“Even if he wasn’t, I’d still like to go down there.”
“What else? Would you like it if I killed Richie?”
“Oh, my Lord,” Donna said. “Would I.”
“What will you give me?”
They heard the back door open and slam closed.
Richie came in through the kitchen, saw them on the couch with the TV off, Donna’s glasses off, what’s this? They weren’t playing Yahtzee or looking at Elvis pictures. Richie stopped chewing his bubble gum. What’s going on here? In some kind of serious conversation that could be about him. Or else the Indian was getting ready to dive into her muff. Either way, Richie didn’t like the looks of it. But lightened up his manner saying, “Goddamn it, Bird, I do all the work and you have all the fun. Did I mention that before? I don’t like to repeat myself. Donna, go take a leak or something, the Bird and I want to be alone.”
Look at that. Now she was staring at the Bird, like it was up to him, or he’d give her permission, those big bald eyes of hers trying like hell to focus.
“Donna, you hear me?”
“He don’t like to repeat himself,” the Bird said to her and motioned with his head, go on.
She still took her sweet time getting up, straightening her robe, walking out, head of gold held high, retired queen of the cons—never had it so good and never would again. Richie stepped over to give Donna a pat on the behind. He looked at the Bird, who looked back at him, but waited, chewing his gum, till he heard a door close.
“You ready?”
“For what?”
“I call the woman, okay? She starts in bitching at me, her back’s killing her and it’s my fault.”
“Am I ready for what?”
The Bird trying to act cool.
“I ask her,” Richie said, “did she ever get hold of her daughter and Wayne. She goes, ‘Yeah, and you don’t have to send the check now, they’re coming home.’ “
That hooked the Bird.
“You kidding me. When?”
“They already left. She says her daughter’s coming to take care of her, on account of she’s in terrible pain and can’t move.” Richie watched the Indian, waiting for him to catch on. “They’re coming ’cause I gave the woman a treatment. You hear what I’m saying? I did it, man, rubbing her old bones. I got them to come home, you understand? Saved us a trip.”
The Bird looked like he was still trying to figure it out. “She’s going to her mother’s house.”
“That’s right.”
“What about the guy?”
“The guy, he’ll go with her, or he’ll stay home. Or they’ll both stop home first, I bet you anything, ’cause it’s on the way. We go to their house right now, tonight, and wait. They don’t come by, we go to the mom’s house.”
“Maybe,” the Bird said. “I’ll think about it.”
Fucking Indian.
Ten feet away. Take one step, hop on the other foot and kick him right in the face. Uh, what did you say, Bird? There’s nothing to think about, man. You want to know everything’s gonna happen? There’s no way in the fucking world you can know everything. You don’t even want to know everything, not have any surprises in your life?
No more partners, man, that was for sure. He should never have brought the Indian into this deal. That caused his mind to pause and think, Wait a minute. What deal? There wasn’t a dime to be made off it, unless he called up that real estate man sometime.
Just then the Bird said, “Okay, we go to their house.”
And they were back together again, Richie grinning at him, anxious to tell more, but blew a bubble, popped it and was chewing again before saying, “Bird? Guess what? I even got us provisions. We spend the night there we’re gonna be hungry. I got us some pizza you put in the oven, I got us a bunch of different kinds of like frozen din-dins, I got us some potato chips, candy bars . . . Hey, I picked up a magazine at the checkout, I’m waiting there? Bird, it shows a picture of a guy weighs twelve hundred pounds. You ever hear of anybody that big in your life?”
“Twelve hundred pounds?” the Bird was squinting at him. “Three horses don’t weigh twelve hundred pounds.”
“I got the magazine out’n the car.”
“What’s the guy eat?”
“You won’t believe it,” Richie said.
Armand, holding a bottle of Canadian whiskey in a paper bag, looked into Donna’s bedroom. He said, “We’re leaving now. See you tomorrow.”
She was over by her dresser, still wearing the robe. It hung open and she left it that way turning to look at him, one hand on her hip, showing him everything she owned. Donna didn’t say anything. What could she?
So Armand said, “I don’t know what time I’ll be back.” She was scared but still didn’t say anything. He took another look at her, that white body with the dark place showing, and closed the door. He waited in the hall for Richie to come out of the bathroom.
