The pain was coming now, a dull throb and stiffening in his adnominal muscles, but Gene tried to straighten himself up as Brown Coveralls and then Wild-Haired Roofer let go of him. His eyes were watery, but he could see Orange Camy gearing up to come at him again, this time probably in the face. Gene put up his fists and braced himself for the blows.
“What the fuck are you all doing?” A woman’s voice cut through all the noise. “Jason Ringworm! Stop being an asshole this minute and leave him alone.”
It was Cora. She was wearing a wet yellow raincoat with its hood pushed back just enough that Gene could see her slightly asymmetrical face, her left eye squinting in anger.
“Get outta here,” spat Jason through his red, swelling mouth. “Crazy freak bitch.”
“Or what—you’ll have someone hold me down so you can beat me up, too?”
A few laughs ruffled around the bar. Orange Camy didn’t say anything while Cora stood there and measured him up then spat out her assessment. She used the tone of voice that she would for a badly misbehaved and contemptible child.
“Shame on you, Jason Ringworm!”
“RingenBURGH! And fuck you, you crazy bitch.”
“You’re a fucking coward. You’re all a bunch of cowards. You should be ashamed.”
Cora took Gene by the arm and started to lead him out, but Kenny called her name and jerked his head toward the back door. She nodded in understanding and guided Gene through the small throng of people.
“I tried to stop it, Cora,” said Danny Hansen. “I ain’t no coward.”
Cora nodded and put up her hood as the two opened the back door to a gust of wind and spray then stepped out into the cold rain.
“You OK?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“C’mon, I parked over here,” she said, trotting to the side street not far from the back door. Gene trotted along behind her, every step wrenching the sore, strained muscles in his gut in a way that almost felt good.
Cora unlocked the passenger side of a small, faded blue Mazda pickup truck, but she let him open it himself and went around to her side and got in. A kewpie Native American doll-type thing hung from the rearview mirror. The passenger seat and floor were covered with books and papers, a binder folder and notebook, and several fashion magazines, but she pulled them to her in a pile to make room for Gene. He nestled his boots between a hard three-ring binder and several empty Wendy’s cups and greasy Taco Bell sacks. The windows soon began to steam up, and after she turned the truck on, she directed a blast of defrost air, a small moon of clear dark slowly rising over the hazy dashboard horizon.
“You OK? Really?” She turned the key and flipped on the wipers.
“Yeah. A little sore. Thanks for the rescue.”
“Kenny called and said there might be trouble.”
“Hmm. Didn’t see that.”
“Kenny knows more than he lets on. God, that Jason Ringenburgh is such an asshole. I’ve always hated him. I’m surprised they even let him in. He’s always getting in fights. He even got kicked out of pharmacy school for fighting a couple years ago. Could you imagine him, a pharmacist? Scary. It looked like you clocked him one though.”
Cora rubbed her chin and mouth on her left side where Jason Ringworm’s face had started swelling.
“Let’s get out of here before anyone gets more ideas,” said Gene, gingerly turning toward the back door, but no one was there.
“Right, sorry.” Cora pulled out of the parking space and turned right on Market. The Egyptian Trails glowed invitingly through the rain-streaked windows, and as they rounded the corner, Gene watched two men duck in the front door. The man who entered second, the one with the slope of his nose matching the pooch of his gut, was unmistakably Jimmy Tosti.
FOURTEEN
“WHERE ARE WE GOING?” asked Gene, looking from the passenger seat into the rainy darkness.
“I don’t know. Back to the house. Miller’s house. You’re not going to ride in this rain are you?”
“We can’t go to Miller’s. That’s the first place anyone would look if they wanted to find me.”
“Right.”
“For all we know, the front door is already gone again.”
“OK, I get it!”
Gene’s abdominal muscles hurt and he lifted up his T-shirt to see if any bruising had started to stain. It was too dark to see, but he couldn’t help but notice that his belly had grown quite a bit bigger over the last couple years. His gut didn’t rival Jimmy Tosti’s yet, but it looked like hairy biscuit dough bulging up over the rim of his riding pants. He immediately pulled his T-shirt back down and arched his back to stretch the abdominals.
