by Rene Steinke
Over at the door, Char and Willa stood with Rush, saying good-bye, Char’s face puffy and tired looking, her hand on Willa’s back. Willa stood slumped over, arms folded at her breasts as if she were cold. Suddenly Lee didn’t resent all of Char’s churchgoing and prayers—ruse or not. Lee only wished for them to have whatever solace in the world there was.
UNTIL CHRISTMAS PASSED, she kept herself occupied, sending presents to her nieces and nephews. She wrote cards to all the relatives back in Beaumont she never saw anymore. She served a holiday dinner in the soup kitchen at the Quaker church. She watched the Christmas specials on TV—it was all an indulgence she’d used to share with Jess—Jack only had so much use for the holidays. And the busyness, the forced cheer of it, gave back to her a small part of maternal duty.
She spent Christmas with her brother and his family in Texas City, glad to be around people who’d once known Jess. This was how most people grieved, she thought, sitting at the fire with Jonathan and his two boys. If she’d felt no pain at moments like this, then it would have been as if Jess had never been there at all, but the pain was virile and energetic—it kept Jess close to her tonight at the dinner table and next to the fragrant tree. When she said to Jonathan, “I’m done with protesting. I’m retired,” she was happy to find that she meant it.
“I never liked it,” he said. “I gotta be honest. I didn’t like the way it took you over. But I always thought you were probably right.”
“It’s not enough. I’ve gone through almost all of my money. And now they want to sue me. I’m just tired, I think.”
“Well, aren’t we all?” he said. “I hear that.” His cheeks were red and puffy from drink, sentimental and hangdog in the way their father’s had been. “That’s why it’s so good to have you here. To just take some time, you know? The boys haven’t seen you since the summer.” Sleeping in the same house as her brother again, seeing Jess’s eyes in his eyes and seeing the echo of Jess’s nose in the noses of her nephews, she was almost able to feel her daughter’s presence, just sitting still there at the table. Until they went to bed, she stayed up and taught her nephews how to play poker, and they’d played for hours, and she’d tried to remember all the strategies Jack had taught her, tried to be wise and shrewd for them, as they ate cookies and one of them held a candy cane in his mouth like a pipe.
DEX
DEX AND WILLA MET at the McDonald’s. The guy with the small oval-shaped head sat where he always sat, in the window, with a plate of fries and three or four Bibles spread on the table before him. He furiously scribbled into a spiral notebook.
“My mom went to high school with him,” said Willa, nodding. She leaned in close and whispered. “He had a brain tumor ten years ago, and after the operation, this is what he does all day, writes sermons that no one will hear. She said he was the salutatorian of their class, that he used to work as an engineer before.”
Dex wanted Willa to know that he’d been defending her. He remembered Bishop’s pointed nose and tiny eyes, and wished he’d made him bleed more. “At least he’s still alive. That DJ my mom liked to listen to on the radio—she was hilarious—she just died from a brain tumor.”
“It scares me, the idea of a ball of something bad inside your brain.”
“Well, I guess they’re pretty rare.”
“I don’t know? My mom knows someone else who died from a tumor. She was the valedictorian of her class. Sometimes if I get a headache, I feel around on my head for lumps.” She laughed.
“I just try not to think about those kinds of things. If my head hurts, I take an Advil.”
She genuinely seemed happy to see him, and he felt guilty about this—as if some part of him felt he finally had the advantage.
On the table someone had left a Friendswood Dispatch, and Willa picked it up, opened the pages, and started reading the headlines about the Mustangs in a mock-serious voice, which made him laugh. “MUSTANG MANIA! THE MUSTANGS MUST HAVE IT!!” He hadn’t known before that she could be so funny. She wouldn’t care that he’d been a trainer, that he’d felt this responsibility to football, even if he couldn’t play.
