The Choirboys (42 page)

"He said he'd like to rebush somebody by sticking a picnic ham in her unit and pulling the bone out, is what he said!"

"I swear I wasn't talking about you! It was my wife!" Spencer pleaded, fearing that Carolina might pull that train tonight and leave him off. "Why is everybody so sensitive tonight?"

"Oh stop it," Francis said. "Carolina, want some Japanese food?"

"You cute little shitbird," she giggled, pounding Francis on the head. "Is it like Chinese food?"

"Better," said Francis lasciviously.

"That Chinese food," Ora Lee giggled. "You know a half hour later."

"Way she accuses me," Spencer pouted. "And I like her so much I balled her on the same night my first wife was delivering our last kid."

"You both had a baby on the same night!" Harold Bloomguard observed.

"Hey, munchkin!" yelled Roscoe Rules to Harold Bloomguard. "You're the littlest guy around here. Settle this argument. Do you think there's anything immoral about screwing a midget?"

"I didn't say immoral," protested Father Willie. "I just said it seemed a little perverted."

"Well I'm not sorry," said Roscoe, sneering at Carolina Moon. "She was a lot better than some big girls I could name."

"Roscoe'd screw the crack of dawn," said Father Willie who was creeping closer to Carolina Moon who was sick of playing with Francis' bare feet while he sang Spanish songs.

"You're bilingual, ain't you, Francis?" asked Carolina Moon.

"Does that mean he licks girls and boys?" asked Spermwhale.

"I'm just afraid my marriage isn't going to work," Father Willie said to Carolina Moon who was suddenly holding his head in her lap.

"Why do you say that?" asked Carolina.

"My wife just doesn't like sex. She'd rather hand out Watchtowers than."

"She ever catch you coming home with a slight odor of vagina on your breath, Padre?" Calvin Potts giggled as he tried to decide at what point Carolina Moon would become more exciting than the fifth of Johnnie Walker he was demolishing.

"Gosh no," blushed Father Willie as Carolina Moon groped him good naturedly under his blanket.

"Oughtta be glad she wasn't like that bitch I was married to," grumbled Calvin. "I hadda check to see if the toilet seat was up or down every time I came home."

"Why don't you get a hair transplant, Spermy?" asked Ora Lee Tingle, waddling past the fat policeman who was sprawled back on his elbows. She bumped him on the side of the head with her enormous ass saying, "Make it pubic hair. Stands up when a girl walks past."

Then Ora Lee squealed as he rolled over and made a grab for her. She eluded him and jumped over Whaddayamean Dean and fell on Sam Niles, slapping him on the side of the face with one gigantic tit which knocked his glasses into the bushes.

"Where's my glasses? Where's my glasses?" yelled Sam Niles, crawling around Calvin Potts who decided the Johnnie Walker was preferable to Carolina Moon for the moment.

"Calvin probably stole your glasses," said Spencer Van Moot. "You know you shouldn't leave nothing around these people."

"Your daddy had three dollars stead a two dollars you'd be black too, chump," said Calvin Potts as Sam Niles found the glasses and cleaned them on his shirttail.

"Where'd Roscoe go?" asked Father Willie who staggered around several sprawling choirboys. "Roscoe! Where are you? Roscoe!"

"Hey, Roscoe! Roscoe!" yelled Francis.

"Roscoe!" yelled several choirboys who didn't give a shit where Roscoe was.

"Roscoe, you there?" yelled Spermwhale Whalen, unzipping his fly and looking inside at which time Carolina Moon made a grab for him.

"Ain't time yet, me beauty," said Spermwhale, zipping up and kissing the girl in a quivering fleshy embrace.

"I'll pay you two anything to do a dirty movie for me!" screamed Francis Tanaguchi.

"You looked like a blue eyed home boy," said Calvin Potts to Whaddayamean Dean who was leaning against a tree gnawing on spareribs with barbecue sauce all over his face.

"Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean?" asked Whaddayamean Dean, and all the choirboys looked knowingly at each other, silently agreeing that Whaddayamean Dean had done it again.

"You gonna slip old Carolina a roll of tarpaper tonight, Calvin?" Francis whispered.

