by Larry Brown
“I don’t know. They ain’t here. You want some lemonade?”
“Did you bring me some?”
“I always do, don’t I?”
She put the towel down and pulled her fingers through her hair.
“I wish I had a daddy good as you,” she said.
He muttered something in agreement and reached into the cooler beside him and retrieved a can and tossed it to her. She caught it and opened it and took a long drink from it, then leaned back on one elbow and lit the smoke and looked out over the water. She could hear a boat roaring by in the distance but she couldn’t see it. And then she could, just a flash of something brown and shiny and the sound of it decreased.
The sun was very hot on her just then. There was no shade anywhere near and she rolled over onto her belly and lay there for a while.
“What you thinking about?” he said.
She pulled easily on the cigarette and let the smoke out slowly, and took another drink from her can.
“What the hell’s Preparation H?”
“Ointment for hemorrhoids.”
“What’s that?”
He laughed. “Bumps on your butthole, girl. Truck drivers get em. So do highway cops. Where’d you see that?”
“TV. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they sell on there.”
“Yeah I would.”
“You think Amy cares for us taking the boat out so much? Seems like we leave her at home all the time.”
He lifted his beer and sipped from it, then set it back on his belly.
“I reckon she can come with us if she wants to. I’ve asked her a million times but she’d rather set up there and read and have her a toddy. You worry about her too much.”
“Look what all she’s done for me, though. She don’t never seem to have any fun.”
“Long as she catches a buzz, she’s fine.”
Far down the lake the sound of the boat had almost died away but now it sounded like it was getting closer and going faster. She saw it cruise past out there beyond the trees again. It kept going, the sound of it ebbing in the distance. She wrote her name in the sand with her finger, then scratched it out.
“Those glasses she got you okay?”
“They’re fine. When you gonna teach me how to drive? You said we could start before long.”
“We’ll get around to it.” He set his beer down beside his chair and bent over for the rod and started reeling it in.
“What you got on there for bait?”
“Chicken livers. I meant to pick up some shrimp but I forgot to. In a hurry to get home.”
He reeled it on in and she watched him. When he lifted the hook from the water the bait was still on it.
“Shit,” he said. He threw it back out and let it settle on the bottom, stuck the handle back in the holder. He leaned over and picked up the beer.
“I need to find someplace to take you where there ain’t a bunch of traffic,” he said. “Out in the country somewhere or something where you won’t hit nothing.”
“Is it hard to learn how to drive?”
“Naw. There ain’t nothing to it. But before you get your license you’ll have to take the driver’s test and pass the written exam. I’ll go with you. Won’t be nothing to it. You’ll just have to study for the written. And practice on your driving a lot. Most kids your age already been driving for a couple of years.”
“We never did have nothin but a old piece of shit pickup. If we even had anything.”
He didn’t comment. She’d noticed that many times when she brought up her family he didn’t. She remembered how he’d gotten that first day when she’d told him all those things. She never had seen him mad since then. She watched his face and wondered what it would be like to kiss him.
She put her face down on the quilt and smoked the cigarette like that. Shit he was good-looking.
“Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s gonna happen to me?”
He waited so long before he answered that she thought maybe he wasn’t going to, but then, quietly, he said: “Nothing bad like what might have before.”
“I told you about my brother.”
“Yeah, you did.”
“And my little sister.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know how I’ll see em again.”
She knew he was thinking about his answer and she let him think.
“Well,” he said finally. “I guess if you ever decide you want to go back and check on em you can.”
“Would you take me? I mean just to see?”
“You know I would.”
“What if they’ve moved by then?”
She heard him laugh softly and when she raised her face he was smiling down on her.
“You’ve got a lot of questions, girl.”
“I know it,” she said. Another one she had was why Amy drank so much but she didn’t ask that because she thought she knew why. She didn’t think Amy loved Sam. She never kissed him and she knew it wasn’t right to think it but if he was hers she’d kiss him all the time. Do more than that with him too. She put her cigarette out in the sand and heard the boat out on the lake coming back. It was much closer now and going slower. And when she pushed up with her arms to take a look it was gliding in toward them, a polished wooden hull pushing a gentle curve of wave, a beautiful woman steering it, her skin dark but not nearly black. Fay sat up.
“Who is that?”
He leaned over and set his beer in the sand.
“Trouble,” was all he said.
Something in his voice didn’t sound quite right to her and he wasn’t taking his eyes off the woman, who had cut the motor and was drifting closer.
“What you mean?”
“You’re fixing to find out.”
