Fay: A Novel

by Larry Brown

  He woke her up when he shut it off and she opened her eyes and they were home. They climbed the stairs together and he locked all the doors but said he wasn’t going to bed just yet. She saw him reaching for the whiskey bottle when she went down the hall to the bathroom. When she came out of there he had unlocked the glass door and was sitting there on the deck, looking out toward the water.

  She didn’t tell him good night because she didn’t know what he was going to do. She went back to her room and undressed and put on a flowered silk camisole that Amy had bought for her and turned out the light and lay under the covers, trying to decide whether or not to stay awake.

  Sometime just before sleep she heard him come back in and rattle around in the kitchen some, heard the dim clink of ice in a glass. She cried for a while about Amy, and thought about them burying her today.

  TIME PASSED AND they fished and swam. Talked late on the deck at night. Several times he had to go see his folks and she cleaned the house or cooked. One day she started packing away the old clothes in the closet and trying on different things. She saved some shoes but only a few dresses since most of Amy’s clothes were too small for her.

  By the time she had spent all afternoon putting things in boxes and taping them shut, she was tired and she felt dirty from kneeling in the closet and hauling the boxes out to the front steps for loading. She wanted a long bath, a cold beer resting on the edge of the tub, her cigarette smoking in an ashtray on the toilet seat.

  She drew the water and took her clothes off and dumped in some bath oil beads while the tub filled. She already had the beer and her smokes in there. She shut the door and turned on a plastic radio that always sat on a flowered rack with doodads and birds. Amy had collected pretty little things and they were all over the house.

  She picked up one now and turned it this way and that, a crystal quail with faceted wings and a tiny beak and a frosted comb. She set it back among its minute brood, fledgling chicks of the same fine glass and no bigger than your thumbnail. She bent and got a magazine from a rack of them beside the tub and got her glasses and put them on and stepped into the tub and eased herself to rest against the rising bubbles and leaned back, and she read some in the magazine and sipped at her beer. When the tub filled halfway up she reached out one foot and with her toes turned off the water. When the temperature dropped some after five minutes she reached that foot out again and let some more hot water in. She stayed in it for thirty minutes, until all her toe pads had wrinkles all over them.

  Not knowing he was home she came naked from the bathroom with the ends of her hair wet, rubbing at herself with a towel, and he was standing there at his bedroom door unbuttoning a striped shirt. Her heart leaped and she froze, and clutched the towel to her breasts for a moment, and then, slowly, her heart beating faster, pulled it down with her hands and went ahead and let him look, thinking: I’m sorry, Amy, I am, but I need him and I’ll take good care of him.

  He tried to avoid it. He turned his head and tried not to look at her. But she dropped the towel on the floor and moved toward him. He was a good man and she wouldn’t find one better, so why not be like a wife to him?

  “Don’t, Fay,” he said, when she got up against him. “It’s wrong, and Amy,” he said but his words stalled as if they’d had no will behind them to start with and when she took his hand and placed it on her nipple she heard him moan. She kissed him and opened her mouth and reached down for him. When she felt it she turned him and pulled him into his bedroom and closed the door behind them.

  Faint night sounds through the open window letting the breeze in, the creak and shift of the big boat at its mooring and the chill of the night air on their skins. He slept and thought he’d dreamed of fishing in a slow brown river and when he was a boy but came awake to find her again like a dream delivered with her mouth open and wet and her lower belly thinly pelted, her skin so smooth under his fingers and her hips arched up to meet him and her sweet lips pressing against his. Dawn found him cradling her next to him and her sleeping with her mouth open just the tiniest bit and the soft snoring that filled the room where light was just beginning to wash through the blinds.

