Late One Night

by Lee Martin

  Angel nodded. “I’m fine, Grams. Is Gramps going to be okay?”

  “I’m waiting to hear, honey. Missy’s been sitting with me. She just now went out to call Pat. Guess she wanted some privacy.”

  Angel saw her then, Missy. She was standing outside the glass doors to the emergency room with her back turned. She had her head down, and Angel could see her nodding as if she were agreeing with what Pat was saying in response to what she’d called to tell him. Then she dropped her cell phone down in her purse.

  Angel told her grandma she’d be right back. Then she went out through the doors to where Missy was standing, and she told her everything that Brandi had told her about the high blood pressure and the baby and bed rest.

  “We have to take care of her,” Angel said. “She doesn’t have anyone else. Her family is all the way out in California.”

  She’d already made up her mind. She wouldn’t be like her father—she’d stay where she was needed.

  “But who’s going to take care of you and your sisters?” Missy said.

  “We’ll take care of one another.”

  “You’re all in my custody now.”

  Angel said, “We’re going to stay with Brandi tonight.”

  And with that, Angel turned and went back into the hospital. Missy had no choice but to follow.

  A doctor was there to talk to Lois, and he was saying that Wayne was going to be all right. He had some stitches in his head, and he was still a little confused, but his vital signs were good, and she could see him now. They’d admitted him and wanted to keep him at least overnight to make sure that he was strong enough to go home.

  Missy said she’d wait as long as Lois needed her to.

  Angel went back to check on Brandi, and in a few minutes she was back. “They’re releasing her,” she said, and Missy told her she’d drive Brandi home too, and she’d stay that night to help take care of her if that’s what she wanted. She’d drive Lois home first, and then she’d go to her own house and carry in the groceries—who knew if the milk and frozen things would be any good now—and she’d tell Pat what was going to happen.

  “Pat can do for himself.” Missy bit her lip and looked away. Then she took a deep breath and turned back to Angel, a tremulous smile on her lips. She waved her hand in the air as if she were swatting away an annoying fly. “He won’t even know I’m gone,” she said. “He’s used to a quiet house.”

  After Biggs left, Shooter let Captain sit there on the couch, rocking back and forth, his bomber jacket still clutched to his stomach.

  The furnace clicked off and then enough time went by for it to come on again. The hem of the curtains by the front window—the long curtains Merlene had sewed—danced a little in the air from the floor vent.

  Finally, when the quiet had become too much for him, Shooter walked across the room to where Captain was sitting and he reached down and took hold of the bomber jacket. For a few seconds, Captain held onto it. Then he let his grip go slack, and Shooter pulled the coat away from him.

  “Change out of your school clothes,” Shooter said in a tired voice. “I’m going to take care of the trash. Then we’ll think about supper.”

  Captain got up from the couch and went into his room. He tried not to think about anything. Don’t think about the fire, he told himself. Don’t think about the goats. Don’t think about Della or Emily or Gracie or the baby. Don’t think about Mother. She’d bought him that bomber jacket. Don’t think about that. Don’t think about Ronnie. Don’t think about the sheriff and the questions he asked. Don’t think about anything.

  Captain heard the back door open and close. He went to his window and peeled back the curtain. He watched his father walking down the path he’d cleared through the snow so he could get to the burn barrel. He had a paper grocery bag full of trash in his left hand, the bomber jacket in his right. He put it all in the barrel.

  Then he set it on fire. He stood there, his head bowed toward the flames, and Captain knew he was praying.

  Captain turned away from the window, no longer wanting to see the flames rising above the top of the burn barrel. Even in the closed house, he could hear his father coughing. He could smell the same bad odor the air held the night Della’s trailer burned, but now he knew the stink was coming from the vinyl on his bomber jacket.

  He opened his closet, and stepped inside. He closed the door and crouched down on the floor in the dark.