She held up the cover page for him, two murky photos of the Banes site, and a headline that said “TAFT PROPERTIES STILL TO BUILD?” In the gray-blue photographs, there seemed to be a giant rectangular box pushed out of the ground. Willa read the article in her normal voice, and she seemed curious, so he tried to act interested too. The photos supposedly showed that the toxins buried a decade ago had come up from the ground, proving that the site was not safe for building homes nearby. But the reporter went on, “No evidence of the emerged tank was there after the sighting was reported in September, according to Mayor Wallen.”
“That’s my mom’s old friend,” said Willa, pointing to a name. “I just saw her the other day at a party. My parents think she’s lost it. But there must be something up with that field.” An agency said they would investigate the pictures, and send someone out to the site for monitoring, and then he lost interest until he came to this part: “‘All I’ve got is my reputation,’ said Avery Taft. ‘It means a great deal to me. And when someone accuses me of being careless with plans, careless with human health, well, that makes me upset. All the hallelujah is just false chemistry.’”
“Well, it’s definitely the warehouse on the Banes site in the picture. I went mudding over there once.”
She seemed impressed by this. “Was that fun?”
“Kind of.” He wanted to reassure her. “I don’t know—that container—even if it is what she says it is—looks pretty small to me.”
They drank their milk shakes, and he finally told her about the fight with Cully and Bishop, but not what had been said. “I don’t know what happened but I kind of went crazy on them.”
She was looking down, picking at the blue polish on her nails, and he realized how stupid he’d been to mention their names, to try to impress her just because he’d thrown a punch. “Hey, do you want to go for a walk or something?”
“No, my friend’s about to pick me up. Do you know Dani?”
“Oh yeah, sure.”
She tapped her fingers on the table as if she were playing keys on a keyboard. “I’m not supposed to see her, so we had to make a plan.”
“Oh.” He wanted more time with her. “Hey, maybe we could do this again. Get a bite to eat sometime.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Her eyes whisked away from him. It didn’t seem possible, but she was more beautiful to him now, even under the harsh lights, which exaggerated the dark circles under her eyes and the black makeup. She looked sad and vaguely foreign and more original than the other girls he knew, but only he would be able to see this.
“I should go outside.” She gathered her books.
“I’ll wait with you.”
The car was a beat-up black sedan, the kind almost no one drove anymore. Dani didn’t look at him, but Willa touched his shoulder when she said good-bye.
DEX BEGAN TO GET BACK AT PAMMY by occasionally lifting a few dollars from the top of a tip pile left on one of her tables. It made her arrogance more bearable, especially on the nights when he worked for her alone. He gave a third of his money to his mom, even though she didn’t ask for it.
Once or twice a week, he’d stay late, knowing his mom wouldn’t like him hanging out at the Casa Texas dance hall if she knew about it, but he’d come to need those nights, and he even convinced Weeks to join him a few times. Mostly they sat and watched the women, their glittered eyelids and glossy lips; their long, shiny hair; and the curve of breasts, big and small, under snug shirts. Dex liked their tight jeans, the muscles of bare shoulders just where the tank top strap hit. Weeks was impressed whenever one of the ladies asked Dex to dance, and it happened more often than not with the regulars because he could two-step, and they knew he wouldn’t make a move on them either. Weeks never got asked. He just sat back in his chair with his arms fol
ded “watching the ladies.”
Dex had become acquainted with a few of them, who, in between songs, liked to give him advice. “Never tell a girl she looks skinny or fat—always say she’s just right.” “Girls like questions. Remember that. Ask your date a lot of questions about herself.” “Girls like a man in a proper shirt.” Sometimes he thought of Willa when they said these things, and sometimes he didn’t, but he liked these women, with their fragrant hair and smooth faces. He liked feeling his hand on a taut waist. He felt protective of them, even though they were older than him; and once or twice, he’d saved a woman from a drunk who seemed to be bothering her, just by asking her to dance. He’d watch the relief come over her face, and enjoyed the man’s scowl as they left him at a table with his lonely drink.
