by Larry Brown
IN A FEW days she was stronger and could hobble around. She tried to fix her meals and eat when she knew he wasn’t there. But it didn’t always work.
Once he surprised her coming out of the upstairs bedroom where she had gone to look for the gun and he put his arm out and against the wall. But she only stared into his eyes for a few hard seconds and ducked under his arm and went past him, down the stairs, no wonder she’d fallen, the steps were loose and they creaked, and paint was falling from the ceiling in the hall, and sometimes she swept flakes of it up. He came down and she saw him going out the back door. She stood watching and listening and went back to looking for it. She looked in every cabinet and pulled the contents of them out and remembered how they’d been and put them exactly back in their order. She’d find money he’d left her in the kitchen under a plate and walk down the road to the gas station as the soreness slowly left her and she’d buy cigarettes or a cold can of lemonade and lean against a post with her sunglasses on watching the boats and the gulls.
Back at the house, she searched closets and ran her hand along the shelves in them and dislodged blankets and pillowcases but it was never there. Each drawer in the house was opened, looked through, the stuff taken out, put back in. It probably wasn’t safe to go back to Sam and she wasn’t going to prison over Alesandra.
He kept odd hours and she heard the slamming of doors in the middle of the night those last days.
She knew the gun was there. It was there somewhere. She knew because when he was sober he was a very careful man, and in sober times he would have put it somewhere he could find it again if he needed it. But she could not find it.
She kept her own odd hours and crawled under the beds and pulled out the couches looking for secret spots or hidden doors. She thought there might be more than one gun. She found pens, coins, paper clips, phone numbers scratched on scraps of paper. She found petrified french fries and loose buttons.
She’d stop what she was doing suddenly and listen for him, and then she would go back to peeking behind dressers, pulling rugs back and looking under them, replacing the beds over them as they had been. It was simple. All she had to do was look in every possible place in the house until she ran into a lock. There was a crowbar in the utility room.
She found the money in an ordinary pasteboard box sitting under an old leather suitcase in a tall wardrobe in the upstairs room. There were dresses long musty and hanging in plastic bags with bodices of fake pearls and dipping necklines, the material thick and soft in her fingers. It was inside a couple of manila envelopes and when she looked in and saw it she knew that the gun had to be close by. If she’d learned one thing about him it was that these two things went together.
Dumped on the bed and even spread out there was a lot of it. She counted it, a little over eleven thousand. Then she put it back into the envelopes. She closed the wardrobe door. Then opened it again to look at something she’d glimpsed. A glossy poster stood hidden behind the dresses and she parted them with her hands and looked at it. A beautiful girl with dark shining hair and bright white teeth smiling out at the camera, one eye closed in a wink, all curves and skimpily clad in a torn T-shirt and her nipples pressed hard against the thin cloth, her hands tugging the hem of the shirt down to barely cover her, a Reena from years past, a Reena that Aaron had known when she looked like this.
In the center of the room with the sound of the cars on the highway coming through the second-story windows she looked at the bed and imagined the two of them lying on it. She backed to the bed and sat down on it. He was on this side. She propped his pillow up and lay back against it. She could see what he saw from there. And where would he put it so that he could grab it quickly if he needed to?
So many times she had held on to the short posts in the headboard but not on his side. She put her hands back as she had done in the throes of their lovemaking and her fingers touched the smoothness of the leather holster that had been nailed back there and then the cool curves of a frame and a wooden grip and a deeply crosschecked spur for the hammer.
SHE MADE GOOD time hitchhiking back to Biloxi. An older man with a smelly cigar and a rusty Jeep took her seven miles before he had to turn off, but she only had to walk about a hundred yards before a divorced lady in a fairly new Ford pickup stopped and gave her another ride. The woman started talking and kept on talking about an operation she was going to have done on her face to make her look younger. She seemed excited and scared. She told Fay that she could ride all the way to Jackson with her but she asked to be let out just this side of a red light in Biloxi and with the truck sitting in the midst of halted traffic she got out and thanked the lady and stepped away from the truck. She crossed the road before the light changed and when the truck moved away the woman lifted one hand and waved. Fay waved back, but she didn’t think there was anything wrong with the face the lady already had.
THE TOYS THAT belonged to Aaron’s children still sat out front, but now they were broken, looked like some of them had been run over. They’d even left the steps. Fay wondered if that Chuck had gone with her. She hoped not.
“Hellfire,” she said, out loud and softly to herself, blinking the tears back. Traffic flowed on the road below.
She looked down the hill. There was a pay phone down there. She’d walked by it on the way up here. She’d seen people use them. You stuck a quarter in them.
What the hell. What the hell else was there to do now?