"Not if I ain't first. I ain't drunk enough for that," said Calvin Potts.

"I feel like a construction engineer," Spencer Van Moot said, overhearing the conversation. "Gonna lay some pipe, six inches at a time!"

"Stealing a girl's cherry is cock robbin," said Carolina Moon to Whaddayamean Dean who looked at her blankly.

"Darn it, did you fart?" Father Willie suddenly asked Sam Niles.

"No, was I supposed to?" replied the weary choirboy.

"So I can't take you away from Carolina, huh?" said Ora Lee Tingle to Spermwhale Whalen after she won a two dollar bet by finishing a half bottle of champagne without taking it from her mouth.

"I said you can't get me there right now," Spermwhale corrected her and gave one of her huge thighs a playful pinch, tearing her mesh stocking.

"Well it's easier to. let's see. Padre! Father Willie!" Ora Lee yelled. "How's it go? In the Bible about the camel and the eye of a needle?"

"I dunno, something about a humping hype," said Father Willie, reaching the stage of drunkenness wherein he was revolted by his uncontrollable sinfulness, yet not to the point where he goatishly succumbed.

"Mothers, brothers and others, lend me your ears," said Harold Bloomguard, staggering to his feet. "Hear about Calvin and Francis almost blowing up some dude tonight?"

"No, what happened?" asked Baxter Slate as the choirboys quieted down for a cops 'n robbers story.

"No big thing," Calvin said. "Cat on a family dispute almost draws down on Francis when he tried to lay the iron on his wrists after the dude had went upside Momma's head."

"It was nothing," Francis said. "He was drunk. Makes a grab for what I thought was a gun. Was his wallet. All I did is whack him across the arm with my flashlight."

"I almost blew the sucker away," Calvin said. 'Thought it was a piece the way he went to the drawer. Was ready to bust a cap between his fuckin horns."

"Be glad you didn't," said Baxter Slate soberly.

"Could you live with yourself if you blew up a guy by mistake that way?" asked Father Willie Wright.

"I could a blowed him up and lived with his foxy old lady," said Calvin Potts.

"Remember that time you busted your flashlight on the black belt guy, Spermwhale?" Spencer Van Moot asked. "This hamburger they were busting thinks he's Kung Fu and tries to drop Baxter. He says, 'Yaaa!' and kicks Baxter and Spermwhale yells, 'Everready!' and hits him with his flashlight. Then Spermwhale gave him nine from the sky with his stick."

Spencer Van Moot then stumbled over Spermwhale's feet and fell against Calvin Potts.

"What's a matter? Fall off your wallet?" Calvin asked the richest choirboy.

"Must give you a hernia carrying that money belt around," said Sam Niles.

"Careful a your head when you fall," Spermwhale said. "All that fuckin hair spray you use could cause brain damage."

"With your money why don't you hire a coolie to pull you around the park so you won't be tripping all over everybody?" said Harold Bloomguard.

And Spencer Van Moot, the best dressed and richest choirboy, lay back on the grass and laughed uproariously when Carolina Moon fell on him lovingly and smothered him in kisses while she felt his body up and down to see if he really did have a money belt.

Roscoe Rules looked at his comrades and now thought they weren't such bad guys. He was even able to tolerate the Gook and the Spook tonight.

Roscoe had met Francis and Calvin at the first choir practice months before when Francis was going through his vampire period.

When they met, both Calvin and Francis were drunk and sullen and sat together in the shadows examining the new choirboy.

"Are you the two they call the Gook and the Spook?" Roscoe had asked with a big smile that was met with stony silence.

"Yeah," said Calvin Potts finally, glaring at Roscoe since Carvin didn't yet know that Roscoe had brought three fifths of Scotch with him.

"Uh, what do your friends call you?" Roscoe asked, having a hard time seeing their faces in the dark. "You can call me the Gook," said the Gook. "You can call me the Spook," said the Spook. "But if you do I'll kick your face off."