  She slept late and he stretched at the rail with his hands curled into fists and yawned scratching at his belly and looked down into the boat and could see the dew on the seats. Remembering the touch of her hands and the feel of her face. The hair that he’d twined between his fingers and how it felt inside her. He picked up his coffee and drained it and put on his tennis shoes and left her a note. He drove over to the bait shop at Pat’s Bluff and got three boxes of redworms and then back at the house he cranked up the old outboard and motored out in the aluminum boat to bait his lines. He worked at that for a while so that he could do something with his hands and one line kept recurring in his head: You sorry son of a bitch. And no way to hide from that. But when he got back to the house she was fixing his breakfast and humming some happy little tune while she moved around the stove, winking at him.

  HE HAD HER out around DeLay one day, trying to show her how to drive. She had the wheel in a death grip of both hands. An hour before this they’d been in the dark and cool bedroom, naked under the sheets. It surprised him that he was able to keep up with her.

  “I guess it just takes some gettin used to,” she said, weaving a little over the road.

  “You’re doing fine,” he said, and patted her on the shoulder. When she got tired he started driving again and they rode down toward Calhoun County on the back roads, past the winched-up engines among rusting hulks and past row crops and pastures and old homes where homemade birdhouses swung gently in the breezes. They came back up 9 and turned and went toward Water Valley and rode down to Enid and had catfish just as the sun was going down at a roadside place where they could sit outside and watch it get dark as they ate, looked at each other, smiled.

  She’d wake him in the middle of the night and he would open his eyes and she would be over him, straddling him, her hair hanging down over her heavy breasts and she would fling it back from her face and lower them to his lips and even though it was dark he could see her just fine.

  Or she would lie on the deck and turn browner and browner. She cleaned the house and washed and ironed. The house was clean when he came in, the bed made, the dishes washed and put away.

  They camped one night in an old tent of his on a spit of land out near Clear Creek. He set up a Coleman stove on a folding table and got out his black iron skillets and battered crappie filets and peanut oil and she watched the sputtering blue flames start up and even out, and she watched him carefully drop the pieces of fish into the skillet and saw how the edges curled up and how cautious he was with the size of the flame.

  They made love in the tent almost all night instead of watching the rods and reels he’d propped on forked sticks beyond the campfire, where the water lapped softly.

  She made him a cake one day by following the recipe on the side of the box. It was a rich chocolate cake with fudge frosting and he ate a quarter of it with milk in front of the television while they watched a show about the Civil War and she never said a word, just stared at what was being told on the screen. First she’d heard about it.

  He took her grocery shopping in Batesville and she was careful with his money.

  “Lord,” she said. “I didn’t know stuff was so high.”

  “Just get what you want,” he said. “I’ll eat whatever you fix.”

  On the third try she got up on his skis and shook the water from her face and soon was trying to do things with the rope, to weave and bob. She busted her ass a few times but she got back up and kept trying and pretty soon she could follow him wherever he wanted to tow her until her legs gave out, then she’d wave to him, drop the rope, and float in the water with her life jacket until he circled back around to pick her up.

  Sometimes he rented movies, Westerns or films about cops in big cities. She learned how to use the VCR and she still thought about Amy all the time and the guilt never did
leave her. It was something she could feel on her as solid as her skin. But all she did was try to make him happy.

  Sometimes in growing darkness they would cast their lines among the dead white trees for the big flatheads that came out of the depths at night to feed, old stubby things with wide heads and long whiskers. He would hold one up in the beam of the flashlight she held, and say, “Now that’s a nice one, baby, he’ll eat good.”

  And she would nod and smile in the rocking boat, unafraid of the dark or the water or any other thing simply because she was with him.

  THE PHONE RANG one morning and he went to answer it and stayed out there for several minutes. He said Yes sir a lot. Fay listened to his end of the conversation from under her pile of covers in the bedroom where the blinds were pulled down against the light. They’d stayed up late the night before watching movies. She raised up for a moment and looked at the clock and it was 9:13. She closed her eyes and drifted for a while, and then he was in the room and on the bed with her, already dressed. She pulled at the sleep in her eyes with the tip of her finger, and rolled over in the bed toward him. She hadn’t even heard him get up but sometimes she didn’t. She seemed to need more sleep these days, was harder to rouse sometimes.

