Father and Son

by Larry Brown

“He’s botherin us,” she said, and she stumbled and almost fell. She grabbed Bobby by the arm but he pushed her hand away.

  “I ain’t bothered nobody,” the man said. “I was mindin my own business. You goddamn whore.”

  “All right. That’s enough of that. What about these kids here?”

  “They mine,” the woman said, and lifted a finger and pointed to the man. “And his. But he won’t help me feed em and he comes around botherin me all the time and I’m sick of it. I want his ass arrested.”

  Bobby looked at both of them and then he looked at the kids. They had not moved. Then he looked a little closer.

  “Both of you stay right where you are. You hear me? Don’t make a move.”

  “I ain’t goin nowhere,” the man said, and he started walking toward a cooler next to the car. Bobby took four steps and pushed him hard against the fender.

  “I said freeze. You know what freeze means?”

  The man didn’t say anything but he stayed where he was, glaring at him with drunken intensity. Bobby took his hands off him and walked toward the children. They were a boy and a girl about three or four years old. They looked like they wanted to run.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He could see their fear so he moved slowly, watching their lowered faces and sidelong eyes. He knelt next to them. There were tin cans in the rubble of the fire, a crude circle of rocks with the blackened stubs of sticks, the skeletons of small fish charred and dusted with ash. He looked back at the man and the woman. They were watching him, poised for flight.

  “You better not move,” he said.

  “Can I set down?” the woman said.

  He didn’t answer. He reached out for what he’d already seen, the little girl’s arm. A shriveled stick of flesh in his hand, the nails on the fingers deeply rimmed with dirt and the bowed arch of the two bones that run from elbow to wrist. The break had been set badly or maybe not set at all. He turned it over, this way and that. He looked into her eyes. A feral child with bright eyes shining in a bleak face and her hair home-cut and lying in long ragged waves close to her ears.

  “What happened to this kid’s arm?” he said.

  Nobody said anything. He got up and walked behind the girl and over to the boy, a trip of a few steps, and he knelt again. He put his amazed hand gently on the boy’s naked back. All his ribs showed and he was badly blistered. He touched the peeling skin with the pads of his fingers. The boy’s belly was swollen. One of his eyes was matted almost shut like hounds Bobby had seen and his right arm and leg were covered with clustered bruises scattered up and down those limbs in blue and yellow hues. He stood up and stepped away from them and put his hand on his gun.

  “You people are under arrest. If you move one step I’ll shoot you where you stand. If you don’t believe me, try me.”

  They didn’t move. Not one muscle.

  “You sit down right there where I can watch you. Go on.”

  The woman started crying and she covered her face with her hands. She was shaking her head and she turned and pointed to the man still frozen against the car like a rabbit caught in a pair of bright headlights.

  “It’s all his fault,” she said. “He does it to me, too, comes in drunk and if supper ain’t ready starts hittin everbody I told him he was gonna get caught you son of a bitch I told you.”

  “Shut up and sit down,” Bobby said, and when she didn’t he walked closer and pushed her hard to the ground. She landed on her ass in the dirt and rolled over onto her side, beating at the ground with her fist in her outrage and weeping as if her heart had broken in half.

  “Turn around,” he told the man. The man didn’t want to do it. He started trying to say something, maybe words in his own defense, but Bobby just went to him and got him by the arm and turned him around and wrenched it up. The man struggled against him until Bobby laid the muzzle of the revolver into the soft place behind the lobe of his ear and leaned close to whisper through gritted teeth: “You can go easy or you can go hard and it don’t matter to me. I’d like to shoot you anyway.”

  The man quit moving. Bobby holstered the gun and got his cuffs off his belt and shackled him tight, then led him over to the car and made him stand there while he got on the radio and started calling for some people to come help him.

