Rust on the Razor

by Mark Richard Zubro

  “He didn’t get arrested?”

  “Naw. It was only a fight. He didn’t actually hit the sheriff. He swung and Peter stepped back, grabbed Hiram’s arm after the fist went by, and pitched him out the screen door. Hiram charged like a bull, but Peter just turned at the last second, pushed him into the wall of the building headfirst. Sort of took the fight out of Hiram. Still took three guys to get him into the back of his pickup.”

  “That’s something,” I said.

  “That’s nothing,” Cody said. “That’s just a Saturday night at Rebel Hell.”

  “How’d the sheriff get along with Wainwright Richardson ?”

  “Never heard of no problems.”

  We feel silent for several moments. Finally, I said, “Let’s go back.”

  She nodded, took the next exit, and swung back onto the interstate going south.

  “Cody,” she said, “you’re not going to try and do something stupid like talk to people about this?”

  “Tell everybody some faggot and a girl dragged me off and threatened me?” He paused. “You’re right. I can’t have people finding out about what I do. You’ve got something to hang over my head.” He jerked a thumb toward me. “If I can find a way, I’ll lock you up, and no threat will stop me.”

  I thought of giving him the lecture that I was gay, not a faggot, and Violet was a woman, not a girl, but what was the point?

  The three of us barely said a word all the way back to Rebel Hell. Violet turned on a country music station. Some of the songs I sort of liked, since I could understand the words. I wasn’t sure I’d understood any of the words to rock music since I was twenty-two.

  By the time we got back, the parking lot of Rebel Hell was more than half empty.

  “Can I have my gun?” Cody asked.

  I reached down to the floor, hesitated, then realized it made no difference. Even if I didn’t give him his gun, all he had to do was go into the bar and tell his buddies. We probably wouldn’t get far.

  I handed it to him. He hefted it gingerly, stared at each of us in turn, then slipped it under his T-shirt in back.

  “Where to?” Violet asked as I watched Cody’s narrow hips as he strode to a red pickup truck. I got in the front seat as he roared out of sight.

  “The hospital.” It was after midnight. “I want to see how Scott is and get the latest on his dad. I want to talk to some more of these people tomorrow.”

  “I’ll help,” she said.

  “I appreciate that. You’re willing to take off work?”

  “I’m the town librarian. I have my MLS and I run the place. I can do what I want.”

  I looked at her clinging halter top and short shorts.

  “You have something to say?” she asked.

  “You’re intelligent. You’re educated. You flirt shamelessly with the men. You dress like Daisy Mae.”

  She laughed. “What’s a nice girl doing with a persona like that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If I can use my femininity to get my way, I will. I’ll do whatever it takes to subdue my world. If I wear a halter top and men drool, I can get more things than if I wear a conservative business suit. For years the library here was scandalously underfunded. Since I’ve been in charge, allocation has gone up fifty percent. I’m sure it’s because of my persuasiveness. If that upsets some women, I don’t care. They don’t live here and they don’t live my life. I take care of myself very well, thank you, with no help from anyone.”

  “Don’t know if I’ve ever met a librarian quite like you,” I said.

  She laughed. “I’ll call one of the girls to come in and cover for me. Lisa’s saving up for college and always wants more hours.”

  At the hospital she accompanied me to the CCU. Hiram, Sally, and Scott were in the hall. They told us that Scott’s dad was still resting comfortably and there was as yet no definitive prognosis.

  Scott said, “I slept a few hours earlier. I’m going to stay until four with Mary; then Shannon and Mama are going to come by. What have you discovered?”

  We moved away from the group and briefly filled him in on what we’d found out. I told him we had more people to talk to in the morning.

  “I wish I could help,” he said.

  “No need. You worry about your dad.”

  “You could use some sleep,” Scott said. “Hiram can take you out to the house. It’s on the way to his place.”

