“Mutual Life and Mothers for Peace,” said Aura. “Accept the charges from Raleigh W. Hayes? I’d be absolutely thrilled.”
“Don’t overdo it, Aura,” snarled Hayes.
“Hello, sweetheart. Where are you now? Are you in New Orleans?”
“How could I be in New Orleans, dammit? I’m in a bar near Camp LeJeune. What are you doing in my office?”
“I don’t know why you keep telling me you don’t frequent bars, Raleigh. It’s obvious you have a whole secret life. I wonder for how long?”
“You’re in no position to bring up the subject of secret lives,” he said, wringing water from the bottom of his shirt. “You’re the one all of a sudden turning into Jane Fonda.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say it was all of a sudden,” Aura serenely replied.
“You mean you admit it?”
“‘Admit’?”
“Did I tell you Mothers for Peace could use my office? Did I?”
“Oh, Raleigh, really! What about one flesh and one blood? Honey, I’ve got some news for you from the police. That rug belonged to Jasper Kilby down the hall, and it looks like somebody wrapped up Bonnie Ellen in it. Those were her shoes.”
“Oh my God! Oh, Aura, no!” Hayes staggered back against the wall.
“Honey, no, no. I’m sorry. Calm down. She’s alive. A friend from her aerobics class saw her wandering around downtown bloody and barefoot in a daze and took her to the hospital. She’s covered with bumps and bruises and she can’t remember what happened to her, but she did recognize her shoes. I went over to see her. Poor girl. Eddie’s gone, cleared out their apartment and vanished. So now the police think they must have had a fight at your office and Eddie knocked her out, panicked, and put her in the rug. It’s absolutely horrible, but at least nobody’s dead. She doesn’t remember a thing between sitting here at this desk, and then walking downtown wondering how she’d lost her shoes.”
In his shock, it took Hayes a while to assimilate all the details of Aura’s story. She had to keep repeating things. “No, I told you, she’s fine. She’s staying with her friend, but I told her she could count on us to help. Thank heavens, you’d gotten her that insurance. But that’s you, Raleigh. Always taking care of everybody else. So, how are you, honey? Everything okay?”
“Very funny. Aura, how do you think my clients are going to feel when they hear I’m sharing an office with Mothers for Peace?”
“We had to have more lines. You wouldn’t believe the calls coming in today. You know we’re running Linda Harp for Congress against Lukes. But, don’t worry, they promised to get our phones in downstairs tomorrow.” Aura went briskly on to explain that Mothers for Peace had rented one of the empty rooms on the fifth floor of the Forbes Building.
“This is insane, Aura. I’m out of town for two days, and you open an office! Where are our children?”
“Downstairs helping paint. And Holly and Booger are putting in some shelves.”
“I guess you know that according to your daughter, her friend Booger is a homosexual.”
“She told you? Now, that’s interesting, Raleigh. I’m glad to hear that. She must feel that you’re loosening up a little and she can share things with you without the old fireworks.”
“I don’t know what you mean by the old fireworks, but I’ll tell you this, things are getting out of hand. I think you ought to take a moment and reconsider your priorities. You’re a mother.”
Aura snorted in a strange way. “A mother shouldn’t run Mothers for Peace? A mother shouldn’t do what she can to see that the planet’s still around for her children to enjoy? A mother—”
“Aura, I already heard your speech on TV this morning.”
“You did? Oh, Raleigh, that’s sweet of you. What’d you think? How’d I come across? Did I sound squeaky? Vera thinks I ought to lower my voice.”
“Vera?” Hayes peered through the hanging lobster pots and fatlipped grouper fish to the far end of the room where Mingo Sheffield, visible in blinks of electronic light, watched two Marines bombing the solar system on a noisy video game. “Vera? Where is Vera? According to Mingo, she was supposed to be in hiding, whatever that means.”
“Oh, you know Vera.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t know anyone anymore. I don’t even think I know me and I apparently don’t know you, Mrs. Hayes, or should I say Ms. Godwin?”
She laughed. “Of course you do, and I know you, and I love every inch of you, and I’d love to see a few, one of these days. When are you coming home?”
“Aura!” Raleigh blushed.
