I correct her.
“I said she might. Her attorney said she hasn’t decided yet.” I finish off the beer.
“But to answer your question, I don’t have any evidence except Leon and his friends don’t like me coming into their bar,” I go on, not willing to tell Rainey that my evidence is living in Hot Springs. She will be furious that I am going to try to drag someone else into this. I stand up.
“I need to go on home.
I told Sarah I’d be home by eleven.”
At the door Rainey surprises me by reaching up and brushing my lips with her own.
“Promise me you won’t do something this stupid again,” she says, her voice a quiet whisper against my ear.
“I promise,” I say, thinking that it has been over a year since we have kissed. Worry-the surest way to a woman’s heart. I thank her again and leave. If I didn’t know better, I would think Rainey still loves me.
At home Sarah and her friend Chris are watching a movie. Fortunately, it is dark in the house, which is lit only by the glow of the TV set. I carry my bloody clothes in a paper sack Rainey has provided me. Engrossed in some horror flick, Sarah barely speaks, and I escape to my bedroom after murmuring goodnight. Tomorrow will be soon enough for her to see my wounds. I take a couple of aspirin and sit down on my bed. Woogie, perhaps drawn by the medication, tries to lick at my face until I push him away. He is even a more inept fighter than his master and has perpetually sore ears to prove it. Before I turn off the light, I tell him, “They would have knocked every one of your teeth out.”
He turns his head away and settles down at the end of the bed as if to say he would never have gotten himself in such a mess.
The next morning every bone in my body feels as if someone has taken a hammer to it. Thank God I don’t have to get out of bed today, because I can’t move. Of course I do have to get out of bed or risk wetting it. As much as I ache, it is tempting just to say to hell with it and see if I can reach the window. I could always blame it on Woogie. As if sensing disaster, he hops down off the bed and scratches at the door.
At least he is civilized. Shamed by my own dog, I slip on some pants and creak into the bathroom. If anything, my face looks worse. Today there are streaks of yellow and green under my eye. I look forlornly at the spot where my tooth was. Even as bad as the others look, chipped and dingy, at least they are present and accounted for, and not in the parking lot of the Bull Run buried up to their roots in the tar.
Depressed, I limp into the front yard with Woogie, hoping nobody is out. Accustomed to more of a walk, Woogie contents himself with lifting his leg over my neighbor’s petunias.
What the hell. If his wife needs flowers, Jewell Patterson, a tall black man in his fifties, can bring home all he wants from patients’ rooms at the VA hospital, where he works as a registered nurse.
His brick home, the color of ginger, has three bedrooms to my two, and Jewell has a snow-white Lincoln Continental in the garage that he’ll wash this afternoon. Carol, his wife, is a schoolteacher. If we’re all outside in the yard and hear the sound of a gun being fired from the direction of Needle Park, Jewell will mutter, “Damn, those niggers!” and order Carol to go into the house. The second week in September, the morning, in contrast to last night’s humidity, is sharp and clear, a beautiful day for a walk, since Needle Park is usually quiet on a Sunday morning. Even drug dealers have to sleep some time. My bones ache too much to go further, however, and I turn around, disappointing my dog. This is what old age must be like.
“Pick up the paper and hand it to me,” I tell Woogie as I dodder up my driveway. He looks at me as if I were crazy, and I stoop in slow motion. Thank God, he can’t talk. He’d give me hell, too.
Normally, I would make some coffee and sit at the kitchen table and read the paper until Sarah gets up. Not today. I collapse back into bed and doze off after reading the funny papers, the last thought on my mind Margo’s underwear in Apartment 3-G.
“Dad, are you okay?”
I awake with a start. I had been dreaming about the fight and apparently was talking in my sleep. I look at my watch.
It is almost ten. I haven’t gone back to sleep in the morning since I was in high school. But I haven’t been beaten up since high school either.
“I guess,” I mutter.
“Come on in.”
