by Larry Brown
There was a screen door but the screen was gone from the frame. It rattled when he pulled it open, banged against his knee shutting as he went in. The living room floor was littered with clothes and empty potato chip bags. He set the coffee cup on the counter and went down the hall toward the bedrooms. It was already hot in the trailer. He stopped at the door to the boys’ room and looked in. Walt and Johnny were piled up in the bed in a tangle of arms and legs, sleeping soundly. He eased the door shut and went to the next room. Henrietta was under the covers, just her head sticking out. He pulled her door closed, too. He smiled a little and tiptoed back to his own bedroom, shut that door as well, turned the knob, and locked it.
Trudy was a solid lump of sleeping womanhood, her mouth slightly open. She was snoring lightly and the trick was not to wake her suddenly. He took off his cap and laid it on top of the dresser, removed his shirt, slipped off his tennis shoes, and took off his pants. He was not wearing any underwear since he had risen early with this deed in mind and he lowered himself down on the bed next to her and began to slide himself under the covers. She was right in the middle of the bed and he got up next to her. Mornings were about the only chance he got, and sometimes he got lucky. But she was sleeping heavily and didn’t respond to his quiet and subtle insinuations. He laid his head back on the pillow and looked at the ceiling. Then he turned over on his side and watched her. One hand crept out and touched the rounded haunch of her tremendous ass. She had on her panties. Her nightgown had bunched up around her waist. He lifted the covers and peered at her breasts. White watermelons. He felt himself stiffening. He reached down and got it, slid closer to her, rubbed it along her leg. She didn’t notice. She didn’t do anything until he put his tongue in her ear. Then she reared up wildly, turned over, flopped down with her back to him. Her snoring filled the quiet little room. He knew those kids were going to wake up any minute and start hollering for their breakfast. He hadn’t thought to set out the cereal and the bowls and the spoons when he came through.
He listened, but there was no sound from the hall. He wormed his way deeper under the covers, as close to her as he could get. His hand went slowly over her ribs and tried to find one of her nipples beneath the weight of her arm. All that skin made it hard to find. His fingers roamed over the expanse of flesh, soft, warm, slightly damp. His straining member poking straight into the crack of her ass. He began to try and work her panties down and her voice came out disembodied, quietly vicious through her clenched teeth: “What the goddamn hell you think you’re doin?”
He stopped. It was important to give the right answer.
“You just look so good I can’t help it,” he said. “Why don’t you roll over?”
“Why don’t you get to work you lazy son of a bitch?”
And she pulled the covers up over her head.
“Hell, I done got started. Just thought I’d come in here and take a little break. The kids are all asleep. I done checked. They won’t hear us.”
She didn’t answer. Was she agreeing to it or thinking it over? He thought she might have gone back to sleep. He reached out for her again.
“Quit it,” she said.
He stopped where he was. He hated to give up this soon. But if he pissed her off she might stay that way for three or four days.
“You sure?” he said. She didn’t answer. In a little while she started snoring again. He rolled over onto his back and studied the ceiling again. He gave out a long plaintive sigh, a gasp of air filled with anguish for what could have been. He closed his eyes to try and remember how it used to be. And after a while he got up and put his clothes back on.
He was up under the truck putting the bolts back into the starter when he heard somebody pull up. A door slammed and he turned his head and saw two feet coming toward him.
“Be out in a minute,” he said. There was a noise beside him and he looked over to see Glen down on one knee with his head sideways watching him.
“What in the hell are you doing up this early?” Puppy said, and kept turning the ratchet handle.
“Shit. I ain’t been to bed.”
“Where’d you get all that mud on you?”
“It’s a long story. You got any coffee made?”
“Yeah. It’s in there in the kitchen. Go on in and help yourself. I got to finish this and get these wires on. They’s some cups in the cabinet.”
“Thanks.”
Glen got up from the dirt and Puppy heard him open the screen door, go inside. The door flopped shut behind him. Puppy got the bolts tightened, then put the wires over the posts and picked up a small nut and a washer from where he’d laid them on top of the idler arm and threaded them on. He got them hand-tight, then slipped the little wrench from his shirt pocket and tightened them down. He wormed his way out from under the truck and stood up, opened the door, sat down behind the wheel, and reached for the keys. But then he remembered that the battery cables were still off and he got back out and leaned under the open hood and put them back on, tightened them. Then he got back behind the wheel and turned the key. The engine coughed over and cranked, and he sat there revving it. He saw Glen come back out holding a cup of steaming coffee and blowing on it. He shut off the truck and got out, slammed the hood, and picked up his wrenches from the ground.
“Let’s go set in the shop,” he said, and went over and pulled the doors open. There were a couple of wrecked chairs in there on the greasy sand and he lowered himself into one and lit a cigarette. He watched his brother come in, look around, take the other chair. The shop was half filled with parts and junk, old bed frames, a broken television, half of an old Ford pickup. Glen crossed his legs and sipped on the coffee. He had mud in his hair, mud on his shirt and pants. Puppy eyed him critically.
