by Larry Brown
HE HELD HER on the couch for a long time, rocking and calming her. She cried and cried. He had wrapped her in his arms and he kept patting her back and hugging her and talking to her in a low voice, trying to ease her. Thinking about that first night and no rubbers. Knowing better all the time and went ahead and did it anyway. Maybe she didn’t know better but he did. Alesandra had always been on the pill and he’d never had to worry about it. But it was too fucking late to worry about it now.
He finally got her to put some clothes on and she went into the bathroom and stayed in there with the door closed while he made coffee and waited for her to come out. He drank a cup and waited some more and finally she did. She’d brushed her hair and had put on some white shorts and a dark blue T-shirt that had come from an oyster bar in Mobile, Alabama. And the weird thing was that she didn’t look like anything was wrong. Totally normal happy Fay.
She fixed herself a cup of coffee and got her cigarettes and when she lit one he realized that he’d have to tell her that she needed to quit for the baby’s sake. He’d have to get her to the doctor. She sat down at the kitchen table and he moved over there with her. She smiled at him and it struck him again how pretty she was. He could still remember what she’d looked like when he’d first seen her but that image bore only a vague resemblance to the woman who sat across from him now. What beauty in her nakedness, her hair down across her breasts, how white they were against the dark of her throat and face and arms. They had to marry. There was nothing else to do. No way they were going to get rid of it and no need even talking about it. He remembered her telling him about her little brother being traded for a car. This child had to have a home and this would be its home. He would take care of it, would raise it to wind and water, to trotlines and crappie poles and sun and rain and fishing. His child. His only child now. He put his head down on the table and rested it for a long time, feeling her slim cool fingers stroking easily across the back of his head. After a while he got up and even though he had only a few hours before he had to report for duty, he got a cold beer from the icebox and opened it and sat back down with it.
He almost opened his mouth and told her, but thought better of it and decided he would wait until tonight. He had to have time to think, and eight or nine hours of work would be good. They could eat a late supper and then they could talk about what they thought they needed to do, both of them, together.
She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. She wasn’t that girl he’d picked up anymore. She didn’t have dirt under her fingernails anymore and she’d gained weight that looked great on her. She was healthy and the baby would probably be healthy, too. And would it be a boy or a girl? It didn’t matter. He’d take either one gladly. A girl could fish as well as a boy. Fay had proven that.
But there were other things nagging at him, too. Look how much difference there was in their ages. He was more than twice as old as her, and what if she didn’t want to marry him? What if she thought he was too old to marry?
Finally she said, “You want to talk?”
“Don’t worry about anything,” he said. “We’ll talk tonight, when I get in.”
And they left it at that.
She fixed some ham and cheese sandwiches and he made her drink some milk. He thought he’d wait until later to bring it up about the smoking. Hell, he could quit, too, to support her, maybe switch to cigars or something.
She ironed his shirt and he shined his boots. He didn’t drink another beer. He brushed his teeth a couple of times and used some mouth-wash and found some Big Red in a kitchen drawer and chewed some of that while he was running the vacuum cleaner over the carpets in the cruiser. He got all his paperwork together, brushed his hat, took the car for a quick drive up the road in his civvies and gassed it up at the closest bait shop and talked fishing with the owner who came out and leaned against the pump while Sam held the nozzle in the fuel tank impatiently. He paid with a credit card and kicked the four-barrel in once on a straight stretch of road and it howled like a small jet engine. Satisfied, he turned back down the drive to his house and went back home.
His uniform was hanging neatly in the bedroom, the boots parked beneath the clothes, and she had pinned all his brass on the shirt exactly where it was all supposed to be. And Fay was lying under the covers with nothing but her head sticking up, her clothes and underwear in a pile beside the bed. She was smiling at him in a certain way he knew.
“Did I do good?” she said.
He sat down on the edge of the bed.
“You did real good. Amy never could get it straight which side my nameplate went on. So I always wound up putting the brass on myself.”
“She was good at a lot of other things,” Fay said.
He nodded.
“Yes she was.”
“What time is it?”
He held up his wrist and looked at his watch.
“It’s almost two-thirty.”
“What time you need to leave?”
“I guess I need to leave about three.”
“Your car all ready?”
“Car’s all ready.”
“Your pistol loaded?”
“Pistol’s loaded.”
“Well then,” she said. “I guess you’re almost ready, ain’t you?” He grinned back at her.
“Almost.”
She stuck one finger out from under the covers and held it up in the air, the nail side toward him. She crooked it slowly, beckoning.
“C’mere,” she said softly.
After he left she cried for a little while and then she dried her tears and washed the lunch dishes and swept and mopped the kitchen floor. She didn’t know anything about being pregnant or what you were supposed to do or if you were supposed to go to the doctor right away or stay in bed or what. She guessed she could read some of Amy’s magazines about raising children or how to fix your hair or how to please your man. She thought she already knew how to please her man. Just keep him fucked down. Just keep it in his face all the time. He’d looked pretty happy when he left.
