by Larry Brown
“Hey Glen,” a voice said. He turned his head to see who’d spoken so nicely. A woman was standing there and he didn’t recognize her. Red hair, tight jeans, a pair of bright red lips. A fuzzy sweater that outlined her small pointy breasts.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
He smiled with effort, waved his whiskey at her with a vague motion of both agreement and indifference.
“Not right off. You look a little familiar.”
She grinned and moved up closer and lowered her voice.
“Well I hope I do. Maybe you just don’t recognize me with my clothes on.”
He searched his memory with nothing coming and then a dim bulb came on deep in the besotted depths of his brain. He pointed to her. “Linda?”
“Brenda. You a little drunk, ain’t you?”
“I ain’t sober, that’s for damn sure. Don’t want to be. Come on and let me buy you a drink.”
She got up next to him and she smelled good. She never stopped smiling. He signaled the bartender and suddenly he stood before them.
“What you want?” Glen asked her.
“Tom Collins.”
“Gimme another one too,” he said to the bartender.
The bartender turned away to make the drinks and she put her hand on his forearm. Pink nails with cheap rings garnishing her fingers. She had on a lot of makeup and eye shadow. A whore’s disguise.
“So,” she said. “I heard you been gone for a while.”
“Yeah. Had to take a little vacation down in the Delta.”
“Well. I’ve missed seeing you. You back for good now?”
He rattled the ice in his glass and drank some more of the whiskey. It was watery now, tasted flat.
“Yep. I’m home to stay. Gonna straighten up and fly right.”
“Oh yeah? I remember when you didn’t use to. I done been married and divorced since I seen you. You ought to come on and go out to the lake with me. They having a dance out there tonight. I’ll pay your way in.”
The bartender brought their drinks and looked warily at Glen but he didn’t notice. He pulled out some money and put it on the bar.
“What time is it?” he said, and then he looked at his watch. It was fifteen minutes till eleven.
“We got plenty of time,” she said. “They don’t close till two. We can catch up where we left off if you want to.”
She was still smiling at him and she had moved in closer and put one of her knees between his legs and she was looking into his eyes and rubbing the side of his waist. She lifted her drink without looking at it and sipped it, watching him.
He remembered her now, or at least a smaller and younger version of her laboring beneath him in a motel outside town on Highway 7, dark nights going from the parking lot to the lights outside the room and drinking whiskey at the door, oral acts performed on top of the bedcovers and the way she could pull her knees almost up beside her ears. She had a false nipple low on her left breast and she used to go into a state of near catatonia when the orgasms shuddered through her body.
“I was thinking about going to see somebody,” he said.
“Go see em later. I want to get my hands on you again.”
She moved her hip against him and turned it so that it shielded the movement of her hand when she reached down and touched the front of him. He started rising up against her fingers. She sipped her drink, gave him her little knowing smile.
“Hell yeah,” he said. “Drink up.”
In a cavern of wood and dim lights he staggered around with her over the floor, bumping other patrons, his feet dragging, a loud band up on a plywood stage and clusters of people at tables along the walls. They stopped serving him and she had to get their drinks. Kissing her in the corner, mauling her breasts with his hands, people watching them, him unaware or just not caring who saw. Finally somebody came over and told them to be nice or leave and they left.
He fell once in the rain but they just laughed about it and she got him back into her car and he reached for her when she got in on her side, pushing her back against the door with the rain coming down and the heat of their bodies and their breath fogging up the windows to where nobody could see in.
She didn’t want to there but he locked all the doors and pulled her sweater over her head and got her pants off and they managed it on his side of the car, her head bumping against the headliner sometimes, a cramped and sweaty encounter, their bodies slick and shining in the weak light that came from the front of the club. He rested, drank whiskey from a flask in her purse. She stretched out on the seat and tried to revive him with her mouth. Later he dimly remembered a few minutes here and there of sex and when he woke he was back at the catfish place and she was trying to pull him out of the car, screaming at him. He tried to fend her off with one hand, batting at her, but she dragged him out and he fell in the mud. The rain poured down on him and plastered his hair to the back of his head while he cussed her and tried to get up. It was hard for him to get up. Everybody had left and there was just his car in the parking lot. He made his way to it and crawled into the backseat and put his muddy head down on the mildewed upholstery. He spoke a last unintelligible plea for something, death or release or maybe just for the rain to stop so that he could find his way to Jewel’s. That was the last thing he knew until he woke up in the morning hearing voices. His head badly overripe and feeling swollen, his tongue thick and furred with some disagreeable taste as if somebody had shit in his mouth. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Two black women in cook’s clothes were looking at him.
“That white boy drunk,” one said.
“Shoo,” the other one said. “Look what a mess. He done been crawlin around in the mud.”
“Oh God,” he said, and put his head back down on the seat, trying to ignore the sun that was beginning to fill the car with light.