“What’d you do, get in another fight?”
“Naw. Got drunk was all. Some old girl picked me up down at Wallace’s. I don’t remember much of it.”
“You got a job yet?”
“Not yet.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. I got to do something. How come you ain’t at work?”
Puppy looked out across the road. “I don’t work there no more.”
“Since when?”
“Since yesterday. I don’t guess you’ve been to see Daddy, huh?”
“Not in a couple of days.”
“What you been doing?”
“Hell. Nothin. Went fishin yesterday.”
“Fishin?”
“Yeah.”
“When you gonna get out and look for a job?”
“What the hell is it to you?”
Puppy sat there for a little bit, rocking the toe of one tennis shoe up and down. Finally he turned to Glen.
“Smart-ass. Me and Daddy got in a fight cause of you yesterday. So don’t ask me what the hell it is to me.”
Glen’s face was streaked with mud and he gave Puppy an incredulous look.
“What’d you get in a fight with Daddy about?”
“Damn it, I didn’t get in a fight with Daddy. Me and Daddy got in a fight with somebody else.”
“Fight with who? What are you talking about?”
“Ed Hall. Right on the goddamn sidewalk uptown. Daddy’s laid up in the bed right now. Trying to take up for your sorry ass. And you ain’t even worth it.”
Glen set his coffee down and leaned forward in the chair. “Now before I get pissed off why don’t you just explain to me what the hell you’re talking about?”
Puppy cooled off a little. He scratched at the sand with his foot. “Hell. It wasn’t just you. He said something about all of us. And we got into it.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Did you whip his ass?”
“I like to choked the little son of a bitch to death. They took me and Daddy to jail and W.G. fired me yesterday afternoon.”
“Is that what’s the matter with your nose?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he hit the old man t
oo?”
“He did one time. He’s bruised up a little. Bobby took him home.”
Glen’s face clouded up. He sat back in the chair and stared out at something ahead of him, or maybe at nothing. He muttered a few words.
“What?” Puppy said.
“I’m just talking to myself.” He turned his head and fixed Puppy with a steady glare. “Has he been seeing Jewel while I been gone?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“Cause you been here and I ain’t.”
Puppy shifted in his chair and patted his leg impatiently. “What would it matter if he had? Best thing for you would be for somebody else to take care of her anyway. You ain’t gonna marry her, and if you ain’t gonna marry her and you keep messing around with her, it ain’t gonna be nothing but trouble.”
“You’re just full of advice, ain’t you? You and Daddy both.”
“And you’re so goddamn hardheaded you won’t listen to anybody.”
They sat quietly for a few moments. Glen took another sip of his coffee. “What are you gonna do?” he said.
“About what?”
“About a job. You said he fired you.”
Puppy drew on his cigarette and let the smoke trail out through his nose. He watched a wasp fly into the shop over his head.
“I’ll go back to fixin cars. All I got to do is put my sign back out front.”
“How come you quit before? That’s what you were doing when I went in.”
“Hell. I couldn’t get people to pay me. They run me out of business when they cut off my credit at the parts store. I had to have a paycheck. That’s why I went to work for the county.”
“People still owe you money?”
“Hell yeah. Sorry son of a bitches.”
“How much?”
“You mean for everything? Or just labor?”
“For everything.”
Puppy thought about it for a little bit. It had been a while since he’d looked at his books but he knew what Trudy had said. She’d taken bookkeeping in high school. He scratched the side of his jaw.
“About three thousand dollars.”
“You’re shittin me.”
“No I ain’t either. They always gonna pay you some next week, you know. And next week don’t never roll around.”
Glen drank the rest of his coffee and set the cup in his lap. He fanned at a fly circling his face.
“So why you gonna get back into it?”
“Cause. There’s money in it.”
“It ain’t if they won’t pay you.”
“Well. I’m gonna do things different this time. Somebody brings a car in here they’re gonna hand me the keys. I’m gonna look at the car and figure up what it’ll cost to fix it and call em up and let em know. And then when they come to pick their car up if they ain’t got the money they don’t get their keys back.”
“Why didn’t you do that before?”
“Aw hell. Everybody’s got a sob story. You do work for friends. Relatives too, by God. This time it’s gonna be different. Have you looked for a job?”
“I went out to the stove factory. That ain’t no job.”
“It’s a paycheck. Hell, Glen, you got to do something. You got to eat. Why don’t you try to get on working construction somewhere?”
“Shit,” Glen said. “I don’t know nothing about no construction.”
“Well damn, Glen, you may have to learn how to do something. You can’t just sit around on your ass and wait for something to come along.”
“I applied for my unemployment.”
“Yeah? And what’s that? Twenty dollars a week?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Shit. I’m gonna go in and get me another cup of coffee. You want one?”
“Naw.”
Puppy got up from the chair and flipped his cigarette out onto the gravel. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said.
He went across the yard and opened the door again and stepped into the living room. All the kids were up watching television and eating cereal, sprawled on the couch or the floor, and they seemed hypnotized by the images on the set, their slack mouths vaguely chewing their food like some memory of eating they once might have had. They were all still in their underwear.