“You OK?”
“Yeah. Just sore.”
The muscles beneath his left rib cage were growing stiff, and it hurt to move, but Gene considered himself lucky. He looked down again and noticed something white stuck in the zipper of his jacket.
“Looks like I got a piece of him here, too.”
“What is it?”
“Ringworm flesh.”
“Gross! Here, use this!”
She handed him a yellow Wendy’s napkin, which he used to clean the flesh out of the zipper teeth, dampening it with water off his jacket to get it all out.
“Now throw it out the window.”
“I’m not a litterbug!”
“Oh please! Throw it out! I don’t want any part of Jason Ringworm riding around with us.”
Cora had turned left onto Fifth Street, heading west, along the river. Now that the rain had slowed to little more than a drizzle, Gene could see a steel trash barrel in the park he’d walked through earlier that day.
“Pull over there,” he said pointing to the trash can.
“It’s raining and it’s biodegradable,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re as silly and stubborn as Miller.”
The two suddenly grew quiet, but for the first time since he could remember, Gene felt proud of the comparison. Slowly and with a few groans, he stepped out of the truck and tossed the wad of napkin into the trash.
“Such a good Boy Scout,” Cora said after Gene was back in the car.
“So why did Miller run all those ads for Five Star and Tovani Bros?”
“Jesus! Do we have to talk about all that shit now?”
Gene didn’t say anything for several moments. It seemed to him like they were meandering, and it reminded him of high school, sitting in Keith’s car, doing nothing but driving around and wasting whole summers.
“So where can we go? Somewhere not obvious.”
“Hey, I got this, OK?”
Cora circled around the park and crossed Fifth Street, a couple blocks from Miller’s house. It hurt to turn around, but Gene continued to check behind them to see if they were being followed. The town, as usual, was empty. They drove past a number of trailer homes on Scott Street then turned onto a street called Frelinghuysen, which was an odd section of town—mostly trailers and very small homes made of cinder blocks or plastic siding along narrow streets barely wider than golf cart paths. Gene wondered if this had been a less affluent section of town from the get-go or was perhaps closer to the river and more prone to flooding.
The rain slowed to a trickle as Cora turned her little pickup into the carport of a mold-green 1940s bungalow. It was flat-roofed and boxlike, and the carport extended directly from the roof over a gravel driveway.
“Where’s this?” asked Gene.
“Granny’s house. My mom’s mom. She’s in assisted living ’cause she fell really bad last year. She probably won’t ever come back here.”
“Where is she? Eldorado?”
“No, silly. Hopkinsville. C’mon, help me put that tarp on.”
Cora got out and softly closed her door, and the two dragged a huge damp tarp to cover the whole body of the truck.
“Granny used to cover her Buick with this.”
“Why are we doing it?”
“It’s better than advertising to everybody that we�
�re here.”
“You can still see the shape. It’s obviously a Mazda B Series pickup.”
Cora looked at the tarp-covered truck and then at Gene. “Seriously?”
Gene shrugged.
“Just help me.”
The two put the tarp on then walked to the side door. Cora opened it with her key and, after they closed it behind them, lit the room with her cell phone’s blue glow. “C’mon.”
The house was small and musty—a living room with a couch, a small bedroom, and a small kitchen. A carpet like lumpy oatmeal spread across the floors of all three rooms. In the darkened room, the walls looked the same mold-green as the outside—not quite aqua but reminiscent of the public pool Gene had gone to while growing up.
“We’d better keep the lights out, right?” she asked. “I’ll see if I can find a flashlight.”
Gene stayed where he was while Cora went to the kitchen and rummaged through some drawers. A dim, fading light came from her hand as she held up an old red plastic flashlight.
“We’ll try not to use it much,” she said, tightening the top and knocking it twice against her hand, which seemed to brighten the beam at least a little.