  They acted as if they were starving, and he guessed they were. He sat at the kitchen table with them and watched them clean up two plates apiece of hamburger patties and vegetables. Mary had given both of them a bath and borrowed clothes from a neighbor. Dr. Connor had come over and had seen to the boy’s eye. He had a white patch over it now and their hands were clean and their hair was clean and they were giggling and whispering to each other and they looked a lot better.

  Mary was washing dishes at the sink and she kept turning to smile at them over her shoulder. She finally hung up her dish towel and motioned for him to step out on the back porch with her.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he told them, and they nodded and kept eating. When he went outside she was sitting in a chair near the railing. He hoisted one leg up on it and leaned back against the post. It was nearly dark.

  “Why don’t you just let them stay here tonight?” she said. “I can fix their breakfast in the morning.”

  “I told those people I’d meet them at eight-thirty. I need to get on down there before long. I appreciate you helping me with em, though.”

  He looked through the screen door at them. The boy leaned over and said something to the girl and she squealed and covered her mouth.

  “What’s gonna happen to them, Bobby?”

  He looked at her. She was rocking gently, staring out across the yard where night was coming to the trees and the grass in ever-softening shades, creeping toward them where they sat. Night things beginning to call. The unhurried lowing of a cow calling to her baby and the little cow voice that answered.

  “I can tell you what ain’t gonna happen to em. They not going back to what they were living in. Right now they’re in my custody. The foster home’ll see after them until the court decides what to do. That may take a while, though.”

  “I don’t understand how people can treat children like that,” she said.

  He let out a big sigh and turned his face toward the pasture. The cows had all gone down behind the barn.

  “I don’t know either. They’d be better off adopted than where they were.”

  “And how would that happen?”

  “The court has to rule that they’re unfit parents. I’d have to testify. It ain’t easy to get em took away from the parents but I can talk to the judge.”

  “You going to?”

  “Yeah. I got to.”

  She sat there rocking for a bit. He watched her. He’d caught her crying one time earlier, when she was dressing them in their new clothes and having to look at their bodies. They still didn’t have any shoes but he could find some for them somewhere.

  “Did you know those people?”

  “Naw. I’d seen somebody down there fishing before by that car. They live back up around Old Union somewhere. I’m gonna take him out to their house sometime, maybe tomorrow or the next day. I want to see what it looks like so I’ll have a little information before I go in front of the judge. I need to know what I’m talking about.”

  He got off the railing and stood up. She got out of her chair slowly.

  “Are you ready?” she said.

  “I guess so. I’ll take em on down to the jail and meet those people. We’ve got some papers to sign. I got to tell the mother and daddy what’s going on.”

  She went into the house ahead of him and was talking to the children while he picked up his hat and got his keys. He stood there waiting for them. Mary herded them toward the front door with her hands on their shoulders and he went out behind them and got them into the car. He let them both sit in the front seat. She leaned in the window and he saw her trying not to cry.

  “Y’all come back and see
me sometime,” she said. They didn’t say if they would or not. They didn’t say anything. They looked at her and then they looked at him.

  “I’ll see you later, Mama,” Bobby said, and he pulled out. They were quiet in the seat beside him. He turned the scanner up and let them listen to that. He found some gum in the glove box and they each got a piece of that. He smoked a cigarette and drove slowly and asked them if they liked to fish. They began talking to him a little. After a bit he pulled his headlights on. And after a bit the children moved closer to him on the seat and began to hold on to him and tell him of the wonders they had seen.

  Virgil was sitting on the front porch working on one of his reels, an old Zebco 33 on a taped-up Eagle Claw rod that he’d owned for twenty years. He’d pulled the handle off and had been squirting some sewing machine oil behind the shaft to try and get it to work a little smoother. The line was strung out between his knees and the front face of the reel was lying on the porch when he heard the car coming down the road.

  The Redbone puppy raised his head from his front paws beside him as the crunching of the gravel got louder. The blue Buick was slowing down and then it seemed to make a quick decision and pulled into the yard. Mary drew up beside the porch with the driver’s side closest to him. He stopped what he was doing and put the rod and the reel down. She was smiling a shy smile and she asked him if he wanted to take a little ride. He got up for his cigarettes and then went down the steps to the car.

