“I wonder if they’ve been wanting to marry this whole time?” he asked. “That would explain a lot. It’s nearly twenty years that I’ve been worrying about this. If they’ve been wanting to marry all this time then it’s a shame they didn’t tell me. They wasted about half their lives, not to mention half of mine.”
“I don’t know, Dick,” Harmony said. “I don’t know how long they’ve been wanting to marry.”
Dick stooped and picked up his dozer cap—it was lying near the girly magazines. He put the cap on and took it off and put it on again, evidently perplexed. He looked at Harmony in a way that suggested deep perplexity.
“Well, I’m older than Rusty but I ain’t dead yet,” Dick said. “Neddie can’t understand that I have to have somebody female and I have to find her quick—I’m eleven years older than Neddie. I gotta find a gal or I’ll die. People think you need it most when you’re young, but that ain’t how it is.”
“It’s not?” Harmony asked—she didn’t know where the conversation was leading.
Dick shook his large head. “Course you need it, young or old,” he said. “But old means higher stakes.”
He looked out the window he had just blasted away.
“When you’re young it’s fun or frustration,” Dick said. “When you’re older it’s life or death.”
“Oh, Dick, you won’t really die,” Harmony said.
“Yes, I will,” Dick said, with a flash of anger in his eyes. “It ain’t hard to die when you feel you’ve already stopped living. You know what I mean? I could catch a sniffle and die right off, the way I feel today.”
In this case Harmony did know what he meant, sort of. It was the way she had been feeling since Pepper’s death. It would be easy to die because she had already stopped living—Eddie was the only living factor she had to deal with, really.
“Dick, you could get a girlfriend,” Harmony said. “Neddie’s not the only woman in the world.”
“She’s the only one for me,” Dick said, but then he had a thought that caused him to blush.
“At least she’s the only one who’s the right age,” he added, speaking in a low tone.
Then, to her surprise, Dick stepped toward her. For a moment she had the fear that he might be about to embrace her. But he stopped a foot away, with a desperate look on his face. He had on old-fashioned blue overalls, with snaps at the shoulders, and as she stood there, amazed, he unsnapped the shoulder snaps and let the heavy overalls fall around his ankles. His long work shirt hung down to the middle of his thighs. For a moment Dick just stood there, large and sad, looking silly—how could he look anything but silly, with his pants around his ankles? She didn’t know what to think, really, but so far she didn’t feel offended. Why be offended because her own nice brother-in-law was so overcome by need that he couldn’t help himself?
“Dick, I’m only two years younger than Neddie,” Harmony said—she was thinking he might have her in mind when he mentioned the part about no one the right age.
But that wasn’t what Dick was talking about, it wasn’t that personal; it was just his great need that caused him to drop his overalls.
“Please,” Dick said. “Please.” He got no further—it wasn’t even a clear request, but that he had even said that much caused him to drop his head in embarrassment.
What am I supposed to do? Harmony thought—sleep with my own brother-in-law on my own sister’s back porch? Why did I even come here?
“Please,” Dick said, again. He sounded like a person who was dying. He had just finished saying how easy it would be to die, in fact.
Oh well, wait till Gary hears about this one, Harmony thought. She reached under Dick’s long shirttail and touched him—a touch was all it took, too. He immediately came and came and came, into the back of his shirttail.
“Boy,” Dick said, before he had even really stopped coming. “You don’t know how obliged I am to you, hon. The reason I don’t wear no underwear is because of this fungus. It flat eats me up, in the summertime.”
“Dick, couldn’t you get a lotion?” Harmony asked. She had reached under the long shirttail to touch him and of course hadn’t seen any fungus—or anything else improper, although something at least on the borderline of improper had taken place.
“Takes longer than that to milk a cow, don’t it?” Dick said, in a more normal voice—he immediately began to pull his overalls up, without even washing the semen off his legs.
“Dick, I’ve never milked, how would I know?” Harmony said. She went in the kitchen to wash her hands, a little embarrassed. Of course Dick had really needed help, but it wasn’t the kind of help she wanted to get in the habit of providing.
