Almost as soon as I left the Greer farm, the sky darkened, and the first raindrops burst against the car windshield like overripe grapes. It rained solidly for five days, often violently. On Saturday, I decided to go to the Unitarian Church’s potluck singles supper, but the rain was still a grim onslaught that obscured the parking lot, and I discovered that I had no heart for the occasion. I sat in the church lot, turned the windshield wipers off, and watched the street lamps melt under dark sheets of water.
I drove home without entering the church, telling myself that at least I had avoided Miss Mitford’s discussion of her son’s orthodontic work and Miss Adrian Blakely’s vacuous New Age nonsense. Upon returning to my home, I went directly to my bedroom, donned my pajamas and crawled under the covers.
My mother knocked on the door and popped her head in. “You are home early,” she said.
I asked her if there was anything wrong with that. She conceded that there wasn’t, with an air of great reproach, and then retreated, leaving me to guilt and a sudden suffocating dissatisfaction with my life. I tried to read a novel I had recently purchased in which the President of the United States is revealed to be a serial killer and cross-dresser, but my mind kept drifting to Eleanor Greer.
Where had she gone?
Boredom, you see. I was massively sick of my narrow bed, my dismal circle of acquaintances, my tedious job, the incessant rain. And so I got up, went to the closet, and found—as I thought I might—the telephone number of Hank Greer. It was in the pocket of my suit coat, written on a Post-It note.
I called him. He didn’t seem surprised to hear from me, despite the hour (it was after ten in the evening). I was not surprised by his reaction either, since I’ve come to understand that most people will answer any question that someone in an official capacity asks them. People like to believe that those in charge have good reasons for what they do.
I asked Hank about Eleanor Greer’s companion. What was his name again? Lou Willis. And how, exactly, had Hank come to know this Willis?
He knew him from high school.
The next day, I drove out to their farm where Hank’s pretty wife handed me the yearbook and said, “Hank says for you to be careful with this.” I drove off with Hank Greer’s 1966 Davis High School yearbook and parked a mile down the road. Turning the pages to the senior class pictures, I found Lou Willis’ picture, looking like Paul McCartney must have looked at around the same time, a chubby-cheeked teenager of the goggle-eyed, sincere school of lying (“It wasn’t me!” his picture seemed to say). Underneath the picture, an unsung laureate of yearbook character analysis had written the three allotted adjectives: thoughtful—loyal—polite.
I studied the thoughtful, loyal, polite Willis and thought of Eleanor Greer and the charred mattress in her brother’s backyard. Lou Willis’ expression of wronged innocence haunted me.
On Wednesday, during lunch, I made some calls. Mrs. Hamilton, who is every bit as sharp as she is exasperating, watched me hang up the phone, and then said, “You are hot on the trail, aren’t you? You are like that private eye on television, only you just make phone calls while he has to drive all over town. Of course, I guess it wouldn’t make much of a show, if he was on the phone all the time.”
I smiled at Mrs. Hamilton. “The phone is mightier than the Ford,” I said, delighting myself with the brilliance of my wit. In my three days back at work, I had amused myself by trying to unravel the mystery of Eleanor Greer’s whereabouts. I justified the time spent on this matter as being job-related, although, of course, this wasn’t precisely true. If Eleanor Greer had chosen to leave the County, that was her business, not the County’s.
I realized that Eleanor herself wasn’t going to be any help. She had no relatives, other than her brother, and he didn’t know where she was. I’d have to find Lou Willis, and Eleanor would be with him.
I spent my spare moments navigating Briscoe County’s various agencies in the frail vessel of my telephone. I was overturned a number of times—numbers that did not work, clerks who seemed incapable of understanding English, and secretaries who were as tight-fisted with information as the CIA—but I was able to prevail upon a number of people to fax me documents, and I learned that Lou Willis had run afoul of the law as a teenager (public drunkenness, petty theft), had enlisted and gone to Vietnam but been discharged five months later for medical reasons, had received vocational training and obtained work at Sloan’s Air Conditioning where, according to County records, he was still employed. He was married.
I called Sloan’s and was told that Lou Willis did not work there. Three weeks ago, he had failed to come in on Monday, never called, and his phone was disconnected.