  Della was his friend. More than that, she loved him. He knew that, and when he was with her, he remembered how it was when his mother was still alive. That’s what Della gave him—that mother’s love—and when he finally crossed the road that night, he only meant to help her. Her car wasn’t in the lane. His father had noticed that just before their argument over the goats had started, pointing out that it was so cold that Della and the kids had gone to spend the night somewhere else, probably with Lois and Wayne. Captain thought it was the exact right time to do a good turn for Della.

  The deputy sat across from Ronnie. He said, “You went back out there that night, didn’t you?”

  Ronnie nodded. “I was in a state when I left there that afternoon. I won’t deny that. It was over between Della and me—she’d made that plain—and I guess it caught me by surprise even if I’d thought that’s what I wanted. Pissed me off, is what it did. A crazy idea came to me. You have to understand I wasn’t thinking right. I stewed about it all evening, and then finally I made up my mind I’d do it.”

  “Do what, Ronnie?”

  “I’d call and see if Della and the kids were in the trailer or if they’d gone to her folks. I’d buy five gallons of gas, and if no one answered the phone, I’d go out there and burn the place. If she was going to push me, then I was going to push back. I’d put her in a mess. I’d make her sorry.”

  “So you told Brandi you were going out for a drive?”

  Ronnie nodded. “I pulled on my boots. I’d made up my mind.”

  “But you never told Brandi that?”

  “I stopped at Casey’s and called Della. No one answered. I bought that gas and drove on out the blacktop. When I got to the trailer, it was dark, and Della’s car wasn’t in the lane. She always left it in the lane, and it wasn’t there. So I felt certain she’d taken the kids and gone to Lois and Wayne’s. I parked a ways down the road. The neighbors had enough to gossip about. People like Missy Wade. I didn’t want her seeing my car pulled in the lane and wondering what was what.”

  Just as he got the gas can out of his car, he said, he heard a door slam shut across the road at the Rowe house, and that was enough to spook him. “That’s when I hauled that gas can through the ditch and angled through the front yard.” He tromped through the snow and got in behind the trailer where he thought no one would see him. “I just stood there a while, catching my breath, listening, just letting things calm down.”

  So, yes, Ronnie was there that night, out there behind the trailer. Brandi was retelling the story—the one he’d told her—to Angel and Missy, but she wouldn’t tell it all. No, there were parts of it she wouldn’t want the girls to ever know, parts that shamed Ronnie, parts that Brandi didn’t want to think about ever again. Angel sat on the edge of the bed. Missy stood just inside the door. Lois hadn’t said a word all the way from Phillipsport to Goldengate, and she’d refused to come inside, preferring instead to wait in the van until Missy came out to drive her home. It was then that Lois would say to Missy, “I don’t know how you can be a friend to her. Not after what she did to Della.”

  How would Missy ever be able to explain what rose in her as she watched Angel help Brandi with her pajamas, and then, once she was in bed, pull the covers over her with such care? How strongly Missy felt Brandi’s need, and in that moment she let sorrow have every bit of her until it could have no more. She grieved for Della and her children, for Angel and the girlhood she was leaving behind too soon.

  Standing there, looking at Angel and Brandi in the lamplight, listening to Brandi’s soft voice, watc
hing Angel reach out and brush a few strands of wayward hair from Brandi’s face, Missy understood in a way she never quite had that life—everyone’s life—came down to this. The chance to do something good, to let people know they weren’t alone. To do it with no thought of what advantage or reward might come to you. To do it because you knew everyone was sometimes stupid, deceitful, selfish, weak. To do it because you knew you were one of those people, no matter how spotless your life. Sooner or later, trouble would find you, either of your own device or a matter of circumstances. Love was sacrifice and forgiveness. She’d heard it in church, read it in her Bible, listened to it from her parents, but somewhere along the line—somewhere in the midst of losing the babies she thought she was meant to have—she’d forgotten it all. She’d become bitter, and this business with Ronnie leaving Della for Brandi had brought out all her anger. She’d been determined to save Angel and her sisters. She’d had no way of knowing that all along it was Angel who was saving her, bringing her back to being a better person than she’d been in too long, bringing her—the thought startled her at first, but then she settled into its comfort—as close as she would ever be to feeling like a mother.

