The break, when it finally happened, offered an awful lot of flourish, but after the balls settled down, Bud found himself with no shape at all. He eventually lost a tall stack of quarters and kept on losing, game after game, until he quit in disgust and walked outside to cool off, blinking against the brilliant blue-and-yellow October day. The air so lacking in haze that after his eyes adjusted, he could make out the cross members on the Juala Bald fire tower.
Bud sat on the bench with three old men in sweat-stained grey felt hats and white shirts and soft pale blue overalls. Also, the former dime store bandit with his air of distraction and pink forehead dent. The men went right on without pause, swapping watches and knives and telling elaborate nasty stories of their younger years, which most would call lies, the main elements being women and fighting. But the old tellers more than balanced out their lack of fact with truth of desire.
One of them delivered an antique joke of stunning dirtiness, very deadpan. The other men sniffed back their sinuses and made other hawking noises in lieu of laughter.
Lit passed down Main Street in his black-and-white. Raised a forefinger to the bench sitters and kept going.
One of the elders said, Sad shit there.
Bud’s ears pricked. Sad why?
—Everything. His wife and his girls. He’s a lonesome man. Luce is all the relation he’s got in the world anymore.
—Say what? Bud said.
—They don’t speak when they pass on the street. Treat each other like they’re both dead.
It took Bud a few seconds to let that sink in. And then all of a sudden, it hit him like a big fat-ass epiphany.
He said aloud, Goddamn. And then he caught himself in time to avoid blurting, So Lit’s Lily’s father too.
Bud, without even a parting witticism, walked to his truck and drove down the lakeshore, past the dam, and through the valley on the river road, thinking and panicking. Breathing fast and shallow until he got dizzy and pulled over to hang his head out the window to heave a little.
Being Lit’s former son-in-law hardly seemed promising, no matter how you looked at it. Lily hadn’t liked to talk about her people, and when she did, Bud wasn’t usually listening. If she called her daddy anything at all, it was Daddy. That’s the best Bud could remember. And what kind of name was Lit, anyway? Not a person’s name Bud ever heard. Or else it slid right on by while he was thinking about something else.
It was like falling into some game with rules everybody knows but you. Such as that business about not flushing with your foot. And because you don’t know the rules, you keep stepping on your own crank while lesser people jump ahead. Exactly like life in general.
Bud clutched his shark-tooth necklace in his fist. Then he cut a deep diagonal slice across the pad of his middle finger with the serrations millions of years old. When the blood domed out, he put the finger in his mouth to taste the iron.
Bud closed his eyes and blew air through pursed lips like a silent whistle. He counted to fifty. When he got his breathing under control, he went through the pertinent facts about his identity.
What signs could they possibly know him by? Bud was a nickname, and to the best of his recollection, it never came up in his various court matters. As for Johnson, it was one of the three most common names in the country. No way would Lit or Luce know he was John Gary Johnson, neither from the trial nor the marriage. Lily always called him Johnny. And nobody up here had even seen a picture of him.
Bud and Lily’s wedding had been a sudden JP thing in South Carolina, a state that didn’t give two shits for blood tests and those sorts of delaying tactics. Down there, they believed getting married should be totally unpremeditated, if that’s the way you wanted it. Five minutes, in street clothes. Quicker than you could get a driver’s license. So not exactly the kind of ceremony where you hired a photographer. And Lily wasn’t much interested in her family back then. She was too happy to get away from home and too hot for Bud to worry about her people, such as they were. She hadn’t even bothered to send a postcard from their Myrtle Beach honeymoon, a largely drunken forty-eight hours, limited only by Lily’s beautician buddy, who had agreed to keep the kids but had put a two-day limit on the whole affair. No grace period whatsoever. Bud had taken the attitude, So what if we’re late and some hairdresser gets mad? Like she’s going to set babies out on the curb. Lily argued that you don’t do friends that way, and Bud said, Test her on it, that’s what friends are for. Nevertheless, Lily prevailed, and they drove home so fast and full of beer to meet the deadline that when Bud stepped out of the car for a roadside piss, he didn’t care who saw. When a state trooper wearing his Smokey Bear hat passed by, Bud didn’t even try to turn his back to the road. He just switched hands to salute. And for once, good luck prevailed. No lights flashing, no wail of siren to accompany a squealing one-eighty. Smokey drove on. Must have awarded extra points for entertainment value.
