Fay: A Novel

by Larry Brown

  “Can you fix me a Tom Collins?” she said, ignoring Cully, going for her smokes, pulling one out, waiting for Aaron to light it. While Cully fumbled at his pocket he reached out with his lighter and gave her some fire. She looked into his eyes and blew smoke straight out. He stepped back.

  “I don’t know Tom Collins but I’ll fix you a Bob Collins, how bout that?”

  “Whatever you say, Aaron. Just long as it tastes good.”

  Her eyes were trying to play with him. He managed to keep from rolling his and turned to the booze.

  He thought he’d just build it as he went along. He poured two shots of some Absolut Citron into a tall glass and then scooped up some ice with his hand and dropped it in there and poured some sour mix into it and added some sugar and some lemon juice and stirred it good. Then he decided he’d shake it so he put it into a shaker and shook it good and then strained it back into the glass and dropped a little more ice in there. He gave it to her and didn’t wait to see her taste it because the other thing was coming back in now, the other thing he’d been thinking about. Oh yeah. That thing. Cully started talking to her.

  He looked around to see if there was anybody who needed throwing out. He was kind of hoping there was. Kicking somebody’s ass right about now might just make him feel a little better because there was no doubt about it, Fay went to see the son of a bitch and there was no need in her trying to lie her way out of it. He knew how they’d lie. Lie in your face and fuck somebody else, Oh honey no this stuff is all yours.

  Eddie came through the door and Wanda went out it. There was a break in the stage dancing and people started coming over to the bar.

  “What’s the matter with Wanda?” Cully said. “Acts like somebody poked a sharp stick up her ass.”

  “I guess parting ain’t such sweet sorrow,” Aaron said.

  Eddie came over and whispered: “What you want me to do with this stuff?”

  He looked across the bar. Customers were lining up.

  “Give it here,” he said. He watched Cully watch him take the dope from Eddie and slide it down in his jeans pocket.

  “Thanks,” Eddie said, and went to wait on the patrons.

  “Anytime,” Aaron said. Lord have mercy he was toting a buzz. He was going to have to get over there in his corner and sit down. He picked up his beer mug and then took a hit of his schnapps. That shit was golden fire.

  “I think I’ll take up my post,” he said to nobody in particular, and moved over to it. He could feel Cully still watching him, but he didn’t really give a shit.

  He found a shelf for the glass and held on to the mug. The constant noise was something he rarely paid any attention to anymore, and it was only when the place was empty sometimes in the middle of the day that he remarked on the silence. Now there was a steady chatter of talk and the music kept on playing. He knew they’d all be drunk eventually. Somebody would get rowdy. Somebody would get a hard-on and wouldn’t be able to make it with a certain girl or wouldn’t have enough money to pay her or couldn’t pass a short-arms inspection and would bump into somebody else who was drunk and had one reason or another to shove back and it was the same old shit over and over. He didn’t care which one it was. All he was waiting for was the happening of it.

  He withdrew into his dark corner and watched how things would play themselves out. He was toting one motherhumper of a buzz. And Fay was the best of them all.

  It was an hour later and he’d been to the bathroom and was coming out when he saw Cully’s door open. He heard talking in there and Arthur came out. They spoke and Arthur went on by, out to the front.

  He moved back that way. He’d left his whiskey up front. His clean boots moved over the dirty tiles in the floor. Cully was doing something with some papers when he leaned against the doorjamb. Cully didn’t raise his head.

  “Real cute, passing the shit out front. Why don’t you just go up to the police department and walk in the lobby and do it there?”

  “Like people don’t know what goes on here.”

  “Thanks to you sometimes. What about Wanda?”

  “I had a little talk with her.”

  “She ain’t got shit to say now.”

  “I don’t blame her.”

  Cully put down the papers and sipped from a drink that was sitting on his desk. The dripping glass had wetted the papers under it into big damp rings. He leaned back in his chair and studied Aaron.

  “When you going to bring sweet thing over here and let her dance?” he said.

  Aaron crossed his arms against his chest. “Try a cold day in hell. She’s been in here too much to suit me already.”

  “What’s the matter? You afraid you’ll get her dirty? If she wasn’t already she wouldn’t be here.”

  “You don’t know that. I don’t want her around you, that’s for goddamn sure.”

  Cully smiled. “I bet she’s got some good stuff.”

  “You bastard. She’s gonna have a baby.”

  “Make her get rid of it so she can dance.”

  “Fuck you. No.”

  Cully’s eyes weren’t believing him now.

  “Why?”

  “Cause,” Aaron said. “I don’t want her around this …” He glanced around at the walls. “This shit.”

  He turned sideways. He needed to go back in there and smoke some more. It was starting to ease off some and he didn’t want it to until it was time to go home. He wouldn’t wake her. He’d let her sleep, let her baby sleep inside her. Get her to the doctor tomorrow. This one could turn out different from all the others. She was young and she was strong and nobody had ruined her yet. He thought there had only been that one guy. Hell, one guy. That was nothing. She was still learning.

  “Maybe she’d like to try a little acting job.”