“She’s twenty-two,” Dick said. He had followed Harmony into the kitchen and stood looking at her like a giant dog who was grateful for a favor.
“Twenty-two?” Harmony said, puzzled. She was busy washing his semen off her hands.
“Sally,” Dick said, as if Harmony would know exactly who he was talking about. No one in her family could quite grasp that she hadn’t lived in Tarwater for many years and didn’t know all the names.
“Sally, down at the feedstore,” Dick said. “She’s the bookkeeper. I got where I hang out there some, when I ain’t plowing.
“Sally’s a redhead,” he added.
“Does she like you, Dick?” Harmony asked, trying to imagine this large man with a twenty-two-year-old.
“I think so,” Dick said, tentatively. “But I ain’t courted in a spell. Maybe I’m just fooling myself.”
Harmony was feeling a little pressured—her brother-in-law was so distraught and so needy for a little sex that she had sort of accidentally given him a hand job, and now he was seeking her approval to date a twenty-two-year-old. She was beginning to feel angry at her sister; if she didn’t want the man why hadn’t she just divorced him, years ago? It was a little hard to imagine Dick with a young woman—but then she remembered that Jimmy Bangor had lost his job as head of security at Caesars for sleeping with a thirteen-year-old. Why shouldn’t Dick sleep with a twenty-two-year-old?—at least it wouldn’t be statutory rape. It might even lead to a little happiness, down the road somewhere. It seemed like even a little happiness was hard to come by in Tarwater—Dick would be a fool to pass it up.
“Only thing is, she’s younger than my daughter,” Dick said. “What’s Donna going to say?
“I can’t do anything about it today, though,” he said. “I’ve got that west field to plow, and then I’ll have to fix the window I shot out—I don’t know what came over me.”
Now that he had enjoyed a little relief, the thought of the damage he had done made Dick feel shy. He managed one more grateful look before pulling his cap firmly on his head—then he went out the door and walked off toward his tractor.
Harmony was remembering that Rusty had said Dick didn’t need a woman—it just showed that people managed to believe what they needed to believe when it came to other people.
Once she was sure Dick had gone back to his plowing she went straight to the phone and called Gary.
“Hi, Gary,” she said; fortunately he answered on the first ring, which probably meant he hadn’t been asleep. If he was asleep it was usually about the fortieth ring before he picked up; he would usually be bitchy for a while, on the forty-ring calls.
“Hi,” Gary said—just from that one syllable Harmony knew that he had probably been taking uppers. She had known Gary for so long that even one syllable was enough to give her a clue as to what his drug of the moment might be.
“Gary, I’m coming tonight, and my dad is coming with me,” she said hurriedly. Sometimes when Gary was on uppers he would just hang up if he felt he wasn’t going to get much out of the conversation.
“Okay, I’ll meet you, I’m dying to see you, what’s the flight number?” Gary said. He was definitely in his efficient mode.
“Gary, I don’t even have the tickets yet, how would I know the flight number?” Harmony said. “Just rem
ember it’s American from Dallas and it comes in about midnight.”
“Oh good, I can come get you on my break,” Gary said. “I have a wonderful car now, it’s a purple Cadillac.”
“Gary, how did you get a purple Cadillac?” she asked. Just hearing that he had that car gave her a little lift. It made her feel that she was almost home. Gary in a purple Cadillac was the sort of thing that could only happen in Las Vegas.
“Sweetie, that’s my business,” Gary said. “I’ll only say that it was a wild exchange.
“Actually, not that wild,” he added, a moment later. “I just happened to have a good night at the craps tables, and a dope addict I know needed money and sold the Cadillac to me for nine hundred dollars—talk about timing, I had only won the money about seven minutes before I ran into my friend the dope addict. Eddie’s gonna love this car. The stereo in it’s worth more than I paid for the whole thing. So what’s happening to you?”
“Neddie’s getting divorced and she’s going to marry Rusty, that’s Dick’s brother,” Harmony said.
“Good for her,” Gary said. “People need to go with their feelings—I guess Neddie has feelings. It’s hard to tell.”
“She has feelings for Rusty, but she stopped having them for Dick, that’s why I just gave him a hand job on the back porch,” Harmony said.
