Lou Anne glanced at Charlie. But Charlie understood at once. “We have any more of that whiskey that Frank left?”
“I don’t think so.”
Robins stood up. “Don’t worry about it,’ he said. Then, reaching into the inside pocket of his coat, he pulled out a little metal flask and, looking at Lou Anne, said, “Just get me a glass with some ice. ’
Lou Anne brought him one and Robins proceeded to pour the contents of the flask into it. He was about to take a sip when he looked up at Lou Anne and Charlie, “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, go right ahead.”
And Robins did, downing the glass in a few skillful swallows. When he finished, he poured the rest of the contents of the flask into his glass, then carried it into the dining room. Robins sat down across from Larry and stared balefully at Lou Anne’s prize pot roast. “I guess I should have told you. I’m a vegetarian.”
“Oh?” Lou Anne said, glancing over the various dishes. “Well...we have some green beans you can eat.”
Robins picked up the plate and poked at the beans with the tip of his fork. He shook his head. “Bacon fat. Can’t eat it.”
“How about some biscuits?”
“How’d you cook them? In lard?”
Lou Anne nodded yes.
“Can’t eat them.” Robins said. “Don’t worry about me. You go on and help yourselves.”
“Well,” Lou Anne said, “there must be something I can fix for you. It won’t be any trouble, really.”
“Actually, I’m not that hungry anyway. Go on and sit down.”
For the next fifteen minutes, the only significant bit of conversation was when Lou Anne asked Robins if he was a Methodist like old Doc had been. To which Robins shook his head. “Nope,” he said, downing the contents of his glass. “Me . .. I’m just a lapsed nihilist.”
“But a ‘nihilist,’” Lou Anne said. “Isn’t that a person who doesn’t believe in anything?”
Robins nodded yes.
“But don’t you think we all need something to believe in? Something beyond ourselves?” Lou Anne asked, glancing at Charlie.
Robins looked up and said, “No.” Then he shrugged and added, “Just look at me.”
“But you said you were lapsed. So that must mean you do believe in something after all,” Lou Anne offered.
“I do my best,” Robins said. And once again they were all at a dead end. By this point, however, both Charlie and Lou Anne had exhausted their resources. Besides, everyone had almost finished. Just dessert and the ordeal would be over.
Then suddenly Robins looked up. “There is something that I wonder about, though,” he began. “Why do we need to believe in anything in the first place? I mean, look at the animal world. Animals are all nihilists. They believe in nothing whatsoever. They don’t need illusions, though perhaps that’s because they don’t possess any of the great intolerable truths that all humans know. After all, they don’t know that they will one day die. We do. Even the stupidest of us. So maybe it’s truth that drives us to illusion and our knowledge that makes us gullible.” Robins hesitated and just when Larry thought he was finished, he started up again, expanding the idea, developing the theme, twisting it and turning it every which way, bringing in quotations from the Bible, references to astronomy, quoting men with Greek and hard-sounding names. Larry, his spoon hovering in front of his mouth, listened to the flow of words, all carefully chosen, each phrase finely balanced and arranged. And yet, despite the precision with which he spoke, even Larry could tell that Robins wasn’t just saying something to be saying something, or even to be showing off. He seemed, instead, to be driven by something inside of him, some deep impulse that took control of him, forcing him to follow out the line of argument to the very end, compelling him not just to see one or even two sides of the question but to turn it over and over, examining it from its most hidden angle. Robins spoke with an intensity that made you listen even when, like Larry, you didn’t understand some of the words he used or even if you couldn’t follow where exactly he was leading to. Finally when Robins finished, he looked up in embarrassment and said, “Sorry, I guess I got kind of carried away.” And then before Lou Anne could say something to the contrary, he looked over at Larry and said, “I think we’ve talked enough about me. What are you interested in?”
“Me?” Larry asked. Then, after a glance at his dad, he shrugged. “Not much, I reckon. Just the usual things. Baseball. . . model cars . . . you know.”
“Baseball, huh? You collect baseball cards?”
“Some.”
“You mind showing me your collection?”
“It’s not a very good one. I only got about a hundred.”
“I’d still like to see them.”
Then, after a little prompting from his mom, Larry got up and walked with Robins back to his room. He got an old shoebox out of his closet and set it down on the bed. Robins began going through them. He picked out a card. Then, putting it back in its place, he said, “You know there used to be a guy who played for the major leagues and he had only one arm?”
Larry shook his head.
“His batting average was two-eighteen. Not bad. Just think what the guy could do with two arms. Anyway, that was during World War II, and they couldn’t be too fussy about who they got to play for them. There was even one pitcher, just about your age. Fifteen. Of course, his ERA was sixty- seven point fifty.” And Robins went on, telling Larry one baseball anecdote after another, embellishing them with precise statistics and dates. At the end, Larry said, “Gosh, you know a lot about baseball.”
“Yeah, I learned a lot of it from my granddad. A lot about baseball. A lot about a lot of things. I guess I was pretty interested in it way back in the olden days.”
Larry smiled, thinking Robins meant “the olden days” as a joke. After all, Larry could tell that he wasn’t very old, only twenty-nine, in fact. “Why aren’t you anymore? Interested in baseball, I mean.”