Cora went into her grandmother’s bedroom and shined her light around.
“Sheets are old but clean,” she said, opening up a slatted pantry door and grabbing a spare set of sheets, pillow, and pillowcase.
She walked back out into the main room, Gene still following, and dropped the sheets and pillow onto the couch.
“For you,” she said. “Make yourself at home. Now, I wonder what Granny has to drink.”
Cora picked a few cabinets before she finally found the right one on the bottom and probed her fading flashlight beam inside.
“Not a lot. A bottle of Southern Comfort—opened but completely full. An ice bucket—looks stolen from a motel room. Nice work, Granny! A blender. An oven mitt. A bottle of some kind of German wine that looks like separated motor oil. Jesus! This stuff is older than I am. Probably been around since the Great Depression. Also, some tonic water—unopened but it’s lost its fizz. And a small bottle of—something.”
She held a steak sauce-sized bottle up to her light.
“Bitters? Yuck. Looks like Southern Comfort. Want some?”
“Sure, why not.”
Cora found two glasses, both embossed with a yellow or orange electric guitar and the words “Branson” above it and “Country Music Capital” below. She opened the freezer and lifted up an empty ice tray, tossed it back in, and closed the door.
“Damn, no ice,” she said, filling up the Branson glasses with the dirty honey-colored liquor.
Gene followed her out the kitchen door and onto a small screened-in patio. They took their seats in aluminum lawn chairs leaning back too far from a white plastic table to be comfortable. The rain seemed to have stopped, and water dripped from the large walnut and oak trees in Granny’s backyard.
“Cheers,” said Cora, holding out Gene’s glass and clinking it when he grabbed it. “To Granny Hoppenbrauer.”
“To Granny Hoppenbrauer.” Gene took a sip of the wretched old sweet stuff. It didn’t sit well on top of the beer he’d swilled earlier, but he hoped it would at least kill some of the pain in his gut.
“At least no one can sneak up on us out here,” she said.
The neighborhood was completely empty. A few windows glowed dawn-blue from televisions in the houses around them, and some neighbor had turned on a small driveway light, but otherwise, the world was dark and wet, the only sound coming from the water dripping from trees and a few crickets, cicadas, or maybe frogs beginning to muster some chirps and croaks from the cold, damp dark.
She lit up an American Spirit and offered him one. He pulled out his Camel Lights but couldn’t find his book of matches so used the lighter she held out for him. The two sipped their warm Southern Comfort and listened to the sounds of the night. Finally Cora refilled their glasses and broke the silence.
“You always smoke?”
“Not in years, and only when I drank. Seemed like a good night to buy a pack.”
“How you feeling?”
“Same. A little better. This stuff helps.”
Gene realized he should have asked about her, how she was doing. He was terrible at this kind of talk. For one thing, he rarely thought of other people, and when he did he usually didn’t like thinking about them, but he liked thinking about Cora and was just about to ask how she was holding up when she broke the silence again.
“You’re not anything like Miller.”
“I thought you said I was just like him.”
“Only as far as stubbornness and Boy Scouts go.”
“Neither one of us were Boy Scouts.”
“You know what I mean. Your faces are similar, though. You have a stronger jaw. And you’re much quieter.”
Gene shrugged. Whenever anyone told him he was the silent type, he could never think of what to say to prove them wrong.
“Miller would be talking up a blue streak now, making jokes about how friendly and welcoming this town is, about Jason Ringworm. But sometimes he could be quiet too—in his own world, brooding on who knows what. Gawd, I miss him so much already. He was good, Gene! Really! He was one of the good guys. Even if he did sell ads to the bad guys. He had to—the paper was broke.” She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. She was quiet for a long time, and then, in a soft, throat-tightened voice, said, “He wasn’t a sell-out.” Through the darkness he watched her cover her face with her hands, hiding her tears. Gene thought about Cora and Miller together, working at the paper, chasing down stories, trying to stand up for this small town, and he had to admit that his brother was one of the good guys. Miller was easily more in the good guys camp than he was.
