by Tom McNeal
She looked up from the book and said to Willy, “For guys, James Bond has got the cars, the gadgets, and the cleavage galore. But really, for girls, there’s not much beyond Sean Connery and that great accent.”
Willy turned a deadpan look to Judith. “They got girls in those movies?”
Judith shook her head and went back to reading. Catherine’s Aunt Lavinia was busy greasing the skids for the caddish Morris Townsend, which was so annoying and yet believable that Judith thought she might explode.
Willy said, “You hear that Max Jackson and Vernon Topp sold two pounds of homegrown marijuana to undercover cops?”
Judith kept reading.
More or less to himself, Willy said, “Talk about shit for brains.”
Thunk, pause, and then Willy said, “Guess you know that Sean Connery’s real first name is Thomas? And just for the record, Gary Cooper was no Gary. He was a Frank.”
She looked up from her book. Willy wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he seemed in the late light almost luminous, as if there were a filament gently glowing just below the skin. She wished she had a camera; she didn’t have one picture of him, or of themselves, for that matter. She folded the book over her finger and said, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t go. I just said they’re made mostly for guys.”
The truth was, she liked going to almost any movie. If she couldn’t get caught up in the story, she’d just sit back and try to figure out how they’d actually made the thing, and where it had all gone wrong.
Thunk.
For a moment he stood as still and smooth as a statue as he watched the arc of the swatted rock. When he reached for another, a small rock, almost a pebble, there wasn’t even the slightest bunching in his stomach, and not for the first time she wondered how he could eat so much and stay so thin. She said, “Here’s one. If you were an actor and had to take a stage name, what would it be?”
These were the kinds of idle questions Willy always threw himself into. “What kind of actor?” he said. “Action hero, or what?”
He then hit the pebble: tink. It didn’t go far.
“Romantic lead,” Judith said.
Over the next half-minute, Willy produced the names Thaddeus Lightfoot, Jack Oaks, and James Montague, at which point Judith burst out laughing. “Those are horrible!” she said.
Willy said he thought they were pretty good if a person would only give them half a chance. “ ’Course, if you want more of a sidekick type, I’d go with Mumbles McKunkle.”
Judith laughed again. “Mumbles McKunkle?”
Willy nodded. “That’s right. Mumbles would do a lot of cranky comic grumbling. Like Walter Brennan in Rio Bravo.”
He then laid the bat over his shoulder and stared grinning at Judith until finally she said, “What?”
“You’re dying for me to ask what your stage name would be, aren’t you? But I’m not going to, not after you making fun of Thaddeus Lightfoot and them.”
“Edith Winks,” Judith said, but then, having heard it, she changed it to Edie.
“Edie Minx?” Willy said. “With an x on the end? Well, shoot, I guess I’d buy a ticket to a movie with Edie Minx in it. In fact, I think I might already have seen her in a certain kind of movie.”
“Winks, you moron. Edie Winks.”
“Twinks. Edie Twinks?”
Judith said it was times like this that made her see that growing old with Willy would be a trial.
Willy said, “Oh, I think what you’d find is that I’d just get more wondrous with time.”
He took a bottle of beer from the cooler and came over to sit on the blanket. He sipped beer and looked off. “I like it here,” he said.
“You like it everywhere.”
He nodded. “That’s true. I mostly do.” He leaned a little closer. “I like that perfume smell, too.”
It was something called Charlie, which Willy had bought for her that day they’d gone to the plunge in Hot Springs. The girl at the drugstore told him it was the coming thing, and Judith had to admit it wasn’t so bad. “I like it, too,” she said. “It’s a little bit sassy, don’t you think?”
Willy nodded. A magpie screeched, then it was quiet again, and he said in a casual tone, “I was thinking you and me might drive down to Denver the Saturday after next.”
This was news. They’d gone to Hot Springs, and one day they’d driven up to see Wind Cave, but Denver was a more exotic destination. Denver was a five-hour drive. “And do what?”