  “He went out there that night,” Brandi said to Angel, “because he loved you. He knew the furnace in the trailer was acting up, and he wanted to know you were all right. All of you. All you kids and, yes, even your mom. He wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.”

  It wasn’t true—though there was at least a bit of truth in it—but Brandi convinced herself that God would forgive her this one lie, all for the sake of the future.

  It was cold, and the wind was coming in gusts, and Ronnie was shivering from the thought of what he was about to do. He noticed a cardboard box on the back steps, a box of ashes.

  “The wind had caught some embers,” he said, “and from time to time a shower of sparks sprayed up into the air. I didn’t care. I knew what I’d come to do, and that box of ashes didn’t mean anything to me.”

  He unscrewed the cap off the gas can spout and got at it. The old upholstered chair he’d dragged out behind the trailer in the fall just before he’d found out that Della had lied to him and wasn’t taking her birth control pills was still there. He doused it with gasoline, knowing it would soak into the foam and burn hot and quick when he finally lit it. He went down the length of the trailer, slinging gas up onto the hardboard siding, pouring it along the bare ground where the roof’s overhang had kept snow from collecting. The tall grass was dry and brittle. He heard his breath and the noise the can made as it emptied, popping every once in a while as its volume decreased. He smelled the gas, and he felt the wind burning his bare ears. He didn’t have on any gloves, but it wouldn’t be until later that he’d feel the sting in his hands.

  “I stopped to rest.” He looked away from the deputy and closed his eyes, playing it all out again in his head. “I still had about half of that can left. I set it down, and I put my hands on my knees. That’s when I saw it.”

  A hole in the siding of the trailer, down low, just before the concrete slab. A ragged hole as big as a boot heel right where he knew the wall furnace was. A hole, he assumed, one of the goats had made at some time or the other.

  “It was the most amazing thing,” he said. “Like it was a sign to me, an invitation to do something other than what I’d come to do.”

  He crouched down and put his finger into the hole. It went all the way through the siding and the insulation and the drywall. He could feel the back of the furnace. It was hot when he touched it, and he knew that meant it was still running. Why, then, had Della taken the kids to her folks, as he assumed from the fact that she hadn’t answered the phone when he called?

  “I got to thinking what would happen if a gust of wind came through that hole and blew out the pilot light. I wondered what it meant that right then, when I’d been determined to burn the place down, I was thinking about that pilot light. It came to me, then: Here’s a chance to do something good, and if you do this one good thing, maybe then you can do another and then another, and before long you’ll have your life back on track. That hole was my chance to save myself. I was so close, you see, to doing something I’d never be able to live down. Burn that trailer and then walk away. But now I had this chance to do something different, patch that hole. Then I’d be able to go home and think better about myself.”

  That’s when he put the cap back on the gas can. He took out his pocketknife. He opened up his coat and grabbed the bottom of his T-shirt with his hand. It was his Sun Records T-shirt, the one that Brandi had found for him at the Goodwill, and yet he didn’t think about how much it pleased him, nor how much he loved Brandi. He thought only of needing something to stuff into that hole.

  He pressed the point of his knife into the T-shirt, down around the bottom, just enough to make a place where he could grab the cloth and rip it. Working with his hand and the knife, he managed to tear away a strip that was sufficient for the task. He wadded it up and stuck it into the hole.

  “My fingers were stiff with the cold,” he told the deputy, “and I fumbled my knife and it fell to the ground. I’d just started to feel around for it when I heard a noise. It was Shooter Rowe’s boy, Wesley, the one they call Captain. He was coming around the end of the trailer, headed for the goat pen. I stood dead still and hoped he wouldn’t see me.”

  Ronnie watched Captain open the gate to the pen and step inside. The goats were bleating, and Ronnie could hear Captain moving about, his boots whisking through the loose straw on the ground. Once, he cursed. Said, “Goddamn it.” Then, after a time, he came out with one of the nannies, something tied around her neck. He was leading it with a length of something, and he had a kid up under his other arm.

