Baja Oklahoma

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven S LIe K C AUG H T Evan in the middle of a death spiral and ordered four more umlauts (or himself and a boule of white wine for Juanita. It would save Slick the trouble of having to use semaphores between drinks. Any wine would be satisfactory, Slick said 10 the waiter, as long as it weren't a Chateau-le-$44.50. "Pinol Chardonnay is a nicc wine," said Evan. "So is Gallo." "J rather imagined you'd say that," Evan simpered, reaching (or an overburdened ashtray. Juanita rescued her cigarette. Slick then settled back and confessed to Juanita that both of his ex-wives, like Weldon Taylor, had been crackerjack comedians. The wife to whom Slick had returned from the army was Janet, his old high school sweetheart. Rather curiously, Slick had said good-bye to a Senior Class Favorite but had come home to find a metal-shop teacher. Janet had done a darn funny thing back in their neighborhood in Tulsa. Almost single-handedly, she had populariz.ed fat arms and screaming over the dinner table. Slick's parting words 10 his first wife had been: " Damned CHA PTER SEVEN "5 if you haven't got me interested in loud voices, Janet. I'm gain' to the opera," Nothing Janet ever did, however, was as hilarious as the stunt Bonnie pulled, which consequently made Bonnie, Slick's second wife, the wittier of the two women. In only twelvc years of marriage. Bonnie fancifully transformed herselr from Rita Hayworth into Joseph Stalin. Bonnie deserved all the credit for driving Slick to a unique psychological discovery, the unearthing of Mankind's Ten Stages of Drunkenness, which were: Witty and Charming. Rich and Powerful. Benevolent. Clairvoyant. Fuck Dinner. Patriotic. Crank Up the Enola Gay. Witty and Charming, Part II. Invisible. Bulletproof. The last stage was almost certain to end a marriage. Slick had missed Bonnie's roll call one night in Tulsa because he drank himself Bulletproof and became involved with a persuasive home-wrecker who vowed he would not have to remove his socks. Slick limped home about seven o'clock the next morning. His plan was 10 sneak inlO the house through the back door before anyone awnkened and curl up on a couch and pretend to have slept there. Dut Bonnie was already in the kitchen cracking eggs for her sister and mother, both of whom lived there-another of Bonnie's jokes. "Where in the holy hell have you been all night?" Bonnie had bellowed. ,,6 PAR T ONE Slick gingerly solved the riddle. He had worked past mid· night on the transmission of a Chevrolet. He hadn't wanted to disturb anybody when he came home. That's why he had slept in the hammock in the backyard. "I'll have mine over easy," he said. "You Iyin' bastard!" Bonnie exploded. "I took that hammock down three weeks ago!" "Well," Slick had murmured sleepily, wandering 01'1. "That's my story and I'm stickin' to ii," Juanita's second husband was Vern Sandifer. Vern, as a figure in her past, was almost as distant as Weldon Taylor now, which was why Juanita could enterlain thoughts of Vern without a relurn o( the old combat fatigue. In the five years between Weldon and Vern, Juanita lost the grandparents who raised her. Her grandfather died of a coronary as he sat in the swing on the front porch. He had been sitting there resting, smelling cotton seed from the elevators towering over the freight cars in the distance, and listening to the plaintive sound of beams falling at North Texas Steel up the road. Juanita's grandmother had died a year later because she missed him. It was during these years that Juanita became adept at tracking down new clinics and sanitariums to keep Grace occupied. She nursed Candy through everything from mumps to anthrax. And she launched her career in Herb's Cafe as a waitress. Vern Sandifer sold mud. Juanita did not understand his line of work immediately, but she was nonetheless attracted to him. Vern was pOlite, well-groomed, very tan, and had tassels on his loafers. A hundred-dollar bill covered the one-dollar bills in his moneyclip . They met in Herb's when Juanita served him a BLD, the CH APTER S E VE N "7 breakfast, lunch and dinner. The BLD was a hamburger...