Further Joy

by John Brandon

  “And now you don’t have to work?”

  “Not if I live somewhere like this.”

  “I see,” said Sofia.

  Reeve was intending to convey openness and full cooperation. His act seemed too flawless.

  “Do you have any experience with the spiritually adept?” Sofia asked him.

  “Actually I do. By marriage,” said Reeve. “My ex-wife’s aunt was a medium in St. Augustine. People used to fly in to see her. Some of them came once a year, like a checkup.”

  “But you never sat with her?”

  “She wouldn’t do family.”

  “You could go see her now. She’s not family anymore.”

  Reeve frowned, not unhappily. “You could do it. You could give me a reading.”

  “No, I couldn’t do that.”

  “Why not? My wife’s aunt made pretty good dough.”

  “I don’t think I’m nosy enough.”

  Now Reeve chuckled. “Work from home. Cash business.”

  “Your ex-wife’s aunt,” Sofia said. “She’s mostly an actress. Not to say she doesn’t have a talent, but she put herself in show business.”

  Reeve uncrossed his legs. He regarded Sofia wryly. “What about this here?” he said. “You’re in business.”

  “This is pro bono. I’m not getting paid and I’m not taking advantage of anyone.”

  Reeve thought a second, picking something off his sleeve, and when he spoke again Sofia couldn’t hear him. There was another sound in her ears. She was being flooded with exactly what she needed to know and not a thing more, the knowledge filling her abundant and organized. She felt like her mind was being held at the bottom of a fast-moving river, but it had all the air it could use. The feeling was serene yet bracing. It had nothing to do with her body, asked no physical effort, nor even surrender.

  Barn Renfro had made a bad investment, sure enough, an illegal one. He’d been planning on selling a bunch of the boats at his shop and slipping away, going into hiding. Barn’s debt had nothing to do with Reeve, but it was the reason Barn had a loaded gun in arm’s reach when Reeve came over in search of his dog. Sofia had all this intelligence and she didn’t feel a bit strained, just very awake. She was breathing easily. She wasn’t losing any time. It was all here before her, like a light had been switched on in a dark room.

  Reeve lived on the opposite side of the lake from Barn, which was the reason he was being questioned. He was Barn’s only neighbor and his alibi, according to Uncle Tunsil, was nothing special. Sofia saw why. Reeve had been carrying on a feud with Barn since the day he’d moved in, a feud he hadn’t mentioned to Sofia’s uncle. There’d been a dispute over the property line, and Reeve was hoping the paperwork from that dispute was buried by now. Reeve was not pleased to be attending this interview. He was not being open. Like so many, like his wife’s aunt, he was a great actor.

  When it became clear that Reeve was going to win the property dispute, Barn had cut down a pair of sprawling live oaks that, in another forty-eight hours, would’ve belonged to Reeve. Reeve had called the county once about Barn dumping his shop waste in the lake, and after that Barn had begun dumping everything in there—even grass clippings and bacon grease. Now there were no fish in the lake and the live oaks were history. Barn had called the fire marshal when Reeve’s family had visited and were roasting marshmallows in the backyard. Reeve’s young nephew had wandered over to Barn’s side of the lake early one morning, curiously examining all the dry-docked boats, and Barn had come around the corner with a filet knife in his hand, telling the boy exactly what happened to people who got caught sneaking around where they didn’t belong.

  And then there was Reeve’s dog. The animal liked to wander. He’d never destroyed Barn’s property or even growled at him, but Barn hated the dog. A couple times he’d yelled across the lake for Reeve to come and get his goddamn mutt before he carted him off to the pound. The day of Barn’s death the dog had gone missing. That’s why Reeve had gone over to the shop. He’d surprised the fear-racked Barn, who’d stayed awake the whole night before on alert against his creditors, and who had been subsisting on pork rinds and beer. Reeve had been prepared for a confrontation. He had begun, in the hour before he’d strode around the mucky lake, to consider the prospect that Barn had killed his dog, that his pet was dead by the hand of this stupid backwoods grease monkey, this man who was a scourge of Reeve’s well-earned early retirement. If Barn had pushed the feud to a new height, Reeve would need to push back or be less than a man.