“Well, that’s certainly being a good sister-in-law,” Gary remarked. “If I had a brother-in-law in dire straits I certainly hope I’d be kind enough to give him a hand job.”
“Dick was in dire straits,” Harmony said. “I barely touched him.”
Just as she said it she had the thought that there might still be come on the floor of the back porch. The reason the thought came to her just at that moment was that she saw Rusty’s dirty white pickup coming up the lane. If Rusty was coming, Neddie might be with him. What if she walked in and saw a puddle of semen on her own back porch?
“Gary, I can’t talk anymore, Neddie’s coming,” she said. “I have to go clean up the back porch—there might be a mess.”
Gary got a little annoyed. He really did hate having his phone conversations nipped in the bud.
“Harmony, why call me if you don’t have more than eight seconds to talk?” he asked.
“Gary, I’ll be home tonight,” Harmony said. She hung up and grabbed a washrag. Sure enough, there was a puddle where the little sex act happened; she got it wiped up just in time, too. Neddie and Rusty got out of the pickup and stood looking at the two dead rabbits in the yard. Then they came around to the window that had been blown away. They peeped through the empty window frame and saw Harmony standing there, with the dishrag in her hand.
“What kind of weirdness is going on here?” Neddie asked. “Couldn’t you have come outside, if you wanted to hunt rabbits?”
“Hunt ’em, obliterate them,” Rusty said.
“It was Dick,” Harmony said.
“Oh,” Neddie said. She looked again at the window and the bunnies.
“Was he waiting for us?” she asked.
“Yep,” Harmony said. She didn’t really want to say any more than she had to.
“Oh,” Neddie said. “I guess that means you told him.”
“Yep,” Harmony said, again—she had settled on the word as being the most useful she could think of, for the moment.
“So, was he upset?” Neddie asked.
“Neddie, he blew the window out,” Rusty said. “I’ve known Dick all my life and he’s never done nothing like this before. It’s the most violent thing he’s done since we had that aggravating black mule. I reckon he’s upset.”
“Well, I hope so,” Neddie said. “I would have liked to see it. I’ve been waiting thirty years to see Dick show some emotion—maybe if he’d managed it sooner I wouldn’t be running off with you.”
“Neddie, Dick just doesn’t know how to show it,” Harmony said. “Lots of men don’t know how to show it.”
“Well, let him learn with somebody else, if he intends to learn,” Neddie said. “I don’t see why I should have to wait thirty years for a man to blow out a window.”
Rusty cocked an eye.
“Better be glad it was just a window,” he said.
Harmony was remembering how sad Dick looked; she was thinking of all the years he had been sad—about his wife, about sex, about life. It angered her that her sister had just sort of let it go on. Dick was right—she had wasted half his life, and half her own, and half Rusty’s.
“Where’d he go?” Rusty asked. “He might buy some more shells for the shotgun and come back and blast us.”
“That’s a thought,” Neddie said. “Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to gather up all the guns and take them to Dad’s house for a while.”
“Dick’s plowing—he won’t bother you,” Harmony said. “It was a relief to him that you plan to marry.”
“Of course we plan to marry,” Neddie said. “I wonder what old Dick will do?”
“I hope he gets a young girlfriend and fucks his brains out, for a while,” Harmony said; she was still angry at Neddie for not having cut Dick loose.
Both of them looked at her as if she’d gone crazy, but Harmony didn’t care. After all, Dick was human too.
“I wonder if he will,” Neddie said. She sighed.
“He’s sure been spending a lot of time at the feedstore lately,” Rusty observed.
“Sally?” Neddie asked.
“Sally,” Rusty agreed.
16.
Out of here, out of here, Harmony was thinking. Neddie got a broom and she and Rusty began to clean up the remains of the broken window. Rusty found a little spatula and removed the rest of the glass from the window frame. But Neddie did look happier as she worked; she sort of had color in her cheeks, a little bloom; she was a good deal more relaxed in the way she moved. It must be nice to be doing a few little chores with the man she loved, rather than with the man she was finished with. It was unfortunate that Dick had to be sad in order for Neddie to be happy with his brother. Still, it was better that at least one of them was happy—at least that was Harmony’s take on it.
