by Larry Brown
“I know it.” He was like a metronome, never varying his speed, endlessly rising and falling, in and out of the shade.
She sat there in the breeze, listening for traffic on the road. Once in a while a car would come by and then wind out of hearing. After he played in the yard with the cat following him she told him that if he’d go on and take his nap she’d fill the little plastic pool for him and he could play in it when he got up. He was an obedient child and he went without arguing, inside the house through the screen door. She heard him pull a chair up to the sink and fill a glass with water and she could see him in her mind, standing there on the chair, drinking it, silent, his hair plastered down on the back of his neck. Ten minutes later she checked on him and he was curled up on the bed, the fuzzy tiger beside him, the breeze blowing the curtains out. She went back to the porch.
She kept on rocking, looking at her watch every few minutes. After a while she went into her bedroom and pulled her clothes off slowly and put on the swimming suit.
The hoe was hanging from a tree limb and she got it down and went into the garden, chopping at the grass that was coming up around the corn, turning the dry dirt over and wishing it would rain. She hoed for thirty minutes and then went inside and pulled the suit off and knelt naked by the tub, drawing it full of warm water and then stretching out with her toes sticking out over the front of the tub and her head propped on the rim, her hair hanging down outside it. Thinking about last night. She didn’t get to say any of the things she’d meant to. It all happened so fast and then he was gone. He’d barely looked at David. He didn’t even say when he’d be back or if he would be. She didn’t know what to do now. It looked like nothing had changed except that he was home again. Things couldn’t keep going the way they were. She drew a deep breath and sighed. She stared at the tile on the wall. A car slowed on the road, pulled in, stopped. She got up and grabbed a towel as she looked out the window but it wasn’t Glen. It was Bobby.
She shut the bathroom door and dried herself rapidly, stepping into her panties and shorts and fastening the top half of the swimming suit around her. When she heard his boots on the porch she reached for the doorknob and slipped on the wet floor, just barely catching herself on the knob and the edge of the sink.
“Shit,” she said. She’d jammed her toe into the bottom of the door. He was knocking. She hobbled out through the living room, limping past the toys that were scattered on the rug. He was standing back a little from the door and he’d taken his hat off. He still had his uniform on.
With one finger to her lips she pushed open the screen door and let him in.
“David’s asleep. Let’s go out on the back porch.”
“What’d you do to your foot?” he said, following her, his heavy frame making a loose board creak.
“I slipped down in the bathroom. I was in the tub when you pulled up.”
She saw him glance at the chicken on the stove as he was coming through.
“Have you had anything to eat?”
“Naw, but don’t worry about me. I’ll go over to the house after while.”
She pushed him out the door and told him to sit down and she’d fix him a plate.
“Don’t fix me nothin to eat. I just stopped by.”
“Go on and sit down. You want tea or milk?”
“Milk.”
She got a plate from the safe and put three pieces of chicken on it. There was potato salad in the Frigidaire and she scooped a round clump of it and put it next to the chicken. Plump red tomatoes were on the windowsill and she peeled one over the garbage can with her little paring knife. Three thick red slices slid onto the plate from her dripping fingers. She poured a big glass of milk and salted the tomatoes lightly, then got him a fork and a cloth napkin and pushed the door open with her hip. He was sitting in the rocker next to hers, smoking a cigarette and watching her with his calm brown eyes. He stubbed the fire from his cigarette on the post and dropped the dead butt in his shirt pocket.
“We ate all the rolls,” she said. “I can get you a piece of loaf bread.” She bent over and set the plate in his lap and saw him trying not to look at her breasts and that made her smile a little smile.
“This is fine,” he said, reddening a bit. “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”
She handed him the milk and slid the other rocker back a bit and went inside for her cigarettes. When she came out he was chewing a mouthful of chicken and cutting the tomatoes with his fork.
She sat down with her knees together, holding her elbows with opposite hands and leaning forward to watch him eat.
