by Charles Rose
“It gets me there,” Richard said to her. Paula walked over to the Corvette, taking long strides in her halter and shorts. She laid her left hand on the side mirror, put her right hand on her hip. Jimmy’s big hands made a camera. “Hold it right there,” he said to Paula. Paula cocked a hip and smiled at them.
“Never thought I’d get this close to a ‘Vette.” She did a little kick with her right foot, keeping one hand on the side mirror. “You think you might take me out, Rich?”
“That’s up to Jimmy,” Richard said. “Ask Jimmy, don’t ask me.”
Jimmy looked down at his boots. He put his hand on the bill of his cap, and pulled it down over his sunglasses. “We’ll all go,” Jimmy said. “The three of us. How does that sound?”
Paula Smithson looked at each of them. Richard watched her pull on the beer can, extracting it from the sleeve. She dropped the beer can in Jimmy’s garbage can.
“I’m not going out with either of you.” Paula fitted the lid on the garbage can. “Not anytime soon anyway.”
She touched the side mirror again, clicking fingernails. Then she turned and crossed the dirt road, and climbed into the Volkswagen. She didn’t wave at them before she drove off.
It was hot inside the cabin. Jimmy turned on the window unit. He shut the windows on one side of the big front room, with its kitchen and ladder to the loft. He put his breakfast plate and the mug in the sink. There were cold beers in the refrigerator. Jimmy put the bass in the refrigerator without taking them out of the waxed paper. He got an ice tray out of the freezer compartment and went to the sink to pry loose the ice. There were glasses in a dish rack, two large plates, two coffee mugs. Their grandfather’s other silver drinking cup, the cup he had given Jimmy, it was also in the dish rack. Jimmy pushed out ice cubes with his thumb.
Jimmy held out his silver cup. “Here, you take this. Or do you want a beer?”
He told Jimmy he would have a drink. He watched Jimmy fill up the ice tray with water from the tap. He’d dumped the ice cubes on one of the plates. He put the tray in the freezer compartment. He put ice cubes into a jelly glass, leaving Richard with the silver cup. Through the vent in Jimmy’s black cloth cap, the patch of hair looked darker now, even though it was still late afternoon, the sunlight pooling on the floor, on the table, white on the venetian blinds.
Jimmy turned, moved into the sunlight. “I’m offering you our grandfather’s cup because I want you to have a drink with me. If you’d been thinking you would have brought yours.”
“I wasn’t thinking of it. I left it at home.” That wasn’t it, but it was what he had said.
“Okay. So you forgot,” Jimmy said. “That’s okay. Maybe it’s better this way. You might forget and leave it out here with me.”
“I wouldn’t leave it out here with you,” Richard said.
“I know you wouldn’t,” Jimmy said.
He watched Jimmy go to the refrigerator. Jimmy reached in, pulled out baloney, some cellophane-wrapped slices of cheese. There was bread on the table, a bread knife, and an open box of crackers. Jimmy still had his cap on. He set the food down on the kitchen table, took his cap off, and flipped it across the room. He pulled his sunglasses off, along the bridge of his nose, and set them carefully on the table. His hair fell out around his neck. He sliced the seal of the Wild Turkey, poured bourbon into the jelly glass until the glass was half full. He went to the sink for water, then sat down across from Richard.
He watched Jimmy light a cigarette. Jimmy was letting the match burn down. Then he shook out the match and blew out smoke.
“Five thousand isn’t enough. You might as well keep your money, Rich.”
So it had come up again. Jimmy wouldn’t give up. “So what do you need to get started on?”
“I told you. Ten thousand minimum from you.”
“And I told you I can’t go that far.” Ice rattled in Jimmy’s jelly glass as he set it down on the table. Jimmy took another drag from his cigarette.
“You could get ten for the Corvette. I wouldn’t have to sign a note. You do that, I’ll give you the Rover. I’ll drive the goddamned truck for awhile. Till I go bust. How’s that suit you?”
“That’s crap and you know it, Jimmy.”
“You do that, I’ll see what I can do for you.”
