Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

by Tom Franklin

  Was continuing to pray for something you already had wrong? He’d even begun to worry his stuttering, his asthma, might return.

  “Son?”

  He was still against the wall and she took her hand from his shoulder.

  He didn’t answer.

  She sat for a while longer. He breathed the smell of his room, the dust behind his bed.

  “Larry?”

  Finally she sighed and he felt her hand on his shoulder again. “Dear Lord,” she prayed, “thank You for Your grace. Thank You for healing Larry’s stuttering and his asthma. Please,” she said, and he heard that she was trying not to cry, “please, God, send him a special friend. One just-one just for him. Amen,” she said, and left.

  WHEN HE WOKE in the morning his teeth were gritty. He’d gone to sleep without brushing. His mother was in the kitchen cooking breakfast, as if nothing had happened. Through his window he saw Carl’s truck gone and wondered if he’d stayed at Cecil’s all night.

  He slipped outside without eating breakfast and trotted all the way to Silas’s with the book in his back pocket. From his spot behind a tree, he saw Silas’s mother’s car parked in front of the cabin and waited until she came out of the house in her Piggly Wiggly uniform and a hairnet. An old cat that had been sleeping in the sun on the car hood rose and stretched as she scratched behind its ears. Then she shooed it off and got in the car, an old Chevy Nova with rust spots and no hubcaps. She turned its engine over a few times but it finally started and she backed up, the cat sitting in the dirt road watching.

  Presently Silas came out and hopped off the porch and began to throw his baseball. He had a glove now, somehow. Larry came out of the woods and walked up to where Silas stood waiting.

  “Hey,” Larry said.

  “Hey.”

  Larry looked around. Then he thrust out his hand. “I brought you this.”

  Night Shift.

  “I know you don’t like to read, but these are all short stories, some just a few pages, so maybe you’d like to try em.”

  Silas popped his ball into his glove and took the book and looked at it.

  “I need the.22 back,” Larry said.

  “How come?”

  “I just do. Please, Silas.”

  “Tell me how come. You got a lot of em. I ain’t got but one.”

  “I told you. I want it back.”

  “No. We need it.”

  “It’s my daddy’s.”

  “ ‘It’s my daddy’s,’ “ Silas mocked.

  Larry had a lockblade knife in the right back pocket of his jeans, and he slipped a finger into that pocket knowing he’d never use the knife, suddenly even having it was a disadvantage.

  “You got-” Silas said then stopped. He looked past Larry toward the trees, and Larry followed his eyes, knowing what he would see.

  It was Carl with a bottle of bourbon, walking toward them. “Hell,” he yelled, “I followed you, boy. Just right behind you, you never seen me. Not once. Drunk I followed you, boy.” He stumbled but came on. “You ain’t got the slightest idea what’s around you, you and your monster books. In the olden days you’d a been dead a long time ago. Some Indian cutting your throat or some gook with a grenade. You got it easy. Momma’s boy reading the livelong day. Watch your cartoons, play with your dolls, read your funny books. But you can’t unscrew a god dang bolt to save your life, can’t charge a dad blame battery. And here when it comes to knuckles, you can’t even get your own daddy’s gun back from the boy that stole it.”

  He’d arrived before them and looked down at Silas. “You don’t like that do you, boy?”

  Silas folded his arms over his chest, the glove in his right hand. He wouldn’t look at Carl.

  “Answer me, boy.”

  “Naw.”

  “Naw, sir.”

  “Naw, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  Now he looked Carl in the face. “Cause I ain’t stole nothing.”

  “Well, if you ain’t stole nothing then don’t be offended.” He took a long pull from his whiskey and screwed the lid back on and wiped his lips with his fingers. “And if you ain’t stole nothing I’ll take it all back.”

  He looked from one boy to the other. “Well now,” he said. “Peers like we got us a dispute between the races, here.” He looked at Silas. “How old are you, boy?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Tell me who your daddy is.” He waited. “I ain’t gone ask you again.”

  “He dead.”

  “Dead! Well, ain’t that sad. And he didn’t leave you no gun? Ain’t that one of a daddy’s duties? Leave his boy a firearm?