“You go to church?” he said.
“Yeah. I saw your mama. She said you never did come home last night. You have some trouble?”
He nodded with a full mouth, looking out across the yard while he chewed. He reached for the milk and took a big drink and mopped at his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Yeah. I wish I’d been in church stead of where I was.” He held the plate balanced on his knees and forked up some of the potato salad.
“Was it bad?”
“Bad enough. Sure is some good chicken.”
She leaned back in her chair and lit one of her cigarettes. She pulled her feet up underneath her.
“Don’t you get tired of it?”
He leaned back too. He was still sweating. The radio said something in the car out front, some man talking in static.
“Is that for you?”
“Naw. I checked out for a while.” He paused. “Of course I get tired of it.”
“That sure was bad about that little boy that drowned.”
“It’s been a bad weekend all around,” he said.
The bones were piling up on his plate and she stepped inside for the milk carton and came back out with it to pour him another glass. He nodded his thanks and kept on eating. She went back in and put the milk up. He’d just about cleaned his plate when she came back out and she stood waiting for him to finish. When he did she took the plate and the napkin and carried them inside.
He’d stretched his legs out and was smoking another cigarette when she sat down beside him again. She hugged her knees and watched him.
“I didn’t know whether to come by,” he said. “I saw him yesterday.” He wouldn’t look at her much. She raised her head and put her chin on her knee and watched the breeze in the trees.
“I guess he’s been over,” he said finally.
“You knew he would be.”
She looked at him and saw what that had done to him. She almost got up and went to him, but the look on his face stopped her. He drew on his cigarette and picked up his hat. “Well? What did he say?”
“Not much.”
“Did you think he would?”
“All I know is I told him I’d wait for him three years ago. And I waited.”
He seemed to be gathering himself for something. His whole body was braced in the chair and somehow she could see him pulling up strength from deep inside himself in the way he looked at her, like a dog that had been whipped but still refused to yield. His eyes were shining and he spoke softly.
“I can give you and David a good life. I didn’t drive by here last night. I wanted to. I figured I owed you one chance to get things settled with him. But I can’t … I won’t live like this.”
He put his hat on and then he stood up. She still had her chin on her knees when he bent over to kiss her cheek. She turned her lips to him too late and he didn’t wait. He went down the steps and stopped for just a moment there in the yard between the little pecan trees they’d planted that spring. A car went down the road slowly out front. She listened but he didn’t.
“I enjoyed my dinner. You can call me when you make up your mind.”
Then he went across the yard and around the corner of the house. There was a tiny noise behind her and she looked around still sitting in the chair. David was standing inside the kitchen watching her through the screen door. He wanted to know if that was his daddy and s
he told him it wasn’t.
There was a scanner hung beneath the radio in his cruiser and he was getting some traffic from the highway patrol and some more from another county, he thought maybe Stone. He hadn’t been listening that close and he couldn’t tell what they had going on. He didn’t really care either. There was plenty for him to worry about in his own county and it seemed like it got worse all the time. Always somebody fucking up. He knew he needed a vacation but he didn’t know when he’d ever get the time to take one.
It was still hot and he had all the windows down and his hat was on the seat again. It would have been nice to stay over at Jewel’s for a while. Sit there and talk. He guessed he should have just kept his mouth shut. But he couldn’t stand not knowing.
There was probably a crowd of people up at Dorris Baker’s house but he thought he ought to swing by there, just let them know he was thinking about them. There were some bad days ahead. He picked up the radio mike and told Harold where he was going. Harold said that was a ten-four and the radio was silent again. The scanner kept chattering. There was a bad wreck on 30 East about four miles out of New Albany. They were calling for an ambulance and a wrecker. He turned the volume down on the scanner and lit another cigarette.
