Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) (10 page)

Eventually, when his mother grew tired of waiting for Arlen to show interest, she arranged for Eula to come over to the house to help her with canning the peaches that grew in the far corner of the property. Eula, who wasn’t exactly dutiful but who didn’t mind helping either, had walked into the house while Arlen was drinking straight from the milk carton with the refrigerator door open and his oldest pair of work jeans on. When he turned to her, he felt as if he’d been hit in the chest with a basketball, the breath knocked out of his lungs. He asked her out that day, sure that she’d come to the house in secret pursuit of his affection, because she and his mother were obviously in on the scheme together. But Arlen’s mother hadn’t known Eula as well as she’d thought: Eula hadn’t fallen on her knees in gratitude that Arlen had asked her out—not by a long shot. She’d finished stocking the jars of fresh preserves in the pantry, and then she’d said,
Maybe. But I don’t know.

The summer storms came and went, and for two months, Arlen did his best to win Eula’s attention. He started going to church again; he ironed his own suit because his mother wasn’t getting the pleats exactly right. He dropped by the drive-in movie theater where Eula collected ticket stubs; he saw the same three movies half a dozen times. When he could stand it no longer, he found out from Will that Eula was quite possibly seeing another guy.

First he was angry. Then beaten. He avoided the drive-in. He began to mope. His mother dropped his plate of eggs and bacon down on the table with an accusing thud. “Didn’t I raise you to be better than this?” she asked him, jabbing her pointer finger. “You want something, you gotta fight for it. You can’t give up.”

Another week passed before he dragged himself back to the drive-in, where he was probably the only person in the field under the giant screen who watched the film alone. He was adjusting his
radio when he heard a knock on his window, and when he turned his head, a man he didn’t know was there scowling at him, bending down.

“You Arlen?”

Arlen rolled down the window. “Who’s asking?”

Eula was running up from behind the man a moment later, breathing hard, her eyes wide with panic. She wore an orange shirt and little shorts that showed off her curves. She took the guy by the arm. “Don’t. Leon, don’t. Please?”

Leon shook her off him, so violently and condescendingly that it made Arlen fume. “No, no, no,” Leon said. He tugged the door of Arlen’s car open. All around them, people had started rolling down their windows, paying attention to the drama that was unfolding under the big screen. “You said this is the guy who’s been coming around bothering you?”

“I didn’t say he was
bothering
me,” Eula said.

“Well, he’s bothering me,” Leon said. He wasn’t a big man—nor did he seem to be any older than Arlen—but his eyes had an out-of-control luster that Arlen would later come to recognize as the precursor to violence. Designs of lightning bolts had been razored into the man’s hair above his ears. His hands were oversized for his smallish frame, but he held himself like an athlete. He leaned on Arlen’s car, overly cool. “Why don’t you get on out here and talk to me?”

Arlen didn’t hesitate. He heard Eula making excuses, saying,
This is ridiculous
, and,
Leon, you leave him alone.
But the words barely registered. The movie went on. There was some amount of posturing and posing. Arlen could still remember the unflinching hardness of Leon’s eyes. People shouted for them to shut up or fight already. The eyewitness accounts were conflicting: Some said Arlen threw the first punch. Others said not. However it began, the outcome was clear: Leon was a broken, sniveling, and bloody mess on the ground.

By the time the police came, Arlen was sweating and so pumped full of adrenaline that he couldn’t feel his knuckles beginning to swell. But he had regained enough of his composure to know he should be embarrassed. With Eula shaking her head and looking on, a cop put handcuffs on Arlen’s wrists and pushed him against his own car. He’d broken Leon’s nose, and an ambulance was on the way to take him to the hospital. Arlen was escorted to the police station, and though the cops had to do their job, Arlen had found them to be a mostly polite bunch with a screwed-up sense of humor. They said Arlen should apply to join the force. Leon had been giving them hell for a long time.

The next day, Eula came to the house again with a Tupperware container full of homemade tomato soup and a batch of cookies. She was sweet as sweet could be, making small talk with his mother, explaining that Arlen hadn’t started it, painting a picture of Arlen as the great defender of women, children, and small animals everywhere. Arlen wasn’t sure his mother bought it, and he didn’t care. He’d fought for what he wanted. That evening, when they sat watching the sky go dark and Eula kissed him, Arlen would have fought a thousand more battles for her to have her kiss again.

