by Larry Brown
It wasn’t like he could say no. But there was nothing unreasonable about it. Bobby’d picked him up before. And even seemed glad to see him sometimes.
“I guess I can. Let me get my beer.”
Bobby reached and opened the door for him. The headlights of the cruiser behind them made little shadows stretch ahead of the rocks in the road.
“Sure. I just need to talk to you for a little bit.”
“Ain’t nothin wrong is it?”
Bobby shook his head and looked down on him with a face that was full of sadness.
“Ain’t nothin wrong, Virgil. Come on and let’s take a little ride.”
The dog had been watching this but now he settled back down on the seat and closed his eyes. Virgil gathered up his sack and got out of the car holding the single beer bottle in his hand, the cigarette in his mouth. Bobby shut the door behind him when he stepped away from the car and he turned to look back at Woodrow. He looked worried. Gloria was still sitting woodenly beside him.
“I’ll see you later, Woodrow.”
Woodrow nodded and lifted one hand and gave a little wave good-bye to him. He pulled the car down in gear and sat there for a moment.
“Take it easy, Virgil.”
“Okay.”
Bobby had already started walking back toward his car and Virgil blinked, glancing into the headlights. He took a drink of his beer and started walking. Woodrow pulled off and waved again. Bobby had already gotten in and was sitting behind the wheel lighting a cigarette. The interior light was on and Virgil saw that Bobby had left his door open until Virgil could get around to the other side. He opened the door to the front seat and hesitated, not knowing whether to set the rest of the beer in there or not. But he got on in and set the sack between his feet and closed the door. Bobby closed his door and the light went out.
“You don’t mind taking a little ride with me, do you, Virgil?”
He had taken his hat off and it was lying on the seat between them. Bobby seemed to be studying him with something almost like worry on his face.
“Naw. I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all.”
“Well,” Bobby said softly. “That’s good.” And they pulled off.
“You want one of these beers?” Virgil said. He offered the bottle but Bobby just shook his head.
“I better not. Not tonight.”
There was a small green light burning on the radio that was under the dash but the radio was silent. They drove slowly. He pushed a switch and the red light outside went off. He started picking up a little speed and Virgil sipped his beer. The car was nearly new and it leveled most of the bumps out of the road.
“When’d you get this car?”
“About a month back. I gave my old one to Jake and Harold got his.”
They kept driving and Bobby steered the car with a casual hand. On a long straightaway they encountered dust drifting across the road and through the darkness ahead one single red taillight that was Woodrow. Bobby slowed down.
“What y’all been up to?” he said.
“Nothing. Drinking a beer.”
“I thought you quit.”
Virgil thought about it for a moment.
“Well. Not exactly,” he said. “I try to stay off that whiskey. Hurts my liver to drink it.”
Bobby nodded. The dust was thicker and they were closer to Woodrow now. At an intersection where they could see the red light still moving down the road ahead of them Bobby turned right and got out of the dust. He pushed it up to about forty and left it there.
“I talked to Glen yesterday,” he said.
“I heard you did. I saw your mama at the store today.”
“What was she doing?”
“She just stopped in for a minute. Wanted me to come eat dinner with her.”
Bobby glanced over at him.
“Well? Did you?”
“Naw. I didn’t know whether you’d want me to or not.”
“Why do you think I’d care?”
“I don’t know.”
Virgil raised the beer bottle and took a long drink from it. Bobby stared at the road.
“Goddamn, Virgil, I don’t care for you eating dinner. If it makes her happy. If it makes you happy. If you think I spend my time worrying about that you’re wrong.”
Virgil didn’t say anything. He guessed he’d finally get around to whatever he had on his mind, but he thought he knew what that was.
“I mean it ain’t like we ever have a family dinner or anything,” Bobby said. “Half the time she ends up eating by herself cause I’m off somewhere. She’d probably like to have some company besides me sometime anyway. Or a bunch of old women puttin a quilt together.”