I asked the man on the phone if he had any idea where Lou Willis might have gone. He didn’t, but added, “He wasn’t worth a shit after his wife left him. He was a good worker before that—didn’t have much of a personality, but he was a good worker.”
I called the wife (“Ex,” she said, “It’s a done thing. We filed and the clock’s running.”). The ex-Mrs. Willis was living in Waco. She hadn’t seen Lou Willis either, but she gave me the name of the nursing home where Mrs. Eunice Willis, Lou’s mother, resided. “He was close to his mother,” she said. “He was always closest to her. When she had her stroke, that’s when he changed, got real distant. He blamed himself, and he blamed me too. Said I should have let her come live with us.”
When I called the nursing home, the ward clerk said, “Honey, she can’t talk on phones. You want to see her, you come on out.” On Saturday, I did just that. The day was warm and bright, and I rolled the window down and let all the promise of spring into the car, but the nursing home took the heart out of me. The building was low to the ground, and the walls were painted a pale green. I felt as though I were underwater, a queasy sensation. A nurse led me to Mrs. Willis’s room. I passed a large, dimly lit area where a dozen elderly people, their bodies formless under blankets and robes, were watching a talk show on a giant TV screen.
Mrs. Eunice Willis, a small, gnarled woman lost in a landscape of pillows, thought I was her son. I was unable to disabuse her of this notion, and when I finally attempted to leave, realizing that no information was forthcoming from this source, she refused to let me go, clutching my arm with surprising strength.
“What do you say?” she shouted. “What do you say, Lou Willis?”
I looked at the nurse for aid, but the nurse scowled and nodded. “Go on,” the nurse said.
“What?” I asked, trying to back away from the elderly Mrs. Willis without dragging her onto the floor.
The nurse rolled her eyes. “Just tell her you love her, for goodness sakes,” the nurse whispered.
“I love you, Mom,” I said, and made my escape.
This robbed me of some enthusiasm for the investigation, but I managed to stop at the nurse’s station and ask if there were any relatives other than Lou Willis.
There was, it turned out, a husband. But he wasn’t in the neighborhood. He lived in Florida. There was a telephone number.
I called the number for Roy Willis on Monday. I said I was calling regarding his son.
I was told that Lou Willis was not there. “He’s out right now,” I was told. “He’s gone to the beach with his girlfriend. He ain’t in any kind of trouble, is he? I told him he couldn’t stay here if he was in trouble. I’m too old for trouble.”
I put the phone down and said, out loud, “He’s gone to the beach with his girlfriend.”
“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Hamilton asked.
“I’m Sherlock Holmes,” I told her.
LOU
Ellie had her heart set on this pink bikini bathing suit that a good-sized cockroach would have had a hard time hiding under. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid not.” I laid down the law, and she finally settled for a more modest one-piece. She sulked some.
“You are an old fart,” she said. “You don’t know anything about fashion.”
“What we are talking
about here has always been in fashion,” I said. “And I know all about it, honey. Believe me.”
I bought myself some swim trunks. They were camouflage, which was kind of a joke. “I reckon I’ll be able to sneak up on any ocean-going VC.” I laughed. Ellie laughed too, not for the joke but because she found my white body, with its monkey-brown arms, a hoot.
We stopped at a drugstore and loaded up on beach stuff: a float, suntan lotion, sunglasses, towels, even a portable radio so we could listen to music.
I hadn’t been to the ocean since I was a kid when St. John’s Summer Camp had packed a bunch of us on a bus and taken us to Galveston. I felt like a kid again, and I worked the radio until I got one of those oldies stations, and lay back and let the sun blaze away, squinting through my shades at a big vacation sun.
I’d been worried about seeing Dad; didn’t know what kind of reception I’d get—although he’s the one that run off, so, logically, I’m the one with a right to a grudge. It was all right, though.
Dad’s like me, he don’t go in for big displays of emotion, hugging and that sort of stuff. But he shook my hand and hugged Ellie, and his eyes got bright, and he kept saying, “Well, there’s been some water over the goddam dam, hasn’t there?” and rocking back in his chair and shooting me one beer after another and generally making me welcome.