Fay put one hand over her eyes to shade them from the sun, the water was so bright out there. The boat came closer to the bank and now the woman stood behind the wheel and steered it until it slid to a soft stop against the sand. Then she was climbing out and lowering herself into the water and Fay knew by the way she was looking at Sam that there was something between them. And in another heartbeat knew what that thing was. It was what those boys had been doing with that Linda in that bedroom in the trailer. What her daddy had tried to do to her and what boys had done to Barbara Lewis with her dress up over her chest. What she wanted to do with Sam if it wasn’t for Amy. She wanted to see this. She looked at Sam and there was a pop and some sand exploded about six inches from her knee and she looked at it and saw Sam running and then another pop and the sand leaped four feet away from her and only then in that split second before she looked up did she know she was being shot at and Sam had reached the woman by then and they were fighting over the gun. Fay got up to see him pushing her back against the boat, but the weight of both of them was making it move. The gun popped again, such a small report, pointed up. It wasn’t as loud as a gun in the movies, it was more like a toy gun or something, but Sam wouldn’t have been gritting his teeth and straining so hard, even while she tried to claw at his face, if it wasn’t real. She heard the woman scream out but she didn’t stop struggling over the little shiny pistol Sam was trying to twist away from her until finally she dropped it with a shriek and maybe some broken fingers looking at the way one hand was feeling the other. She lay gasping in the water while he stepped back and looked around. He turned and started to give the gun a toss, stopped, checked something on it, then gave it a toss up on the beach, behind his chair. It didn’t fire when it landed. He was trying to watch the woman while he got between her and Fay, and she didn’t do anything for a while but just lie there in the water and watch him. Watch them. It was hard for Fay to keep from edging behind Sam once she’d taken a good look in those eyes and seen murder there without a doubt because she’d seen that before.
The woman raised a hand and wiped at her face, and then she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and tried to move the hurt hand. Fay saw tears come from her eyes, saw her face re
ddening and puffing, heard her ragged breathing. She began to shake a little when she thought about the bullets, how fast and invisible they were, how silent but for the pop of the gun. In the movies some had silencers and only spat.
Sam moved closer to her, one hand out, searching for her. She grabbed it and held, and got up close behind him. She rested the other hand on his back and looked over his shoulder at the woman. She had cold eyes, Fay saw, eyes that had no light in them at all, something she must have been able to turn on and off when she wanted to and somehow Sam had not seen that. Even now she was looking for a new way to move, sizing things up. She wasn’t whipped yet. Sam seemed afraid to take his eyes off her.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, yeah. She missed me. I didn’t even know she was shootin at first.”
“I didn’t either. Just stay where you are. Better still, back up a little. Naw, just go over there where I threw that gun and stand next to it. She can’t get to it now.”
She did like he said. She could hear him talking to the woman, didn’t know what all he was saying, but the tone of his voice sounded like he was trying to get her to behave. The woman was saying things to him in a low voice. She looked down at the gun. It had sand on it. There was blood on Sam’s face, a long scratch where she had gone at him with her nails. It was dripping down his cheek and she wondered if he knew it.
He knelt next to the woman, saying things to her, but she slapped at him and drew one of her legs back and kicked at him. Fay saw her pull loose when he tried to take her arm, heard her call him a son of a bitch and a lying bastard. Then she looked at Fay and said, “Where in the hell did he find you?”
Fay took a few steps forward and the wind blew her hair. Her legs were long and brown and nicely sculpted, a skin of dark marble flowing. Little painted red toenails that splashed in the water.
“Walkin down the road if it’s any of your business, bitch.”
“Why don’t you come on down here?” Alesandra said.
Something old clicked in her. She could see the same hate she’d seen in Barbara Lewis. Way back in Florida when she would run out in the road for the food and the candy.
“Bring your ass on down here. I’ll show you who you can fuck and who you can’t. White trash piece of shit.”
“I’m fixin to whip your ass,” Fay said, wading out until Sam stopped her.
“Hold it. Right where you at, Fay. Come on, Alesandra. Get up and get in your boat.”
Fay had the whole picture now, and it explained everything, why Amy didn’t kiss him. This was it right here. The bullets had come close and she started shaking more and she thought about Barbara Lewis showing her her food and telling her to come on over and get it if she wanted it bad enough and she took more steps without knowing she was taking them and then Sam was pushing her back to tell her to quit, that this was enough, to stop it.
“Roll your blanket up, Fay. Roll it up and put it in the boat.”
She didn’t want to keep looking into the woman’s eyes so she moved back to the blanket and rolled it up and got her few things and carried everything down to Sam’s boat. She looked at the rope and looked back. He had her up and she was saying something to him in a low voice, and Fay was watching when the woman pointed to her. She busied herself stashing the stuff behind the front seats and she was realizing that she was going to have to ride back across the lake with him. With one smooth-muscled move she hauled herself up the side of the boat with her hands and dropped into her seat with her feet hanging over, dripping. Sam was helping the woman into her boat, and she was crying. She tried not to listen. There was more crying and then begging because she kept hearing the word please. The engine fired and after a moment Fay looked up. The boat went slowly and blue exhaust churned up from the transom. Sam stood there watching after it. The woman sat sobbing over the steering wheel. It didn’t move any faster. Sam turned his back on it and walked over.
“Well shit,” he said. He waited a moment. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t know she’d do something like that.”