Bobby slowed the car a bit and he seemed to relax. He watched things all around him as he drove, the fence at the side of a pasture, a rabbit frozen in the weeds, the lights of houses far off in the dark.
“You know Frankie Barlow, don’t you, Virgil?”
“Yeah, I know him. I ain’t seen him in a long time. I used to go over to his place some. Long time ago when he was just a boy. I knew his daddy. It didn’t do to cross him.”
“How you know that?”
Virgil took a drink of his beer and looked out the window for a moment, then watched the needle on the speedometer hovering around thirty-five.
“I just do.”
“You ever see anybody who did?”
“Not exactly.”
Bobby smiled at him for a second, like maybe he didn’t believe him. “How you know it didn’t do to cross him then?”
Virgil crossed his legs and reached for the last cigarette in his pocket. He lit it and rested the beer bottle on his leg.
“I went over there early one day to get some beer. I had some lines out in the river, that was back when I was still commercial fishin. There was a window there by the side and the old man slept on a cot in there. Somebody come by in the middle of the night, he’d get up and sell em some beer. But he come to the door and let me in that day and there was a big puddle of blood on the floor. I like to stepped in it. Hell, I looked down, knowed what it was, but I asked him what it was and he said it wasn’t nothin, just where he had to kill some son of a bitch the night before. Went on and sold me my beer.”
Bobby nodded and the car slowed even more. “I never did know him. That was before my time, I guess. I’ve known Frankie a long time. Glen used to go over there a lot. I did, too, years ago. Them two never did seem to like each other. Always figured they’d eventually get into it. Both of em bad to fight when they got to drinkin.”
“Puppy told me that Glen was drunk before he ever got over there.”
“They got into it about Jewel, didn’t they? Wasn’t that what it started over?”
“I think Barlow offered to buy her a drink was all it was.”
“Yeah, I finally got that much out of her,” Bobby said. “She don’t like to talk about it much. I reckon she tried to talk him into lettin her drive home but he wouldn’t do it. Got mad. Dropped her off then rode around all night long. Have you seen her lately?”
“Not in a while,” Virgil said, and took another drink of his beer. “My car’s been tore up and I can’t hardly walk over there. Some days I can make it to the store and back. That’s about it.”
Bobby looked out his window and turned his head back.
“Glen tell you I had a talk with him?”
Seems like I talked to one of your mistakes yesterday.
“Yeah. Come to think of it he did. But he’s mad at me. He thinks I drank up the money for his mama’s headstone.”
“Did you?”
“Nope. I just ain’t went and got it yet. Ever damn penny of it’s still right there in the cabinet where she kept it.”
Bobby loosened his hold on the steering wheel a little and eased back in the seat, relaxing just a bit.
“Jewel said you helped her buy some stuff for David. Some Christmas presents and stuff last year. It’s good of you to help her, Virgil.”
“Somebody’s got to. Glen won’t.”
“Tell me something, Virgil. Does he just blame the whole world for all his problems? Does he even care what he does to you?”
“I don’t know what’s in his head. I thought he was a good boy at one time. But he’s been this way ever since Theron died. If I could take it all back and change it I would. But I can’t.”
“What does he say about Jewel?”
“You don’t want to hear it.”
Bobby closed up on him again and just kept driving. With him it was hard to tell when he was mad. But if he didn’t want him to tell the truth what the hell did he pick him up for? He had a ride home to start with. Minding his own business.
“Did he spend the night with you last night?” Bobby said.
“Yeah.”
“What time did he get in?”
“I don’t know. I laid down about eleven, I guess. He come in sometime after that. He was in his bed asleep when I got up. I guess he come in after he went to see her. But I don’t know. And I ain’t gettin in the middle of it.”
Bobby turned his head and looked at Virgil hard.
“What do you mean? You’re already in the middle of it. You been taking him fishin and puttin up swings for him. What do you call that if it ain’t right in the middle of it?”
“That’s all right, by God. If his own daddy won’t take care of him I will. And dare any damn body to try and stop me.”