  Barn could’ve killed the dog or he could’ve driven him out to the middle of nowhere and left him. Reeve had been breathing raggedly when he’d barged into the dim shop out of the blaring sun and stopped short at the gathering sight of Barn pointing a gun at him. He couldn’t even see Barn’s face, except the bulging, bloodshot eyes. Then the barrel of the gun was advancing, Barn’s fingers squeezed fat around the handle, his face coming into focus, merciless but full of something like, it seemed to Reeve, relief. Reeve could smell the man when he came close, could almost make out the curses and oaths he was reciting.

  When Reeve thought back on the ungainly grunting struggle that followed, as he was doing right now, sitting across from Sofia, he thought of how the gun had felt once he had it in his hand, the foreign coolness of the grip soothing him in that steamy shop in the wilds of this steamy county, the gun’s perfect balanced weight and perfect incuriosity. Barn was slobbering, vanquished and separated from his pistol, gathering himself as well as he could, staggering, spitting. Reeve watched him read the situation, injured and beyond all reason, watched him grab an outsize wrench off his worktable and lumber forward, grinning now, saying Reeve would never do it. Reeve remembered wondering if Barn was right, the man raising the wrench overhead into the dusty air of the shop, his intent simple and evil, and then there was a bright roar all around them, a shudder running through the walls.

  Reeve had regretted the act immediately. He’d regretted the entire feud, regretted leaving Jacksonville, regretted letting his wife walk away. His entire past was a mess. He could smell blood through the sour gunsmoke. He should’ve gotten the hell out of the shop the second he had possession of the gun. But he hadn’t. He’d wanted to be dared, had wanted to stand the ground he’d gained, to push his advantage. Reeve had stalked onto another man’s property, a native’s property, half expecting an altercation, and that man had wound up dead.

  He wiped off the weapon as he’d seen done in a thousand movies and returned home and scrubbed his kitchen. He dusted every piece of furniture in his house and swept his garage. He kept washing his hands, he didn’t know why. He started a commonplace grocery list—eggs, milk, bread.

  Now he had to hope the animosity between himself and Barn was not unearthed. He’d been asked nothing about his dog, Salvatore, who was still missing. Reeve wasn’t aware that Barn was mixed up with criminals. He could easily get away with this, but he didn’t know that. His mind was a stew of worry but he looked to Sofia like a man on a demanding vacation, a man who’d ordered a complicated drink and was awaiting its arrival. He was a murderer, this guy across the table. He’d taken a man’s life.

  After the interview, Sofia drove out along the Hargreaves Trail, toward Barn Renfro’s place. She’d driven past it before, maybe a half-dozen times—the nondescript boat shop that was twice the size of the house it sat next to, the lake you barely caught a glimpse of as you passed. There was a wide spot in the gravel just past Barn’s spread, and Sofia parked her Datsun and got out. The air was laden with the odor of burnweed and the only animal life present was the many varieties of small dark birds—on the fences and power lines and pecking about like chickens near the road. Sofia could feel the heat from the gravel right through the soles of her shoes, her keys jingling in her hand. She turned up Barn’s drive and headed straight for the shop. The front of it was hung with a single orange ribbon, across the regular door and the big bay doors. The structure was very tall now that Sofia was close to it, t
o accommodate the boats Barn worked on in there. Used to work on. Sofia figured the door was locked. She didn’t want to try the knob. She just needed to see inside, so she kept on around the side of the shop, looking for a window, and when she saw one she went up and rested her fingertips on it.

  The surprise would’ve been if this wasn’t the place she’d seen in the interrogation room, but when she pressed her nose to the glass it was all there. Right on the other side of the window was the table where Barn had grabbed the wrench. Same table. It was covered with iron files and sockets and screwdrivers and pliers. Beside the table was some sort of press—Sofia couldn’t tell what it was for but she remembered it. She kept her face where it was and after a minute she could see more, a familiar red toolbox, and a miniature fridge. A bookshelf full of manuals. A rack of fishing rods suspended from the rafters. She turned her head and checked behind her. Everything was quiet. The pines that marked the other edge of Barn’s property were perfectly still. She imagined Reeve’s dog running out of those pines, bounding toward her and barking lightheartedly. She had no clue what had happened to that dog. Maybe Barn had happened to the dog. Or maybe the world had simply taken it away.

