by Larry Brown
He was hoping he wouldn’t get another call now and he turned down the volume some on the police radio and turned on the FM radio in the dash, punching buttons until he got a country station out of Tupelo. If they’d just let him get back home and get away from the house they wouldn’t be able to call him back in. He figured Amy and Fay were up by now. He’d get a quick shower and clean those fish and pack a lunch and then they could take off.
He took the bypass around Oxford again and pulled over at a beer joint at the Panola County line and got a ham sandwich and a paper cup full of Coke and ice and ignored the young country boys with cutoff jeans eyeing him so uneasily with their arms full of cases of cold beer. He got back into his cruiser and unwrapped the sandwich and then pulled out. He cruised at fifty-five and nobody passed him. It never failed to amuse him how well they behaved whenever they could see his car. The Coke was nestled between his legs and he picked it up occasionally and sipped at it from a straw. He finished the sandwich and kicked his speed up a bit and soon he was turning onto the access road and taking the curves where the kudzu was deep and green, a lush landscape of vegetation that encroached on the edges of farmers’ pastures and the yards of houses. He could see the shapes of old shacks set back from the road that the creeping vines had claimed totally, leaning forms sinking slowly back into the earth. Once in a while he met cars and trucks towing fishing boats or ski boats. Once in a while he waved to somebody.
He slowed and turned into his drive and stopped as he did many times to look again at the mailbox with its painted birds and flowers framing the name Harris and could remember the morning when Karen had been sitting on the deck with her brushes and tubes of paint creating it, smiling up at him for a moment before leaning forward to touch it with the tip of her brush. He sat there studying it with the window down and his hand resting on the side mirror. It was flaking some now, part of a bird’s tail missing, a few petals from a daisy. He guessed the metal was galvanized and the paint wouldn’t stick to it forever. He blew out a long sigh and went on down the drive.
When he came out of the pine forest and in view of his house, Amy’s car was gone. He pulled the cruiser up beside his pickup and checked out on the radio, then got out and went up the steps. The radio was playing inside and there were breakfast dishes in the sink.
The note was lying beside the telephone, next to the one he’d left for her, but he didn’t really want to go over there and read it. He opened a beer and took a long drink and looked out through the patio door. The lake was rough with wind and waves. He took another drink and walked over to the table and picked up the note:
Sam, I’ve taken Fay over to Tupelo to shop for some clothes. Be back later this evening.
A.
He balled up the note and threw it toward the trash can and stepped out on the deck. He leaned on the rail, a small muscle working in his jaw. The beer was cold in his hand and he turned it up again with the wind moving over his face. His boats were drifting and bumping against each other on their ropes below.
“Fuck it,” he said, and went over to the ice chest to take out the catfish he’d put in water there that morning. When he raised the lid they were all dead and stiff, their discolored backs hard and their pale eyes staring. He just shook his head and let the lid drop.
Light waves were breaking against the beach and he could see people lying on towels and children playing in knee-deep water. Ski boats were pulled up to the edge of the sand and young people in shorts and swimsuits were sitting on quilts or lying still in the sun. He cruised past them slowly and looked out over the lake. He had his black trunks on and he was just riding, letting the air wash over him, sipping a beer and watching everything as it went by. There was no telling when they might be back. Get over to Tupelo like that and get to talking and shopping and she wouldn’t notice how late it was getting and it would be easy for them to just have supper over there. That was how she and Karen had done a lot of times. They’d see a movie together and go look at new cars or go visit Amy’s parents. And thinking of that reminded him that he needed to get over there and see his own folks. But they’d always get to talking about Karen and that was always so hard. He didn’t have any answers for them. He didn’t even have any for himself.
The sun was straight overhead and the water had calmed. Some people were skiing up near the levee and he saw somebody fall and the splash of the water. The boat slowed and turned back to pick up the skier. It looked like Amy could have at least waited until he got back to ask him if he’d made any plans. But Fay would probably have a good time. She needed some new clothes and he didn’t care anything about a shopping trip anyway.
He relaxed in the seat and just cruised with one foot stretched out on the nylon carpet and the wind whipping his hair. There was no need in sitting at the house by himself, watching television or something.
A boat came by him and ran alongside for just a minute, and the driver raised his hand and slowly waved and grinned. Sam waved back. It was Tony McCollum, the one who’d pulled Amy over that time and had been nice enough not to take her to jail for drunk driving. He probably had some lines out, too, or was going grabbling in some of the logs he had tied down all over the lake. Tony waved a final time and sped off, and Sam turned the boat east and away from the beach and pushed down on the throttle until the hull was skimming the water. He sipped his beer and watched the trees on the south side going by. He guessed he could always go back to the house and get in the pickup and drive up to the bait shop for some night crawlers and bait his lines. But it was still too hot to do that. And he knew if he kept on riding around in the boat drinking beer he’d still be doing that when it got dark. Unless he ran into her somewhere out here.
