by Larry Brown
“Aaron,” Reena said, and turned the light switch on for the bedroom. Fay’s suitcase was still there where she had left it. She shut it and fastened the latch.
“What’s he doing out here?” Chuck said.
“He’s picking up Fay,” Reena said. In a lower voice she said, “You might ought to get on, honey. He’s drunk. I’m glad you’ve got a good place to stay tonight.”
“You gonna be all right?” Fay said. She glanced out at Chuck and she could see him glaring at them.
“I’ll be fine,” Reena said. “He’ll go to sleep after while and sleep it off. That’s what I’m gonna do, too. Sleep it off.”
“Okay. I guess I’ll see you later. Sometime.”
“Sure. Take it easy.”
Fay turned with her suitcase in her hand. She hated to walk by Chuck. When she glanced at him again, going by, he stared at her with open hostility and turned up his beer again. She put her hand on the screen door and pushed it open and looked back once. Reena was standing with her hand against the wall, and Chuck had set his beer down and was getting up, going toward her.
“Bye,” Fay said, and she didn’t look anymore. The door flapped shut behind her and even before she got over to Aaron’s vehicle she could hear the rising voices inside, the screams and the curses already starting up. She tried to block the sound from her ears. She put the suitcase into the bed and opened the door and got back in with Aaron.
“Get everything you need?” he said.
“Yeah. All I got’s my purse and my suitcase.”
He backed into the street and then pulled out. She looked back at the little trailer and the dim light that was burning inside. She wondered what would ever become of her.
The road followed the natural curve of the beach and the water. Out there was only blackness and vague distant lights far away from shore. He left Biloxi and they went by the big sign she had seen that welcomed visitors to Gulfport and she saw again buildings and hotels she had seen on the way in with the truck driver. She felt like there hadn’t been much choice. They were already crowded in Reena’s place. She would have had to leave sooner or later anyway.
Aaron didn’t talk much and it was hard for her to keep from taking little sidelong glances at him. He drove with one hand on the wheel and listened to songs on the radio. He asked her one time if she needed to stop and go to the bathroom or anything before they got out of Gulfport but she said she was fine.
When they’d left all the red lights and intersections behind, he pressed harder on the gas and kept his arm out the window with his hand resting on the roof. She saw more big houses with the dark trees in the yards and she saw shopping malls and liquor stores and seafood shops. Places that sold shrimp, places that sold shells. The road was well lit by lamps on poles and she swayed slightly in the curves with the motion of the El Camino. The tailpipes rumbled their low and throaty song in the night. On spits of land on the coastal side of the road there were big restaurants whose signs were still lit up. She smoked another cigarette and wondered how much longer it would take to get there. She was tired and had to fight against going to sleep in the seat. Once in a great while they met another vehicle, but mostly the road was deserted. It was uncomfortable sitting there with him with both of them so silent, but she had no idea what to say to him. She’d already told him she liked his boots.
“You all right?” he said, after a time.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
He took one of the cigars from his pocket and stuck the end of it in his mouth. He bit off the end and spat it out the window. She watched him lick it with his tongue, rolling it and turning it, then he clenched it between his teeth and reached out his hand to push on the lighter.
“I figured you were. You just been so quiet I didn’t know.”
“Well,” she said. “I didn’t know if you wanted to talk or not. You seem like one of them people who don’t talk a whole lot. Sometimes.”
“I guess you got that right.”
She saw his eyes in the dashboard lights, heard the lighter pop out, a small red cherry moving in his hand and making a faint glow on his chin while he puffed on the cigar and got it going. He tapped the lighter on the edge of the ashtray and then stuck it back into its hole. He leaned his elbow on the door top and held the cigar between his thick fingers as he drove on through the night.
“It won’t take us too much longer to get there,” he said. “Then you can rest.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Pass Christian’s pretty nice,” he said. “You’ll probably like it better than Biloxi. It’s quieter over here. Probably ain’t as much to do but there’s not as many people either. That’s what I like about it.”
She nodded and smiled but she knew he couldn’t see it. She wondered how old his mother was. And what she’d think about him bringing somebody in this late. But she might be already asleep and wouldn’t know it.
“You like livin down here?” she said.
“I was born here,” he said. “Lived around here all my life. My dad used to have a shrimp boat and I worked on it when I was a kid.”
He put the cigar back in his mouth and puffed on it, then held it in his fingers again.
“Did you like that?” she said.
He didn’t answer for a space of time and she thought maybe he wasn’t going to. But when he spoke she could tell that he’d been thinking about his answer.
“It was a good way to live,” he said, finally. “It was hard work. You had to get up early in the morning and go out while it was still dark. But it was a great feeling to be out on the water like that with my old man. The best part was seeing the nets come up because you never knew what you had besides shrimp. It might be anything in there, octopus, shrimp, fish. Daddy always let me pick out all the trash and throw it back. We’d get back in to the harbor about eleven or twelve and grade it out, take it and sell it. Clean the boat up, patch the nets, get it ready for the run the next morning. I did that for years. I’d probably be still doing it if things hadn’t happened the way they did.”