IN THAT DROWSY dreamy state that comes between dreams or in your afternoon nap Sam heard her talking to him and he stirred and moved his socked feet on the bed. He wasn’t under the covers but he had Fay’s pillow tucked close to his face because her scent had lingered on it, even through one night with Loretta’s head on it. She talked to him in short sentences, and he could see her pointing and moving her fingers the way she did when she was telling something she was excited about, a movie she’d seen while he was away, a piece she’d read in a magazine, a show about a lone tigress in a deep green forest in India. She talked on and on and she had her swimming suit on and her belly was showing a little but she was still looking great. He had to get some baby food. Needed to stock up. The baby would need one of those baby life jackets. Here was a baby in the dream in a diaper and a sailor hat holding up a sign: GIRLS CAN FISH TOO. She kept talking and he kept lying there listening to her and her voice soothed him with the round vent in the white ceiling blowing cool air down on his splayed fingers, his lips open slightly, his chest falling and rising ever so slightly and then the message machine chirped a bright beep and he woke up. Then he sat up. Then he got up and ran up the hall to look. The little green light was winking at him, on and off.
SHE FIGURED MAYBE a six or seven hour drive depending on if he was home and when he got the message. She tried not to let herself think beyond that.
Walking back by the beach she thought she would just sit on the porch. If Aaron came in she didn’t have to tell him nothing. Tell him she was just sitting there. She sat out there all the time anyway. Or she had.
Trucks and cars passed her and she didn’t put her thumb out, but it was going to be a long walk back if she didn’t get a ride. She thought it was about twenty-something miles. Wasn’t any way she could walk that far today. She didn’t want to overdo it and start herself to bleeding again. But she couldn’t stay with him anymore. She could get back some way and wait all night if she had to and see if Sam showed up. If he didn’t, she could call him again from Arlene’s.
It might take time. She had to remember that. He might be on duty and not be in until midnight or sometime. Or if they’d found Alesandra and found out he’d been messing around with her he might be in some trouble. If he didn’t come tonight she’d just call back tomorrow. Maybe get him instead of the machine.
She kept walking and she didn’t like being so close to the traffic, but sometimes there wasn’t much room to get over.
Once a man in a car pulled over onto the shoulder a ways up and almost caused a wreck
, vehicles swerving around him and horns blowing. He looked back and waved for her to come on up and get in with him, but she just stopped where she was and waited for him to go on. He didn’t for a long time, just kept sitting there and waving, like he was hoping she’d change her mind and come on and get in with him, but she shook her head, looking at his face, dark, a curly head of black hair. Hair like Chris Dodd’s. Finally he went on.
The beach was covered with people and it was getting on toward evening. The gun made her purse so much heavier and she was tired of carrying it. She had to have it. He wouldn’t understand anything but the gun.
The breeze was blowing as always and it lifted her hair from the side of her face as she walked. Some boy waved out the window of a car to her, but she only looked at him for a moment and saw him waving, and then stopped looking at him. The horn blared on the car, the sound of it dimming as it went on down the highway. She kept walking. Same old shit.
THE ROAD WENT by under him like it was greased. He had his gun because she’d said there might be trouble. That she was sorry for the things she’d done. He didn’t know what she’d done and he didn’t care because getting down there as fast as he could in one piece was the only thing.
He was stopped twice in north Mississippi. One trooper pulled him over just past the Grenada exit on I-55 South but it was only Dago Petersen, wanting to know how everything was going for him. He’d followed him long enough to get his tag and since he knew he’d probably clocked him at something like ninety, he didn’t mind sitting there and talking to Dago for a few minutes. After he told him he was going down to the coast for a few days to try and relax and forget about everything for a while, Dago told him he was sure sorry about what had happened to him, his wife, that gas truck crash. All that trouble. They’d all heard.
“They tellin all kind of shit on you, man,” he said, his arm up above him leaning on the cab, the wide brim of his hat shading his face. “But I’m hopin everything’ll turn out okay for you.” And he told him he’d see him later and walked back to his cruiser.
The deputy sheriff who’d hidden himself in the bushes south of Duck Hill only kept him for a second after he showed his badge, didn’t even need all the explanation about how he was late for a meeting in Jackson and his cruiser was down, was already shaking his head that it was okay and for him to have a nice day, that he wouldn’t have even stopped him if he’d known who he was, and he went on back to his cruiser, too.
Then he shot through Montgomery County and left it behind.
AARON THOUGHT JUST take her somewhere now, maybe call an airline in Jackson and get two tickets somewhere, maybe down to Key West. Or he could take her to San Francisco and they could walk up and down the hilly streets with the little stores that had almost anything a person could want to buy, walk in the crowds of people with their different clothes and faces and their handbags and shoes. They could grab a cab out to the stadium and catch a ball game one afternoon, have hot dogs in the stands with tall waxed cups of beer, and she could get to see some of the country. There was plenty of money. He could spend some of it on her.
The crowd was low. The crowd was quiet. He sold two half-ounces of the grass and he kind of wanted to go back and check on her, see how she was doing. But he hated to leave. Cully was off somewhere and Arthur had called in that he wouldn’t be able to come in until later on, so he’d had to call Eddie in to cover for him, and Eddie was pissed at having to work again tonight.