“What happened?” Sarah exclaims immediately as she comes through the door. Her eyes redden as soon as she sees me. She is wearing her blue summer dress I haven’t seen since the spring, a strand of fake pearls her aunt Marty got for her at Christmas, stockings, and her white flats. Mass what else? What has prompted this? So far as I know, she hasn’t been inside a church in a couple of years. Then I remember her letter and our conversation on the way home from Conway during Governor’s School.
I put a finger to my mouth and motion for her to close the door. I assume Chris is still in the house. I feel as sheepish as if I had been caught with a woman in my bed.
“Just a little problem last night,” I say, pulling the sheet up to my chest.
“Sit down on the bed, and I’ll give you a real quick summary. Looks like you’re on your way to Mass. You look great.”
Obediently, Sarah sits on the bed, a horrified look on her face.
“Did somebody beat you up?”
God, she looks beautiful. My heart is about to burst as I realize how much she looks like her mother on our first formal date. We went to an outdoor seafood restaurant, not more than thirty yards from the beach in Cartagena. It was January, windy but still warm, and the waves crashed so loudly against the shore we almost had to put our heads next to each other to be heard.
“I was out at this redneck bar looking for some information about that case I have in four days involving the black psychologist, and a guy who obviously hates my client jumped me in the parking lot.”
“Oh!” Sarah says, jostling the bed and sending a wave of nausea through me. I shouldn’t have had that last beer at Rainey’s last night.
“Your eye looks terrible. I’m so sorry.”
I try to smile, but it probably looks like I’m wincing.
“I’m fine.” Except for the last two words, I’ve at least told some of the truth. There is no sense in trying to tell her the whole story right now.
“How come you’re going to Mass?”
Leaning forward on the bed, Sarah wails, “He knocked out your tooth!”
I lean up and pat her hand.
“It was the chipped one probably about to fall out anyway. I’ll get a fake temporary one tomorrow. It’ll look ten times better. Don’t worry.”
“Did you call the police?” she asks, tears beginning to trickle down her face, ruining her makeup. I wish she wouldn’t wear it.
I reach over and grab a tissue from the nightstand beside the bed.
“Quit this,” I say handing her the flimsy paper.
“Chris is going to think I’ve been abusing you.” Call the police? I think not. I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple weren’t there giggling as that monster at the door hustled me outside. At least he didn’t come out with me.
“Nay, calling the cops would have been sissy in that place,” I say.
“Oh,” she says, laughing in spite of herself, “where was it?”
“Go on to church,” I urge her.
“I’ll tell you more about it later. It’s no big deal.”
She looks down at the cheap Timex watch I gave her for her birthday last week. Seventeen. She’s been kissed, but I hope that’s all. A black boy from her Christians and Jews camp has called her a couple of times, but she says they’re just friends. Given who her mother was, how can I complain?
“Are you going to be okay?” she asks, pushing up from my bed.
“I can stay home. After not going for two years, it’s not like I’m trying for a perfect attendance record.”
“I’ve been a great father, haven’t I?” I say, forcing a smile. I run my tongue through the latest hole in t
he rapidly deteriorating dike that is my body. At least they didn’t knock out four or five.
“You’ve been a great father,” Sarah says, her voice trembling and hoarse with as much emotion as a radio evangelist’s.
Lighten up, kid, I think. It’s not as if I am trying to make a living as a prizefighter.
“Say a little prayer,” I instruct her, “that my dentist won’t enjoy fixing this too much. That’s what I’m worried about.”
I get the grin I want, and five minutes later I hear the front door slam. Woogie, pushing open the bedroom door, clicks into the room and sits on the floor looking hopefully at me.
His toenails are starting to look like bear claws. He could use a trip to the vet, but so could I. He wants to jump up on the bed, but he doesn’t deserve it. Lying flat on my stomach with my left hand under my pillow, which is down by my waist (my sleep position since Rosa died), I have to strain to see him.
“You wouldn’t have bitten a flea last night.” Disappointed I won’t let him up on the bed, he settles down on the floor. I yawn, hoping Sarah won’t retail this all over St.