“You ready?”
Richie looked surprised to see him standing there. He said, “Yeah, let’s go.”
They went through the kitchen and out the back to the Dodge parked in the narrow drive. Armand had to edge past a tangle of bushes to open the door and get in his side. Richie was already behind the wheel starting the car. He got it going and sat there a moment.
Armand thinking, He forgot something.
Richie looked at him, giving him a glance, no more than that, and opened the door.
“I forgot something.”
“What?”
“I want to bring some booze.”
“I got it right here.”
“Not what I drink, you don’t.”
Armand didn’t say anything else. He waited as Richie got out of the car and went back into the house. Armand turned off the engine and sat listening. He saw Donna the way he had looked in the bedroom at her naked beneath her robe. He sat listening, thinking that Richie would use his gun if he was going to do it. He sat listening not wanting to hear that sound or have Richie come out and tell him he did it some other way, if that’s what he was doing. He sat listening until Richie opened the door and got in, handed him the bottle of Southern Comfort and started the car. They backed out and drove away from the house, lights showing in the living room. Armand didn’t say anything and neither did Richie.
20
* * *
ELEVEN-THIRTY THAT EVENING Carmen stopped at a Kountry Kitchen south of Gary, Indiana, tired and hungry, halfway home.
The hardest part of the trip was getting out of Cape Girardeau, crossing the river and following county roads east to find I-57. After that there was nothing to it. Turn left and drive straight up through almost the entire state of Illinois. Turn right on I-94 and cut across a corner of Indiana, where she was now. She’d have something to eat, get back on 94 and it would take her all the way across southern Michigan, through Detroit and to within twenty miles or so of home. Mom could wait.
Carmen was anxious to walk into her own house again, that drafty old barn with its cramped kitchen, its foyer bigger than the living room, its creaks and groans, the steam pipes making a racket in the winter. The house would be cold, it didn’t matter. She wanted to see it, make sure it was still there after more than eighty years, look out the kitchen window at the woods and the brush field and Wayne’s Chickenshit Inn. She’d call him when she got home, which would be about six-thirty in the morning if she could stay awake and drive straight through. Find out what time he was leaving. Check to see if Mom was okay and maybe wait for him. Mom could be all better now, knowing her little girl was coming home. Wayne could have already left by the time she called. But if he was there, she’d tell him not to be surprised if Ferris drops in, and if he does, be nice, okay? Just say good-bye. And Wayne would say, yeah, uh-huh, what else you want me to do? How about if I give him a hug? . . . Or not mention Ferris at all. He was three hundred and fifty miles behind her, back in southeast Missouri with his muscles and wavy hair, Carmen thinking of him now as a clown who used to walk into her house, an annoying jerk
rather than a serious threat. She should have spoken up to him more. Got mad and told him to get the hell out, goddamn it. And got mad thinking about it, cleaning up her plate of bacon and eggs, cottage fries, rye-bread toast and coffee, Kountry Kitchen No. 3.
She should’ve thrown something at him. Something heavy. She threw beer cans at Wayne, but beer cans were for show. Or she should’ve hit him with something. Keep a sleever bar handy for creeps who walk in the house uninvited.
Carmen finished, got the check and went to the counter to pay. A guy in a John Deere cap reached it at the same time. He touched the bill of the cap funneled over his eyes and said, “After you.” Carmen nodded, glanced at the guy, saw his eyes and the sly grin and thought, Oh shit, another one. He said, “I imagine there’s all kinds of boys after you,” and Carmen got out of there.
The pickup stood close, angle-parked in the lights of the Kountry Kitchen. She unlocked it, climbed in, reached for the door to swing it closed and the guy in the John Deere cap caught it, held it open.
“Excuse me. I just want to ask, if you got time . . .”
Carmen started the engine, revved it.
“Wait a sec now, I thought we might have a drink. There’s a spot up here before you get to the Michigan line, the Hoosier Inn off Exit Thirty-nine? You ever been there?”
Carmen took time to look at him, his face raised, hopeful now. She said, “Do you really think I want to go to a place called the Hoosier Inn off Exit Thirty-nine? For a drink or any reason at all? Are you serious?”
