Late One Night

by Lee Martin

  He slowed down and took a look at the river. The swirls of gray and white and blue in the ice made him think of clouds, puffy white against a blue sky, and it was easy from the height of the bridge to imagine a heaven. There were times like this when he could believe in an afterlife, when he could convince himself that someday he’d see Merlene again.

  What would he tell her about Captain? Would he be able to say he’d done his best by him?

  “Where we going?” Captain asked.

  Shooter glanced at him. “Nowhere in particular. We’re just driving. You in a hurry?”

  Captain looked down at his hands. He rubbed at some brown streaks of oak stain on his fingers. “I’m making a gun cabinet in shop.”

  “Looks like you made a mess.” Shooter tried a little laugh, as if he’d been cracking a joke, but he could tell that Captain was hurt. He pulled his coat sleeves down over his hands. “I thought I got rid of that coat.” Shooter had buried it down deep in a cedar chest that had been Merlene’s. The chest was in the basement now, full of the clothes of hers that Shooter hadn’t been able to bring himself to get rid of. Apparently Captain had found the coat and dug it out sometime that morning when Shooter was out to the barn getting the Bobcat tractor ready to go. He hadn’t even seen Captain get on the bus wearing that coat.

  “I like it,” Captain said.

  “It’s ratty.” Shooter reached over and pinched the coat sleeve in his fingers. “You didn’t have any business snooping around and snatching this up.”

  The coat was a fake leather bomber jacket that Captain had always favored since Merlene bought it for him from Walmart. The sort with vinyl made to look like leather. Shooter raised Captain’s arm and made him look at the patch as big as a pancake where the vinyl was missing. The quilted lining beneath was dappled, light brown in some places and black in others.

  “Mom bought it for me.” Captain yanked his arm away from Shooter’s grip. “She said it was a bomber jacket fit for a Captain.”

  They were over the bridge now, coasting down onto the flat plain of the river bottoms. Shooter pulled off onto the shoulder and they sat there while the wind swept across the barren fields, not enough of a treeline anywhere to stop it. The truck shook a little when a gust came up, and out across the fields a fine powder of snow swirled.

  “Stay here,” Shooter said.

  Then he got out of the truck and tromped through the snow and the corn stubble, fifty feet or so, until he was confident that he was far enough away so Captain wouldn’t be able to see him very well. He listened to the wind howling around him, felt its sting on his face, let it bring tears to his eyes. He forced himself not to look back, not wanting to see Captain’s face looking out the window of the truck.

  He reached into the pocket of his barn coat and closed his hand around Captain’s Case Hammerhead lockback knife. He dug out a spot in the snow with the toe of his boot until he could see the frozen ground of the furrow. Then he dropped the knife into that hole and covered it with snow. If luck would have it, he thought, no one would find that knife and spring would come, and the farmer who worked this field would plow the knife under.

  It took everything he had to turn around and walk back across the field to the truck where Captain was waiting. He wanted to lie down in the snow and let the cold have him. He wanted to close his eyes and think of Merlene. He wanted to just slip away from the living and not have to answer for anything.

  But Captain was waiting. He could feel him watching. Captain, who was his to take care of. No one else’s. He’d promised Merlene that he’d do that much.

  “What were you doing?” Captain asked him when he came back to the truck.

  “Had to take a leak,” Shooter said. “Let’s go home. It’s getting late.”

  “Almost time for supper,” Captain said, and Shooter told him, yes, it was, and after supper the sheriff, Ray Biggs, was going to stop by to ask Captain some questions.

  For a long time, Captain didn’t say anything. He rubbed at the stains on his hands some more. Then he said, “About the fire?”

  “That’s right,” said Shooter. “You remember what you’re going to say?”

  Captain nodded. “I remember.”

  “All right then,” Shooter said, and then he pressed down on the gas pedal, hurrying now toward home.

  Missy watched the doors close behind Angel. Then she turned to find a seat in the waiting area, where Hannah was keeping Sarah and Emma entertained at a table that had puzzles and games on it.