Jewel woke him just before daylight and stepped from the room in her robe to check on David. He was asleep in his bed, lying on top of the covers. She worked the sheet from beneath him and put it over him and went to the kitchen to put on coffee. When she walked back into the bedroom Bobby was lying back against the pillows. He was smoking a cigarette and looking out the window. He turned his face at her step and she bent over him, kissed him.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Mornin. How you feel?”
She sat down and he scooted over a little for her.
“I feel good. I feel a lot better.”
He nodded and drew on his cigarette.
“He asleep?”
“Yeah.”
“You think he heard anything?”
“Naw. He sleeps like a log. Like you.”
He smiled at her and turned in the bed. “Did I snore?”
“I started to get up and go sleep in the living room one time.”
“Well. I should have gone on home I guess.”
She reached out and put her hand on his stomach. Ran her nails through the black hairs there. “Why?”
“Hell. Mama.”
“I can’t tell if she approves of me or not.”
“That don’t matter.”
“You got to live with her, though.”
“No I don’t.”
She smiled at that, bent down and kissed him again. Then she got up and took off her robe and let him watch her dress. After a while he got up and put his clothes on, got his hat, grabbed the gun in its holster, and by then the coffee had finished perking and he drank a quick cup at the kitchen table. She eased him out the front door and kissed him by the side of the car with the sun just up. He cranked the car and she leaned down to kiss him again and told him to call her.
“I will.”
She turned around and went back into the house and into David’s room. He was still sleeping. She sat on the bed for a while watching his face, the soft chin, the hair a little too long, the little dimples on the backs of his knuckles where they lay slack over the sheet. Something had changed now. She wasn’t worried anymore. She got up an
d went into the kitchen to start making their breakfast. The cat came in and sat watching her and she talked to it as if it knew what she was saying.
The top edge of the sun was beginning to rise from the trees on the river. Bobby splashed through holes of water in the road as he drove along. He had to have a shower, fresh clothes, a shave. The rain had drenched the trees and the leaves stood bright and shining and the rows of cotton held long trenches of muddy water, the little creeks he crossed over swirling foam and sticks and sucking at the limbs that trailed down from the banks.
He drove with his hand resting lightly on the wheel and the memory of her giving him a peace he had never felt. He’d slept little but he didn’t feel tired. And there were things to do.
It was 6:30 when he looked at his watch and Mary was probably up by now, making biscuits, making coffee. She would already have gone to his room.
He turned off onto his road and the sun kept rising through the windows on the right side of the car. Mist was lifting from the fields and the sun flashed on the weeds still wet from the rain.
He slowed, turned into the yard, and parked the car in front of the porch. He left his keys in it and when he got up to the door it was open. He walked in and found her in the kitchen, standing at the sink and looking out the window.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Morning.”
That was all he got out of her and he couldn’t read her mood. She’d probably been worried about him. She always worried about him.
“Is there any coffee?”
“Over there in the pot.”
She kept looking out the window. He set his hat on the table and took off his revolver and put it on a chair. He looked down at the mud on the heels of his boots, saw where he’d tracked it on her nice clean floor. She hadn’t noticed. He sat down and took his boots off and then went across the floor in his stocking feet to the corner cabinet and took down two cups.
“Want me to pour you some?”
“I’ve already had some.”
He put one cup back and poured the other one full of coffee, stirred in some sugar, and reached inside the icebox for the milk.
“What’d you do?” she said. “Work late?” She’d turned around and she didn’t look happy.
“Not exactly,” he said, and took the coffee and the milk back to the table with him.
“You sleep at the jail?”
He poured some milk into his coffee and reached inside his pocket for a cigarette. Once he had it lit he looked up at her.
“I spent the night with Jewel.”
“You mean you slept with her?”
“Yes.”
She looked down at the floor.
“I knew that was going to happen,” she said. “Don’t you care what people think?”
The anger came quickly and he was surprised at the level of it. He wasn’t going to hurt her if he could help it. Their fights had been few, but when they came they had always been bad. So he tried to head it off.
“Tell you what, Mama. I’m gonna drink this coffee and take a shower and shave and I’ll get me some breakfast in town. I got a lot to do today and I don’t want to start my day off having an argument with you. So let’s just be nice, and I’ll sit here and drink my coffee, and I’ll be out of here in about twenty minutes. We can talk about it tonight if you want to.”
He lowered his face and took a sip of his coffee. It was rich and hot and sweet. He hoped she’d hush. All she had to do was behave.
“That girl,” she said, and he held up one hand.
“Hold it. Don’t say nothing about her.”
“That boy’s not yours. He’s Glen’s and you know it. What are you gonna do, marry her?”
She was looking at him with eyes he hadn’t seen before, and she took a few steps toward him.
“If she’ll have me I’m going to. This has gone on long enough.”
“What about the way she ran wild with him for years? Do you think people are just going to forget about that? Don’t you want to get elected again? Don’t you care anything about your career?”