“Vera went to get her portable TV. We think we may make the news on Channel Seven. Is there a set in that bar you could watch? And what are you doing at Camp LeJeune? I wish you had some of our flyers with you to distribute there. But I thought you were going straight to Kure?”
“Don’t ask. Are the police still after Mingo and me? Can you believe I’m actually in a position to have to ask that question? Now that he’s found Bonnie Ellen, does Hood still want me about those guns?”
“Not really. I mean, he’s blustering around, calling up and so on. The fact is, he’s after me, and he’s trying to take it out on you, too. He actually came up with this preposterous notion about how Mothers for Peace was staging anti-male crimes all over Thermopylae to get publicity. I mean, really! Are we going to waste our time throwing paint on men’s sports clothes and stealing stupid PeeWee Jimson’s bust out of the library or chiseling off cannonballs? It’s hilarious. Anyhow, I just refer everything to Dan. He can handle Hood.”
“Dan Andrews?” This was Raleigh’s lawyer, his neighbor, and his old college roommate.
“How many Dans do we know?”
“Well, Aura, I thought perhaps you were referring to Dan Rather on CBS, or maybe Daniel Schorr.”
“Raleigh, am I picking up some subliminal hostility? What were you really trying to say when you started in on that little-woman-getback-to-the-kitchen grunting that you don’t even believe deep down?”
“Every man believes it deep down.”
She sighed. “Sweetheart, sad to say, that’s probably true. It’s not going to be an easy fight.”
“I’m not fighting.”
“I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about the whole kit and caboodle.”
“Fine. Fight on. Up the revolution!”
“It’s not funny, Raleigh.”
A thin boy in a Marine uniform, his hair shaved to a nub, his pimples scrubbed to a flame, was now fidgeting behind Raleigh, slapping his coin loudly from palm to palm. “Somebody’s waiting for the phone, Aura. I’ll call you as soon as I get hold of Gates and know what I’m doing. I don’t suppose you’ve heard any more from Daddy?”
“No. Not a word, and neither has Vicky Anna. She lent us three chairs and a desk. By the way, I’m supposed to tell you that, let’s see, Grandpa Clayton’s grandfather married an orphan, a girl from the state home.”
“Frankly, Aura, I don’t care if he married Abraham Lincoln’s widow.”
“Well, Vicky said you asked her to look it up.”
“Oh. Are you talking about that general? Goodrich Hale Hayes?”
“Darling, they’re your family. That damn little Earley! I hope he realizes what he’s put you through. Did you see Flonnie Rogers? Did she know where this man Jubal is?”
“She said Charleston, but she’s a hundred and one, and she thought I was Daddy. Aura. Tell me, am I crazy? What am I doing?”
“Trying to do the right thing by everybody. Like always. Now, don’t worry. We’re fine here, and Betty can run the office as long as you need her. You know how much she loves you. But tell me the truth. Do you want some help?”
“No, thank you. I’m okay. Bye.”
After a little silence, she said, “Bye.”
“Aura? Aura? You still there?”
“Raleigh?”
“Listen.” Hayes moved the receiver to his other ear. “I was proud of you on TV. Bye.”
“Ra
leigh Hayes!” He heard her laugh. “That’s what I was waiting for! That’s the man I married! Bye-bye, honey. I love you too.”
“Too? Did I say I loved you? All I said was I was proud.”
“Oh, Raleigh, where have we been all these years? I feel like I’m twenty years old, don’t you?”
“Considering that’s around the time I was in Germany, digging latrines in the snow, yes, that’s pretty much what I feel like.”
Yielding the phone to the young Marine, who said loudly, “Thank you, sir,” dropped his money, and scowled with embarrassment, Raleigh Hayes, feeling oddly elated, returned to the bar and drank his scotch. Four more people had joined Mingo in the high vinyl chairs; two were soldiers, two were a couple nuzzling one another with a defiant self-consciousness. The man was burly and wore a wine-colored shirt open over a cream polyester sports coat. The woman was tiny and wore designer jeans with a ruffled blouse. The young Marines over by the video games eyed her wistfully.