  Hiram did not eagerly say he’d be glad to, but he made no objection. Violet offered, but she lived in town and Scott said it would be silly for her to drive all the way out. I wasn’t eager to be alone with Hiram, but I thought this might be a good time to talk to him about the sheriff.

  Scott walked with us down to the hospital door and gave me a brief hug. Hiram looked annoyed, but Violet looked pleased.

  Hiram led me to a green pickup. In the dim light I could count at least three major dents in the passenger-side door before I got in.

  He started the engine, turned the radio up loud, put the car in gear, and jolted out of the parking lot. The noise from the truck told even my untutored ears that he needed a new muffler, or perhaps he’d taken it off. That and the radio noise and we were the loudest thing going down the streets of Brinard. Bumps and potholes didn’t seem to bother Hiram. He neither swerved nor slowed for them, with the result that numerous times, we bounced severely about. Twice I hit my head on the cab roof. I guessed this amused him when I saw the side of his mouth rise half an inch both times my head thunked on the roof. I’d looked for seat belts when I first got in, and the truck was new enough to have come with them installed. I didn’t see any. He must have taken them out. The truck didn’t have air-conditioning, or if it did, Hiram wasn’t about to turn it on, and I wasn’t about to ask. I matched him by rolling down my window and sticking my elbow out. He gripped the steering wheel with two fingers. I pressed my left hand flat on the seat beside me and held on to the wing-window with my right.

  As we passed the edge of town I shouted over the noise, “I’d like to understand why you hate me so much.”

  He glared at me, then reached over and snapped off the radio. The roar of the mufflerless truck seemed to be swallowed up in the surrounding forest. He said, “Enough to want to take you right now out into Thomas Jefferson Swamp, shoot out one of your kneecaps, and see if you ever come out alive.”

  Hiram was the biggest of all the Carpenter kids—at least six-six and beefy, but I doubled if much or any of it was fat. His hair was the same color as Scott’s, but Hiram’s was brush-cut.

  “Why not just kill me?”

  He stared ahead as we followed our headlights into the soft Georgia night. The breeze from the window made the humidity almost bearable.

  “Thought about it. Not sure where to hide the body.”

  His lip did not curl in slight amusement. This was a very angry man. I braced myself for a possible attack. All I said was, “You must have met gay people before.”

  “Never.”

  “What about Scott?”

  He glared at me again. Several minutes later we rounded a sharp curve that thrust me against the car door. In the middle of the curve, Hiram said, “Scott is not gay.”

  This time when he glared at me, he caught me with my mouth open in astonishment. Hiram made a fist and punched the rim of the steering wheel. “He is not gay! He’d never choose to be that way!”

  Was there a point in giving him the “We don’t choose this” lecture? I tried. “Hiram, as you were growing up, you didn’t make a choice. I bet from the earliest you can remember, your sexual thoughts were about girls.” He stared straight ahead at the road and gave no indication he heard, but I continued. “When Scott was little, he didn’t choose to have sexual thoughts about boys. It was the same for him as it was for you. You had fantasies about girls. He had fantasies about boys. As both of you got older, you wanted women and he wanted men. That’s all. It wasn’t some goddamn choice.”

  All Hiram said was, “Scott is not gay.�
�

  I thought of graphically describing the things Scott and I did in bed together, but realized anything even slightly detailed might just make him angrier.

  “If he says he’s gay, why hate me?”

  “He’s not gay.”

  I let several miles of silence pass and then said, “I heard you got in a big fight with the sheriff.”

  “I ain’t talkin’ to you.” With that he flipped the country music station to very loud, straining my budding tolerance for the art form. Not another word did he say until we got to the Carpenter home. He pulled into the end of the driveway and stopped the car.