Carmen put the pickup in reverse and backed away from the Kountry Kitchen, the open door bringing the guy along against his will, the guy yelling now, “Hey, for Christ sake!” Scrambling to stay on his feet. Carmen braked, shifted, took off in low gear and left him. The door swung closed as she drove away.
Hit them with a truck if you don’t have a sleever bar.
Twenty years married to Wayne.
She followed her headlights along the nighttime freeway, not as tired as before, thinking about Wayne now, seeing them together. They’re in the kitchen having a beer and she’s describing the guy in the John Deere cap, oh, about thirty-five, not bad-looking. She tells what the guy said, word for word, memorized, beginning with “After you,” and then what she said, very calmly, after he invites her to have a drink. “You really think I want to go to a place called the Hoosier Inn, off Exit Thirty-nine?” Wayne would be grinning by then. “Are you serious?” He’d love it. It was the kind of thing Wayne would say. Or he’d ask the guy if he was out of his fucking mind, but “Are you serious?” still wasn’t bad. She wanted to hurry up and get home, call Wayne, and if he was still there tell him to get on his horse.
They told Wayne at Waterfront Services there were northbound tows leaving but none that had to stop at Cape. A guy who worked for the Corps of Engineers, a civilian employee, was in the office. He said Wayne could ride with him as far as Thebes, where he lived, and it was only another nine miles to the Cape bridge, but he first needed to see a man over at the Skipper Lounge. Wayne thought he meant ride in a boat, but it was a Ford pickup they drove to the pizza-smelling saloon and the man the guy from the Corps of Engineers had to see was the bartender. He had to see him keep pouring Jim Beam into a glass until the fifth was used up. By this time it was eleven-thirty at night.
Carmen, Wayne believed, would be somewhere around Chicago, while he was stuck down at the ass end of the state. The bartender kept watching him to see he didn’t lift the guy from the Corps of Engineers off the floor and threaten or shake him.
The guy kept telling Wayne to take her easy, have another, he’d still get home quicker than by towboat. Wayne, who only had every other drink with the guy, said, “Okay, if you let me drive.” Sure, hell, they’d both go to Cape and have one and the guy, smashed out of his mind by now, would drive himself home from there. Which was okay with Wayne, as long as he wasn’t riding with him.
They got to Thebes and Wayne said, “Which way now?” The guy said turn here, turn there, okay stop. They were at the guy’s house. Wayne said, “I thought we were going to Cape.” The guy from the fucking Corps of Engineers said, “You’re going to Cape, I’m going to bed.” Wayne almost stole his truck. It took him three hours and forty minutes to hike it half in the bag, from Thebes to the bridge, not seeing one goddamn car on the road. He picked up the Olds at Cape Barge Line, got home feeling like shit and there weren’t any aspirin in the medicine cabinet. Carmen had taken them with her. Thanks a lot. There was a note on the refrigerator and his new work gloves he’d forgotten lying on the breakfast table. Wayne set the alarm and went to bed.
He woke up at seven wearing his Jockey shorts and the yellow cowhide work gloves, hung over, feeling mean and craving ice cream. For about fifteen minutes he lay there thinking about a chocolate milk shake. He had downed many of them in a hung-over state while other guys drank cold beer or hard stuff as a pick-me-up. Wayne believed drinking before noon could get you in trouble and ice cream was better than sweating out the clock. Carmen had bought some, he was pretty sure, the other day, a half-gallon of butterscotch ripple. He jumped out of bed to check and there it was, Thank you, Jesus, in the freezer part of the fridge. But hard as a rock. He took it out to soften while he showered and got dressed.
But then in the shower with water streaming over him, hair lathered with shampoo, he thought, Hell, bring the ice cream in here and it would soften enough to drink, just like a thick milk shake.
Wayne left the shower on and closed the curtain so the floor wouldn’t get wet. He walked out of the steamy bathroom naked and wet, tiptoed along the hall to the kitchen, on the right, and stopped, catching a glimpse of something to his left. Through the living room and out the window. A cream-colored Plymouth pulling into the drive to park behind the Olds. Deputy Marshal Ferris Britton getting out of the car, coming to the side door.
