by Robert Inman
He heard the clack of the receiver as Joe Pike hung up and he lay there, expecting to hear the clump of footsteps up the hall toward his bedroom. Come on. Get it over with. But he didn’t. Trout stayed in the bed a few more minutes, examining the cold knot of dread in his stomach. And then he got up and went to face the music.
The back door was wide open, letting all the air conditioning out into the fast-warming day. Trout looked through the screen door and saw Joe Pike sitting at the bottom of the steps, his great shoulders hunched forward over the piece of sweet potato pie he was having for breakfast. Joe Pike heard the squeak of the screen door spring as Trout opened it, turned and looked up at Trout, then went back to his pie. Trout closed the door behind him. He sat down beside Joe Pike, stretching his legs and letting his toes wriggle for a moment in the grass. Joe Pike went on eating, finishing off the pie, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve. He sat there holding the plate, looking out across the back yard toward the garage where the motorcycle sat.
After a moment he said, “I understand you were busy on the phone last night.”
Trout didn’t say anything. He didn’t look at Joe Pike, either, not directly. But out of the corner of his eye he could see the tiny movement as the muscles along Joe Pike’s jawline tightened. His father was truly pissed. It didn’t happen very often. He tried mightily to maintain an air of felicity, compassionate concern, even-tempered ministerial grace. Usually, he succeeded. But his eruptions, when they came, could be downright cosmic.
There was the indelible memory of Joe Pike flinging a cat out the second-story window of the parsonage in Moultrie, where they had lived before Joe Pike had been assigned to Ohatchee Methodist. Trout was ten at the time. The cat had climbed onto Joe Pike and Irene’s bed in the middle of the night, pounced suddenly upon Joe Pike’s face and dug in its claws. In his own room next door, Trout was blasted from sleep by Joe Pike’s anguished bellow: “Sonofabitch!” Then an awful ruckus as Joe Pike sprang from the bed, dashed to the window and threw it open. And finally the howling screech as the cat flew through the air and landed in the back yard. For a long time, Trout could hear Joe Pike stomping and growling about the bedroom, wounded and mad. Trout huddled in his bed, terrified -- both at the raw anger and at the thought that Joe Pike might bust his gizzard and fall dead on the floor.
Joe Pike’s face was raked with angry scratches when he appeared at the breakfast table the next morning. He seemed fairly well composed, but there was a tightness around his eyes. Trout, at ten, had already learned to look for the little signs, to watch and wait, sniff the breeze. He took a long look at Joe Pike, saw the tightness, remembered the explosion that had shattered the night, the awful howl of the cat. And Trout started to cry.
Joe Pike softened. “Hey,” he said, patting Trout on the shoulder, “I’m okay. Just a few scratches.”
“Did you kill Lester Maddox?” Trout blubbered. The cat was a scrawny stray that Trout had befriended and named in honor of Georgia’s governor.
“Good Godawmighty,” Joe Pike thundered. “The damn cat almost killed me!” Then Joe Pike blanched, a flush of embarassment spreading across his face, and ducked his head.
Irene had taken it all in, watching Joe Pike, expressionless. “Lester Maddox is just fine,” she said to Trout. “I gave him some milk at the back door a few minutes ago.” Then she turned to Joe Pike and looked at him for a long moment.
“Sorry,” he said, chagrined. “I didn’t mean…”
“Of course you did,” she said. “The cat clawed the hell out of you.”
“Irene…”
“Why shouldn’t you be mad? Curse the cat. Curse God for making a cat act like a cat. Go downtown and stand on the corner in front of the newspaper office and yell, ‘I hate cats!’ Get really, truly pissed off, Joe Pike. It would do you a world of good.”
Trout could feel his eyes widen. He had never heard his mother use a word like that before.
Joe Pike cut a nervous glance at Trout. “Irene, honey…”
“Stop trying to be Jesus,” she said, her voice flat, tinged with disgust. And weariness. “It’s exhausting.”
Joe Pike stared at her for a moment, then rose from the table and left the room.
