Some Can Whistle (30 page)

I did my duty as an executor; the house and the art were sold. Some of the money went to the Actors’ Home, the rest to her parents, both of whom died within two years. Jill’s drawings I gave to UCLA, where she had studied. The only thing I kept was
Let the Stranger Consider
—it seemed she had meant it for me.

Once or twice a year I looked through the album, hoping that in time I would understand what she wanted me to consider. Was it the fact that I had stayed a stranger, or was it she that I was to consider? She had been in her mid-forties when she drew those portraits; she didn’t set out to flatter herself, but neither did she attempt to diminish her own appeal—her clarity, her frankness, her welcoming attitude. I never looked through the whole album consecutively; even just looking at two or three drawings at a time made me miss her too much. More often than not I just turned to the haunting drawings at the end, where Jill was recording her disappearance, her shrinkage.

In time I got to wondering about Jill. In the years when we
were attempting to renew our friendship, I never asked her about her love life, and she never asked me about mine. I wasn’t having a love life just then, and I doubt Jill was either. I knew several of her friends, and none of them ever mentioned a guy. But maybe there had been a guy; or maybe there was about to be one. She had been private but not exactly cautious; perhaps at the end she had welcomed the wrong man.

The woman was dead; it didn’t really matter, and yet an old boyfriend’s curiosity began to nag at me. Finally I called the detective who had investigated her death; he was bored at first, but he was also a big “Al and Sal” fan, and when he found out who I was, he obligingly looked up the file.

“She wasn’t in the house but a moment when she was killed,” he said. “Her keys were still in the door. She probably just ran afoul of some drifting dope-head.”

I felt embarrassed for having asked. Why had I even supposed her death had to do with a boyfriend? What kind of worm was that, what kind of apple? Did I think the violence of love produced a more acceptable end than the violence of accident? I never resolved those questions, but I did regret calling the detective.

I finished my story by expressing that regret. T.R. sighed. All belligerence had left her. She looked very young and very sad.

“Do you know the Governor?” she asked, to my surprise.

“Oh, I’ve met him,” I said. “I wouldn’t say I know him. Why?”

“I used to read about you,” T.R. said. “You know, little things in the paper, about you being at a party with the Governor.”

“I have been at two or three parties with him,” I said.

“Yeah, but you’re famous, so you could get him on the phone, right?” she said. “You can call him up and ask him something if you want to, right?”

“I probably could,” I agreed.

“Do it,” T.R. said. “Ask him if Earl Dee’s really out. If he’s out I want to know it. I got two babies to raise. I don’t want to end up like your friend. Just ask the Governor, Daddy. Call him right now.”

When I put my arm around her she was shaking.

“I’ll call him right now,” I said.

For the first time I began to be a little worried about this dark man—Earl Dee.

I called the Governor and he gave me the name of the head of the prison board; the head of the prison board put me in touch with the warden of the Huntsville unit, who scratched his head a bit and said he’d have to call his Records department in order to locate Earl Dee.

The warden also turned out to be a fan of “Al and Sal”; he promptly called his Records department, and within thirty minutes a young lady in Records called me back with some good news; Earl Dee was still in jail.

“Yep, he got in a fight and slammed a cell door on somebody’s headbone,” the girl said, in accents that bespoke East Texas. “The earliest we’d be letting him out is about two months from now.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s a very big relief.”

Just as I was putting down the phone I heard a terrible scream from T.R., who had decided to go swimming while I made my calls. The scream was so chilling I went into shock—my instinctive conclusion was that the young lady in Records had just told me a lie. Earl Dee
was
out, he had found us, and he was about to murder T.R. I managed to overcome my shock and scramble out the door. One glimpse of the pool was enough to show me my mistake. T.R.’s screams resulted from the fact that Godwin Lloyd-Jons was floating face down on the surface of the pool. The kids eyed his floating body with curiosity but little alarm.

“He’s dead, he drowned!” T.R. said in a shaky voice. “Get him out, Daddy—maybe we can give him mouth-to-mouth.”

“He’s not dead,” I assured her, wishing I could will the adrenaline that had squirted into me when T.R. screamed back into its ducts or glands or wherever adrenaline comes from.

