“Blake, I suspect the canon of journalistic ethics is a floating thing at the Grower.” Cam heard the sound of pouring, thought for a moment that Rainey was urinating beside him, then smelled whiskey.
“Mother Earth, I anoint thee with sour mash. Cam, I’ve had enough to drink tonight, don’t you think?”
Cam Sizemore laughed quietly. “Maybe so. Maybe we all have.” Was there ever enough for Rainey? Of anything?
Behind them, an incoherence had entered the noise of the party, a falling cadence. Fred, the ancient bard of orange juice, paid in whiskey, was plucking raggedly at “Lost Highway.”
Cam turned to Blake Rainey. “I’m going home. Let’s hope none of our friends ends up in a ditch. That’d be ethical news for Herb Klein.”
Blake Rainey stared out over the lake, the empty glass in his hand. “You go on home, Cam. I’ll take care of things here. And don’t worry about our boy Billy and that Jew reporter. I got a man in Tallahassee. He don’t like boys that turn on the team, and he don’t believe a quitter’s story. We’ll have our championship game. And I’ll talk to Billy again. Find out if he went to his daddy’s office to light matches.” Rainey reached up with the empty glass and tapped himself twice on the forehead. “If I have to, I’ll knock some sense into his head.”
That tapping. Cam Sizemore remembered talking to David Dyer one summer day behind the bleachers, the day Billy Dyer had fought big Charlie Rentz and got hurt in the head. He remembered David Dyer gripping his arm, concern for his son in his eyes. He remembered shrugging from Dyer’s grasp, reaching up, and tapping his own forehead just as Blake Rainey had done.
Your boy’s all right. Just got his bell rung. But if it happens again, you should worry.
Cam wished now he hadn’t done it. Threatened a man’s son. To accomplish what? He had already owned David Dyer. He wished he could take back what he had said, but David Dyer was gone now and nothing could be taken back from the dead.
FORTY
You could see the fire a mile away and, like everyone in Oleander, Billy was drawn to it. When he got close enough to see that it was not a fire of destruction but of celebration, what people called a bonfire, he knew it was best to stay away. But tired of hiding and awed by the high column of flame in the night sky, he drove to the fire and parked the Ford with other cars at the edge of a brushy field behind a shopping center. Standing at the back of a crowd of juice workers where he hoped no one would know him, he watched the faces that circled the fire, watched them multiply until hundreds stood around the heap of burning timber, scrap, and junk that reached as high as a house. What he saw in these faces resembled what he had seen by the fire of Mystery Night, a somber trance, a kind of hypnotism that closed the eyes of thought and opened the vision of the tribe. He did not know who had organized this spectacle or if anyone had. Someone had built the timber rick that burnt now like an alien sun in the firmament of night. Now men and women ran to its edges, using coats to shield their faces from the heat, and threw things into it, things that caught instantly, or exploded, or shot up in the raging skyward draft, evaporating into carbon as they flew. Broken chairs, ragged clothes, rakes and hoes, an old cedar chest, a mattress, part of a picket fence, and books went into the fire. Anything to keep it going.
The drum corps from the Spartan band was here somewhere, beating out a march as though summoning an army to stand in ranks around the fire. In silhouette three cheerleaders, their faces lost in halos of fire-lit hair, somersaulted in unison across the space before the crowd. The tribe cheered. Men whistled. Women called out, “Again! Do it again!” Children imitated awkwardly or well.
A single voice somewhere far from Billy sang out the first words of the fight song “On, You Spartans!” and instantly others joined. It was only minutes before the sound, like a wave breaking on a beach, reached the crowd of juice workers where Billy stood, and even some of them, sheepishly at first and then with more conviction, took up the song. A man looked back at Billy, then looked again, his eyes narrowing perhaps in recognition, perhaps in censure of the boy who was not singing. Billy knew he should not be here. The next fire-lit face that glimpsed him might know his name, that he was the reason for this bonfire. Bon. Good fire. This good fire threw its roaring light into the void of night because Billy Dyer had caught passes, blocked viciously, broken tackles carrying a ball, won games, but also because he had told a story of football and money that threatened everything the tribe believed. Another man, wearing bib overalls and a sweat-stained undershirt, turned back at him and smiled. Get out of here, said the voice in Billy’s mind.