Michael’s. The way gossip spreads, when I wake up Father Curtis with the earnest pop eyes and bad breath will be standing over me, administering the last rites. I can’t stop yawning Good, sleep. Blessed sleep.
19
I am awakened out of a fuzzy dream by the sound of the telephone ringing in the kitchen. I was dreaming I was in a boxing ring, and my opponent (some guy I don’t recognize) kept hitting me after the bell. Stiff as Sheetrock, I limp into the kitchen, remembering that Sarah said she and Chris were going to McDonald’s after Mass. Did I tell her I was driving to Hot Springs this afternoon? I can’t remember.
“Hello,” I say, clearing my throat, my raspy voice more a moan than a greeting.
“Gideon,” a female voice says, “it’s Kim Keogh. Did I wake you?”
Guilt feelings for not having called her rouse me from my lethargy. If she’s calling to give me some hell, it’s just another chicken coming home to roost. I look down at Woogie, whose own expression seems downright scornful. You deserve this call, jerk. “Well,” I say, my tongue seeking out the hole where my tooth was, “I had to get up to go to Hot Springs this after noon.” Go ahead and ream me out. I’m leaving anyway.
Her voice is soft, almost a whisper.
“Have you got a minute
Mournfully, I run my fingers over my wrecked face, yet grateful I still have one. How did my nose survive? Last night when it was being ground into the tar of the parking lot, I was certain it would be in the shape of a pretzel this morning.
She still wants to go out with me! Maybe she thinks I’ll die this time.
“Sure,” I say.
“I’ve been meaning to call you.”
There is a pause as if she is filing this lie away for future reference.
“I have a proposition for you,” she says finally.
“Want to hear it?”
This is amazing, I think. I’ve treated her like shit, and she’s going to invite me over for lunch. Maybe I can eat with a bag over my head. I’m not up to competing with the movie stars on the walls of her apartment today.
“I’m all ears,” I say, a little cocky, thinking this isn’t too far from the truth.
The left one, at least, feels the size of a small boxcar. Even as bad as I feel, I’m all for being propositioned.
“I’ve got some information that can affect your case, but if I give it to you and you can use it,” she says, her voice firm and steady, “I’ll want you to agree that when the trial is over you and Andrew Chapman will give me an exclusive interview on camera.”
I try to think what she could possibly have. I can’t imagine.
“You’re asking me,” I complain mildly, “to buy a pig in a poke.” I’m not anxious to make this kind of bargain.
Since I’ve been in private practice, I’ve tried to be friendly to all the reporters who cover the courts. Free advertising is the best kind.
“Besides, I can’t bind my client without talking to him anyway.”
Kim, not a subtle negotiator, asks, “What about you?”
After last night I’m not as eager to jump in headfirst.
“Let me talk to Andy first,” I insist.
“He’s the kind of guy who would regard this as a form of reverse blackmail if he’s not handled right.”
Kim sounds as young as Sarah.
“Are you serious?”
I shift from my right to my left leg. Even my hips are sore.
“You claim to have useful information but won’t part with it without a price,” I point out delicately.
“But I suspect most of us would regard this as a part of the American free-enterprise system.”
Her voice frosty, Kim retorts, “It’s my professional duty to try to get a story nobody else gets.”
I try flexing my knees to ease the pressure on my spine, wondering if I might need to go to a chiropractor. The media, God bless it, have perfected the maxim that the ends justify the means. Surely, if most reporters made a decent living, the general public would hate them as much as it hates lawyers.
“How come you can’t break this on your own?” I ask, changing the subject. If I hurt her feelings too much, I’ll scare her off.
“I can’t confirm it,” she admits.
“If this is just a rumor, I’ll get sued for libel.”
Ah, it might be about Olivia, I realize. I’m getting an appetite. Still searching for a painless position, I lean back against the kitchen wall.
“It’s your station they’d be interested in suing.”