  “Tell you boys what.” Carl walked over to the tree and placed his hand on its trunk, scuffed from Silas’s baseball, and eased himself down until he sat at its base with his legs crossed.

  “So. Yall both want the rifle. You remember in the Bible? Story of King Solomon? Wisest man ever? Two women come before him with a baby both claiming it. Know what he says? Says cut that sum bitch in two, give each woman half.” Carl mimed sawing through a baby and giving Larry one side, Silas the other, all the while talking. “The one woman says, ‘Good, do it,’ and the other says, ‘No, don’t kill that youngun. She can have it.’ And boom, mystery solved. What I’m getting at here, boys, is that yall have put me in the position of Solomon. I got to slice me a baby.”

  “I’ll get the gun,” Silas said.

  “Don’t be so hasty, boy,” Carl said, unscrewing the lid. “I just need me one of them lightbulbs to go off over my head. Then we can figure this out. Wait-” He coughed and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “I got it. Yall got to fight it out. Man to man. White to colored. Whichever one of yall wins gets the gun.”

  At first Silas folded his arms and turned to go, but Carl said if he did he’d go tell his mother, that when she came home tired from her two shifts she’d find Carl Ott waiting inside the house, a mite drunker, too.

  “Fight,” Carl said.

  Neither boy spoke.

  “Now Larry here’s a little older, but on the girly side, so I figure it’s even.”

  Silas said, “You can’t make me.”

  “Oh I can’t?”

  “Naw.”

  “Naw, sir. If yall don’t fight,” Carl said, stripping off his belt, which fell from his fist like a snake unrolling, “I’ll whoop you both.”

  Carl started forward with the belt back and Silas came at Larry and pushed him, not too hard, and Carl stepped away, crouching like a handler at a cockfight. When Larry didn’t push back Silas pushed again and Carl yelled, “Fight,” and Silas pushed a third time and this time Larry grabbed him in a halfhearted hug around Silas’s middle. Silas brought his knee up in Larry’s gut and Larry let go and fell, his belly on fire, his breath lost, grateful for that, otherwise he’d be crying.

  “Get up,” Carl said.

  He rolled over.

  “He down,” Silas said.

  “Get your pansy behind up, boy,” Carl said. He came forward swinging the belt and popped Larry’s rump with it.

  Larry barely felt it over the shame swarming his cheeks. He saw his hands in the dirt as they pushed up. Silas had retreated a few steps. He crouched, ready, when Larry charged, and sidestepped and tripped him and fell on his back and they were wrestling on the ground, dull thuds in the dust, cloth tearing, grunts. From above he heard Carl telling them to bite if they want to, it’s allowed, kneeing in the nuts, allowed, kidney punches, rabbit punches, check, check, eye gouging, go ahead, fight dirty, the whole time swigging from his bottle, until finally Silas had Larry facedown in the dirt. When the dust passed it was over. A matter of seconds.

  “Let-let-let go,” Larry said, his voice muffled.

  “Looks like you won yourself a rifle, boy,” Carl said.

  “Let me-me-me-me-me uh-uh-up,” Larry said again, louder, a note of panic.

  Silas tightened his grip.

  “La-la-la-la-listen at the little stuttering baby,” Carl said.

>   “Quit it Sssssilas!” he cried. “Ple-ple-ple-please.”

  Silas held on.

  “You,” Larry burbled, “you n-n-n-nigger.”

  Silas let him go and rose. He backed up with his hands open.

  Larry got to his knees, brushing dirt from his face, spitting. Tears were falling off his chin now, dripping into the dirt on his shirt. He stood to face Silas, and Silas looked different than Larry had ever seen him. His eyes now flashed the same fierceness the other black boys at school had, that the girl Carolyn had. He was already sorry but knew it was too late.

  Because here came Silas and Larry saw that Silas was fixing to hit him, now on his own. Was coming around with his left hand and Larry waited for it, closing his eyes, and then Larry’s head popped and the world blared with hot white noise and spots of light. When he opened his eyes he was facing another direction. His knees had buckled and he opened and closed his mouth, tasting blood, sorrier yet for what he’d called Silas and seeing, through his flooded vision, Night Shift facedown in the dirt. Somewhere behind him he heard their voices and looked back to a world that would never be the same.