Coach Prosser stepped into the space before the fire, and a uniformed police officer threw him a bullhorn. The crowd cheered. Prosser smiled, waved thanks to the cop, looked at the instrument in puzzlement until he saw how to turn it on. An eerie CLICK crackled across the throng. Prosser raised the bullhorn to his lips, cleared his throat, and when the sound was magnified, some in the crowd laughed. Prosser smiled. “Thank you all for coming out tonight in support of the Spartans. This might be the biggest gathering I have ever seen, outside a stadium, of people who love football, love our team and our town. So, first of all, I want to say, humbly and from the bottom of my heart, thank you, not just for this, but for everything.”
Prosser hit his big chest twice with a closed fist. His heart. The bullhorn caught the sound and sent it out, Thump. Thump. And Billy smiled grimly thinking of Prosser’s hands, huge and scarred, the backs of them covered with red hair. Prosser grabbing boys by the helmet cage or the breastplate of their pads, pulling them from pileups like pieces of cordwood, and setting them on their feet to quail and quake under his relentless lecturing, admonishing, the endless repetition of the right way to do a thing, anything, everything on a football field.
Prosser raised the bullhorn again. “We are not here tonight just to support our team, the best boys this town has ever raised to manhood, who have fought through a long season to this last, best opportunity. We are here—you and I know it—to send a message to everyone out there who does not believe in us, does not believe we play an honest game, that we do not cheat, have never cheated, never will cheat, and that we would rather lose, would rather lose badly, would rather die, in fact, than win by cheating. I say this to you here tonight, I promise it to you, I say it to Tallahassee, and I say it to the stars above me, to God Almighty Himself. Show me the man or boy who believes that we needed to cheat in order to win, and I will, I will…” He turned and made as if to fling the bullhorn at the fire, then returned it to his lips. “Let that man or… boy step forward who believes I cheated, and he will burn in hell!”
The crowd gave to the night, the dark void, the column of flame its loudest roar. And Billy felt as a physical thing the sound of the throng. It concussed his ears and rattled his bones. And as the spirits of Oleander ascended to their height, Billy’s fell. My God, he believes it. They all do. Prosser. Somehow in that marvelous, strategic mind, those caverns of thought, he has convinced himself his story is true and mine is a lie.
Billy felt a hand on his upper arm. He turned, dazed, to a white-bearded old man in a green leather coat. With a grip surprisingly strong, the man pulled Billy back through the crowd, away from the fire.
In the half-darkness twenty yards behind the crowd, in the last of the cheering for Prosser’s hellfire sermon, the man stood in front of Billy and lit a cigarette. His Zippo flared, and Billy saw the same unhurried smile he had seen that night in the alley behind his father’s office.
Billy stepped back beyond the reach of the man’s hands. “What do you want?”
The man drew on the cigarette, closed his eyes with the pleasure of the smoke, opened them. “Billy, ain’t you?” The man waited for Billy to own his name. He didn’t.
“I know you. You Billy Dyer. My name’s Fred.”
It was a country voice, the musical twang Billy had heard a thousand times in his nights at Honey Bear Juice. The man reached up and stroked the white beard into a cone
at his throat. Brown nicotine stained the hair below his narrow lip. He crooked a finger at Billy. “Come on. I got something to show you.”
The man turned and walked toward the darkness. Billy followed, knowing that he should run, that he was following this strange old man as hungry children followed monsters in fairy tales.
They walked to a long, black Lincoln parked at the edge of the field. Something lay on the roof of the car, but Billy could not make out what it was. Fred reached back and seized the thing, some kind of case, opened it, and showed Billy a pair of binoculars. He pressed the binoculars to his eyes, aimed them at Billy. “That was purty, you and the girl in the lake. Purtyest thang I ever seen. She’s a sweet one. A little on the big side for my taste, but purty all the same. You a lucky boy, Billy. I wuttin’ getting no poontang young as you.”
