“You never been to a brewery. I need to—”
“Go to the bathroom.” She led him there by the arm and watched as he knelt, heaving up burning threads of bile. She put a hand towel under the tap and rubbed it cool on the back of his neck until he finished. “Get in bed. I’ll clean up.” She took him to his room.
He slept and woke, avoiding that shimmering black horizon where the dream of his father waited. He was dimly aware of her moving around the house, cleaning, straightening, whispering to his half-conscious face: “I’m doing some laundry. I’ll be back in a bit.” He heard her footsteps receding, then the washing machine rumbling.
He awoke some time later to the smell of clean clothes and Moira’s hands rolling him to the edge of the bed. She pulled a dirty sheet from under him, spread a clean one with a breeze of laundry smell, then rolled him again while she finished making the bed.
“Move over.”
He did, and she slipped in beside him, pulling a clean sheet over them. When she rested her head on his shoulder, he expected a barrier of clothing, but her naked skin touched his and her warm breath bathed his neck. “I know what you need,” she whispered into his ear. Her words were like solid things, tiny hands caressing his neck and face. She kissed him behind the ear. Her hand stroked his chest. Maybe she did know what he needed. Maybe there was another way to lose his mind. She slid her hand under the waistband of his Levi’s, held him until he grew hard, then let go.
She whispered, “But I don’t take advantage of drunks. You taught me that.”
Billy mumbled, “I love you.”
Moira’s face was fiercely close. She dug her fingernails into his shoulders. “No, you don’t. But it’s sweet of you to say that to me.”
He heard her dressing in the dark. From the bedroom doorway, she said, “I’m so sorry about your father.”
THIRTY-ONE
At school, everyone was good to Billy Dyer. Teachers handed him assignments as though he might not be able to support their weight. In their eyes he saw the twin agonies of parents and of people who simply did not know what to say. His fellow students saw him now as doubly valuable, a football player who had reversed the Spartan fortunes, but also a messenger from the night country of grief, a place few of them had seen. He could see in their eyes their wonder at the mysteries he might bring back from that place. Of course, no one asked what he had found there, and this silence, this time, resembled, strangely, the days after Mystery Night when he had walked the hallways of Carr a pariah for reasons no one would name.
Only the team spoke of his father. Somehow they seemed to know death. Maybe in their life of wild collisions and the fear of dishonor that filled them every Friday night they had come near an understanding of the thing Billy had seen. He saw in their eyes that they embraced him in a new way, as a boy who knew death, something they would all know eventually, a boy who would lead them into the future. They said things. “Sorry about your dad, Billy.” “Tough, man. Really tough.” The words, awkward, halting, didn’t matter. What was in their eyes meant everything.
After lunch, Assistant Principal Laird called Billy out of class. He glanced up and down the quiet, empty hallway, then he spoke to Billy like they were men, not a man and a boy. “Billy, a reporter from the Grower wants to talk to you. His name is Herb Klein. Your mother won’t allow you to be interviewed unless she is present. We agree with her about that.”
Billy was taken to a small conference room where his mother waited across a table from the reporter. She sat tall and stared straight ahead, sad, beautiful, and fierce. Herb Klein smiled neutrally at Billy, his eyes tendering official sympathy. He was short, gray-eyed, stooped, and scholarly, and wore a blue seersucker suit and a tired black tie. On the table in front of him lay a pack of Camels, a Zippo lighter, and a notebook. Ignoring Klein, Billy’s mother rose and came to him. He could hear the whispering silk of her dark gray suit as she walked and smell the fragrances she sold. She looked into his eyes, then took his hand and led him into the hallway. She embraced him, kissed his lips, and stepped back.
Billy had never seen her look so beautiful. She had put special effort into her hair and makeup and choosing the gray suit and shoes. But her hands trembled at her sides, and fear shared her blue eyes with sadness and anger. Billy reached up and carefully lifted the blond hair from the side of her neck. The bruise was gone. He saw no other marks on her. Good, he thought. Then he thought, Everything. Everything I did has led to this.
