The whole thing was very depressing—certainly Roger deserved better than he got, but that wasn’t what had me down. Lonnie had not come around the shop since the night of my “accident,” which meant that I had spent the holidays alone. All the plans I had made for a romantic Christmas Eve together, the stocking stuffers I had stashed away for him, the bottle of real imported champagne I had purchased for a New Year’s Eve toast—all for naught. I was missing him like a crazy person—just to see him, I told myself, would be enough. But I knew that was a lie. I wanted to touch him. To feel him. To taste him. But it was impossible, I knew. I had a home health care provider for the first week I was home, a heavy-set LPN who went about her duties with an unrepressed contempt for me that she masked with only the slightest hint of professional pleasantries and Southern propriety. I chalked it up to her having to work for a homosexual during the celebration of Christ’s birth. Whenever I would wake from a nap, I could hear the religious broadcasting station playing in the living room, evangelicals trumpeting the end of days and the spiritual defilement that had become America. I figured she saw me as a part of that wilderness, a leper for her to tend to in order to gain stature in the kingdom beyond. I will wash your clothes now, and fix you a sandwich, and by the way it’s too bad how you are going to burn in hell for eternity. But I was a good patient—a model patient. I wanted to recover as quickly as possible. The sooner I was able to maneuver on my own without her help, the sooner I would be able to reopen the shop and hire Lonnie.
The day before the doctor gave me the all clear, I called Joe Boggs and told him of my predicament.
“I am able to get around the house, but with this cast on my leg, I am going to need someone to make deliveries. Is there someone at the shop who might want to work a couple of evenings—I don’t want to impose on you, but I need to get back to my church deliveries.”
Joe hesitated a moment. “I’m not sure.” I knew he was squeamish about sending one of his men over to me—goodness knows what I might expose them to.
“I thought business might be slow now after the first of the year. If you would just ask. Maybe someone could use some extra money. I’m happy to give you a finder’s fee as a courtesy as well. I can donate some flowers to the sanctuary in honor of whomever you choose.”
There was a hesitation as I knew he was considering the offer. “My mamma’s birthday is coming up in a few weeks.”
“Perfect,” I said. “I am happy to do an arrangement for her if you can find me a driver. I will call you tomorrow to see if anyone is interested.” If the thought of free flowers weren’t enough to close the deal, I knew that last comment would at least get him to ask—he knew I would pester him until he did.
When I called the next morning, Joe told me that several people had been interested in the job, but in the end, it had been decided that Lon would come over to see what I needed if that was okay by me. He also told me that I should know up front that Lon had been in a little trouble with the law, had spent some time in prison, but that he was conscientious and dependable. “Just don’t expect him to say too much. He’s a quiet one.”
I assured Joe that would be fine with me, but secretly my heart was dancing—no, not just dancing, it was Fred Astaire in a tuxedo tapping up a marble staircase, tipping his hat. It was smiling like Gene Kelly. It was singing like Mario Lanza.
Someone else—one or more of the other workers—had shown interest in the job. How had Lonnie reacted? Did he bully them into submission, stare them down? Or did he say, “He belongs to me.” I wanted to ask Joe Boggs for more information, but was afraid to show too much interest. After all, it was only a delivery driver that I was after. And if there had been a confrontation, I knew Lonnie would never speak to me about it. But still, it was better than a scene from a Hollywood musical or a romantic opera. Lonnie had fended off the other candidates—repelled these other suitors, if you please, in order to keep me all to himself.
I arranged with Joe that Lonnie would work for me two evenings a week and on Saturday afternoons when they closed the garage at noon. What I didn’t tell Joe was I had decided that I would ride with him when he was making the deliveries; if anyone asked, I could tell them I was merely showing Lonnie all the regular stops I delivered to. The truth was I just wanted to be with him. And not only with him, but we were in public together. Driving around Morris as big as life for everyone to see. And when we finished our deliveries, we went home—together. I want you to know the next few weeks were like a heavenly honeymoon for me. Lonnie would arrive at the store, walking in the front door like he owned the place. No one cared. I ordered him a shirt with the Vale’s Floral Design logo stitched on the front and his name embroidered directly below on the shirt pocket—our names close enough they were almost joined. And I was happy with that. I began to think that this was going to be how life might be. I thought of the hundreds of ways I would express my gratitude, my appreciation, my affection, my . . . love to him.