And after that Roscoe had sat furious and quiet and wondered why people didn't like him. After all he had been willing to treat them all the same, even niggers and slopeheads. Then he started looking hard at the Gook. And it looked as if his teeth had grown grotesquely. Roscoe was sure it was the drink because there in the darkness of MacArthur Park it looked as if the Gook had fangs! But of course that was silly. Yet five minutes later when Roscoe got up to walk off into the trees to relieve himself, he was bushwhacked by a hissing demon which leaped on his back and bit him on the neck while Roscoe screamed in terror and tried to reach for his gun as he wet all over his shoes.

It had taken Spermwhale Whalen to pry Francis Tanaguchi from Roscoe Rules' throat that first night, and as Roscoe threatened to kill Francis, it was Harold Bloomguard who explained to Calvin and Francis that the new kid on the block had brought three fifths of Scotch to choir practice which they could expect at any future choir practice Roscoe might attend. After hearing that, Francis and Calvin became very tolerant of the insufferable prick and Roscoe Rules was an accepted choirboy. He was able to sit now at this memorable choir practice and not think that nobody liked him. And he could pinch Ora Lee and Carolina just like the other guys.

While Roscoe remembered his first choir practice and felt all cozy and secure because now he belonged, he started talking to Sam Niles who was already mightily pissed off because one of the lenses on his glasses got scratched when Ora Lee slapped him in the face with a tit.

"Niles, we just gotta get the department to give us good ammo," Roscoe began. "You see, high velocity shock waves're like sonic booms and they burst the veins and arteries. But they don't stop like the hollow points and the blunt nose. A copper casing holds the lead together. Centrifugal force breaks up the lead. You only need a pointed projectile for accuracy. Get it?"

"I get it," Sam sighed.

Then Roscoe said, "I ever tell you what I used to do to all the pricks in the juvie gangs when they turned eighteen? I used to send them a Xerox of the page of the LAPD manual which tells about shooting at adults only. With the page I'd enclose a dumdum bullet and a greeting card. On the card I'd write, 'You are now, by law, an adult. Have a nice eighteenth birthday, asshole.'"

"That's about as interesting as a night in the drunk tank," said Sam Niles, who lay back smoking, looking at the great star while the bourbon went to work on his entire body, turning it to rock.

"Looky here, Ora Lee," said Calvin Potts as he was starting to think that the fat girls weren't so repulsive after all. In fact, depending on how you looked at her, Ora Lee was starting to get downright gorgeous.

"Looky here, what?" asked Ora Lee. "You boys aren't interested in us girls tonight. You're all sitting around like that bunch of fruits hangs around the other side of the duck pond."

"Well you know, consenting adults!" said Francis Tanaguchi, kissing his partner Calvin Potts who pushed him away.

". and I been thinking about buying this baby falcon," said Roscoe Rules to Harold Bloomguard. "I live out in the country with decent people. Room for an eagle even. I could train him to kill on command. Shit, how many guys own a hunting hawk?"

"Last guy I know of was William the Conqueror," said Baxter Slate.

"Would really be great!" Roscoe mused. "Your own killing bird!"

"You could feed him raw meat right out of your hand," said Baxter.

"Sure!" said Roscoe.

"And to save feed money you could train him to fly over the kindergarten and carry off kids," Baxter Slate said.

"You know, I never liked you, Slate," said Roscoe Rules, turning sullen.

"Roscoe needs his steel plate buffed!" Spencer said gleefully.

"Are you trying to incinerate that Roscoe belongs in the funny place?" asked Harold Bloomguard, taking pleasure in the thought that someone else might be going there with him someday.

"What're you trying to say? What're you trying to say?" Whaddayamean Dean blurted, still propped against the same tree, a pile of rib bones on his lap, a half empty bourbon bottle resting on his chest.

"I don't think it's fair," said Father Willie, arguing a point of law with Spencer Van Moot. "In these unlawful sex cases a boy of thirteen can be booked as opposed to the old statutory rape charge where he couldn't. Who enjoys it more, the ear being scratched or the finger scratching?"

"If they're doing it in the ear they deserve to be booked, the perverts!" said Carolina Moon as Spermwhale Whalen threw her down and kissed her again.

"I'd give anything to direct this scene!" cried Francis Tanaguchi.