Ferris Britton appeared in the hall, looking into the kitchen, looking right at Carmen.
“You remember the last time?” Lenore said. “I was in bed two weeks, I couldn’t move and you came every day? You took care of me, you took care of the house . . .”
Ferris Britton, wearing that tight sport coat, thumbs hooked in his belt, grinning at her.
“I don’t know what I would have done without you. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom alone, remember?”
“Mom, I have to go. Somebody’s here.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s work we’re having done.”
Ferris was grinning and shaking his head now, showing some kind of appreciation, enjoying himself.
“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Tell me what time, in case I go out.”
“The same time, around eleven.”
“I could call you. No, if Wayne’s making good money down there, at least I hope he is, you call me.”
“I will, don’t worry.”
“What’re you fixing for dinner?”
“Mom, I have to go. Bye.”
Carmen hung up, Ferris still grinning at her.
He said, “That was your mom, huh? I don’t know if it’s a good idea giving her your phone number.”
Carmen took a moment. “You walk right in someone else’s house?”
Ferris was looking at the electric coffeemaker, over on the counter by the sink. He moved toward it saying, “Excuse me, but this isn’t exactly someone else’s house. It belongs to the Justice Department through seizure by the U. S. Marshals Service and is in our care. I thought I told you that.” He raised his hand as Carmen started to get up from the table. “Stay where you are, I’ll help myself.” Ferris took a cup from the dish drainer, filled it with coffee and came over to the table. “Smells good and strong. I don’t use sugar or cream, nothing that isn’t good for me.” Still grinning at her.
Maybe always grinning, Carmen remembering his boyish expression in candlelight, wavy brown hair down on his forehead, country-western entertainer or television evangelist. She said, “Are you gonna walk in anytime you want? If you are, I think we’ll find another place.” She had to look almost straight up at him standing close to the table and it made her mad. “Maybe we will anyway. I didn’t come here to be a cleaning woman for the Justice Department.”
Ferris stopped grinning. Carmen watched him squint at her now, squeezing lines into his forehead, another one of his expressions. Carmen believed he had three or four: deadpan, mouth open, this one and his gee-whiz grin.
He said, “You mean you aren’t a cleaning lady?”
She watched him set his cup on the table, turn and inspect the kitchen in a studied way, nodding, before looking at her again.
“Well, you sure could do my house anytime.”
There was the grin back again and now he was taking off his sport coat, folding it inside out, making himself right at home.
“Hey, I’m kidding with you. Don’t you know when I’m kidding?”
She watched him slide into the breakfast-nook booth, bringing the sport coat across his lap. His wavy hair, his weight lifter neck and shoulders in a short-sleeve white shirt, red-print tie hanging in front of him, seemed to fill the space on the other side of the table. He brought his cup to him and hunched over to rest his arms on the table edge.
“I knocked. You must not’ve heard me.”
“You didn’t knock or ring the bell,” Carmen said, “you walked right in.”
“I hear you talking to somebody I want to know who the person is, or if you’re in some kind of trouble, need my help. That’s what I’m for.”
She watched him pick up his cup and hold it in two hands as he took a sip. He held it in front of him, looking over the rim of the cup at her.
“Mmmmm, that’s good. I was in court all week was why I haven’t come by. I take that back, I mean during the day. I come by two different nights like around eight, but you weren’t home either time. The pickup was here—I looked in the window, saw how you’d cleaned the place up. Man, I thought I musta had the wrong house.”
Carmen said, “You looked in our windows?”
“Just the living room. No, I went around to the kitchen too. Where were you?”
“If we weren’t home then we were out.”
“Well, I know that. Where’d you go?”
Carmen took her time, wanting to tell him it was none of his business, but wanting to excuse him, too, because he was dumb, because he was overprotective, took his job very seriously and didn’t realize he was blundering into their privacy. She wanted that to be the only reason he was here, sitting close across the table with those huge arms and shoulders, staring at her.