  I got out, slammed the door, and began to walk the fifty-foot drive to the house in the glow of his headlights. I heard the gears shift and the engine roar. I turned back to look, but the lights of the truck were too bright. For a second it seemed they were coming for me. I flinched toward the underbrush but caught myself. I forced myself to walk calmly down the center of the path. At the same time I waited for the sound of the engine closing in. Pride was one thing, standing there and getting creamed another. Gradually, I heard the truck swing back onto the highway. In seconds the noise was gone and I was in the middle of Georgia darkness. Ahead, through the trees, I thought I could see light from the house.

  The moon and the stars gave plenty of illumination as I strode through the otherwise dark night. The humidity was cloying but less than horribly unpleasant. I tried to picture Scott as a kid running through nights just like this. He wouldn’t be afraid of the surrounding emptiness. I heard crickets, and frogs, and an owl or two, plus other things I couldn’t identify. I thought I might have been halfway to the house when the bushes on my left swayed slightly and I heard unfamiliar rustling. None of the other foliage moved. There was no wind. The movement had to come from something that breathed air. When I stopped, the foliage held still. I walked a few more steps and the movement and noise came again. I strode purposefully forward. I figured it couldn’t be a lynch mob, or if it was, they were remarkably quiet for such a large group of people. I wondered if it was a bear. I realized that I didn’t know if the state of Georgia had bears, mountain lions, swamp lions—if there were such things—or cougars or lions and tigers. Doubted these last two. The idea of alligators and crocodiles crossed my mind, but I thought, They only live in the Florida Everglades, isn’t it, or maybe the bayous of Louisiana? But then I didn’t know for sure, and I wasn’t eager to wrestle anything that was out in these woods. I hurried my pace, but I refused to run.

  6

  I arrived unlynched at the clearing in front of the house. I opened the door and found Scott’s mom and Shannon doing dishes in the kitchen. Mrs. Carpenter heard me, turned, grabbed a dish towel, wiped her hands, and came toward me, smiling shyly. “I’m glad you came with Scott. Can I get you something? Make you a sandwich? Get you a drink of lemonade?”

  She was maybe five feet four, with gray hair that saw a beauty parlor at least once a week. She had on a dark brown housedress, the style Edith Bunker always wore. Deep wrinkles grooved her face from nostrils to chin. She would have looked formidable frowning, but she always seemed to be trying to smile.

  Shannon had yet to turn and face me. She kept wiping dishes and putting them away in appropriate cabinets. Mrs. Carpenter didn’t seem to notice. She said, “I need to bring my husband a few personal things. If you want anything, let me know. Scott showed you everything when he brought you here earlier?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Carpenter.”

  “I ask because you can’t be sure with kids, no matter how old they get. They do seem to forget some of the most basic things. You have fresh towels?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “If you’ll excuse me … I’m afraid my children are right. I’m going to have to get some rest.” She leaned heavily on a dining-room chair for a moment.

  I moved closer to her and held out my hand. “Can I help?” I asked.

  She shook her head, seemed to stretch every muscle, then nodded. “I’m old,” she said. She left the kitchen and disappeared through a door on the far side of the living room.

  I turned back to Shannon, who was now looking at me. She slapped a plate onto the dish drainer. It cracked in half.

  She was about five-nine, with a slender, muscular frame and blond hair slightly darker than Scott’s. He had told me she’d been a runner in college. Her body had athletic grace. She wore baggy sweat pants and a shapeless top. She faced me and spoke in a whisper. “You dare stay in this house? You dare defile my parents’ home?”

  I stepped back. I said, “Everybody keeps telling me that people in the South will never confront you directly. That they’ll say things behind your back, but they’d never insult you to your face. They’d never be that rude. I must have missed something. Maybe I’m in the wrong South.”

  “Rude! I was born in this house. Every one of us has good memories, wholesome memories, of growing up here.”

  “Your mother invited me.”

  “She doesn’t dare defy Scott. He’s the oldest boy, so he gets special treatment. If we had our way, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “‘We’ who?”

  “Hiram, Nathan, and me.”

  “But not Mary.”

  “Ha! Mary’s so sweet. Just like Scott—she likes everybody. But she’s not here to protect you.”

