Father and Son

by Larry Brown

  “That’s mighty nice of you, Roy. Thanks for taking me fishing.”

  “We’ll go again. Any time you want to.”

  They shook hands again and Glen went to his car. As he backed it up Roy was taking the fish around the side of the house, out of sight. Dark was falling and all the light had gone out of the lake. He glanced at it again, going down the hill, and now it lay flat and black and brooding, the solemn cypresses melting together into a thick mass forming at the backwaters. Owls would be coming soon out of the high woods on the bluff, their silent soaring shapes slanting down across the water and rifling toward the grasses on the far side where mice crouched fearless and unaware.

  He took a bath when he got home and combed his hair and shaved. He’d spent part of the day before cleaning up, knocking down cobwebs and dirt dauber nests. Bottles had been sitting in corners and on tables and he’d boxed them up and set them on the back porch. He went out there now that he’d cleaned himself up, washed the fish smell from his hands. Somebody had come out to turn the electricity on after he’d gone by there and paid the bill, and now he had lights, hot water, an icebox to keep things cold. Hot dogs and baloney and mustard in there with a six-pack of Pepsis.

  The porch had been built years ago from sawmill oak and it had gone unpainted and now was rotten in places. There was one chair in the yard, overturned he guessed from some storm, and he stepped down and got it and set it up on the porch. There was an old swing set out there left behind by a former owner but no child of his had ever played on it.

  Standing in the yard he looked down toward the river and the dark banks of trees that lined it. There was a big field of cotton at the end of his backyard, over a hundred acres, lush now with cotton plants, their ordered rows stretching away to invisibility under the blankets of clouds. It was hot and humid and he could see heat lightning flaring in the distance, something that seemed dark and ominous moving toward him. The trees began to bend a little in the wind that was rising up. He wanted to go see her but that image of Bobby on her front porch still burned inside him. He was feeling worse and worse about the little boy and he had begun to feel a yearning to see him, hold him, know him. He thought it might be better for all of them if he just went away somewhere, but the thought of Jewel was a magnet forever pulling him toward her. Those nights in his mind would not go away and he told himself to just go talk to her. He’d gotten a cheap wristwatch in town the day before and he struck his lighter over the face of it to read the time: eight o’clock.

  He could go drink a few beers, give her time to put the boy to bed. Then he could go over. His sins were beginning to weigh on him and if what he held within was not remorse it was something close to it. He knew that he needed to slow down on his drinking but he needed a drink. So he went through the side yard, not bothering to lock the house, and out to his car and down the road somewhere to get it.

  Most of the fear had gone with the passage of another day and Jewel had cooked pork chops on the grill for the two of them. They’d finished eating and she had let him play in the yard until dark and mosquitoes had driven them in. He was watching television on the floor in the living room and she was drinking a rare beer in the chair behind him. She was wondering if Bobby was going to come by tonight to check on them. She hadn’t decided whether to tell him about the car coming by the night before. And she hadn’t decided what she would do if Glen came by. Talk first for sure.

  “Bedtime before long, honey,” she said.

  He was petting his cat where it lay stretched out in his lap and he looked at her over his shoulder.

  “Can I have a Coke?”

  “You already had one.”

  “Please?”

  “Can you get it?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  He set the cat on the floor and it walked to Jewel and leapt easily to her lap. David got up and went down the hall and she heard him open the icebox door. She petted the cat for a little bit and then it jumped down and trailed after the boy.

  There was not much traffic on the road tonight. She’d been listening. There were a lot of times when she wished she could get out of the house at night and this was one of those times. But David needed her at night. She thought she’d let him stay up for another thirty minutes and then she would lie in her bed with her eyes open and try to think again of where she had gone wrong. Her body would turn and twist in the sheets and the sweat would come again and she would remember those nights in the woods on a blanket and wonder if he did.

  David came back with his drink and sat on the floor again, watching the characters on the fuzzy television screen. The antenna needed fixing but she was scared to get up on the roof by herself. There were so many things she needed a man for, a leaky faucet, a stuck door, and more than anything the warmth of another hand. She thought about calling Bobby. She looked down at her legs, her painted toes propped on the footstool. She drew a deep breath and sighed. David got up and came over to her. He climbed up in the chair with her and she got him up under her arm and hugged him.

  “Who is that man?”

  “What man?”

  He pointed toward the television. “That man.”

  “That’s Andy.”

  “Where’s Barney?”

  “Barney’s not on there now.”

  “I want to see Barney.”

  “He’ll be on there after while.”

  He was quiet then, watching the show. From time to time he lifted his bottle and took a drink from it. The cat had come back in and was stretched out on the floor, paws twitching. She watched the show without really listening to it. She guessed she could call up to the jail and see where he was. He might be there, or he might be on the road. He moved around so much. Slept at odd hours and ate sometimes when most people were sleeping. It wasn’t nine o’clock yet. And she could always take a bath and forget about it. Stretch out in the tub and turn the water on warm and later try to get a good night’s sleep. She hated sleeping with the window down because it was so hot. But now a breeze was lifting the curtains from the front windows and she could hear thunder far off. Rain coming. It would be welcome, the garden was so dry. The grass. The road in front of her house so dusty.