“Let’s see,” Carmen said, “we shopped, bought a new shower curtain, some dish towels. I called my mother. . . . Oh, Wayne bought a pair of work gloves.” She paused, staring at the marshal’s innocent irritating expression, and said, “We thought about going to a show, but didn’t know if we were allowed to.”
Ferris said, “Sure, that’s okay, you can go to the show. But call me and let me know which one. See, I have to know where you are, you know, in case something comes up. I think I got your old man a job over to Cape Barge, if he don’t mind getting filthy dirty crawling underneath towboats. A drydock’s the last place I’d ever want to get hired. He told me he was an ironworker before. I didn’t ask him, but is Wayne an Indian?”
Carmen said, “An Indian—why would you think that?”
“I heard one time they could only get Indians to go up on those high buildings, either ’cause they’re crazy enough to do it, not afraid of heights, or ’cause they’re surefooted—I don’t know, maybe they wear moccasins and aren’t as likely to fall.”
“I’m told they fall like anyone else,” Carmen said. “I’ll bet you also heard you’re not supposed to look down when you’re up pretty high.”
“Yeah, you get the urge to jump.”
“If you do, you’re not an ironworker. It’s looking up that can get you in trouble, if you start watching the clouds moving.”
“I imagine it takes getting used to,” Ferris said. “What’d your old man do before he was an ironworker?”
“He’s not my old man, he’s my husband.”
“I know he’s older’n you are, I saw it in the file. He’s forty-one and you’re thirty-eight, only he looks it and you don’t. You look more my age. I turned thirty-one this past July, but I keep in shape. I work with weights I got at home in my exercise room. I can do those one-hand push-ups, I can do nine-hundred and sixty-five sit-ups at one time without stopping. I’ll run now and then but I don’t care for it too much, I do leg exercises instead. You ought to see my workout room. It was the den before I got divorced. My ex-wife went back to Hughes, Arkansas, that’s near Horseshoe Lake, not too far from West Memphis, where I was born and raised.”
“I have a nineteen-year-old son,” Carmen said, “in the navy. Right now he’s on a nuclear carrier in the Pacific Ocean.”
“Yeah, I saw in the file you had a boy in the service I expected you’d look like an old woman, but you sure don’t. I can tell you take care of yourself, like I do. I respect my body. Watch this.” Ferris raised his right arm, cocked his fist and his bicep jumped out of the short white sleeve. “See? Does a little dance for you.” He looked from his arm to Carmen. “You like to dance? Get out there on the floor and shake it?”
“At times,” Carmen said. “Why don’t you put your arm down?”
“You want to feel it?”
“That’s okay.”
Ferris straightened the arm, raised the other one and stretched, saying, “Oh, man,” before laying them on the edge of the table again, hunching those huge shoulders at her.
“You have a stereo?”
“We didn’t bring it.”
“How about a radio?”
Carmen gave him a weary look. She said, “You’re too much,” and instantly
wished she hadn’t.
He liked it—grinning at her again.
“My ex used to say that. I’d turn on the stereo and we’d dance right there in the house, the two of us. It’s what I miss the most since getting divorced. Well, it and something else. We weren’t married but a year. I think we did it more when we were going together’n when we were married, and I’m not talking about dancing now. What I think happens, when it’s right there all the time waiting you get so you take it for granted. And I mean just in a year’s time. I ‘magine after something like twenty years you don’t do it near as much, or least not with the same person you’re married to. Am I right about that?”
Carmen felt herself boxed in by the table and his big shoulders filling the space in front of her, his shoulders, his wavy hair, his grin . . . She tried staring at him calmly, with no expression—practiced from staring at Wayne, good at it—let this guy know she didn’t think he was cute or funny or was afraid of him. She wasn’t. She was irritated, but didn’t want to show him that either. Irritated by that goddamn grin and now by the thought—all of a sudden popping into her head—that she had missed something in his handwriting, or hadn’t paid enough attention to signs of ego. How could a person as dumb as this guy be so confident? That was not only irritating, it was a little scary.