“Get him out!” T.R. said. “I can’t stand to touch dead things or I’d get him out myself.”

“He’s just doing his breath-control exercises—it’s some kind of Eastern discipline he affects,” I said. “He’s always floating on his face in the pool and scaring people like this.”

T.R. stepped closer to the edge of the pool. Godwin seemed to be totally naked, as he often was when he chose to do his breath-control exercises.

“I don’t know, Daddy,” she said. “He sure looks dead to me.”

Indeed, he did look dead. I would have thought so myself if I hadn’t found him floating face down in the pool so many times only to see him suddenly start spurting like a porpoise, after which he would allow himself a few drags of air and then swim up and start being his obnoxious self.

Muddy came running out of the house with his AK-47 at the ready. He ran out and crouched beside the diving board.

“Where is he?” he asked, meaning Earl Dee.

“He’s still in Huntsville,” I said. “I just got the good news.”

Just then Godwin began spurting like a porpoise. Until that moment, T.R. was highly skeptical of my opinion that he was alive.

“See, I told you,” I said. “He loves to float face down in the pool.”

When Godwin lazily swam to the edge of the pool, T.R. was waiting for him.

“What kind of little freak are you, going around scaring people like that?” she asked.

Godwin was largely deaf even when he didn’t have water in his ears.

“My dear, apparently I forgot my trunks,” he said. “I do hope you’ll forgive me. No offense was meant.”

“Is that water cold or is that water warm?” T.R. asked. “I hate to jump off in a pool of cold water.”

“I’m having a little difficulty hearing,” Godwin admitted.

T.R. reached down and felt his arm, which was apparently warm enough to quell her fears about cold water.

“Swimming will feel a lot better now that I know Earl Dee’s
still in prison,” she said. “How long did they say they’d keep him?”

“At least a couple of months,” I said.

“Shoot, we can enjoy the summer then,” she said, before plunging into the pool.

Muddy Box seemed a little disappointed that there was no Earl Dee to shoot at. “I guess if he’d come he’d have found out we wasn’t no easy prey,” he said.

The day that had started out so badly with my headache and T.R.’s anger and the sad story of Jill Peel turned into one of the most pleasant days the group of us had spent together. Godwin borrowed Jesse’s towel and made himself presentable. Once presentable, he soon concocted a large quantity of Singapore Slings. Gladys brought out some guacamole and then decided to go swimming herself. Her archaic breast stroke so fascinated Jesse that T.R. and Muddy had to take turns ferrying her around the pool so she could watch Gladys.

“Don’t look at me that way, Jesse—it’s okay if cooks swim,” Gladys said.

Buddy lumbered up to get Bo for their daily fishing trip. He took the news of Earl Dee’s continued incarceration philosophically.

“Somebody’ll slam his headbone, sooner or later,” he said. “Don’t matter how big and mean you are, there’s always somebody bigger and meaner.”

Anticipating the loss of his job due to this news, Buddy drank many Singapore Slings and various other things and got quite drunk. I informed him I had no intention of firing him; I wanted him to guard the house while we went to Europe.

“Which countries are in Europe?” T.R. asked. “Geography was my worst subject in school—I could never work up no interest in any place but Tyler.”

“I guess I know what you worked up an interest in,” Muddy said. He was not participating fully in the general good mood. Running out with his machine gun and finding no Earl Dee to shoot seemed to have left him feeling a little flat.

“How could you know, you grew up in Louisiana, you little
birdbrain,” T.R. said affectionately. “You never even heard of me until after I moved to Houston.”

Godwin was having a hard time keeping his eyes off T.R., who wore a very skimpy bathing suit. In an effort to impress her, he rapidly named all the countries of Europe, starting with Iceland and working eastward until he came to Greece.

“What about Australia?” T.R. said. “You didn’t name it. I thought Australia was over in Europe somewhere. I’ve always wanted to see a kangaroo.”

Once in a while, when excited, Godwin reverted to his old professorial mode. At such times he was inclined to spew out streams of erudition, much of it unrelated to any question that had been asked, or anything that a normal human might want to know. In this instance he began to talk about Ptolemy and Strabo. Soon we were left with no choice but to admit that we were dealing with a well-educated man. Godwin’s spurts of erudition made me sulky, made T.R. sleepy, and didn’t affect Muddy at all. While he was spurting, Pedro and Granny Lin came walking up from their hut. They went on into the house in search of beer.