  “Guess what?” he said. She could see the excitement on his face when she raised up and looked at him.

  “What is it? They want you to go back to work?”

  “Yeah. At four o’clock. Pete Turner had a wreck and Joe Price shot some woman in the eye over at Belzoni. They need me back today.”

  She pulled her pillow up behind her head and slid backward a few inches, and reached her hand out to his. She’d been knowing it would have to end sometime but she just hadn’t thought it would be this soon. But it wasn’t like he was going away forever. He was just going back to work.

  “Well,” she said, “you think they’re gonna put you back on the night shift?”

  “I guess for now they are. But I’ll get back on days eventually, always do. You want to get up and eat some breakfast?”

  She stretched her arms over her head and yawned. She didn’t feel rested yet, and some more sleep, to slide back under the covers and drift away again, that sounded better than getting up to the bright sunshine she knew was outside.

  “I don’t know. I may sleep some more. What time you think you’ll get in tonight?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe around one or two. Shouldn’t be any later than that. You gonna be okay out here?”

  “I want you to show me how to lock all the doors. I don’t think I’ll be afraid. I just want to make sure all the doors are locked. I’ll sit up and watch TV until you get in. And I’ll have you some supper fixed. What you want?”

  He was already getting off the bed and going to the closet, pulling his shirt off, going for an old T-shirt in the closet.

  “I don’t care. Whatever you want to fix. I’ve got a lot to do before four. I’ll have to leave about three-thirty. I need to wash my car and clean it out. Make sure it’s running okay. I haven’t had it out on the road in over three weeks. I’ll have to gas it up, too.” He finished pulling the shirt over his head and turned back to her. “You go ahead and sleep some more if you want to. I think I’ve got some pants ready but you may need to iron me a shirt when you get up. You mind?”

  “I don’t mind a bit.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothin.”

  She was looking toward the window and he came back around and sat down on the bed again.

  “All right,” he said. “What is it?”

  “Nothin. I’m just gonna miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you too but that’s not what’s bothering you. What is it?”

  She turned on her side so that she was almost speaking into his pillow.

  “What you gonna tell your friends about me? A bunch of em saw me at Amy’s funeral.”

  “I’m not worried about that. What goes on between you and me is nobody’s business but ours.”

  “But don’t you talk to your friends? I could tell you had a lot of em. How come they don’t come over here any?”

  He sat back and patted at his chest for his cigarettes but he’d left them somewhere else.

  “They used to. Some of them. A long time ago, back before Karen died. But after she passed away I think they kind of got the picture that Amy didn’t want people over. So they stopped coming.”

  “Don’t you miss em though?”

  “I don’t have to miss them anymore,” he said, and stood up. “I’m going back to work today. We’ll talk about all this whenever you want to, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  It was relatively cool under the shade of the big pines and he started spraying the car down with the water hose. He was sad to be leaving her by going back to work, but he’d missed being out on the road in the cruiser, waiting for something to happen, and she was right—he’d missed his friends. Going back to work would make coming back home even better, and he’d still have his regular two days off after five on. There were so many places he wanted to take her and so many things he wanted to show her.

  Dried bugs were all over the windshield and he had to rub pretty hard on them to make them come loose. Damn things were everywhere at night and he drove so much at night. It took about ten minutes of rubbing to get the whole windshield clean but when he sprayed it off it looked pretty good. He moved to the back glass and did it. It wasn’t nearly as bad. While he was back there he went ahead and did the trunk.

  He’d already been thinking of a trip they could take one weekend if she was up for it. The trailer the ski rig had come with was parked behind the house, the tongue propped up on a concrete block, but all he had to do was hook it up to the pickup, get her to drive it over to Pat’s Bluff and wait for him. He could take the boat over there, back the trailer down to the water, and they could load the boat back on it and then they’d be free to haul it up to Arkabutla or down to Grenada or Enid. They could get a new tent or rent a cabin, fish all weekend.