Bobby turned his face back to the road and drove in silence for just a moment, and then he looked at Virgil again.
“Don’t get all upset, now.”
“I ain’t upset. But he’s gonna find out you been seeing Jewel. And then what’s gonna happen?”
“Me and Jewel ain’t done nothing wrong,” Bobby said.
“Yeah, but he never will believe it and you know it. You better go on and tell him. Or get her to.”
“She don’t know what the hell to do.”
“I know what he ain’t gonna do.”
It got quiet in the car. He guessed Bobby was getting pissed off but he didn’t care. He was about to get the same way. None of this was his fault and he wished they’d just leave him out of it. Nobody ever listened to him anyway, never had. All this was just as hard on him as it was on them. Maybe harder. He took a few more pulls on his cigarette and then flipped it out the window. They were all still young and they thought they would be forever. They didn’t know how fast their lives would go by, how one day they’d turn around thirty years from now and wonder how it had managed to pass so quickly. They didn’t know that the things they did now were important and would matter when those thirty years were up. He didn’t want to try and tell Bobby any of that. He couldn’t take sides in this. They were going to have to work all this out for themselves. And all he could do was watch, and hope for the best.
“How come he hates me so bad, Virgil? I ain’t such a bad guy, am I? I always got along with Theron. And Randolph, too. Even after I got elected and caught Glen doing something wrong, I’d cut him all the slack I could.”
“Why?” Virgil said. “Why would you cut him some slack? You grew up with him. You know how he is.”
Bobby seemed embarrassed. He didn’t look around. “I don’t know. I guess partly cause of you. Probly partly cause of what happened to Theron. I always felt sorry for him after that. Tried to be nice to him. But he never would let me.”
Virgil took a small sip from his beer and glanced out the window for a moment. The houses along the road were dark now and there was a sad wonder in Bobby’s voice. Virgil wished he could give him the answers to his questions, and he knew there must have been a lot of them down through the years. There had been so many times when he would have given anything to be able to just take him fishing one afternoon, to let him know that he cared about him and that he was sorry for the way things had to turn out sometimes, but there never had been any chance of that. Emma had seen to that. That crazy jealousy she had for Mary had driven a wedge between them, and the lies she had told Glen when he was too young to know better had eventually convinced him they were truth. All the nights out drinking and fishing on the river. All the car wrecks and the times in jail. He wondered what he could have been thinking of in those years when she was poisoning his mind against him. It was all such a waste. Way too late to fix now.
“How old was you when you and Glen got in that fight?”
“I don’t remember, Virgil. He’s a good bit younger than me. Course he was as big as me. I reckon he’s about four years younger than me, ain’t he?”
“Yeah. You were born while I was still on Corregidor.”
“Forty-two.”
“Right. If I could have got a leave and come home, I would have married your mama. I mean if your granddaddy would have let me. But after they bombed Pearl Harbor they wadn’t no leaves. Then four months later I was captured. I don’t blame her for marrying Charles. She had to do somethin.”
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “But Charles was killed in ’43. Why didn’t you marry her when you got out? When was that? Forty-five?”
“Yeah. But I couldn’t hardly walk for nearly a year. I had that infection in my spine. I didn’t figure she wanted a cripple. How could I have even supported y’all?”
“How come you married Emma then?”
“She got pregnant.”
“That don’t seem like much of an answer, Virgil.”
Bobby stopped the car and killed the motor and got out. He left the lights on and went to the trunk with the keys. When he came back he cranked the car and passed a bottle over.
“Here. I took this off a drunk the other night. Drink it if you want it.”
Virgil lifted the bottle and looked at it. It was a pint of good whiskey and it was nearly full. It warmed his stomach when he twisted the cap off and took a drink. The car moved forward and when Bobby started speaking again he never looked around. He might have been talking to the road.
