Bluff City Pawn

by Stephen Schottenfeld

  He steps in first, but his thoughts are behind him to what Joe’s seeing but not as far as to what disappeared upward for Harlan. Going through the big rooms, the wide rectangles and long corridors, but Joe eyeing a different shape and design to things, trying to figure out how in late age you maintain all this. No signs of ruin or weeds sprouting, like Joe hoped, but Huddy now seeing in the yesteryear fixtures and furnishings some neglect—a dim chandelier with two bulbs not changed, a grandfather clock showing the wrong hour. Same wallpaper ungluing and above a chipped ceiling. The king-size grand piano and then they pass along the hallway, where Huddy views the close-up poses of the first family, of early kin and clan once here, young smiling faces on summer lawns and bodies adorned in formal suits and gowns, charmed circles grouped around white tablecloths, and the one person who remains here to gaze at her dressed-up relatives—this first lady now like the final chaperone of the dinner dance. An old woman in an older house, like centuries adding up.

  Back to the hunt room, where he spots the widow same as last time rising, but now stiffer as if overnight she’s been hurt, the chair arms like crutches to steady her standing. Huddy about to introduce when a voice nudges, “I’m Joe, Huddy’s brother,” and he watches a welcome hand extend quick and direct to meet, and Huddy smiles inside and shakes his head inward, too, at the way his own name was called and how it took Joe near fifty years to turn family man.

  “Hi,” Huddy says. If he were wearing the black hat Harlan’s seeing, he’d cup it humbly in his hand.

  She offers them drinks and Joe accepts and only after does Huddy see the full pitcher already set on a silver tray.

  “Thank you,” Huddy says, the glasses filled generously and passed and set down on horse-jockey coasters, and he wonders if Joe saw the pitcher or if he sniffed out the mint leaves the instant he stepped in, if he knew where to look or how to smell. She waves her hand at seats and takes hers, the same laced fingers resting on her lap. Four bodies arranged in a horseshoe ring, the brothers sharing the couch and the mother and son in facing chairs, and Huddy stares outside, at the horseshoe flower beds, which he realizes now are shaped that way, like being with Joe helps him decipher or maybe it’s just being here twice. He turns back to inside, to the shelves and walls lined with horse heads and harnesses and a hitching post beside the foxhunt fire screen. Then he looks at Joe’s profile, his eyes paying no mind to these objects, as if they were mere clutter or souvenirs to what he didn’t collect or wouldn’t profit from. He scrutinizes the architecture, assesses the borders and trims and moldings, then cuts along the walls and floor to study how the room was framed. “This is beautiful wood.”

  “Why, thank you,” she says.

  “Heart pine,” Joe nods, and he lays his hand on the flooring.

  “What did you call it?”

  “Heart pine. Center of the wood.”

  “What a lovely word,” she says, and Huddy watches a smile pull across her face. “Heart pine.”

  Joe nods and sips first. “Was it cut from out here?” he asks, and Huddy wonders if that’s just an excuse to survey the land he wants to grab and scoop up, Joe’s mind dividing the earth and racking up wealth, and Huddy figures he’ll look out there, too, at the same unending hereafter.

  “Well, I don’t believe it was,” she says, and Huddy looks at Kipp, who looks outside for cut pine. He shrugs when he doesn’t see a mill or stacked logs.

  “You don’t find this wood available anymore,” Joe says. “This is old-growth pine. You can tell by the growth rings.”

  “Well, you see the dogwoods,” she says. “Mama planted those. And that little Christmas tree is a giant redwood. Whoever lives here a hundred years from now can enjoy it.” She pauses, the silence like a sigh, then mentions another family tree, how the yard man cut it wrong so the limbs don’t go to the bottom. “It stands like a tree, but it’s not supposed to.”

  “It’ll fill in,” Joe assures.

  “Yes, in time, it will.”

  “But I know what you mean,” Joe says. “The water garden I built at my place, I had to supervise every stone.”

  “Yes, your bother mentioned you had one,” she says, nodding at Huddy. “It’s hard to get good help.”

