All her previous boyfriends had worn nothing but frat-boy khakis and Izods, like they were in some pathetic paramilitary unit that got their asses kicked all the time. Back then, Stubblefield was still getting over his brief beatnik motorcycle phase. Still immersed in his little square black-and-white books of poetry with alarming titles, and sometimes sporting a goatee and a black turtleneck and black leather pants. His garb caused a woman on Centre Sreet one day to ask him what it was he liked so much about his unusual leather pants. Stubblefield said, You don’t have to wash ’em, you just wipe ’em down.
It was all thoughtless romance with Alice, and could have been the start of several decades of bitter misery, except that a month before the wedding day Alice’s heart changed directions. A better boyfriend came along. Not a passing whim, like Stubblefield, but somebody solid. Some old high school beau or golfer suck-up to her father. She informed Stubblefield all distant over the phone.
The diamond, though, was returned in person. To be exact, Alice flung it in Stubblefield’s face as if he were the spurner. It hit him at the brow and bounced onto the concrete stoop outside his front door. Then it angled off into the shrubbery, sparkling all the way.
The harsh tone there at the end was surely the idea of the new boyfriend, who struck Stubblefield as high-minded and adamant about his sensitivities. He wanted no trace left behind to remind him that he was not the first explorer to plant his flag on that pale frontier.
A week later, Stubblefield took out a classified ad in the local paper. For Sale: One (1) engagement ring w. 1.5-carat diamond. Fair-to-poor condition. Also matching wedding band. Excellent condition. Diamonds are forever, but the heartbreak has passed. $1 ea.
Which sealed his fate on ever getting a good deal on a new Caddie, but also made him more than a few friends around town. For a week, many Tanqueray tonics were bought for him down at the waterside bar. Drinkers young and old raised toasts welcoming him to his new fraternity of dumped lovers.
After Stubblefield finished his answer to her question, Luce said, Pale frontier?
—Figure of speech.
WAY INTO THE NIGHT, Luce got head-bobbing sleepy, and Stubblefield reached to her far shoulder with his good hand and slouched her over in the seat toward him until her head lay tipped against his leg and her dark hair spread over his lap.
He drove down an empty road into the tree-farm pine barrens that led to Florida, feeling happy and as if, right this minute, everything matched his expectations of how life ought to be. The Hawk was dark as a piece of night, except for its dash lights and the overlapping beams of headlights. In the foggy late-night hours, Stubblefield pulled over at a wayside picnic spot and slept an hour or two with his right hand tangled in Luce’s hair, and then he went on driving. At the first thin rim of dawn the children’s eyes rose into the rearview. All bright with interest in the sudden new landscape.
They skirted the Okefenokee in early-morning fog, the wet air coming in the wind wings rich and urgent. Luce opened her eyes for a minute and said, What’s that smell?
Stubblefield said, Alligators.
She said, Good, and settled her head back on his leg while Stubblefield explained to her about the culture and history of Florida. For example, they’ve got snake farms. Imagine setting out on purpose to grow snakes. Florida was the Wild West before there was a Wild West. It was nothing but Indians and Spaniards, and then it went straight to cowboy gunmen like John Wesley Hardin. And it still is wild, or at least lawless. Good God, you can get away with all kinds of shit down here. The politicians are all criminals. Granted, that is only a distinction from everywhere else in that they’re so blatant about it that they often end up in federal prison.
Around about there, Luce drifted back to sleep.
DOWN AT FLAGLER, Lola lived in a shady cinder-block cottage three streets from the beach. Dead live-oak leaves spilling over the gutters and a rusty red Olds Rocket 88 with all the good driven out of it parked in the sand yard.
Stubblefield went to the door and knocked. Luce and Dolores and Frank stayed in the Hawk.
Lola answered, wearing a floral-print beach wrap hanging open over a shimmering teal bathing suit. Barefoot, and her toenails painted pink. Freckled cleavage tanned to a line and then an inch of pale cream visible below that. Her hair wet and tumbling to her shoulders. A cigarette between her lips.
Stubblefield thought he must have come to the wrong place. This was not the grandmother he had imagined. He said who he was, and who he had with him. Her daughter Luce and the children of her murdered daughter, Lily.
—I do remember their names, Lola said, talking around the cigarette and very dry in her tone. How did you find me?
—Made a call.
—Not like I was hiding out or anything.
—She needs your help, Stubblefield said.
Lola said, Huh?
IN THE CAR, Luce studied the woman. Her mother. The word called up nothing but dim memories of shouting. Rough hugs. A face shoved close, breathing Wild Turkey and planting sloppy kisses on her forehead, leaving candy-apple-red smears.
And something failed to sum. Her mother must be, what? Old, at the very least. Luce did some fast head arithmetic, and the surprise total was not far past forty. And, even so, Lola looked years younger, for she had been damn handsome to begin with and had undergone production of only the two accidental girls spaced close together in her final teenage years. Plus, she had successfully skipped most of the wear and tear of raising them. So she had low miles on her, and what she had were apparently road miles. Adding the youthful effect of breasts and tousled hair and beach clothing, she could probably pass for Luce’s older sister in any light more flattering than the glare of midday sun. Though, actually, this was midday.
Luce got out of the car and leaned the seatback forward. The children climbed from the back and began exploring their new world. Lapsing into their water-witch manner, following invisible lines of force across the yard, quartering the space, doubling back, feeling for something with senses other than the usual five. They finally settled ten feet apart and seemed not to be looking at anything in particular, but still alert.