  There was a place on the back side of her land. A POSTED sign that guarded a wire gap that stayed chained and locked. It was dark enough to use the headlights to guide them through the sunken woods’ road littered with leaves that whispered under the tires. At the top of a small hill she pulled into a clearing where the trees were spread out a little and there was room enough to see the sky. She shut off the lights and the motor and they got out. She opened the trunk for him and he got out the quilt.

  In near full dark he stood holding her and opened the buttons of her dress to find her naked beneath it as always in the past. He knelt in the pooled fabric of her dress at her feet and kissed her stomach while she held his head in her hands. Tree frogs were singing and through the trees the faint flare of fireflies moved slowly in the air. And she lowered herself to him with the moon beginning to come up through the trees. It hung there for a long time, soft rays shining down among the leaves.

  When the dust she’d left had settled over the road, he eased back into his chair and the puppy came over. He petted him. The puppy whined and nuzzled deeper into his hand. The sound of the crickets came back, lulling him in the cooling evening air and taking him back to the last time he had made love to her, in the dark of a hot summer night, beneath that old oak tree, in 1941.

  David was in his little chair rocking and watching the television while she ironed some clothes in the front room. She saw the headlights pull into the yard out past the curtains and she set the iron down and turned it off. All the doors were locked and she went to the window and looked out, saw the big star on the side and saw him cut the headlights off.

  There was a switch for the porch lights beside the door and she turned it on, unlocked the door, and stepped out holding the screen door open. He was reaching back to get something out of the car and she sat down in a chair to wait on him.

  “I’m runnin late,” he said, and she could see something in his hand. He came up the steps and sat down in the chair next to her, holding the gun in both hands.

  “What am I supposed to do with that?” she said.

  “Use it if you have to.”

  “I don’t know how to use it.”

  “I’m gonna show you.”

  He took it from the holster; to her it was an ugly thing, short and deathly. He made her take it and hold it.

  “This is a double-action revolver,” he said. “That means you don’t have to cock it. All you got to do is point it and squeeze the trigger.”

  She looked at the thing. It was very heavy to her. She couldn’t imagine using it on anybody or what it would do to a person.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “It’s a .44 magnum.”

  She turned it over in her hands. Through the side of the cylinder she could see the ends of the brass cartridges nestled snugly in their chambers.

  “I’m scared of it, Bobby. And David in the house, where am I going to put it?”

  He reached over and took it back and slid it into the holster, put the strap behind the hammer, and snapped it down. Then he put it back in her lap.

  “Put it somewhere you know he can’t get to it. Might be better if you don’t even let him see it so he don’t know it’s in the house. If you’ve got a shoe box or something, put it up high on a shelf in your closet. Keep it in one place. That way if you need it you’ll always know where it is. Like if you wake up in the middle of the night or something. You hear me?”

  She rubbed her hand over the holster.

  “All right,” she said. “Have you seen him?”

  “No. Have you?”

  She shook her lead a little. “No.”

  The bugs had started coming into the light and some of them had landed on the porch and were crawling over it. Bobby put his foot out and crushed one with his boot. A thin dry crackling.

  “How’s David?” he said.

  “He’s okay.”

  “He said anything about it?”

  “Not much. I had to leave him with Miss Henderson today and I had to work late. I fixed his supper and he’s been watching TV. He’s all right.”

  That seemed to satisfy Bobby.

  “Well,” he said, and he got up. “I guess I better get on. It’s been a long day.”

  She sat holding the gun and looking up at him.

  “Why don’t you come on in? I can fix you a cup of coffee.”