Kim, perhaps sensing my interest now, asks, “You want to come over about seven if you’re back from Hot Springs?”
I look at my watch. It is only noon. I’ll have plenty of time.
“Sure,” I say, “but you’ll have to disregard my appearance. I’ve been going through a second childhood recently and have acquired a few nicks since you saw me last.”
Guessing, Kim says pleasantly, “Somebody beat the shit out of you, huh?” Her voice contains no hint of surprise, as if she expects lawyers to brawl.
Embarrassed, I admit, “Something like that.” I guess she doesn’t have to be a genius to figure out the damage middle-aged men can do to themselves.
After I hang up I immediately dial Andy’s number but get no answer. I wonder if he is at church. Do psychologists believe in God, or has Freud shamed them out of it? I’ll try to reach him later, I decide, and stumble toward the bathroom to see if I can shave without screaming.
As I reach the outskirts of the tourist town of Hot Springs, a torturous two-day stage coach drive in the 1840s but only an hour’s drive to the northwest from the house this afternoon, I think that it would be an interesting, even exciting, place to live-over a century ago. In the 1880s rival gambling interests shot it out on Central Avenue; Al Capone sedately walked the streets in the 1920s. Along Central, the main drag, illegal gambling flourished alongside still viable attractions such as Bath House Row, the Arlington Hotel, and first-class horse racing at Oaklawn Park. And all along the way, showbiz people as bizarre as Phineas Bamum’s midget, General Tom Thumb, trooped into town over the years for the purpose of entertaining luminaries as diverse as Yankee Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman and Helen Keller. How could Baptists have so much fan? It apparently got to be too much for the state, for in the 1960s, under the administration of the so-called black-sheep Rockefeller brother, Winthrop (though he had more integrity and compassion than many of us wanted), Arkansas’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, the state police conducted a series of late-night raids, confiscating slot machines by the carload, and suddenly, after a century of notoriety and excitement, Hot Springs, left with only its natural beauty and legalized horse track, became respectable and now confines itself to the normal appetites of more typical small-town corruption and tamer tourist entertainments such as I.Q. Zoo, the Alligator Farm, and the Mid-Ame
rica Museum.
In ten minutes I am standing in front of the door to Charlene Newman’s apartment and am presumably separated from her by only the length of a security chain. I got her number from the telephone company, and less than two hours ago called her and told her the truth-that I am a lawyer in a criminal case in which her ex-husband is a witness and needed to drive over and talk to her in absolute confidence.
She said okay, but now that I am here, if this is Charlene Newman behind the door (my introduction of myself has elicited no response), she is having second thoughts. Perhaps it is die neighborhood that invites such caution. It is in a seedy, cheap part of the downtown area. The hallway in her apartment building is dimly lit, dirty, and is as confining as the inside of the corroding, stained gutter that runs along the outside roof. After almost a minute of dead silence, the door comes to as the chain is unhooked, and then a slender but well-built young woman dressed in faded jeans, a blue halter top, and sandals, slides through it, revealing not so much as a couch in the background.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she says, her voice pleasantly hillbilly.
With her straight dark hair the color of black shoe polish, thin lips, and an aquiline nose, Charlene Newman surely has Native American blood coursing through her veins. She leads me out of her apartment with her arms folded across her chest Indian-style, as if she were auditioning for a part in a movie that spoofs bad westerns. She is not a princess, but not a squaw either. If she would smile (assuming her teeth are good), with her high cheekbones she could be pretty.”
“What’s Leon got his self into now?” she asks. She leads me in the direction of the mountain behind the Arlington Hotel. My own jeans feel like a rubber suit in the humidity and heat.
Fall is only a week away, but it might as well be midsummer.
Though a walk might relieve some of my stiffness, I hope we aren’t going far.
Walking uphill on a wooded path past benches populated primarily by elderly retirees, many of whom are Yankees permanently escaping snow and ice, I summarize Leon’s involvement in Andy’s case, uncertain, despite the divorce, how far I can go in trying to paint Leon as a villain.
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