Dominic came out of the house with a glass of orange juice for her. He sat down at her side. A moment passed, in which neither of them looked at the other.
He sighed, and made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Um, Manny read somewhere that Bush sent a memo to the IRS telling them to crack down on back taxes, especially from the lower-middle class and the poor. Apparently the poor aren’t paying enough taxes fast enough.”
She made a sound she hoped he would take for agreement.
“What’s the matter with you, kitty cat?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Maybe it’s our collective hangover.”
They were quiet for a few moments.
“Something’s not right,” he said. “Something’s off center in this place.” His gaze wandered over the house and the pool area. “Like, why’re you and Tyler still living here? There must be some nice places in town.”
She told him about the rental house that had gone up in flames, looking straight at him, feeling the weight of what she withheld from him like the weight of her body.
“Well, they’re all wonderful and all that. But if it was me, I’d want to get off to myself. It must feel like you’re waiting for your lives to start. I’d hate that.” He tapped his knee with the flat of one hand, gazing off at the cloudless sky and the brilliant curves of the river in the distance. Some part of him was always moving. He was all energy. “Manny’s—he’s—positive. I guess I wrote you that.”
“Yes.”
Again, they were quiet.
“I met him at the house of a friend.”
“He’s got beautiful, kindly eyes. It’s the first thing you notice about him.”
Dominic leaned the chair back, and then let it fall forward again. “I think sometimes he’d talk better if the language barrier didn’t provide him with a kind of cover. His writing’s very cool. You wouldn’t know from it that he wasn’t from here.”
“His aunt lives in New Orleans?”
He nodded. “Well. He calls her Aunt Violet. She’s got a masters degree from somewhere. She’s lived in New Orleans since the thirties. I tell you we’re gonna stay there?”
“I think you told me over the phone.”
“I thought I said we were going to see.” Again, he leaned the chair back, only this time he stayed that way, clasping his hands behind his head. He looked toward the river. “Is that the Mississippi?”
“A branch of it, I think.”
He turned to her. “I’ve never known you to be incurious. What’s happened, anyway?”
Before she could realize the import of the question, she said, “Nothing.”
He kept his eyes on hers.
“Dominic, what?”
“Something’s different.”
She waited.
“Are you happy about the baby?”
“Christ,” Lily said. “What a question.”
“That’s cool,” he said, and let the chair come forward, unclasping his hands. “Are you preoccupied about your book?”
She frowned.
“I mean, your play. Whatever. Mary Kingsley.”
“I don’t know what it’s going to be,” Lily said.
“Is that what’s bothering you?”
At this moment, sitting there in the sun with him, with his pale eyes taking her in, she almost told him. The urge was so strong that she stood up, and walked to the border of the lawn.
He came with her, saying, “What? What?”
“Nothing’s bothering me, Dominic—please,” she said.
“Is it you and Tyler? You’re not getting along. I saw it—anyone can see it.”
She took his arm. “Were they talking about us?”
“Who?”
“Nick—Sheri. The others.”
“Nobody said anything. I saw it. Okay? When I said anyone, I meant anyone of my superior sensitivity and insight.”
“Dominic,” she said. Then: “No. I—I can’t talk to you about this.” She moved away from him, back toward the house. Rosa and Manny had come out and taken two chairs in the sun. Lily walked past them and in, and Dominic followed.
“Jesus, there is something,” he said. “Are you gonna tell me?”
She had the scary sensation that he knew everything, and simply wanted her to come across with it as a sign of their trust in each other as friends. “We had a fight,” she said. “It’s—it’s nothing more than that.” She told herself, moving away from him, down the stairs toward her basement room, that this was in some sense true enough, and that therefore she had not actually lied to him.
