They sat side by side in Henry’s pickup outside the Chandler place. They’d killed the brights so as not to disturb Evie’s father. It was getting late. Evie was tired, said she was burned out with everything.
“It’s like untying one knot, only to find there’s another knot beneath that, and then yet another,” she said. “And Evan? You think Carson framed Evan?”
“I think Evan is just as likely to have done that all by himself.”
“You said he remembered nothing.”
“
He
said he remembered nothing. Wakes up after drinking himself blind, there’s blood on his hands, and in the hallway outside his room there’s a dead guy with his brains beaten out. Circumstantial maybe, but … Jesus, how do you even defend yourself against something like that?”
“You don’t,” Evie said. “Wonder if he knew about the kid by then.”
“Maybe not,” Henry said. “Rebecca got pregnant in February of 1949. Had the kid—when?—November sometime, right? Evan killed the guy—if he did, in fact, kill him—in August. He may have gone to jail knowing nothing about it.”
“I wonder when he found out that Rebecca had died,” Evie said.
“He didn’t really speak of her. He only told me about the daughter right toward the end of my sentence. Way I’m thinking right now is that he told me only enough to get my word. I don’t think Carson was ever Sarah’s legal guardian … maybe in name, but certainly not in any other capacity. I think Evan told me that because he knew Carson would contradict it. He wanted to put me in enough mystery so I wouldn’t quit.”
“He knew you well enough to know how stubborn you’d be.”
“Maybe so,” Henry said.
“And you’re really not gonna open that letter, are you?”
Henry shook his head. “Nope.”
“Because?”
“What if there’s something in it that changes my mind, Evie? What if there’s something that makes me not want to deliver it? Regardless, what Evan wants to say to her is none of my business.”
“Seems to me you’ve been manipulated by one brother and framed for something you haven’t done by the other. I could say you were dumb as milk, sure, but I actually admire you, Henry Quinn.”
“Fuck off, Evie Chandler,” Henry said, laughing.
“No, seriously, I really admire you. You ain’t a quitter. You got some backbone. You are an idiot for that stunt with the gun that put you in Reeves, but you saw it through and you got out, and I know you ain’t gonna go back.”
“Hell no, not a chance.”
“There’s some kind of girls who could fall for a man like you.”
“Is that so?”
“Sure there are. I mean, a couple of cans short of a six-pack, maybe. You don’t like to say ‘mentally defective,’ right, but you know the kind of girl I’m talking about. Pops bottle caps with her teeth, eats off the kitchen floor.”
“You are such a dumb fuck,” Henry said. “Christ in hell knows what I am doing hangin’ out with you.”
“It’s because you love me, Henry Quinn, but you’re too proud to admit it.”
“Pride is not one of my primary faults, I assure you,” Henry said.
“So you don’t love me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So you
do
love me?”
“Didn’t say that neither.”
Evie laughed. “Asshole.”
“Fuck you very much.”
Silence reined for a minute, and then she said, “Carson Riggs scares me, Henry. He’s a bad fucking guy. I just feel it.”
“I know he’s a bad guy, and he scares me, too.”
“Maybe he framed his brother, maybe he killed Warren Garfield … and he had something on Doc Sperling and Garfield, something that got them to do whatever was needed to get that poor girl committed to Ector Psych. And then he sent his mother there as well. Carson Riggs is the kind of family everyone could do without.”
“And there was a fourth one, Sperling said … someone else who knew what Riggs had on him and Garfield.”
“Yeah, someone else who’s dead.”
“You seein’ a pattern here.”
“Everyone we need to talk to is dead.”
“Apart from Alvin Lang, grandson of the fucking lieutenant governor of Texas, for Christ’s sake. And that’s who Sperling said we should talk to.”
“I need to sleep. I don’t even want to think about Alvin Lang until tomorrow.”
“Talking to the guy isn’t the problem, Evie. Who’s to say that this affair, the abortion in Mexico, whatever the hell happened, is even something that he’s concerned about? Maybe he couldn’t give a damn about being sheriff. Maybe he doesn’t even want to be sheriff. And if Carson knows about this, what’s to say Lang won’t just hightail it over there, tell Riggs that we’re trying to blackmail him, and all of a sudden I’m back in Reeves trying to explain to Evan why the hell his daughter never got the letter.”
“They’ll cut my head off and drop me down a dry well.”
“Could be worse ways to go.”
“Fuck it,” Evie said. “Let’s go inside and drink bourbon ’til we puke.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Henry said, and opened the car door.