  Carl had dropped his bottle and begun to fall, hugging Silas for balance, the two dancing weirdly through the bitterweed toward the house, Silas fighting to get away, nearly crying himself as he said, “Let me go, Mr. Ott, please,” and Carl slurring something in his ear that made Silas bat his hands away. He broke free and sprinted toward the far woods and Larry was left alone, on the ground, in the weeds, with his father.

  six

  WEDNESDAY MORNING SILAS sat at The Hub’s small back table, chewing the last bite of his second sausage biscuit. He’d called Angie the night before to say he wasn’t coming but they could have lunch the next day. He’d slept badly and even dreamed about Larry Ott, though the dream was gone by the time he sat up amid his tangled wet sheets to reassemble its strange narrative. On the drive to The Hub he called the hospital, and a nurse said Larry had been moved out of recovery and to intensive care. He’d come through surgery but was yet to wake up.

  Silas looked out the window at the mill’s smokestacks, relieved again not to have to face Larry. For so long he’d used that stuttered “nigger” as an excuse to avoid him. Coming back home, rare as he did, from Ole Miss, from the navy, Silas had never asked about Larry. Once in a while as he drank and smoked weed with M &M and their pals, Larry’s name would come up. Scary Larry they’d begun to call him; should they ride over fuck with him? But Silas would change the subject, put Larry out of his mind. Sure he’d heard Carl Ott had died. Who gave a shit.

  “You want another biscuit, sugar?” Marla called. She wore a hairnet over her gray hair and a white T-shirt stained with grease. She was in her early sixties with a potbelly and had been cooking here when he’d been in school. She had leathery hands and a voice like a man. She bore an uncanny family resemblance to Roy French but damn if that woman couldn’t make a sausage biscuit.

  “No thank you, Miss Marla,” he said, dabbing his chin with a napkin from the aluminum dispenser on the table and adjusting his seat on the bench so his handcuffs wouldn’t pinch. He wiped his lips and sipped his Pepsi. He loved the food here, especially the hot dogs, which reminded him of Chicago. Marla used kielbasa and grilled them almost black, with a lot of ketchup and mustard and relish and chopped onion. She dabbed hot sauce on top of it and your lips would be burning when you finished.

  He got up and put his notebook in his back pocket and took his hat from the chair beside him and walked past an aisle of fishing tackle and cosmetic items and up to the checkout. Facing him a wall of cigarettes, lighters, cheap cigars, aspirin, BC powders, and energy pills.

  “I’m bagging you up a couple of hot dogs,” Marla said over her shoulder. She had a cigarette in her mouth, the smoke a constant updraft under the hood of her grill.

  “Preciate it,” he said, passing his hat from hand to hand.

  In a moment she came to the counter and handed him one of her greasy bags.

  “Thank you, Miss Marla,” he said, long past even the pretense of paying her. Instead, as she turned to get something behind her, he slipped a five into the tip jar.

  “I saw that,” she said, turning back to hand him four ketchup packets and a few salts and peppers. She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray by her register. “I heard somebody shot Larry Ott.”

  “Sure did. I’m headed out there in a bit. Look around.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “He’s in the ICU.”

  “Lord, oh Lord Lord Lord,” she said, her face grave. “First Tina Rutherford, then M &M, and now this.” She clucked her tongue. “Well, they say bad things come in threes, so we got our quota for a while ain’t we.”

  “I’d say we do.”

  She reached absently behind her for another pack of Marlboros and began to unwrap the cellophane. “You know, 32, I always felt bad for him. Larry.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, sugar. Whole county thinks he’s a kidnaper or rapist or murderer or all three, but I remember he used to come in here buy comic books. Back when we carried em. The politest thing, that boy. Wouldn’t hardly look you in the eye.”

  “You ever see him now?”

  She shook her head and slid a cigarette out and lit it with a Bic. “I had me a girl worked the register few years ago. Didn’t hear when it happened but she told me later, all proud, how she told that so-and-so he wasn’t welcome in this ‘family place.’ That was about the time I let her go.”