“I don’t know. Things like that just happen.”
“You sure know a lot about it not to be interested in it anymore.”
Robins shrugged, putting the top back on the shoebox. “I suppose it’s possible to know everything and be interested in nothing.” Then, looking even more glum than he had appeared at the supper table, he added. “Which, I’m afraid, is probably the way God feels about us. What d’you think?”
Larry, dumbfounded by the casualness of this remark, glanced down. “I don’t know. It seems like He’d have to be kind of interested in us. I mean, if He made the world and everything. And if—”
“If what?” Robins asked.
Larry looked down, a little embarrassed. “I mean, if it’s true about Him sending Jesus here for us.”
“Sending him to be crucified, you mean?”
Larry nodded, struck by Robins s tone. There was something not quite mocking in it, but still disturbing. Almost a kind of bitterness. He looked up at Robins, expecting some clarification. “Don’t you believe Jesus was really crucified?”
“Sure, I believe he was crucified, all right,” Robins said matter-of-factly. “That was the easy part.”
“I guess I don’t understand.”
“If the only way God can show any interest in us is by having some poor guy nailed to a cross, I say. Thanks just the same, but save your interest for another planet.”
Larry stared up at Robins, visibly taken aback. Not simply by the statement itself, but by the way it was said. That same strange bitter quality in Robins’s voice. Robins then stood up and carried the shoebox back to the closet. “Better to have a millstone tied around your neck,” he mumbled.
“Sir?”
Robins shook his head, then said, “Don’t worry about it. I was just shooting my mouth. I do that a lot, you may have noticed.”
Larry nodded uneasily. An awkward pause followed. Rob
ins had walked over to the window and looked outside. “You’re a friend of Jamey’s, aren’t you? That’s why you were over there the other night, wasn’t it?”
Larry nodded. “Yes.”
There was a pause. Still standing with his back to Larry, Robins went on, “He’s pretty much of a loner, isn’t he? Except for you.”
“I guess. . . .”
You seem like a nice kid. So I guess he must be a pretty nice kid, too. Since you’re friends.”
“Yeah, he is. And real smart, too. He knows all about the stars. I mean, you wouldn’t believe how much he knows.”
Suddenly Robins turned around, as if something had just struck him. “The stars?”
“Yeah.”
“He say how he came to know so much about them?”
Larry shook his head. “I guess from reading books.”
“At the orphanage, huh?”
Larry nodded, puzzled by the slightly cynical tone of Robins’s question. “Oh, there’s something else I almost forgot. He saved my life. Me and this other boy’s.”
“Oh?’ Robins asked, raising his eyebrows. “How’d he do that?”
Larry sat down by the edge of the other twin bed and began to tell Robins about the incident down by the river. Robins listened silently. “You sure it was a water moccasin?”
“I’m sure,” Larry said. “I know one of them when I see it.” Robins nodded, then asked why the other two boys—Clemson and Alvin—were teasing them in the first place. And Larry, with some embarrassment, told him about the incident that had started the whole thing. “Why didn’t you just beat them up?”
“Well,” Larry explained. “That’s what I wanted to do, but Jamey wouldn’t let me.” And from there Larry went on to tell Robins about the deal he had made with Jamey, to let Jamey try to work things out in his own way. “And the thing is, he did do it his own way. He didn’t hit them. He didn’t even tell them that they were doing wrong. He just—”
“Just what?”
“Just did what he did, and that’s all.”
“Well,” Robins said with a smile, “in this case, it was quite a lot.” Robins thought a moment. “I’d say he sounds like a pretty unusual boy.” Then Robins walked over to the window. “I wonder, has he ever said anything to you about where he was before coming here? Anything like that?”
“No. We kind of don’t talk about that. I guess he doesn’t like to remember. You know?”
“Yeah, I suppose everybody’s got something they’d rather not remember. Though strange how life keeps reminding you.” Robins hesitated. Then, turning around, he looked at Larry. “Did Jamey ever say anything to you about my grandfather? Old Doc?”
“Old Doc?” Larry repeated. The question came as a total shock, and his face registered it. Robins glanced over at him and frowned. “I say something wrong?” Larry shook his head. But then, just as Robins seemed about to follow up this question with another, Lou Anne tapped on the door and stepped into the room. “Y’all ready for dessert now?”
Larry jumped up from the bed. “Sure, Mom.” And then, as if dying of hunger, he rushed from the room, nearly knocking his mom down on the way. Lou Anne, puzzled by his behavior, shook her head and told Robins, “I guess he really is ready for dessert.” But Robins, still looking out the window, said nothing.
Over dessert, Charlie and Robins began talking with each other. Robins was telling about his first visit to Lucerne and how terrified he had been of his grandfather. Yet, while everyone else seemed amused by Robins’s stories, Larry kept his eyes fixed on the apple crumb pudding in front of him, as if he had been studying its behavior for a science project. Finally, when he finished, he asked to be excused, saying he was going out to play in the tree house. Soon afterward, the phone rang and Lou Anne answered it. She came back to the dining room and sighed. “It’s Amy again. Beulah still wants you to come there and check on all the damn windows and doors again. Just tell her you don’t have the time.”
