Griff looked dejected, walking the perimeter of the pool. He reminded Eric of a lifeguard. “It’s gone,” he said. “They must have come back for the rest.”
“The coping, you mean?”
“They took everything.”
“Once the trial is over, we’ll take a trip somewhere,” Eric said. “You and your brother can pick the best place to skate in the country and we’ll make it a vacation. We could all use a break.”
Griff came around the shallow end of the pool. The sounds of the high school band practicing were in the air, a far-off cacophony of horns and drums.
“The bowl will still be skateable once it drains, but not like before. I probably won’t come here again. It would just make me sad.”
“I’m sorry, bud,” Eric said.
Griff picked up a few rocks from the ground, inspected them, then lobbed one into the deep end. The plunk sent waves of concentric circles through the pool, small shivering ripples that folded back on themselves upon reaching the cement walls. Then he threw another rock, then another and another. The chalky skim dispersed into tiny concentrated islands that floated away from where the rocks hit, as if in retreat, and collected around the palm frond, the cups and mesquite branch. It made Eric want to toss rocks into the water as well, to start up some kind of game with Griff.
“Did you get in a lot of fights when you were a kid?” Griff asked.
“A few,” Eric lied. “Not too many.”
Actually, he’d been in only one fight, an awkward affair in junior high. There were more palms than fists, more taunts than blows, a lot of wrestling and very little pain. At one point, the other boy, Robbie Kuykendall, had taken off his shoes and thrown them at him. Eric had spent his life avoiding trouble, taking the high road, turning the other cheek. Not because it was the right thing to do, but because he was afraid. He’d long hoped no one recognized that about him. Even now, he’d lied to his son to throw him off his father’s cowardly scent.
“They recognized me,” Griff said. “They knew me. They were taking the coping, too, but one guy started saying these ugly things. About Justin, you know? They knew I was his brother, knew what happened.”
“And that’s why it started? You were trying to defend him?”
“It would’ve happened anyway,” Griff said. “They were wasted.”
“Well, I think—”
“I guess it’s always going to be like that. With people recognizing him, saying things.”
“It sounds like they were looking to stir something up. Not everyone’s like that. Most people won’t be,” Eric said. It was a relief, a shock, to sound calm and sensible. To hear what Griff had endured was to feel small and inconsequential. His throat went stiff. He glimpsed a future where his sons, and Laura, and certainly Eric himself, were assailed by the past, and he was powerless in the face of it. The threat was brutal, but his powerlessness was worse; it was, he saw and then fought not to see, what he’d been staving off for four years, the sense that his best efforts would never be enough. He could protect none of them.
“Okay,” Griff said.
“And once this all dies down,” Eric said, hating the sound of his voice, the accent creeping in, the lie he was forming, “people will see him for who he is, not what happened to him. People have short memories. Trust me, I teach history.”
Griff threw his last rock and dusted off his hands. He milled around the pool, kicked a long tube of beer cans bound together with duct tape. He said, “Don’t tell, okay? Don’t tell Mom or Justin. I don’t want him to think people are talking about him, even though they are.”
“I won’t, bud,” Eric said. “But next time, just let them say whatever they need to say and get out of there.”
“You think there’ll be a next time?”
Eric thought of Griff starting school the following week, thought of potential fights in the locker room or hallway, more trips to the emergency clinic. He said, “I just want you to know it’s okay to walk away.”
Griff was staring at the pool. He said, “Now that the coping’s gone, I keep thinking of all these tricks I want to try, of everything I could’ve done here.”
“You’ve got a good heart. Whatever happens, I want you to know that. You’ve got a good, good heart.”
“Mom said something like that, too.”
“We’re your parents and we love you. And I’m just glad we get to spend some time together.”
“We’ll probably spend more time together now,” Griff said. “There’s nowhere to skate.”
He was making a joke, trying to pardon his father. It made Eric want to say how sorry he was that he’d never come here to watch Griff ride. The heat cleaved to his skin and the air smelled of the stagnant water. Traffic was picking up, workers and volunteers arriving at the Shrimporee. There was the occasional whine of a circular saw in the distance. The marching band was still playing, struggling through a fight song that swelled and swelled and swelled but ultimately fell apart.
