Father and Son

by Larry Brown

  “You bastard,” Glen said softly. He watched Bobby standing on the porch and he saw him look directly at the barn. But it was only for a second. His heart gave a leap when Bobby came down the steps, and he gripped the knife in his hand. Bobby stopped at the edge of the yard and just stood there looking around. Didn’t want to get his feet wet Glen guessed. After a while he saw him turn around and go back up the steps and inside the house. The door closed behind him. He kept watching for a few more minutes, waiting to hear him leave, but he never heard the car crank up. He guessed he was looking for her. And he could always put his boots on and come on down there.

  He didn’t know what to do now. Maybe it wasn’t too late to just leave. He didn’t think she knew who he was. He hadn’t spoken to her in years. Never had spoken to her much to begin with. Never had wanted to. But maybe she remembered his voice. Maybe his voice sounded like his daddy’s, and she wouldn’t have forgotten that. He looked at the knife again and stood up and turned. They would never know who had done it. All he had to do was to do it and leave back across the pasture the way he had come, get his car, go find a beer joint somewhere. Sit in there and drink all evening, have a good alibi, just like the one he had for Barlow: I spent the night with my daddy. They couldn’t prove anything if he said: I was in a beer joint all evening, ask anybody.

  But he didn’t want to leave just yet because she hadn’t paid yet, not for what she had caused between him and his mother. It was too late to fix that now, too late to fix anything. They might have been able to work everything out if she had just lived until he could get out and come home and try to repair the things that had gone so wrong, but now she was dead and nothing was going to bring her back and now he couldn’t tell her again that he didn’t mean to shoot his brother or that he didn’t mean to run over that little boy. It all rose up in him and choked him and he fell against a stall with hot tears blinding him, knowing full well about love and the pull of it and the way of flesh and how weak it was, how it could turn you away from the path of what was right and good. He knew that was true because Brother Roy had stood up in the pulpit and shouted those things back on those summer nights when he was caught up in the fever of it and knew that he was saved by Jesus and would be forever clean and washed of his sins, even the one of killing his brother. But then there were those other nights when his daddy was gone and Puppy had run away again, and he was all alone in the house with her. He remembered how scared he was, too scared to tell anybody, and how it went on all that summer until the day he climbed to the barn roof and went across it and walked its ridge with his hands out for balance and came to the edge of the eaves and stood there looking down at the yard so small and the little house and how they came out and called for him to come down, and how he obeyed only because he could not bear to face what Theron already had.

  He went to his knees in the barn, crying and knowing she was hearing it, knowing that she was afraid and thinking of all the nights when he had been afraid, and he went forward on all fours to where she lay in her nest of hay. He saw then that she was indeed beautiful. She was almost as beautiful as his mother, and he began to undress slowly, quietly, taking a great pleasure in it, thinking of how it was going to be, how fine to finally join with that flesh. When he was naked he went to her and once again laid his hand upon her leg. She didn’t move. She didn’t do anything at all. This was so wonderful. This was so right. He had been waiting for it for so long. He knelt there, touching her, smiling in the dim light that came in through the door of the barn. He saw a mouse run across the floor. He heard a distant rumble of thunder that promised more rain.

  Bobby had curled onto his side. The noise of his light snores sawed through the room and the old ceiling fan turned over him, cooling him, rocking him deeper into sleep. Nothing moved in that room except for the fan whisking its blades around and around, a soft white blur that spun above him, making a current of air that stirred the hairs on his head. He dreamed in quiet, his face crushed into the bedspread and his hands drawn up between his knees and his eyes closed tightly against the world. Maybe he moved with Jewel in her bed again, or drove over the country road, walked again the woods where the buried child had lain.

  The phone began ringing in the hall, a little cheery musical tingling that went unheard. He slept on in the quiet room, the telephone ringing, the house still. It sat on the table and rang and rang and the sound of it echoed lightly up and down the hall, small, insistent, slightly shrill, unheard. It rang and rang and then it was silent. It was so quiet in the house that you could have heard the mouse that had come from the barn run across the polished hardwood floor, its little feet scrabbling for purchase on the waxed surface, rounding the curve outside Bobby’s room, leaping down the hall, the little tail waving and making a tiny squeak as it hopped into the bag of yarn where Mary sat nights knitting an afghan for a neighbor’s child.

  Jewel put the phone back into the cradle and sat there looking at it. They’d told her at the jail that he was at home but she guessed he had left again. She still had her work clothes on and she went back to her room to change. She found some shorts and a sleeveless blouse and slipped out of her uniform and put on the other clothes, slid her feet into a pair of sandals. David had gone out into the backyard and she walked through the kitchen and out the back door. He was out there climbing on the swing set.

  She looked up at the sky and wondered if the rain would stop now. But it had been nice last night to see Bobby’s headlights coming through that rain and up into the yard. She wanted to cook supper for him if she could just find him. She wanted to talk to him about Glen coming by. And she wanted him to spend the night again.

