Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

by Tom Franklin

  “We’re brothers,” he said.

  “Half brothers.”

  “Did you know?”

  “No,” Larry said, then, “Yeah. Ever since yall got in our truck that morning, I knew something. Then when Momma give yall them coats…”

  Silas remembering Larry’s breezy mother, so different from now, saying how Alice should have no trouble accepting the coats because she’d never minded using other people’s things.

  “He wished you’d been the white one,” Larry said.

  Silas thinking how Mrs. Ott had driven away and Silas had put on his coat and zipped it to his neck and buried his hands in the pockets, which were lined with fur. But his mother had continued to stand in the freezing air, holding the coat she’d been given, looking at it. “Ain’t you gone put it on, Momma?” he’d asked as they started to walk, her carrying the long gray coat as if someone had handed her a dead child. At some point Alice slipped one arm and then the other into the coat’s sleeves, she buttoned its buttons, starting at the top. Silas had followed her, still not seeing what an emblem of defeat, shame, loss, hopelessness, the coat was. With such gaps in his understanding, he saw very clearly how the boy he’d been had grown to be the man he was.

  “You think it was better,” Larry said, “living with him?”

  “No,” Silas admitted. “I speck it wasn’t.” Then he said, “It wasn’t easy without one, either. I used to wish I was you, all that land, all them guns. That warm house, that barn.”

  “Bet you don’t wish it now,” Larry said.

  Silas didn’t know how to answer but it didn’t matter. Larry was thumbing his buzzer.

  The nurse walked into the room. “Yes?”

  “How much trouble would it be,” Larry asked her, “to move me to another room?”

  She blinked and then closed her mouth. “You. You want to change rooms?”

  “Yeah. Please start whatever paperwork you have to. I’ll pay whatever extra it costs. I just want my own room. Please.”

  “Well, he’s out tomorrow,” the nurse said, nodding to Silas, “he’ll be gone before we could move you. But if you want me to go to the trouble of starting the paperwork-”

  “I do,” he said.

  seventeen

  WHERE LARRY’S ONLY visitors had been law enforcement officials, Silas had a stream. Not long after Larry asked to change rooms, a pretty black girl in a paramedic outfit came in, smiled quickly at Larry then went to Silas’s bed, her fragrance settling over Larry like a whiff of honeysuckle bush. He’d requested that a nurse draw the curtain between the beds, so now he heard but didn’t see.

  “Baby,” she said, “you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Silas said. He cleared his throat.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “bout the way I been.”

  “You ain’t been no way,” he said, “but right.”

  Rustling, sheets moving.

  “Look at your arm.”

  “It’s a mess ain’t it.”

  “They gone put you on disability?”

  “Say they are.”

  “Full pay, 32?”

  “Say so.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  They talked about the dog, the girl telling him she was glad she hadn’t been the first responder. She didn’t know what she’d have done, something happened to him. He kept assuring her he was fine. She said she knew a great rehab tech, she’d make sure 32 hooked up with him, he’d get his arm back, wait and see. Then their voices lowered and Larry figured they were talking about him. He had the television on overhead, not too loud. Though Silas had a remote control on his bed, too, and though they shared the set, Larry maintained control. There were other sounds and he knew they were kissing.

  A moment later she stuck her head around the curtain. She had a high pretty forehead and big eyes, a little smile.

  “Larry?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m Angie Baker.” She came forward and touched the back of his hand where it lay in its leather belt. Her nails weren’t painted; he could tell she bit them. She looked into his eyes so frankly he glanced away. “I’m 32’s girlfriend,” she said, bending to get back into his sightline.

  “You the one who found me,” he said.

  “32 sent us.”

  “I thank you,” Larry said.

  “I just wanted to say,” the girl said, “that I’m sorry for all you been through. Silas told me. And I wanted to tell you if you ever wanted to come to a church, the Fulsom Third Baptist on Union Avenue would welcome you.”

  Larry didn’t know how to answer. It was a black church. Finally he said, “Does Silas go there?”

