by Farris, John
"Looks like you was in a good'n," the young man said as I sorted through change to pay for the soda. "You total that son of a gun?"
I dropped the coins on the counter and pulled the tab on the can. I turned and looked at him. I didn't say anything. I couldn't have, because my tongue was thick with the terrible taste my erratic brain was producing for me. I drank some of the soda, not getting my mouth on the small opening in just the right way, so that I dribbled down my chin. I was staring at him, but barely paying attention. He didn't mean anything to me. The remark was just harmless conversation, an attempt to be sociable. Or sympathetic. I don't know. But as I looked at him he backed away. In the manner of a man about to be suddenly dead backing away from the muzzle of a loaded gun.
The blonde cashier was looking at me too, with her chin up in a startled way. "Orvie," she said, "sometimes you need to take a tuck in it, son." And to me: "Don't pay him no mind. He's just my sister-in-law's cousin from Brash Fork."
I lowered the can of soda and wiped my chin with the back of my other wrist. That hand, the arm itself, was shaking. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I was, literally, seeing red. I reached out and set the can on the counter. I said to the blonde girl, "What are you staring at?" It was a voice I wasn't at all familiar with.
She wanted to drop her eyes. She couldn't, because I wouldn't let her. Her mouth fumbled and finally she said, "Well, nothing, really. Now look, what we don't need here is trouble."
"Do I look like a troublemaker?" I reached up again with the trembling hand, to wipe away the sticky track of soda. It came away smeared with bright warm blood. I had no idea where the blood came from. I wasn't frightened or particularly disturbed. I was infuriated by the blonde girl, her washed-out blue eyes and thin, beaky mouth. I felt contemptuous of her, for being frightened of me.
"I was shot in the head," I explained, trying to be reasonable. "See the bullet scar?"
"Lord," she said. "I see it! That little puckery place there? Lord, yes." Her eyes narrowed in speculation. "Now I know, I seen all about you on the Channel 12 news! What was it, about a week ago? Didn't you see him there on the TV, Orvie?"
Orvie said, "Who, me? Not hardly. I don't pay attention to it."
"I didn't ask for this," I said. Still reasonable, if not benign. "Getting shot wasn't any doing of mine. But I'm all right. I'll be fine, once my hand straightens out and—" It seemed very necessary for me to reassure them, two strangers who saw me trembling and bleeding, as if I'd cut my lip on the soda can. I wanted just to go away, and find my daughter. I explained that to them, too. "I'm looking for my daughter," I said. "She—well, it's late. And I'm not—I just want her to come home, I need her."
The blonde girl nodded, a little too vigorously. "Want us to call her for you, then?"
"If I knew where she was, I'd call her myself!"
"What's her name?" the girl asked, getting up the nerve to smile a little. But I was still scaring her. I couldn't understand why. I couldn't imagine anything frightening about me. Not even my scars. Not pretty, no, but not frightening either. A lot of people had scars. Mine would go away.
"Sha—" It was all I could say. There was a lull. A sensation of nameless disaster held me in paralyzed suspension. I had awareness—of the blonde cashier and her sister-in-law's cousin from Brash Fork, of my immediate, harshly fluorescent surroundings—but in the immeasurable outback of my mind where there had been volcanic thunderclouds, lightning and acid red downpours, now nothing stirred or shone with even the faintest radiance. I felt tightly bound and shrunken inside my own body, like a mummy in a case. The dark, the dark! I was shuddering—with fear, not violence. "She's—" I stopped, and my heart wanted to stop as well, to end this agony. "My life," I said.
There was heat lightning, like a remnant of flame sinking in a lantern, to the north above the Saurian tailbone of the Appalachian Mountains that lay across our corner of Georgia. I drove away from the Texaco Mart and turned north on the next street. Two blocks away I crossed the railroad tracks that bisected the city and the now nearly still heart of downtown. Only the Manhattan Restaurant, on the second floor of a Civil War-era building on the northeast corner of the Square, showed activity, although the Manhattan, like almost every other establishment in Sky Valley, closed by eleven o'clock.