Sheffield had taken it upon himself to order two Captain’s Platters, saying, “It’s already dark, we might as well eat here as there.” The food was brought to them in a booth looped with little hammocks holding starfish, sand dollars, and tropical shells that no one had ever found on a Carolina beach. Their dinners were jumbled piles of greasy fried dough in which tidbits of seafood could be faintly detected. “If you don’t want yours, give it to me,” Mingo mumbled, trying to chew a leathery clam neck. “You sure are picky, Raleigh.”
The insurance man handed over his plate, and continued to update his neighbor on the Thermopylae news. “So, so much for your wife’s disappearance. Vera and Aura are in this Mothers for Peace thing together. Mingo, I honestly think you ought to go home. Now that the police know nobody’s been murdered, all you have to do is apologize to Billy Knox. Maybe you could get your old job back. Can’t hurt to try. You’ve got to think of the future.”
Sheffield rubbed a napkin in circles around his mouth. “Are you trying to get rid of me? Because you promised I could come.” Tears welled in his round eyes. “I’ve never even seen Charleston, or gotten to go hardly anywhere at all. Ever since the tenth grade I’ve had a job, and nobody ever fired me before. Not once. I mean, that’s not a lie, is it, Raleigh? And now all I want to do is go on this little trip and try to be some help, and you keep making these insinuations. I’m not the one that got to go to college and join ROTC and get to see Germany and everything.”
“That was not exactly a vacation. And please don’t misunderstand me.” Hayes took off his glasses, because the sight of Sheffield’s tears was making his own eyes water. “I told you you could come along, and you can. But I don’t want to waste your time. The point is: I need to look for my father. You need to look for a job. You have obligations.”
The fat man licked away a tear. “Well, don’t worry about us. Vera and I are working on a plan.”
“A new business venture?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“All right.” Raleigh was familiar with previous forays by the Sheffields into private enterprise. While the Hayeses had bought Tupperware, Amway, Avon, magazines, plant hangers, and vegetable slicers from them, not enough other people had. “Care for some coffee?”
“I’m coming with you?”
“Oh, Mingo. Okay, fine.”
Mingo grinned as wide as the moon.
At seven, Raleigh persuaded the bartender to turn on the television perched on a shelf in the corner. Twenty minutes later, the two travelers were in a fistfight with half the customers at Captain Nemo’s. It started when the smirking anchorman on the screen announced that earlier that morning a Thermopylae couple had been charged with creating a public disorder right there in the Channel Seven studio, following the taping of Woman Alive! They’d been fined fifty dollars each, and released with a warning. “The outburst began during a heated question-and-answer period between the studio audience and Woman Alive! guests, Congressman Charlie Lukes, up for reelection in this summer’s primary, and Aura Hayes, president of Mothers for Peace.” A clip came on, at the sight of which Mingo gasped. “Gollee, that must of happened after that mean guy turned our sets off in the store! Gollee!” Half the studio audience were not only on their feet, they were swinging their arms, apparently trying to separate Nemours Kettell and his wife, Barbara, who had each other by the shoulders and were shaking and jerking each other so furiously that people around them screamed as toes were tromped and elbows flew into abdomens. Wayne Sparks, beatifically smiling, looked on. “Mr. and Mrs. Nemours Kettell apparently fell into a political argument over the discussion between the congressman and Mrs. Hayes,” blandly noted the voice-over. “Kettell is a successful businessman and the Thermopylae chairman of the Re-Elect Charlie Lukes Committee. Mrs. Kettell is vice president of Mothers for Peace.” In the next clip, two policemen were dragging out the backdoor of the studio Barbara Kettell, who appeared to be either practicing the old style of passive resistance by going entirely limp or had passed out; behind them came Wayne Sparks, fingers raised in the peace sign. After him hurried somebody with his jacket pulled over his head. “That’s Nemours,” Mingo pointed. “I sold him that jacket at the Washington’s Birthday Sale.”
The voice-over continued as a new clip showed Aura and Lukes glaring at each other from their swivel chairs on the dais. “The disturbance broke out in the final minutes of today’s program.” Aura was in midsentence. Her eyes were glittery and her voice icy. “No, I am not ‘proud’ that we sent the Marines in to invade that tiny little Caribbean island, in complete violation of every international law. I think it happened two days after the deaths in Lebanon because of that tragic bungling. And comparing it to the invasion of Normandy? That’s too ridiculous and too pitiful for words.”
