by John Weston
“Well, what, then? Just tell me.” He faced her again and touched her shoulder. “Just tell me and I’ll stop pestering you.”
Her eyes lifted to meet his, and he noticed for the first time the dark smudges that hadn’t been under her eyes four nights ago. “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you if you promise not—”
“Of course. What are you talking about?”
“Luke made love to me,” she said.
“What do you mean, he made love to you?”
“I mean just that. The night before last. And last night.”
Jolly stopped his tirade. He looked all over her face on which the freckles stood out against the flesh, over her hair the color of April laburnums, over her hands that held the blanket closely. He swallowed once and said, “Do you mean like—well, like Luke and Babe Wooten?” His mouth remained open, waiting.
She smiled, and some of the light returned to her eyes. “Yes, Jolly. Just like Babe Wooten.”
“Son of a bitch, “he said.
She watched him curiously. “How old are you, Jolly? Never mind, I know how old you are.”
“I’m the same as him.”
“No, you’re not. Even if you are, you’re not. And I’m eighteen. Does that surprise you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s because I’m little and have these idiot freckles.” She breathed deeply again. “Eighteen years on that god-forsaken ranch with nothing but asthma and white-faced cows.”
Jolly said nothing. His mind tumbled over firelight, and April laburnums and red fringes and a sunlit pond and a bare brown belly and a grinning boy with a shock of straight black hair.
“I’d better go in, Jolly,” she was saying. “Jolly?”
“What?”
“I said I’m going in.”
“OK.” He walked to the top step of the porch. “OK, Dogie. So long.”
He walked a long way through the pine woods, the rain soaking his clothes, until he reached the paved road. From the sanctuary of the trees he looked out upon the paved road that led, in one direction, toward town. The rain made the asphalt blacker and made it shine with polish. When a car traveled over the road its tires sucked away the polish and sent it spraying. As soon as the car was gone the rain began its patient re-surfacing of the tracks. Except for the occasional cars there was nothing to break the steady, shy sound of the rain that with each drop cleaned the pines and the years-deep rug of pine needles and the dwarf oaks. The air itself grew lighter, lifting the odors of the woods, sweeping the smell of burning fireplaces through the trees. In the ditches the Indian paintbrush raged red and defiant beside clumps of white daisies whose myriad heads salaamed in turn to the god rain.
Sheltered by the umbrella of a great pine, Jolly attempted to light a cigarette with matches grown soggy in his pocket. He deliberately struck each match on the little sandpaper strip until the pink heads had all been rubbed away. None of them would light. The cigarette had become wet, also, from being held between his lips too long, so he dropped it to the ground along with the matches. He leaned against the rough bark and waited. He was not waiting for the rain to stop. He was not waiting for darkness. If you had chanced upon him there, his hands shoved into his pants pockets and with his collar turned stiffly against the rain, and asked him why he waited, he would have been unable to tell you. As long as he stayed within the woods there were no complications. A man’s (and likely a boy’s) thoughts are his own in the forest. He can think whatever or wherever his mind will let him. And there is nothing to which he must give account for the things he thinks of or the things he does. Certainly the pines do not care. He may stand there, and welcome. But once he stands on a paved road he has to go somewhere, because a paved road was meant to go somewhere. If he chooses to walk the paved road he will come to people, eventually, because that is the somewhere a paved road goes.
He did not shiver until he saw the orange square of light appear across the road, deep among the trees. Some woman had begun to stir in her kitchen, preparing dinner. For a moment it seemed that the day was going backwards, or that a whole night had disappeared while he stood there, and this was a new morning in the making.
He slid down the short muddy bank part way, then leaped onto the pavement and stamped the mud from his shoes. He crossed to the left side of the road more for obscurity than for safety, and he hunched against the chill rain as he headed toward town.