Moonlight glimmered on the overflow of water from the bronze basin of the fountain that occupied the center of the square, a place of some historical distinction: a detail of horse soldiers from General Sherman's army had skirmished here with a collection of local irregulars during the war. A couple of the oaks that were around at the time are said to contain shot vainly fired in the short-lived defense of the town, known then as McCauseland Station. The brick of the pathways in the square had come from demolished buildings of the era. Of course there were cannons with semi-erect barrels, and the seven-foot statue of a young man on picket duty with rifle and bayonet in an upraised fist, his other arm in a sling. His expression, combining anger and a fierce joy to fight, had scarcely been softened by more than a hundred years of weather (the statue, local historians believed, had been modeled after sketches provided by Frederic Remington).
I'm not a Civil War buff, but I often stood in the doorway of my shop just off the southwest, lower corner of the square, where my business had been located for nine years. From this vantage point I could see the wounded Confederate against an oblong of sky between two buildings. I had watched him in sun and snow and blazing autumn weather with leaves slashing by, in every change of light the seasons had to offer. He was a symbol to me, I suppose, of what was durable in man, and worth honoring. I had no grand philosophy, no deep insight into the tragedies, the beguiling enigmas of life. I only wanted to work hard, educate myself, and be loved in my allotted time. I thought that I knew my limitations. If, by the grace of God, I could be bronze, I had no desire to become steel.
Fifth Street was five blocks north of the square, and I made a left turn off Larrimore. The Driscoll house, white frame with red shutters and a shingled roof in a darker shade of red, was architecturally distinguished by two turret-style porches on the corners facing the street. There were entrance doors, each with an oval of curtained glass, on both porches, but no true front door. The driveway, two parallel strips of badly crumbled concrete, was to the left of the house and went on back to a free-standing garage that had once been a carriage house. The light of the porch next to the driveway was on, a muzzy yellow sun with flickering orbits of insects. But the house appeared to be totally dark.
The Maxicab that belonged to Bobby's brother was parked in the drive toward the rear of the house, in front of a black sedan. I parked by the curb a couple of feet from the driveway entrance, looking at the back of the pickup truck with its half-dozen belligerent, bragging, typically proletarian bumper stickers. Nuke Them Till They Glow. Abandon Hope All Ye Who Ride My Bumper. Damn I'm Good. My right eye was tearing, and the panic that had compelled me to come this far was still feeding an indestructible headache. The window was halfway down on my side and I heard the fitful music of tubular wind chimes somewhere, the low momentum of thunder as wind poured through the crowns of trees along the street. It had been a warm and humid evening; now the air smelled refreshingly of rain.
Bobby Driscoll was already home and, I supposed, in bed. If I had had the presence of mind to call my own home from the Texaco Mart, I would have found Sharissa there. This is what I thought, but something still nagged at my heart, my confidence.
I got out of the Honda, wondering if they had a dog. If I aroused one by walking up the driveway, if anyone appeared at the door, I didn't know what explanation I could offer without sounding foolish. The way I looked—little knotlets of surgical thread clustered like spiders on my discolored forehead—would not have helped. I came to the Maxicab and paused there, looking at the carriage house thirty feet away. There was a netless basketball goal over the double doors that sagged on their spear-point hinges; the paint above the goal had been nearly worn away by t
he repeated impact of the ball. A flight of steps went up to a narrow covered porch along one side of the carriage house. There was a cat on the porch. I saw only its creature eyes, a dazzling greenish gold, as if they had been ignited by a faint light leaking around a window shade.
I moved closer to the carriage house and looked up from the bottom of the steps. Little shards of light like razor cuts gleamed in the denseness of an old green window shade. The sky lit up. The wind died. I heard a different, fainter, fondled sighing.
"Bobby."
"Don't you want to?"
"Yes. No. I better not."
"I'm dying to."
"Uh, Bobby. No. Don't put your hand . . . there."
"I love you."
"I love you, too. Please stop, it makes me crazy."
"Uhh, God."
"It's so late. I'd better get home."