  “By this time, I’d gotten over behind the back steps, and I crouched down,” Ronnie said. “I was afraid for him to see me. I didn’t know what I’d say about why I was there.”

  Captain went around the other side of the trailer, and Ronnie couldn’t make up his mind whether to go or stay. He wanted to go—wanted to get as far away from there as he could—but he was afraid that if he made a move, Captain would spot him. It was hard for Ronnie to tell where he was. And, too, he was curious about why Captain had come for those goats.

  It wasn’t long before he was back, and he led out the other nanny. Again, he had her kid under his arm.

  “I thought it was curious,” Ronnie said. “Like he’d come to steal those goats. I thought, What in the world?”

  The deputy said, “So it was you and the boy out there?”

  Ronnie opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “It was the two of us. I was just waiting to see what would happen next.”

  Captain remembered what his father had said when they’d patched Della’s fence that afternoon: Sometimes it’s best to start over. Put a match to that fence.

  All evening, he’d thought about that, how if that pen and shed were gone, then he and his father could build a better shed, a better pen, and then the goats wouldn’t get out. Della would have that one less thing to worry about, and Captain felt good knowing he could give her that. It was only right after she’d been so kind to him.

  His plan was to lead the goats one by one across the road to his father’s barn and leave them there while he got down to work. He had a box of Diamond matches, the ones he used when he burned the trash. He knew there was straw in the shed behind the goat pen. Dry enough even on a cold night to catch and burn. The wood planks of that shed and pen were dry too. It’d be a snap. It’d all go up so quick. He knew his father was asleep in front of the television, and wouldn’t he be surprised when he found out what he’d done?

  Della would be surprised too, and so would Ronnie.

  When Captain slipped out of the house that night, he remembered to put on his bomber jacket, and he grabbed his sock hat and his gloves. He spotted Ronnie’s Firebird pulled off alongside the blacktop. He didn’t know what to make of that, and he really didn’t have time to think on it. He had to kee
p his mind on what he was going to do.

  Half of the shed was a lean-to, open to the east, facing the blacktop. A doorway cut into the interior wall of the lean-to led to the closed part of the shed, and that’s where the goats had gone to lie down in the straw, where they could be away from the brunt of the wind.

  Captain realized he needed something to use for a lead. Otherwise, how would he get those goats across the road to his father’s barn?

  That’s what he was wondering as he stood in the pen’s shed.

  Then he thought of the bales of straw. Just enough light from the snow cover outside coming in through the doorway helped him find the bales, and in an instant it all clicked inside his head, and he knew what he’d do. A great happiness spread through him. The light from the snow cover, the straw bales—it all meant that someone was helping him to do the thing he’d come to do. It meant that what he intended was right.

  He couldn’t get at his knife with his gloves on, so he slipped his hands out and stuffed the gloves into his jacket pockets. He opened the blade of the knife and felt it lock into place. Then he bent over and grabbed one of the strands of twine that held the bale together.

  Just as he was ready to cut it—he’d use it for a lead—the billy goat, Methuselah, butted his head against him and the blade slipped and gashed the hock of his left thumb. He felt the cold air sting the flayed skin, and he knew right away he was bleeding.

  “Goddamn it,” he said.

  Then he went back to work. He cut the twine and then made a slip knot around the neck of the first goat. He’d save the cantankerous one, Methuselah, for last.

  The other four were agreeable. The two nannies let him lead them across the road to his father’s barn with little complaint. He was able to carry one of the kids on each trip.

  He put his gloves back on, blood soaking into the left one. When it came time to loop the twine around Methuselah’s neck, the goat balked, jerking his head this way and that, filling the shed with his bleats. Captain kept at it, finally getting the job done, and Methuselah let him lead him a few steps before he dug in and refused to go any farther. Captain tugged hard on the lead. That’s when the twine snapped. He went stumbling backwards, falling on his butt on the frozen ground.