  To Missy’s surprise, she saw Lois Best occupying a chair back in the corner, nearly hidden by a half wall. She’d nodded off with her pocketbook on her lap, her hands resting on top of it, and with her head down like that, Missy nor the girls had taken any notice of her.

  Missy wasn’t sure whether to wake her, but she could only assume that Lois was there because of Wayne, and it would certainly be rude not to inquire. So she took the seat next to Lois, hoping that the motion would make her open her eyes.

  But it didn’t. Missy reached over and touched her on the arm. “Lois,” she said. “It’s me. Missy.”

  Lois snapped up her head and opened her eyes. She blinked a few times as she studied Missy, and Missy knew she was coming back to the living with reluctance.

  “Oh, honey,” she finally said. “It’s Wayne. He’s not a bit good.”

  Missy asked her what the trouble was, and Lois explained that he’d gotten out of bed that morning and fallen, striking his head against the corner of the dresser.

  “Opened up a big old gash.” Lois felt her own scalp. “It just bled and bled. I knew I had to call for the ambulance. They’re sewing him up now but honey, I’m not sure he even knows where he is or what happened. That’s how out of it he is.”

  Lois reached out her hand, and Missy took it. She felt the dry skin, cracked from the cold, and she put her free hand on Lois’s back and rubbed slow, gentle circles to give her some comfort.

  “I’ll sit right here with you,” Missy said. “I won’t leave you alone. Did you ride in the ambulance with Wayne?”

  Lois nodded.

  “Then I’ll wait right here, and when it’s time, I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “You’ve always been good to me, Missy. And you were good to Della, too.” Lois pressed her finger to her lips, shushing herself. “Oh, just listen to me going on about myself. Shame on me. Is it one of your own that’s brought you here? Don’t tell me something happened to Pat?”

  “No, it’s not Pat.” Missy hesitated, not sure whether what she was about to say would upset Lois. “It’s Brandi. She fainted.”

  “And you were with her?”

  Missy nodded. “At the high school. She was talking to Angel.”

  “About Ronnie?”

  “She was about to tell the story that Ronnie told her just before Biggs arrested him. Then she passed out. Angel’s back there with her now.”

  Lois crooked her neck to peek around Missy at the double doors. “My poor grandbaby. She’s been through a world of hurt. I hope there’s no more on down the road for her, but it looks like Ronnie’s going to have something to answer for come the judgment.”

  _________

  Biggs was waiting in the driveway when Shooter and Captain got home. His patrol car was idling, a cloud of steam roiling out from the tailpipe.

  Shooter pulled alongside him and turned off the truck. “Go on in the house,” he said to Captain. “Get out of your school clothes. Go on.”

  By this time, it was close to five o’clock. Only a few minutes of daylight left. Shooter got out of the truck and watched Captain hurry by the patrol car and on up to the front door. He had a key, and he used it to let himself in.

  A pair of Canada geese flew overhead, honking as they came to settle in the barren cornfield that ran along the side of the house toward the woods. Shooter knew that those geese mated for life and they were protective of each other. If one was hurt or sick, the other would guard it, not leaving until the m
ate got well or else died. It was a beautiful thing, Shooter thought. A very beautiful thing.

  Biggs was out of his patrol car, unfolding to his full height. Shooter said, “I thought you were coming after suppertime.”

  “This can’t wait.” Biggs hunched his shoulders against the cold. “I need to get your boy’s story right now.”

  He slammed the patrol car door shut, the noise echoing across the fallow fields. The car door startled the Canada geese, and they lifted into the air, the gander trumpeting the alarm call. Soon they were flying over the woods.

  Shooter watched them go. He stood there in the open country, his head tilted up to the sky, and he thought how easy it must be for God to look down and see everything there was to see.

  “Wild geese,” Shooter said. “Just looking out for each other. Just trying to get by.”

  _________

  The doctors found out that Brandi had passed out because her blood pressure was high.

  “They say I’ve got toxemia,” she said to Angel, who had come to sit beside her gurney while she waited to see if she’d be discharged or admitted.