  She went down the steps and out into the yard. It was still wet but a lot of it had soaked into the ground. She tipped the grill over and poured the water out of it and set it back. David was swinging now. His shoes were muddy. There was somebody else she wanted to see, too. It was still early enough that she could go by there. She just hoped Glen wouldn’t be there. But she knew they didn’t get along. It was sad, but she didn’t guess anything was going to change it.

  “You want to go see Papaw?” she said.

  He stopped swinging immediately and climbed down and ran across the grass to her.

  “Papaw,” he said. “Let’s go see Papaw, I want to go fishin.”

  “I don’t think we can go fishing today. We got to come back home and cook supper after while. We’ll just go see him a little bit. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said. “But I want to tell him I want to go fishin again.”

  She took his hand and smiled at him and they turned together and went across the yard holding hands. The birds were in the trees again and there were puddles of water in the driveway.

  “You need to put on some clean clothes,” she said.

  “I ain’t dirty, Mama.”

  “Yes you are too. You’ve got mud on your shorts and you need to put on some clean shoes if you’re gonna go see Papaw.”

  “Papaw don’t care if my shoes are muddy.”

  “I know he doesn’t. But I do.”

  She took him in the house and helped him change and she found her car keys. She stuck a pack of cigarettes in her pocket and thought about trying to call him one more time, and then she thought she could do it later. Or maybe just stop by there. There was plenty of time. It was nowhere close to dark yet. The sun hadn’t even started down.

  She told David to wait just a minute and she went back through the kitchen and fastened the latch on the screen door and locked the wooden one. She heard the front screen door slam and David was sitting in a chair on the porch when she went out there.

  “You ready?” she said.

  “Yep.”

  She locked the front door and got him into the car. She was still a little worried about Glen, that look he’d had on his face. And she saw his face in David every time she looked at him, and more than once she had wondered what Glen had looked like as a little boy. He’d never shown her any pictures fr
om home, never had seemed to want to talk about his family, had always dismissed them with a few words. All that anger that had always been inside him. What had happened to his brother. How bad things must have been for him when he was growing up. It wasn’t any wonder that he’d always stayed in trouble.

  “Did you call Papaw?” David said.

  She pulled the car into gear and headed down the driveway, easing through the mud holes. She’d have to wash her car now.

  “We’re just gonna drop by,” she said. “We probably won’t stay long. I just want to see how he’s doing.”

  “What if he’s not home?”

  “I think he’s probably home.”

  She pulled to the end of the driveway and looked out at the road. The tracks of tires were embedded in the mud and she’d never liked driving when it was wet. Somebody had told her they were going to blacktop all the roads soon and she was glad of that.

  She swung out and passed one hand through her hair and rested her elbow on the windowsill. David got up in the seat and walked across it to stand beside her. He put his arm around her shoulder and leaned his head against hers.

  “Sit down, now,” she said. “Be careful.”

  He slid down in the seat but he stayed next to her. She smiled, driving with him close to her, the clouds still hanging in the sky and the fields drab and laden with water.

  “I want to play with Papaw’s dog,” he said.

  “We can’t stay long. We’ll just visit for a little while. I need to talk to Bobby sometime.”

  “You mean Daddy?”

  “No. I mean Bobby. You remember Bobby. He came over to the house the other day. The sheriff. That’s Bobby.”

  He turned his small face up to her. “That’s not Daddy?”

  “No, honey. That’s Bobby.”

  He had that look of confusion on his face that he always wore whenever she got to talking about Bobby or Glen. She never had all the answers for his questions. He saw things on television, he picked up things from conversation. Virgil had told her that David asked him about things on their little fishing trips. She knew it hadn’t been easy on David and that she was to blame for it. But she hoped that most of this would be something he wouldn’t remember much of when he got older. There would be plenty of time to explain things then.

  The red mud sucked at the tires as they drove along. She thought of all the letters she’d written Glen and how few she’d gotten back. They were more like notes, scribbled things she could hardly read sometimes. She would tell him how David was growing and what he was doing, but he wouldn’t say anything about all that. He’d just talk in his notes about how hot it was, how hard they were working him, how much he hated them, what he’d like to do to them. She knew now that she never should have let him back in her bed that first night. But it had been such a strange time. Such a lonely time. The good times with him were what she’d thought about, not that last night across the river when she saw again how he could be. She had hoped those three years would change him, that he’d come home and do the right thing, marry her, claim David, give him his name. But all that was gone now. And Bobby was a good man. With enough time she’d be able to forget about Glen. It might not be easy but she had to think about David. She wanted to try and explain all that to Virgil, to let him know that nothing had changed between them just because she wasn’t going to see Glen anymore. He was still David’s grandfather. There wasn’t any way around that.