Cora bit back a sob and looked up at Gene. “How am I going to get through this if I feel like this now? How am I ever going to go in that house? It’s only going to get worse.”
Gene had no idea what to say. He listened to Cora crying, which sounded strangely like the way girl cartoon characters cry. It was cute and heartbreaking at the same time. As she sobbed, almost in little boo-hoos, he felt like he should do something, so he lumpishly got up and came around to her side of the table and quietly put his arm around her shoulder.
“I’m OK,” she said, pushing him away, her small hand on his chest. “Thanks, but I’m OK.”
Gene, even more lumpishly, returned to his side of the table and sat back down.
“You’re sweet,” she said, wiping her eyes and refilling their glasses with Southern Comfort.
They drank and smoked and talked about Miller. Gene told her about his forays into poetry and vegetarianism, which made her laugh. Cora talked about their recent lives together, and Gene notice how Cora now consistently put Miller in the past tense, even when she talked about the trip to Isla Mujeres they had planned on taking in December. The two finished the bottle and most of their cigarettes and made several trips each to the bathroom, which was wallpapered with a green outdoorsy pattern of trees and deer that provided a recurring joke between them about pissing in the woods. As far as they knew, no one had followed them or knew where they were. There was a smattering of cigarette butts, like a small crowd of wild mushrooms, under the table where they had ground them out with their wet shoes.
“I’m drunk ’n’ tarred,” Cora said, finishing the last of her glass and donning a Kentucky accent, “and ther ain’t no more likker.”
“I’m drunk, too,” said Gene standing up. They swayed like trees in a summer storm as they walked out of the porch and into the dark kitchen. Gene could feel his heart beating both in his head and in his gut where he’d been hit. Cora found a new toothbrush in the bathroom and a half-used tube of Aim. He couldn’t help but think how cute she looked brushing her teeth, slowly and childishly in her drunken state, her mouth full of white foam.
“Sorry there’s only one,” she said handing it to Gene. “I tried to wash it out pretty good.”
Gene brushed his teeth while Cora pulled back the sheets on her grandma’s bed and inspected the pillows, then he staggered onto the couch, dropped his coat on the floor, pulled off his boots, and lay down. Cora went back into the bathroom, closed the door and peed and washed her face. He could hear her coughing and possibly throwing up her ancient Southern Comfort in the toilet. Gene couldn’t sleep in his riding pants and T-shirt, even if he was drunk as hell, and decided it would be OK to strip to his boxers while Cora was in the bathroom.
“Goodnight, Gene,” Cora called as she left the bathroom.
“You OK?” he asked, but she had already closed the bedroom door behind her.
After less than a minute, Gene realized he had to take a piss and got up to go to the bathroom, feeling both embarrassed and a little excited to be walking around in his boxers in this small strange house with her on the other side of a thin hollow door. Back on the couch he covered himself up with some of the sheet and had just started dozing off when he felt a nudge on his shoulder. It was Cora. She was standing above the couch, the small living room window illuminating her in her black panties and pink bra. She had a lithe body like a nymph.
“You awake?”
“Just dozing.”
He looked up at her and could see that she was or had been crying again, and she sniffled a little.
“I miss Miller.”
“Me, too,” he said.
“I’m drunk enough to want some company.”
“OK.” He gingerly swung his feet to the floor, his gut sore as he strained to stand up. He’d expected to give her a hug, but she’d already turned and walked toward the bedroom. Gene took a deep breath, inhaling her scent, and followed.
Cora moved to the right side, and Gene slid behind her but on top of the sheet and put his arm around her shoulder.
“Like this?”
“I miss him,” she said, starting to cry again. “Do you? You probably don’t since you hadn’t seen him in so long.”
“I miss him more now than I have for the last ten years.”
“He was good,” she said, through a sniffle. “He never hurt anybody—or at least never meant to.”
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