by Terry Shames
“There’s one more thing.” Jack’s lip is curled. “I don’t want Woody Patterson here tonight. I can’t keep him from coming to the funeral, but I don’t want him at the visitation.”
Belle frowns and squinches up her eyes. “I disagree with you. I think anybody should be allowed in who wants to pay respects, but I’m not going to argue with you.”
“Good.”
“What about his family? You mind if Laurel comes? Or Woody’s daddy?” Her voice is as cold as dry ice.
“I don’t have a problem with the rest of them.”
When we get back to the house, Jack says he’s done in and needs to lie down. I’m glad for the break, and also glad that Curtis isn’t around. I help Jack get settled in his bed and head into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. No sooner have I sat down at the dinette table with the coffee when the phone rings. It’s Doc Taggart, Bob’s doctor, with a verbal report for the boys about the preliminary autopsy report. I jot down the information and take my coffee into the living room.
I jerk awake when Curtis comes in the front door. I sit up and take a deep breath. My neck is stiff from my head flopping backwards onto the back of the chair when I nodded off. I don’t usually sleep in the afternoon and I feel stupid with it.
“Don’t get up,” Curtis says. He’s carrying a Dairy Queen sack, which he holds out in an awkward gesture. “Got extra fries, if you want some.”
I tell him to go ahead, and about that time Jack calls out for someone to help him get up. I help him into his chair and wheel him into the kitchen where Curtis has his hamburger and French fries set up. Jack lights a cigarette.
Curtis waves his hand in front of his face. “Whole house smells like cigarette smoke.”
“There’s a perfectly good motel if your delicate nose can’t handle it,” Jack says. “Besides, think about the advantage to you. I’ll probably die faster, so you can inherit what I’ve got.”
“If there’s anything left after you burn through it.”
“All right boys, you can fight on your own time. There’s something I need to tell you.” I tell them about the call from Doc Taggart with the preliminary autopsy report. “I hope you don’t mind if I took down the particulars.”
“Fine with me,” Curtis says. “What did Taggart say?”
“Like we all figured, your dad died of a heart attack. I asked the doc if Bob had a history of heart problems and he said no, and the coroner said his heart looked in pretty good shape and it was probably an arrhythmia.”
Jack sighs. “I wish that SOB Doc Taggart had kept a better eye on him. He might have needed a pacemaker or something.”
“Too late to worry about that now,” Curtis says. How did he get to be such a cold-hearted man? Jack sits up and I can see by the set of his mouth that he’s about to go off on a tirade.
“Doc Taggart is sometimes a little hard to take,” I say. “But he’s a good doctor. Smart. Keeps up on things.”
There’s nothing wrong with my eyesight, so I have no trouble seeing one of those smirks that Curtis passes around so freely. I can’t keep my mouth shut. “He took care of my wife, Jeanne when she had cancer, and the doctors in Houston told us he did a good job.”
“I know he’s a good doctor,” Jack says, unaware of the anger at Curtis that has flared up in me. “I’m just wishing for something that can’t be. Did he say anything else?”
I look at my notes. “Just that if Bob had lived longer he might have had some prostate problems. And he mentioned alcohol in his system—you told me you two shared a bottle of tequila with Coach Eldridge Sunday night.”
“Daddy didn’t drink that much, but he had a little to be sociable.”
“And he must have been fighting off a cold, because Taggart said he had a fair amount of Benadryl in his system.”
“No, that can’t be right,” Jack says.
“What do you mean that can’t be right? Nothing wrong with taking something for a cold.” Curtis is talking with his mouth full.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Jack says, “except he wouldn’t take something like that.”
Curtis pops the last French fry and wipes his mouth. “What makes you think you know what daddy would and wouldn’t take?”
“He told me he wouldn’t ever use any drug that might make him sleep so sound that he wouldn’t hear me if I needed him in the night.”
Curtis slurps the last of his soft drink. “Well, looks like this time he did.”