There was nothing he could say to that. He wondered which woman Jimmy would ask. Not likely the one before Paula. Jimmy’s crowd all knew each other. His women had been with most of his friends, some married, others just live in. Richard poured bourbon into the cup, drank a little, went on holding the cup. He wondered if Paula had drunk from it. He thought of her lips on the rim of the cup.
“I’m not trying to bribe you, Rich. Just saying that if you sold your new car I might let you hang with me.”
He felt something loosen, the words upchuck. He wasn’t pushing them in Jimmy’s face now. “Look, you want me to sell my goddamned car. I want you to have that marina because I know how much it means to you to have some chance of a future.” The words spilled out; he couldn’t stop them. “Shit, I’d do it just for our grandfather’s sake, so he’d know in his grave you were worth something.”
Jimmy reached out for the silver cup, his big hands gripping it, shaking. “What he might think doesn’t mean anything. He wouldn’t care if I turned to shit as long as I remembered him. I mean as long I’m doing my drinking like a goddamned Southern gentleman, it doesn’t matter what he thinks of me.” Now Jimmy stared straight ahead, with the drinking cup in his hands. “And you, Rich, what would he say about you if you shacked up with one of my women. He wouldn’t say it, but he would think it, maybe not my way but his. He’d know if you needed a woman just to keep from whacking off every night, then little brother ought to provide you with one. Which I’m willing to do if you do for me.”
There was no way to stop what was happening. Through ridges in the venetian blinds Richard saw the Volkswagen pull up. He watched Paula get out of the Volkswagen with a twelve-pack and go to her trailer. Jimmy put out his cigarette. He was quiet; he didn’t say anything. Richard kept his eyes on the trailer, on the venetian blinds in the windows. He tried to calculate how long it would take for Paula to pick up the telephone. Or, forget that, just come over. He might have time to go to the car, get the photographs out of the glove compartment.
“There’s something I think you should know. About our grandfather.” He would come out with it; he had to do that. Jimmy looked at him; he said nothing. “I have some photographs in the car. I want you to take a look at them.”
Jimmy was tilting the bottle, measuring out the next drink until the level was flush with the label. “You can save yourself the trip, Rich. All you have to do is tell me about them.”
He wasn’t vomiting words this time or shoving them at Jimmy’s face. His voice remained flat in its distancing. They were naked or stripped down to loincloths. Their hands were behind their heads, heads low, almost touching the ground. They were squatting or kneeling in front of a ditch. He wasn’t able to finish, for Jimmy was out of his chair now, without speaking, without even listening. He moved across the room, his head held high, to the footlocker, its padlock unlocked in the hasp. He didn’t come back with the .45, or the commendations, or the Purple Heart. He came back with a photograph. He laid the photograph next to the silver cup.
“The troops had target practice,” Jimmy said. “You can see for yourself what the targets were.” They were squatting, kneeling in front of the ditch. “He told me himself. He had one too many one night. For once he couldn’t handle his liquor. We were sitting out by the pool. He kept his foot locker in the pool house. I found this in his footlocker. The funny thing was he didn’t keep it locked.”
Richard laid down the photograph. “Why did he keep this thing?”
“He told me it kept him in touch with himself, with what he was capable of doing. When I told him it was the war,
he said, yes that’s what it was, the war. He hadn’t ordered it. But he had seen it. He had even taken photographs.”
The glare seeped out of the venetian blinds. A corporal was holding an M-1 with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. In the background was the Pacific, the cargo ships, a destroyer, blasted palm trees on the beach, stacks of boxes and crates, a machine gun emplacement, shell cases. The business of war was being carried on, in the background, beyond the ditch. He was being pulled into the photograph, but Jimmy’s flat voice was bringing him back.
“Write me a check for five thousand, Rich. I’ll get the rest of the money somehow.” Jimmy put one hand on his silver cup. “And you might see how much you can sell this thing for. You can sell yours too, while you’re doing it.”
Now Jimmy’s hands were flat on the photograph, but Richard knew he could never cover it up. “I can never accept what he did.” He was looking at Jimmy now, knowing Jimmy had to accept what he’d said.
“I can’t either. But I can live with it.”
