Eli’s idea was that Taft should pay McKinley for the damages caused by Lucas, and then hire Lucas to paint his house, Taft to supply paint, brushes, ladders, and so on, and to work alongside Lucas, keeping an eye on the boy, gaining his trust, building his confidence. Then, when the job was done, Lucas’s wage would go to square his account with Taft, and hence with McKinley, and clear him with the court.
“How much in damages for McKinley are we talking about?” Taft asked Eli.
“Seven-eight grand.”
“You love to spend my money, don’t you, old sport?”
“Your money?” said Eli. “It ain’t your money, is it? Not by what you told me the other day. Go see your new buddy. Go see the Mystery Guest.”
“I thought you didn’t believe it, about him. You said you didn’t.”
“I don’t know if I do or I don’t,” said Eli.
“But you’re telling me to use him.”
“It worked for Sean.”
“So it did,” said Taft. “Though Sean’s case was different, wasn’t it? Sean was going to die. This kid? This Luke? This doesn’t sound to me like a promising kid. For one thing, he doesn’t stay fixed. All the trouble he was having on the school bus? We rode to his rescue. We dealt with the situation. We made a happy ending for him.”
“You did,” said Eli. “You and your partner.”
“We did,” said Taft. “And now he’s back, worse than before. I don’t know: how about this? How about, good luck to this kid, and when I want my house painted, I’ll hire a painter, not a juvenile delinquent.”
“Luke ain’t a juvenile delinquent,” said Eli. “He’s a good kid. Promising? Teachers say he’s one of the smartest kids they’ve seen. Luke’s alright. He screwed up, is all. You never screwed up?”
“Never, old man.”
“He’s hit a rough patch,” Eli went on. “He needs a break. He needs more than the money for McKinley. He needs a friend. What it is: the kid’s depressed.”
“Depressed?” said Taft. “Of course he’s depressed. Everybody’s depressed. I’m depressed. You’re depressed.”
“I ain’t either depressed,” said Eli.
“Well, then, maybe you should be. How long is this business going to go on?”
“I don’t know,” said Eli. “This big old place? All the upkeep you haven’t given it over the years? It will have to be scraped down good before you can even think about painting. Say, a week for the scraping. The whole job? Another week, two—that’s if the weather holds for you.”
“Christ,” said Taft. “And what is it I’m supposed to do for him? Besides pay him?”
“Not much. Just be there. Be with him. Get to know him a little. Get him to know you. Show him somebody’s with him. Somebody’s on his side.”
“Somebody, meaning me? I’m not on his side.”
“Then pretend,” said Eli. “Act. Lie. Fake it. You can do that, can’t you? Well, maybe not. Maybe you can’t. Maybe you’re too honest. If you don’t have what it takes, well, then, forget it.”
“I just told you I don’t have what it takes, old top,” said Taft. “Don’t worry, though. I know where I can get it.”
“I know you do,” said Eli.
• • •
“The boy’s a screwup,” said Taft. “Eli likes him, but Eli’s his cousin; he has to like him. In fact the boy’s almost certain to be a complete mess. He’s a criminal. He’s born to hang. I’ve seen a million of them.”
So have I, Chief,” said Dangerfield.
“Eli thinks he needs a mentor,” said Taft. “That’s me. I’m to be his mentor, but lightly, invisibly. I’m paying him, but really I’m his guide, philosopher, and friend. He’s not to know that, though. In any case, I don’t want to be his friend. I don’t think it will work.”
Sure, it will work, said Dangerfield. Look, Chief, you’re not his friend. You’re his confessor. You’re his priest. A priest, is what you’ll be.
“Can you do that, old boy?” Taft asked. “Priests?”
Dangerfield laughed. Nothing to it, he said. Priests are easy.
“Ah,” said Taft. “Of course, they would be.”
• • •
Lucas’s mother drove him by Taft’s on Tuesday morning. She was late for work, but rather than simply drop Lucas at Taft’s, she shut off her engine and turned in her seat to face her troubled son.