PART • 4
Falling
SIXTEEN
1
THAT EVENING, two policemen drove up with the news that Buddy Galatierre had been killed. Millicent, Sheri, and Lily had been out on the porch, waiting for the men to return, and had all separately begun to worry as the sun went below the level of the trees to the west, and the air grew steadily colder. They had put sweaters on, and Lily was shivering, and still they had remained there in the failing light, waiting. Dominic sat with them and talked aimlessly about old television shows, trying to distract them from their anxiety. Finally he’d gone into the house to wake Manny from his long nap. After he was gone, Sheri had said, “I hope Nick doesn’t have them out drinking somewhere.”
Millicent was the first to see the police car. She gasped as the officers got out and approached. All three women stood. Lily recognized the taller of the two policemen as the older man who had issued the speeding ticket to Tyler. He was the one who gave the news, saying it in a flat, nerveless, but kindly voice, all business, “Mrs. Galatierre?”
“Me—that’s me,” Millicent said, as if she were pleading with them not to harm her.
“Ma’am—Mrs. Galatierre, I’m afraid it’s your husband.” He stopped, but only for a moment. “I’m afraid your husband’s—” Again he stopped, and Millicent started to sink to her knees. Lily and Sheri caught her.
“I’m sorry,” the policeman said.
Sheri began to wail. The two policemen helped carry Millicent inside, to the couch. Sheri stood at the door, her broken features registering only disbelief. “There’s some mistake.”
The officers were very considerate, and the older one explained to Lily that the other men were at the hospital where Mr. Galatierre had been taken. Tyler and Nick had brought him in. It was evidently a shooting accident. One of the rifles had gone off and the bullet had struck Mr. Galatierre in the stomach. They were in the woods, far from help. They struggled to get him to the hospital in Memphis, but he had bled so badly from the wound that the emergency people couldn’t save him. Nick and Tyler were with the police, there, now.
The younger one said, “Any time a firearm’s involved—see, there’s questions.”
“We’ll take you to the hospital,” the older officer said. “I’m terribly sorry.”
Dominic and Manny came out of the family room, entering the kitchen just as Lily started down to get her winter coat.
“Lily?” Dominic said.
And she broke down, unable to form words out of the spasms of weeping that came, while Dominic put his arms around her and held on, murmuring, “What’s the matter? What is it? Lily, what’s happened?”
They found Tyler in a little room off the hospital’s main lobby, sitting at a desk, with two other police officers standing over him. Tyler had been crying, and he sat with his head in his hands. There was a tape recorder on the desk, the spools turning. Sheri asked tearfully for Nick, and was led down the hall toward another room. Lily went with her, because the two policemen were still interviewing Tyler. Nick sat in his room alone, staring off into disbelieving space. They saw him through the window in the door, but were not allowed, just yet, to enter. From somewhere a lean, dark man in a suit had appeared, holding a small pad of paper and requesting to speak with the women separately. He had prominent, almost swollen-looking cheekbones, and a widow’s peak that gave him a sinister appearance, but his voic
e was very soft, his bearing completely sympathetic. He spoke to Millicent first. Lily and Sheri waited in the massive, open lobby, sitting on futonlike furniture of an absurdly bright blue color. Sheri was in shock. Someone had given her a sedative. She sat with her legs tightly together, holding a handkerchief in her small fists, as if to tear it apart. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she said nothing, and didn’t seem to hear what was said to her.
The older officer came back through the lobby. Lily asked, “Can you please tell me what’s going on?”
“Ma’am, until we are absolutely certain of whatever made this an accident, we have a homicide.”
She felt her legs falter under her.
“A man’s been shot. We’re trying to ascertain what happened. We have to file a report. Are you Harrison’s wife?”
She nodded.
“It was his rifle.”
“Oh, God,” Lily said.
“Here,” he said. He helped her back to where Sheri sat, hands still clenched in her lap, tears streaming down her face. When Lily sat down next to her, Sheri stirred, and then, seeing the officer, muttered, “I think he came down here to kill my father.”
The officer said, “Excuse me—is it Sheri—Mrs. Green?”
She stared, bleary-eyed, at his face.
“Do you want to talk to me about anything?”