“Buy you dinner someplace fancy.”
“Really?”
He nodded. He’d gone to the library and in the Denver directory found a restaurant where Teddy Roosevelt had once eaten and where from the roof you could see both the railyards and the downtown skyline. They could leave before dawn and eat dinner around one. That way, they might have a little time to do some shopping beforehand at one of the big department stores.
“What sort of shopping?” Judith wanted to know.
“Oh, maybe get you a new dress and shoes and all that kind of stuff. To wear to this Buckhorn place when we eat.” He smiled and didn’t try to hide his pleasure in all his planning.
Judith had to admit the whole idea was pretty exciting. “So how’re we going to pay for this big adventure?”
“Well, I’m about done with Minnert’s room, so he’ll be paying me. I’m going to buy some tools, but there’ll be money left over, too.”
“And we’ll be going and coming back all in the same day, right?” She was thinking of her father and what he might say.
“Sure,” Willy said. “And I already made the reservations, so don’t start fretting about that.” He slid out a grin. “I told them it was your birthday. That way we get the free dessert.”
“Not to mention the horrible singing,” Judith said.
He stretched and yawned and snugged his head into her lap, preparing for a little nap. Judith looked up from her book when she heard the gentle call of a mourning dove. Oo wah hoo, oo oo. And then again: Oo wah hoo, oo oo. The light was soft and dappled. She ran a hand over Willy’s chest and let it rest there, receiving the rhythms of his slowing breath. She was purely happy. She knew it then, within the moment, rather than sometime later, which was when she usually recognized her brushes with happiness.
7
On a Wednesday afternoon in late July, Willy applied the final coat of paint to the Minnerts’ new room, then folded up his tarp and hauled away his tools. Minnert himself was away, so Willy gave the deadbolt keys to Mrs. Minnert, who clasped her hand tightly around them and kept nodding as Willy explained that he’d been paid for all the materials, so all that was left was payment for the labor, and he’d be back Sunday afternoon with the final bill. Judith accepted his invitation to tag along, and when they arrived, it was clear they were expected.
The big farmer sat in an old chair under the hackberry tree, seed cap tipped back, boots off, a blue enamelware cup in his hand. A hatless man sat alongside, a small man with a sharply pointed chin. This, along with his skittery eyes, gave him an almost feral quality. Though it was hot, he wore an unlined denim coat stained with several colors of paint, chiefly yellow and red. As Willy stepped from the truck, this man drank quickly from his own blue cup and set it back down on the stool they were using as a makeshift table. Possibly Willy had seen it sooner, but it was only then that Judith noticed the handgun lying on the stool.
Mrs. Minnert sat on the wooden steps of the mud porch, hunched forward, her housedress pulled over her widely parted knees. Half her face seemed expectant; the other half sagged. She said, “He brought his girly-girl with him.”
Willy seemed to take this as a joke. He smiled at the woman, then turned to Mr. Minnert and said politely, “I’ve come so we could settle our account.”
“It’s settled,” Minnert said. He set his cup down next to the gun, then leaned back. “I paid as I went.” He folded his hands over his ample stomach, like Farmer Buddha, Judith would think later, but not right now. Right now, she just wanted to
leave. She saw at once that nothing good could come from this visit.
Willy returned to the truck and came back with a file folder in his hands. “These’re—”
“What those are don’t concern me at all,” Minnert said.
The small man shifted in his chair. Judith had the clear idea that this was what he had come for, but what his role might be, she had no idea.
Willy seemed about to speak, but stopped. He looked at the open folder in his hands, then closed it and looked at Minnert. “We had an agreement. We shook hands on it. You pay the materials up front and—”
“That’s right,” Minnert said. “You did the work right along and I paid right along. I’m a pay-as-you-go man.” He took the time to inhale and exhale deeply, as if thinking. “Now it’s true, I took a little risk letting an unlicensed fella like you do the work without a contract, but that’s all behind us. The work was slow but it finally got done and you’ve been paid on time and in full.”