  “Aw why don’t you shut up about that shit?” Aaron said. “You scared the hell outta her first time she seen you. She ain’t gonna have nothing to do with you. I’ll see to that.”

  “If I sell it and make some money she might.”

  He couldn’t believe the stupid son of a bitch was still talking about it. He moved up a little closer.

  “Listen. I ought to have my damn head examined for ever listening to you. I done told you all this shit. You ain’t got nobody to sell it to. You ain’t got no way to edit it or nothing or put a title on it. It ain’t no movie. It’s just a bunch of people fucking.”

  Cully didn’t speak for a while. He moved his chair some.

  “You’re saying you won’t get tired of this one. Cause she’s different, I suppose.”

  “Yeah. She is.”

  “I wish you’d tell me how.”

  She was different. She was better somehow. She had that nice smile and her tits were the most wonderful things he’d seen in his whole life. And he knew already that he’d give plenty to be able to hang on to her. He had to hang on to her. That’s all there was to it.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “She just is.”

  Cully lost interest. “We’ll see what kind of tune you sing in a few months,” he said. “Did Charlie ever come in to get on the door?”

  “He’s supposed to be here.”

  “Will you go see? And come back and tell me if he’s not. So I can call Willie or somebody to take up money?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Close the door, please.”

  He did. He walked across the hall and locked that one behind him and smoked some more dope and went back out front to see Charlie coming in. The crowd had grown a lot and he wasn’t surprised at all to see Kristy up on the stage dancing and laughing with the cheering customers. The smoke hung above the shoulders of the customers in pooling layers that curled and eddied. A waitress walking through it would send it spinning, and then it would settle again. Kristy winked at him from the stage and he had to admit that she had some style and only needed to be about twenty years younger. She could do that thing with some tassels from the old school his mama had probably learned in, twirl one clockwis
e and the other one counter. Great shouts and whistles went up as the tassels spun.

  Aaron laughed and looked up at her and smiled. He gave her the thumbs-up. Her weatherbeaten haunches gleamed in the stage lights for another night at least. And he guessed he couldn’t blame her for trying. He glanced over at Arthur, who nodded and found the whiskey.

  A HONKY-TONK ON Grenada Lake and country music blaring. Sam sipped his drink at the end of the bar and watched the couples whirl and move on the dance floor. The lights were low out there and he didn’t see anybody in there as old as him except for the bartender.

  He didn’t know what to do now. He guessed they’d call him again sometime.

  She was just gone. But Lord please. He said that to himself on a bar stool with a glass of whiskey in his hand. He wasn’t anywhere close to crying. People were out there dancing. Some of them, he knew, were in love. Some of them had to be and he could tell it from the way they looked at each other. Maybe she’d even fucked somebody else by now. It was possible. She might have found herself in a place where she might have had to. Or wanted to. She was so young. She wasn’t no more than a child, really. He knew he shouldn’t have done what he’d started doing with her. He knew he shouldn’t have flirted back with Alesandra on that road that day. And he wished that he could bring back the time from before when Karen was still alive so that he could have another chance not to be so hard on her.

  He bent his head. Lord please. If You can. Let her come back. Or let me just see her one more time.

  He guessed a prayer was a prayer, no matter where you said it, even if you said it in a bar. He hoped that was so. He felt like people were looking at his hair. But he could pray in here if he wanted to.

  WHEN CULLY GOT on top of Reena she couldn’t watch it anymore. It was the way she turned her head and looked at whoever was running the camera. And with it taking place in here she figured she knew who that was. It was just like watching the boys from the camp on top of Barbara Lewis. She got up and turned it off.

  She wasn’t walking too good by now and her glass was almost empty. And she wasn’t looking out the window for him to come home anymore either. If he could let them do that to her, right here in this bed, and putting it on a videotape, then there probably wasn’t much else he wouldn’t do. She thought back to when his eyes had scared her the first time she’d seen him. And she thought again about the booming of the rifle and how his shoulder had kicked back with each shot.

  She weaved her way across to the door and she knew she had to be careful on the steps. They were steep and they were old and she knew she was pretty drunk. But all she had to do was hold on to the rail and take one step at a time and get down to the kitchen and mix another drink and then maybe she could go to sleep. When she got up tomorrow she could decide what she was going to do.

  She took careful steps. The stairs were steep. The boards under the carpet, some of them weren’t too steady, so she kept a good grip on the rail and went on down and into the kitchen and fixed another drink. She spilled a little. It didn’t matter. Sam might be here any day now. He might just drive up in the front yard and park right out there and walk up on the porch and knock on the door. He was a highway patrolman and he could just tell Aaron that he had business with her. And he couldn’t say nothing. She’d seen him kill somebody. The police all over Alabama were probably looking for him right now.

  She could see it in her head. She’d just get her clothes and go right out the front door. She’d tell Sam everything. She’d tell him what happened with Alesandra. If she had to she’d even tell him that she’d gone to bed with Aaron, but she’d been lonely. And scared. And had needed somebody to hold her. She’d ask him to forgive her.