He did not know what he would say to Luke. The realization that he wasn’t angry had come a long time back, but he hadn’t tried to reason that out. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all about Dogie. She seemed to be far away, wrapped in the woods and her Indian blanket. Jolly stopped absent-mindedly in the rain. It was Luke’s face, not Dogie’s, that appeared in his mind. It was the dark-skinned face, not the freckled one, the slow grin, not the head thrown back in laughter, the straight black hair, not the yellow that appeared. It was Luke he wanted to see.
Jolly turned back on the road in the direction of home. His clothes were cold against his skin and wet. Gloaming came early on afternoons of rain when the setting sun, obscured, could not reflect its light from the eastern hills. His mother would have supper ready to serve already, he knew, because the evening meal was always served as night fell, not by the clock.
The car’s lights picked and blinked over the wet trees and then the pavement before Jolly heard it. He stepped to the muddy bank and continued to walk without looking back. Just as the wet kiss of the tires was audible he recognized the valiant, cardiographic pump of the Blue Goose’s engine. He stopped and watched the car approach.
“Hey, Joll.” The car door swung open.
“Hey, Luke.” Jolly slid onto the seat.
“Where the hell you been? I been callin’ you for about ten hours.”
“You know where I’ve been.”
“You seen Dogie?” Luke asked. He watched the road.
“Yeh, I saw her. You got any goddam dry matches?”
“No.”
“Figures. What are you doing?”
“Turning around. We got a body to pick up.”
“No,” Jolly said. “I don’t want to. I’m going home.”
“Ah, jeez, Joll. It won’t take long.” Luke stopped the car cross-wise in the road and waited. “I’ll need some help.”
“Where is it?”
“County.”
“There’s lots of people to help out there.” Jolly turned his face toward the right-hand window. “You gonna take me home? Because if you aren’t, I’ll get to walking again.”
Luke grumbled and began to turn the car back the way it was first headed. “Yeh, I’ll take you home. Jesus H.”
They rode without talking for a while until Jolly faced Luke again and blurted, “Goddam you, Luke.”
“Well, hell, Joll. You had your chance to—”
“You call that a chance?” Jolly’s voice climbed high above the wet sounds of the car. “You call that a goddam chance? Right in the middle of a stinkin’ cloudburst?”
Luke’s voice was patient. “I told you, Joll, you gotta keep—”
“Yeh, I know. I know what you told me. Christ, a guy’d have to stay up all day and night to get anywhere before you.” Jolly watched the car’s lights swing over the top of the hill that led to his street.
“You gonna shut up a friggin’ minute?” Luke asked. “Listen, I didn’t really expect no—I didn’t think she would the first night, fer chrissake.” Luke wanted to talk about it. “Jeez, I never saw nobody as ready as—well, goddamit, Jolly, you could have! Anybody could have.”
“Can’t you ever see anything? Can’t you ever see anything, or know anydamnthing?”
Luke stopped the car at Jolly’s house. “You ain’t makin’ much sense. Know what? You act like you was saving her, or something.”
“Maybe I was,” Jolly said quietly, his face to the window again.
“What?”
“Nothing.” The two boys were silent for a t
ime, each watching the rain splash and spread on the glass. “Forget it. I don’t give a rat’s ass. Screw her all you want to. And screw you, too.” Jolly breathed deeply and sat up straight, his hand on the door handle.
“You comin’ with me?” Luke asked.
“No. I’m going to get out of these goddam wet clothes and eat something.”
Luke laughed.
“All right, garbage-mind,” Jolly grinned. “What’re we going to do tonight?”
“I don’t know. What d’you wanta do?”
“I don’t know.” Jolly opened the door and stood out into the rain. “I’ll walk down in a couple of hours. Will you be through by then—with the body and all?”
“I’ll come get you, Jolly. You’ll be all wet again,” Luke said.
“No. No, I’ll wear my idiot raincoat.” Jolly shut the car door and stood with his hands in his pockets while the Blue Goose spun wildly away into the wet street.
SIXTEEN
JOLLY slammed the back door and stood scraping the soles of his shoes on the square of carpeting that lay for that purpose on the worn linoleum. “Mom?”
“In here,” she answered from the living room. “Come see who I got.”