Charlie smiled at his wife. “The damn windows and doors, huh?”
When Charlie went into the kitchen to talk to Amy on the phone, Robins frowned. “Beulah? Isn’t she the one who lives out in that farmhouse, stays up in her room all the time? Supposed to be an invalid of some sort?”
Lou Anne nodded. She also happens to be my great-aunt, which makes her think that she can call Charlie out there any time of the day or night. I swear, one day I’m going to tie him down in his bed if he doesn’t stop letting people like that take advantage of him.”
Robins then said he remembered her, and that when he was a boy, he and Doc used to drive out and see her whenever one of her many little ailments—of which she had dozens and dozens—started acting up. “Thing I remember most, though, is she was always asking my grandfather about dreams. Where they came from. What he thought they meant. That kind of thing.”
“Well, she’s still having them. I keep telling Charlie that’s all it is, her thinking that something’s going to come and get her in her sleep, crawling in through the window. That’s all. When I used to live out there, I’d have to check the windows two or three times a night, and even then she wouldn’t trust me.”
When Charlie returned, he was putting on his coat. “Don’t worry, honey,” he said, trying to forestall any outburst from Lou Anne, “I’m just going for a little drive in the country. You feel like getting out?” he asked Robins.
“Sure. Why not?”
Lou Anne shook her head and got up from the table. “I swear, Charlie. One day—”
“One day what, honeybun?” Charlie said as he went over and put his arms around his wife. She tried to keep her indignation, but Charlie had already started kissing her on the neck. Finally Lou Anne pulled away. “If you want to move in with Beulah, you’re welcome to. That’s all I have to say.”
“But honeybun,” Charlie said, looking shocked, “who’d play ‘The Streets of Laredo’ for me?”
“Just see if you ever get me to play that song for you again.” And with that, Lou Anne carried the rest of the dishes into the kitchen. Robins looked at Charlie. “She’s not really mad, is she?”
“Lou Anne? Course not. She’s got the temper of an angel.” Then, as if to demonstrate this for Robins, Charlie called out into the kitchen: “You want me to give Beulah your regards, honey?”
At that moment they heard a plate hit the floor and shatter into what sounded like a hundred pieces. “Reckon we best be going,” Charlie advised.
11
Out at Beulah’s, Charlie led Robins up into the old woman’s foul-smelling, nearly airtight bedroom. On the way out, Robins had told Charlie that if the old woman really was being bothered by her nightmares, maybe there was something he could do about it, explaining that he had always had an interest in the psychology of dreams. Charlie told him he figured it was worth a try but added that Beulah wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. Robins nodded and said, “Yeah, I remember.”
Amy led the two men into Beulah’s room, and Charlie introduced Robins. “My grandfather used to bring me out here when I was little,” he went on to explain.
“You a doctor?” Beulah asked, eyeing Robins suspiciously.
Robins nodded yes. “I used to have a practice up in Atlanta.”
“I ain’t paying no great big doctor bill,” she snapped. “You expecting to rob me blind, you ain’t.” But she quickly calmed back down when Robins assured that there would be no bill. “I just came along to see if I could help out any.” But when she thought about it for a moment, she again cast a suspicious eye on him: “What kind of doctor are you if you don’t charge none?
“I guess not a very smart one,” Robins said with a laugh. This didn’t seem to hit Beulah’s funny bone, wherever it was. She scrutinized him hard and said, “You do kindly favor old Doc,” she said. “I sure know one thing. Your granddaddy, he was a mighty fine doctor,” sh
e allowed. “Wasn’t no time of the day or night he wouldn’t come. Them new doctors, over there in Willard, why, they won’t come even when you offer to pay them a little something for their trouble. Ain’t that right, Amy?”
And Amy nodded, “Yes’m, Beulah. That’s right.”
And another thing, I ain’t taking off my clothes, neither, so you can get that clean out of your head right now.”
Robins deliberated, as if this last condition presented a considerable sacrifice on his part. But he finally nodded his head. “I can live with that, Beulah.”
“I sure hope so,” Beulah declared in no uncertain terms. “Actually, all I need to do is talk to you a little in private. Assuming you think you can trust me.”
At this point Charlie excused himself—he was finding it increasingly hard to keep a straight face—by saying that while they were talking, he and Amy would go down and check all the windows and doors.
“Don t you forget about them windows down in the basement, neither. You hear?”
“Yes’m, Beulah,” Amy said, closing the door behind her. When Charlie and Amy left, Robins stood in the middle of the room for a moment, scratching his head. He glanced over at the heavily draped window. “Kind of stuffy in here. You don’t mind if I open a window, do you?’’
Beulah lifted up her head in alarm. “You leave that window be,” she said with a hiss.
Robins looked back at her. “Beulah, it’s stifling in here. You got to get some fresh air.”
“I don’t want no fresh air. You just leave that window be. You hear?”
Robins nodded. Then, coming back to the side of the bed, he looked at her. Beulah, I was just thinking you might sleep a little better if you were more comfortable.”
“I’m plenty comfortable way I am,” Beulah said, snorting.
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