Mrs. English came down the hallway. Billy’s mother turned, eyes hard with warning. Mrs. English stopped, nodded at Billy. She said, “I thought Billy might need—”
“He has what he needs.”
Billy touched his mother’s forearm. “Mom, I want her… to come in.” To the confusion in his mother’s eyes, Billy added softly, “She knows me.” He took his mother’s hand and led her inside. With Mrs. English, they sat across from Herb Klein.
As the questions began, Billy found that he remembered less than he had thought he would. A furrow had opened in his mind, separating him from much of what had happened. He could recall nothing of the suicide but a popping sound, a spray of red glass, then his father’s broken head hanging half out the window. The weird smile that had come to his father’s face just before the window turned red was inside Billy somewhere, but he confused it now with the expression on his father’s face in the coffin. But David Dyer had not been buried yet. He lay in a drawer in a mortuary. Why should the picture of the coffin be so vivid? And why should his father be alive in it?
Herb Klein’s gray eyes were disappointed. His pale hands scribbled phrases in the notebook. “So you didn’t actually see your father shoot himself?”
“No.”
“Why were you in Carver Heights?”
Billy said, “I was following my dad,” knowing it was too much to admit.
A sudden intensity came to Herb Klein’s eyes. “Why?”
“I was curious, I guess.”
Herb Klein lit a Camel, inhaled until his pursed lips made a small pop. “I’m curious too. Maybe we can help each other. You know who owns those houses your father was visiting?”
Billy shook his head.
“An attorney named Cameron Sizemore. With a little help from some… investors. They’ve been buying them for years. Your father worked for Mr. Sizemore.”
Billy nodded. Made his eyes empty.
“Your father was what we’ll politely call a rent collector. A guy who goes into a bad neighborhood collecting cash from people who don’t write checks, who half the time can’t afford to pay him, and he’s carrying a gun because sometimes his clients get a little drunk or a little crazy or a little angry about how bad the whole deal is. Or, he’s carrying it because sometimes they don’t want to give him the money and he has to be a little persuasive. Know what else your father was doing besides collecting rent?”
Billy shook his head. Waited.
Klein leaned toward Billy, his voice low, insinuating. “You know anything about the big construction project north of town?”
Again, Billy shook his head.
“It’s an interstate highway. And it’s gotta pass through Oleander for obvious geographical reasons. And some people have, let’s say, influenced the decision about where it goes, and they’re gonna make a lot of money, and some other people, little people, are gonna get…” Klein looked at Billy’s mother and Mrs. English. “Excuse me, ladies. They’re gonna get screwed. You father was delivering eviction notices. It’s time to stop renting roach-infested shacks and make way for some pretty white concrete so that happy tourists can zip on down the Sunshine State. Your dad was doing the screwing at the street level, if you get my drift. I don’t know yet what else he was up to or how he stood to benefit, but I assume substantially, and I’m gonna find out.” Herb Klein’s words were harsh, but his stare gave no heat. Only cold resolve.
Billy said, “My dad’s dead. Why don’t you leave him alone? Whatever he did is over now. Why don’t
you go after those other people?” And the old satchel was safe in the belly of a space heater that had not been lit in years. And if the satchel held what else there was to know, if the papers in it knew how Billy’s father had stood to benefit, then Billy would make sure no one ever saw them.
Klein smiled small and tight. “That’s not the way it works, Billy. You start at the bottom and work up.” His voice was falsely sad and his hands moved like they were turning over playing cards. “You flip the little guys and, when they’re belly up, you step on their soft parts, and they tell about the bigger guys and so it goes. We were gonna talk today, your dad and me. He’s in my appointment book. I can show it to you. So, maybe if you know anything, you should talk to me. Sort of take his place, speak for him.”
“I don’t know anything.” Billy peered into the man’s hard, gray eyes, and they both knew Klein was one reason a man had put a gun to his head. “And I won’t go belly up.”