28
AFTER ERIC AND GRIFF CAME HOME, LAURA CLAIMED TO have forgotten a couple of items at the store and headed out again. It was another lie. She passed the pawnshop, but there were cars in the parking lot, so she went out to H-E-B and picked up a loaf of potato bread and a jug of laundry detergent. They were the first things that came to mind. When she swung back out onto Station Street, the only cars in front of Loan Star were the pawned Cadillac and a customer’s beat-up hatchback, so she steered around to the rear of the shop and parked beside Cecil’s truck.
She stayed behind the wheel, letting the air conditioner blow against her, hoping the hatchback would leave soon, hoping it wouldn’t. The sun bore down, bright and lilting, and she closed her eyes in the heat. She hadn’t slept the night before or this morning, and she knew she wouldn’t sleep until after the Shrimporee at the earliest. Her hands had been trembling for hours, something she fully noticed only now that they had stopped. She longed for rest. The idea of closing herself in her darkened bedroom, of shutting her eyes under the ceiling fan, held an almost primal allure. And yet she knew the allure was a dead end. When she’d tried to take a nap after her first trip to the store, she’d just lain on top of the comforter thinking about the day ahead. After she’d said what she needed to say to Cecil, she was due to drive Justin into Corpus for his session with Letty. Then, tonight, they’d eat together as a family. Even if the meal was just a sack of burgers and fries, it seemed important that the four of them sit together at the table. After supper, Cecil would stop by, claiming to need Eric’s help with something, and the two of them would go to the marina and ambush the Bufords. Then Laura would stay up all night, awaiting word. So this was her opportunity to rest, to breathe before whatever happened next happened. The knots in her muscles and mind loosened, lowering her into a soft pit that could become sleep. The ease with which she relaxed surprised her. Last night, after she and Eric made love, she could hardly close her eyes. She had, in fact, climbed on top of him hoping it would sate her, calm her, exhaust her. But, no. All night and all morning, she felt like she was being chased.
And yet, even in the last few hours, even with the Shrimporee looming, there had been short stretches of time when Dwight Buford wasn’t foremost in her mind. Instead, she thought of Griff, of the scar that would surely form along his hairline and of what the coming school year might hold for him. She thought of Justin, how he worked so hard on his room, how he loved to drive, like every other teenager in the world. And certainly, she thought of Eric. Of how stoic he’d been these last few weeks, how he seemed to strut from time to time, his chest out and his shoulders back. If he found out she’d come to visit his father, he’d be mortified. Even with his newfound stoicism, Laura saw him as a child. He was a boy at the top of a high dive who couldn’t bring himself to jump, a boy who’d stay up there until night fell and he could descend the ladder in the dark. No, he wasn’t brave or strong, but now he was desperate enough, scared enough, so beside and beyond himself, that he was pr
eparing to do what she knew he couldn’t. She pitied him. She wanted to slap him across the face to wake him up, for he seemed to have dreamed himself into a life that didn’t exist. And yet she couldn’t recall a time when she’d loved him more. She hated how cold she’d been these last few weeks, how she wouldn’t allow herself to relent. Another reason she’d pulled into him last night was to apologize. It seemed possible that it would be their last night together and she wanted him to remember that despite everything, he’d once had a wife who loved him.
Inevitably, thoughts of Dwight Buford would return. She’d start to sweat and shiver. Her gut churned with doubt, with guilty relief. She saw him getting into a car before dawn, riding silently toward the water that his father so badly wanted for him and his mother. Because of the storm, she saw skies dark and ugly and sagging with rain. She smelled the dampness in their car. He rode in the backseat without speaking, his reflection uncommonly large on the window, a distortion of slack cheeks and pale skin and tired, sallow eyes. They passed buildings and houses and signs that had stood there for decades, but everyone in the car, knowing their lives were on the cusp of change, saw them as if for the first time. The poor ruined woman in the passenger seat would have wanted to speak, but instead she just lay her head against the window, her mind riddled with the hollows left in the absence of hope.