She was wondering if maybe he could grin forever when it began to fade and he said to her, “Oh, well, you think on it and let me know.”
He slid out of the booth with his sport coat. When he turned, Carmen saw the revolver holstered on his right hip. She wanted to say something to him, but was more anxious for him to go, get out of here. He started to, he reached the doorway to the hall and Carmen got up to follow, make sure he left. When he turned she stood still, her hand on the edge of the table.
“See, you look to me like a nice person, the kind I’d like to get to know.”
“Thanks,” Carmen said.
“That’s why I know it isn’t all rosy between you and your old man, considering what he’s into, the kind of people he associates with. I can’t say I know what the deal is . . .”
It took Carmen a moment to realize what he was saying. “Wait a minute—Wayne isn’t into anything.”
“I suspect it might be something like labor racketeering, the kind of work he does, and the Bureau’s got him up against the wall.”
“No—believe me. You’ve got the wrong idea.”
“Am I close?”
“He hasn’t done anything is what I’m trying to tell you.” She watched Ferris put on his frown and pose with his head cocked.
“That’s funny, I thought your old man was in the Witness Security Program.”
Carmen felt an urge to go over and kick him in the balls, hard. “You don’t have to be a criminal, do you? Isn’t that right?”
“I think it helps,” Ferris said, “since I never heard of anybody in the program that wasn’t dirty—outside of relatives, wives, like yourself. See, that’s why I know you and him have your problems, ’cause as a law-enforcement officer I’ve dealt with plenty of guys like your old man. I’m sworn to protect his life, but that don’t mean I have to show him any respect.”
“I don’t believe this,” Carmen said with nervous energy, too many things in her mind to say at once. She saw Ferris turn to go and then look back at her again.
He said, “I don’t have to show you any respect either, if I don’t want to.”
Carmen took one look at Wayne and said, “Oh, my Lord,” not so much at the way he weaved and bumped against the refrigerator, but seeing his coveralls filthy with grease and soot, bunched under his arm.
“I stopped off. I’m not late, am I?”
“For what? We’re sure not going anywhere,” Carmen said. “Give me those.” She took his coveralls and threw them into the dark utility room. “Where’re you working, in a coal mine?”
“Close to it. I spent this morning in a coal barge welding in steel plates.” Wayne had the refrigerator open now. “The drydock foreman says, ‘So you’re a welder, huh?’ I told him, ‘You bet I am, AWS certified.’ He says, ‘Yeah, but can you weld plates watertight?’ I said, ‘Hey, I can weld a goddamn building so it won’t fall down. Is that good enough?’ He liked that, he said, ‘We’ll try you out.’ “
Carmen watched him bump the refrigerator door closed with his hip, a can of beer in each hand, wound up because he was working again and had stopped off with the guys, back into a routine. Carmen was still tense from the deputy marshal’s visit, anxious to tell Wayne about it, but saw she would have to wait her turn. He was seated now in the breakfast nook, popping open the beer cans.
“I worked on the coal barge and then this big triple-screw towboat, the Robert R. Nally, comes in sideways from out in the river—that’s called walking the boat, when they do that. The chief engineer, this guy I got to know pretty well, was madder’n hell at the trip pilot. . . . See, there’s a pilot they hire for trips, he and the captain take turns navigating, driving the boat. But this one they had caused the Robert R. Nally to run aground up here at a place they call the Backbone, Mile Ninety-four. It was pushing sixteen barges and the chief engineer said they splattered, broke the tow all apart. He said what happened, the dummy trip pilot was trying to steer the Backbone when he should’ve flanked it.” Wayne was grinning.
Carmen saw him wrapped up in his riverboat story, into a new trade and sounding like Matthew in his letters full of new words and references. At another time she might be interested. Right now it was beginning to irritate her.