Billy’s mother was on her feet. “That’s enough. You have no right to speak to my son that way.” She stared at Klein like he was a dog or an insect. Mrs. English lifted Billy by his elbow, turned him toward the door.
Billy thought the women looked fierce and beautiful protecting him, so he let them. His father was dead, and this was only a game of newspapers and law. Herb Klein looked into Billy’s mother’s cold eyes, pressed his lips into a thin line, closed his notebook, and said, “Thank you, Billy. And thank you, ladies.”
Outside on the crescent drive in front of the school, Billy walked his mother to the old green Dodge. With shaking hands she searched her purse, found a tissue, and blotted her eyes. When she opened the door, Billy saw that used tissues littered the floor of the car. So, driving up from Sarasota, she had cried for his father. Then, he supposed, she had stopped somewhere and refreshed her makeup. Made herself into ice. Beautiful ice. Then she had come to protect Billy, her protector.
“Billy,” she said, “you have to come with me now. You can’t stay in that house alone. It’ll get into the papers.” She looked at him, cold turning to cunning in her eyes. “It’ll ruin football, don’t you see that? They’re writing nice things about you now. You have to come home.”
She read about me in the papers.
She put her hands, one still holding the wet tissue, to the sides of his face. “I need you, Billy. I need you to come home.”
Home?
Quietly he said, “I can’t do that, Mom. I can’t live in Sarasota and play football. Maybe later. Maybe after football, I’ll be with you.” But he couldn’t imagine it now, how he would live with her. After his father’s death. After Karl. After he had bought her from Karl with Rainey’s money.
She watched him for a while, her eyes dry now. Then she let the tissue fall to the sidewalk between them. Billy looked down at it. Proof, he thought. You loved him.
She said, “I’ll call you. About the arrangements for your father.”
*
That night Mrs. English came to Billy’s house. When he opened the door to her knock, to the questions in her dark, impatient eyes, she handed him a brown paper bag.
“I brought you a cheeseburger and some fries.” She shrugged. “I figured everybody likes a cheeseburger.” She stepped into the living room and glanced around. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay.” Billy looked down at the bag. “Thanks.” He watched her eyes move unsurprised from the dog-stained terrazzo floor to the cigarette burns in his father’s chair to the rusty screens of the lanai. When they came back to Billy’s face, they seemed to say, So it goes.
Then, with Billy following, she moved around the house like she was alone in a place where something terrible had happened. In his bedroom, she smoothed the faded chenille bedspread and plumped his pillow, opened his closet and ruffled the sleeves of his shirts. Billy watched, wishing he had something to offer her, a drink, but there was only water in the kitchen. She drifted to the bathroom, picked up a dirty towel, and dropped it into the hamper. She tapped her fingers on her trim thigh, walked to his father’s bedroom, opened the door, and examined the room Billy had been unable to enter. On the last day of his life, Billy’s father had neatly made his bed.
“You and your dad lived alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Your mom’s a looker.” She said it tired, like there was more to life than looking good.
Back in the living room, she found on the coffee table a composition Billy was writing. She read a few lines, winced, smiled. She tossed her head, throwing thick dark hair out of her eyes. “Where should I sit?”
Billy pointed at the green chair. He sat on the couch and waited.
She was wearing the same dress she had worn that morning at school, dark gray with short sleeves, tight at the waist. When she crossed her legs, he saw a hole in the sole of her shoe. She had nice legs, maybe a little thin, but shapely all the same. She reached down and picked up a newspaper from the floor, showed Billy the headline: Oleander in Frenzy. Big Game Looms. “A man is dead,” she said “and they give him a few lines of ink. A life… out like a light, and all they care about is a game.” She closed her eyes.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?
She spoke the lines reverently, as though she were alone in a church, then she opened her eyes and peered at Billy with shy hope. “Do you know Gray? The elegy?”
He shook his head.
