Arnold was full of emotion. Truely could feel the misery radiating off him. He put on the radio in hopes of distracting Arnold from the weight of his despair. There was not a lot that needed to be said. Being present — sometimes that was enough. Right?
Before they were back in the city the rain started, a genuine downpour. Truely turned on the wipers. They slapped at the windshield, again, again, again. But it was almost useless. The traffic had slowed to a crawl. The city was awash with gloom.
“One question,” Truely said as they sat bumper to bumper in the clotted traffic, inching toward home in the rain. “Vonnie. How old is she?”
“Just turned fourteen,” Arnold said.
WHEN THEY GOT HOME the house smelled like peanut butter cookies. That was the good news. The bad news was that Courtney had taken it upon herself to rearrange some of Truely’s furniture, nothing drastic, just enough minor change to annoy him. “What do you think?” she asked when they came in.
“I liked it the way it was,” Truely said flatly.
“Try it for one week. Okay? If you hate it we’ll move it back.”
“Whatever.” Truely wanted to ignore the situation, not discuss it.
“What’s in the bag?” Courtney asked Arnold.
“Trout,” Arnold said. “You in the mood to fry some fish?”
The idea seemed to appeal to her. She went to the kitchen and began glancing through the cabinets. “Don’t think we have enough cornmeal left,” she said. “And no Crisco either — if you want Southern fried.”
“I’ll walk down to the store and get some,” Arnold said.
“It’s pouring rain.”
“I don’t care.”
Truely suspected Arnold was telling the truth. He thought walking in the deluge might actually be therapeutic for Arnold. A moment of emotional camouflage. Already he marveled at Arnold’s ability to transform his mood to accommodate the company he was in. “I’ll drive you,” Truely said. “What else we need?”
“Maybe a head of cabbage,” Courtney said. “If you want slaw.”
They left for the short drive to the nearest small grocery, Korean run. It was a painless errand really. Truely handed Arnold twenty bucks and sat in his double-parked car while Arnold went inside and completed the errand.
When they got back to the loft, Courtney had moved each piece of rearranged furniture back to its original spot. Truely noticed instantly. “What?” he asked Courtney. “You have aesthetic second thoughts?”
“I saw the look on your face, True, when you came in and saw that something had changed. It was a look, you know. A certain look. We’re just so different, you and me. On some level I like change — even terrible change like Hastings walking out — it startles me back into life, like a violent jolt, it inspires me to take action. I don’t know. Even when I hate it, I like it. If I go too long with nothing changing I get worried — then what the heck, I change something myself.”
“Like your face?” It was a mean-spirited remark. He wasn’t sure where it came from exactly, but it was too late to censor himself.
She paused as if to let the remark register. “Yes,” she said. “My face. My circle of friends. My habits.”
“And?”
“And you don’t.”
“And — according to you — that’s because?”
“Because you hate change, True. Big or small. For better or worse. You hate it. I’m not sure why.”
“Do you think maybe you might be exaggerating — just slightly?”
“Lord knows I hope so,” she said.
“Y’all stop fussing and let’s fry this fish,” Arnold said.
“We aren’t fussing,” Truely corrected. “Not really.”
“Yes we are,” Courtney said. “Don’t lie to the boy.”
While Courtney fried fish and made slaw with the attentive assistance of Arnold, Truely went across the room and turned on the TV. Texas was playing Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout this afternoon. It should be a gut grinder. It was end of the first quarter already and the score was 7-up. Truely loved a good defensive struggle. But the thing that was even more compelling was that Mose Jones was the color guy for the game. Truely wanted to plant himself on the sofa with a cold beer and watch the game. That was all. And when it was over he wanted to watch the next one, USC at Oregon, and the one after that, whatever it might be.
At one point Courtney glimpsed the TV and commented, “Wow, look at Mose. He hasn’t changed a bit. He looks great, doesn’t he?”
“You know Mose Jones, the sports guy?” Arnold asked her.