One night Mr. Holgine walked up to Dex and handed him a hundred dollars. “Here’s your bonus. I see how hard you work.” Holgine always left by ten p.m., but he must have heard about Dex staying late sometimes. “I talked to your dad the other day and bragged on you.”
“Thanks.”
“But see here—I want you to tell me if you see any stealing around here, alright? Or any slacking off? That would be real helpful.”
Dex didn’t want to be paid for spying, but he didn’t want to offend Mr. Holgine either, so he nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”
His mother was still mad at him, but it helped when one night he took her and Layla to Casa Texas for dinner, and Mr. Holgine personally brought them extra fish tacos to taste and margaritas for his mom. “Dex is driving, right?” He winked.
“I see why you like working here,” his mom said, her face flushed. “The people are real nice.”
He wanted to bring Willa there, to show himself to her in that atmosphere, introduce her around, maybe they could even dance.
HAL
HAL HAD BEEN UP LATE, half watching a game on TV in the dark, among shadows of furniture and upholstered pillows. The game ended, the Cowboys lost, and he opened his laptop to check email. There it was. “Wanted to let you know Cully’s doing a fine job, José said. Not a brick out of place. Avery.”
“Goddamnit.” Hal slammed his computer shut, and the shadows around him just sat there. In the bedroom, Darlene would be snoring softly, wearing the flannel nightgown that reminded him of his mother. His head felt too heavy to hold up, his shoulders sore and fatigued. He pictured himself taking off his pants and getting into bed next to Darlene, and had a strong feeling he was not going to get the exclusive listing from Avery Taft. He’d had his chance, and he’d failed somehow.
Cully should have been working an internship, doing something for his future, and instead Avery had him doing toady work, work whose danger Hal had played down to Darlene because he’d been so desperate to have a line back to Avery.
He felt his face burning in the dark. He felt the smallness of his house around him, the cheapness of its furnishings.
He had to fight against this defeatism. Attitude was everything. He’d given a hundred dollars to the Victory Temple last week, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted to give more. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
There had to be an answer to this. He was a good man. He loved his wife and son. If he prayed, if he was patient, there had to be an answer. He lay there all night, waiting, stared out the window at the streetlight’s metal hook and luminous tent.
The next night, around eleven, Avery called to say copper wire had been stolen. Two bolts had gone missing, plus some copper-plated pipes that had been locked up in one of the homes, and Hal began to worry about Cully out there in that trailer all alone. Plus, if Darlene found out the half of it, she would be furious.
He told her where he was going, her curves hidden beneath a thick white shirt, her eyes red from watching TV, but he lied about the reason, said he was just going out there to keep Cully company for a couple of hours.
“It must be boring,” she said, “just sitting out there. I hope he’s at least using the time to get some homework done.” She was talking from the side of her mouth, as she did more and more lately for some reason, as if it was too much trouble for her to turn her face to him.
“God willing,” he said, hiding his worry with a smile and wink. He was almost too good at hiding things from her now.
“Bye, hon,” she said, snuggling down into the couch pillows, some woman on the TV cooing about diamonds.
Hal called to tell Cully he was coming, and Cully said he’d leave the gate open for him.
When he got to the site, he parked next to the sign that said NO TRESPASSING: TAFT PROPERTIES. He took a flashlight from the kit in his car, and used it to find the gate in the hurricane fence, which Cully had left slightly ajar. He wiggled the beam over the empty territory ahead. As he walked through the dirt and weeds, the beam caught on a gray rabbit, hopping through the long grass, and its frenetic aliveness startled him. He could just see the glare from the TV dribbling through the trailer’s window. As soon as he got there, he opened the screen door, knocked, and yelled, “Hey, it’s your dad!”
As he walked in, Cully stood up, his plaid shirt untucked, his face slack, and his hair all mussed, though it was only eleven. There was a book open on the table, an empty glass, and a crumpled bag of potato chips. Hal didn’t want to think about what Cully might have been doing, but he certainly didn’t look ready to catch anyone at anything. Hal had expected to find him at attention, his posture straight, eyes alert.