Behind Loan Star, Laura’s hands were shaking again. She clicked the radio on, hoping to hear something calming, but the deejays were just bantering about the Shrimporee. She got out of the car quickly and crossed the parking lot as if pursued by a wasp. Head down, no looking back. The hatchback and Cadillac were still there. Inside, Cecil was helping a customer, a woman wearing sunglasses and deliberating over a diamond-studded tennis bracelet. The air in the shop fluttered with all of the fans, and it smelled of Windex, as if Cecil had recently wiped down the display cases. A security camera hung from the ceiling. Laura knew it hadn’t worked in years, a fact that Cecil had always bragged about, as if duping a potential thief trumped catching an actual one. Mismatched merchandise lined the long metal shelves. It saddened her, as usual. When she looked at what had been pawned, she was always bracing against an encroaching melancholy. It had been that way since the first time Eric brought her here to meet his father. Seeing the necklaces and power tools—even seeing the guns and knives—that had once meant something to their former owners stymied her. What would it take, she wondered, for someone to give up that pretty silver tea set? The mounted javelina head? She couldn’t stop herself from scanning the displays for items she recognized, rings she’d seen on her customers’ fingers or paintings that had once hung in acquaintances’ homes. Before, she’d always worried she’d recognize someone coming in to hock something, worried she’d see someone she knew reduced to the lowest possible point. Now she worried someone would recognize her.
“It looks dull. I’m not sure it’ll clean up,” the woman considering the tennis bracelet was saying to Cecil.
“Could be that you’re still wearing your sunglasses,” he said.
“Oh, right,” she said, humorless. “What’s the least you’ll take?”
“I can’t go any lower,” Cecil said. “I’ve got that much in it. My partner paid more than he should have.”
“Ivan,” she said. “We see him at the Black Diamond. He likes tequila shots and married women.”
“Those sound like hobbies of his,” Cecil said.
“Can you hold it for me? I get paid next Friday.”
“Layaway’s ten percent down.”
“Sometimes Ivan works deals with me,” the woman said quietly, coquettishly. “I’ve seen the couch in the office a couple of times.”
“He works Monday,” Cecil said. “We’re closed this weekend for Shrimporee.”
She handed the bracelet back to Cecil. She lingered for a minute, hovered over the jewelry cases like an inspector. Laura thought the woman was watching her from behind the sunglasses, so she turned her back and studied a mother-of-pearl accordion on the shelf. She made her way to the front of the shop, passing fans that blew strands of her hair into her face. When the woman left, the bells on the door chimed. Laura watched her get into the hatchback. She situated herself behind the wheel, turning on the air and lighting a cigarette, then finally reversed out of the parking spot and pulled onto Station Street. Once the car was out of view, Laura flipped the sign in Loan Star’s door so that it read CLOSED.
Cecil said, “Is this a stickup?”
Laura stood gazing into the parking lot, feeling the heat magnified through the glass. She wanted to close her eyes again. She could have fallen asleep right there. Cars passed on Station, and though she feared each one would turn in to the driveway, none did. The sun banked off the Cadillac’s chrome. The arrow marquee still read HE’S BACK. Cecil must have taken the sign in before the storm, otherwise the letters wouldn’t have survived. He was a practical, willful man, and just then she felt such affection for him that she wanted to spin on her heel and run to embrace him, as if he were her own father.
She didn’t move. For a moment she thought she might faint. The world seemed to flicker. She said, “I love Eric.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Your son. I love him.”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” Cecil said. “He’s mighty partial to you, too.”
“He’s made mistakes, but who hasn’t. He’s done the best he could.”
“Everyone has.”
“He thinks he can hold everything inside, but he can’t. He doesn’t have a poker face.”
“Laura,” Cecil said, “if you’ll say what’s on your mind, I’ll do my levelheaded best not to miss it.”
“He’s not built for what you’re having him do. It’s too much. I’m here to ask you to call it off.”
“I see,” Cecil said.
“The fact that I’m here proves he can’t hold in what he ought to.”
“Whatever he’s told you, he told you because you’re his wife, because you’re Justin’s mother.”
“He shouldn’t have,” she said.
“We can agree on that,” Cecil said.
“What happens when y’all show up and Mayne’s got a bodyguard with him?”
“A bodyguard? I think he’d more likely bring the Easter rabbit.”
“Or a fleet of cops? What happens when something goes wrong and you can’t go through with it? The two of you’ll wind up in jail for attempted murder. Or kidnapping? Wouldn’t that be something to read about in the paper.”