He put the cigar back in his mouth and puffed on it, then held it in his hand again. She wanted to know more but didn’t want to ask. He began to slow a little and she could see that they were coming into a speed zone where the signs were marked at forty-five miles an hour.
“Getting pretty close,” he said.
“I hope your mama don’t care for me spendin the night.”
“She won’t know nothing about it till in the morning. She goes to bed with the chickens.”
Now they began to pass by more big homes, most of them two-story with galleries on the top floors and tall columns out front, railed porches with the pale forms of furniture sitting vacant and shrouded in shadows. Huge trees everywhere, dark and brooding. He slowed a little more and pointed out to the left, where some dim lights burned.
“There’s the harbor,” he said.
A flock of masts stuck up into the sky and he slowed the El Camino to a crawl to let her take a look. There was a plank walkway that extended out among the boats tied to the weathered posts and she could hear the faint song of wind singing through their rigging.
“Boy,” she said. “It’s a lot of em, ain’t it?”
He had slowed almost to a stop. He nodded.
“Yep. Not as many as it used to be, though.”
There was a gravel lot where trucks were parked and where metal buildings stood. Under a lamp on a pole she could see a cat walking, then standing on its hind legs to paw at a garbage can. Out beyond that there was only the black and invisible sea. He took his foot off the brake and turned off the road.
“We’re here,” he said.
“You mean right across the road from it?”
“Yep. I’ll see if I can get you into a front room. She usually don’t have much company on Sunday night.”
The drive went up a slight rise. She saw the house then. There was a miniature yard but the house rose up tall and white in the dark.
Some candles were burning on holders on the front porch and she could see the windows on the third floor, the glass black with night. Some of the paint was flaking away on the side they were driving past and he said, “Needs a little work done on it.”
“It’s nice,” she said. “It’s really somethin.”
He didn’t answer. He pulled into an open space behind the house, stopped, and put it in park and killed the lights and motor. He opened his door and started out.
“Come on,” he said, and she opened her door and got her purse off the seat beside her. By the time she got the door closed he had already come around and picked up her suitcase and was carrying it toward the house.
“Watch your step,” he said. There was a rail to hold on to and she held on to it. Through the glass doors she could see a kitchen and a big table covered with a cloth and beyond that a hall and tables and lamps and some upholstered chairs. He set the suitcase down and found some keys in his pocket and flipped through them until he found the one he wanted. He put it into the door and turned it and the door swung open. He pocketed the key and picked up her suitcase.
“Here we go,” he said.
She followed him, hesitantly, looking around. He let her get in and then shut the door behind her and locked it. He still had the cigar in his hand and he put the suitcase on top of the table and walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. She stood there by the table watching him.
“You want some coffee or something?” he said, and looked back at her.
“I don’t know. You goin to make some?”
“I thought I might. I thought I might have a cup and sit out on the porch before I go to bed.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll drink a cup if you’re gonna make some.”
She saw him reach for an ashtray on the counter and put the burning cigar in it.
“Look around if you want to,” he said. “She’s got some pretty nice stuff in here.”
She walked around the edge of the table, touching the faded green cloth that covered it. It was sunken in the middle with a rim that ran around the outside edges and she realized suddenly that it was a pool table. The legs were made of dark wood and vines and leaves were carved into it, small birds and animals that perched on limbs or flew down through branches on flawless feathers.
“My lord,” she whispered, touching it reverently.
“You want to shoot some pool?” he said. She looked up at him and he was smiling. She smiled back and he gave a little laugh and went on with what he was doing, pouring at the sink, getting things from the cabinets. The cues were racked on one wall and she ran her fingers across them. She’d seen her daddy shoot one time, drunk and unsteady in a Georgia tonk, betting money he didn’t have, ordering beer he couldn’t pay for. She remembered them all being driven out into the rain by a big loud man. She could hear Aaron whistling a small sweet tune in the kitchen, a sound comforting to her ears. He seemed different now, calmer, happier. Not at all like he had been in the bar earlier. But she still feared him. Up the hall there were some doors and she wandered that way. Old photographs of the house she stood in were hung on a wall, the trees out front much younger then, women in long dresses standing on the steps, a horse hooked to a buggy waiting beside a bush. A picket fence that was not there now. She raised her face to look at the beadboard ceiling, thinking of how old this house must be. She wished she’d gone to school more. Just one more thing she’d missed out on because of her daddy, the chance to learn things, the history of places, old wars that were fought. She missed those channels on Sam’s satellite dish, the stories about animals and other countries and little brown men who fished nets in the sea, other old ones who rode open boats across black water with their harpoons hoisted for whales. She wanted to know how old this place was. But when she looked around at the fragile tables with their thin legs and the lamps that sat on them with their yellowed globes and the wide planks in the floor, she knew that it was old. Old. Maybe it had been sitting here as long as that harbor across the road.