“The trip pilot doesn’t work for the company, he’s like an independent contractor. He gets two-fifty a day and good ones are in demand. Even taking time off, you know what you could make a year, steering a boat down the river?”
Wayne paused, raising his eyebrows and his can of beer, and Carmen said, “Ferris was here.”
“When, today?”
“This morning. He thinks you’re a crook, involved in some kind of racketeering.”
“Guy’s an idiot. He introduces me to the drydock foreman and tells him I’m in the Witness Security Program. The foreman goes, ‘Oh, is that right?’ I had to tell him after Ferris left, ‘You want to check on me? Call Detroit, call my local.’ He says, ‘Well, if you can do the job . . . ’ “
“I did call Detroit,” Carmen said. “I called the Marshals Service and spoke to John McAllen. I told him what happened . . .”
“We finally got a phone. Right there and I didn’t even notice it.”
“McAllen said he’ll look into it.”
“Good, straighten the guy out.”
“Wayne, I was on the phone talking to Mom—he walked right in the house.”
“Who did, Ferris?”
“He didn’t knock or ring the bell, he just walked in.”
“Was the door locked?”
“I don’t know, you went out. Did you lock it? He probably has a key anyway.”
“I was with a guy after that mentioned him. We stopped off, the chief engineer and the captain of the boat we’re working on—both of these guys’ve been on the river over forty years. The captain, he wears a regular suit and tie, took me up to the pilothouse, showed me all the controls. But the way I got chummy with him was through the chief engineer. I was underneath the stern of the boat, in the drydock now, they got the old wheel off that was bent . . . The wheel’s the propeller, only it’s a great big goddamn thing, taller’n I am, they cost ten to fifteen thousand each. I’m welding a plate over the piece that holds the wheel to the shaft, the chief engineer says, ‘I got a job you might want to look at.’ “
Carmen turned and opened the oven. With hot pads she brought out a casserole of pork chops and escalloped potatoes, placed it on top of the stove and didn’t move, standing with her back to Wayne.
“He takes me aboard and down to the engine room, three diesels in there, twelve-hundred horsepower each, and shows me this busted exhaust flex joint.”
Carmen got a head of lettuce from the
refrigerator, brought it to the counter next to the sink, still with her back to Wayne, and began tearing it apart to make a salad.
“It’s a waffle-type joint made of stainless steel, the kind of job ordinarily they’d take out the whole section and send it to the shop. Anyway, I put a weld in there, the chief engineer looks at it, he says, ‘We go ashore after work I’m gonna buy you a drink.’ I don’t care that much about welding, but you know what’s the most interesting thing about that operation, seeing how the drydock works. You ever see it?”
Carmen had a chunk of lettuce in her hand. She threw it down on the counter, came over to the table and picked up the can of beer Wayne had opened for her.
“What they do, they fill it with water and the entire dock sinks down in the river. They work the towboat in there between the two sides, pump the water out and the whole thing raises back up with the boat. They took a barge out and put a big goddamn towboat in there in less than an hour.”
Carmen slammed the beer can down on the table.
“The guy walked into our house!”
Wayne looked up at her, startled.
Carmen said, “Am I getting through to you?”
Wayne touched her arm. “Why don’t you sit down, okay?”
“I don’t want to sit down. The guy walked into our house, uninvited. Without knocking or ringing the bell. Do you understand that?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“I could have been undressed, I could have been taking a shower. Did you ask anything about that? What I was doing, what I felt, was I afraid? No, you tell me about this wonderful welding job you did and how the fucking drydock works.”
“I was gonna discuss it with you.”
“When?”
“Right now. I was about to tell you about this guy that joined us after.”
“In the bar?”
“Yeah, a place they go.”
“Great. Tell me about the guy you met in a bar.”
“Why don’t you sit down, okay? Take it easy.”
“You want to know something else? The guy who came to our house, Armand Degas?”