“I guess you didn’t know her too good. Your face is scratched,” she said, and touched the blood.
“How bad?”
“Not too bad.”
He leaned there and they watched the boat growing smaller, idling away. He went back for his cigarettes and lighter and his chair and everything, made a couple of trips while she sat there and watched the boat go away. She never had been called a white trash piece of shit before but she’d been called white trash.
He untied the boat from the willow it was moored to and coiled the rope and dropped it in the floor. He paddled out a ways before he started the outboard.
The sun had started to ease over in the sky and the air was cooler now. She reached back for her shirt and pulled it on. He put on his sunglasses and then she couldn’t see his eyes. That woman thought she’d been in his bed.
They moved out from the red banks and the trees into open water and he turned the boat in the direction of his house but he didn’t increase his speed. He seemed content to just motor along barely above an idle and she guessed he wasn’t in any hurry to get home and see Amy. What else could he do but lie about the scratch? And what if Amy asked her about it? What would she say then? She’d have to lie too unless she wanted to get him in trouble. Maybe big trouble, maybe huge trouble.
Suddenly he killed the motor in the middle of the lake. It was very quiet then. The boat rocked in the waves and he took a look around and turned in his seat to face her. He took off the sunglasses and tossed them into the compartment on the dash.
The boat lay in the water. The lake looked empty.
“She thought you were with me,” Sam said. “Seeing me.”
“I figured that part out.”
“Is this still bleeding?”
“Not bad now. It’s scabbed over some.”
He rubbed at it, looked at his fingers. “Well. I’ve either got to lay it off on something else or tell her the truth. I don’t want to tell her the truth.” He paused. “I don’t know how much you’ve noticed about me and Amy.”
How close the bullets had come. How fast and unseen. How close she had come to winding up like Barbara Lewis.
“I mean you must have noticed that we’re not real affectionate toward each other.”
She snapped herself back. “Yeah. I’ve noticed. Why?”
He seemed to be struggling with something inside himself and he seemed embarrassed.
“Hell, you’re grown, I’ll just say it. I haven’t been to bed with her in four years.”
She felt the blood going to her cheeks. He saw it too.
“I’m not trying to embarrass you. I’m just trying to explain this thing with Alesandra.”
“That woman.”
“Yeah. That woman.”
He seemed confused, a way she’d never seen him before, and he started out with some words and then stopped.
“Well here’s what I can’t do, Fay. I can’t lay it off on my dead daughter. I can’t say if she hadn’t died this never would have happened. It mighta happened without it. I don’t know.”
She chewed her bottom lip a little and felt some calmer. It looked like the boat with the woman in it was gone but she looked around just to make sure. He was waiting for her to say something.
“Can I ask some questions?”
“Yeah.”
“How old is she?”
“Thirty-one.”
“Where’s she live?”
“Down at Clarksdale.”
“That’s a nice big boat. She rich?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, and looked at a fingernail. He touched the scabbing scratch and looked at his finger. “Too damn much money probably.”
“How long you …?”
“Little over a year. I’ve met her in different places. Hotels mostly.” He looked around at the lake. “But out here a good bit too.”
She felt her face burn as sh
e said what she had to say.
“I don’t know nothin personal about what men and women do. But I’ve seen it,” she said, looking up then. “I’ve seen it look awful and I’ve seen people enjoy it. You and her, do you … enjoy it?”
“Damn,” he said, and then he looked her in the eye and said, “Yeah. We do.”
“More than with Amy?”
He looked down and thought about it and was slow to raise his eyes and say, “Yeah, I think so. From what I remember.”
She thought about them doing it, them being on a bed with Sam on top of that woman and their mouths in different places and she started feeling warm inside and she thought about him naked and what he looked like and especially what he looked like down there and she wondered if that woman put her mouth on him the same way that Linda had done that boy Jerry. And what did it feel like when they put it in you? Did it hurt? She’d heard girls in camps say it hurt the first time. Her mother had tried to keep her close but she hadn’t always been able to. They’d get on different rows of beans or tomatoes sometimes, different parts of the orange groves. Her mother never told her any of the things the girls told her. She looked at Sam’s lips. What would it be like to touch his teeth with her tongue?
“You gonna see her anymore?”
“I can’t. She tried to hurt you.”
“I’d say a limb scratched me, then.”
“Is that what you’d say?”
She nodded and pulled the shirt around her a little closer, giving him a satisfied smile. The motor came to life and he sent the boat toward the house. The world was becoming such a much more interesting place to live in. There would be a hot bath, clean clothes, good food for supper. It didn’t hurt anything to think about him. Thinking about him didn’t hurt anything. It was just thinking.
AMY CLOSED HER shop down early one day after Fay had been with them for a while. She did that sometimes, when the mood hit her. She had other appointments scheduled but she just couldn’t stand there anymore. She told the girls to lock up when they finished and she walked out to the parking lot at Batesville under a hot sky at four o’clock.