“He killed my father. He came here to do it,” she said.
Lily touched her shoulder. “Sheri, please don’t talk like that. You know how Tyler feels—”
“Uh, Mrs. Green, it was—apparently it was your husband who was holding the rifle when it went off.”
“Nick?” Sheri sobbed. “Nick did it?” She looked at him, and then at Lily, and then sank into Lily’s arms.
2
THE INTERVIEWS went on for more than two hours, and Nick and Tyler had been questioned in the hours before the women arrived at the hospital. Millicent seemed almost hollowed out, desiccated, and the sedatives she had been given made her so groggy that they admitted her for the night. The police officers were thorough, behaved with flawless courtesy, presiding over the elucidation of what was apparently no more than a ghastly accident, although they would not, for the present, rule out the possibility of there being some charge brought against Nick for failing to check the safety on the rifle.
The story, as well as could be made out, was that the three men had driven into the wilderness, and had walked a good three miles from the car. They had come upon signs of a bear, probably a black bear. They hadn’t seen any deer—except, Nick said in a broken voice, a roadkill on the way—and because it was a bear and the tracks were fresh and they wanted to feel safe, they had their rifles ready. Nick asked to see Tyler’s, and so Tyler had handed it to him. They traded. It was one of those casually juvenile things between men, Nick liking the new feeling of the other rifle. They came to a barbed-wire fence, and got ready to climb it, each of them checking that the safety on his rifle was engaged before starting over. Tyler and Buddy climbed it and jumped down, but something stirred in the brush nearby, just as Nick got ready to follow them. He took his safety off, and stood ready, while Tyler and Buddy waited, crouched and listening. They all waited for some time, almost fifteen minutes, talking low, and worrying about the bear, an attack, rabies. It was the woods, and the noise went on, then ceased, and then began again. This continued for another few minutes. And at last it stopped altogether. But the quiet became freighted with the presence of the bear, something watching them. They laughed about it, yet they were nervous. Nick started over the fence, hurrying because he had begun to imagine that the bear might rush him while he was suspended on the wires. The toe of his boot caught on the second one, and he fell, tearing the flesh under his arm. The rifle went off. A moment passed before either Nick or Tyler quite realized what had taken place.
Nick hadn’t put the safety back on.
They hadn’t been thinking right. The bear, if it was a bear, had occupied their minds. Now there was only the unspeakable fact that they couldn’t call it back, retrace their steps and undo it. Go back there and be more careful, be so much more cautious.
On the way home, Lily drove. No one spoke. The night breezes were cold, and the starry sky seemed closer than before.
Rosa opened the front door when they arrived. She had been crying. She stood back for them to enter, and then disappeared to some other part of the house, to suffer her grief alone. Dominic and Manny were sitting in the kitchen, with that impotently sorrowful aspect of people on the periphery of a catastrophe. Sheri moved past them as if they were furniture and poured herself a large tumbler of whiskey. She drank long and slow from it. Though she already had tranquilizers in her system, nothing seemed to have any effect. She looked at the two men, and at Lily, but said nothing. As she started out of the kitchen, Dominic asked if there was anything he and Manny could do. “Oh, no, I’m sorry,” she said. “Please—please excuse—me.” Her voice broke. She went upstairs, sobbing, and they heard the door to the room she and Nick shared click quietly shut. Tyler wandered through the rooms of the house, lost, wide-eyed, a child in a nightmare sleepwalk. Nick lay facedown on the sofa in the living room, weeping.
“God,” Manny said, wringing his hands.
“Lily,” Dominic murmured, “I think Manny and I ought to leave.”
She nodded, half remembering that there was something important that he should know. It was almost as if she might forget it. She went through the house, looking for Tyler. She found him in the wide living room, with its bear rug and its animal heads on the walls, and she remembered Buddy, only last night, walking her in here to calm her nerves by talking about how he had stumbled onto happiness. That seemed a whole lifetime ago. She watched Tyler pick up a picture in a stand-up frame and then set it down, and she saw the terror in his face when he turned to her.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said, and began to cry. “Jesus.” He pushed on, through to the next room, and the next, and then to the stairs, which he climbed, toward his mother’s and Buddy’s empty bedroom.
