“Yeah. Come to think of it he did. But he's mad at me. He thinks I drank up the money for his mama's headstone.”
“Did you?”
“Nope. I just ain't went and got it yet. Ever damn penny of it's still right there in the cabinet where she kept it.”
Bobby loosened his hold on the steering wheel a little and eased back in the seat, relaxing just a bit.
“Jewel said you helped her buy some stuff for David. Some Christmas presents and stuff last year. It's good of you to help her, Virgil.”
“Somebody's got to. Glen won't.”
“Tell me something, Virgil. Does he just blame the whole world for all his problems? Does he even care what he does to you?”
“I don't know what's in his head. I thought he was a good boy at one time. But he's been this way ever since Theron died. If I could take it all back and change it I would. But I can't.”
“What does he say about Jewel?”
“You don't want to hear it.”
Bobby closed up on him again and just kept driving. With him it was hard to tell when he was mad. But if he didn't want him to tell the truth what the hell did he pick him up for? He had a ride home to start with. Minding his own business.
“Did he spend the night with you last night?” Bobby said.
“Yeah.”
“What time did he get in?”
“I don't know. I laid down about eleven, I guess. He come in sometime after that. He was in his bed asleep when I got up. I guess he come in after he went to see her. But I don't know. And I ain't gettin in the middle of it.”
Bobby turned his head and looked at Virgil hard.
“What do you mean? You're already in the middle of it. You been taking him fishin and puttin up swings for him. What do you call that if it ain't right in the middle of it?”
“That's all right, by God. If his own daddy won't take care of him I will. And dare any damn body to try and stop me.”
Bobby turned his face back to the road and drove in silence for just a moment, and then he looked at Virgil again.
“Don't get all upset, now.”
“I ain't upset. But he's gonna find out you been seeing Jewel. And then what's gonna happen?”
“Me and Jewel ain't done nothing wrong,” Bobby said.
“Yeah, but he never will believe it and you know it. You better go on and tell him. Or get her to.”
“She don't know what the hell to do.”
“I know what he ain't gonna do.”
It got quiet in the car. He guessed Bobby was getting pissed off but he didn't care. He was about to get the same way. None of this was his fault and he wished they'd just leave him out of it. Nobody ever listened to him anyway, never had. All this was just as hard on him as it was on them. Maybe harder. He took a few more pulls on his cigarette and then flipped it out the window. They were all still young and they thought they would be forever. They didn't know how fast their lives would go by, how one day they'd turn around thirty years from now and wonder how it had managed to pass so quickly. They didn't know that the things they did now were important and would matter when those thirty years were up. He didn't want to try and tell Bobby any of that. He couldn't take sides in this. They were going to have to work all this out for themselves. And all he could do was watch, and hope for the best.
“How come he hates me so bad, Virgil? I ain't such a bad guy, am I? I always got along with Theron. And Randolph, too. Even after I got elected and caught Glen doing something wrong, I'd cut him all the slack I could.”
“Why?” Virgil said. “Why would you cut him some slack? You grew up with him. You know how he is.”
Bobby seemed embarrassed. He didn't look around. “I don't know. I guess partly cause of you. Probly partly cause of what happened to Theron. I always felt sorry for him after that. Tried to be nice to him. But he never would let me.”
Virgil took a small sip from his beer and glanced out the window for a moment. The houses along the road were dark now and there was a sad wonder in Bobby's voice. Virgil wished he could give him the answers to his questions, and he knew there must have been a lot of them down through the years. There had been so many times when he would have given anything to be able to just take him fishing one afternoon, to let him know that he cared about him and that he was sorry for the way things had to turn out sometimes, but there never had been any chance of that. Emma had seen to that. That crazy jealousy she had for Mary had driven a wedge between them, and the lies she had told Glen when he was too young to know better had eventually convinced him they were truth. All the nights out drinking and fishing on the river. All the car wrecks and the times in jail. He wondered what he could have been thinking of in those years when she was poisoning his mind against him. It was all such a waste. Way too late to fix now.