They did drink bourbon, but not so much as planned. Glenn Chandler was sleeping, and so they stayed quiet, hung out in the kitchen for a while, and then went to Evie’s room where they lay side by side and looked at the ceiling and talked about what would happen when the letter was delivered, or not delivered, and this was all done and dusted. The real possibility that it might be never be done and dusted was not broached.
“I gotta go make some records,” Henry said.
“You’re gonna have to sing me a song one of these days, Henry Quinn. For all I know, you might sound truly awful.”
Henry smiled. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve her, but Evie Chandler just pleased the hell out of him. In that moment, he could not think of anyone with whom he’d rather be.
“So say it all settles down. Say you get your letter delivered, or maybe we find out that she really is dead, then what? You gonna go back to your ma in San Angelo?”
“I’ll go see her, sure,” Henry said, “but I have no plans to stay. Me and my mother sort of hang together more out of necessity than design.”
“You have no desire to find your father?”
“None at all. Far as I understand, he didn’t even know that my ma got pregnant. I don’t think he knows he has a son. Guess he’s alive somewhere, maybe has a family now, and the last thing in the world he’d want is someone he’d never even been aware of showing up and claiming to be his son. Wouldn’t be right to do that to someone.”
“That’s a very compassionate viewpoint. If it were me, I’d wanna go over there and collect up on all the past birthday and Christmas stuff.”
Henry laughed. “What’s done is done; that’s the way I see it. He didn’t break any promises because he didn’t make any in the first place. People do impulsive things, and sometimes there are consequences. Doesn’t mean you have to beat them to death for it.”
Evie pulled herself closer to Henry. She liked that feeling of warm solidity beside her. Her hand on his chest, feeling it rise and fall as he breathed, feeling sleep stealing her words away even as she tried to speak to him.
“You’re making no sense now,” Henry said. “Sleep, why don’tcha?”
“’Cause I wanna talk to you.”
“We got plenty of time to talk,” he whispered. “Like Louis said, we have all the time in the world …”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Henry Quinn.”
“I don’t,” he replied, but she didn’t hear him. She had already slipped out of wakefulness into a deep and undisturbed sleep.
The sermon on Sunday, August 7, 1949, struck a chord with William Riggs. The words that got his attention were:
Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him
. It was from Proverbs, and the minister went on with further verses from the same book, saying such things as
The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother
, and
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him
.
Since his confrontation with Garfield, William Riggs’s attention had been completely bound up, tied tight like some Gordian knot. Grace had seen it clear as day. “You’re wearing your troubles like an overcoat,” she said.
“You aren’t troubled?” he asked her, a question that provoked an expression of dismay.
“Of course I am troubled, William. Lord, what would you have me think about this? That poor girl is up in that crazy hospital, and our son put her there. I understand that she wronged him terribly, but I never thought him so vindictive and heartless.”
“Can’t help but think that had I loved him more … or at least demonstrated some greater degree of affection when he was a little ’un …”
“Enough of that sort of thing,” she said. “That’s all just so much supposition and nonsense. You think they arrive like a blank slate and we get to write their personality? Children have a mind of their own before they even learn to walk.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Still, it is difficult not to think that—”
“That what? That had we done something a different way, he might not be the man he is now? You’re forgetting Evan in all of this. Evan was the one who done slept with his brother’s girl, William. How is he blameless in all of this? Way I see it, Evan is the one who’s responsible for this trouble, but we long ago accepted that he was a troublemaker, and so that makes whatever he does forgivable.”
“I’m not saying that.”
Grace smiled. “You don’t know what you’re saying, William Riggs.”
William paused, smiled in self-recognition. “You’re right there.”
“If all the energy we spent worrying about how something might have been different was devoted to dealing with what is actually there, then half the problems we have would no longer be problems.”
“That’s a very wise observation, my dear.”
“Well, what do you expect? I am a very wise woman.”
“That you are,” William replied. “So, I seek your counsel. What do you think we should do?”
“I think that this will settle. I think that his blood is up, and he is driven by little but anger. The anger will dispel, he will remember how much he loves her, and he will start to forgive her.”
“You think he will ever take her back?”
“No, I don’t believe he will. Had there merely been an indiscretion, a dalliance, then perhaps. But a child? Carson’s wife carrying Evan’s child, and everyone knowing, thanks to Ida Garfield and her storm drain of a mouth, I don’t think so. I think that would be too great a burden to bear.”