All of which added up to a compelling argument for Bud’s anonymity in this town, even with the sad remainders of Lily’s messed-up family. Unless he’d slipped up sometime.
Bud raked back into the past and only reached last week before a bell rang. A vague memory. Waking up one morning—or, rather, afternoon—all cotton-mouthed and feeling queasy. Preemptively rushing to the bathroom and kneeling at the porcelain with his head bowed for a long time.
He wondered now if he might have run his mouth that night playing cards with a few of his high-volume customers. Get a load on among impressionable ears and start being the big man, telling all kinds of tales about how damn cool you are. Wouldn’t be unimaginable to have dropped some comment about a murder charge and a bitch wife. Little towns like this, shit got around, and Lit always had his antenna up.
Bud felt panic rising again in his chest, like the first surge up a percolator tube. He took a deep breath to damp it down. Told himself, If you’re not who you want to be, at least act like who you want to be. Form a clear picture in your mind of a bastard nobody wants to mess with, and then become that picture. Get on with it. Find the money and move on down the line. Go to Brownsville, or all the way to Havana and live with the bearded rebels.
CHAPTER 10
SOMETHING SWIRLING AND TROPICAL pushed heavy air up from the Gulf, the remains of an end-of-season hurricane. Weather hit the wall of mountains and stalled. Wet roads and rain falling out of a blank low sky. Early dark, and every indicator saying summer is long dead. Cold times ahead. Every glint of headlight from dead leaves on wet pavement pointing the way down Lonely Street.
—A slow tenor-sax kind of night, Stubblefield said. Or maybe a Chet trumpet solo with an equal ratio of silence to music. Gloomy and sensitive.
—Movies, Luce said.
Beads of raindrops on the windshield bled together into a sheet of water between wiper passes. A last bunch of purple coneflowers and goldenrod shed their petals on the seat between Stubblefield and Luce.
Bad night for a real first date. And also unwelcome that Luce needed to announce a three-hour deadline for how long the kids could stay with Maddie. This despite Maddie making some winking, embarrassing comment about the kids being welcome to stay for breakfast. A happy surprise, though, as far as Luce’s attire. A vintage cotton print dress, cornflower blue with yellow wisps of viney figures. The bodice and waist snug, and the skirt somewhat full and a little faded from the wash. No raincoat or umbrella, only a white cotton sweater over her arm for later when the fog rose. Dark hair loose at the shoulders. Her look not at all in the current style. More from another time, a former life, back when she wanted to be beautiful and thoughtless. Not have any ripples ringing the pool of her perfect life.
Devastating was more the first word Stubblefield came up with, no matter the current fashion. And dangerous, possibly, to assume the outfit was not worn somewhat ironically.
INSIDE THE ROADHOUSE, all was murk. Light mostly from three neon beer signs over the ancient oaken bar. The puncheons squeaked against their pegs as footsteps fell upon them, and
they swagged between the stout joists where gravity and decay and all the other evil shit time wreaks against material things had dragged them downward. Stubblefield led Luce through the dancers to a back booth, the tabletop pale yellow Formica patterned with overlapping black outlines of boomerangs. Not as jolly a place as Luce had guessed, though she had nothing to guess upon but scenes from black-and-white movies where nightspots were pretty glamorous and existed somewhere far away from here.
They were barely seated when two tall rum and Cokes magically appeared. Luce looked at them and then at Stubblefield.
—El patrón, he said. At least for now.