She frowned. “Oh, Billy, I’m sorry, but what does an English teacher do? She gropes at life through the veil of poetry. Maybe that’s why I went to the game—my first since coming to this town, I’ll have you know—to see you crazy boys, I don’t know, doing life. Living.” She sighed and dropped the newspaper at her feet. “Billy, you lied to Herb Klein. You know why your father was in Carver Heights. And I think it’s somehow related to what happened to you before. When they cut you from the team. That you’re involved in something… criminal.”
Billy shook his head, glanced over at the old space heater. “I told the truth.” Sir and Sir had never discussed business, at least not highway business.
“Did your father work for Cam Sizemore?”
Billy nodded. “But he didn’t talk about it.” Or the war. Only that one time. The Norden bombsight.
Mrs. English stood, moved close, touched Billy’s cheek. So close that he could smell perfume and then the mysterious thing that came from her skin, better than perfume. The thing that was her privacy. She walked to the front door, stopped, and regarded him in that tired way he had always liked. Tired of the bullshit. “Billy, you have to talk some time. For your own good, and maybe for others, too.”
He remembered that day in the dark stacks at the back of the library, the smell of old paper and glue and linseed oil. And Mrs. English touching his shoulder, showing him for the first time that she was more than a teacher. That he was more to her than a student. He wanted to give her something, here and now in this house where Sir and Sir had lived an accommodating life, but she was asking him to upset everything that was balanced.
He couldn’t do it. “What I have to do is play one more game. One more good game. After that… I’ll think about other things.”
She turned to leave.
“Uh, Mrs. English. Have they, the school board, have they decided… what to do?”
At the door, she turned back, frowned, tossed the thick brown hair from her eyes again. “No, Billy, not yet. And neither have I.”
THIRTY-TWO
His mother’s green Dodge was the only car parked in front of the Copeland Daniels Funeral Home, a simulated Southern mansion whose underworld held God only knew what horrors. Billy got out of the Ford and looked up at the hazy sky trying to complete the calm he needed for this meeting. He ran his palms down the sides of his legs and felt the envelope of money in his pocket. The last thing my father gave me.
She had decided there would be no memorial service. Billy’s father had not been close to his family. Her people had not liked David Dyer very much, and they lived in Michigan. She had decided to have his father cremated and told Billy on the phone, “Your father hated the idea of being buried. He had nightmares about it after the war. He used to wake up screaming, thinking he was lying in a coffin. He told me the bombs he dropped buried people alive.” Billy did not mention his own dreams.
He slid into the pew beside his mother and saw that she held a cardboard box in her lap. Lettered on it were the words, The Mortal Remains of David M. Dyer. She didn’t look at Billy.
He waited.
She sighed, and it seemed that the breath she expelled was a little death, the last of something in her. She patted his thigh. “How are you doing?”
“I’m all right, Mom.” Should he ask her the same question? She was calmer than he had expected her to be.
She said, “I want you to close your eyes and be very still. You don’t have to pray, but I want you to think about your father. I want you to send him peace and love if you can.”
“Can you?”
Her eyes searched his face. They were dark and sunken, her cheeks hollow and pale. “Yes, I have decided I can do that. Let’s do it together, okay?”
“Okay, Mom.” Billy closed his eyes and remembered his father. He remembered how well he had played golf, remembered caddying for him a few times, and how much he had enjoyed walking in fine weather with grown men who respected his father’s skill. He remembered tossing a football in the backyard in the evenings, and, as his own skill had grown at running and catching, how his father had sometimes stopped throwing the ball and simply stood looking at him with an admiration Billy had not then understood, but thought he did now. He remembered how they had watched boxing together, enthusiasts of the sweet science, students of courage and craft. He remembered seeing his father’s Army Air Force uniform hanging in the closet, the bright silver captain’s bars, the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Just as he felt his mother’s hand on his thigh again, he hoped his father’s life had done some good, that the war he had fought had saved more than it had destroyed. Hope was as close as he could get to prayer.
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