“You can do this, Luke,” she told him.
“Yeah,” said Lucas. “Maybe.”
“Don’t say maybe. You can do this, and it will be a new start for you. For us.”
“Yeah,” said Lucas. “Maybe.”
“I wish you’d worn a clean shirt,” said his mother.
“I’m painting a guy’s house,” said Lucas. “Why do I need a clean shirt?” His mom killed him.
“I’m so tired, Luke,” his mother said. Then, “You can do this,” she said again. She started the car. Lucas got out. He watched his mother drive off. She killed him. He turned to the house.
Taft had agreed for the job of scraping. “Okay,” he had told Eli. “I’ll sign the boy up for scraping, and I’ll help him as I’m able. We’ll get the place scraped and ready to paint. Then we’ll see. Maybe I’ll keep him on for the painting. Maybe not. As for the rest of it, the friend part, the on-his-side part, we’ll see about that, too.”
“Fair enough,” Eli had said.
After his mother had left, Lucas waited on Taft’s porch, at the front door. A big summer day, with big white clouds aloft moving fast before the wind but not much stirring on the ground, and the heat building up. Lucas was sweating. He didn’t know what he was into here. He didn’t know how to paint houses. He didn’t want to paint houses. He didn’t know what he wanted. He did know that he was at the end of some kind of road, or anyway he was at a fork. He knew more than that. He knew he needed not to fail. He knew that the hard surface he could feel behind him, pressing against his shoulder blades and his butt, was a wall. He thought maybe it was the wall.
No, he decided. Wall or no wall, he couldn’t do it. He would walk home. His mother would be at work. He would get some things together. He would take off. He would hitch rides. He would get a job somewhere far away. A dangerous job, a job in a mine. He would die in a cave-in. But, wait: what if he never got that far? What if he hitched a ride with a psychopath, a murderer? What if he were killed, dismembered, his body never found, or even burned? No. Even that, Lucas thought, he could manage. Not this. Lucas turned from the door and started for the road.
Langdon Taft came around the corner of the house. “Lucas Polk?” he asked.
Lucas nodded.
“I’m Taft.”
Lucas nodded again. He looked at Taft. He found he knew him. “You were on the bus,” he said.
“What bus?”
“The school bus. With Mandy and Candy and them.”
“Ah,” said Taft, “that bus.” He said no more, but waited for Lucas.
“Um, I’m here about the—” began Lucas.
“I know why you’re here,” said Taft. “Come with me.”
He led the way around to the side of the house. There he picked up a steel paint scraper, handed it to Lucas, nodded at the wall of the house, and said, “Have at it.”
“What?”
“Have at it. Go to it. Any time.”
“Um, I don’t know if Mr. Adams told you,” said Lucas. “I don’t know much about this. Painting? I mean, I don’t really know anything.”
“There’s nothing to know,” said Taft. “This isn’t painting, this is scraping. There are only two ways to do it: side-to-side and up-and-down. You can’t go too far wrong. Come on.”
They left the porch and went around the side of the house, where Taft took the scraper from Lucas and passed it across a section of the clapboard siding. Dry flakes of white paint flew in a shower from under the scraper. Taft handed the scraper back to Lucas. “You’re off,” he said. “See how you go. I’ll look in later on.” He turned and went
into the house.
Lucas set to work. He scraped side-to-side, then he scraped up-and-down. Side-to-side seemed to go better, or maybe it was simply easier. He worked the scraper gingerly, tentatively, but even so, flakes and bits of paint filled the air, and Lucas saw he was making good headway. He began to feel easier. By the end of the morning he had scraped the side of the house from front to back to his own height.
At noon Taft came out and stood beside Lucas. Together they regarded the partly scraped wall, which now had a mangy, piebald look. Lucas waited.
Taft shook his head. “It won’t do,” he said. Lucas looked at the wall.
“Here,” said Taft. He took the scraper from Lucas and stepped up to the wall. Bearing down firmly, he drew the blade along a clapboard that Lucas had scraped. More paint scattered behind the scraper.