The old man was looking pretty good for his age. His hair was blacker than I remembered, and I guess he dyed it cause his eyebrows were as gray as frost, but he still had all his teeth and his shoulders were still broad.
The house wasn’t bad either, a two-story wood frame with a big attic fan that made a terrible clatter when you first turned it on but then settled down. It was the sort of house a real estate salesman would call a “fixer-upper” and Dad was putting new cabinets in the kitchen, and the floor on the screened-in porch was tore up.
“I’m busy as a hooker at a convention of Bible salesmen,” Dad said, and he grinned his old Irish grin, and winked at Ellie. “If you’ll excuse that comparison, Miss Greer.”
Ellie giggled.
After I got her settled in the guest room and kissed her goodnight, I went back downstairs and told Dad I was sleeping on the sofa.
He raised his eyebrows. I could see he was after more information, but I didn’t feel obliged to supply it.
“I’ll just sleep here,” I said. “If it’s all right.”
“Well sure,” he said, and he went off and came back with some sheets. “You ain’t in any trouble with the law?” he asked, and I thought then we might have an argument, but I just said, “No, the law don’t have any interest in me,” and he nodded and went off.
The next morning, I woke and smelled coffee perking, and just lay there, enjoying that hopeful smell. Hearing voices overhead, I sat up and hauled my pants on and went upstairs.
Dad was standing at the door to Ellie’s room. He was telling the story about the time our dog Samson was whupped by an opossum. It’s a good story and he tells it good, and I could hear Ellie laughing. I walked quick past him, said, “Excuse us,” and shut the door. Ellie had pulled the sheet up around her, but, laughing and all, she’d let it slip—and like I say, she sleeps in the raw.
“Better get dressed,” I said.
The beach calmed me down. There’s something about the way the ocean just goes on and on that is reassuring.
“Look at those little birds there,” I said to Ellie. “Don’t they look like windup toys? You figure if they fell over, their legs would keep on kicking.”
“I need for you to put this suntan lotion on my back, Lou Willis,” Ellie said, rolling over on her stomach. With her rhinestone sunglasses, she looked like a movie star.
I rubbed the lotion in while Ellie continued to talk. She talked about how we should go to Disney World since we were in Florida. She had picked up a brochure somewhere. “I want to meet Mickey Mouse,” she said. I didn’t say anything, and I guess Ellie took that as me saying no, because she started to pout. “There ain’t nothing wrong with meeting Mickey. There ain’t no harm in Mickey. Mickey Mouse is a gentleman, Lou Willis, and you can’t say different, and you know it.”
Ellie has a style of argument that doesn’t require my comments. I let her go on, and when she finally stopped, I said, “I guess we could drive to Disney World. Why not?”
That cheered her up right away, and she turned around and gave me a hug and a kiss. She smelled like sunlight and towels fresh out of a dryer, and I almost lost my balance and fell into her, but somehow I got to my feet.
“I’m going for a swim, honey,” I said, and I turned and ran straight into the ocean, and threw myself into the hard, cold waves, and swam straight out past the breakers, and floated on my back and closed my eyes and listened to the seagulls holler and waited for a feeling of doom to leave me. And I thought it had, but just when I thought that, I was suddenly sure that a shark the size of an eighteen-wheeler was right under me. I swam back to shore, heart beating like crazy. Every inch of the way, I felt it follow me, down there in the blackness, a big, angry, upside-down God eyeing a sinner.
Nothing happened though. I still had my legs, and it felt good, putting each foot down on the scalding sand. But the blanket was empty; Ellie was gone.
I knew I was right about the feeling then. I was wrong about the shark, but I was right about the danger. I grabbed up a towel, wrapped the clasp knife in it and jogged toward the boardwalk.
I didn’t have to think twice which way Ellie would go. It would be the crowds and the glitter that would draw her. The other direction was older folks, parents with children and old women looking for seashells. I wouldn’t find Ellie there.
The beaches were crowded. I walked past a big, pink hotel where teenagers were playing frisbee and a volleyball game was going full tilt, with lots of blonde girls screaming and laughing, like a soda pop commercial. It seemed to me that a lot of those girls were technically naked.