“Truely does,” she said.
“For real?”
“We played ball together,” Truely said.
“You played ball?” Arnold sounded incredulous.
“High school,” Truely said. “Then Mose went on to play college. And pro ball. And the rest is history, as they say.”
“You know him? I didn’t think you know nobody like him.”
“He’s from Hinds County, Mississippi,” Courtney remarked. “Hometown boy makes good.”
“You should have married him then,” Arnold said, “as long as you was marrying somebody. Forget that Hastings.”
Courtney laughed. “He was a child at the time,” she said. “A black child too. Back then, white girls didn’t marry black boys.”
“And now they do?” Arnold asked.
“Sometimes, I guess,” she said. She paused a second. “And then they get the heck out of Dodge, pronto. They move to California, maybe,” she teased.
“My mama say if I marry a white girl she disown me,” Arnold volunteered. “She think people need to stay with their own. She never liked me staying at the Mackeys’ either. She’d throw a fit, said I was acting ashamed to be black, like I was wishing I was white.”
“Were you?” Courtney asked.
“No,” Arnold said flatly. “Sometimes my mama just talk bull.”
“Mose Jones was the coolest guy in Hinds County,” Courtney said. “Still is, I guess. I mean, besides our boy Truely here.”
“Very funny,” Truely said.
“I got some new respect for y’all,” Arnold teased. “You know somebody like Mose Jones.” You could almost see it coming, the idea. “Let’s call him up. You got his phone number?”
“He’s working,” Truely said. “He’s not going to answer the phone.”
“We’ll just leave him a message then. Come on, man. Call him.”
“Bring me my cell phone off the desk,” Truely said.
Arnold got the phone. “I want to listen to his voice message.”
Truely got Mose’s machine, passed the phone to Arnold, who clearly got a kick out of hearing Mose’s voice. “He sound just like on TV.”
“Hey man,” Truely said into the phone, “I’m sitting here with a couple of your big fans, Courtney Noonan, former queen of Hinds County, and Mr. Arnold Carter, our buddy from down in San Diego. We’re watching you cover the Red River Shootout. Good job, man. I see you got a little Texas bias, but I’m okay with that. Let us know if you get up this way for a Pac-10 game. Don’t be a stranger. Take care.”
“Cool,” Arnold said. “Maybe he’ll call us back.”
“Okay, do y’all mind?” Truely turned the TV volume up. “I’m trying to catch Mose’s commentary over here. I’d appreciate it if you’d reduce your idle chatter to a bare minimum.” The only interruption he was willing to tolerate was when Courtney handed him a plate of hot fried fish with hush puppies and slaw.
Except for a couple of times when Arnold got brief vibrating phone calls, which he took in the bathroom — a place he now referred to as his office (“I’ll take this in my office,” he’d say) — the three of them sprawled out on the sofa with their food in their laps and watched football like reasonably normal people on a fall Saturday night.
At one point Courtney said, “True, I almost forgot to tell you — a woman named Lanie called this afternoon. She said she got your home number from Jaxon. Sh
e wants to know if you can meet her for coffee. I told her, never mind coffee, you’d love to take her out to dinner and a wild night of dancing!”
He shot her a threatening look. “I assume you’re kidding.” He was totally unsure that she was.
“I told her you’d call her. Her number is on the counter.”
More to his own surprise than anyone else’s, Truely got up, got the number and walked out on the terrace and called her back. He wasn’t sure what had come over him.
Twenty
IN THE COMING WEEK Truely made calls to firms of contract lawyers who had worked for Jaxon and him in the past and got the name of a good criminal lawyer in San Diego, who agreed, for the right price, to represent Arnold’s mother. A steady round of phone calls ensued, the gist of which was that the police had a sound case against Arnold’s mother. Her boyfriend was only one of several people prepared to testify to having bought drugs from Arnold’s mother at her apartment.