  He had to get down on his knees and scrub like hell on the headlights, one set at a time. The grille was the same way and he had to rub hard on the thin bars there and one of them broke under his hand.

  “Why you plastic son of a bitch,” he said. He knelt and pulled the two broken ends back together so that you couldn’t really tell that it was broken. He rubbed at it a little more.

  “Shit,” he said softly.

  He started moving around the cruiser, fender to door panel to door panel to fender with the sponge, dragging the hose by the nozzle behind him. He looked at his watch and it was almost fifteen after ten. He wondered if she was up yet and he looked toward the house but couldn’t see her in the kitchen. She was like him, wanted a cup of coffee in the morning before anything else. But maybe she wouldn’t get too lonely by herself. She could stay out on the beach and there was plenty of stuff to watch on the dish. He knew she liked those space movies, Star Wars and all that stuff. Hell, she probably never had gotten to see much of anything, growing up the way she had. He sure would like to run into her daddy sometime. Oh yeah. He’d like to have a little talk with that man. Maybe show him the error of his ways.

  “Take you off in the middle of this lake and drown your ass,” he muttered under his breath.

  But was he any better? He was forty-two years old. She was seventeen. He worried as he rubbed with the sponge. But he wasn’t any kin to her. It was a big age difference, sure, but it wasn’t like other people hadn’t done it before. Well it was twenty-five years. He was twenty-five when she was born. Hell, he’d been a state trooper for about five years when she was born. And had she ever said where she was born? He didn’t much think she had. If she had he couldn’t remember where she’d said. No telling, moving around like they had.

  The car needed waxing but he wasn’t going to wax it today. There wasn’t enough time and he wanted to spend some time with her before he left. He wondered what Joe Price meant shoot
ing some woman in the eye. No telling what the story was there. He guessed when he saw Price sometime he’d find out. And if Pete was in the hospital he needed to go see him. Maybe he needed to leave at three instead of three-thirty so he could go by the office for a while and sit around some and find out what all had been going on. Sit around and shoot the shit a little bit before he hit the road. Maybe Fay would fry him up some chicken if he asked her to. He could get one out of the deep freeze and thaw it out before he left. She was getting to be a pretty good cook. She was good on biscuits and mashed potatoes and gravy for damn sure.

  He worked his way down the other side with the soap and the nozzle, rubbing and spraying. His feet were wet in his tennis shoes. The car sat dripping and clean and shiny. He poured the soap out of the bucket and rinsed it out good and turned off the water and coiled the hose beside the house. He walked around the car, looking for dirty spots, but he didn’t see any. He looked up toward the house but he still couldn’t see her. It was twenty till eleven and he’d thought she’d be up by now. But it didn’t matter. Far as he was concerned she could do whatever she wanted to.

  He checked the car again. Hell, he didn’t need to rub it down with the chamois. He’d go in and make her some coffee, maybe have another cup himself. He needed to take her to the grocery store again sometime so she could get used to doing it whenever she got her driver’s license. It would save him a lot of time and she’d probably be glad to do it. She was so good-natured. He hated to go off to work and leave her because he already knew she didn’t like being by herself. She’d just have to get used to it. But it would be okay. Nothing was going to happen to her out here. All she had to do was keep the doors locked. He’d go on and get her up. She’d probably be ready to play.

  But when he went in the door with that happy thought in his head and intending to make the coffee and then wander back to the bedroom and try to talk her into getting up, he heard a noise coming from the bathroom in there and his feet started moving faster and fear was rising in his throat and when he snatched open the door there she was, kneeling over the commode in nothing but her panties, holding her hair out of her face with both hands, her growing breasts full and swinging, retching the contents of her stomach, what was left of last night’s meal, into the bowl of water that was already discolored with chunks of pink matter. She heard him and turned her face up to him with gobbets of half-digested things on her lips, her eyes full of tears, and then it hit him: Oh, fuck, she’s pregnant.