“Well, I’m proud,” said Lukes vehemently. “It gave America something to feel good about again.”
“Killing a few dozen Caribbeans, including hospital patients, not to mention the deaths of young American men, makes you ‘feel good,’ Congressman?”
“I’m losing my patience here.” Lukes savagely gripped his hefty thighs. “You’re doing nothing but revealing your ignorance of very complicated issues.”
At Captain Nemo’s bar, the man in the wine-colored shirt suddenly shouted, “You’re damn right. He’s damn right. Get her off of there! Send her back where she came from.” The woman in the frilly blouse and designer jeans beside him nodded too. “He’s right.” Lined up in front of the couple were at least eight imported beer bottles. Seconds later, the man shouted again, “I hate those damn bitch feminists. All they’re interested in is queers and abortions.”
“He’s right,” nodded the woman, shaking four gold chains out from under her blouse. “I’ve got no use for them.”
It was when the man repeated, “Damn bitch,” for the third time that Raleigh Hayes flung back his chair and stood up. “Okay,” he shouted across the room. “Excuse me. Excuse me! I’m going to ask you to refrain from making any further comments about my wife.”
In complete silence, everybody in the place turned to stare at him. Then the three young Marines started nudging each other and chortling. Then the couple at the bar began to giggle. “He’s a nut,” the woman told the bartender.
“That your wife?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Hayes said, coming toward him. “Even if she weren’t, your remarks are uncalled for.”
“On TV? Sure. Sure.” The grinning drunk looked Hayes up and down, from his damp dirty Hawaiian shirt to his mud-caked shoes. “Well, why don’t you tell her to wash your clothes, you bullshit.” He elbowed his girlfriend and she laughed loudly.
Beyond reason now, Hayes snarled, “I told you to keep filthy comments to yourself.” At this, the burly man leaned out from the high chair and shoved our hero, who skidded backward onto the floor, sprang up before he even stopped sliding, and hurled himself at his assailant. In seconds they were grappling in zigzags across the room, while the woman hopped up
and down shrieking, “Kill him, Daryl!” and the bartender yelled, “Quit that! Quit that! Hey! Watch out!” A few seconds more, the man was on top of Hayes, banging his head against the floorboards. With whoops, the three Marines piled on, striking out indiscriminately at both combatants and at each other. Down at the bottom of this churning mound lay poor Raleigh, a knee crushing his face and a chin digging into his ankle bone. Suddenly, he heard a long loud hollering, like a sonic boom, coming closer; then bodies began to fly away from him. His attacker shot backward with an astonished look. The same look opened Hayes’s mouth when he saw the big man spinning in air on the Gargantuan shoulders of a twirling Mingo Sheffield, whose amazing uninterrupted bellow was vibrating the glasses on the bar shelves. The flailing man above him squealed, “Stop! I’m gonna puke. Stop!” Mingo looked up in surprise, as if baffled to find a stranger flopped around his neck, and stopped with a jolt, heaving off the body of the drunk, who rolled over and quickly lurched toward the hall where the bathrooms were. His girlfriend stumbled after him in high heels. After trying to rebutton his torn shirt, Sheffield brushed back his hair, which he wore with a deep careful side part to cover his bald spot. “Well, gollee, I’m sorry,” he said to the Marines and the bartender, all of whom crouched behind furniture at the alert. “But four on one isn’t fair.”
Hayes was feeling under the tables for his glasses, which he found fortunately unbroken, just bent. The two Thermopyleans quickly paid their bill, and left Captain Nemo’s. The news wasn’t even over yet. The weather girl was slapping black magnetic clouds all over her map of coastal North Carolina. Walking to the Cadillac, Hayes coughed twice, then stuck out his hand and shook his friend’s. “Thank you, Mingo.”
“I didn’t even know what I was doing. I guess I never would have done it if I’d ever known what I was doing. Did you see that! Did you see what I did! Oh, damn, I wish Vera could have seen me. You’ll tell her, won’t you, Raleigh? And Tommy and Boyd and everybody? They’re never going to believe me, so you say it’s true.” Sheffield’s postbattle exhilaration continued unabated as Raleigh drove straight to the highway, never taking his foot from the accelerator until he saw the sign for Kure Beach.
Handling Sin Page 26