But she was all alone now, just like she had been when she’d first met him.
By four she had the house all cleaned up and she checked the chicken that he’d left in the sink. It still wasn’t thawed out yet but it didn’t matter, she wasn’t going to try cooking it for a while yet. He said there wasn’t anything to it, just mix up an egg in some milk and dip it in that, then roll it in flour, salt and pepper it, cook it on low heat with a lid over it and it would turn out all right. She hoped that was so. She didn’t want to mess up his dinner after his first night of work.
Before Amy died she’d shown Fay where everything was in the kitchen, all the utensils and knives and pots and pans and graters and cutting boards, and where she kept all the food. She found the bag of red potatoes and pulled out four big ones and set them up on the counter to wash and peel and slice up later. She set out the flour and two bowls. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy. She thought she’d open a can of green beans from the cabinet and make some biscuits. That was one thing she had learned from her mother, how to make biscuits. She might not have been very good for anything else much, like protecting them from their father, but she knew how to make biscuits. She’d seen her make them out in the woods, out of canned milk and lard and flour, and bake them in an old dutch oven in the coals of a fire. Why hadn’t she fought him harder? Why hadn’t she run him off? Who knew? Who knew what the old man had put her through? Maybe she’d just gotten tired and had given up. A lot of times it had seemed that way. But there was no use wasting her time thinking about all that now. She was out of that shit now, for good. And she wanted this baby. She was plenty old enough to have one.
There wasn’t really anything else she needed to take care of right now. She wasn’t sleepy and didn’t need a nap. She didn’t really feel like reading right now and there was plenty of time for that later. The remote control was lying on the coffee table and she went over and picked it up and sat down on the couch and turn
ed on the TV and started flipping through the channels. People in suits talking, somebody making a speech. Cartoons, some crazy rabbit hopping around with a black duck with a ring around his neck, and some fat little pink pig chasing them. Somebody was showing some jewelry on another channel and on another one some people in shorts and swimming suits were walking on some machine without getting anywhere. She was wanting to see a space movie but there didn’t seem to be one on. Whoa. Wait a minute. Cowboys and Indians. She stopped right there and turned the volume up. Then she turned it up a little more. A bunch of people in some wooden wagons with round white tops on them had pulled their wagons in a circle and there was a shitload of Indians riding horses and wearing feathers all in their hair, circling them and shooting arrows at them.
“All right,” she said. She thought there was a bottle of wine in the icebox with the cork stuck back in. She got up and went to the cabinet and got down a wineglass and pulled the bottle out and poured the glass full. Then she stuck the wine back in the icebox and went back to the couch. She’d be horny again by the time he got back home. Some of the wagons were on fire now. People were hauling water in buckets and throwing it on the flames. This was how movies were supposed to be. She wondered if they ever made movies of people fucking.
Sam drove his cruiser in and parked it out near the edge of the grass where a man was mowing on a red Snapper and another man was trimming the grass along the curb behind him. They both wore prisoners’ clothes and they didn’t raise their heads when he parked the car and got out.
The lounge was near the back of the building and the door was open. Jimmy Joe Jacobs was pouring a cup of coffee when he walked in and he looked up and saw Sam and put the cup down quickly. Sam grinned at him.
“What’s up, Jimmy Joe?”
“Hey boy,” he said. “Bout time you got back to work.”
He gave Sam a hard handshake and patted him on the shoulder a couple of times. He had survived a terrible crash with a fire truck in a driving rainstorm near Sledge one night and it had left him with a permanent limp, all the bones of his right ankle having been fused together. Sam had known him for about twelve years and he was one of the ones who used to come to the house and fish with him.
“Take off your hat and set down a spell, Sam. You want me to pour you a cup of coffee?”
Sam took his hat off and put it on a table.
“I got time for a cup, I guess. I’m supposed to go on at four. I just thought I’d stop by here and see what’s going on.”
Jimmy Joe poured him a cup and knew what to put in it, two spoons of sugar and a little Carnation that he pulled from a small refrigerator sitting next to the coffee machine. He dropped two quarters in a big coffee can and handed Sam the cup.
“Thanks, Jimmy.” They settled in some chairs near each other and Sam pulled the tall ash can closer to him and lit up.
“Aw, there ain’t nothing going on,” Jimmy Joe said. “I had to come by here and fill out some wreck sheets. The captain’s on the phone for me, trying to find out when I’ve got to be in court next week. Same old shit. I heard you’s coming back in today. It’s good to see you, Sam.” He looked down into his coffee for a moment and then back up.
“I sure am sorry about Amy. She was about as good a woman as I ever met, I reckon. How you been doing?”
“Aw, I’m all right.”
“You been fishin any?”
“A little. I been going late in the evening and catching a few catfish.” He started to say “You ought to come out sometime and go with me” but then thought of Fay and decided to wait. Instead he said, “You been staying busy?”