  Silas nodded and put his hat on.

  “You gone see Roy today?” Marla asked.

  “Don’t know.” He opened the bag, still warm, and slipped the condiments in.

  “You do, tell him I got in some fresh catfish.”

  “I will. Thanks.” He raised the sack, greasier than when she’d given it to him. “For this, too.”

  “You welcome, sugar,” she said, smoking.

  HE PARKED BY the gas tanks in front of Ottomotive and got out jiggling Larry’s keys. The shop looked the same, its white-painted cement blocks pleasantly crumbling at the edges and sprigs of grass sprouting along the foundation. He turned. Nothing moving out here, the motel across the highway silent, a child’s bike parked by the front door. Had Larry caused this section of town to dry up? Fulsom had moved east, sure, but why? Silas tossed the keys in the air and caught them. Then he got back in his Jeep, smell of hot dogs, and pulled past the gas tanks and parked where Larry did each day, over that Ford-shaped rectangle of dead grass, noting the lack of an oil stain. Larry’s vehicle must be the most cared-for in the county, a patient with its own full-time doctor, Larry riding along, ear cocked for any rattle, hoping for a knock, a belt to squeal, the brakes to whine.

  He selected a key, and when he pushed the office door open a slab of light, punched through with his shadow, fell into the room. He reached in and clicked the light on. Smell of grease and old dust, not unpleasant. The office was small, a desk to the right, a few chairs along the wall under a calendar, an ancient Coke machine and crates of empty bottles, bookshelves.

  Of course, he thought. Books. They were everywhere, double-stacked and dog-eared, novels among automotive repair manuals in brown binders. At the other end of the room another door led into the shop. He left it open and fumbled along the wall for a light switch, finding it and splashing the shop into view, a large room, high ceiling with exposed wooden rafters, car bumpers and long pipes and hoses stored up among the beams. The back walls were hung with tools and belts. There was a shelf of Interstate batteries. A metal worktable with a gutter along the back for collecting oil. There were fifty-five-gallon drums stacked in one corner and a large hand jack in another beside a tall red toolbox on casters. He came forward and opened the top drawer, the smoothest bearings he’d ever felt.

  He pulled the chain that raised the bay door and stood watching the highway, struck by a memory. When he’d heard about his mother’s death several years ago, he’d driven down from Oxford. On
the way into Fulsom, he’d gone right past here and from the car window seen Larry standing where Silas stood now, in this spot. Silas had kept his eyes forward, as if Larry could’ve seen him, as if he’d been standing there all those years, watching for Silas to come back. It had bothered him, and he’d tidied up his mother’s affairs quickly, ready to get the hell out of south Mississippi. She’d already paid for her funeral and the little plot out in a country graveyard, already done the work to get ready for her own death; all Silas had to do was sign some papers and collect her few belongings, which included Larry’s old rifle. He’d taken it all, the gun in a carrying case, back with him, passing Ottomotive on the way out of town, too, Larry standing there, again, Silas facing forward.

  AT LARRY’S HOUSE he got out and stood in the sun. He looked at Larry’s piece of sky, his view of trees, his house. He breathed Larry’s air.

  Glancing down, he saw something twinkle among the rocks and dirt of the road. He pushed his hat back on his head and took off his sunglasses, knelt. Glass. Without touching it he lowered his face toward the road, which already gave off heat. Little square pieces, thick. Windshield, or a window. Not many pieces, a few here and there, as if somebody had cleaned most of it up. Now on all fours like a dog, he eased his eyes over the road.

  He got a few evidence bags out of the cardboard box of things he’d brought from his Jeep and used tweezers to pick up several pieces.

  Next he gave the yard a thorough walk-through, circling the house once, again, finding nothing, not even a cigarette butt, telling himself you couldn’t go too slow, that anything might be the piece that solves the puzzle.

  French came on the radio, asking did he have news. Silas said negative.

  “You been to see him? Ott?”

  Silas said he hadn’t and felt French waiting.

  “He ain’t awake yet. I’ll go when he wakes up.”