“You started doing it when you was thirteen,” Muddy said, apropos of nothing. “You told me you did that time when we went swimming in the ocean.”

“So?” T.R. said. “What’s it to you when I started? I didn’t even know you then.”

“Thirteen’s pretty young to start,” Muddy said resentfully. “I didn’t even start till I was fifteen, and I’m a boy.”

“There’s no law saying girls can’t start younger than boys,” T.R. pointed out. A domestic argument seemed to be brewing. Godwin went on coughing up odd facts about Strabo and Ptolemy, oblivious to the fact that none of us was interested.

“And then there’s Euclid,” he said. “Quite an amazing mind, really.”

“Muddy’s got an amazing mind, too,” T.R. said cheerfully. “He keeps it in his dick. I’ve known two or three men whose only trace of brains are in their dicks.”

“I guess you would know a few, if you started when you were thirteen,” Muddy said resentfully.

“I didn’t see no reason to wait,” T.R. said, looking him in the eye. “If you wait, all that happens is that you get older. I’ve already got older but at least I had more fun than you did, along the way. Two years’ more fun.”

“Sometimes I wish I’d stayed in jail,” Muddy said.

Ten minutes later they were smooching on the diving board. Shortly after that they disappeared for a while. Jesse brought a bucket of checkers out of the house, poured them into the pool, and watched them float. Bo had learned to swim under water and swam around and around, froglike—he was a good deal more pleasant as a grandchild when he was under water. Gladys napped on a towel as Godwin continued his lecture on Euclid.

“Godwin, I’m the only one listening,” I pointed out. “Please don’t tell me any more about Euclid. Don’t tell me any more about Strabo or Ptolemy or Pliny or Herodotus or Martial or Catullus or Euripides or anyone. It’s making my headache start up.”

“T.R. is truly beautiful,” Godwin said. “I could educate her in a year, perhaps less, were it not for the impediment of Muddy.”

“Were it not for the impediment of Muddy, you’d be in over your head,” I said.

“Nonsense, I’m convinced T.R. and I could make one another very happy,” he said. “What a delicious irony it would be if I ended up your son-in-law.”

“Godwin, if you try to fuck her I’ll kill you,” I said listlessly. I knew perfectly well he would try to fuck her if he got the slightest encouragement, or perhaps even if he didn’t; I also knew I wouldn’t kill him—at worst I would probably only exile him from Los Dolores, a trivial response at best. What I couldn’t figure out was what difference it made, or what right I had to anything more than a simple opinion about T.R.’s choice of sexual partners. After all, she was grown, and I had made no attempt to influence her during her formative years. For all I knew she would be resentful if I even suggested that she pass up Godwin
or anyone else; certainly all of my women friends would be resentful if I tried to get them to pass up anyone. They would see it as a violation of the tacit pact we had not to interfere with one another in that arena. Maybe T.R. had been right, earlier in the day, when she said she felt like one of my female friends rather than like my daughter. What was really involved in feeling like a father, or like a daughter? I didn’t know, and I was beginning to feel gloomy at the thought that it might be something I could never learn—that my daughter would never feel that I was more than a friend. I already felt that
she
was more than a friend, and yet it was hard to be precise about the difference.

My spirits sank and Godwin noticed them sinking.

“Oh, piss,” he said. “You’re getting depressed again. Your daughter’s perfectly wonderful.
Why
are you getting depressed?”

“Yeah, why?” Gladys said, sitting up. One of Gladys’s more startling abilities was the ability to move instantly from deep sleep to full, even prickly, wakefulness. One minute she was snoring, the next minute she was insulting you.

“Because it’s hard to know what all this means,” I said. “I sort of like to have my thinking at least roughly aligned with my feeling. Neither of you would understand that because you never bother to think.”

“That’s because you’re rich and we ain’t,” Gladys said. “You got so much money that you can think all you want to. I got to scramble, myself. If I sat around thinking, I’d never get nothing done.”

“My point exactly,” Godwin said smugly.