  Huddy settling back, happy to stay at the margins. The son has already answered yes, and the widow mixing with Joe keeps the answer there, like Joe keeping Harlan in the truck. Huddy imagines Harlan seeing the big yard and barn and knowing it’s just two brothers feeding at the trough, and Huddy listens to Joe switch from trees to vines to flowers, talking about the irises and the azalea and crape myrtle, sounding as native as the plants, his eyes shining like he’s not just admiring this place but remembering it. Remember when we played horseshoes, Huddy? Remember when daddy would cut the hay and we watched him bring it in? He sure loved to go out in the hayfield.

  “It’s beautiful land,” Joe says, and the flattery doesn’t surprise Huddy, but his feelings do, like Joe’s not just talking about some green future but a past he hopes just as much to build—building fifty homes but finding one, too. Maybe those teenage years Joe was away he was sneaking into this pasture, camping out. Or maybe he dreamed about here when he was home.

  “Thank you. It does need attention.”

  “Would that be a meadowbrook?” Joe asks, and Huddy doesn’t even know what that means, but he looks outside for water. Is there a pond here, too?

  “A meadowbrook?” she says. “No.” And Joe hesitates and, for an instant, he’s found out, some loanword he got caught borrowing, and Huddy looks to Joe, who looks slight, sitting on the couch like he’s standing small or fell through it, and Huddy stares outside to help but he can’t locate where they’re talking. “The meadowbrook is around the other side,” she says, and Huddy guesses it’s carriages. There’s one on the near side of the barn. “I believe we are seeing a governess,” she says, her response upbeat, as if you could never be certain of such things, a governess and a meadowbrook are such lookalikes, but what a challenging identity game it is trying to tell them apart from this distance.

  And Joe squints back outside, as if it were just his eyes deceiving.

  “The meadowbrook is driven in the horse show by a little Welsh pony,” she says, as if Joe was right to talk about the one carriage even if he should’ve named the other.

  “My wife has taken an interest in horses,” he says, and Huddy thinks he’s lying and he’d like to say it right now.

  “Well, I’ll tell you. To see horses grazing is just so calming. They’re not like cats that want to curl around your legs. You can just love them at a distance.”

  And then Joe compliments the barn, and names it, calls it a pole barn or a pull, Huddy isn’t sure, but the widow hasn’t heard either because she’s inside her head, contemplating horses or meadowbrooks or other loved ones, and Joe’s word has leaked out at the wrong time and he can’t say it again because Kipp is nodding, even if he doesn’t know which word if any is right.

  “I went to the first Germantown Horse Show,” she says, “before it was called the Charity Horse Show. It was hosted at the football field of the high school, and they gave the overhead stadium lights to the football team, so I guess it was a charity even when it wasn’t called one.”

  Joe must have been reading manuals on barns and carriages while Huddy hustled up his dirty cash. What Huddy’d like to tell the moneyed members is how much money is dirty. He could tell it to Harlan, Harlan would appreciate this fact, but Huddy remembered a cop saying if you sent a sniffer dog into any bank vault, they could smell out the drug money. Trace of cocaine, whatever. It’s there, in every bank. Huddy forgets what the percent of the money was, that the cop told him was always there.

  “That’s a lovely board fence,” Joe says.

  Look what he knows. Not the carriage, Huddy thinks, although he sort of does, but everything else, the barn, the fence, the flowers, the trees, and probably every blade of grass and how they get hit by horse feet or darkened when the bodies leap
over.

  “The gates are in need of repair,” she says. “But I suppose there’s not much point in fixing, with the horses away now.”

  “You sure can’t tell from here. But I’d be happy to do that, if you wanted.” And he shrugs easily. Joe is here to buy the property and push it around with a bulldozer, but right now he’s a preserver of the integrity of the land and what’s man-made upon it. A healer come to mend and restore what’s broken, and not to subdivide and chop. It’s one thing to hide what you are. It’s another to stand for its opposite.

  “Are you in the building trade?”

  “I am,” he says and then turns away as if he’s been immodest to say so, and nods at Huddy. Maybe he just spoke some marked words he forgot to mention being a tip-off. Sure thing, Huddy thinks. Time to buy in. Huddy on the couch like he’s hiding in a hole, but now he and the money won’t be shy.

  “We’re ready to load up today,” he says. “Has anyone removed anything?” And he looks Kipp square in the eye.

  “Nobody’s touched a thing.”