  “You sleepy?” she said.

  “Not yet.”

  “You can stay up thirty more minutes. Then you’ve got to go to bed.”

  “Okay.”

  He climbed down from her lap and went to sit beside the cat again. Stroking it and drinking his Coke. She got up too.

  “I’m going out on the front porch and smoke a cigarette.”

  He looked up. “Ain’t nobody gonna bother us is it?”

  “No baby. Ain’t nobody gonna bother us.”

  She hoped that was true. She picked up her cigarettes and lighter and grabbed the beer and pushed open the screen door. She stood for a moment leaning against a post, watching the clouds sliding rapidly over the moon, light and dark showing, the wind rising and the trees waving a little. She sat down in the chair and put the bottle on the porch and lit a cigarette. With her legs stretched out in front of her she watched the sky and the road. She wanted to call him. Glen could always drive by again. She wished she knew if it was him in the car the second time. She wished it hadn’t been so dark.

  She turned and looked in the window at David. He was still on the floor with the cat. If she left him alone he’d go to sleep in there. She got up and walked to one end of the porch and looked out into the blackness. Then she walked to the other end and did the same thing there. She sat down in the chair again and put her feet up on the post. You’re worse than a damn cat in heat, she told herself. She smoked, rocking back and forth, reaching down once in a while to take a sip from the beer. She got to thinking about her mother and all that she’d said, what she’d called David. It still hurt to think about all that and she wished again that her father had lived. He would have talked to her about it. It would have hurt him too but he wouldn’t have turned his back on her. But at least David had Virgil. He was alway
s glad to see them, was always happy to take David fishing. She didn’t know why Glen couldn’t be more like him. They were so different. Bobby was more like Virgil, but most of the time they seemed like strangers to each other. She was afraid there was going to be trouble between Glen and Bobby and she didn’t want to be the cause of it, never had meant to be. Her promise was the only thing that had kept her from letting Bobby in. And it looked like that promise hadn’t been worth much to her anyway.

  She took another drink of the beer and looked out into the darkness. All this time waiting for him. All those nights when she couldn’t sleep for thinking and worrying. The times alone when David was sick and crying. Or happy and growing and such a joy to look at and hold and bathe and feed. All that time by herself. One night with him in her bed didn’t make up for all that.

  The thunder rolled again and the sky split its dark underbelly with flashes of lightning. The breeze was coming steady now, cool and strong. It wafted under the limbs of the trees in the yard and the leaves danced on the edges of the wind. She heard the first few drops hit the roof. A smattering like a handful of shotgun pellets on a tin plate. She hugged her knees and laid her cheek on one of them. She kept sitting there, waiting for whatever would come. She was lonely all the time now, and the nights had become too long. It began to rain harder and the earth seemed to revel in it, the clouds moving into a steady black mass. The thunder cracked closer and the rain began to roll in beads from the edge of the roof. She rocked in the chair and listened to the television. There was no way she could go and get into her bed. Not yet. The night had not brought what she wanted yet. She sat there and listened to it rain. It came down and down and pounded on the roof and swept in sheets along the edges of the yard where little pools of flowing water formed and glistened. It drowned out the noise of the television and she sat there for a while longer, then looked through the window and saw the little boy lying on the floor, his head along one outflung arm, the cat next to him. She got up and went into the house and picked him up and put him in his bed with his clothes on. Pulled the single sheet up over him. Went back to the front porch to watch it rain some more. It was dark out there, black with the rumblings of the night. She watched for lights coming down the road.

  Bobby had given up on finding Glen. The rain started down on his windshield ten minutes after he left the jail and now his wipers were going at it, sweeping the water from the glass in little cascades. His headlights showed it slanting down on the highway and he was still heartsick with the things the children had told him. He’d been putting off doing what he had to do, knowing it wasn’t right but not wanting to face it this soon either. Now it had started raining and his task would be worse. Tomorrow he would have to face it, rain or not.

  He turned down the road that led to Virgil’s house and drove by it in the rain. The house was dark except for a dim light in the front room. Lying in there listening to the radio probably. There was no need to stop. He probably didn’t know where Glen was. And all his driving hadn’t turned up a trace of him. It was like he had vanished somehow. And Virgil was probably all right. In a few weeks he’d be healed up okay. He could stop and check on him later and see how he was doing.

  The rain came down and he could see the drops of it bouncing off the hood. Nobody much was out. He did meet a few cars, their lights bleary and water-streaked in the rain, and it looked like a good night to stay home. He thought about Jewel in the storm alone. At least he hoped she was alone. He could drive by there too. See how she was doing. See if he was over there or had been. He had already told them at the jail that he might be in the car for a while.

  He’d had no supper yet but he wasn’t hungry for food.