A three-piece band played on a raw plywood flat barely six inches higher than the floor, hammering out “Baby Blue” from meager materials. A guitar, a bass, a drum kit. And the guitarist’s urgent hog-calling vocalizations, the kind where you can’t understand a single word but the message is unmistakable. The drummer was maybe a little eager with his rolls and cymbal crashes. The guitarist pushed his picking and singing through a tweed Fender Bassman amp the size of a suitcase. The volume cranked so high that tubes blew regularly enough that he kept a cardboard box of 12AX7s beside the amp like a janitor with his light bulbs. He played a black lacquered guitar, shining with points of light from the neon.
Stubblefield asked if Luce would like to dance, and she said, Not yet.
The band’s covers were mostly the kinds of songs people wrote in the past when everybody took songs more seriously. Back a couple or three years, when Gene Vincent and Charlie Feathers and Groovey Joe Poovey were having hits. Guitar licks falling like little ball-peen hammers beating on roof tin, and some young man at the edge of sanity shouting all his yearning and anger for the world to hear, keening it out mad in the manner of old battlefield Celts. Two and a quarter minutes of urgent utterance broadcast mostly over radio stations you couldn’t pick up until dark.
At some point, the band tuned endlessly and then played an original composition, made up by the singer-guitarist himself. He had drawn various ideas from circuit-rider hymnals, Stephen Foster, Uncle Dave Macon, many elder bluesmen. Also George Gershwin, Allen Ginsberg, and Elvis. It was the history of America filtered through the mind of a handsome self-educated country crackpot with a pompadour and a Telecaster. The dancers all sat down. For the last lines of the song, the singer fell to one prayerful knee, and the job of making eye contact with the audience rested entirely on the band, for the singer pitched his crazed unblinking gaze toward higher things, a better world where desire prevailed beyond understanding.
At the end of the song, the band took a break and the composer came over and scooted next to Luce across the burgundy vinyl. A courtesy call on the new owner. A round of three rum and Cokes materialized. The guitarist’s greased hair was a shade of Superman black that never grew out of any earthling’s head. Also, he sported a mustache and a tuft of growth beneath his lower lip the same absurd color. Some hillbilly hipster reimagining himself as Nathan Bedford Forrest or Jeb Stuart.
—Hey, man, the guitarist said.
Stubblefield said nothing. He put out a look of mild expectation, mainly by way of upraised eyebrows.
The guitarist said, What?
Stubblefield said, I liked that last one. Maybe some other time we can talk about all your references. Like, you could do an annotated version.
—But?
—I’m just saying a fact. I liked it, but that’s me. Some people want to dance. Well, first they want to drink, and then they want to dance. Some of them, if they’re drunk enough to dance, they’re drunk enough to puke in their loafers. So all I’m saying, sometimes a break is good. They sit down and order more drinks. Rule number one, you can’t force everybody to think.
—Shit, the guitarist said.
—That was a compliment. If people sit down, don’t take it personal. If all they do is dance, nobody makes any money.
Luce said, I never heard anything exactly like it.
The guitarist said, Is that good or what?
—Good for me, Luce said. I’d hear it again anytime, if it was on a record and if it would play on my record player.
—If?
—It’s got a crank and a big brass horn, Stubblefield said.
—Well, we’ve not got a record.
The guitarist downed his drink and slid out of the booth and walked back toward the stage. Stubblefield went right into something else more pressing, made so by Luce’s nostalgic dress.
He said, Hard to believe we’re sitting here together now, all these years later. Back at the pool, the announcer said your name, and for days afterward, that’s all I could think about.
—How do you think about a name? Luce said. You can’t think about a name. Not for more than two seconds. There’s nothing to think about.
—It focused my feelings.
—All you saw of me was that minute it took to walk around the pool with a bunch of pretty girls.
—It was an awfully full minute.
—And my name summed it up for you, then?
Stubblefield shrugged.
—I don’t even like it, Luce said. But it’s that or Lucinda. And from here on out, if you want to talk about beauty shows that I can’t really remember too well, then I’ve got a headache and need to go home.