"Not yet. A little longer."
And silence. From them. As the wind returned, a ferocious exhalation scaring up the leaves of trees. The hair on my forearms was standing too. I bit where I had bitten before, where my lip was cut, and a drop of blood spurted onto my tongue.
I looked around. There was a trash can nearby, against the backyard fence. I went to it and tore open the sack of garbage on top and found cans, a nearly empty catsup bottle. I flung the empty cans up there, on the porch, where they clattered and rolled. A dog in a neighbor's yard began barking. For good measure I hit the blank front wall of the building above the basketball goal with the heavy catsup bottle. It left a red smear.
Then I ran down the driveway to my car. I felt half scalded, half frozen. The loose and crumbling drive might have thrown me, causing worse damage to my healing head than Ricky Gene's bullet. But I made it to the Honda.
The sky flashed as I got in, let off the brake and rolled backward. Half a block from the house, I started the engine, drove in reverse to the intersection, no lights. Even so, Sharissa might have recognized our family car. But neither she nor Bobby appeared in the driveway. I had not been seen getting away from there.
Would it be enough, I wondered—the racket, the interruption. Would it have awakened her from the fevered bliss of seduction, would she come to her senses now?
My alternative had been to walk up the sagging steps and find the door to the carriage house hideaway, walk in and put an end to their groping without saying a word.
But I couldn't have faced either of them: boy and girl partly or fully unclothed, entwined on some musty piece of discarded furniture, their skins shining from perspiration in the dim light. Sharissa's lips, her nipples, swollen from kissing, being kissed . . . If I had discovered her like that, it would have shattered us both. Love, respect, trust, all in ruins. At least she deserved a chance to think twice about her foolishness. The upstairs of the carriage house the equivalent in privacy of a cheap and anonymous motel room—what had possessed her to go up those steps with Bobby? How well did I know my daughter, after all? And why had I ever trusted him?
If they had not had intercourse tonight (and despite my anxiety, I could be reasonably hopeful that before I arrived Bobby and Sharissa had only indulged themselves in what used to be called "heavy petting"), then almost certainly in the near future Sharissa would find herself in a similarly compromised position, on another delicious joyride, all twists and turns and no stopping place. Bobby would see to that. He already had broken down most of her defenses. He wanted Sharissa, and he was going to have her.
I was angry with Bobby, yet I couldn't condemn him. I had seethed with the same brutal longings in my time.
I couldn't bring myself to consider the likelihood that Sharissa wanted, with equal passion, to make love to Bobby. I could not visualize her on those terms. This was not the daughter I had raised and cherished. She had scruples and an impressive personal dignity, the beauty, breadth, and grace of a virgin goddess. She was a role model for younger girls. She taught a class at Sunday school. She had informed my days with a parental contentment that now, burdened with her lubricious secrets, I seemed destined to lose. Unless there was some action I could take that would not turn her against me.
Rain began, midway of my brooding drive home to Thornhill Road.
If I stayed calm, I thought, then I could reason with her. I might have the opportunity to appeal to Sharissa's better nature, before it was too late.
I tried to frame adequate beginnings to such a conversation. Father to daughter. But we had never talked about sex. I hadn't seen her fully naked since she was seven years old, scampering from the hall bath to her room in the small ranch house we'd rented in Sherwood Forest: soap bubbles clinging to winglike shoulder blades, the edges of her hair drenched and slicked down on the lucent skin of her breast. Adorable and asexual at that age; womanly now, steeped in the ardor of her boyfriend, already half-corrupted by his powerful musk.
She would listen to me, for a while: grim and embarrassed and downcast.
Then Sharissa would say, How could you spy on me? And I would have no appropriate answer. However unfair her accusation might be, my credibility would be destroyed by those few words.
Together Caroline and I could enforce our demand that Sharissa drop Bobby, not see him socially. But it was the sort of edict that bred rebellion in teenagers; it would only serve to make Bobby more attractive to Sharissa, even necessary. They would find ways to be together, and the urgency of their furtive meetings might only lead more quickly to what, at any cost, I had to prevent.