What would he want this early in the morning?
If the doorbell rings, Wayne was thinking, yell at him to go away. But the doorbell didn’t ring. He heard a key turn the lock and knew what Ferris wanted.
Wayne slipped back along the hall to the bedroom, closed the door partway and stood listening. He heard the side door close.
Ferris was in the house.
Wayne got a clean pair of Jockeys from the dresser and put them on. He was still wet, hair creamed and swirled with shampoo. He looked at his new work gloves, never used, lying on the bed.
Ferris was in the hall, looking in the kitchen. He came to the bathroom and for a moment stood in the doorway. He stepped inside.
Wayne came only a few moments later, into the steam and sound of the shower going behind the flowered plastic curtain. He stood looking at Ferris’s back, close enough to reach out and touch the big grip of the revolver on his belt, the shirt stretched across those solid shoulders, short sleeves rolled up, the muscles in his arms tightening as he raised his hands to his hips. Wayne was going to tap him on the shoulder and say . . . whatever you said to a guy who thinks he’s about to surprise your wife in the shower. He hesitated, watching Ferris’s right hand reach up to take hold of the curtain. Maybe you don’t say anything.
Ferris did. He said, “Surprise!” Yelled it out as he tore the shower curtain aside, ripping part of it off the rod . . . and stood looking at wet tile, the shower streaming into an empty tub. He stood like that for several moments, as though thinking, well, she must be in there somewhere. Wayne got ready.
He waited for Ferris to turn, saw his face, all eyes, and hit him. Hit him with his right hand in that yellow cowhide work glove, hit him as hard as he had ever swung a ten-pound beater, hit him one time with everything he had and Ferris went into the shower, bounced against the tile and slid down to lie cramped in there, legs sticking up over the edge of the tub. His eyes opened to stare dazed through the stream of water.
Wayne bent over, hands on his bare knees, to look at him. He said, “Oh, it’s you. Shit, I thought it was somebody broke in the house.”
&nbs
p; The phone rang in the kitchen.
It rang five times before Wayne got to it, taking off his gloves, and answered.
Carmen’s voice said, “Wayne? I’m home.”
21
* * *
“I JUST WALKED IN THE DOOR.”
“How was it? You have any trouble?”
“It wasn’t bad. When did you get there?”
“Four A.M. I got up at seven, had a shower. At the moment I’m having some ice cream. Butterscotch ripple.”
“Are we a little hung over?”
“You took the aspirin with you. That was a cruel thing to do, you know it?”
“Wayne, why don’t you leave as soon as you can. In case Ferris stops by.”
“He already has. He’s here right now.”
“You mean he’s right there, in the kitchen?”
“No, in the bathroom. I think his jaw’s broken,” Wayne said and told her about it.
Carmen listened. She said, “Wayne, you better get out of there, now.”
“Soon as I clean out the refrigerator.”
As he said it, and told her he didn’t see a problem, he’d ask Ferris if he wanted him to call Emergency Medical or the cops, Carmen was aware of a humming sound, familiar, one she was used to, and turned from the sink to look at the refrigerator. The door was closed and it was running. Wayne was telling her now he planned to keep his foot on the gas all the way and try to make it in ten and a half hours, set a new Cape to Algonac speed record.
“We turned off the refrigerator,” Carmen said, “didn’t we? I mean the one here.”
“We shut everything off but the phone.”
“Well, somebody turned it on.” She paused, listening. “Wayne, I think the furnace is going.”
“Check the thermostat.”
“I can feel it. It’s warm in here.”
“Maybe Nelson had the house open, trying to sell it. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“Maybe,” Carmen said, looking across the kitchen to what had been a pantry and now was Wayne’s closet, where he kept his hunting and fishing gear, stacks of outdoor magazines. She listened to him speculate, Nelson gets an offer and the next thing they know he’s trying to sell them a two-bedroom over at Wildwood, your choice of decorator colors. The shotgun must be in there, in Wayne’s closet. It had to be, they didn’t take it with them. The closet would be locked and the key was on the ring with the rest of his keys, in her purse.