They had grainy police video of undercover cops scoring drugs at the address. It had been on TV down there. You could see Arnold’s mother standing just inside the doorway. You could see she was talking to people, even laughing sometimes. Despite the shadows you could see she was a businesswoman of sorts, stuffing bills in the pockets of her tight jeans. It was startling to Truely, who had requested and been sent the poor-quality copy of the video evidence. Arnold’s mother looked for all the world like a kid herself. If he were guessing, just from seeing the video, Truely might think she wasn’t much older than Arnold was. Arnold claimed she was actually thirty-two — which meant she was fifteen or so when he was born. On the video she had on what looked like a skin-tight sweater with no bra. Her bared midriff bulged over low-slung, pasted-on jeans.
Honest to goodness it disturbed Truely to see Arnold’s mother dressed like one of the runaway teenagers he sometimes saw panhandling on the streets of San Francisco — bumming cigarettes or quarters, offering all manner of disease-bearing favors. “She’s doing some real jail time,” the lawyer had told Truely. “The only question that remains is — how much?”
Arnold took the news with relative calm.
“Not an easy thing to deal with,” Truely had said to him at the time.
“Could be worse,” he said. “News I dread is when they go on and tell me she’s dead. Somebody shot her or she overdosed. The rest, I take it as it comes.”
Truely put his hand on Arnold’s shoulder, instinctively, just like his father used to do to him when there were no words suitable for the occasion.
“My grandmama say this might be the best thing could happen — jail.” It was like Arnold was talking himself — not Truely — into believing this. “She say she gon sleep better knowing Mama is straightened out and eating regular and can’t get her hands on no street drugs. Might be she come to her senses.”
Earlier Truely had given Arnold the business card of his mother’s new attorney. “In case you have any questions,” he’d said. “You can call him.”
“Mama never had a actual lawyer before,” Arnold had said. “Just court appointed is all. Everybody know court appointed is no good.”
“This guy will do what he can,” Truely promised. “But he’s not a miracle worker.”
“No problem,” Arnold said. “I don’t believe in miracles.”
DAYS LATER when Truely got Courtney’s phone call, clearly a distress call, it was midafternoon and he was at the warehouse space over on Mariposa Street. “You have to come home,” she told him. “I need you to be here when Arnold gets home from work. We have a serious problem, True. I mean it.”
When Truely got back to the loft, Courtney was clearly agitated and upset. “First of all,” she told Truely, “I was not snooping. Okay? I want that made clear.”
What felt like fire flashed through Truely’s belly. This wasn’t going to be good. Already he knew that.
“I was doing some laundry, right?” Courtney continued. “The sheets off the beds, some towels — and so I looked in Arnold’s suitcases while I was at it, in case he had some things that needed to be washed, right? It was a harmless gesture.” She made her way across the loft and Truely followed her. “I opened this suitcase right here. It wasn’t locked or anything. And I glanced around for dirty T-shirts or whatever. Then I see this knot of a flannel shirt, all tied up, right? Like this. See, right here?” She pointed at a wadded-up plaid shirt. “Pick it up, True. You’ll see.”
Truely reached down and grabbed the shirt. Courtney’s dramatic ways of doing things sort of rubbed him wrong, but he had learned long ago that it was easier to go along with it than to resist. “Okay,” he said, lifting the knotted shirt. Immediately he noticed that it was unusually heavy. He put the shirt down on the bed and began to unwrap it, loosen the knots Arnold had so carefully tied. Hidden inside the shirt was a sizable handgun. When Truely lifted the shirt the gun rolled out on the bed. “Damn,” he said.
“It’s a gun,” Courtney declared, as if Truely didn’t have sense enough to know it. “He’s brought a gun into this house.”
Twenty-one
WHEN ARNOLD CAME IN from his long day of delivering furniture he found Truely and Courtney waiting for him. Courtney had made a pot of coffee earlier and had a good caffeine buzz going in addition to her moral outrage. “What in the world can he be thinking?” All afternoon, while they paced and waited for Arnold to come home, she had spoken that rhetorical question into the surrounding quiet.