  “You ain’t got to worry about Silas,” she said. “You can’t get his black ass anywhere near a church. Less you shoot somebody in one.”

  She stayed much of the night, was there when Larry drifted off.

  Next morning she was gone, replaced by a heavy woman with a bouquet of daisies, nodding to Larry as she got water for the flowers and tidied the room. Silas called her Voncille and thanked her for sending the deputies after him. And for the flowers.

  Then a man Larry recognized as the mayor of Chabot came and joked could Silas still wave cars with that cast on? And could he learn to use his right arm to aim the radar gun and his right hand to fill out his reports? But all joking aside, the mayor said, they sure were proud of him.

  Later a couple of other deputies came in and talked with Silas. They’d taken Wallace’s snakes for evidence, and there’d been a moment of dark comedy when a heretofore unseen boa constrictor slid across the kitchen floor and was shot to death. They’d also found an aquarium of rats, food for the snakes, in a back bedroom. A debate had ensued over what to do with them. Let them go? Flush them? They’d decided to turn them over to a local pet store, the bunch of them currently in the back of Deputy Parvin’s Bronco.

  Leaving, the deputies both nodded to Larry.

  French came by around nine, looking spiffy and wearing, for the first time, to Larry’s knowledge, a shirt with buttons on it and khaki pants. He looked rested and ruddy as he stood at the end of the curtain between them, where he could see them both.

  “Gentlemen,” he said.

  Silas said, “You must got more TV today.”

  “So do you,” the chief said. “On your way out. That pretty anchor wants to talk to you.”

  “First,” Silas said, “can you undo Larry?”

  “I can,” said French, coming down Larry’s side of the divider, undoing the right restraint and then rounding the bed to do the left. “I apologize for that,” he said.

  Larry rubbed his wrists and looked past the chief at the television, a cat food commercial.

  “Well.” French moved around the curtain to Silas’s side. “We got a fellow doing your traffic.”

  “Thanks.”

  French reached past him and pulled the curtain aside, Larry swept into view, his eyes on the TV.

  “I’m gone talk to yall both a minute,” French said. “Mr. Ott, will you turn that thing off.”

  Larry clicked it off.

  French said aside from the Rutherford girl’s wallet, they’d recovered eleven firearms at Wallace’s place, pistols, rifles, shotguns, and ammo. Also, most of an eight ball of cocaine, pills, an eighth of marijuana and a pipe and a one-hitter.

  That sounded about like Wallace, Larry thought.

  French went on. The zombie mask had a spot of blood on it that matched Larry’s blood, which, bolstered by Larry’s testimony, left little doubt that Stringfellow had pulled the trigger. Also, because of the information from Larry, Stringfellow had been linked to M &M, so they could now investigate that case in light of this new evidence. French’s guess? Wallace had shot M &M, too.

  “Now you fellows,” French said, looking one to the other, “have got some history. But what else we got is a whole shebang of reporters and cameras, even CNN, and now Fox News. They all want the story, when each of you gets out,
and I don’t see no reason to hold things back now. The parents have been told, and they send their apologies to Mr. Ott,” nodding to Larry. “And their thanks to you, 32. But I warn you both against getting too personal. They’ll sink their teeth into anything you give em, try to make this a damn human interest story. I don’t know about yall, but I don’t want no humans interested in me.”

  Not long after, Silas was taken away in a wheelchair, discharged, saying as the nurse rolled him out the door, “I’ll come see you, Larry.”

  Now the nurse appeared with another wheelchair, this one for Larry.

  “Your room’s ready,” she said.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll stay here.”

  eighteen

  ANGIE HAD BROUGHT his cowboy hat and two of Marla’s hot dogs. She couldn’t stop touching him as she drove him to the Chabot Town Hall, and he finally took her nondriving hand in his good one and held it. His arm, in a cast and sling, hurt like hell and he was tired, but it felt good being out of the hospital and into his hat. He’d just come from a meeting with Shannon, the sole reporter he intended to speak to about any of this. Let her scoop CNN and Fox. They’d met at the diner and she’d recorded his story, growing more excited as he talked, already writing, her photographer moving around the room, standing on chairs, squatting. The article, Shannon said, scribbling, would run Thursday. “It just might get me a Pulitzer,” she’d said. “Will Larry Ott confirm all this?”