“Why don’t y’all put some clothes on,” he said, but he got no answer. He set his cup on the counter to pour some more coffee. He heard a door open and looked up to see Trudy in front of the bathroom in her robe, one finger crooked and moving rapidly to summon him to her. He stepped down the hall to where she was.
“What the hell’s he doing here?” she said.
He knew who, but he said it anyway. “Who?”
She glared at him and he guessed he’d put her in a bad mood, waking her up like he had.
“I don’t want him around my kids,” she said. “He’s a bad influence.”
“He’s my brother. What you want me to do, run him off?”
“If you don’t, I will.”
A slow burn started inside him as it sometimes did. He spoke very slowly. “He’s just having a cup of coffee. He’ll be gone after while.”
“He better be,” she said, and she stepped back into the bathroom and slammed the door in his face.
Another fight. He didn’t know why they always had to fight. He had almost forgotten the time when they didn’t. He was tired of it, God knows he was tired of it, and his whole fucking sorry life with greasy hands all the time and working on some piece of junk or other for somebody, it didn’t matter who, looked like he’d always be doing that, always be on his hurting back on gravel reaching up into the dark oily undersides of vehicles skinning his knuckles.
He looked at the cheap wood-grained door for a moment and then drew back and drove his fist into it and it jumped open to reveal Trudy’s big white hips overswallowing the maw of the green commode, where she was perched with her robe up around her waist, her eyes wide open in alarm. She didn’t say anything and he could hear her dripping down into the water. He stood there and looked at her.
“Don’t say nothing else about my brother,” he said. She didn’t move and she stopped peeing. He shut the door and went back up the hall and poured his cup of coffee. The kids were still facing the television.
“I said put some clothes on,” he told them, and when he went out the door they were going toward their rooms.
Glen was still sitting in the chair looking out at the morning when he sat down again. He lowered his mouth to his coffee and sipped at it.
“Why don’t you go see Daddy?” he said. “I meant to go check on him but I need to get to work.”
“What are you working on?”
“That pickup there. I just fixed the starter on it and I got to put a new muffler on it. I got to get my sign back out on the road so folks’ll know I’m open for business again.”
Glen sat there looking at the ground. “What did he say to you?”
“Who?”
“Ed Hall.”
He wished now he hadn’t even told it. He didn’t know why he had. It probably wouldn’t do anything but stir up more trouble.
“It don’t matter what he said. Only reason he said it was cause you run over his kid.”
“So you’re blaming me for it.”
“Naw, Glen, I ain’t blaming you for it. What good would that do?”
It was quiet for a while. They sat in the chairs with the heat rising around them. Glen looked up toward the trailer and nodded at it. “She still hate my guts?”
“You ain’t her favorite person in the world I don’t guess.”
“Well,” he said. “She never did like me anyway.” He got up from his chair. “I’m gonna get on down the road.”
“Why don’t you go by there and see about Daddy?”
Glen put his hands in his pockets and kicked at a rock. His eyes were red and he looked rough. “I don’t know. Hell, he’s probably all right, ain’t he?”
Puppy took another sip of his coffee. He hated to have to beg him
like this. “He’s getting pretty old, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I mean, wouldn’t you want your kids to come see you when you get old?”
“Wouldn’t make no damn difference to me,” Glen said. “I’m gonna go talk to Jewel.”
“You better leave it alone.”
“Fuck leavin it alone. I’m gonna find out what’s going on.”
Glen walked to his car and Puppy got out of his chair. He wanted to say something else to him but he didn’t know what it should be. He knew Glen wouldn’t listen to him anyway. So he didn’t say anything. He just wondered if his own children would visit him when he got old. And if Glen was the one who killed Frankie Barlow. He was pretty sure that he was. He didn’t watch his brother leave, didn’t see him turn up the whiskey bottle. He went around the side of the shop, trying to remember where he had put that muffler. His hand was beginning to hurt a little.
Bobby thought he knew every pig trail in the county, but he didn’t know this one. The road was more like a path through the woods, shaded and relatively cool, and it sloped up the hill to a clearing where he could see the roof of the trailer in the morning sun. Once they got close he began to see things abandoned by the edge of the road and half reclaimed by creeping vines and nests of briars, old refrigerators and discarded lawn mowers, bedsprings and rotted sheets of plywood, cans buried in leaf mold, piles of bottles, a rusted-out Ford pickup riddled with bullet holes as if people had been shot standing beside it.
His prisoner had not spoken since he’d turned off the main road and Bobby could sense a growing uneasiness in the backseat where he sat with his hands cuffed. He stank. The children had, too, before Mary gave them a bath.
He slowed the car and pulled up over the hill and turned down into what he guessed they called the yard. He stopped in front of the trailer and looked around. Overturned chairs and scattered beer cans. Broken tree limbs were hanging from the roof of the trailer and panes of glass were patched with masking tape. Milk crates and soda bottles and wheel rims and blownout tires. He shut the car off and turned in the seat.