A still moment passed before Minnert casually reached toward the stool. He took the blue cup, sipped from it, set it back beside the gun. He knitted his hands behind his head and stretched his stocking feet out from his chair. Judith looked at the feet in their worn gray socks—Minnert seemed actually to be wriggling his toes.
The small man was less sanguine. He’d tipped his chair back and jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. And whereas Mr. Minnert was actually smiling, this man could only try.
Willy said, “I generally go through my life trying to do right by the next guy, but…”
He stopped, and when Judith turned toward him, it gave her a start. He looked as if he didn’t know what to say next. She had the feeling he hadn’t expected Minnert to be drinking and hadn’t expected a gun on the stool and hadn’t expected a little feral man to be sitting next to the gun on the stool. He’d just been Willy, who expected the best of people.
“But?” Minnert said. He was completely composed; he’d again folded his hands over the dome of his stomach. When Willy didn’t answer, he said, “You said you try to do the right thing with people but.” He smiled. “But what?”
“But what!” Mrs. Minnert said in a squawky voice, and this seemed to break Minnert’s spell somehow. Willy glanced at Mrs. Minnert, then returned his gaze to the farmer. He said, “But in this case, I’d have to say that you’re not much more than an asshole dressed up like a fat man.”
The words shocked Judith and everyone else, too. All at once Mrs. Minnert let loose a splintery laugh and Joe L. Minnert stiffened and the little skittery feral-looking man pulling a gun from his left pocket snapped off a shot that poofed into the dead grass some distance from Willy—a mistake, possibly, a nervous impulse of the finger, but the shot seemed to please the man, and settle him. His smile now seemed authentic.
Mrs. Minnert’s laughter rose in pitch.
Willy took a step forward, and Judith grabbed his arm. “Let’s go, Willy,” she said. “Please, let’s just go,” and to her relief he did stop his forward lean, and when she pulled at his arm, she could tell she’d turned his thinking. He took a step back.
Mrs. Minnert broke her laughter long enough to say, “Lover boy takes orders from the girly-girl!”
Judith was tugging at his arm, and finally he let himself be pulled toward the truck, but slowly, as if leaving weren’t what he really wanted to do. Judith released his arm and hurried around to her side, just wanting to get away from this place and these people but expecting something—what, exactly, she didn’t know, but something, and she was right.
As Willy reached through the window for the vise-grip handle, a single shot thupped into the side of the truck bed.
Willy’s whole body froze.
“Forget it, Willy. Let’s just go,” Judith said, but Willy stepped back from the door and walked the few feet required to inspect the hole in the metal. Then he turned around to regard Minnert and his crony, the little one smirking and Minnert staring out from behind his placid smile, and still looking at them evenly, Willy said, “What’s funny is you’d think all assholes would look pretty much the same, but just look at the two of you.”
Mrs. Minnert let out another crackling laugh, and Judith in a hissing voice said, “Willy, c’mon!”
She cranked the vise grips and pushed the door open.
He got in, and to her complete surprise they drove away unimpeded.
When they were beyond what she supposed was firing range, she said, “Those are horrible, horrible people.”
Willy didn’t speak. He drove and stared forward and worked his jaw. This was something new. Judith had never seen him stew, could not in fact have imagined it. His first words came thirty minutes later, when he said, “That little guy was left-handed.”
An odd remark, but at least it was speech. Judith said, “Who was he, anyway?”
Willy shook his head. “No idea. Not from around here, I know that.” They drove a while more and he said, “Minnert did the same thing to Nick Packer on the gun cabinet Nick built him. And when the Porterfields got killed in a car wreck, Minnert bought the property off their eighteen-year-old-daughter for a fourth what it was worth, then turned around and sold off all the hilly crap to some out-of-state hunting group for what he’d paid for the whole place, and although he didn’t broadcast it, he didn’t mind letting it drop that he’d gotten himself a farm for free.”
I told you so came to mind as something to say, but what Judith said was, “When did you learn all that?”