“Let me handle this,” Truely told her repeatedly.
“Sure,” she said.
“I mean it, Courtney. Leave this to me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of interfering.” Courtney was seething. “You handle it, True. I want you to. Really. Knock yourself out.”
BY THE TIME Arnold finally walked into the house Courtney’s restraint was spent. Before Arnold could drop his jacket on the chair and take off his boots, she said, “You have some explaining to do, buddy-boy.” She knew Arnold didn’t like being called buddy-boy.
“What’s up?” Arnold looked first at Courtney and then at Truely, immediately sensing the seriousness of the occasion. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s what we want to know.” Truely lifted the handgun in the air so Arnold could see it. Then he laid it out on the kitchen counter. “What’s this?”
Arnold looked at the gun for a minute as though he had no idea what it was. His eyes were darting from Truely to Courtney. “A gun,” he finally said.
“Yeah, I know it’s a gun,” Truely said. “But whose gun? And what is it doing in my house?”
“It’s mine,” Arnold said.
“What? Are you some kind of criminal?” Courtney snapped. “You about to rob somebody or shoot somebody? What do you need a gun for?”
“I don’t have that gun to cause any trouble,” Arnold said. “I just have it to keep myself out of trouble.”
“Bull,” Courtney blurted out.
“Court,” Truely snapped, “let me handle this.”
She pretended to zip her mouth closed. But her intent gaze was fixed on Arnold and it was already causing him to break into a sweat.
“You go through my stuff?” Arnold asked.
“Oh, that’s priceless,” Courtney said. “Yes, we’re the bad guys here — we’re the ones betraying the trust around here.”
“Courtney, stop,” Truely barked.
“Sorry.” She rolled her eyes and zipped her lips again.
“Courtney was doing some laundry,” Truely said. “She looked in your suitcases for any clothes that needed to be washed — trying to help you out, man. She found your gun wrapped in an old shirt.”
“Now y’all think I’m a criminal?”
“We don’t know,” Truely said. “What should we think?”
“Where I come from everybody got a gun, man. Out here folks got they computers and Blackberries and shit, but back home we got guns. That’s how it is.”
“That’s stupid,” Courtney said. “I’m sorry, but it’s tot
ally stupid.”
“You got guns,” Arnold said to Truely in an accusatory tone. “I heard you talk about you’ve got them guns in storage. You tell them stories about when you used to go hunting — shot all them deer.”
“You trying to tell me this handgun here is for shooting deer? Right here in downtown San Fran? Come on, man.”
“I used to get scared when I was staying over at Shauna’s by myself. I heard noises and stuff. They some strange people walking around over there. You seen them. So I needed that gun. Only way I get to sleep is knowing I got that gun.”
“You don’t bring a gun into another man’s house and not clear it with him first,” Truely said. “You understand that?”
“Sorry,” Arnold said.
“You’re too young to even have a gun in the first place. I know you don’t have the right paperwork to own a gun,” Courtney said. “How do we know you weren’t going to get up in the night and shoot us both and make off with our credit cards or something?”
“That what you think?” Arnold looked insulted.
“Maybe you’re not a bad person, Arnold. Maybe you’re a good person with really bad judgment,” Truely offered.
“So y’all gon throw me out now?” Arnold asked.
“Throw you out? If this was Mississippi we’d take you and wear your rear end out — talk about it later. You’d get a whuppin’ to remember,” Courtney said. “It scares me, Arnold. This sneaky side of you. I don’t like it. It’s creepy.”
“So y’all gon kick me out?”
“There’s an idea,” Courtney said. “A young kid without a lick of good sense roaming the streets of San Francisco with nothing to his name but a handgun. Now there’s a scenario for you.”
“Where did you get this gun, Arnold?” Truely interrupted. “Tell me that.”
Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi Page 25