It was only later, when he was sitting in the interrogation room at some police station in a city he didn’t know very well, that the true price of winning Eula’s affection had become clear. The detective told him:
Tell us about the guy you beat up down in Virginia two years ago.
The cops stood looking at a folder that Arlen wasn’t allowed to see, smirking at one another and saying,
You put this guy in the hospital
, and,
Really did a number on him
. Arlen hadn’t known how to defend himself. He was the stranger who had shown up in town just when the senator’s wife had turned up dead. And someone in the building where Arlen’s cousin lived swore she “recognized” Arlen from the police sketch that had been running on a perpetual loop on the local news. The cops called Arlen’s tiff with
Leon a
prior
, which Arlen knew was not a good thing because to say he had a prior meant that they thought of that fight as
the crime prior to the current crime.
Slowly, the notion of being innocent until proven guilty was revealed to be untrue in countless little ways.

Once he was firmly entrenched in prison life, Arlen thought back to the fight, to the smell of summer earth, grass, popcorn, and car exhaust. To the way Eula had looked at him when they sat together on his mother’s porch, her girl’s eyes wide with apology and pleasure too. He got to spend two years with Eula, got to make love to her for the first time and hold her afterward, got to marry her, got to move their few belongings into an empty and waiting house. And he knew if he had to choose between not having Eula or having the fight all over again, he would roll up his sleeves a second time, knowing full well where it all would lead, but thinking of nothing besides how badly he’d wanted her to love him.

The cops picked up Arlen walking through Jackson Ward with an open bottle of Wild Turkey in his hand. He hadn’t even bothered to wrap it in a brown paper bag. When they asked Arlen where he lived, he’d said,
Nowhere.
But he gave them Will’s name.

Now Will stood begging the police officer, a guy who was friends with one of his brothers but whose name he could no longer remember, for a little mercy. They were standing on the sidewalk. The darkness was yellowed with porch lights and streetlamps. Around them the people of the neighborhood were staring out from their stoops and windows. Will reasoned: Yes, Arlen had been drinking. But he hadn’t been bothering anyone. He hadn’t been driving. It was no big deal.

The officer seemed unconvinced.

“You do know who this guy is, right?” Will pointed with his thumb toward the cop car, where Arlen sat hanging his head.

“Should I?”

“You hooked yourself Arlen Fieldstone—the guy they just let outta prison? Nine years he was in there, without having done a thing wrong.”

“
That’s
the guy?”

Will nodded. “Yeah. Poor bastard.”

The cop crossed his arms. “Man. Talk about the short end of the stick.”

“There’s gonna be a lot of questions if you bring him in. Lots of reporters, I mean. Asking questions and such.”

“I hate reporters,” the man said.

“Think you might cut him a break?”

“I shouldn’t.” He glanced about as if he expected someone to be watching him. “You taking responsibility for him?”

“Yeah,” Will said. “I am.”

The officer clasped Will on the shoulder. “You’re a good man.”

Will nodded solemnly. “Arlen is too. When he’s sober.”

“Aren’t we all,” the man said. “Get him home. And tell your brother I was asking about him.”

“Sure thing,” Will said, and he hurried before the officer changed his mind. He collected Arlen from the backseat of the squad car, steadying him with a firm hand, and then he walked at Arlen’s side slowly, so slowly, as if they were taking a leisurely evening stroll. Arlen smelled of sweat and whisky, and the way he shuffled along in his wrinkled clothes and wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye put Will in mind of a homeless man.

Will helped Arlen into the passenger seat, then shut the door. The smell of sweat and alcohol was strong. Will had to hold his breath until he could roll down the window. The hot night air offered no relief.

“So on a scale of one to ten, how plastered are you?” Will asked.

“Eighty proof.” Arlen laughed a little. “You mind stopping at the drugstore on the way back? Cop took my whisky. I need a replacement.”

Will grated his teeth together and started the car. “And what money are you gonna buy it with?”

“Oh, right,” Arlen said brightly. “Course I’ll pay you back.”