She walked up the hall to the front door. There was a big room off to the left with a cold fireplace and rugs and more chairs. Magazines scattered on a low table. On the mantle over the fireplace slanted back in their frames stood the pictures of two young men. One of them was Aaron and the other one was the man who had beaten Reena and taken her money from her. Aaron wore a uniform in his picture. His red hair was clipped short. She remembered Reena saying that Aaron worked for his brother. But to her they looked nothing alike.
She turned at hearing a step and Aaron was standing at the edge of the room, the cigar in his fingers.
“It’s making,” he said. “You want to sit out on the porch till it gets ready?”
“Sure,” she said. “Can I smoke out there?”
“You can smoke in here if you want to,” he said. “Mama doesn’t care, she smokes herself. I been trying to get her to quit but I finally gave up.”
From the porch she could see the stars clustered above the masts of the boats. She sat down across a table from him and lit her cigarette. He pushed an ashtray over to her and she said thank you. She set her purse on the floor beside the chair. It was very pleasant there. A light breeze was coming off the water and the moving leaves waved shadows up and down the white columns in front of her. The wind sang in the rigging steadily, like a song that could lull you to sleep.
“It’s like music,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool.”
There were potted plants scattered across the porch and baskets of ferns hung overhead. They spun and twisted slightly in the breeze. She could see the coal at the end of his cigar glowing when he pulled on it. She liked him.
“This looks like a real old house,” she said.
“Built in 1852 I think. Before the Civil War I know. Mama bought it about eighteen years ago. After Daddy died.”
“And she lets people stay here?”
“Yeah. Just overnight usually. She gets up early and fixes their breakfast. Toast and jelly and stuff. Eggs and bacon if they want it. It’s got eight rooms for rent. I stay upstairs when I stay here.”
And what would happen to her tomorrow? He’d said he would take her back in the morning, but she knew she wouldn’t know where to go when she got there. She couldn’t just keep staying with Reena. Maybe she just needed to go back home. As bad as that sounded, she might have to. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t left. She wouldn’t have gotten to have loved Sam either. But at least she wouldn’t be pregnant and so far away from her mother. Hell, who knew if they were even still there or not?
“You look like you got a lot on your mind,” he said.
She looked over at him. He was looking out toward the harbor and he was holding his cigar in his hand on his knee.
“I guess I do. I need to find me a job. A place to stay.”
“How’d you get down here?”
“I hitchhiked. Caught rides with people.”
“I used to do some of that,” he said. “I didn’t think anything about packing a few clothes when I was eighteen and heading out. To San Francisco or wherever. Montana. I hitchhiked all the way to Mexico one time and stayed down there two months. But I wouldn’t do it now. Too many crazy motherfuckers running around out there now.”
“That’s what a friend of mine told me one time,” she said.
The silence closed in again between them and they sat there in it for a while. Her cigarette was almost gone.
“I guess that coffee’s ready,” he said, and he put the cigar in the ashtray and got up. She started up.
“Just keep your seat and I’ll bring it out to you. How you like it?”
“Sugar and milk,” she said.
“One spoon?”
“Two. Please.”
He went across the boards of the porch and through the screen door. And should she just walk away from this too? Get up in the middle of the night and take her suitcase and head out again? She had to be someplace and settled when
this baby came. She had to get to a doctor and have it seen about, find out how long it was going to take, find out how much time she had left. And that was going to cost money. The baby would need food, milk, clothes. Maybe medicine. She remembered how sick Calvin had always been before they got rid of him, how Gary would rock him and try to shush him when the old man was drunk and disorderly. Maybe that was why they got rid of him, because he was always so sick. But he seemed to have grown out of that right before they traded him off. There had been a brief time when he was happy, and would crawl around on the grass wherever they were, and let her hold him, play with him. Reckon where he was now?
She watched the boats in the harbor. She could see the nets gently waving, just barely. It would be nice to walk out there in the daytime and look around. Sam would like a place like this, crazy as he was about boats. And water and fishing.
She might never get to see him again. He’d never get to see his baby if that was so. She didn’t even know what his address was. As many times as she’d ridden by that mailbox of his, the one his daughter had painted. It had some numbers on it but there hadn’t been any reason for her to try and remember them. She’d never thought she’d one day need to write him a letter. What she guessed she’d thought was that she’d just kind of stay there forever.
She heard Aaron’s steps in the hall and she turned her head slightly over her shoulder to watch him push open the screen door with his elbow. He had two cups in his hands and she could see them steaming. He set one down.
“It’s hot, now,” he said, and handed her the other one.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. How you like it so far?”
She held the cup gingerly, resting the bottom lightly on her palm and blowing across the rim of the cup with her fingers curled in the handle.
“It’s real pretty,” she said.
“What time you need to go back tomorrow?”
“It don’t matter I don’t guess.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. I guess I better look for a job somewhere.”
“Did you finish high school?”