  The old house was streaked dark with rain when she pulled up and parked. David was out the door almost before she could get the car stopped.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, but he didn’t wait. He ran across the muddy yard toward the front porch while she was getting out of the car, but Virgil had already heard them pull up and he was coming out with a grin on his face. David ran up the steps and Virgil knelt to hug him instead of picking him up as he usually did. He had him in his lap in a chair by the time she got up on the porch.

  “Hey Papaw,” she said, and she bent over and gave him a hug that he returned with one arm, the other one holding David.

  “It’s about time y’all came to see me,” he said. “Pull you up a chair and set down.”

  “I told David we couldn’t stay long,” she said. She got the other rocker and pulled it up next to the edge of the porch. “How you been doing?”

  “I been doing all right. What about you?”

  She sat down in the chair and got her cigarettes and lighter out of her pocket.

  “We’re doing okay,” she said. The puppy came up from the yard snuffling and sniffing at everything, and David climbed down and started petting him. The puppy slapped his long bony tail against the leg of Jewel’s rocker.

  “Why don’t you go out in the yard and play with him, honey?” she said.

  “Come on, puppy,” David said, and the puppy followed him down the steps. She watched Virgil watching them, smiling a little, rocking slowly in his chair.

  “You want a cigarette?” she said, and held the pack out to him.

  “Thanks.” He reached and got one and pulled some matches from his pocket. She got one for herself and lit it and crossed her legs.

  “That rain cooled it off good, didn’t it?” he said.

  “Feels good out here.”

  “I was just fixin to drink me a beer, Jewel. You want one?”

  “I might drink one with you,” she said, and he got up and went in to get them. David started around the corner of the house with the puppy trotting behind him.

  “Don’t get off too far, now,” she called after him. He waved and went out of sight. She heard Virgil coming back up the hall and he pushed open the screen door and handed her a bottle of beer.

  “Boy that’s cold,” she said, and took a drink of it.

  “I had em in the freezer.”

  He sat back down and she saw him wince just a little.

  “You all right?”

  “Aw yeah. I just slipped down the other day. You seen anything out of Glen lately?”

  She rocked slowly and held the beer on the arm of the chair. “Well. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. He came by the cafe this morning.”

  “Was he drunk?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But he wasn’t sober either?”

  “No sir. He wasn’t sober. I asked him what he was going to do about David and he said he didn’t know.”

  She’d been looking at the floorboards but now she raised her face and watched Virgil. He took a long pull on his beer and then held it on his knee.

  “I asked him the same thing,” he said. “That was Sunday. That’s the last time I’ve seen him.”

  The wind was blowing just a little and riffling through the trees at the edge of the road. Virgil’s rocker made little squeaks on the boards of the porch.

  “I tried to talk to him Saturday night,” Jewel said. “But he said he had to leave. I kept thinking he’d come back that night, but he never did. Did you know somebody broke in my house?”

  Virgil seemed stunned.

  “Naw,” he said. “When was that?”

  “Sunday night. I called Bobby to come over the next morning and then he come back that night and brought me a gun. We were out on the porch and Glen drove by and saw us. Now he thinks … he called me a whore and said David wasn’t his. But I’m afraid it was him that come in my room. I’ve got to do something.”

  Virgil didn’t seem to be listening to her. He was looking at something out across the road. “What do you mean?”

  “I waited on him, Virgil,” she said. “I guess it was crazy but I thought maybe things would be better when he got out. That’s what I was hoping for. But he ain’t gonna marry me. And I don’t even want him to now. I can’t believe how he looked at me. It was like he hated me. I’m sorry to have to say all this to you.”

  Virgil rocked and didn’t answer. He seemed to have withdrawn into some place deep inside himself.

  “David don’t even know who his daddy is,” she
said. “And Glen wouldn’t talk to me about him. So I told him not to come back. I just wanted to let you know. I don’t mean to hurt you. You been good to us and we both love you. You know that.”

  He finally turned his head and she could see the pain on his face. He leaned forward and winced again.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said. “You got yourself to think about. And that boy. You’ve give him every chance in the world to do right by you.”

  “This don’t change nothing between you and me and David. He’s still your grandson. I want you to see him.”

  “I appreciate that,” he said. “You gonna marry Bobby?”

  “I am if he asks me. He’s a good man.”

  Virgil nodded and lifted his beer again. “I imagine he’ll ask you.”

  “I was afraid you’d get upset. I know you’ve worried about all this as much as I have.”

  “I can’t do nothing with Glen. Ain’t been able to for a long time.”

  “I tried to call Bobby,” she said. “They said he was at home but I never did get an answer. I guess he must have left. I was all upset. I wanted to tell him about Glen. Let him know it was over. But I wanted to see you first.”

  He took a last drag from his smoke and threw the butt out into the wet yard, lifted the beer again but then set it back on his knee.

  “You might as well go see if you can find Bobby and tell him. He might be home by now.”