“Aw yeah. Yeah, it’s been pretty busy. We had a bad one down on Fifty-five the other day, tractor-trailer and a van full of retarded kids.”
“I saw it in the paper.”
Jimmy Joe took a sip of his coffee and crossed his ankles, wincing just the tiniest bit. Sam had seen that wince a hundred times.
“Yeah, it was awful. Poor little kids. Bad enough to be born like that and then have a damn truck run over you. Sometimes I don’t know why I stay in this business.”
“Well, you ain’t got long to go. What, two years?”
“Nineteen months. Nineteen months and then I’m outta here. Ain’t gonna do nothin but watch my cows eat grass. Fish and play with my grandkids.”
Another trooper stuck his head inside the door and Sam started to get up, but the trooper waved him back down.
“Don’t get up, Sam,” he said. “Sit there and rest. I heard you come in and just wanted to say hi. You doing all right?”
“Yes sir, I’m doing fine. Thanks for asking.”
“You welcome. You ready to roll at four?”
“Yes sir. I’m glad to be back.”
“Well we’re glad to have you back. Sure am sorry about everything.”
“Well. I appreciate that.”
“All right. Good luck. Be careful.”
“I will.”
The trooper pulled back and went up the hall to an office and went in and closed the door.
“Boy he’s had a cob up his ass today,” Jimmy Joe said in a low voice.
Sam sipped his coffee and tipped some ashes off his smoke. It felt good to be back in here, to have his uniform on again. He meant to call Fay after while.
“What over?”
Jimmy Joe kept talking in that same low voice and he leaned closer.
“Hell. You didn’t hear what happened to Joe Price?”
“Well. I heard he shot some woman in the eye.”
“Yeah. He was pokin her in his patrol car.”
“What?”
“Oh it’s going to be a hell of a stink,” Jimmy Joe said. He took another sip of his coffee and scratched at his knee. “They trying to keep the governor from hearing about it but he’s got spies all over the place. Somebody wantin a promotion, you know.”
Sam looked up the hall and saw a trooper cross from one office to another. He could hear the dispatcher talking dimly on the radio behind a closed door.
“He had some woman in his patrol car?”
“Aw you know how he is. He’ll fuck anything. I believe he’d fuck a snake if somebody would hold its head. What I heard, now I ain’t talked to Joe, what I heard was he pulled this woman over for weaving outside Belzoni and she was drunk and I reckon they worked it out to where he wouldn’t get her for DUI if she’d give him a little.”
“Where the hell’d you get all this at, Jimmy Joe?”
Jimmy Joe sipped at his coffee again and then held the cup down on his good leg. The trooper up the hall crossed it again and shut his door.
“This is what he told Alvin on the phone the other night. Joe’s scared to death his wife’s gonna find out. Alvin told me, now don’t tell nobody none of this, hear?”
“I won’t.”
“Alvin told me he got the old girl to pull in down in this cotton patch on this dirt road and she got out of her car and got in his. Dumb son of a bitch. Looks like if he was gonna do something like that he’d of got out of his car and got in hers. But that ain’t what he did. So he gets her back there on the backseat and strips her clothes off and takes his off and lays his pistol belt down in the floorboard. So they’re back there fuckin like a couple of minks and they get done and gonna put their clothes back on and they set up and one of em somehow kicks the damn pistol and knocks the safety off and I think he told her to watch it, and then I reckon she bent over to pick up her britches or her blouse or somethin and either kicked it again or moved it or somethin and it went off and shot her right in the damn eye through the end of the holster.”
“Goddamn,” Sam said. He took the last drag off his cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray and leaned back in his chair. He looked at his watch and saw that it was getting close to three-thirty.
“What they gonna do to him, reckon?”
“Well, the woman’s in the hospital over there. I think she’s married, too.”
“Is she gonna live?”
“Aw yeah, she’s gonna live but she ain’t gonna have but one eye for the rest of her life. It turned and come out before it hit her brain. They put Joe on administrative leave but he’s already been down to Jackson twice to talk to the big man. I expect they’ll can his ass unless somebody can do some creative lying. And talk the woman into keeping her mouth shut.”
“What’s her husband saying?”
“He ain’t saying nothing. He’s in Parchman doing twenty years for raising marijuana.”
They sat there for a bit, listening to the chatter of the radio in the room out there. And it was only a few more moments until a door opened and the dispatcher came walking down the hall toward where they sat. She was a woman about fifty years of age and her blond hair was puffed and swirled up on her head and she had an enormous set of titties that stretched out the front of her uniform almost beyond belief. She stuck her head in.
“Hey Sam.”
“Hey Gladys.”
“Are you on duty yet?”
He set his coffee down.
“I can be. What’s up?”
“Oxford PD called and they’ve got some kind of disturbance over there on Jackson Avenue. Somebody’s out in the street swinging a butcher knife at cars. They wanted to know if we could send somebody over but everybody’s tied up right now with a roadblock down on Thirty-two. You want to go?”
“Yeah, I’ll go. You want to go, Jimmy Joe?”