Trout remembered it all clearly now as he sat with Joe Pike on the next-to-bottom step and felt his displeasure filling up the morning. Trout drew his legs up to his body, wrapped his arms around his knees. What to do? He could say he was sorry, but that wasn’t really the case. He was sorry Joe Pike was pissed off; especially sorry that he, Trout, was the reason. It was just not something he needed right now, not with all the other. But he wasn’t sorry he had made the phone call. Okay, so Joe Pike hadn’t been over there. But he could have been.
“Just who the dickens do you think you are?” Joe Pike asked. Trout didn’t say anything for a few seconds and Joe Pike turned and glared at him. “Huh?”
“She’s always hanging around,” Trout said.
“Grace Vredemeyer is the choir director,” Joe Pike said stiffly. “I am the preacher. The preacher and the choir director are in business together. Church business. The Lord’s business. That’s all there is to it. Grace Vredemeyer is a fine Christian woman.”
“Jumping up and down in the education building with her titties hanging out,” Trout said, not making the slightest effort to hide his sarcasm.
“Watch your mouth, mister!” Joe Pike barked.
Trout felt a little thrill of perverse pleasure and it emboldened him further. “And riding around all over the place in your car.”
“Visiting the sick and shut-in,” Joe Pike said.
Trout could hear a note of defensiveness creeping into Joe Pike’s voice. He bore in. “There aren’t any sick and shut-in at the Dairy Queen.”
“No, just a smart-assed young’un,” Joe Pike shot back.
“People are talking,” Trout insisted.
“Who?”
Trout shrugged. “I bet somebody is.”
“Well, they can damn well mind their own business.” Joe Pike looked away and his shoulders gave an angry shudder. He sat there for awhile, fuming. Finally he said, “I’ve made all kinds of fool of myself at one time or another. Been an absolute damned fool on occasion. But,” he turned back and looked Trout straight in the eye, “I’ve never made a fool of myself over but one woman. Your mother.”
Trout said, “I wish you’d make a fool of yourself over her again.”
Joe Pike looked at him for several seconds and then his shoulders slumped. He seemed weary with the effort of argument. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head slowly, opened his eyes again. When he spoke, his voice was dull, the fight gone out of it. “I can’t, Trout.” There was the same despairing resignation of the man who had clumped into his room in the middle of the night, ranting about the second coming and then saying how he had failed.
Again, Trout felt the grip of fear. “I want her home, Daddy.”
“So do I,” Joe Pike said earnestly. “More than anything. I think if she were here, I could…” his voice trailed off.
What? Recover your faith? Lose weight? Comfort your son? Save the town? Come up with the answers? Stop lusting in your heart after Grace Vredemeyer?
“But she’s not ready yet,” Joe Pike finished.
“How do you know? Have you talked to her?”
Joe Pike thought about it for a moment, his brow furrowing. “No. They still don’t want her to talk to us for awhile.”
“Why?”
“I believe she sees me as part of the problem.” Joe Pike shrugged with resignation.
“How about me? Am I part of the problem?”
“No. Of course not.” He shook his head, stared at his hands for a moment. “Just me.”
Trout could hear in Joe Pike’s voice a plea for sympathy. But Trout didn’t sympathize. Not at all. His anger grew, like a headstrong animal straining at a leash, and he just let it go. “What is the problem? What’s wrong with Mama? Nobody’ll talk to me about what is t
he problem.”
“She’s depressed, son. I’ve told you that. I’ve told you everything the doctors have told me. I’m not trying to hide anything.”
“Yes you are!” Trout cried. His voice rose an octave and he knew he sounded like some shrill little kid, but it didn’t matter. “You won’t tell me what’s really wrong! You won’t tell me why!”
Joe Pike didn’t say a thing. Maybe that was the great unanswerable question. Maybe even the great unaskable question. Why?
Trout felt himself smothering, as if Joe Pike had thrown his great bulk on top of him, every pound of it, squeezing the breath out of him. He wanted to scream, Get off! Get off! But the words wouldn’t come. He felt panic. He had to break free or be crushed. Now! He gave a mighty heave and stood up with a jerk, took a couple of steps into the yard, spun back toward Joe Pike. His chest heaved as he gasped for breath and he felt his eyes bulging.
Joe Pike stared at him, alarmed. “Son…” He stood and held his hands out, reaching for Trout.