  “What’s that?” Angel asked.

  “Sometimes pregnancy causes the mother’s blood pressure to go up. Pregnancy-induced hypertension. It can happen with first-time moms like me.”

  “Will the baby be okay?”

  Brandi closed her eyes a moment as she said a silent prayer. Then she explained to Angel how the placenta might not get enough blood and how if that happened the baby wouldn’t get enough oxygen and food and would have a low birth weight.

  “But that might not happen,” she said. “Now that we know what’s what, there are things I can do to make sure I deliver a healthy baby.”

  Those things turned out to be eating less salt, drinking eight glasses of water a day, and bed rest. The doctor told her she could go home, but he wanted her in bed most of the time, lying on her left side to take the weight of the baby off her major blood vessels.

  “Who’s going to take care of things around the house?” Brandi said after she’d listened to the doctor and tried to imagine everything she’d have to do. “Who’ll take care of me?” she said, not knowing whether Ronnie would be back anytime soon, if ever, and there were the girls living with Missy and Pat. Brandi closed her eyes and thought about what might happen with Ronnie, wondered whether anyone would ever believe the story he’d told her. Then she said, “My family all lives in California. I don’t want to go all the way out there.”

  “I don’t want anything to happen to the baby,” Angel said. Then a nurse came in to take out Brandi’s IV and Angel stepped out through the curtain so she’d be out of the nurse’s way and so she’d have a chance to find Missy to tell her she was worried about what was going to happen to Brandi.

  Shooter and Biggs went into the house, and to Shooter’s dismay, Captain was just standing there, as if he’d been watching out the window, still in his school clothes. He hadn’t even taken off his coat. That ratty-assed bomber’s jacket—Shooter knew he should have thrown it out, but it was one of the last gifts Merlene had given Captain, and Shooter couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it. But now here was Biggs, eager for Captain’s story.

  “You ought to get out of those school clothes,” Shooter said. He glanced at Biggs and lifted his eyebrows. “You know how boys are. Always ruining their good things. Go on and change, Wesley. We’ll wait.”

  Captain headed toward the hallway, his head down, but as he tried to get past Biggs, Biggs reached out and grabbed him by his coat sleeve.

  “This won’t take long,” he said. “I need to ask some questions and then get back to the courthouse.” He said to Shooter, “You understand.”

  “Well, at least let the boy take off his coat.”

  Biggs let go of Captain’s sleeve and said, “Sure. No harm in that. Go on, son. Make yourself comfortable.”

  Captain lifted his head and found Shooter’s gaze upon him. Captain opened his eyes wide, asking his father what he should do, and Shooter gave him an almost imperceptible nod, but it was enough to tell Captain to go ahead and take off his coat. He slipped his arms out of the sleeves and then folded the jacket across his arm, bunched it up into a wad that he hugged to his stomach.

  “You got a belly ache?” Biggs asked him.

  Captain shook his head no, and then he sat down on the couch, the coat still clutched to him.

  “Wesley.” Shooter sat down beside him and put a hand on his back. “Tell the sheriff what you saw the night Della’s trailer burned. That’s what he’s come to hear.”

  At the courthouse, the deputy said to Ronnie, “You know what it looks like, don’t you?”

  “Looks like what you all want it to look like,” said Ronnie.

  “Bought a can of gasoline the morning of the day the trailer burned and another can that night. We found that can in Brandi’s shed, almost a gallon still in it, and she said you used it all up in her car that morning. Looks to me like you used that can again later.” The deputy listed all the evidence that seemed to be adding up to Ronnie’s guilt. “Footprints that match yours found behind the trailer. A T-shirt smelling of gas. Shooter Rowe’s story. And now this? Ronnie, do you know what’ll happen if a jury finds you guilty?”

  “Lock me up, I expect.”

  The deputy nodded. “For a good long while. Forever, if the State’s Attorney can prove premeditation. And, Ronnie, if you ask me, that won’t be hard to do. I doubt you’ll ever see the outside again.”