Willy didn’t answer her question but instead seemed to answer some other question, one he was asking himself. He said, “But that man gave his word. We shook on it.”
Three days later, while the Minnerts had gone to Thermopolis, Wyoming, to pick up a grain cart, Willy and a group of men—all of Boss Krauss’s crew, as well as the Whiting brothers and a few others—drove out to the Minnert place to take apart the room Willy had built. Willy provided crowbars, sledgehammers, and beer for the occasion. By the time Judith arrived after her library shift, there was nothing left but the floor joists, and they were going fast. The men’s high spirits derived from more than just the stimulus of work and beer; they seemed to take pleasure in justice quick and rough. The demolition debris was sorted according to material, into separate piles of trim boards, plywood, sheetrock, and framing lumber, all of it broken and ragged, nails sticking out everywhere. An overhead light fixture lay in a wild nest of electrical wire.
“What’re you going to do with all that stuff?” Judith asked, and Willy said, “Leave it. Those are Minnert’s materials. That’s what he paid for, on time and in full.”
They could’ve left the place in worse shape. They cobbled together plywood to cover the door opening and picked up their trash before heading for their trucks and cars. Willy and Judith were the ones to take the last look back, and she said, “So. Are you happy?”
He stared at the sight and shook his head. “Had nothing to do with happiness,” he said.
Shortly after noon the next day, the Rufus Sage chief of police showed up at Boss Krauss’s job site east of town. Willy saw him driving up but pretended not to. Ted Seers was an ex-Marine who’d played fullback at a small college, one of those solid, compact body types that sports commentators often liken to bowling balls. His voice was unvaryingly low, flat, almost uninflected. He parked his cruiser, strolled over, and after waiting for the hammers and saws to quiet, he said, “This thing out at the Minnert place yesterday. Anybody know anything about that?”
Nobody said a word. Chief Seers in his low-voltage manner scanned the blank faces and began to nod to himself. “No, I didn’t think so.” He caught Willy’s eye and motioned him over with a minimal tilt of the chin. Seers looked unperturbed, but Willy knew Chief Seers always looked unperturbed and that didn’t keep him from being a severe ball-buster when it came to criminal behavior. He said, “How about you, Willy? What do you know about these shenanigans?”
Willy thought about it a second or two and said, “All I kn
ow is that Minnert’s handshake isn’t worth shit.”
Again the chief was nodding. He looked at Willy, at the other men, then back to Willy. “Yeah, well, I had to ask.” He looked away. He didn’t seem unhappy. He said, “I told Minnert I’d have to ask a lot of folks, there being so many he’s treated poorly over the years.” And then Seers was straightening his back, sighing, letting Willy know he was done. “Okay, then,” he said. “You get back to me if you hear anything I ought to know.” As he walked back toward his cruiser, he nodded at Boss Krauss and said, “I pick up a nail out here in one of my all-seasons, I’ll have to send you a bill,” to which Boss Krauss put up a big laugh to show he was taking it for the joke he hoped it was.
“And you think that’s that?” Judith asked that night.
“I do, yeah. I don’t think Minnert really wanted that room in the first place. I think it was her who wanted it. It’s possible it all worked out more or less to Minnert’s satisfaction.”
“Except for the public humiliation.”
He was turning the truck into the parking lot. “That’s why he went to Seers, which got him nowhere, and what’s he going to do beyond that?”
Something, Judith thought. Because people like Minnert are built to do something. And for the next week or so, she had the occasional feeling she was being watched, observed, studied even, but when she turned to confirm the suspicion, there was never anyone there. She told Willy about this phenomenon one evening as they were heading up to Hilltop Lanes to eat pizza, shoot pool, and maybe watch a little of the women’s bowling league before finding someplace to be alone.
“ ’Course you never see anybody,” Willy said. “It’s because you’re not being followed by a run-of-the-mill secret agent man. You’re being followed by an invisible secret agent man.” He ran out a broad smile. “Those invisible ones can be vexatious.”