But Trout backed away another couple of steps. “What did you do to her?” he cried.
Joe Pike flinched, as if he had been slapped. “Do?” he said dully. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You…” What? What kind of name could you put to all those days and weeks and years of an invisible, deadly gas that filled the house -- Joe Pike’s forced jollity and Irene’s lengthening silences and the growing knot of dread that started in the pit of Trout’s stomach and grew like a cancer until it became him. They didn’t yell, didn’t fight, didn’t even disagree about anything. It would have been so much easier if they had. But this thing between Joe Pike and Irene had no name that he knew. At twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old he didn’t even know which questions to ask. So he remained silent, watchful, fearful. Toward the end, Irene didn’t seem aware of anything, including Trout. And Joe Pike, his great body sagging with despair, grew remote. Both of them exhausted, disappointed, perhaps even ashamed. They hid their faces from Trout. And in doing so, for them -- the once-secure center of his universe -- he had ceased to exist. Then they had taken Irene away to the Institute and Joe Pike had ridden off to Texas and Trout had been left alone and dumbfounded.
So now he faced his father here in the back yard of the parsonage and still, he didn’t know what questions to ask. He knew only that despair was turning to rage, and that he was beginning to see it as the only desperate defense he had left. If he didn’t stand and fight, he would sink beneath the same mire that had sucked in his parents.
“I’m sick,” he yelled at Joe Pike. “I’m sick of Mama being gone. I’m sick of you being screwed up. I’m sick of being a Moseley. And I’m sick of this one-horse pissant town that doesn’t even have a pissant tennis court.”
Joe Pike’s mouth dropped open. He started to say something, but instead he just made a sort of gargling sound in his throat. Then he closed his mouth and hissed between his teeth. He closed his eyes and nodded slowly, up and down. Then he opened his eyes and took a deep breath. “Well…”
Suddenly, the back door of the parsonage flung open with a bang and Aunt Alma stood there in the doorway, wrapped in a floral print dressing gown, hair wild from sleep, bug-eyed and livid. Trout and Joe Pike stared up at her in astonishment. “The sonofabitch is trying to start a union!” she cried.
ELEVEN
Aunt Alma called it a “war council,” and she looked mad enough to fight. She towered over the living room gathering, enlarged by indignation. Joe Pike was there, Trout (she had insisted because “the day will come when you and Eugene will have to deal with subversives.”), Cicero, Judge Lecil Tandy, the family’s longtime legal retainer (“We’ll take this thing all the way to the Supreme court if we have to.”), and even Uncle Phinizy. Aunt Alma must be dead serious, bordering on grim, if she had swallowed hard enough to include Uncle Phinizy.
It was barely seven o’clock. Judge Tandy looked dazed, his eyes watery and his skin sallow, roused unceremoniously from sleep and given no opportunity to bathe, shave and don a seersucker suit appropriate to the occasion of giving considered legal advice. He was dressed instead in a flannel shirt, much out of season, and a rumpled pair of gray trousers. Between the cuff of one trouser leg and the black wingtip shoe below, there was a stretch of blue-veined bare skin and knobby ankle. The other ankle was covered by a black ribbed sock.
Joe Pike hunkered as far down as he could get in a stiff leather chair, a quizzical, distracted look on his face. Uncle Phinizy yawned broadly. It was his bedtime. Only Cicero looked fresh and awake. Cicero was habitually an early riser, and besides, he had human remains waiting for him down at the vacant lot. He was wearing a freshly-starched uniform, creases razor sharp, leather belt already strapped to his waist with pistol on one side and portable radio on the other. Cicero sat with his legs crossed, cap perched jauntily on his knee.
From the back of the house, they could hear Rosetta grumbling in the kitchen as she prepared coffee. Rosetta, too, had been rousted out early. Metal and china rattled ominously.
They all sat, awaiting Alma’s pronouncement. She stood in front of the fireplace, arms folded defiantly, color high. She, too was in uniform: a defiant red summer suit, sensible pumps, hair pulled back in a tight bun, an amazing transformation from the wild-haired spectre that had appeared at the back door of the parsonage an hour before. Trout thought she looked quite capable of addressing a White House conference. Perhaps her old friend President Carter would summon her to vanquish malaise. “Jimmy,” she would say, “get a grip.”