Yes, I loved Lonnie. But therein lies the curse of love. It feeds you, but it also consumes you. As my love grew for Lonnie, it only left me emptier, more lonely. It isn’t enough to be the lover, to cast all your affection out like feed seed to hungry chickens. Love must come back—César had shown me that. My life with Lonnie had a pattern, a certain routine, but I felt as if I walked behind him in his shadow. I cooked for him, washed and ironed his clothes, gave him cash for his work, and blew him whenever he would allow. Still, I wondered sometimes if he ever even noticed me. It began to weigh on me more and more every day. I wanted to matter to him. He was my whole world. Could he not see that? What I needed, what I wanted, what I desired more than anything was to know that Lon wanted me, needed me, desired me as well. In short, I wanted Lonnie to love me back.
If the truth be told, the more I did for Lonnie the less I seemed to matter to him, or even worse, the more I seemed to irritate him. When I would approach him with the offer of sex, he would brush me off. He grew ill-tempered if his shirt wasn’t pressed to his satisfaction or if dinner wasn’t to his liking. Then, if I didn’t have cash to spare between “paydays,” I began to notice cash disappearing from the store. I knew he was taking it, but there wasn’t anything I could say about it. I began to suspect, wonder if his attention was drifting. It didn’t help that he insisted I stop accompanying him on the deliveries.
“I don’t need you watching over me every minute,” he said.
And so, I stayed at home and waited for him to return, his shirt ironed, his dinner warm in the oven. And like so many stories of this type, there was one night when he didn’t come home. I worried at first that he might have been in an accident, but I knew if he had, the police would have called me since the van was registered in my name. I told myself that he needed some time to be alone, that it was okay. Then I sulked. Then I cried. Then I wrapped his dinner up and put it in the fridge and went to bed. I was used to waiting for Lonnie. I had spent many nights when he did not come over or in the weeks after Roger’s death when he could not come over. But this was different somehow. In those long, still nights, I had imagined that he wanted to be with me. But now, I could not pretend. He wanted to be somewhere else. And with every stray headlight I would rouse, thinking finally he had come home to me. I don’t know when I finally fell asleep, but when I awoke the next morning the van was back in the driveway and everything was back to normal. Then it happened again. And again.
Finally, one Saturday afternoon in mid-February, just after Valentine’s Day, things came to a head. A piece of toast overcooked, who will control the TV remote, whose turn it is to take out the trash: Like so many squabbles that escalate into a full-blown quarrel, ours began when Lonnie complained about the lunch I made for him.
“With as much fucking money as you have, you think I could get something besides baloney.”
“But you like baloney.”
“I like The Dukes of Hazzard. Doesn’t mean I want to watch it all goddam day.”
“I am happy to m
ake whatever you want. You should know that. Just tell me what you want.”
I could see the wheels clicking in his head, like tumblers in a lock turning over. This wasn’t about baloney. He wanted to ask me for something—and not a tuna or roast beef sandwich.
“What is it, Lon? Is there something you want me to give to you?”
He laughed. “Whatcha got in mind, M.R.? You gonna get me a puppy?”
I stopped short. “I just want you to be happy. What would that take?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m getting tired of driving that piece of shit van of yours. Goddamn, there ain’t even a decent radio in it. And I can’t smoke in it.”
“It would mask the scent of the flowers. Besides, I haven’t even paid all the bills for the hospital yet.”
“Shit, M.R. I see the money that comes in here. And what kind of expenses do you have? With all the money that comes through this place, you must be stashing money away. You own this house outright, don’t you?”