Billy took a step forward. “Listen, goddamn—”
The man pushed aside the lapel of the leather jacket. A nickel-plated pistol rode in a leather strap under his arm. Billy’s throat opened, and ice fell into his chest. He balled his fists to conceal his shaking hands. It was hard to breathe. He tried to swallow, almost gagged. The coat fell back over the pistol. “I brought somebody to see you, Billy. He didn’t look through no field glasses at you and the girl. It was just me done that. I have been watching you.”
The man opened the front door of the Lincoln, and Blake Rainey swung his long legs out, groaned, and stood, blinking in the darkness.
“Where’s Len?” Billy said. “I thought he was your driver.”
Rainey gave him a level gaze, shrugged. “He’s good for some things, not others.”
Fred walked away toward the crowd. Blake Rainey opened the Lincoln’s back door and grinned. His voice was low and soothing. “Get in, Billy. We need to talk.”
Billy stepped back, putting space between him and the tall smiling man. The businessman, landowner, grower. The tycoon. He looked at Rainey’s clothes, the expensive black suit with its folksy touches, the American flag tiepin, the cowboy belt with big silver buckle, the old-fashioned gold watch and fob, the black high-heeled boots. They’d smell of horse shit, Billy’d bet. They would if you got down close enough, and he’d bet a lot of men had smelled them. “I’m not…” he began, but Rainey crossed the distance between them, reached out a long, slender hand, and took him by the biceps, pulled him close.
“Come on, Billy. What will it hurt? I just want to talk to you. You and me are not as far apart as you think.” He pulled Billy to the Lincoln, smiled wide like a friend, like a teammate. “Come on, Billy.”
They sat in the back of the car as the firelight faded and people drifted away from the field. The drum corps still rattled its tattoo, but Billy could see in the faces of passing citizens that Prosser’s oration had climaxed the night, leaving a pleasant, finished feeling in the heart of the town.
Billy looked at Rainey. “So, Fred… ?”
“Does things for me. Fetches and totes, drives, takes care of that place out in the woods where all this trouble started awhile back. Caretaker’s a good word for Fred. He’s careful. Even plays a little music at parties…” Rainey’s long fingers strummed an imaginary guitar. “Parties you’ll enjoy someday, Billy.”
“The binoculars,” Billy said. “He was watching us from across the lake?” His face flamed with shame—that the old man had seen him and Moira, that Rainey knew about them, and God knows who he had told.
“Powerful instruments,” Rainey responded in a brooding tone. “In the war, I was stationed on a destroyer in the North Atlantic. You could see ten miles on a clear day with a good pair of Zeiss binoculars. Hell of a thing, keeping my eyes peeled for U-boats with an instrument manufactured by Krauts. There weren’t many clear days on the North Atlantic in winter. It was a deadly game we played with the U-boats, Billy. I’m damned lucky to be here telling you about it.”
“Who—”
“Am I going to tell? About you and the girl? Probably nobody. Why would I? You were just doing… what is it the song says? Doing what comes naturally. Maybe doing it a little early, a little prematurely, a little bit on the sly, but doing it naturally.” Rainey laughed. “I assume there was nothing… unnatural going on. I think Fred would have mentioned that.”
Rainey reached out and put his hand on Billy’s knee, gave it an affectionate squeeze. “Come on, Billy, don’t worry about it. Sure, she’s a nice girl, and they’re not supposed to do such things, but we both know, me longer than you, that they do. They surely do. Why hell, her mother’s a lady doctor, strange as that might seem, and a very prominent one, you probably know. She and I work together on the school board—did you know that, Billy? A lady doctor on the school board of Oleander. Never thought I’d live to see the day. Anyway, there’s no reason that little girl should lose her reputation and damage her mother’s standing in the community. No reason at all for that to happen.”
Billy said, “Everything will be fine as long as I—”
“Aww, Billy, don’t put it like that. Subtle and simple are always better in my book. Let’s just say you’ve had your moment of youthful rebellion, and look, my God, look at what you’ve caused.” Rainey swept his hand at the window, at the sated, dreaming people walking by, at the dying glow of the fire, at the town that believed their burning was a hex against Billy’s accusation. Rainey drew a deep breath. “Look at you, Billy, a mere boy, and you’ve moved this town to mass hysteria. We could say you’ve got powers that can be harnessed for a fine future.”