“You didn’t finish,” said Taft.
Lucas looked at the wall. “You said there’s nothing to it,” he said.
“There isn’t,” said Taft. “It’s one of those jobs, though. It’s so easy, a baked potato could do it. But, God damn it, it still has to be done. And it has to be done right.”
Lucas threw his paint scraper against the unfinished wall. “I’ll have to do it all over,” he said.
“That’s right. Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”
Lucas didn’t reply.
“Courage,” said Taft. “I’ll give you a hand. I’ve got another scraper around here someplace. It goes better with two.”
“You don’t have to. I can get it.”
“I know you can. I know you will. We’ll both do it. For now, though, you must be dry. What about a lemonade? A Coke?”
Give him a beer. Dangerfield, in immaculate whites and wearing a jaunty straw boater with a purple silk band, was laying out the stakes and the wire wickets for a croquet pitch on the lawn beside the house. The kid’s been out here all morning, said Dangerfield. He needs a cold beer.
“He’s too young,” said Taft.
Nonsense. He’s had beer. Beer is why he’s here.
“My point, exactly, wasn’t it?”
Lucas looked at Taft. “What did you say?” he asked.
Careful, murmured Dangerfield.
• • •
By the end of the afternoon Tuesday, working side by side, they had the lower third of the north wall finished to Taft’s satisfaction. They knocked off about four. Lucas walked home.
“How did you get on with Mr. Taft?” Lucas’s mother asked him that evening.
“Okay, I guess,” said Lucas.
“You guess. Come on. Did you like him?”
“I guess.”
“What’s he like?”
“I don’t know,” said Lucas. “He talks to himself.”
“Your dad had him for a teacher.”
“He did?”
“Yes. Your dad thought Mr. Taft was a fool.”
“He did?”
“Yes,” said Lucas’s mother. “Of course, your dad thought everybody was a fool, everybody except himself. Look where that got him.”
Wednesday morning, they were up on ladders, scraping away at about the level of the second-story windowsills. They had worked silently for the most part. Lucas didn’t have a lot to say for himself. Those kids never do, especially the boys. They don’t open up for you like a suitcase; they take time. But, for most of them, time is all they take. Taft knew that.
“Um, you know that day on the bus?” Lucas asked him.
“What about it?” said Taft.
“Well, about Mandy and Candy? What you did to them?”
“What did I do?”
“You turned them into, um, frogs,” said Lucas. “How did you do that?”
“What makes you think I did?”
“I was there. I saw it.”
“Don’t believe everything you see.”
“Not only me. The other kids saw it. I heard what they said.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear.”
Lucas seemed to consider that. He drove his scraper along the wall. Silence.
“So, was it like a trick?” he asked Taft.
“Like a trick, yes.”
Good, murmured Dangerfield. On the lawn, he addressed a croquet ball with a wooden mallet.
Silence from Lucas. Then, “My mom says you were a teacher. You taught at our school, she says.”
“I used to,” said Taft. “Long before your time.”
“Did you quit?”
“‘Retired,’ we said.”
“Why?”
“I was a lousy teacher.”
“How come?”
“I didn’t like the students. The students didn’t like me.”
“Me, either,” said Lucas.
“Of course not,” said Taft. “Of course they don’t. You’re not like them. You notice things. You think about things. They don’t. You’re different. You’re exceptional.”
Liar, whispered Dangerfield. Tock, sounded the croquet ball.
“I don’t know,” said Lucas.
“I do,” said Taft. “You’re not just another dumb kid. Anybody can see that.”
Liar.
“Shut up,” said Taft.
“What?” asked Lucas.
“You missed that spot, that spot over there, see?” said Taft.
They worked together without talking for a few minutes. Then Lucas asked Taft, “So, what did you teach?”
“Whatever they needed. History. English. Latin, when they had it.”
“My mom says you taught my father.”
“It’s possible,” said Taft. “What was his name?”
“Reginald. Reginald Polk.”