“You alright, man?”
“Yeah!” Cully said, rubbing his eyes. “I guess it’s just been quiet out here—you know, nothing happens. Once in a while I go outside and stare at the dark, listen for cars.”
“You’ve got a big responsibility here.”
“Yes, sir.”
He told Cully what Avery had said about someone stealing copper wire and pipes. “Yeah, Dad, he told me, but I don’t know—if José didn’t see anything, I don’t see how I’m supposed to.”
“Look, the way he’s paying you, I think you do whatever Avery says, right? You’d better keep your head up. Where do you sit? Over here by the window?” Hal got up and went to the cushioned bench next to the spot that looked out in the direction of the buildings. “You can see the warehouse pretty well, I guess.”
“Depends on the night.”
“But you’d see a car coming along, wouldn’t you? Avery should light it all better. I’ll ask him about that.” But even as Hal said it, he knew he probably wouldn’t. It had to be just some kids that had stolen the wire—a one-time thing.
“And you go on rounds?”
“Two or three times a night.”
“Well, I’m going to sit up here with you. At least for tonight. Give us a chance to catch up at least, right?”
Hal looked at Cully, his muscled shoulders, that face, young and plump, the mouth always angled, but he had the sense that his son’s sleepy-eyed passiveness might actually be fear.
He’d been ignoring it all this time—that Cully just wanted to make amends—but Hal blamed himself that the thing with the girl had ever happened. He hadn’t set a good enough example. He had never said to Cully directly, “Look, you need to honor a woman’s body.” He had never said, “Protect the weak.” He had never talked to him about how he’d tamed his own lusts. It hadn’t been easy.
Cully turned on the TV, and they watched the end of a basketball game. The frantic push to the net, and one black guy’s long arm octopusing upward. Hal much preferred the slow, magisterial span of football—but he let himself go with the frantic back-and-forth, got fascinated by a freakishly tall white guy who barely had to move once he got under the basket.
“Dad,” Cully said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m really okay out here by myself. I can handle it.”
“Oh, I just wanted to talk, to tell you the truth.”
Cully sighed. He was so far away, with his legs up on the chair, denim fading at the muscles, his hair too long over the ears and all awry—Cully was drifting even farther now. What was in that cheap wood cabinet over the sink—not groceries? Tools, he guessed, flashlights. He rubbed the skin just under the top button of his shirt, an itch there. And just then, he made a bargain with God: I’ll make it right with Cully, and you can please swing the blessings my way—get Avery to set things in order.
“I want you to forget about that thing that happened, son.” He wanted to win his boy back, to feel his own benevolent authority again. “Get it out of your mind and stay as far away from that sort of thing as you can. Stay the hell away, you hear me?” He was surprised at the violence in his voice and saw his hand fisted on the table, the wedding ring glinting in the one light. “God gave us sin so we can know his mercy. And you know his mercy, boy, you got me?”
Cully gave him a salute.
LEE
SHE’D BEEN NAPPING when the knocking at the door woke her, and with her mouth tasting like salt water, her hair in her face, she propelled herself to the door. There was Atwater, his face flushed and birdlike, shiny with sweat.
He held out some papers. “I found out some things. You’ll want to know.”
She felt almost too tired to stand and hold the door open, a lethargy in her limbs, and a phrase from Avery Taft’s letter repeated itself: Cease and desist . . . She invited Atwater inside anyway, and poured them each a glass of iced tea. They sat at the kitchen table.
“I think I told you I had a little money put aside for research. And here’s what I’ve got: you know, Garbit gave Rue Banes a lot of the oil remains that she used for refining—that was true. They offered to help her with the technical side of disposing of the leftover chemicals after refining, what to do with all the stuff she couldn’t use, and then they didn’t. They just didn’t. But they knew even then that the oil solvents were bad. I have that right here.” He tapped at the stack of papers.