In three more years he could put in for retirement and what would he do then? A man could only fish so much. Or ride around in the boat and drink beer. It was about all he had to do when he was off. It might be best to not even think about retiring until they forced it on him. Go for thirty. He knew plenty of other troopers who were doing it. Maybe later they could travel, go to some places they’d never been. He could buy one of those big recreational vehicles and they could drive it out to Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, or go up in New England in the fall and look at the leaves turning colors. He had to do something with her. She couldn’t keep going the way she was. She was going to drive herself crazy, crying the way she did and asking him all those questions he could never answer.
Oh yeah he could see them, cruising up and down the highways of America, just another retired couple with nothing but time on their hands, no place to be at a certain time and nothing in particular to come home to.
The lake began to narrow down toward the mouth of the Talla-hatchie River and he slowed the boat some, started making a wide sweeping turn. The water was low and there were stumps in some places to be hit so he turned back toward the deeper water and headed toward the levee again. He looked at his watch and it wasn’t even three o’clock. He didn’t want to be drunk on his boat out on the lake. He thought he’d just cruise past the levee one more time. There wasn’t anything else to do.
He pushed the throttle on down and went for a half mile and then he saw the boat coming out from the landing on the north shore. Instinctively he looked back toward his house but it was no more than a smudge of color over there. And he knew they weren’t back yet anyway. He slowed and made a wide turn and the other boat turned with him without getting any closer than a hundred yards. The Chris Craft with its curved glass windshield and that big Mercury inboard was a high-dollar ride on this lake. She had her dark hair bound up in a red scarf. Bright spray kicked up from the mahogany hull and he could see her smiling at him. He didn’t smile back. She turned the wheel to the right and swept over into his wake and trailed him, closing the gap slowly until she was running forty or fifty yards back of him, bouncing in the deep trough he was leaving. She probably tailgates cars, too, he thought. But then she pulled out and passed him just as they were getting closer to a stand
of trees on the right. He slowed and she shot past, weaving back over in front of him. He saw the hull on her boat come up when she throttled back and he followed her into a cypress brake where the water was fairly still and they were sheltered from view. He slowed down almost to an idle, being careful, steering between the old trees into a cooler shade where floating logs lay under Spanish moss all hung down from the limbs. He had fished for crappie in here, early morning mist, the quiet splash of a jig, the birds crying, peace.
Up ahead there was a gap in the trees and in the patch of sunlight slanting there in shafts between them she turned the boat around and headed back toward him. He pushed the throttle straight up and killed the engine. She stopped hers only when she was almost to him. He reached his hand out and let the boats come together with a soft bump.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said.
He raised his face and looked again into her Lebanese eyes.
“I’ve been busy.”
It was what he always seemed to say. It was so hard to keep it quiet and he knew he’d been lucky. Just like with Tony a while ago. Seeing him then and not now. And anybody could pull up in here. But they had to talk somewhere.
“You’re always busy,” she said, and he hoped she wouldn’t cry again. Or threaten him with something. How much of it was an act and how much real? What if it was all real?
“What you want me to do, Alesandra? Quit my job?”
The water lapped at the trunks of the cypresses. A fish splashed near the base of one and formed a ripple there. The water settled very gradually and the boats squeaked when they rubbed together. He turned loose of hers and held on to her foot instead, couldn’t help himself. The warm pad of her heel, wrinkled, tough. Her calves were velvet too. She took off her scarf and shook her hair loose, then reached for a plastic cup and drank from it. Probably gin. She smoked only five cigarettes a day and could squeeze him so tightly inside her it took his breath.
She let her hair fall across one eye. “Where’s the old bag?”
He turned loose of her foot but she didn’t move it, just hooked the underside of her ankle to his boat and held it.
“Tupelo. Shopping.”
“Shops till she drops. A real eighties woman.”
“No need to get ugly. We already know you can.”
“You seeing somebody else?”
“No.”
“I catch you with somebody else I’ll kill her.”
He thought she watched for him. Maybe with binoculars. She was always able to find him. He didn’t know if what he felt was love. And wasn’t it a little bit late to be still chasing after that? Everything was supposed to have been settled by now, with his life, with his family. He should have been expecting grandkids by now. But now here she was and there Karen was.
“I can’t keep it up, Alesandra. I tell lies and forget what I told. I know she’s caught me before. I think she probably knows I’m seeing somebody.”
“One time you said you didn’t care if she did.”
The beer in his hand was almost empty. He drained it and tossed it over the side.
“All I know is we’ve had this conversation about twenty times. I can’t leave her the way she is. I’ve been with her too long.”
“But you’re not happy.”
“I’m like you see me.”
“You used to always be happy with me.”
“Maybe the fucking guilt has just weighed me down. Have you ever thought about that?”
“So now I make you feel guilty.”
He looked at her, the flat brown belly with its little slit of a navel, the full breasts with their line of cleavage in the flowered two-piece, and he thought of lying down with her soon, in ten or twenty minutes, maybe even now right here.
“Sometimes I feel guilty,” he said.