  She turned and peered again into the shop, more familiar details coming into focus. This was the place she’d seen in her vision, and she ought to have been feeling satisfaction over that. Her ability had been proven, the question answered—the reason she’d gotten involved in all this in the first place. Reeve, composed and accomplished, in good shoes and a sport coat, a recent retiree, was a killer. This was a fact. But satisfaction wasn’t coming. There was a corkboard on the far wall where a half-dozen boat keys were hanging. Beneath that, an air compressor. There was a big clean spot in the middle of the dusty floor, Sofia saw. It had to be where Barn had fallen dead, where his blood had been mopped up. No, satisfaction was nowhere close.

  That evening, Sofia sat with Uncle Tunsil on the front steps. He had a glass of whiskey resting on his leg. Through the branches of the nut tree the sky was pink.

  “The smart money’s on an out-of-towner.” Uncle Tunsil straightened his back until it produced one hollow crack. “Smart money’s been on an out-of-towner from the start. Bookie or dealer or something. Oh, well. Poor old Barn.”

  Sofia nodded.

  Uncle Tunsil took a nip from his glass and his face tightened. “I should get better bourbon. I go through about a bottle a year.”

  Moments earlier, Sofia had looked her uncle in the face and lied to him about Reeve, had said she’d gotten nothing. She had lied to her uncle and now was finding it hard to speak to him. She couldn’t be responsible for Reeve getting punished, couldn’t be the one to decide a man be tried for murder. She had a talent, but that didn’t make her anyone’s judge. If anything, she’d seen how far from black and white these matters could be, how presumptuous it was to think she ought to intervene, how presumptuous, even, to think that anyone ever really got away with anything.

  Sofia looked over at her uncle, gently rocking the liquor in his glass, squinting into the thick-aired evening. Sofia felt she was sparing him something too, by keeping quiet. He wasn’t cut out for nailing unfortunate people to the wall. He was a big, tough innocent. Still, she felt disloyal. She’d wanted to help him and now she was working against him. Lying to him. He’d hear grumblings in town, might even lose some respect in some people’s estimation. He might not care about that, but Sofia did. There was a foul nagging in her chest.

  She wasn’t going to worry him anymore about her gift. That was for sure. He didn’t deserve a psychic in his house. She was going to let him think the matter had been resolved.

  “I got more to look into before I shelve the case,” he said. “The guy the state sent is heading back to Tallahassee. He can’t wait to get out of here. He told me when he runs over his hundredth snake he’s going back home, and he’s got about a dozen to go.”

  Sofia wanted to ask her uncle for a pull of his whiskey, but she knew she would hate the taste. Her stomach was roiling gently. There was still no breeze, no cars on the road that ran past the house. The only sound was the rising chant of insects. Sofia thought she could smell the lemons on the little tree in the yard.

  “You know,” her uncle said. “You should quit giving that boy of yours a hard time.”

  Uncle Tunsil hadn’t been looking at her and now he was. It was out of the ordinary for him to say anything to her about James.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Do you?” he said. His voice was stern, but his eyes weren’t.

  “Of course I do.”

  “You got your gifts and I got mine. I can detect a good dude when I see one. In these parts, they’re about three per thousand.”

  Sofia gazed ahead, past the road, at a huddle of weary myrtles.

  “That’s a good dude wants to treat you nice. Your best policy with that kind of customer is stay open for business. Sometimes you young people think too much. You can think yourself into the loser’s bracket.”

  Sofia felt inert. She didn’t expect to speak, but then she did, like she wanted to confess something. She told Uncle Tunsil what she had been telling herself all along, that she was scared of what came after the chase, scared that James would get tired of her once he knew he had her. It sounded flimsy in her ears.