“How old was you when you and Glen got in that fight?”
“I don't remember, Virgil. He's a good bit younger than me. Course he was as big as me. I reckon he's about four years younger than me, ain't he?”
“Yeah. You were born while I was still on Corregidor.”
“Forty-two.”
“Right. If I could have got a leave and come home, I would have married your mama. I mean if your granddaddy would have let me. But after they bombed Pearl Harbor they wadn't no leaves. Then four months later
I was captured. I don't blame her for marrying Charles. She had to do somethin.”
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “But Charles was killed in '43. Why didn't you marry her when you got out? When was that? Forty-five?”
“Yeah. But I couldn't hardly walk for nearly a year. I had that infection in my spine. I didn't figure she wanted a cripple. How could I have even supported y'all?”
“How come you married Emma then?”
“She got pregnant.”
“That don't seem like much of an answer, Virgil.”
Bobby stopped the car and killed the motor and got out. He left the lights on and went to the trunk with the keys. When he came back he cranked the car and passed a bottle over.
“Here. I took this off a drunk the other night. Drink it if you want it.”
Virgil lifted the bottle and looked at it. It was a pint of good whiskey and it was nearly full. It warmed his stomach when he twisted the cap off and took a drink. The car moved forward and when Bobby started speaking again he never looked around. He might have been talking to the road.
“Somebody killed Frankie Barlow over at his place last night. They think around midnight. That's why I asked you what time he got in. I can't prove nothin. It ain't even my county. And I damn sure can't watch him all the time. I ain't trying to sound like an asshole. I just know how he is. I don't want to see Jewel hurt no more. So if you see him before I do, tell him that he better be careful.”
He didn't say anything else. He sped up and drove fast, powering the car into the curves and eating the miles away. He slowed a little when he got close to Virgil's house and then he turned into the drive and pulled up next to the porch. The Redbone puppy was lying there on his chain. Virgil got his beer and his whiskey gathered up and got out and shut the
door. The car backed away and turned around, and then it went out of the yard and up the road, dust swirling behind it, the red taillights growing smaller and the sound of the car diminishing to a low roar that went on and on through the hills so that he could hear it for a long time, standing there under the stars, sipping from the whiskey and listening to the puppy whine and whine.
Mary was reading a book in the big armchair when he opened the door and stepped in. He turned the lock behind him and put the gun and the keys on a ledge in the hall, dropped the hat on the coffee table.
“You're out late,” she said.
“The wheels of justice got to keep on rollin, Maw.” He flopped into a green recliner and pushed the footrest out on it. “What you got? Another one of them trashy romance novels?”
“It's a book about Africa,” she said. “I always wanted to go to Africa. Ever since Charles got killed I've always wanted to.”
“Well I don't. Missippi's wild enough for me.”
“Don't sit there. You'll go to sleep.”
“I may do it but I'm too damn tired to move. You go to the funeral home?”
“I was just about the last one to leave. I kept waiting around on you. I just knew you'd show up. Where you been?”
“I had to go somewhere.”
She got up and went into the kitchen. It was dark in there and he saw the light in the icebox come on, her robe moving in front of it. He heard her open the bottle and she came back in and handed him the beer. He
took it and nodded his thanks and took a good long drink of it, lowered the contents by a third.
“And I went and talked to Virgil.”
She greeted this with silence, just sat with one finger stuck up across her bottom lip the way she did and studied him. He had to be in her class when he was in the sixth grade. She watched them all that way while they did their lessons and that was when he learned that when she did that her mind was a million miles away.
“I took him home,” he said. “Been down at the VFW again, drinking with Woodrow and that old Parks woman.”
He took another sip of the beer. He kind of wanted to eat something but he kind of wanted to get to bed, too.
“What time you going out there tomorrow?” he said.
“I think they open at twelve. But I thought I'd get up early and make some sandwiches and take them by the house first.”
“I got to go in early, too. We got to do that escort and Jake's on vacation. We're shorthanded. Hell, we're always shorthanded.”