“Somebody killed Frankie Barlow over at his place last night. They think around midnight. That’s why I asked you what time he got in. I can’t prove nothin. It ain’t even my county. And I damn sure can’t watch him all the time. I ain’t trying to sound like an asshole. I just know how he is. I don’t want to see Jewel hurt no more. So if you see him before I do, tell him that he better be careful.”
He didn’t say anything else. He sped up and drove fast, powering the car into the curves and eating the miles away. He slowed a little when he got close to Virgil’s house and then he turned into the drive and pulled up next to the porch. The Redbone puppy was lying there on his chain. Virgil got his beer and his whiskey gathered up and got out and shut the door. The car backed away and turned around, and then it went out of the yard and up the road, dust swirling behind it, the red taillights growing smaller and the sound of the car diminishing to a low roar that went on and on through the hills so that he could hear it for a long time, standing there under the stars, sipping from the whiskey and listening to the puppy whine and whine.
Mary was reading a book in the big armchair when he opened the door and stepped in. He turned the lock behind him and put the gun and the keys on a ledge in the hall, dropped the hat on the coffee table.
“You’re out late,” she said.
“The wheels of justice got to keep on rollin, Maw.” He flopped into a green recliner and pushed the footrest out on it. “What you got? Another one of them trashy romance novels?”
“It’s a book about Africa,” she said. “I always wanted to go to Africa. Ever since Charles got killed I’ve always wanted to.”
“Well I don’t. Missippi’s wild enough for me.”
“Don’t sit there. You’ll go to sleep.”
“I may do it but I’m too damn tired to move. You go to the funeral home?”
“I was just about the last one to leave. I kept waiting around on you. I just knew you’d show up. Where you been?”
“I had to go somewhere.”
She got up and went i
nto the kitchen. It was dark in there and he saw the light in the icebox come on, her robe moving in front of it. He heard her open the bottle and she came back in and handed him the beer. He took it and nodded his thanks and took a good long drink of it, lowered the contents by a third.
“And I went and talked to Virgil.”
She greeted this with silence, just sat with one finger stuck up across her bottom lip the way she did and studied him. He had to be in her class when he was in the sixth grade. She watched them all that way while they did their lessons and that was when he learned that when she did that her mind was a million miles away.
“I took him home,” he said. “Been down at the VFW again, drinking with Woodrow and that old Parks woman.”
He took another sip of the beer. He kind of wanted to eat something but he kind of wanted to get to bed, too.
“What time you going out there tomorrow?” he said.
“I think they open at twelve. But I thought I’d get up early and make some sandwiches and take them by the house first.”
“I got to go in early, too. We got to do that escort and Jake’s on vacation. We’re shorthanded. Hell, we’re always shorthanded.”
She looked down at her hands and examined her nails with her fingers straight out.
“What’d you have to talk to Virgil about?”
“I just wanted to have a little talk with him.”
“About Glen?”
“About Glen and some other things, too. Can you get me up about six?”
“I reckon so. You want me to fix you some breakfast?”
“How about fixing me about three eggs and some ham and make me some biscuits? I’ll take you out for an ice cream cone sometime in my cop car, give you a thrill.”
“You just get up when I holler at you.”
“I’m going to bed right now. Soon as I finish this beer.”
They sat there for a little while. The big clock in the hall ticked its slow minutes. And a little bit later she woke him, had already taken the bottle from his hand. She told him to go to bed and he did. That night he dreamed of Jewel sleek and wet on a sand dune, waves breaking behind her and a bucket and pail standing in the wash. He was building a house and he watched from the roof. The sun was hot and gulls were crying in the air. There was a grave nearby, just a wooden cross stuck up in the sand, and she was picking flowers to place around it. She was sad but he knew it would pass. He laid shingles one by one under the sun and the day was long and boats tacked in the bright water off the coast. Virgil was fishing beneath an umbrella and Puppy was working on a car. And Omar, the black bull, stood in the breaking waves and plowed them with his nose, lifting his head to the wind, his hide shining wetly and the curly hair blowing on his face.