—Sure, Stubblefield said. He made the riverboat-gambler spreading-hand gesture of the lawyer. He said, From this second forward, I’m all about the present moment. Be here now. Not back then.
Luce made a scoffing laugh of unbelief, then too late put her hand to her mouth like suppressing a sneeze. Stubblefield began to think she was having a good time. From what he could tell of her recent life, there might not have been much flirting in it.
The band fired back up with several sarcastic slow-dance favorites for Stubblefield’s benefit. He drew Luce, only half unwilling, onto the floor for twangy Ventures and Santo & Johnny arrangements of “A Summer Place” and “Mr. Blue” and “Sleep Walk” and “Where the Boys Are.”
LUCE HADN’T DANCED in a long time, but you can always hold each other and sway. It felt good, though she couldn’t help wondering how long it had been since a man had held her, and then it was back to midnight in the switching room. She stepped away from Stubblefield and he followed her to their dark booth and fresh magic rum and Cokes.
—What? Stubblefield said, across the boomerang Formica.
—Nothing. I can’t dance anymore. I used to be good at it, but not anymore.
—We don’t have to dance.
—It’s okay. We can try again later. Be back in a minute, Luce said.
She got up and walked across the room, and as she passed the bar, a man brushed the back of his hand against her ass. Accidental, but not. Luce didn’t make eye contact, just kept walking, not feeling him drop his cigarette and follow her until it was too late. As she opened the door to the ladies’ and stepped in, the man put his foot out to stop it. He gripped her shoulder and turned her around.
His face right in hers and his breath all Scotched up, Bud said, Luce, why’s that boyfriend of yours been asking around about me?
Luce didn’t know what he was talking about, but one look at him and she knew who he was. Bud still blinked from the bright light over the bathroom sink, and also his surprise that she wasn’t cowering in fear but shouting right in his face. So when she let up from her first outburst, he seemed confused with her reasoning. But he got the drift, which had to do with him being a murderer. Which took him a few seconds to begin acting cool about.
He said, Pretty girl, you’re free to have an opinion, but the court saw it my way and let me go. And now I’m here.
—You were born guilty, and we both know you killed my sister, and the children saw you do it. You did something to them, too.
Luce watched his focus fade, and a moment where he started to get twitchy. Then, like an actor momentarily losing the thread of his character and suddenly grasping it back, he got confident again. He said, Now, why do you want to get going
in that direction? Listening to those little bastards’ lies.
—They can’t hardly talk.
—Big surprise. I never knew the natural daddy, but their mama was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. So, what do you expect?
—What I don’t know is why anybody would marry you. But I know Lily was sweet and trusting, and I’m not. I can figure the things you did by how they act.
—You’re letting your private imagination run wild in bad directions. But go ahead on and make up whatever mean stories get you fired up. Nothing to do with me.
Just angry, not really thinking or planning, Luce said, I’m going to get back at you.
—Back at me? Bud said. What does that mean?
—What do you think?
—Well, let’s see. Could mean several things, such as kill me.
—You’d have it coming.
—Now, I’m no lawyer, but you probably crossed the line into conveying threats. Which is how they’ll put it when I go to a magistrate to get a restraining order. Probably be your daddy to serve it.
Luce was caught wrong-footed by the unexpected threat of law and her father against her, and couldn’t come up with anything to say.
Bud went riffing forward without hardly drawing breath. He said, And by the way, pretty girl, who are you to threaten me? You’re not such hot shit around here anymore. Used to be a cheerleader way long time ago. Which I’ve done some imagining about. A lot more wholesome than whatever trash you’ve made up about me. Just saddle shoes and bobby sox and pleated skirts. Wool sweaters with the name of the team animal spelled out across the titties. Red underpants for when you turned cartwheels in front of the crowd. Back here in the sticks, a cheerleader must be about like being a movie star for a couple of years. But then what? All downhill from there. Now you’re living up yonder at the ass end of nowhere, as you hillbillies say. In that old ruin by the lake. All by yourself, except for those retard kids. Real dark lonesome nights, way down that rough dirt road.