He walked into the other room. “What in hell—in the world is that?” he asked.
There in the middle of the floor, seated on a folded quilt, sat a little boy playing with a hairbrush and some blocks. He looked up at the sound of Jolly’s voice and laughed. Beside him in her rocker, her attention bent protectively toward him, sat Jolly’s mother, beaming, but trying not to show it.
“ Where’d you get him?” Jolly asked. The little boy laughed.
“Isn’t he cute?” She bent down from the rocker to retrieve a flung block. “The spittin’ image of your father.”
Jolly stood dripping wet. “What are you talking about, Mother? Whose is he? Where’d you get him?”
Mattawilde leaned back in her rocker and watched the boy. “That black hair,” she said. “And those eyes.”
“Mother.”
“He’s Jamie’s,” she said, and her eyes flicked to Jolly’s face for a moment.
“Jamie’s! How do you know? Where’d he come from? Jamie’s and who else’s? He didn’t tell me he was married, for crap’s sake.”
His mother rocked and watched the baby pound one block on another. “Those were Jamie’s blocks,” she said. Then she said, “Well, he isn’t married. But he’s about to be,” she added quickly. “And you needn’t tell anybody different.”
Jolly sat on the sofa and then stood again and moved to a wooden chair that his wetness would not harm. “Jeez, I don’t know what you’re even talking about.”
Jolly kicked a stray block gently back toward the edge of the quilt. “Who’s the mother? And how’d he get hold of this baby if he’s not married? And how did you get hold of it, in the first place?”
“We’re going to keep him a few days while they go off on a little trip. Understand, Jolly, this isn’t the right way—there’s never been anything like this in my family before—but they’re going to straighten things out.”
“Well, where’d she come from? Who is she?”
Mattawilde’s mouth tightened briefly, then relaxed again. “I don’t know, for sure,” she said. “I haven’t met her yet. Jamie wanted things to be—better first.”
“Jeez,” Jolly commented.
“And you just watch yourself when the time comes, young man.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Things will work out. Look at that hair and eyes. The spittin’ image,” she reflected.
“Yeh,” Jolly said and unconsciously touched his own blond hair. “Aren’t we going to eat?” he asked.
“Oh, Lordy,” his mother said. She heaved herself up from the chair. “I pert’ neally forgot all about supper. You run get some dry clothes and bring ’em in here to change where they’s a fire and you can keep a eye on Him.” The pronoun was deified.
“Jeez,” said Jolly. “I’m an uncle again, Granny! Wait’ll I tell Luke. He’ll never be an uncle.”
“You’re not plannin’ to go out again in this rain, are you?” Mattawilde said. She came back to the doorway from the kitchen and peered around it to see if the boy was safe.
The store lights and the neon of Whiskey Row were on in the town when Jolly crossed the plaza two hours later. The fish in the iron-railed pond were hidden from sight, resting on the bottom of their public wetness while the rain kept up a mass of constantly converging circles over their heads. Teddy Roosevelt and his green steed charged the coming night. A few people hurried from awning to awning in front of J. C. Penney’s and Sears and the dime store.
Jolly approached the Meaders Mortuary from the front, instead of from the alley as he usually did. The pillared façade rose blankly and starkly white in the gray evening. No lights shone from the windows either downstairs or upstairs, which should have been the first sign that something was different about the mortuary this night. Jolly tried the front door and found it locked. “Funny,” he said. He walked around the side, ducking under the heavy-hanging willows. From near the back a blue-white light filtered through Venetian blinds, causing the rain drops to flicker as they fell. Someone was in the office. At the window Jolly could make out, in narrow horizontal strips, the back of George Meaders, apparently asleep at his desk.
He tried the next door, the one that led to the music room from the outside, and found it unlocked. Once inside he made his way cautiously to the office, guided by the blue-white neon light.