  It took him ten minutes to get over to Jewel’s house. When the headlights swept the yard and the porch he could see her sitting in the chair, the tip of her cigarette a tiny red neon light. He pulled up close and shut off the lights and the motor, walked fast with the rain pelting him up to the porch and then he was standing beside her. She got up and kissed him and he held her tight, not saying anything, just holding her and rubbing his hands over her back. But then for the first time she pulled his hands around to the places he had wanted to touch for so long and she started breathing harder. The lightning flashed and the thunder called and she took him by the hand and led him inside, into the darkened house and down the hall to her room. It was hard to see and he followed by holding on to her as a blind man might.

  David watched from a crack in the door after the lightning woke him up. Mama and that man.

  Was that his daddy?

  At first they pulled at each other’s clothes and then the lamp went off and there was just the noise of them in there, the things they were whispering, the sounds they made. The cat watched, too, silent beside him, its eyes almost luminous in the dark hall where the two of them crouched soundless, listening.

  Virgil lay in his bed and listened to the rain whisper on the roof of a house that he did not own. The puppy was in there, too, curled in a red ball on the floor, tail tucked and muzzle on his paws. The television was playing silently to give a little light to the room but he had the radio on, Johnny Cash and Cowboy Copas, Patsy Cline and Ernest Tubb. The rain danced against the roof and poured down the posts on the front porch, where it blew in under the eaves. He lay back on his nest of pillows and heard the rain drip down into the dead flower beds that ringed the house and knew that the chickens were snug in their rusted cars.

  He could feel Emma again now in the dark corners and could almost hear her steps in the hall. The air was infused with a cool and soothing moisture that had settled on his skin. There was someone else in there, too, and he felt his presence and knew that it was Theron come to see him again as he always had. He felt him in the way the curtains moved and the way the wind whistled outside the windows, the way it was whistling now through hollows of hardwood timber and dark river bottoms where the trees stood dripping water into the black sloughs that surrounded and nurtured them. He felt him in the creaking timbers, in the rafters above, his step on the boards of the house where he had died. The wind hushed, the curtains stood still as if something had passed outside them. Then it was gone. The wind picked up, and it rattled the screens, and he took a last drink of the whiskey. The puppy whined uneasily in his sleep and he told it to hush. He wished he could see Glen. He remembered how small his hands were when he held him on his knee by the river and put a cane pole into his fingers.

  For some the night was not over. In a gathering of the drunk and happy Glen sat nursing a glass of straight whiskey and brooding over the remains of his food, barely touched on a red china plate. It was a catfish place with open-air tables but the rain had driven everybody inside. Music was playing loud but he barely heard those laughing voices and those country tunes of heartbreak and loss. He drank the whiskey and stared at the table. The cheap watch said it was 10:30 and he knew it was time to be moving out.

  He got up from the booth none too steady and went to stand at the bar. Faces surrounded him, wide smiles and cracked teeth and missing teeth and it seemed that everybody in there was having a good time that hadn’t rubbed off on him. He drank some more of the whiskey. Time was slowing down. He watched the second hand on a dusty clock hanging on the wall.

  It was still raining outside. He could hear it on the windows and the roof. The storm had moved in bringing with it lightning and crashes of thunder that he could hear pealing outside the cinder-block walls of the joint. The smell of fried catfish hung over everything. It was on his clothes, his skin. He was drunk enough now to be able to start feeling bad about taking the money from his father and to wonder if it was still a good idea to go over and try to see Jewel.

  He drained the glass and rapped it on the counter. The barman came down and refilled it, and he paid. The air seemed to be cooling, the outside night pressing in. His mood kept swinging. He wanted to be in her bed, see her face, touch her skin. Breathe in the stillness with her lying naked beside him, the rain coming
down. Then he’d start feeling there was nobody to turn to, just like the way it had been after Theron died in all his blood. That long period of grief when he felt that he might go out of his mind from having to remember it over and over every day and knowing that his good strong brother was lying under six feet of dirt and wilted flowers and that the rain would fall on him and the sun would burn down on him and that his spirit would move lost in this world maybe forever, rootless and drifting, watching them, hovering around the edges of the house and the yard where he felt him many times and did not want to feel him anymore.

  His mother had never blamed him. She had just borne it, carried it around with her. Her grief was so deep and personal she could never share it with anybody, not even his father. And he had watched them drift farther and farther apart until they were no more than strangers who had to live in the same house, take meals together, raise him and Randolph for the good of them. And always Bobby too, the outside child, standing on the outside edges looking in.

  The lights seemed to dim in the place for a moment. Talk waned, the jukebox skipped, then something hummed and the lights came back on bright and the music picked up and people started laughing and talking again. He sipped his whiskey and looked at his watch. It was getting late. If he was going he needed to go now. But something still held him back. He didn’t know what she would say if he went back now. So much time had gone by. There would be those questions again and he knew there were no answers he could give her that would satisfy her. He knew she’d probably already made plans but they weren’t his plans. It was too soon, and too much had happened. She probably wouldn’t put up with much more because all the promises he’d made had not been kept. She might not even let him in this time. Not unless he made some more promises.