  Uncle Tunsil looked unimpressed too. “History repeating itself, huh?” he said. There was a gnat or something in his drink, and he fished it out with his finger and flicked it away. “I’m not the lecturing type. I’ll just say it isn’t always an advantage thinking you’re a step ahead. Because here’s the thing: you never are.”

  A lone gull flew overhead, seeming lost, piping its peppy, shrill call. It zigzagged over the house and out of sight. Of course Sofia’s uncle was right about this. She should tell James all of it. She should open the whole book to him. The interviews. Driving past the prison as a child. Shannon Janicek. She should spend every minute with him, give him everything he wanted. She’d felt all along it was foolish not to.

  Uncle Tunsil finished his last spill of whiskey and didn’t seem to know what to do with the glass. A few minutes remained before it was night.

  “The kid’s lucky in a way, despite the treatment you lay on him. To love something the way he does you. It’s not everybody who finds that. Not the real thing, like he has.”

  Sofia and Uncle Tunsil were quiet then. They weren’t happy or unhappy. The hunting birds were swooping now, nighthawks and the like. Something seemed different in the known little world of the front yard, and they realized a breeze was sweeping over them. It rustled the leaves of the good half of the nut tree and lisped against the roof of the house. It wasn’t going to keep blowing for long. It was going to die out any moment and leave Lower Grove to deal with the real summer.

  NAPLES. NOT ITALY.

  On TV is a painting show. It’s like the show that guy Ross used to do. This new guy is more Ross-like than Ross, dreamier. His clothes are astounding. What he’s painting looks like a flowerpot until it looks like an oaken bucket. He starts filling the bucket with something, his brushstrokes precise yet whimsical. Wheat. Soon the bucket is on a table, outside. We wait to see what he’ll do with the sky, what kind of weather is on the way.

  For us, it rains the whole weekend and on into the week, sometimes barely drizzling and sometimes resembling a monsoon. Our friend is down for a visit, a woman our age who’s newly single and rankled. After a few hours, she softens. She needs my wife and me in order to be herself, or a version of herself she can live with. In the old days, in the desert and in a lot of other places, we showed her that she didn’t have to volunteer for anything, that she didn’t have to smile at strangers or defend her opinions. We forced her to learn how to prepare lots of dinners. And now she has returned to us, to this shabby old condo we’re renting.

  ***

  The TV in the sunroom stays on, muted, day after day. None of us have what it takes to turn it off or to sit and listen to a program. The TV is as bi
g as a booth, an old-fashioned big-screen from before they started flattening TVs out and pinning them to walls. You could collect tolls from inside this TV, or dispense pills. The TV is our connection to the fresh disasters of the world. We watch earthquakes soundlessly topple buildings in Asia. We see Alabama leveled by tornadoes, hollow-eyed couples gazing at rubble. Naples is due for a hurricane, the weather experts say, but it won’t much matter; the retirees here are rich and have deluxe insurance policies and houses on concrete stilts. And if someone dies, well, they were getting ready to die anyway.

  The TV shows us which priests and congressmen and starlets can’t stop doing the wrong things. We make a point not to root against them, to remember that everyone needs to make a living. The ways these people make theirs come with extraordinary demands.

  The TV shows us the world of the young, too, and they’re the sorriest young people yet—empty of righteous hatred, casual in their loves, seeking a thousand shallow alliances. The young are easy to make fun of, but this fact does not comfort us in the least. They still have youth, regardless of what they do with it, and so we envy them.

  Lara, our visitor, owns a near-empty condo in another part of the state. She doesn’t want to return to it. Two dozen acres around Lara’s condo are clear-cut, a vast tract of dingy sand. Her building was the only one completed before the whole development project was halted. It looks lost, her building, like it arrived at a ball field on the wrong day. When you drive up Lara’s street, you see just how flat Florida is, and how exhausted. At night, at Lara’s condo, it’s like living on the moon.

  In the mornings, before we’re awake, she runs in the rain until her feet hurt. A desperate practice, but one that earns a person a certain seriousness. She makes lunch soups full of beans and organic herbs. She spends hours mending torn clothes or writing letters to her aunts—the types of womanly tasks my wife no longer finds the energy for.