At the doorway he stopped and viewed the sleeping man at the desk. George Meaders’ fingers still rested lightly on the round desk ashtray. In it a cigarette burned, a long ash bent along the inner curve of the bowl. From a half-open desk drawer the brown neck of a whiskey bottle stretched, topless. George Meaders breathed easily. Jolly wondered why Luke and Mrs. Meaders would have gone out and left him sleeping like that. But then, maybe they didn’t know.
“Mr. Meaders,” Jolly said.
The man made a chewing noise with his mouth and rolled his head.
“Mr. Meaders!” Jolly touched the sleeping man’s shoulder.
George Meaders raised his head slowly, the gray hair hanging limply over his forehead. For a moment he seemed not to see anything but only stared over the top of his desk toward the opposite wall. Then he felt Jolly’s hand on his shoulder and whirled toward him, his eyes wild and unfocused.
“Sorry to startle you, sir,” Jolly said. He moved away from the desk and George Meaders’ staring face. “Is Luke home? I just came by to see Luke.” Jolly feigned interest in a framed magazine photograph of a blue lake set beneath a single snow-capped blue mountain.
When Mr. Meaders did not answer, Jolly turned back to him, expecting to find him asleep again. Instead, he was reaching the whiskey bottle out of the drawer, and having some difficulty doing it, and with the other hand he was holding a glass already a third full. He concentrated, tight-lipped, on the job of pouring. He was about to replace the bottle when he stopped and seemed confused. He then drew another glass from the drawer and poured it half full. He extended the glass feebly. “Here,” he said. “For you.”
Jolly took the glass of whiskey because he couldn’t think what else to do. He watched George Meaders drink from the full glass, cough, and then swivel in his chair so that he leaned over the desk, the glass in both hands. He lifted his eyes to Jolly. They were bleary and red.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Meaders? What’s wrong?”
“You don’t know?”
“No, sir. What should I know?”
“No. Of course you don’t know. How could you.”
“Please, sir. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jolly felt the chill from his wet raincoat.
Luke’s father drew a great shuddering breath, and it seemed to take all his strength. “Luke is dead.”
Jolly watched his face and knew unquestioningly that what he had heard was true. Luke’s father, suddenly m
ore gray than before, wiped his shirt sleeve over his eyes and rested his face for a moment on the crook of his arm. Jolly felt the room pitch crazily and then come back into place. “No,” he whispered. “No.” He sat in a chair and saw George Meaders raise his head and search for a moment before his eyes found Jolly’s again.
“How, Mr. Meaders? How?”
“Ambulance,” Mr. Meaders said. “He went out on a call.”
“Where?” Jolly spoke breathlessly, urgent that Mr. Meaders would hurry, would tell quickly—as if it mattered. It did matter.
Luke’s father waved his hand vaguely. “Arrowhead,” he said. That would be nearly fifteen miles.
“Was he alone? What happened? I thought he was going to the County to pick up a body.”
“Yes, alone. The—I went for that one. No one to go—” His words disappeared in soundless sobs, and he held his hand over his eyes.
“What have they done—where is he now, Mr. Meaders? Have they brought him in?”
George Meaders removed the hand from over his eyes and ran his finger around the lip of the glass that he still held. “Andersen went out to get him. He’s here.”
“You mean here in the mortuary? The preparation room?”
“Yes.” Luke’s father continued to stare at the glass, but his eyes filled, and when he blinked the tears coursed down the creases of his face beside his nose.
Jolly looked away and fought against the lump that rose from the pit of his stomach to his throat. He watched the blue mountain until the room settled again. He said “Did you—has he been—”
“Yes. Andersen’s in there now. All except the trocar. I couldn’t let him.” George Meaders broke down and wept openly, his head cradled on one arm, the other still reaching toward the glass of whiskey.
Jolly stood and looked at the glass he held. He set it on the desk. “Go up and go to bed, Mr. Meaders.” He touched the man’s arm. “Go on,” he said gently. “I’ll—I’ll lock up down here.” He met George Meaders’ gaze. They stared at each other for a moment, and the old man looked relieved.
“Thank you, Jolly,” Luke’s father said.