Lily followed. Tyler sat on the edge of the bed, and seemed about to slump over. Then he saw Lily standing in the doorway. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “I can’t.”
She went to his side and put one arm over his shoulder.
In the room, there were pictures of Sheri in all the stages of her growing up, and a few pictures of Tyler, apparently taken by whoever Buddy had paid to travel north to keep some kind of record, however sporadic, of Millicent’s abandoned son.
“Lily, I wanted to hurt him. My whole life, I wanted to hurt him. Both of them. I think I made it happen, Lily. How could it have happened?”
“Shhh,” she murmured. “Don’t.”
He sobbed, and held tight to her. “I never dreamed—Jesus. I got to liking him so much. I wanted to do what I could to hurt them both, Lily, growing up, I thought about it, went to sleep with it at night—they hurt me so much. My whole life. It’s my fault. It’s my fault. And I love them—I swear it, Lily. Oh, God, I swear it. When I got the reckless—the ticket, he was upset with me and he put his hand on my shoulder. I could see he was worried about me. Him. I never for five minutes got anything like that with my father. And I wanted it so much when I was small.”
“Oh, baby,” Lily said. “Let it go. Go on and let it go.”
He was still talking through his sobs, but his words were not distinguishable now. He wept, and the minutes passed, and she held him, crying, too. She didn’t know how long they remained like that. At length he subsided, and the exhaustion he felt, along with the drugs the doctors had given him, took effect. He drifted into a fitful sleep in her arms, in Buddy and Millicent’s bed. And she held him for a long while before extricating herself, and making her way downstairs.
She’d heard movement there. Here was Nick Green, pouring himself a glass of bourbon, standing at the kitchen counter. His eyes were glazed over and raw-looking. “Can’t sleep,” he said.
“Don’t have any more of it
, Nick.”
“The boys left.”
“Dominic—”
He nodded before she could finish, and then took a long drink of the whiskey. It seemed to hurt him going down. He put the glass on the counter and gripped it with both hands, letting his head droop between his shoulders. A sound issued from the back of his throat, like a suppressed shriek. Then he breathed, straightened, and took another drink of the bourbon. She saw the blood on his shirtsleeve where he had been cut.
“Nick,” she said.
Again, swallowing the whiskey seemed to hurt him. When he looked at her, his eyes had filled with tears again, but no tears fell. He sniffled, shook his head, and sighed. “They gave me stuff at the hospital. Nothing helps.” He took another hard gulp, grimacing with the pain of it.
“Nick, don’t. It was an accident.”
He sobbed. “Oh, God, Lily. Jesus good Christ in heaven.” She went to him, put her arms around him, weeping, too, again. The two of them stood there in the light of the kitchen, in the smell of alcohol and sweat and dirt.
At last, she moved to the other side of the room, to the doorway, where she held on to the frame and looked back at him. He hadn’t moved from where he had been standing when she’d first entered. “The others are asleep,” she said to him, sniffling.
He took another long pull of the whiskey.
“Go to bed, Nick. Please?”
“You kill a man,” he said, “and they ask you a lot of questions about it, you know, and they want to know every angle, every little detail of the bullet and the bleeding and the dying right under your eyes—right under your eyes. Jesus.” He sobbed, ran the heel of his palm across his left eye, half turning from her, sniffling again. “Ah. Christ. I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she told him.
He wasn’t looking at her now, talking almost to himself. “And—and—God. They get you to repeat it—they’re so considerate and nice through the whole thing, and you repeat it and you repeat it, and then they give you some medicine to help you sleep—” Now he did look at her again. He held his hands out, as a person does who has nothing to express but the most profound bewilderment. “And then they send you home.”
Hello to the Cannibals Page 36