  She sat in the kitchen with her legs spread apart in a chair and drank some more of the whiskey. She’d tell him she was sorry. And that she wouldn’t ever do anything like that to him again.

  She didn’t know what to do. As much as she’d thought and thought she still didn’t know what to do.

  She finished the drink and then fixed another one. It was helping her think. But her smokes were upstairs.

  She went back up slowly, one step at a time, holding on to the rail. She wasn’t going to sleep with him tonight. Not after watching all that stuff on the tape. She’d get all her stuff, that’s what she’d do. She’d move back into the other room and wait for Sam to come get her. And then they’d go back home. And then almost at the landing she made a misstep, lost her balance, tried to catch herself and couldn’t.

  IT WAS PAST dawn when Aaron found her on the floor, sprawled in gray light coming through the tall windows to show her there on the polished pine boards sawn with crosscuts from logs snaked out with mules, dead and lain here all these years deaf and dead to the rhythm of the neighboring sea. It looked like she had rolled almost to the pool table and there was blood streaked on her thighs and a dark smeary puddle of it was what she lay sleeping in.

  THE LAKE SEEMED lonely this early in the morning and Sam stood with his hands in his pockets looking out over it. A thin low cloud hung out there.

  He didn’t know if he could go down there now. It might make it worse if they called for him and he was gone.

  He was afraid now that whatever trouble in the world lay before her was beyond his reach to prevent. He just didn’t know how she’d make it by herself. And then realized once more and sadly that wherever she was, she would not be alone for long unless she wanted it that way.

  He wasn’t going to give up hope. She might get in touch with him. There was always that to hope for. A phone call might come at any time when he least expected it. There was so much luck involved in living, the good along with the bad. So he hoped to have some good luck. It seemed not too much to ask.

  SHE WOKE IN a white room, short white curtains on the window. Her bed was at an angle where she couldn’t see out the glass. Voices spoke beyond the walls and she knew something had happened but not what. She remembered knowing that she was ready to leave him. She was drinking in the kitchen. She thought she might have fallen down the stairs. Her legs were sore, her belly, her head. Something was plugged into her arm, a clear tube that led to a bag on a steel pole. It was a hospital, then.

  A tray of food sat nearby. Pudding, milk, a banana. She waited for someone to come and tell her something.

  She slept again and a nurse woke her, overweight, breathing hard, gray hair and glasses. She was the one who let her understand that the baby was gone now and that the doctor had cleaned out her womb.

  Then he himself came in with his wavy hair and steel-rimmed spectacles and told her what he’d done to her. She had trouble looking him in the eye. He said there might be some bleeding for a few days but not to worry about it unless it became severe. He spoke quietly. He looked like he was sorry. And she was free to go.

  The door closed behind him and the nurse finished unhooking the IV from her arm and she pulled the needle out and put a small bandage on the puncture. Then she left, too.

  Fay’s insides hurt but she got off the bed and found her clothes and got dressed slowly. She wondered how much milk she would have had and if it would have been enough and if she would have chosen that way to feed the baby. All those articles in Amy’s magazines. Only knowing she had to see Aaron kept her from crying.

  And in the hall he had absolutely nothing to say. It was just as well. She didn’t want to talk to him anyway. She stood in a corner of the lobby while he paid the charges with one-hundred-dollar bills and got a receipt.

  He helped her out to the El Camino after somebody on the staff offered her the use of a wheelchair and she refused it. It wasn’t too hot yet in the parking lot and she was grateful for the clouds.

  Driving through the streets she saw the copper glint of whiskers that lay along his jaw and she saw his big knuckles riding the steering wheel. She found her cigarettes in her purse and smoked one, the window cracked and her eyes steely and blind to the things that passed outside the glass. He wiped his right hand a few
times on his jeans, his hand flat and the fingers spread. He drove with a nervousness she had never seen in him as the traffic picked up.

  He stopped without asking at a roadside barbecue joint and went in quickly and got her a cup of coffee and brought it back out to her with a lid on it and extra packs of sugar clamped in his fingers. He didn’t speak and neither did she.

  It was too hot to drink. She held it and blew on it and blew on it and sipped lightly and still it scalded her tongue. When it got too hot to hold she switched it to her other hand.

  And what were people made of and how did they come together to be what they were? What made you be bad or good? Why did good men die and bad men live? She kept seeing Cully on top of Reena. She kept thinking about those kids in that trailer and that dried bologna she’d found in the tiny refrigerator. She knew he had money. She knew he had guns. And probably more than one. Reena and Gigi, probably that Wanda, too. He’d gone through every one of them. And he’d go through her, too, if she let him.

  “I can’t believe I ever went to bed with you,” she said. “You’re about a sorry son of a bitch.”

  And he must have agreed with her because he didn’t say anything.

  SAM STARTED TAKING drives in the afternoons. He’d go up to the store and get some gas and maybe a six-pack and a bag of pig skins. A fresh pack of smokes. He’d ride down to Enid and look at the water and then pull around on the south side of the spillway and watch to see if the people were catching anything.