He watched Jimmy roll up the photograph, wedging one end in the silver cup. He moved the cup away from his sunglasses.
“It’s yours,” Jimmy said to him. “You can do what you want to with it.”
Jimmy got up and went to the footlocker. He lowered the lid and snapped it shut.
Complicity
Michael held up his shirts on the clothesline without taking his eyes from the mower. It was something Eileen had seen him do before, when he was mowing and she had a wash on the line. She watched him push and pull the mower with one hand until the strip of grass was cut. He lowered the clothesline with care. He backed up and pointed the mower into a strip of uncut grass, inches away from her sunflowers. Coming toward her, he didn’t look up or move his head. He had half the backyard still to mow.
Eileen had chicken wings, in two skillets. There would be white bread and tomatoes, home-fried potatoes and gravy, and a pitcher of Kool-Aid for dinner. Her children were watching television, in the living room, next to the kitchen. Her son Dennis was stretched out on the floor eating peanuts, the floor she had swept and mopped down today. She ordered Dennis to clean up the peanut shells, take his diet drink and go outside. She told him Michael could use some help with the lawn. Her daughter Melissa sat on a footstool painting her toenails, her big knees raised, her long arms out, intent on the movement of the brush. Bits of polish speckled the floor. From the bedroom Eileen heard baby Marcus cry. So Melissa thought she’d do her toenails while her mama looked after Marcus.
She sent Melissa to the bedroom and went back to turn the chicken wings. She heard Dennis slam the front door. Michael was mowing away from the house. She hurried back to the living room, swept the peanut shells into a dustpan, found a wastebasket to empty the dustpan in. She turned off the television set. Melissa came out of the bedroom with Marcus, one hand supporting his head. Eileen wished Melissa would quit staring at her like it was her mother’s fault she had to keep Marcus today. Melissa put her hand on the doorknob, opened the creaky front door, stepped into the heat dazzle outside, and without bothering to close the door she was crossing the front yard, taking long steps, swinging her hips, holding Marcus so his head didn’t jiggle. Eileen closed the front door with relief.
Between the polka dot floor-length curtains crinkled apart on the brass rod, she scanned the baked clay road beyond the front yard. She heard the window unit in their bedroom, grease popping in the kitchen, beyond that the whine of the mower somewhere out in the backyard. A light blue Ford Escort was moving up the road. She watched it pull into the front yard, unable to think or move for awhile.
Mr. Green was here, Michael’s parole officer. She had to ask Mr. Green to please come in. He was entering her living room. She didn’t know yet how to act with him, a thin man, tall, with a long face, wearing seersucker pants, a short-sleeved shirt, a narrow tie with a tie clasp. Mr. Green’s thin mouth creased into a smile as if he’d seen something odd or comical.
“You know what I’m here for, Eileen.”
It was the shooting at Eddie Nunn’s, that was what he was here for. He was looking for Michael’s brother Clifford. Eileen looked at Mr. Green’s seersucker pants, wrinkled, frayed along the cuffs, then on up to where his smile was creased across his face. “Clifford, he ain’t been around for awhile.”
“You’re sure of that, Eileen.” It was Eileen, for him, not Mrs. Reece. She resented it, but said nothing. “Maybe Michael knows what you don’t know.”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t know, Mr. Green.”
Mr. Green picked up a photograph of Michael and Clifford together, in a fish camp in North Georgia. She knew the photograph well. Clifford was holding a four-pound bass. He was taller than Michael by half a foot. He wore a T-shirt clipped at the shoulders. Clifford had been out of a job even then. Bad news, that was Clifford.
Mr. Green set down the photograph.
“I told you. Clifford isn’t here.”
“All right, Eileen, he isn’t here. But you know what would happen to Michael if he gets mixed up in this? I mean in any way mixed up in it.”
She knew. He’d be violating parole. They would have him back in prison again.
“I wouldn’t want that to happen, Eileen. I’d hate to see Michael mess up his life.”
She was standing too close to Mr. Green, smelling his sweat, his maleness. She felt something assumed between them, as if she’d allowed him to touch her. The man’s voice reached out and covered her; she felt she couldn’t shake it off. “You can always get in touch with me. You can always call me at home. If you think that would be the thing to do.”