I recognize the stubborn set of Jack’s jaw. “Still,” he says, “I’d like to double-check on that autopsy report. If they got it wrong about the Benadryl, they could have gotten other things wrong, too.”
About then Dottie Gant comes in to relieve me. She’s a retired nurse as big as a linebacker. She won’t have any trouble helping Jack in and out of his chair.
On the way home I think about the Benadryl and decide I’ll give Taggart a call to make sure I heard it right. Then I brood a little about Jack’s insistence that Woody Patterson not attend his dad’s visitation. Time was, the two boys were best friends. But that was a long time ago.
“What the hell have you boys gotten yourself up to? You two know how to handle guns! How could you have let this happen?” I’m driving like a bat out of hell toward the county hospital at Bobtail. Jack Harbin is lying in the backseat, groaning, while Woody Patterson leans over the backrest holding a blood-drenched towel onto Jack’s foot.
“It just . . . we just . . . ,” Woody stutters, sounding like he’s going to cry.
Jack groans louder. I’ve seen men who are hurt a lot worse make not nearly so much noise. You can’t accuse the boy of being stoic. “Jack, you got hit every which way on the football field this year. Did you make that much racket every time?”
“This is different, it burns like the fires of hell.”
Their story is that they went out to the woods to bag some squirrels and somehow Woody managed to shoot Jack in the foot. Woody drove Jack to the bait shop, but said he was too shook up to drive all the way to the emergency room in Bobtail, so he called me.
There’s something fishy about their story. I’ve known both boys since they were in diapers, and they started learning to shoot as soon as they could hold a gun. How did an accident like this happen? Jeanne told me a while back that these boys both think they are in love with Taylor Brenner. I hope the boys didn’t think their rivalry could be solved with rifles. It’s a done deal anyway. Woody and Taylor are getting married in a week.
Jack has just finished army boot camp and will be deployed soon. I wonder how this injury is going to affect whether he can rejoin his unit. I almost hope it keeps him back. Rumors are high that there will be war in the Persian Gulf and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if Jack was unable to go.
Both the boys signed up for the army fresh out of high school. All the way through school they were big sports heroes—quarterback and receiver, pitcher and catcher. They must have figured the only way they were going to continue to be heroes was to join the service.
And then, out of the blue, the army rejected Woody on account of a knee injury he suffered in his sophomore year. Who would have thought that a boy who broke the school record for yardage gained in his senior year would be judged unfit to serve in the armed forces? Some folks said Taylor was marrying him as a consolation prize.
We screech to a halt at the emergency room, and get chewed out for parking in the driveway until I show them my badge as police chief of Jarrett Creek. Attendants start to haul Jack away, but he stops them. “Chief Craddock, don’t tell my folks about this. Please.”
“How the hell do you think they’re not going to know? It’ll be all over town in no time.”
“I’ll tell them I stepped on a nail or something.”
He insists so much that I finally agree to keep quiet. When the attendants take Jack away, I tell Woody to come with me to park the car. After we park, he reaches over to open the door, and I clap him on the shoulder
to make him stay put.
“What the hell were you two boys really up to?”
Woody shakes his head.
“Was this on purpose? Is it about Taylor?”
Woody stays quiet.
“All right, you’re not telling. It goes down as an accident either way, but I don’t like it.”
We’re stuck in the waiting room for a couple of hours before a grinning nurse comes out to say, “That is one lucky boy! Shot went right through his foot without hitting anything major. Couple of small bones that should be good as new in no time.”
“That should make you feel better,” I tell Woody.
But he groans and drops his head into his hands, which makes me wonder if he intended worse.
At Woody and Taylor’s wedding, Jack serves as best man. He is on crutches with his foot all bound up, but the story that he stepped on a nail seems to have taken hold.