“I needed him to ease up on watching the house. He wasn’t doing anyone any favors out there.”
“So tell him to stop,” Laura said. “Tell him he’s being careless. Tell him to go home.”
“Mayne put something on the table at a fair price. It’s no different than when someone pawns a television.”
“And what does that offer have to do with tonight’s ambush?”
A flatbed truck with a load of lumber jostled toward the marina, then another and another.
Laura said, “I don’t deserve the blue ribbon for being a wife. Not even close. The same goes for being a mother. But I’m trying. I’m putting one foot in front of the other.”
“So is Eric. He’s looking for a road out of this. He’s looking to do right by his boy.”
“He is, or you are?” she said. Her hands were shaking again. She crossed her arms, curled her fingers into fists.
Cecil made no response other than to find a key on his key ring and lock the jewelry case.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Laura said. “I didn’t sleep last night. The storm, I guess.”
“It was a gully washer. What we used to call a toad-strangling rain. The farmers’ll be happy.”
“Can’t you let it play out in court?” she said. “We’re so close to an end we can all live with. I just keep thinking of everything that could go wrong.”
“And I suspect Eric’s thinking of everything that could go right.”
T
hat his father knew him as well as she did, knew of his cavalier optimism, was a comfort. There had certainly been times when she wished Eric had seemed angrier or more desolate, times when she questioned whether he truly understood the gravity—the finality—of their situation, but in the last weeks while she acted so frigid with him, she’d also come to see how much she relied on his hopefulness. Such reliance had brought her here this morning; she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.
Laura said, “Just because he thinks everything will work out doesn’t mean it will.”
“Doesn’t mean it won’t, either,” Cecil said.
29
AFTER HIS SON’S WIFE TOOK HER LEAVE, CECIL LEFT THE CLOSED sign showing and locked the door behind him. Anyone stopping by would assume he was pitching in at the Shrimporee. The cab of the truck was baking. He’d always expected Eric to confide in Laura. He’d expected some resolve to come from it, some comfort. He hadn’t counted on Laura to turn skittish. Truth to tell, he’d thought she would want to pull the trigger herself.
The blacktop outside of Southport was empty and wet. Overhead, a pair of frigate birds circled. They were the first ones Cecil had seen all year, likely flushed from the mangroves by the storm. Justin’s old billboard threw a long, thin shadow across the road and over the snarl of mesquite trees in the median, their twisted and arthritic limbs. The roadside ditches brimmed with brown water; the grassy pastures and planted fields were darkly saturated. A broken-up tread from a tractor tire was scattered on the caliche shoulder.
Despite Laura’s visit, despite the doubts she’d cast, he could still imagine driving out here tonight. He could still flash forward through everything he’d laid out for Eric: Cecil would pick him up after the boys were asleep, and they’d drive to Loan Star to get the Cadillac. Then they’d take it and the truck to the marina, snuff out the lights, wait. When the Bufords arrived, they’d show them the rollerboard suitcase full of clothes and the envelope full of cash. They’d hand them over with the Cadillac’s keys and pink slip. Cecil would explain about the man he knew in Saltillo, Mexico, who’d agreed to pay Dwight cash money to clear brush from fields, a man who’d seen trouble himself and had a vested interest in not drawing any kind of attention. Then Eric would say they needed him out of the country. He’d keep his tone even, as if asking for a favor or calling in a friendly debt. He’d say that even the prison up in Huntsville would be too close for the Campbells’ sanity. They would show them the gas cans in the bed of the truck. “If he skips bail, they’ll take our house,” Mayne would say, and Cecil would nod, not without satisfaction. They would allow his parents to say goodbye. Cecil would ride in the passenger seat while Dwight drove the Cadillac. He would admit to carrying his pistol, explaining he’d brought it only to discourage Dwight from wrecking the car or speeding in front of a cop or running off when they switched seats near the Sarita checkpoint; Cecil would deliver them across the border in case the guards asked to see a driver’s license. Eric would follow in Cecil’s truck. They would drive three hours into Mexico, then stop so Cecil could get out and drive back with Eric. Dwight would continue on to Saltillo while they crossed back into Texas and made it home in time for the Shrimporee.
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