She looked down at her hands and examined her nails with her fingers straight out.
“What'd you have to talk to Virgil about?”
“I just wanted to have a little talk with him.”
“About Glen?”
“About Glen and some other things, too. Can you get me up about six?”
“I reckon so. You want me to fix you some breakfast?”
“How about fixing me about three eggs and some ham and make me some biscuits? I'll take you out for an ice cream cone sometime in my cop car, give you a thrill.”
“You just get up when I holler at you.”
“I'm going to bed right now. Soon as I finish this beer.”
They sat there for a little while. The big clock in the hall ticked its slow minutes. And a little bit later she woke him, had already taken the bottle from his hand. She told him to go to bed and he did. That night he dreamed of Jewel sleek and wet on a sand dune, waves breaking behind her and a bucket and pail standing in the wash. He was building a house and he watched from the roof. The sun was hot and gulls were crying in the air. There was a grave nearby, just a wooden cross stuck up in the sand, and she was picking flowers to place around it. She was sad but he knew it would pass. He laid shingles one by one under the sun and the day was long and boats tacked in the bright water off the coast. Virgil was fishing beneath an umbrella and Puppy was working on a car. And Omar, the black bull, stood in the breaking waves and plowed them with his nose, lifting his head to the wind, his hide shining wetly and the curly hair blowing on his face.
It was late and Puppy knew he needed to get on home, but he hated to fold his hand. He was out of beer and he'd written a check to get into the game and it was lying out there now in the center of the table with greenbacks crumpled in piles, low mounds of quarters and dimes. There was a blue chip in front of him, two red ones, and a white one. Twenty-one dollars. He was holding two pair, jacks and eights, all different suits, and a three that he couldn't match up with anything. And he knew better than to try and draw to a possible full house with it this late, and with this much money lying on the scuffed table, and twenty-one dollars in front of him that he could still stick back in his pocket. All he had to do was fold and go home. But he'd been losing all night, off and on, and knew it was time for his luck to change.
“What about you, Puppy?”
He glanced over at Wayne, who was holding the deck in his hand, leaning back in his wooden chair. A small cloud of smoke hovered over the table, a vague smell of musty furniture and rat poison that seeped from the corners of the room.
“I'm thinkin about it,” he said.
“Well don't think all night. Some of us got to work tomorrow.”
He started to say something back but he'd already taken too long to
decide. Good sense told him to get out, have money for gas and buy a few groceries. Trudy was going to be waiting up on him and if he came in broke again she wouldn't even let him go to sleep.
“Bet's to you, Puppy,” Tolliver said.
“I know it.”
“We gonna play or what?” Jimmy Jackson said. They were all looking at him and Wayne gave out a long sigh. There was an open half pint of whiskey sitting in front of him and he picked it up and took a small sip. He cleared his throat and set it down.
“What damn time is it anyway?” Tolliver said.
Wayne lifted his wrist and looked at his watch.
“Five till twelve,” he said. “Shit, I need to go after this hand.”
“I should have done gone,” Jimmy said.
It was two dollars to him and they could see how much money he had left, and they probably knew too that he didn't have any more in his pocket. If he could just draw a jack or an eight. But Wayne probably had him beat anyway. Still, he hated to fold. All that money was out there on the table. If he could give her all that she might even treat him right for a change.
“Come on, Puppy, shit,” Wayne said.
“I'm out,” he said, and he dropped his cards on the table and pushed his chair back.
“Bout goddamn time,” Tolliver said. “Bet's to you, Jimmy.”
Puppy got up from his chair and picked up his chips, walked over to the table where the kitty was, and brought it back over and set it on top of his cards. He stood and watched them finish the hand, watched Jimmy rake it all in with a small flush. He got his twenty-one dollars back when they cashed their chips in and then they put in three dollars apiece for the light bill and the snacks they kept in the old icebox and then it was time to go home. They put the cards away and the chips and Wayne
waited for them all to get out on the front porch before he pulled the chain on the light that hung over the table. Puppy waited on the porch and then Wayne came out and locked the door.