“Sure, I remember him.”
Liar. Dangerfield drove for position. Tock.
They worked on. They finished the north wall and moved around to the east. There, no longer on the weather side of the house, the work went more quickly. Lucas was pushing it, pushing the pace.
His father. Ask him about his father, Dangerfield muttered. He sent the wooden ball smartly at the wicket. Tock.
“What’s your father doing now?” Taft asked Lucas.
“Um, he’s gone,” said Lucas.
“Gone, where?”
“My father?”
“Yes. Where is he?”
“Um, he doesn’t live here.”
“Yes. Where?”
“Um, Tennessee.”
“That must be hard,” said Taft. He made his scraper screech in a long pass over the wall. Dry paint cascaded down.
“What?” Lucas asked him.
“That he’s not around.”
“Hard for who?”
“For you.”
Lucas shook his head. He shook his head and leaned into his scraper.
“It’s not?” Taft asked him.
“No,” said Lucas. “I don’t care.”
“Really? It sounds tough to me. Eli says you don’t have any friends.”
“Sure, I do. I did. I had a friend. Brian. But he moved away.”
“Did he go to Tennessee, too?”
“I don’t know where he went,” said Lucas.
Dangerfield’s ball missed the wicket by a foot and rolled to the edge of the lawn. He hurled the mallet after it.
Silly damned game, he said.
• • •
Wednesday they finished the east side and started on the south. The south side was easy because it had an extra window on the first floor. By mid-afternoon they had it done and were ready to begin the west end, the gable, which would complete the job.
Something was eating at Lucas. He hadn’t said a word all day. Taft waited. At last Lucas gave off scraping and, staring at the wall in front of him, said, “What you said yesterday?”
“What did I say?” Taft asked.
“About, um, Mr. Adams. What he said? It’s none of his business, anyway.”
“What he said about what?”
“About friends. The old fuck. Why’s he think I don’t have friends?”
“Because you don’t?”
“What’s it to him, anyway?”
“He’s worried about you.”
“He’s stupid, then. If I’d wanted to kill myself, would I have crashed in a pond?”
“Who said you wanted to kill yourself?” Taft asked him.
“Everybody. My mom, Mr. Adams. The other kids. Everybody. That’s what they think.”
“Did you?”
“I just said. No. If I’d wanted to do that, I would have hit a tree or a bridge or something. Wouldn’t I? Not a stupid pond. Wouldn’t I?”
“Why did you, go into the pond, then?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember much about it. I was drunk, and I don’t remember. If you’re drunk, you don’t always remember. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Don’t be too sure,” said Taft.
Lucas resumed scraping. After a couple of minutes, he said, “He’s in prison.”
“Who?” asked Taft.
“My father. My father is in prison in Tennessee.”
Taft nodded.
“You didn’t know that?” asked Lucas.
“How would I?”
“Everybody else does. Don’t you want to know what he did?”
Taft worked his scraper along a windowsill. He shrugged. “He didn’t do anything to me.”
“He killed somebody,” said Lucas.
“That’s tough”
“Tough? On who?”
“On whoever he killed, mostly, I guess,” said Taft. “Also on your mother. On you. It’s tough on everybody. But, see here: that’s your father, not you. Right? You didn’t kill anybody. Right? You’re not in prison in Tennessee. Right? You’re here, and you’re free.”
“So, what?”
“So, everything,” said Taft.
• • •
Thursday afternoon. They were about done. Lucas was on the long ladder, near the top, scraping, scraping, working his way up under the peak of the roof. There’s only room for one up there, so Taft, on the ground, held the ladder.
Above Lucas’s head, Dangerfield sat on the roof, straddling the roof beam. Still in his croquet whites, now after three days become a little grubby, he was smoking a fat cigar, enjoying the fine late-summer weather, enjoying himself.
Look at him go, said Dangerfield. This kid knows how to work.
“He does,” said Taft.
Are you going to hire him to stay on for the painting?
The Devil in the Valley Page 7