It wasn’t like they could just run him off. Keep some more things from happening. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind that Ed Hall was going to try something sometime. Maybe he needed to go and have a little talk with him, too. Some people you couldn’t tell about. Ed went to church and coached Little League and all that good shit, but that didn’t mean he might not load up his 30-30 one day and go find Glen and stick the muzzle in his ear. It wouldn’t bring his little boy back but it would probably make him feel a hell of a lot better, at least until they sent him to the same place Glen had just come out of.
He turned up County Lake Road. He got up pretty close to the house and started seeing vehicles pulled over next to the ditches.
“Boy boy,” he muttered, guiding the cruiser carefully between the cars. They’d damn near blocked the road. He never knew what to say at these things. Stuff like this where nobody was really to blame for it. Nobody to punish for it. Nobody really guilty of anything except maybe carelessness, or just being young.
He eased past the house to see a throng of people in the yard. There was an empty space at the end of the driveway as if they’d left it just for him and he swung in and parked. He shut the car off and got out and put his hat on. Folks nodded and spoke as he walked up.
“Hey Bobby.”
“How you doing, Sheriff?”
He shook a few hands, being quiet and respectful, lifting a hand to wave at faces here and there. They parted for him and he went up the wide brick steps past the potted flowers onto the porch. It was crowded, people gathered still in their church clothes and kids not playing but sitting mutely on the porch boards with their feet hanging above the flower beds, behaving like they’d been told to. He took his hat off and pulled open the screen door and stepped inside the living room. People in chairs eating, a low murmur of conversation. He could see the women gathered in the kitchen and he headed back there quietly, speaking soft hellos as faces turned toward him. He was caught by the arm at the opened French doors and arrested by the seamed face of Miss Lula, who was already old when she taught him in the eighth grade.
“Why don’t you set down and let me fix you a plate, Bobby?” She had already begun steering him toward a chair but he just stood still and bent over to her.
“I’ve already eaten, thanks. I wanted to speak to Dorris and Sue just a minute. Are they here?”
Miss Lula was a small thing in a black lace dress. Her hair was a pale blue with little whorls of coiled webs sprayed and tightly packed.
“Sue’s laying down in the bedroom but Dorris is down at the barn. You want me to get her up?”
He glanced at the people watching him. There was food on every available surface in the kitchen, table and countertop laden with fried chicken and deviled eggs, sliced hams and casseroles, pies, cakes, dishes of vegetables and sweet potatoes.
“No ma’am,” he said. “Don’t get her up. I’ll go out and see Dorris. Do you know if they need anything?”
She gazed around and shook her head as if she were lost in all this and then looked up at him. “Do you know I’ve taught just about everbody in this house?”
“I don’t doubt that, Miss Lula.” He smiled down at her. She still had her hand on his arm.
“When you gonna find you a nice girl and get married? You can’t live with your mama your whole life.”
“I’m workin on it,” he said, already turning his attention away from her. “I’m gonna ease on out here. I’ll see you, Miss Lula.”
“He’s took it hard, Bobby.”
“I know he has.”
He moved away from her and began to try and make his way through the kitchen to the back door, people jostling a little and shifting to allow his passage and all of them eating, forks moving toward mouths and fingers holding rolls and pickles. He knew this was just the preliminary. The actual funeral would be much worse.
“Hello, Bobby.”
“Hey. Scuse me, ma’am.”
They’d all have to watch and listen to the screaming and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Then they’d all come over here and eat again and trickle out one by one leaving the clean dishes stacked on the tables with their names written on tape beneath them and the leftover food crammed into the refrigerator. The dogs would eat good for a few days. All these people would bind together for a number of hours or days in the way that only great tragedy wrought. And then their lives would have to go on and the loss would diminish for all those except the ones who lived in this house. They would wake to it every day, sleep by it every night. It would infiltrate their meals and their lovemaking and their trips to take out the garbage. The slightest thing would remind them of it. It might grow gradually dimmer with a great passage of time but it would never fully leave or be closed out like the shutting of a door. That’s what he hated about it. He didn’t blame them for eating, but he wouldn’t have even if Jewel hadn’t fed him.