I’m walking up to my front door after leaving Jack’s house when a green vintage Buick comes barreling up the street and screeches to a halt in front of my house. I could have told you who was driving with my eyes closed. Laurel Patterson has always driven like the devil is chasing her down the road. She may be married, with two young kids, but that hasn’t slowed her down.
I’m hoping she’s not coming to see me, as I need a few minutes to unwind, but she jumps out of her car waving at me, and heads my way. Laurel has put on a few pounds and doesn’t move as fast outside of the car as she does in it. She’s wearing shorts and an over-sized T-shirt, and has her light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Up close, I see that her dark eyes are troubled.
“What brings you over this way?”
“Mr. Craddock, I have a favor to ask of you.”
“What kind of favor?” She’s so serious that I have to hold back a smile.
She plants her hands on her hips. “It’s about Woody. Daddy said you could talk sense to almost anybody.”
“Come on inside, out of this heat, and tell me why you need me to talk sense to your husband.”
We sit down at the kitchen table. Laurel grips her hands together in front of her so hard her knuckles whiten. Her eyes spark fire. “Woody wants to have Jack come and live with us.”
“Whoa!” I rear back in my seat. I can’t even begin to list how many ways this is a bad idea, the primary one being that the two men haven’t spoken a word to each other in twenty-some-odd years. “I sure didn’t expect that. I presume it doesn’t fit into your plans?”
“That’s an understatement! I don’t see how Woody can even think about having Jack at our house. He’s just an awful man. I mean, I’m sorry what happened to him, but a lot of people say he’s made the worst of the situation.” She sighs. “That’s not fair. I don’t know what I’d do if I was in his place, not being able to see or walk.”
“Laurel, with his physical problems, even if he was a practicing saint it would still be hard having him live at your house. You’ll just have to tell Woody how you feel.”
Her smile is tired. “Woody is a good man, but he can be stubborn when he gets something in his head.”
It occurs to me that he and Jack are the same that way. “To be honest, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I doubt if Jack would take to the idea anyway.”
Her lips go all pinched. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. You have to admit Jack’s gotten along fine, being waited on hand and foot by his daddy. And if he thinks he can get Woody to do the same thing, I expect he’ll figure out a way to forgive Woody pretty fast.”
I’m surprised at the anger in her voice. She’s generally even-tempered, if a little impulsive. There must be something else behind the fuss she’s putting up. I can’t help wondering if Taylor Brenner is in the mix.
Laurel is an attractive enough girl, but nothing special to look at, with a pudgy face and a button nose. Folks were pretty surprised that she ended up with Woody after his divorce from Taylor Brenner. How could Woody go from Taylor, who was about as electric as a girl could be, to steady, plain, easy-going Laurel? But Jeanne told me to wait and see, that she bet it would work out. And sure enough, after he married Laurel, Woody settled down big time, almost as if he was relieved not to have to keep up with Taylor’s bright star.
“Why does Woody want to take Jack in, anyway? He’s got you and the kids to consider. And doesn’t your mamma live with you, too?”
“That’s what I told Woody, but he says since he works at home, like Jack’s dad did, he can take care of Jack the way Bob did. And you know good and well who the work would fall to.”
“Like I said, why would he want Jack there anyway, the way things are between them?”
She pushes away her untouched coffee and crosses her arms on the table. “You know Woody feels responsible for what happened to Jack. It was his idea for the two of them to sign up for the army.”
“I know that’s what Woody said at the time. But they were kids. It wasn’t Woody’s fault the army took Jack and didn’t take him.”
“Woody says there’s more to it. And he won’t talk about it.”
Okay, so maybe Taylor does figure in there somewhere. But I have a feeling I’m not going to get to the bottom of it right now.
“I still don’t think Jack would move in with you all.” I tell her about Jack’s insistence that Woody not be allowed at the visitation tonight.
Her fine hair has straggled out of its clip, so she undoes it and snatches the hair back up tight and clips it again. “I know it. Belle called the house and told him.”
“How did Woody react?”