“It troubles me greatly that that he was able to influence Garfield and Sperling so easily. Without their medical and legal authority, he could never have done this.”
“Warren Garfield and Roy Sperling have a great deal to answer for, William, and I doubt it is merely this business with Rebecca.”
“What do you mean?”
Grace sighed and shook her head. “Why didn’t they tell him to go to hell with this notion? How did he convince them to fall in with this?”
“Leverage,” William replied.
“Leverage, indeed. But time unties all knots, no matter how well tied.”
“Well, whatever befalls that pair will be no less than they deserve.”
“Don’t let your mind turn against them, William,” Grace said. “That serves no purpose but to make you bitter.”
William heard what his wife said, and even though he agreed, he could not feel anything but resentment toward Garfield and Sperling. No one deserved the fate that had befallen Rebecca. And Evan did not know. William felt it his duty to alert his younger son as to what was taking place here, if for no other reason than to make him aware of what he’d done. Not for punishment; it was not his task to punish his son, for Evan—being Evan—would punish himself more than anyone else could, but for didactic reasons, perhaps. Evan needed to understand this lesson: life did not go easy on the shirkers. A man makes a decision, he then acts, and the consequences spread out like ripples from a stone tossed into a lake. Those ripples would fade before they reached the shoreline, or caught by wind and preexisting currents sometimes became waves sufficient to drown someone. Rebecca, if not helped in some extraordinary manner, would drown, and that was something William had no wish to see.
“I need to speak to Evan,” William said.
“Well, you will need to find him first,” Grace said. “Lord knows where he is these days.”
“I will find him,” William said. “And he can help me deal with the trouble he’s caused.”
Morning of Monday the eighth, William Riggs rose earlier than usual. He’d not slept well, his mind occupied with possibilities, very few of which were good. Last word of Evan he’d been Austin-bound, and that was where William figured he’d begin the search. Needle in a haystack came to mind, but he was intent on delivering the news to Evan.
“And if you don’t find him?” Grace asked.
“I’ll just keep on looking,” William said, hefting a bag of clothes in the back of his truck. He then proceeded to kick the tires in turn, perhaps determining air pressure, roadworthiness, something else known only to himself. Stalling, Grace thought, as if William knew his only destination was disappointment. Fact of the matter was that Evan could be anywhere. He was probably still in Texas, for Evan was Texan through and through, held within the border as if drawn by some preternatural magnet, its pulse both hypnotic and unrelenting.
“Austin ain’t Calvary,” Grace said, stating the obvious.
“Evan is a big enough personality for folk to remember him,” William said. “It’s a music town. Someone’ll know him.”
“You’ve got a picture?” Grace said, herself now stalling. She had a bad feeling, had pushed it aside, but it kept coming back again and again like a bad taste.
William just smiled. He didn’t need to answer. They both knew this was some fool’s errand, that this was no organized and calculated strategy, but merely a matter of doing something rather than nothing. Only way William’s mind would rest was if he acted. That was his nature. Only real regrets were those things left undone.
“Find a good boardinghouse,” Grace said. “Somewhere clean. Make sure you eat properly.”
William laughed. “Yes, dear.”
She walked around the truck and opened her arms. He met her halfway, and they held each other for the longest time.
“This is a rare business,” she said.
“Our sons’ business,” William said, “and thus our business, too.”
“Travel safe. Telephone me. Let me know what’s happening,” she said, and kissed her husband.
“Of course,” William said, and with that, he relinquished her and got into the truck. He started away, the window wide, waving back at her from the end of the drive before he turned onto the highway.
Before Grace had a chance to turn and walk back inside, Carson’s car appeared at the end of the drive and wound its way up to the house. She stayed there in front of the steps, wondering what had prompted a Monday-morning visit.
“Ma,” he said as he climbed out of the car. He was in uniform. Maybe he’d just been passing and thought to stop in.
“Carson,” Grace said. “Brings you here?”
“I need to discuss things with you,” was his answer, and there was a dryness and a formality to his delivery that did not sit well with her.
“Things?” she said.
“What has happened with Rebecca and what is going on with Pa.”
“You want to come on in the house, son?”