I arrived home at eleven-fifteen. I hoped Sharissa would be only a few minutes behind me. But I didn't want to see her when she came in.
My head was killing me. The pain was so bad I vomited, which left me tingling and cold. I needed to take two Percodans, if there was to be any chance of my getting to sleep. I realized, too late, that I shouldn't take them on an empty stomach. I knew I had pushed myself beyond the limits established by my head wound. Which only made me feel incompetent, and this sense of helplessness served to increase my anger at the predicament I was in. Everything seemed to be going against me lately.
Lightning flashed outside the kitchen window; my field of vision, dark at the edges, was filled with sparklers.
When I could see clearly again I was aware of the lighted kitchen window in the Kindors' house, and Meghan Kindor's face at the window, as if she was peering out at the sky. I knew that thunderstorms made her as nervous as a child. And she was alone tonight.
The rain swept across the lake behind our homes and I was drenched and shivering by the time I let myself in through an unlocked patio gate and knocked at their kitchen door.
The outside lights came on. Meghan looked out apprehensively through frilly polka-dot curtains, then unbolted the door.
"Greg? Good Lord. What—"
"Could I come in? I know it's late—"
"It's not that late!"
Meghan stood aside for me. She was wearing a short, flowery, snugly fitting kimono. Without her shoes Meghan was exactly five feet tall.
I entered the kitchen, dripping on the floor, and leaned against a countertop. Tricky Dick, the Kindors' ancient mongrel, lifted his gray muzzle from a corner of the rag rug he slept on in the keeping room, looked at me with half-blinded eyes, gave an obligatory bark, and fell back into a doze.
"Isn't this something?" Meghan jumped at thunder and laughed her high-pitched, staccato laugh. "Whoops! There goes another one. I'll get you a towel. Sit down, Greg. You look—tired."
"Sorry to make a mess," I mumbled to her back as she went down the hall to the powder room. There was an opened magazine and a half-eaten apple on the tiled range counter in the center of the kitchen. Above my head lightning bloomed; rain streamed down the skylight and I noticed a slow drip, from a badly flashed corner of the skylight. The kitchen smelled of freshly baked cinnamon bread. It had been a long time since Caroline had had the leisure to do any baking, and I missed those appetizing odors in our own kitchen.
Meghan came back with a monogrammed hand towel, looking closely at
my face. I blotted it slowly. The lights dimmed momentarily, and Meghan's eyes flashed wider in alarm. She grinned. She has a pretty mouth with a high arch to it, arched eyebrows and a droll, semi-drowsy expression most of the time—I think it must be the way her eyelids are tucked and folded at the corners. Her eyelids were tinted a vivid blue tonight, but her lips were nearly colorless.
"You should have brought an umbrella."
"I didn't realize . . . it was raining so hard."
"It is really coming down!" she said, with an ecstatic shiver. I was trembling too, my jaws locked together. "Let me get you a sweater of Doyle's. Pull that wet shirt off, Greg? I'll throw it in the dryer for you."
"Hope it isn't too late for you, Meggy."
"No, no, I barely sleep a wink all night with Doyle and the guys out of the house. It's just too darn quiet." Her voice faded as she rummaged in the coat closet in the foyer. "Where's Caroline tonight?"
"Atlanta Hilton. Political dinner. She won't be home much before two."
"Poor thing. The hours she puts in."
I looked through the bow window of the breakfast corner as another filament of lightning, like a deep crack in a block of black ice, split the sky. I saw the Chevy Maxicab pull into our driveway up the hill.
"She loves her work," I said of Caroline, as Meghan returned with a V-neck cotton pullover.
"Well, I really envy her, you know." Meghan held out her hand for my shirt and I unbuttoned it, pulled it out of my khaki pants. She looked at the soaked cuffs and my wet docksiders but didn't comment on them. "She has a career. I wish now I'd finished college."
"Why didn't you?" I said. I started to pull the sweater over my head, then remembered and took off the corduroy cap. Meghan stared for a couple of seconds, then looked deliberately away.