“Yes, you know I do,” I said. “But . . .”
“Yes, but,” he mocked, making a face at me like a child who doesn’t want to eat his dinner. “I don’t want a car. If a car was all I wanted, I know how I can get me one.”
“Then what?”
“You don’t understand. I ain’t never had nothing except what I could fit into a box,” he said.
“It’s not a sin to be poor.”
“Why don’t you try it sometime, then?”
“Lonnie, I am not a rich man.”
“But you own a house. You ain’t got no expenses except for yourself and whatever little thing you think you might want to give me. And what happens to this place when you’re gone?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never really thought about it. Perhaps I will sell it and set up a scholarship at the community college.”
“Hah! You act like you want me to be here, but you’re the one who says how much I can have. You get to be the one who decides. And when you’re gone, you’re gonna give all this to somebody who don’t even know you. Somebody you don’t know. Why do you get to decide that? Why do you get to be the boss here?”
I had no reply for that.
“What is it you want? A car? When I get the hospital bills paid, we can go look.”
“I told you I don’t want a goddamn car.” His chair flung backward across the floor as he stood up and headed to the door. I hobbled behind him, but by the time I caught him, he was already at the van loaded with the flowers to take to the churches for Sunday services
“Then what?”
“I think we need to be partners here. That way I would know you was on my side and wasn’t just going to turn me out. That you was loyal.”
I let you break my leg, I wanted to scream. I stood by and watched you shoot my dearest friend in the head. Doesn’t that count for something? I was trying not to think of what Roger had said to me: “He wants something from you. He will get it from you, too . . . or take it from you, and then he will be done with you.”
He closed the door on the van. “You just think about it. You just think about what could keep me coming back here to be with the likes of you.”
I must say, that wounded my vanity. I knew I should just walk back in the house, let things settle, but I was deep in the white water, paddling with all my might. “So, since you don’t want to be with the likes of me,” I said, “I guess that means you will be keeping the van tonight.”
He didn’t say a thing, just turned and backhanded me across the face so that I fell backward into the azalea bushes along the front of the shop.
“Where I go ain’t none of your bidness,” he said. “Besides, you can’t drive it, so if you ain’t using it, then why shouldn’t I? I make the deliveries in this pile of shit, and if it weren’t for me it probably wouldn’t even run. I don’t need the grief. So you better watch it—if I wanted, I could just say you go and do all this yourself. Would you like that? No, I bet you wouldn’t. I should be able to get something back out of it for myself.”
I thought about mentioning all the food, the clothes, the money that he had “gotten back,” but lying on the ground has a way of changing your perspective. So, I merely helped myself to my feet and walked back inside. I heard the motor start. Gravel flew as he sped out of the driveway. I hoped he would at least make the deliveries that were scheduled. I had a professional reputation to think of after all. I attempted to occupy myself with the notion that churches would be flowerless the next morning and how the congregations would react, but I knew it was only a game to keep my mind from settling on what was really wanting to claw its way into the center of my brain. I went to sleep that night for the first time hoping that Lonnie would not return.
5
I spent Sunday afternoon fielding calls from the local churches trying to explain why they had no flowers. I blamed the pain medication, said that I had been unable to work, should have called, so sorry. As might be expected, the Baptists were the most unsympathetic.
“We had an agreement, Mr. Vale. Do I need to remind you? Our members expect flowers on Sunday morning. Especially in the winter. It brightens the sanctuary. You should know, the early worship service was ruined because of it—ruined. Dot Owens went home during Sunday school and brought in a potted plant just so we would have something to put on the altar for color. It wasn’t right.”
“I am so sorry,” I said. I did not want to have another fight. I just wanted to be left alone. “I will do whatever it takes to make it up.”
“What you can do is never let it happen again.” And then the click of the phone.
In my experience, despite their unbending belief in eternal green pastures and streets of gold, Baptists are a pretty angry lot.