  There was something in the way he watched her that made her afraid a little. They both heard the car coming and turned their heads as it slowly went by. There under the bright light on the front porch they watched it go by in plain sight and saw his car and saw for a brief moment Glen looking out at them and then flipping a cigarette butt into her driveway. The car neither sped up nor slowed down, just kept traveling at the same rate on down the road and out of sight.

  She didn’t say anything. He didn’t either. He just ran down the steps and got into his car and cranked it and pulled away.

  He was thinking of the little sand road just beyond the next hill and he kept his eyes on the rearview mirror for as long as he could see the straight part of the road behind him. Once over the hill he sped up and then spun the car into the side road and rocketed down through a gully of dust and gravel and sailed up the next hill and powered it into a sliding drift that took him around the next curve and his only hope was that he wouldn’t meet anybody at that speed. At the T in the road he took the right turn and shifted into second and kicked hard down on the gas and wound it up tight, dropped it back into third and looked back for Bobby. He took the old car fast up the patched blacktop past rusted fences and a crumbling barn, black cows on green grass, into the woods that began there and into a vast cavern of trees and hanging grapevines, the headlights boring a tunnel that he followed. He stuck one hand out the window and waved at nothing.

  “Adios, motherfucker,” he said.

  Late that night in her bed she held David close and stroked his sleeping head. It was hot with the window down and she could feel a thin film of sticky moisture in the folds of skin at her throat. She rubbed at it with the web of her hand and looked at the dark ceiling. A small fan was casting waves of humid air over the single sheet that covered them. David had been asleep for over an hour but tonight it wouldn’t come to her. Not now. Not with it this hot.

  She got her arm from around him and eased out of the bed. He didn’t stir. She covered him back up with the sheet and went across the floor, her bare feet padding softly, out the bedroom door and down the short hall to the kitchen. There were some little Cokes in the icebox
and she opened one and went out to the living room where she’d left her cigarettes, turned on the lamp, and sat down in the chair that faced the television. She didn’t turn it on.

  The cigarettes were on the table there and she shook one loose from the pack and lit it with a match and then blew the match out, dropped it into the ashtray. It was very quiet with David asleep. He was growing up fast and he didn’t understand about the things grown people did. He didn’t understand why his daddy didn’t live with them and it was hard for her to make him see why. Virgil had been good to spend time with him and she was grateful for that. David always came back happy from their little fishing trips.

  The cat came out of the bedroom, hugging the wall, rubbing against a chair and the lamp. It stopped and stood whipping the tip of its tail, watching her. Then it walked across the floor and jumped up on the couch and stretched out.

  She knew it was cool out on the porch. She got up and went over to the front door and unlocked it, pulled it open so that maybe a little air would come in through the screen door. A slight breeze was weaving through the ferns that were hanging on the front porch. There was no sound coming from the bedroom. She went back and got her Coke and picked up her cigarettes and went out, holding the screen door and not letting it slam behind her.

  The floorboards were cool on her feet. She sat in a dark chair on the dark porch and looked out at the road shining under the moonlight. Out there beyond the fence the trees stood humped in black and silver tones. Clouds were drifting over the face of the moon. It felt like it used to when she slept on the screened-in porch at her father’s house. He’d been gone a long time now and she barely remembered him. The red ember of her cigarette brightened and glowed when she put it to her mouth and drew on it. She could hear the smoke whistling out of her lungs when she exhaled. She could hear the slow crunching of gravel under tires, almost like somebody walking but louder than that. And then she saw that a car was creeping down the road above her house, the lights off, moving just barely above an idle. She stubbed the cigarette out quickly on the leg of the chair and sat perfectly still. Maybe it was darker under the overhang of the porch roof where she sat. The car came on not moving any faster than a person could walk, maybe not that fast. She began to hear the sound of the motor. The car slowed and it looked like Glen’s. It stopped in front of the house and sat there. A match flared inside the car, a face was briefly lit. And then a hand came out the window and an arm hung down the side of the car. The hand moved the cigarette back and forth to the face. Somebody watching her as she watched him.