Why wasn’t Michael with her? She wanted to go to the front door and open it and rush out. Through the gap in the curtains in the front window, she saw the mower spitting out charred grass, sweat beading Michael’s forehead, heard it putt putt down after Michael flipped the switch to off, one hand still tight on the handle. He left the mower where it was. He didn’t look at the Escort. Mr. Green turned to the front door. She left him waiting for Michael.
She cleared off the kitchen table so they would have a place to sit down. She poured cherry Kool-Aid into jelly glasses. She could hear them in the living room. They were talking about Michael’s pickup truck—Michael had it in the repair shop today, at Buddy Plott’s, down the road. This morning Michael had driven off in the pickup. He had left it at Buddy Plott’s because he didn’t want it sitting in front of the house, and walked back on the dirt road. He’d come in the house to tell her to bring some lunch to the trailer. She had told Melissa to do that because she didn’t want to be where Clifford was, didn’t want to come in contact with him.
She waited until they were in the kitchen before she took the lid off one of the skillets and turned off the gas on the burners.
Mr. Green pushed back his chair, he was giving himself some leg room. “Sheriff Conroy wants to talk to you, concerning your brother’s whereabouts. I said I would have a word with you first.”
“How would I know where my brother is?”
“I’d like to believe you, Michael. But the thing is, Sheriff Conroy doesn’t. He thinks you know where Clifford is.” When Mr. Green set his jelly glass down, it left no trace on the oilcloth. “Okay. So you don’t know where he is now. So when did you see him last?”
“I saw him Saturday night, at Eddie Nunn’s.”
“I thought I told you to stay away from Eddie Nunn’s.”
She knew Michael had an answer for that. “Eddie Nunn needed an extra man on the door. Eddie Nunn, he gave me this blackjack. I don’t even take it out of there. He pays me and I leave it there.”
“I told you never to carry a weapon.”
“I didn’t carry it. I left it at Eddie Nunn’s.”
She knew Michael carried the blackjack home, left Eddie Nunn’s with it in the car because things could happen on the way back. But Mr. Green didn’t know that.
That Michael could kill a man with his bare hands—Mr. Green knew that, but knowing that didn’t scare him at all because he believed Michael trusted him.
“Okay, you left the blackjack there. So you saw Clifford at Eddie Nunn’s.”
“I saw him last Saturday night.”
“You need to tell me about it,” Mr. Green said. “Sheriff Conroy, he thinks he’ll have to take you in. You have to tell me what I need to know.”
“We eat first. Then I’ll tell you.”
Michael asked Eileen to fix Mr. Green a plate. She’d do it; do what Michael asked her to do. She’d do the chicken wings and tomatoes first, three for Michael, two for Mr. Green, let the chicken wings swim in the gravy, how Michael liked them, not Mr. Green. Mr. Green wouldn’t take potatoes, but he would have a slice of light bread. Eileen put light bread on his plate, and set the plate down in front of the man.
Mr. Green looked up from his notebook. “Thank you much, Eileen.” He turned in his chair, a chicken wing raised in his skinny hand.
“You’re some kind of cook, Eileen.”
She had to thank him, he expected it and when she did he put the chicken wing down. He dragged light bread around in the gravy.
She went to the living room and looked out the front window. Between the curtains an edge of the trailer was visible, not the door with its concrete block step, a window with a wall unit. The chrome on the Escort’s bumper flashed. Clifford barged through the trailer door. He was glaring out at the woods that seemed to be hemming him in. He moved across the yard to the Escort. He put his hand on one of the side mirrors, tried the door to the driver’s seat.
Mr. Green wasn’t that big a fool. He would lock his car parked at an ex-con’s house. But this was her house; she owned it. Michael had come to live with her. But that wouldn’t matter to Mr. Green; he would lock his car in front of her house too. Watching Clifford trying the car door, stupidly thinking he’d steal the car, she was glad Mr. Green had locked his car. She saw Melissa close the trailer door as soon as Clifford disappeared in the woods.