While they cleaned up the broken glass Harmony kept rinsing out the washrag; she was still nervous about what had happened on the porch. While she was rinsing, the phone rang. Neddie and Rusty were in the yard, cleaning up broken glass. Since they were out of earshot she answered the phone.
“Well, they finally lowered the boom, come get me out,” Pat said. “I need a lawyer too, and not one of these bozos around here. I’ve had romances with both of the lawyers in Tarwater, and they’re too resentful that we broke up. I doubt they’d do a good job even if they had the brains.”
“Pat, you mean you’re in jail?” Harmony asked. “If you are, how’s Billy?”
“Snoring, he ain’t up yet, he don’t even know his sister’s joined him in disgrace,” Pat said.
“Then how’s Peewee?” Harmony asked. She was wondering how Neddie would take the latest news. She happened to glance out the window, as she wondered, and saw Neddie and Rusty kiss. Watching, Harmony felt a little nostalgic. It had been a while since a nice man had turned to her and just spontaneously given her a kiss. Neddie’s hair was blowing in the prairie breeze she loved so much. She looked girlish, almost—only a few days before, she looked like an old woman. Love could come and take away your years; maybe it could come and take away grief; shave it away; whittle it away. Neddie was getting some happiness, but Pepper was dead—the thought was like a burn, like a torn blister. She had the impulse to phone Laurie and see if she made it home safely.
“Harmony, are you listening? I’m in jail,” Pat said. “Get Neddie or somebody to bail me out of here.”
“Neddie and Rusty are kissing,” Harmony informed her—the kiss was still going on. Harmony couldn’t quite keep her eyes off the new lovers, although she knew it was wrong to peek.
“They’re kissing?” Pat said. “In broad daylight?”
“Yep,” Harmony said. “They’re getting marri
ed. I told Dick this morning. Dick likes a girl named Sally, at the feedstore.”
“Sally, that little slut,” Pat said. “I guess he does like her. So do a lot of other men. Sally’s a peanut brain. She’s about eighty percent tits.”
“She could still be sweet,” Harmony said. She liked the idea of Dick having a nice romance. The fact that Sally had big tits shouldn’t be held against her.
“Harmony, I know you have big tits too, but try to keep your mind on the point,” Pat said. “The point is I want out of jail.
“Peewee gives me the creeps,” she added.
Rusty and Neddie had broken their kiss and were walking back toward the house, their arms around one another.
“Pat, did they get you for the embezzling?” Harmony asked.
“That, and the fact that I got stopped with a few pills in my car,” Pat said. “Seventeen thousand pills, to be exact.”
“Seventeen thousand pills?” Harmony said. “Even Gary couldn’t take that many pills.”
“Well, I just happened to make a real good score,” Pat said. “All I meant to do was sell them to some oilman, so I could replace the money I took from the bank. It was just my luck to have a taillight broken out. The damn patrolman only pulled me over because he was bored—it was Sammy Jackson, he’s liked me since we were in grade school together. I don’t know why he looked in the trunk—I guess he noticed I was a little jumpy. Seventeen thousand pills is hard to miss.”
“Pat, I’ll tell Neddie, we’ll be right down,” Harmony said; actually, she had the plane tickets on her mind.
“Okay, but don’t let any grass grow, I feel like a caged animal down here in this cell,” Pat said.
“Okay, we’ll come,” Harmony said, wishing it was time to go to the airport. Much as she loved her sisters and brother, their needs were not her needs. It saddened her that she could not get to know their children—in the young ones of the family there lay the best hope.
For herself, she wanted to go. She had to recover her spirit, to try and be herself again, and she knew she couldn’t recover it in Oklahoma. The best place to try might be the casinos. Beneath their lights she had spent the happiest years of her life. She thought maybe as soon as she got home she would call Myrtle. Maybe if the other half of the duplex wasn’t rented she and Eddie and her father could live in it for a while. They could get a goat or two—her father might like that—or maybe a few peacocks, or even some chickens.