“This ain’t the only job in the world. I can raise cows. Or drive nails if I have to.”
“Drive nails? You’re the sheriff. Did you work this hard to give it all up?”
She came closer to the table and he forgot about his coffee and set it down.
“Listen, Mama,” he said. “I grew up without a daddy. David ain’t going to.”
He saw the tears well up in her eyes and it was too late to take it back. But he would have given almost anything not to have said it. She put one hand up to her face and covered it. She looked old and small and weak. He started to get up and put his arms around her, but she took the hand away from her face and came closer to the table.
“Why do you think it’s up to you to marry her? Why don’t you ask yourself why Glen never married her?”
“Because he’s sorry, Mama.”
He looked down at the table for a moment. He had to make her see, and he looked back up into her eyes.
“I don’t give a damn about what happened before,” he said. “She made some mistakes, yeah. She was young. I was too at one time. It don’t mean people can’t change and straighten up their lives.”
She leaned over the table to him like some wraith descending upon him and her eyes were filled not with anger but with worry, the faded blue of them searching over his face in something like awe.
“What if you marry her and he starts coming around again? What will you do then?”
“That ain’t gonna happen.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I ain’t gonna let it.”
She straightened up and rubbed her hands along her arms. The light was coming through the window and she turned to look at it as she moved away from the table. She went to stand at the sink, still hugging herself. Some birds were singing out there in the wet leaves.
“Wild,” she said. “I know about that. I was always crazy about Virgil. But my father didn’t like him. Wouldn’t let him come around. So I had to see him in other places. Sometimes I slipped out. There was a place we’d meet when they thought I was asleep.”
“I think I’d just as soon not hear this,” he said. He reached to pick up his coffee but his hand was shaking. He spilled some trying to take a sip. He looked at her and could see the gray strands in her hair. He could imagine what she looked like in her youth and he knew that had to be a hard thing for her to turn loose of, like everybody had to one day. He could remember her face leaning into him when he was a child and she held his chin in her hand and combed his hair and how young and pretty her face was in that dim memory. He imagined her the way that Virgil had first seen her.
“You never know what the future’s going to bring,” she said. “I just don’t want to see you hurt. I’m sure she’s a nice girl.”
She turned around to him and he sat silent in the chair watching her. She wiped at the wetness on her cheeks with the backs of her fingers.
“Look at me,” she said. “Like I’m the one to try and give you any advice.”
“It’s okay, Mama. Everything’s going to be all right. You’ll see.”
“Have you asked her yet?”
“Not yet. I don’t know what she’ll say yet. And I wanted to talk to you.”
“Well,” she said in a low voice. “I hope everything will be okay. I just want what’s best for you.”
And then her voice broke and she came to him. He got out of the chair and put his arms around her and he hugged her tight. She was so small under his arms. She cried a little more and then she quit. He turned loose of her and watched her face.
“You going to be okay?”
“Of course I will. I’m sorry for acting like that. I just want you to be happy.”
“Just give me a little time. I’ve got to work things out with Jewel. And probably Glen, too.”
She took a step away and turned halfway to the window, rubbing one hand with the other.
“Glen’s what I’m worried about. The whole time he was in school he always looked at me like he hated me. I guess he does.” She glanced back at him, and to him she looked scared. “Be careful with him. You don’t know what he might do.”
“I’ll worry about that later,” he said. “I got to get on to work. There’s something I’ve got to do today.”
“What?”
He picked up his hat and put on his gun and took a last sip from the coffee on the table.
“I’ll tell you tonight,” he said.
Puppy was sitting on a five-gallon bucket he had turned over and he was taking a starter apart with a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench while having his morning coffee. Engine blocks and hubcaps and the crushed fenders of cars and trucks lay about him. A hoist for hauling up motors hung from a limb on a big tree in the yard. He was trying to get the bendix off and put a new one on and his tennis shoes were wet from the dew.
He dropped the screwdriver in his lap, picked up his coffee, and eyed the road. He had to get his sign out there today so that people would know he was open for business again. In a way he was glad. He liked working for himself and setting his own hours.
He looked toward the trailer and wondered if she was awake yet. Sometimes she didn’t get up until nine or ten, depending on when the television woke her. He sipped his coffee and noticed that it was getting a little cold in the cup, so he thought he’d ease back inside and see if she was awake.
He put his tools and the starter on the ground on a rag and got up and walked to the steps, concrete blocks stacked against the sill of the door. He’d been meaning to build a front porch but there was always too much to do. He didn’t look at Virgil’s car as he went past it. It was just another reminder of things that needed to be done. He knew his daddy needed his car. Some days he just couldn’t seem to get going. But now that he had all this time maybe he could get around to it. His daddy didn’t need to walk everywhere with that bad leg. It probably wouldn’t take him over half a day to fix it.