I was feeling dizzy and wasn’t seeing right. Too much sunlight was falling, like grain spilling out of a silo. I thought I’d have to sit down and clear my head, but just then I saw her. She was standing at a hot dog stand, eating a hot dog and talking to a big, tanned fellow wearing those Speedo swim trunks that are a joke on modesty.
“Ellie,” I shouted.
She turned and waved, all innocent and glad to see me. She stood up a little on the balls of her feet when she waved, jumped a little, and I knew she was truly glad to see me and that she didn’t know how scared I was for her.
“Lou,” she said, when I came up to her, “these are the best hot dogs.”
I looked past her at the blond boy who was wearing the dollar-an-inch bathing suit. He had what I call a squirrel-in-the-middle of the road smile, meaning it could go any way, that smile. I gave him a cold look.
“Lou, this here is Howie,” Ellie said. “He was telling me how he plays in a rock band.”
“I guess that would impress some folks,” I said.
Howie’s smile went away. “I wasn’t trying to impress anyone,” he said. I could see then that he was one of those fellows who liked a fight.
“It’s good you wasn’t,” I said. Howie frowned.
“Oh Lou,” Ellie said. “I wish I was in a rock band. You know I can sing.” She finished her hot dog, crumpled the wax paper, and tossed it in a wire trash bin. Then, suddenly, she turned. “Last one in is a rotten egg!” she shouted, and she bolted for the ocean.
I clutched Howie’s arm. “Settle for being a rotten egg,” I said. “Take my advice.”
He glared at me now. His eyelashes were too long for a real fighter. I felt tired.
“Take your hand off me,” he said.
I took my hand off fast. “I didn’t mean anything,” I said, thinking I could still stop things somehow.
“I’m going for a swim,” he said.
Fear came on me again. I was desperate. “Don’t go!” A fat lady, walking by, gave me a quick, startled look and then moved on. I wasn’t thinking, and I
grabbed his arm again. I was talking fast. “Look, I was just out there. There’s a big old shark out there. I swear. I’m gonna fetch Ellie right now. It’s too dangerous.”
It was a feeble attempt, I admit. He yanked his arm away, and poked a finger at my chest. “You old fucking hayseed,” he said. “I told you I was going for a swim. Now get out of my way before I kick your ass.”
I got out of his way, watched him jog down to the surf, jog out to the first wave and dive into it. You could tell he’d done it a few times. He looked comfortable in the ocean.
I traipsed on down to the tide, keeping my head down. A lot of black, tangled seaweed lay at my feet, like something a cat would cough up. People shouldn’t go swimming in this stuff, I thought. I kept studying the seaweed, unwilling to look up, but finally I had to. Sure enough, he was out there with Ellie, the two of them bobbing up and down, not more than two feet from each other.
I threw the towel away, let the sea grab it. Holding the clasp knife close, I marched into the dirty water. I didn’t look up, didn’t give them another look. I knew exactly where they were. I swam past a couple of young boys who were horsing around. I swam with long, slow strokes.
I can hold my breath for a long time. Ma says I was a hollering baby, so maybe that’s how I come by my good lungs. Anyway, I slid under the water, and started out. I swam blind, with my eyes closed tight, and when I finally stuck my head up, I was no more than five feet from the back of handsome Howie’s head. If Ellie had been looking at him, she would have seen me, but she was swimming back toward the shore, and I thought: Now or never.
I filled my lungs and sunk back under. I flipped my knife out and frog-kicked forward.
I caught him around the waist, and he was hairless and sort of slick with suntan oil, and he leaped half out of the water, but I was expecting that, and he spun right into the knife and it opened him up. I thought I could hear the blood hissing out of him, like steam. My hands felt scalded by it. I went down with him, and we rolled like circus acrobats under a bigtop full of black water. I could feel him shrinking in my arms, and I thought: If I just wait a bit I can put him in my pocket. But I was out of air, and I had to let him go and fight for the surface. I guess, if Ellie had been there, she would have seen in my eyes what I’d done. But I was a lot farther out from shore, and I couldn’t make her out. When I did find her, she was helping a little girl build a sand castle.
The Return of Count Electric & Other Stories Page 9