“I don’t have time to make a visit,” Carson said, “but I wanted to give you a heads-up. I have been talking to the oil people—”
“Carson,” Grace said, interrupting him. “I’ve heard enough already. We’ve talked about this before, and I reckoned we’d agreed on it. Evidently not—”
“Listen to me, Ma—”
“No, you listen to me, Carson. Your father has gone off in search of your brother. Knowing your father, he will find Evan, and he will haul him back here, and we will start making this thing right. I know what Rebecca did, and maybe there ain’t no forgivin’ her, but what you and Roy Sperling and Warren Garfield have done is ungodly. I ain’t makin’ no bones about it. That’s my viewpoint, Carson. What you’ve done is wrong is every way something could be wrong. I don’t care whether you are the law. You are still my son, and I am telling you right here and now that you have to set this right—”
Whatever was happening in Carson’s mind made little evidence in his expression. He seemed calm and self-assured, as if what he was hearing were of no concern to him at all.
Grace saw the child that had let Rocket out of the old barn and scared him away. There was something cruel and vindictive in her eldest son’s eyes, and for a moment she was afraid.
“You’re right on one count, Ma,” Carson said. “There ain’t no forgivin’ her, and there never will be any forgivin’ of her. She couldn’t have done worse. Evan, too. Evan’s gonna drink himself to death or get hisself stabbed in some bar someplace. I don’t give Evan a second thought. Rebecca is my business, however. Mistake to marry her it may well have been, but she is still my wife, whether I care for it or not. She is being punished, and that punishment will stand whatever you or Pa might think or do or say. And you’re right on another count, too. I am the law, and what I say goes. That’s the end of this business, and I ain’t sharin’ another word with you about it.”
“You think we can’t do anything about this, Carson?”
Carson smiled. “I
know
you can’t do anything about it. She is crazy—no argument—and she’s up there in Ector for the duration. After that baby done gets itself born, I’ll be filing for divorce and she will have no right to contest. And those head-peepers up there can do whatever the hell they like with her, because she will no longer be my responsibility.”
“And the baby? What’s to be done with your brother’s baby?”
“Hell, I couldn’t care a single good goddamn, Ma. Pa finds Evan and drags him back here, then he’s gonna be comin’ back under duress. Evan don’t want a wife, and he sure as hell don’t want a kid. The man’s a drunk and a bum and a transient. You see him draggin’ a kid around the saloons and bars of Austin?” Carson snorted derisively. “I don’t think so.”
Grace knew that Carson was right. What was she dealing with here? A bullheaded tyrant and an irresponsible drunk. Said a great deal about how they’d been raised. Not such a good testimonial for their parenting skills. However, as she’d pointed out to William, children came personality intact, and no matter what they might have done, these boys would have gone the way they were going. She told herself this, tried to believe it, but it lacked conviction. She was not convinced that they hadn’t just flat-out failed, that what was now transpiring was a result of their own mistakes.
“Evan and the girl smashed everything to pieces, Ma,” Carson said, and there was a ghost of sadness in his tone. “I loved that girl from the day I first seen her, and you know it. Took me more ’an a decade to win her over. Well, to
believe
I’d won her over. But I never did, did I? She loved Evan more than she could ever love me, and that is something I can’t abide. You wanna know the truth? It’s not the infidelity. It’s not what they did. It’s not that she got herself pregnant and is carryin’ my brother’s child … It’s that she came to me the very next day and said she would marry me. She knew exactly what she’d done, and she went ahead and accepted my proposal. Whether she knew she was pregnant is not the issue here. It’s that she went behind my back with my brother, and she was all set to marry me the very next day. She would never have told me, would she? She and Evan would have held on to that dirty little secret until the end of time, and I would be there, the good husband, the dutiful father, and she and Evan would be sneaking looks and sharin’ something that only they knew about right under my nose. That is what I can’t forgive, Ma.”
“Oh, Carson, I’m sorry …”
Carson shook his head. “You ain’t got nothin’ to be sorry for, Ma,” Carson said. “Pa neither. You done good by both of us. Okay, so maybe we ain’t all you wanted us to be. Maybe we’re a disappointment every which way you could imagine, but whatever you might think about me, I am not one to betray my brother or my wife. Bad things I may have done, but not to my family. Family is different, Ma, and you well know it.”
With that, his tone and expression evidence enough that he didn’t want to hear another word, Carson opened the car door and got back in.
He accelerated away, kicking up a cloud of dust behind him.
Grace stood there, her heart racing, her whole body taut.
Bad things I may have done, but not to my family.
Was this what she’d been afraid of? That Carson had been involved in something terrible, something involving Roy Sperling and Warren Garfield, something that tied them all together in such a way as to never be untied?
Grace hurried back into the house. She wished she’d gone with William to Austin, ludicrous notion though it might have been, but the very last thing she wanted to be was alone.