  “You’ll have to ask him,” Silas had said.

  Angie was chatting, and he could tell she was happy. Their plan was for him to go by his office and then to her place where she was going to put him to bed and baby him for the next few days.

  She pulled into the parking lot across from the booming mill. “You want me to come with you?”

  “Naw,” he said, opening the door. “I speck the mayor’s gone reprimand me, and I wouldn’t want you to see that. Might lose all respect for me.”

  “Might?” she said. “I’ll be here when you ready.”

  Mayor Mo and Voncille were waiting in the office, her at her desk, him at his. Neither spoke as Silas came in, taking off his hat with his good hand. He tossed it on his desk and turned his chair around the way he usually did for town meetings and sat down. They were both watching him in a way he couldn’t decipher.

  “Let me go first,” Silas said. “I got something to say.”

  “About what?” The mayor looked down at his legal pad. “Neglecting your traffic duty? Putting us in the hole in our little budget with a whopping, what, three citations in the last three weeks? Harassing the receptionist at River Acres? Enormous ER bills? I could go on, you know,” tapping his pad.

  “He’s always been a list maker,” Voncille said.

  “All of it,” Silas said. “Look-”

  Mayor Mo tossed the pad behind him and stood up. “What are we going to do with him, Voncille?”

  “You could fire him,” she said. “But who’d you get to replace him on that salary?”

  Silas looked from her to him.

  “Only thing I can think to do,” the mayor said, “is hire him some part-time help. What you think, Voncille?”

  “Yeah,” she said, smiling now. “I been working up an ad for the paper. ‘Somebody’ “-quoting from her own pad-” ‘to direct traffic,’ for starters.”

  Silas didn’t know what to say.

  “Mr. Rutherford,” Mayor Mo said, “has authorized it. He thinks we’d all be better served with you doing more patrols. What he called real police work.”

  “He said that?”

  “He did. And I told him we might start thinking about getting you a better vehicle, too. Next year. Maybe, what, a new used Bronco?”

  Silas sat looking from one of them to the other. “Thank yall,” he finally said, “but I can’t take none of it. Not yet. You got to wait till the paper comes out.”

  “Why?” the mayor asked. “What’s in the paper?”

  “You just got to wait,” Silas said. He got up. “For now, thank yall. I need to go home and get to bed.”

  HE CONVALESCED THE rest of the day and into the evening, Angie pampering him, propping his arm up with her big throw pillows, bringing him his grilled tenderloin in bed, taking the day off from work in case he needed anything. He sat studying her little catfish as it probed along the bottom of the tank. That night they watched movies in bed and slept close and he woke in the dark thinking of Larry.

  The next day, he asked Angie to take him to Larry’s house and then by the hospital. She helped him dress, lingering at his zipper, and they took her Mustang with her hand on his knee.

  At the hospital she helped him with the box of mail he was carrying. Tough with one hand.

  “You want me to come up with you?” Angie asked, balancing the box for him.

  “Naw, thanks,” he said. Standing in the parking lot by her car. “I just don’t know what to say up there.”

  “You ain’t got to say anything,” she said. “Just go and sit with him. See what happens.”

  HE DID JUST THAT, came in the room and sat on the edge of the bed. Larry wouldn’t look at him, just gazed at the television, which was showing the Cubs on WGN, losing, as usual. He’d put the box of mail on the foot of Larry’s bed but Larry wouldn’t acknowledge it.

  “I used to go there,” Silas said, pointing to the television. “Wrigley Field. When I was a boy.”

  Larry raised his arm and changed the channel. Geraldo.

  “Yeah,” Silas said. “They ain’t no good anyway.

  “I’m still feeding the first ladies,” he said. “Getting them eggs. You know what I do? Take em to Miss Marla over at The Hub in Chabot. You know that place? She calls em ‘free-range eggs.’