“But you’re not blaming it on me.”
“No.”
“Good. Because it takes two people to fuck, Sam. I can’t fuck you without your cooperation.”
Her temper was rising and she said crazy shit like that sometimes. She was just afraid he wasn’t going to go with her, follow her to whatever place she had staked out this time. Sometimes it was a tent on the lower lake. There had been hotel rooms all up and down I-55 between Hernando and Grenada. He had even gone to one in Grenada in his uniform once, knowing how stupid it was when he did it, late at night, the parking lot jammed with cars.
“Where you staying?”
“Right across the lake. Holiday Lodge. I got cable TV. Twenty-two channels. Even the air conditioner works.”
“I probably better go home after while,” he said.
He heard a boat coming at a high rate of speed and he turned his head to see Tony McCollum race by, looking their way. It was too late to duck. She set her cup up on the wide railing and he knew what she was going to do even before she slipped her hands around behind her back. She pulled away the top half of the suit and then just dropped it in the floor of the boat.
“I know something more fun than that,” she said.
She picked up her drink and leaned back in the seat and let him have a good long look. Her lips on the rim of the cup and her eyes smiling to him and the rays of sun wavering over her. The thing of it was that she knew how weak he was and he hated himself for that. But he guessed it still wasn’t enough to make him say no to her, was it? He wondered what Amy would do if she found out. If she’d even care.
“All right,” he said, finally. “I can’t stay all evening, though. We’ve got company. I need to get back before dark.”
“I’m sure that’ll be plenty long enough, Sam,” she said, bending over for the top.
It was nearly seven when he got out of bed and walked to the window and pushed the curtains aside. Some boats were coming in to the marina and he could see that the sun would be going down before long.
She was lying on the bed having another drink, her head propped against a pillow and only one long brown leg under the covers. He let the curtain drop and went into the bathroom and got into the shower and turned it on and stood there while the hot water beat down on him. He was getting too old for this kind of stuff. After a while he turned the water off and reached for a blue towel on a rack there and dried himself off. He had to look at himself in the mirror then and he didn’t much like what he saw. He turned away from it and went back into the bedroom and sat down beside her, then he stretched out again and put his hand on her belly. She set her drink down and rolled over to him. She kissed his knuckles and then his mouth. He put his hands around her and she was warm and good, her skin soft and tight under his fingers. Her hand moved down on him and he didn’t think it would happen again but it did.
“You just took a shower for nothing,” she said.
“Yeah, I reckon so.”
It was almost dark before he could get away from her and even then she didn’t want him to go. When he pulled away from the dock she was standing with her arms crossed in a short terry cloth robe and she didn’t wave good-bye. He looked back once and waved. Far out across the lake he looked back and could see a white dot still standing there like something planted in concrete. After that darkness and the distance swallowed her up and he turned his face toward his home across the lake. He couldn’t see any lights when he got a little closer.
The lake was smoothing over again and the water was turning blacker. He reached down to the switch for the running lights and turned them on. Other boats were going in to the landings and he could see their lights. He was ashamed of himself like always.
He saw their lights pull in from where he was sitting in the living room watching a Clint Eastwood movie on the television. They’d cut the cusswords from the movie and inserted other ones and commercials for dog food and paper towels. He looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly nine-thirty. He got up and went over and turned the volume down on the set and sat back down again to wait. But then he got up and turned on the porch light for them and he saw them coming up the steps, their arms full
of packages and bags and he pushed open the door and held it for them. They were talking and laughing and Fay had on some new clothes.
“Hey Sam,” she said.
“Hey. Looks like y’all bought Tupelo out.”
“Just about,” Amy said. “Would you go out there and get the rest of those bags for me? On the backseat.”
“Yeah. I been wondering where y’all were.”
“We just got to shopping,” she said. “Go on in, Fay, let’s set this stuff down.”
They went on in and he went down the steps and opened the door of her convertible and reached in for three big plastic bags. All full of clothes. When he shut the door he looked up at the house and could see them in there, moving around and putting their things down. He went up the steps and into the living room. He could hear them down the hall.
“Where you want this stuff?” he yelled.
She called for him to bring it back to Fay’s room and it sounded strange hearing her say that, and to hear it coming from that room where he had gone and sat so many mornings before going in to work, sitting in the old rocking chair that Karen used to sit in when she was doing her homework or even before that when he would sit in it and read to her before bedtime even when she was too old for it. They were both sitting on the bed opening the bags and pulling out the clothes. He couldn’t help but smile at them.
“My lord,” he said. “What’d y’all do, buy a whole new wardrobe?” He set the bags on the bed and sat down in the rocking chair. Crossed his legs.
“We just got her a few things she needed,” Amy said.
“I got all kinds of shorts and blouses and stuff,” Fay said. “I think we went to about ten different stores.”
She looked up at him and smiled, and he knew when he saw her face that Amy had told her about Karen. Had explained this room, maybe even the rocking chair he was sitting in.