“If I stop now. If I take it all back. If I say I lied.”
Rainey said nothing, didn’t even nod. He just gazed out the window as the people drifted past.
Billy whispered, “I can’t do that.”
Rainey’s head whipped around, his eyes small and fierce. His voice held no inflection. “I’ll give you three women. No, I’ll give you four. The first one is the girl. She’ll stay clean. No mud on her skirts, Billy, from your little indiscretion at the lake. The second one is that teacher. I’ll give you Mrs. English. She keeps her job. She stays on, and we say no more about her sins against the common good. And the third one, Billy? The third one will surprise you. The third one I’ll give you is your own mother.”
Rainey raised both hands, drew back from the shudder that wracked Billy. “I know, I know. But Billy, think about it. A man like me don’t give a boy two thousand dollars without asking himself where the money goes, why the boy wants it. It was you, Billy, you yourself who said it was for your mother. Bank accounts can be examined, Billy, when you have friends, and I have more friends than I know what to do with. In and out, Billy. In and out. That’s where the money went. Into your momma’s bank account and out to a man named Karl Grube, a boxer, my sources tell me, at least a man who was once a boxer and wants to be again. But those same sources tell me, Billy, that our good Karl is a canvasback with a glass jaw and feet so slow he counts when he walks into the ring. One, two. One, two. So, your mom, for some reason, is backing a loser, but let that go, Billy. Let that go. We won’t even go into her reasons for Karl. The point is, I’m giving you the third woman, your own mother. Nobody will ever know you took money from me to play football—they don’t believe it now, do they? And nobody will know you gave it to your mother to finance an aging pug who can’t punch his way out of his own jockstrap.
“And now there’s the matter of the fourth woman, Billy. And though she finishes fourth, she’s all woman.” Rainey opened the car door and whistled into the dark.
Billy heard footsteps, two sets, a giggle, and saw the tails of Fred’s green leather coat, then a face leaned into the lighted backseat, a face descending uncomfortably close to Rainey’s thighs. The blond woman smiled, opening red lips to show strong white teeth. “Hey, Billy,” she said, another country voice.
Rainey put his hand gently on her shoulder. “Billy, this is Darla. Go ahead, Darla.”
Darla opened her sweater and her creamy breasts sagged sadly, beautifully, onto Rainey’s thighs. Billy saw
four eyes then. The two brown nipples watching him in mute appeal, and Darla’s, blue and as uncomplicated as berries, watching him watch the other two. When he looked up, she smiled and shrugged pleasantly.
Rainey said, “All right, Darla. Thank you.”
“Sure, Blake.” Darla closed her sweater. On her way out of the car, she gave Rainey’s cheek a peck.
When the door closed, Rainey glanced pensively at Billy as though what had happened, all of it, was not quite a night’s work. “Billy, you seem to be precociously interested in the opposite sex, and that’s fine. It’s manly, it’s virile, it’s a lot of good things. But, as we’ve already said, it is not a good thing to muddy the skirts of a girl of a certain class, a doctor’s daughter. So, Billy, the time-honored way of handling that… precocity of yours, well, it goes by the name of Darla. And believe me, son, Darla will honor your every need. And she’ll take her time.”
Rainey drew a deep breath, sighed, and smoothed the lapels of his black suit coat. “All right, son, that’s four women for you, and that’s about all I can think of to offer. I hope you will consider yourself honored by the thoroughness of this. I’m giving you a girlfriend, a teacher, a mother, and a… concubine, and all I’m asking in return, son, is that you tell the people of our good city that you might have been wrong about something somebody said a long time ago at a meeting at my house. I can’t imagine the boy who wouldn’t at least consider himself tempted by such a bargain.”
Rainey watched Billy, and when he did not see what he wanted, he reached across Billy and threw open the door. “Well then, will you at least think about it for a while? A short while, Billy. We don’t have a lot of time. And remember, all of my gifts can be taken away, and people you love will be hurt if that happens.”
Billy said, “And I go back to football.”
Fighting in the Shade Page 25