  “I wasn’t aware I needed protecting. Is this some kind of threat?”

  “I hope you get arrested for killing the sheriff. If I could find a way, I’d help implicate you so you’d get thrown in jail. Then we’d get Scott back.”

  “Why is it so difficult for so many in this family to accept the fact that Scott is gay, that he is very happy and has a good life?”

  “Yes, he has a good life. He’s rich, and you just live off him.”

  This was a delicate subject between Scott and me. He was not famous when we met, and, in fact, avoided telling me what he did for three months. At first he said he was a part-time manager of an exercise club, which was accurate. The imminent arrival of the baseball season was the impetus for him to tell me the truth. I think he feared I’d call the media and announce our relationship. No matter how open they are now or claim to have been, every gay person has been in some kind of closet. It might be anything from a slight hesitation about telling a new acquaintance that they’re gay to attempting to keep their orientation totally hidden. So even though I didn’t like it, I understood. Of course, now he’d called the media himself.

  As to the issue of money: Over the years, I’d done numerous things to keep my independence. Many times he’d told me I could quit my job as a teacher, but I never did. I enjoy it too much, and I would never want to live off him. I rebuilt my house a while back after it burned to the ground, but I used the insurance money and my own savings. Yes, he gives me presents that are extravagant beyond my wildest imaginings as a kid, and yes, living in his penthouse on top of a building along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago is fabulous, but I didn’t fall in love with him for his money, nor do I stay with him for it. I love him.

  I said, “You and the rest of your family have benefited from his wealth directly and indirectly. From his fame, for sure. It must have been incredible growing up as his sister.”

  “He may have been famous, but I carved my own niche as an athlete. I won some state championships, too. Of course, it was only girl stuff, so I didn’t get the recognition. It was always Scott, Scott, Scott. And my hero brother turns out to be a pervert, and he brings that sin into this house.”

  I wasn’t used to fighting with in-laws. My first big tiff had been an hour or so before with Hiram, who did little more than growl at me. Shannon at least spoke to me. I wasn’t sure if this was better or not.

  “Can we sit down?” I said. “Please.”

  She remained standing with the dish towel pulled taut between her fists. “Just say what you have to say.”

  “Look,” I said. “I don’t expect cheers and parades, and I’m sorry you don’t like me, but I love you
r brother more than anything else on this earth. I would do anything for him. Make any sacrifice for him. He is more precious than anything in the world to me. I’ll help him through this time with his father, and he and I will leave. I wish I was more welcome, but that doesn’t seem possible. If we can’t begin trying to be friends, can we at least agree to be civil while I’m here to help Scott?”

  Her eyes were those of a zealot in the face of the infidel. She turned her back on me. I gave up. I had more problems than whether my in-laws liked me or not.

  Upstairs, I brushed my teeth, took off everything but my underwear, and crawled between the sheets.

  I tossed and turned for some time while the glow of the full moon entered through a window facing east. I fell asleep wondering if you could see motes of dust in moonlight streaming through a window the same way you could in sunbeams.

  When I awoke, it was daylight. Scott lay on top of the other bed. He was in his briefs and lying on his stomach. I stared at the white ceiling, afraid to move much for fear of waking him, although he usually slept very soundly. I hadn’t heard him come in, which testified to my own state of exhaustion. Nature’s needs eventually caused me to slip on some jeans and hurry to the bathroom. I reentered the room and closed the door softly.

  “It’s okay, I’m awake,” he said. He turned over on his side and propped his chin on his hand.

  I sat on the side of his bed.

  “How’s your dad?”

  “Slept peacefully through the night. Mama and Shannon are there. I got here about six. What time is it?”

  I looked at my watch. “Nearly ten.”

  He eased his head back down. “I’d like to sleep for a week.”

  I patted his arm. “How’s your muscle strain?”

  “Practically haven’t noticed it.” He grinned. “You might want to massage it now.”