Will sighed and drove through the tangle of University of Richmond buildings, dark now except for the occasional flash of a security light and campus phone. People more shadow than flesh slumped along the sidewalks, lingered outside of doorways, or sat nodding off at bus stops.

“Here’s all of it,” Arlen said, and he reached awkwardly into his pocket and pulled out the wrist-sized wad of money from Will’s cashbox. He tossed it on the bench seat between them. “Minus the Wild Turkey.”

“What were you gonna do? Take off with it? Skip town?”

“Where would I go? Disneyland?” Arlen snorted. “To see if Eula’s gonna put me up for the night? Pull the other one.”

Will shook his head. In the glare of the passing streetlights, his knuckles against the steering wheel had gone pale like eight little moons.

“And how’d
you
do today?” Arlen flapped Will’s chest with the back of his hand. “Get any action?”

Will glanced over to see Arlen’s face—a white, white smile that reeked of sneering. “Course I didn’t get any action. Wasn’t looking for any.”

“No?” Arlen’s chuckle was low, slightly menacing. “You think I don’t know why you dragged that girl out with you today?”

“Arlen—”

“Don’t you
Arlen
me. Sound like my momma. I might’ve been in prison for the last decade, but I know that look a man gets when he’s talking about a woman. And I seen it on your face.”

“You’re not making sense,” Will said through clenched teeth. Arlen was dangerously close to the truth. And if Arlen knew it, Lauren knew it too. The thought was unnerving. He didn’t want her to have any more pull over him than she already did.

“You do know that woman ruined my life,” Arlen said, his voice sober now. “And here you are going on pleasure trips with her when I can’t even bring myself to leave the shop—”

“Hold up. You didn’t do such a bad job getting out of there today.”

“Hmm.” Arlen looked out the window. They’d just about reached the apartment in Carytown. “Guess you’re right about that. Guess I did get out, didn’t I?”

“That’s right. You did. And now it’s time to take the next step.”

“Which would be . . . ?”

“Putting this whole prison business behind you.”

“You mean I gotta make nice with your pretty lawyer.”

“I don’t think she works as a lawyer anymore. And no—you don’t have to make nice with her. But you’ve got to do
something
. And far as I can tell, talking to her and hearing what she has to say would be a good first step.”

“I ain’t interested.”

Will pulled the car up in front of his building and put on his hazards, double-parked. “I’m just trying to help you.”

“Ain’t nobody can help me,” Arlen said.

“Then I’ll make you help yourself.”

Arlen sighed, so deep and heavy that Will could feel the very weight of it pressing down on his own chest.

“Lauren’s not going away until you see her.”

“Well, in that case, you shouldn’t be trying so hard to get me to call her up.”

“I don’t follow,” Will said.

“Once me and little Miss Sunshine are square, she’s gone.”

“Not important.”

“Right,” Arlen said.

The car idled but Arlen made no move to get out. The street was quiet. The vintage clothing shops and gift boutiques were silent and dim. Even this late in the evening, the air was oppressively hot and the hum of air conditioners was the street’s only sound.

Arlen put his hand on the door, then seemed to think better of it. He turned to Will, his face awash with streetlight. His pupils were red. The skin around his eyes was puffy and blotched. Will knew then that he’d been crying.

“Sorry about this,” Arlen said.

Will took off his seat belt, leaned over, and hugged him. His brothers had always been tough guys—not much for brotherly contact except on the rarest occasion. But Will couldn’t even begin to understand how much Arlen had likely starved for affection of any kind. And so he held him close and tight longer than he normally would have—no matter that Arlen smelled like booze and armpits—before Arlen sniffed and let go.

“Wait.” Will picked up the wad of cash on the seat. “Take this back in with you?”

Arlen glanced down at the money for a moment, then back up at Will. “Sure thing,” he said. And then he walked his slow and somber walk back inside.

Lauren hadn’t needed her brother to tell her over the phone about the latest letters to the editor that had popped up in online versions of national papers. She’d already seen them. She regularly punched her own name into search engines to see what people were saying about her, as if she might have some control over their chatter simply by knowing what it was. She read the letters with all the compulsion and sourness of a jaded detective, hunting herself down.