Neither Lonnie nor the van showed up on Sunday, and I thought about reporting it stolen, but I knew that would just sound foolish since Lonnie had been driving the van all over the county for months. The same was true on Monday, and I decided not to open the shop. Joe Boggs had called early in the morning to see if I had any knowledge of where Lon might be. Lon wasn’t now just gone from me, he was gone all together, and I made myself sick with worry. There was no way I could bear to deal with the likes of Joanne Jackson or any flowerless Baptists who might want to pay me a visit.
I started a hundred chores and abandoned them almost as soon as I had begun, unable to focus my attention on anything except Where is Lonnie? When is Lonnie coming back? Will Lonnie come back? Then, about midafternoon, when I was lying down to rest, I heard a car pull into the driveway. I knew by the crunch of the tires on the gravel that it wasn’t the delivery van, and I almost didn’t go to the door when they knocked. But when Lon called out, “Hey, M.R.—you in there?” I sprang from the bed as quickly as my broken leg allowed. When I answered that I was coming, I could hear Lonnie whispering to someone. He wasn’t alone.
I opened the back door to the porch and was astonished to see Lonnie standing with his arm draped over the shoulder of none other than Drexel Smith. From the looks of them, it had been a hard weekend. I wasn’t sure if they were drunk or high; the neck and armpits of Lonnie’s shirt were ringed with sweat, and his pupils were large black dots in his brown eyes. Drexel shifted his weight from one leg to the next dancing to his own internal rhythms. He chewed on his fingernail as if scared of how I would react to him standing at my back door.
“What was you doing sleeping in the middle of the day?” asked Lon, as he walked past me into the kitchen and opened the fridge, taking out two beers.
“Not sleeping. Resting,” I said.
“You sure you wasn’t pounding the pud,” said Drexel, holding his right hand at his crotch and shaking his wrist back and forth.
Lonnie uncapped the longnecks and handed one to Drexel. “M.R., you remember Drexel here, dontcha?”
“Sure he remembers me.”
“Yes, I remember you, Drexel. What I didn’t know was that you had gotten out of prison. I thought you were gone away
for three years.”
“Well, you know how that works. It was my first offense and they labeled me with manufacturing instead of possession because of the fire. But because most of the evidence burned up, they couldn’t stick it to me very hard. Plus, I ‘accepted responsibility for my wrongdoing and sought out drug rehabilitation on the inside. ’ ” At the last comment, Drexel put his hands together like a penitent. But he seemed unable to stop himself from talking. “Yessirree, I was a fucking model prisoner. I been back a couple of months now,” he continued. “I bought me a camper van and parked it out where the trailer burned up. You should see it. There’s still just a pile of burned-out shit sitting there. No one even hauled it off. And as long as the lot was empty, I figured I might as well settle back in for as long as I needed to be here.”
“So, you’re not back for good, then,” I said. I didn’t know whether this was a good sign or a bad one.
“Hell no,” Drexel hooted. “We plan to get shed of this place as soon as we can.”
“Shut up, Drex,” Lon interrupted. “You’re on one of your talking jags and just spilling over like a plugged-up toilet.” Lonnie drained his beer in a gulp, then reached in the fridge for more. “M.R., why don’t we step into your parlor where we can all relax a bit. Me and Drex got something to talk over with you.”
I had turned Mother’s old bedroom into a den so I could have a place just to watch TV. It ran along the side of the house, and as we entered, I couldn’t help but notice the nearly new Cadillac they had driven. I wondered whether they had traded the van for a new car but knew that was impossible. Besides, the car looked familiar to me. It took a moment for me to realize that it was Laverne’s missing car. I can tell you this, it did not give me comfort to know that Drexel and Lonnie had sequestered the car—probably out at Annabeth’s abandoned lot, waiting until they were ready. For what, I could only imagine. This meant that they had not just run into one another or recently met. Roger had been dead for over a month—they had known each other before his death. This had been planned.
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