  “Need to hire somebody to cut your grass, it’s getting pretty high. I’d do it myself but, you know.” Raising his sling.

  He sat for nearly an hour and then pushed himself up. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Bring the mail.”

  AT RIVER ACRES he sat with his knees crossed so he could rest his cast on it. Motherfucker was heavy. His elbow ached all the time, but he’d decided to stop taking the Lortabs. He didn’t fool himself: the pain was penance. Were his visits to Mrs. Ott more penance?

  As she sat in her chair, gazing at him as if he were a broom, he dug up memories, telling her about him and Larry and them chickens, how that one afternoon long ago, when they’d been let to be themselves, they’d bounded through woods and over grass, invincible boys, snagging grasshoppers out of the air and capping them in jars with air holes nailed in the lids, overturning logs for the fleeing beetles and cockroaches they yielded, stealing spiders out of their webs, taking the jar to the chicken pen where the birds zipped right over-

  “Who’re you?” Mrs. Ott asked.

  “Silas,” he said, hefting his arm.

  “Oh,” she said. “Who?”

  Later he stood with the Jeep ticking behind him, watching the Walker place. Kudzu and privet had overtaken most of it, given the house another layer of mystery. Something moved past his foot and he looked down, a slender black pipe slid away from his boot. He caught his breath. The weeds twitched and it was gone. He took off his hat and stood holding it, looking where her window was, behind its boards and vines, and wondered was her ghost in there, leaving a trail of smoke dissolving as she passes one room to the next.

  NEXT DAY HE tore the Sheriff’s Department seals off Larry’s front door and stuffed them in a garbage bag. Behind him Angie, in a head rag and old jeans, came up the porch carrying a bucket with a brush and Ajax in it. She got to work cleaning the blood from the floor and Silas went to the gun cabinet and started moving catalogs and junk mail to the kitchen table. It took him a while to get the cabinet clear and dusted, and then he went out to Angie’s Mustang and opened the trunk. He came back in the house, past her on her knees, wearing rubber gloves and scrubbing and humming, and went down the hall.

  For a moment he held the old rifle, which Angie ha
d helped him clean that morning. It seemed lighter than it used to. He took its walnut forearm with his gimpy fingers and worked its lever with the other hand, the smooth ratchet sound, smell of gun oil, and admired its craftsmanship, the checkering on its stock, its blueing in which he could see his reflected face, the nearly faded etching of a hunting dog on its forearm. Holding it for a moment he was a boy again, the world the world it had been a long time ago, a world full of unknowns, a world full of future and possibility, but then he reached and set the rifle down stock first in the green velvet oval and fit its barrel in its green velvet groove and it stood there, a thing returned to its rightful place. Silas inhaled, a man now, full of unknowns yet, but, maybe, with some future still ahead. Some possibility. He looked a moment longer, then turned and went up the hall to where his girl was standing up, pushing her hands into the small of her back.

  nineteen

  SILAS HAD VISITED four days in a row. Larry didn’t know what to say to him so he said nothing. He enjoyed the visits, saw that Silas was nervous but liked that he came so often, liked, in fact, that he was nervous. Not talking was easy when you had no idea what to say and, he supposed, it was his right. Yesterday his mail had included some new books, Lonesome Dove and some John Grishams. Silas had also brought him a change of clothing, khakis and a chambray shirt. A pair of work boots Silas had put in the closet. It occurred to Larry that Silas had been in his house, going through all his things. Without being asked, he brought Larry’s checkbook so Larry could pay bills. He was getting the shop mail, too. As if anticipating all Larry’s questions, Silas would chatter about how the chickens were, which always led to Larry’s mother, her condition the same. He asked if Larry knew when he was going home but didn’t seem to need an answer.

  On the fifth day after Silas’s release, Dr. Milton came by on his rounds and listened to Larry’s back and chest and examined his wound, looking better, the skin around it less bruised. He shone a light in his eyes and asked questions and poked him here and there and seemed satisfied. He said Larry’s wound looked good, and that his heart sounded decent enough but that he should change his diet, eat less fat and more salad. He should exercise.