He breathed an open sigh when he stepped out on the back porch. He nodded to some wide-eyed boys who viewed him with mute admiration, their mouths slack with awe.
“How you boys?”
Dorris had his tractors and his combine and his two cotton-pickers parked under the big shed he’d built three years ago and Bobby could see the fields of cotton stretching away behind the house, a vast acreage of green that lay shimmering in the heat. A group of men were sitting in some lawn chairs in the shade beside a cotton trailer. He walked across the yard toward them and a man standing a little apart from the group came out from under the shed to meet him. He could see that Dorris was shaking his head and crying before he got to him and he felt like crying himself because it was so unfair. He reached his hand out.
“God, Bobby,” Dorris said.
They didn’t hug but they shook hands hard. Dorris had been in the boat when Bobby hooked the boy’s leg with the gambrel. Standing in that muddy water and feeling that cold slick limb come into his hand. Having to raise his face and look at Dorris in the boat.
They dropped their hands and watched each other. Bobby asked him how he was doing.
“Not worth a shit. I thought I could take it better than this but I can’t. Come on out here and get you a chair.”
Birds were moving in the branches of the trees. From inside the house came the steady babble of voices. They walked side by side to the end of the yard and across a patch of gravel that was stained with oil or grease and sunlit. Broken gaskets and flattened cans.
“I had to get out of the house for a while,” Dorris said. “All them people. You know. I mean they mean well. They’ve brought a ton of food.”
“I saw it. Have you made arrangements yet?”
“We picked out the casket this mornin. He’s out at the funeral home tonight and the funeral’s at two tomorrow.”
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Bobby nodded but he couldn’t think of much to say. He knew all the people sitting out there: Sammy Brewer, Carlton Thomas, Lewis Foster, and there looking up at him with something like personal insult on his face was Ed Hall. It made sense that he would be here since he had something in common with Dorris now. Bobby spoke to them all and they all said hello or nodded except Ed. They were sitting at the edge of the shade among drums of oil and sacks of seed and fertilizer, weather-browned men who with their hats off showed a white line of demarcation above their foreheads where the sun never touched them. Farmers, carpenters who never took their shirts off if they were outside.
“We was just talking,” Dorris said. “About that old pond. I never had fished in it but Lewis said he had.”
Lewis leaned forward enthusiastically to tell his fish story in a high and rapid voice.
“I caught a bass out there one day weighed eight pounds,” he said. “Caught him on a weedless worm and the son of a bitch fought like a motherfucker. Caught him over there on the back side right next to an old log that was in there.”
“I didn’t know they was goin,” Dorris said. “I wished I’d knowed they was goin.”
Bobby looked at the toes of his boots and said to himself, But you wouldn’t have done anything different, Dorris, you would have stayed on your tractor or worked on a fence or whatever you were doing. They were just going fishing.
“Course I don’t blame myself for it,” he went on. “He’d told me he could swim a little. Said he was gettin pretty good. I was gonna take off one Saturday and me and him go. Course I always stay so busy. I’m always so busy,” he said.
Yeah, and hindsight, and what if? You could do that forever and drive yourself crazy with it when the simple truth was that they had been fishing, and his boy had suddenly stood up on the transom of the boat and told the other two to watch him cut a back flip. He had gone into the water and he never had come up. Bobby thought he might have hit a log down there. It was full of logs, always had been, and in truth there had been a swelling low on the base of the skull. It was his right as the sheriff to order an autopsy, but with the body lying under a tarpaulin on the bank with a small crowd of the grieving already gathered, Dorris had led him a few steps away and whispered fiercely into his ear that he couldn’t stand to think about them cutting him apart, that he was dead and nothing was going to change that, and please don’t let them do that to his baby, Bobby, not the one who fed the bottle calf Omar Junior and whose rabbits housed in hutches he could almost reach out and touch from where he was standing now in the shade of the shed.