  Huddy nods and gently clears a space on the table, pushes a horse book aside to set down the case, and Kipp grabs a stack of magazines and places them on the shelf under.

  “We agree on the list,” Huddy says. “The price. I’m ready to count.” The clasps click open, too loudly, like a malfunction. Huddy feels even with the money tucked in a case, being shown in a back chamber of this house, in a house set back from an exclusive street, a street so separate from the city, he could never be discreet enough.

  “Kipp,” the widow says, and her brow knits as if she’s recalled some item of the family budget that doesn’t add up, and Huddy thinks, There it goes. She may have traded in her horses, but she’s still a horse trader. “What …” she says. “What was the gun that Pete wanted?”

  “We already done that, mama.” And he nods back at Huddy, and Huddy dips his hand in and distributes the cash, the stacks like bricks building out a row.

  “Let’s count along together,” Huddy says. And Huddy counts out a thousand, and Kipp repeats the number, and Huddy says, “Agreed,” and Kipp nods, and Huddy counts again and again till they reach ten thousand and he says the number and Kipp repeats it, and they push the stack aside. Counting thousands ten times and Huddy says, “Ten thousand,” and Kipp nods and Huddy waits till he says it aloud, and then Huddy pushes the stack. Back and forth from Joe’s paper down to Huddy’s and back up again, and when the counting ends, Huddy knows what Kipp’s gaining, even more to his inheritance, but he’s unsure what her earnings mean.

  The sellers in his store, the money’s a magnet, but he’s not there and she’s not them, and she hasn’t looked yet, just glancing warily around the room at her horse museum, the transaction sitting in her mind between a prize and a bribe. What Huddy would tell her is it’s nothing suspicious, nothing smuggled in. Just the price of what’s being offered, a rate of over a dollar a day for your entire laughing life. You could live near forever and still make that dollar. A never-ending allowance, a lifetime of pin money, so how could you call what he’s done underpaying? How could his payment ever be low? Finally, she looks down, her eyes skimming the surface, a certificate she already possesses, a familiar skin. But then her brow unlines and she blushes. And almost laughs. And Huddy can’t blame her. It’s fun to look at. “My,” she says.

  When they step outside, the truck is gone. Until they look hard to the right and see it, pulled close to the house and turned around, the front of the truck now streetward. Harlan is in his middle seat like he’d paid a driver or like the vehicle backed itself in.

  “We don’t need a signature?” Joe asks.

  “She’s out of the picture. Got her money. I’ll have her sign the list, if you want, after we take the guns.” Huddy shrugs about a bill of sale, looks back at the house. “You had a good talk. Made a real connection.”

  “Connection?” His eyes narrow at Huddy. “You got no idea what connected is out here. I rubbed shoulders for fifteen minutes. If our granddaddy had hobnobbed with her daddy in one of them pictures, one of those grand old men on horses. Sitting around at the polo club. That’s connected. You think having money gets you in? Money don’t get you invited. And it’s invitation-only.”

  “Joe, I’m just telling you what I seen. You did it perfect.”

  “Yeah?” And his face is open like a kid’s.

  “You bet. Two of you done walked a nature trail together.” Huddy smiles and Joe smiles and they’re sharing something mutual.

  “You think she’s selling?” Joe asks, almost mumbling it, and Huddy’s surprised to be the one asked.

  “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe she don’t know yet.”

  “That’s typical,” Joe nods. “You gotta talk them out of their property. Let’s go get our guns.” And he smiles again and Huddy’s glad to hear such happy music.

  They get Harlan from the truck and Huddy swings up the gate and the three walk to the garage, the door already opened, the middle car backed out to widen the lane for carrying.

  “Kipp, this is Harlan,” Huddy says, and he figures if he says both names, he can skip namesake. They shake hands and then Kipp moves back to the false-fronted door opening to the safe door, which leads to the gun room.

  “I’ll leave y’all alone in there,” Kipp says, and he steps off to the side, and Huddy nods and brings his brothers through and waits for their reactions.

  He watches Joe study the contents. He doesn’t know guns, so maybe it’s weight and what the truck’s axle can handle. And Harlan’s acting low-key and natural and then he says, “All of it?” and Huddy says, “Just the guns,” and Harlan looks at his brothers and says, “Damn.” Then he says, “You pay in Confederate money?” And he laughs and they both smile, but Huddy’s not happy and not yet breathing because the guns are still here and not in his shop and he wants to move them so fast he’d throw them in the truck naked if they wouldn’t bruise.