One good thing was No Wanda. No phone call, no nothing. So maybe her ass was gone too. Now. Maybe they were all gone now and he could tell her that, too, that he’d gotten rid of all of them if that’s what was bothering her. Maybe she was having some weird time with it being in his room. But he didn’t see why. He didn’t know what difference it made where you did something like that. It was losing the baby. That’s all it was. She’d get over it. She was stronger already. He’d seen her come in from her walking. Everything would be all right in a few more weeks. Once she got healed up.
He turned around to tell Eddie to fix him a drink and the front door opened and Cully walked in with Kristy. She had some classy new clothes on now, a short dress, her legs not too bad in the pantyhose.
They started to head toward the back and then Cully said something to her and then came on over to the bar. He stopped next to Aaron.
“Where the hell’s everybody at?” he said.
Aaron looked out over the few tables that people were sitting around. There wasn’t anybody on the stage now but Bobbi was supposed to be back there getting ready. He guessed they were going to have to kick her out before long. Her ass was just too fat. A few people had jeered at her and made her cry one time. It looked like the quality of the talent was going downhill fast.
“I don’t know. They damn sure ain’t here. I wish to hell I wasn’t either.”
Eddie moved over in front of them and put his wet hands up on the bar.
“Y’all want something?”
“Give me two draft beers,” Cully said, and Eddie turned to get them. “Well shit. Why don’t you go home, then? Go fuck your pretty girlfriend?”
“Fix me a Turkey and Coke when you get a chance, Eddie,” Aaron said to him. “When you get a chance. Please.”
Eddie nodded and watched the flow from the keg tap into one of the glasses. Aaron turned to face his half brother and scratched at the underside of his jaw with his finger. He didn’t think his pretty girlfriend was ready for that. “Aw hell,” he said. “Ain’t nobody to bounce but Eddie if I take off. Arthur ain’t never come in yet.”
“Arthur’ll be here in ten minutes,” Cully said, and he reached out for the two beers the bartender was setting down. “Thanks, Eddie.”
“How you know?” Aaron said. He watched Eddie start mixing his drink back there.
Cully picked up one of the beers and sipped at it. Kristy had crossed her arms, a peevish look already on her face. Aaron glanced at her. Either hot to fuck or already had her meat hooks in him. Already had him whipped. They did it to him every time. And the nastiest one that walked through the front door next, that was the one he would want.
“He called me at the house a while ago. Said he’d be in at eight. Go on if you want to. We can handle it on a Tuesday night surely to God. But suit yourself.”
Aaron watched him. He picked up the other beer and walked away as Eddie slid the Turkey to his elbow. He watched Cully go over to her and motion with his head for her to go on ahead of him, and they walked behind the bar and she pushed against the swinging door and they went through it.
“Slow night, boss,” Eddie said. The music had been off for a few minutes and Aaron didn’t mind it. Listening to the same ones over and over again every night, it burned you out. And they played it so loud. Cully claimed it made people drink more. And Aaron had said Yeah, but they can’t hardly have a goddamn conversation.
“Yep.” He leaned on the bar and took a sip from the drink. “You still want a little dab of that hash?”
Eddie looked anxious. “I don’t know,” he said. “How much is it?”
What he ought to do was just go on home, then. She was probably watching television or something. He knew she still went up there and watched it because whenever he came in, whatever time it was, he felt it to see if it was still warm, and it almost always was.
“I can let you have a nice piece for eighty,” he said. “Same stuff you smoked the other night. It got you high, didn’t it?”
“Hell yeah,” Eddie was quick to say. “I don’t know if I can afford that much.”
Aaron took another drink.
“Well shit or get off the pot. That’s a pun,” he said. “A play on words.”
“You got it on you?”
“Hell yeah I got it on me. I can get it on me.”
The music cranked up again and the stage lights dimmed. But maybe it was still too soon to try talking to her. Maybe she just wanted to be left alone a while longer. He didn’t know how long it took a woman to ge
t over something like this. Not on the inside where the baby had been. On the inside where she felt things. There had been some women he’d liked a lot. But there had never been anything like this. No other woman had ever made him feel this way. He didn’t want to be away from her any longer than he had to. Maybe he should just get her clean out of town. They didn’t have to stay here. The world was full of places to go.
He thought he’d stick around a little longer. He thought he’d see what went down with Eddie here, and he took him to the back room and pulled an old olive U.S. Army footlocker from under the bed and got him out the hash and they smoked some of it quickly so that Eddie could get back to the bar, and Eddie did, and then he just sat back there by himself with the music climbing through the wall, and something thumping the wall in Cully’s office, something thumping, and thumping, and thumping.
Man, he thought. She’s wearing his ass out.
THERE WAS A mall along the beach and she’d seen it before. It had a movie theater and there was a marquee out front and they had three different ones showing. She stopped in the road and looked at it. There was a place to cross right down there.
She’d never really been to the movies. Sam had kept telling her he was going to take her to the show sometime. He talked about the popcorn, and about how good a movie was on a big screen like that. He said watching one on a videotape was nothing compared to seeing the same one in a theater. And even if he’d gotten the message right after she’d left it, it was still going to take him six or seven hours to get down here. She had to get back to Pass Christian. It would be dark by then. But she looked at a cab stopped at a stop sign down the street for just a moment.