“He said as long as we can go to the service, that’s okay.”
“Do you know if Taylor is coming down from Dallas?”
“She’s already out at her mamma’s. She called this afternoon. She was trying to decide if she ought to go see Jack.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“She doesn’t know if Jack would be in the frame of mind to see her.”
“You and Taylor get along, do you?”
She shrugs. “We used to get along fine. I don’t see much of her these days. When she comes to see her mamma, it’s only for the day, so she doesn’t have a lot of time for the old crowd.”
A neat sidestep to the question I was really asking—if there was any jealousy over Woody.
She looks up at my kitchen clock and bolts out of her chair. “Oh, my Lord, I’m late. I’ve got to pick up my boys from school.” She cocks her head at me. “I hate to ask you, but do you suppose you could talk to Woody about this? He’d listen to you.”
I get up and walk to the door with her. “I don’t know why he’d listen to me. What about his daddy? Maybe Frank could talk some sense to him.”
She pauses at the door. “Sounds like you haven’t kept up with Frank. He’s gotten to be a hermit since Sissy died. I don’t think he’s said three sentences to us in the last six months.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I really am. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to stop by and see Frank after his wife died, since we don’t know one another that well. But it wouldn’t have hurt me to call him, having gone through that rough patch myself.
In the late afternoon, I go down to the pasture behind my house to spend a little time with my cows before I go off to Bob’s visitation. What Jack said about the Benadryl in Bob’s autopsy report is still nagging at me. I make a mental note to call Doc Taggart’s office tomorrow to check it out.
Bob Harbin’s coffin is a flashy silver-and-chrome affair with dark blue satin lining and outer panels studded with brushed chrome medallions. I imagine it’s going to draw some criticism. People in Jarrett Creek are close with a dollar and don’t care much for show.
Jack is fitted out in a jacket that swallows his thin frame. His wheelchair is positioned near the coffin for the visitation. A couple of his veteran friends sit in the pew near him. The pungent smell of whiskey floats to me as I bend to speak to Jack. “Your daddy looks good. They did a real fine job with him.”
&nb
sp; “Yes, sir. Lurleen told me it looks like Daddy could get up out of the coffin and walk out of here.”
I pat him on the shoulder and tell him I’ll see him at the funeral tomorrow. I only stay twenty minutes before I head off for my weekly date. Ever since my next-door neighbor, Jenny Sandstone, and I made our peace after she saved my art collection from arson, we get together once a week over a bottle of wine. Jenny is a lawyer, and likes taking a break from her work. We stick to gossip and complaints.
Sitting at Jenny’s kitchen table over what Jenny claims is a pricey bottle of Pinot Noir, I tell her I’m troubled about what Jack Harbin is going to do now that Bob is gone. “You got any bright ideas? Jack would like to stay put here in Jarrett Creek, but I don’t know how he’s going to pay for that.”
“What happened to Jack’s mother?” Jenny is dressed in blue jeans and a white blouse. Her flame-red hair is tied back, with tendrils of it escaping like coiled wire. She’s a big woman, around six feet tall and buxom. Jenny made it clear from the get-go that she’s not in the market for a man, and that suits me fine. I’m happy to have the occasional company of a smart woman who isn’t interested in taking over my wife’s position.
I tell her about Marybeth, Jack’s mother. “She lives over in Bryan–College Station. She visits every now and then, but she has a hard time with what happened to Jack.”
Jenny frowns. “Seems like with his dad passing, she could step up.”
I shake my head. “You’d have to know Marybeth. It’s not that simple.”
“Whatever you say.” Jenny doesn’t have patience for self-indulgence. “Damn shame for a young man to suffer such grievous wounds.”
“You’ve got that right. He was a pistol when he was young. Best quarterback ever came out of Jarrett Creek High School.”
“You mean it would have been okay if he was only good at math?” Jenny can have a sharp tongue at times.
“You know I don’t mean that.”