  “We gonna load real neat here,” Huddy says, his fingers tapping the air. “Joe, we got packing blankets in the back. Lay one down on the floor, and when you put the guns on top, space ’em out. Don’t want nothing touching. Let’s go ten across. You make a layer, throw another blanket over, make another layer. You making lasagna. Stagger the second layer of guns in over the first so they’re not on top of each other.” But then he thinks it’s too much, and shakes off the last part. “Forget it, don’t need to stagger. Just, no bruising, no rubbing.” He turns to Harlan. “You carrying two at a time. One in each hand. No cradling. When we’re done with the long guns, bring the crates from the truck. We’ll take the pistols out in those.” Huddy’s got his list and his pen ready for checking, but he worries about the widow upstairs staring outside, finding a loophole, and the son lurking nearby, and there’s too much of Huddy’s payday in two guns, so he hustles over and picks the Henry and the Yellow Boy and they’re coming out now.

  “I thought you said I was carrying,” Harlan says.

  “I’m showing you. Just follow orders.”

  “I am.”

  “Don’t talk neither!”

  And Huddy rushes through the garage where Kipp is gone and he gets the cases he brought for rare guns, and sets the rifles inside, and walks them into the far interior of the truck. Buries a blanket over ’em. Then he steps out of the bed and hurries back to the gun room. Joe looks him over and says, “You alright?”

  “Just get to the truck,” Huddy says, and he points Harlan over to the first rack. “Grab two. Show ’em so I can read the serial numbers off the receiver. When I ID it off the list, you git.”

  Guns going out in twos, and when Huddy finishes with twenty, he steps outside to see, the butts of the rifles nicely spaced and stacked. He nods at Joe, whose shirt is untucked and his face looks warm and bothered, but Joe brushes him back to the room and Huddy goes there to get Harlan to bring more out. Huddy checking the list and Harlan doing his job right, reading off the guns and saying nothing else, moving down the gun li
ne and in and out of the room, until he looks back at the empty rack where Huddy’s first two came from.

  “Something wrong with your eyes?” Huddy says.

  “Nothing wrong, boss.”

  “Next two are right in front of you. You already passed that spot, so why you looking there?”

  “No reason.”

  “What is it, Harlan? You wanna know what’s special? You wanna know what I’m treating personal? Are you fucking kidding me? If Joe knew I was talking to you right now. This is all special. So don’t look around for the one special thing to fuck up.”

  “Relax, man.”

  “When you get to the truck, bring the two crates sitting to the left.”

  Harlan leaves and Huddy walks over to the pistols cabinet and swings the glass door open. He hears Harlan returning with the crates and Huddy meets him halfway, grabs the top one from his arms and carries it to the pistols. He flips the crate and dumps the socks out. “One pistol per sock. Half of these should fit in a crate.”

  Harlan nods and looks back at the cabinet but doesn’t move.

  “What?”

  “I guess you ain’t gonna let me spin these things.” Harlan eyes the first-generation Colt, and his face is serious because he knows the collection is, too.

  “Not today. Couple days, I might let you have your cowboy moment.”

  “This man had some taste,” Harlan says. “Sure treated himself right.”

  So Huddy whistles with Harlan for a bit, and when he’s finished slipping the pistols in the socks and bunching the socks in the crate, he lifts one crate and Harlan the other and that’s it, a gun room without guns, no reason to be here, and Huddy looks at the display photos of Yewell and he won’t say goodbye because he’s taking him with the guns. He’ll say goodbye to her, though, but when he rings the doorbell and sees Kipp, he knows she won’t, ’cause she’s done with the meeting. He hands Kipp the list and tells him where she should sign, right below where Huddy’s written, paid in full. sold to huddy marr. And Huddy waits at the door, watches the traffic on Dogwood. One car, then another, then a third speeding to catch up to the second or get away from what’s behind. Kipp returns and Huddy’s about to mention the ammo in the garage, in case she didn’t know and wanted it out of the house. He could pick that up later and take it off her hands, but he figures Joe’s the one that needs to come back, so he’ll let his brother have his future day. Today is his own.