  It was then that the deputy noticed the first sign of emotion from Ronnie. His lip quivered, and his eyes got wet, and he tipped his head back, his nostrils flaring, as if he were fighting as hard as he could to keep whatever he’d held secret all those weeks balled up inside him.

  The deputy said, “Your kids? They’ll come to see you in prison sometimes if they can bring themselves to forgive you for what you did, and if they can manage for someone to drive them down to Menard, which is where you’ll end up. Or maybe they’ll never come and it’ll just be you and those walls and all that time to know the way you ruined them by killing their mother and their sisters and their baby brother. You think they’ll ever be able to get the picture out of their heads of how those kids clung to Della in the flames and the smoke, or what their charred bodies looked like when all was said and done?”

  That’s when Ronnie covered his face with his hands. “I didn’t do it,” he said. “I swear.”

  “All right then,” the deputy said. “Tell me why we should believe you.”

  He was outside that night, Captain said, because he was worried about the goats. “We tried to patch the fence for Della, but they kept busting out.”

  He kept his eyes down, focusing on the boots Biggs was wearing. The toes were stained with road salt. Biggs stood in front of the couch, listening to the story.

  “So you were outside and you went back behind the trailer to check on the goats?”

  Captain nodded.

  Biggs said, “Tell me everything you saw.”

  “He saw Ronnie’s car,” Shooter said, but Biggs wouldn’t let him go on.

  “I want to hear the boy tell it. Let him say what he’s got to say.”

  “Ronnie drives a Firebird,” Captain said. “It was parked along the road. That car can go fast. I helped him work on it when he still lived with Della. He said I was his right-hand man. You know what kind of carb that car has? A Barry Grant Six Shooter with a three-deuce setup. Sugar tits! Now that’s something.”

  Captain was getting worked up, and Shooter rubbed his back and said, “Wesley, just tell the story. Tell it plain and simple for the sheriff.”

  “Ronnie was behind the trailer,” Captain said. “He had a fivegallon gas can. He was sloshing gas all along the back of the trailer. And he reached into his pocket and jerked out a book of matches.” Captain looked up at Biggs for the first time. “He had a book of matches. He lit one up.” Captain was rocking back and forth a little. “He had a gas can and
a book of matches. The whole trailer went whoosh. That’s what I remember. That big whoosh. And Ronnie ran away.”

  Biggs was quiet for a while. Then he squatted down in front of Captain so the boy would have to look him in the eye.

  “You felt pretty close to Ronnie, didn’t you, son? Like you said, you were his right-hand man.”

  “I like Ronnie,” said Captain. “He always treated me good.”

  “You wouldn’t want to see him get in trouble if he didn’t do anything wrong, would you?”

  Captain squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head from side to side until, finally, Shooter had to take him by his shoulders and tell him to stop.

  “He had a gas can and a book of matches,” Captain said again. “He lit one up and everything went whoosh. That’s what I know.”

  Shooter stood up from the couch. “You got what you need?” he asked Biggs. “Captain always thought the world of Ronnie. This hasn’t been easy for him.”

  The words came from Captain’s mouth in chunks, like they were made of steel and hard to bite off. “I always—thought the world—of Ronnie—sugar tits.”

  “Wesley, don’t talk like that,” Shooter said. “It’s not proper.”

  Biggs said to Shooter, “Why’d you wait so long to tell me your story?”

  “I was thinking about Wesley. Things have never been easy for him. And this?” Shooter couldn’t go on. He laid his hand on Captain’s head and stroked the blond hair with a tenderness that almost made Biggs uncomfortable to see it, this moment that should have been private. “But I know what’s right and what’s wrong,” Shooter said, “and I know I have to teach Wesley as much. So what I’m telling you is the right thing to do. I know that for sure now, no matter how this ends up.”

  Angel was surprised to see her grandmother in the emergency room waiting area. “Grams?” she said.

  “Oh, honey.” Lois got to her feet and put her arms around Angel, gathering her in. “It’s your gramps. He fell and hit his head.” She let go of Angel just enough to hold her at arm’s length so she could get a good look at her. “Honey, are you all right?”