“Well, we can all thank Trout,” Alma said.
Trout looked at her in surprise.
“The rental car parked in Wardell Dubarry’s yard,” she said. “Cicero traced it to the Augusta airport.” She looked at Cicero, waiting for him to report.
Cicero fished a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket. He read: “1979 Ford. Green in color. Rented from Alamo by one Sylvester DeShon. Washington, D.C. driver’s license. Born eight twenty-two forty-three. Five feet eight, a hunnert and thirty pounds.” He looked up at the others. “Scrawny fella.” Then back down at his paper. “Hair, black. Eyes, gray. Wears corrective lenses. Picked up the car three days ago, turned it in yestiddy. Put on the registration form at Alamo that he’s employed by the Consolidated Textile Workers of America.”
“Cah-TWAH!” Phinizy said suddenly.
“I beg your pardon,” Aunt Alma said.
“Cah-TWAH,” Phinizy repeated. “Consolidated Textile Workers of America. C-T-W-H. Cah-TWAH.”
Alma fixed him with a withering look. Phinizy gave her a little flash of a smile. She didn’t return it. “Do you have any information about the Consolidated Textile Workers of America, Phinizy?” she asked.
“No,” he answered. “Just the acronym, Alma.”
She continued to stare at him, jaw set, breathing rather forcefully through her nostrils. But she didn’t say anything. Finally she turned back to Cicero. “Go on,” she said.
“Well, that’s about it, ‘hon.”
“A union organizer,” Alma said slowly. “And black to boot.”
“Well, that’s no surprise,” Phinizy said. “A fair number of the mill workers are black.”
“I know that,” she snapped.
Trout stole a glance at the others. Phinizy studied Alma, bemused. Joe Pike studied a spot on the oriental rug where two stylized deer frolicked amidst a leafy glen. Judge Tandy looked as if he might slip into sleep at any moment. Or die quietly.
Cicero folded the slip of paper, stuck it back in his shirt pocket, hitched up his gun belt and hiked one leg over the other. The toe of his highly-polished black shoe bobbed rhythmically.
From the kitchen, the sudden crash of crockery hitting the floor. Then, Rosetta. “Shit.”
Joe Pike cut a quick glance at Trout. They had been skirting each other warily since Trout’s eruption in the back yard of the parsonage. It was hard to tell what Joe Pike was thinking. He had a befuddled look and his face was slack fr
om lack of sleep. But then, that was the way he looked most of the time these days.
“Thank you, Trout,” Aunt Alma said.
“You’re welcome,” he answered without thinking. For what?
“A nice piece of intelligence,” Phinizy said. And to Cicero, “Splendid detective work.”
“Wadn’t nothing to it,” Cicero said. “First, I called your Atlanta airport because I figured anybody renting a car in this area had probably flew into Atlanta. Alamo at Atlanta’s got three green Fords, but one of ’em has a busted radiator, one was gone to LaGrange, and the other to Alabama. So then I called your Augusta airport and they didn’t have but your one green Ford…”
“Thank you, Cicero,” Alma cut him off.
Cicero gave her a nice smile. “No problem, ‘hon.” Then he stood up, plucking his cap from his knee, hitching his gun belt. “Well, I guess I’ll be getting on downtown.”
“Sit down, Cicero,” Alma ordered.
“Hon’, I got the state crime lab coming in…” he glanced at his watch, “fifteen minutes.” He motioned in the general direction of town. Human remains waiting, perhaps even a murder mystery. A bulldozer held captive. Cicero’s eyes fairly danced with anticipation.
“Cicero, we have a problem here,” Alma said patiently. “Could you perhaps give us a few more minutes of your time?”
Cicero stood his ground. “The way I see it ‘hon, you got a legal problem. And you got,” he indicated Judge Tandy with a wave of his hand, “the finest legal mind in the state of Georgia here.”
Judge Tandy struggled to his feet, gathering himself to emote.
“Just a minute, Judge,” Alma said.
Judge Tandy sat, a bit deflated.