Not much in the way of greeting between mother and daughter. A hug was too much, a handshake out of the question. Lola tipped her head back and blew smoke out the corner of her mouth, and Luce got straight to business.
—Lily’s husband, Bud. He hurt the children. And then he killed her. He’s come to town, making threats. And Lit won’t do anything about it because he’s buying dope from him.
Lola said, Golly, I wonder why I ever left?
STUBBLEFIELD’S SWADDLED cut hand throbbed. He looked at all four of them, the way some bloodline thing connected the wings of their noses, their eye slants. Nevertheless, Lola and the children didn’t care to own each other. They wouldn’t look her way, like she was some ghost wavering before them in a dimension they took a pass on sensing.
—I wasn’t made for a grandmother, Lola said.
—Or a mother, Luce said.
—News flash, Luce. Neither were you. We’re a lot the same. Lily was the one different.
—You don’t know anything about me, Luce said. I’m not the same as you. And if I ever was, I’ve changed.
—People don’t change, Lola said. Maybe you’re still young enough to pretend that’s not true. People are who they are, and everybody around them has to take it or go somewhere else.
—I didn’t go anywhere. None of us did.
—But I did. I couldn’t take any of you one day more.
Stubblefield had been standing off to the side saying nothing, but now he said, Great God.
Lola glanced at him like she hadn’t even noticed he was still there.
—Here’s the final word, Lola said. I can’t help you out. Sounds like you’re maybe exaggerating some. I heard he got off. Sometimes, juries get it right. And that doesn’t mean I’m not sad about Lily. But when I left, I left. I’m not looking back. And I’m not looking for a fam
ily. I’ll fix you some ham sandwiches and let you talk about the good old days if you care to. And then pretty soon, it will be time for all of you to get in the car and head out home.
Luce said, Hell, we can eat a hamburger on the road without having to listen to another word of your shit.
—Well, Stubblefield said, I guess that about says it. Dolores and Frank, go give your granny a big goodbye hug.
The children didn’t attend to the suggestion in any way other than to flick each other a glance.
Lola took a final lungful of her Kool and flipped the sparking butt at Stubblefield and went into the house. The butt bounced off Stubblefield’s chest, and the screen door bounced off Lola’s still-fetching ass before clapping shut.
And yet, before they could load up and drive away, Lola stuck her head out the screen door and shouted, I never loved a damn one of you.
ON THE WAY BACK NORTH, Stubblefield took A1A, to let Luce and the kids see the ocean. He hadn’t slept but a few snatches in days, and he was all drained of adrenaline and had switched to take-out coffee. His vision and hearing and thoughts seemed kind of gritty.
Somewhere after St. Augustine, he pulled Luce across the seat to him and said, That was all my mistake. I thought it would be a safe place. It’s not how I expected it to go.
—It’s what I ought to have expected. But I let myself start hoping. That was the mistake.
Stubblefield drove awhile, Atlantic on the right and palmetto scrub on the left, and tried to line his thoughts up. He said, There’s a kind of person that wants you to carry their trouble. If they can, they heap it every bit on you and walk away without a guilty look back. And if they can’t do that, they lighten their own load by handing off a piece of woe to anybody who’ll take it. You two girls didn’t have a choice but to take what your mother dished out. All the rest were fools that let themselves get altered in their thinking by the prettiness of her.
—She is, isn’t she?
—You had to get it somewhere.
They crossed the St. Johns on the ferry and went up Little Talbot and then across the inlet to Amelia, flying fish leaping almost as high into the air as the car windows as they drove over the low wood bridge.
Stubblefield checked his wallet and did some figuring. They could stay awhile at his old beach town with the fort and the lighthouse and the shrimp boats. It wouldn’t be quite like the dream date on the Gulf he had imagined. No beer-joint oysters or beach-music jukebox dancing or night swimming. No being young and free. Mostly being scared and not knowing what to do about it.
But, through a stretch of beautiful autumn weather, they rested and walked on the beach. The children ran up and down and threw shells at each other and waded in the cool water until they flopped in the sand exhausted and happy. For brief moments, they let Luce wrap them in towels and sneak in a hug before they squirmed away.
One afternoon, near sunset, Stubblefield built a small driftwood fire, which delighted the children. They sat calmly, watching the flames. In a while, Dolores got up and collected dead dune grass from the beach and came to Stubblefield, sitting at the fire with Luce. Dolores bundled four long stalks in her hand, and lightly whacked him on each shoulder. Very ceremonial, like a knighting. Then she threw them in the fire and backed away, her dark eyes looking just over his shoulder. She stopped and stood, waiting for something to happen next.
Stubblefield went to the tide line and collected ribbons of seaweed and twisted and plaited them, using old Boy Scout rope-making skills. He knotted the ends to form a small circle and set it on Dolores’s head. She immediately shook it off, but then picked it up and put it back in place and wandered in the direction of a few sanderlings quickstepping at the edge of the water. Frank sat near the fire and watched the whole process, and then he came over and stood at Luce’s shoulder.
She said, If you want one, say please.
Frank said, One say please.
So Stubblefield made him a wreath too.
Each evening during their time there, they ate shrimp, a new food to Luce, and she could not get enough of it. The children went to bed early, exhausted, and slept until dawn to the drowsy wave sounds rising from the beach. Way late, Luce and Stubblefield sat on the sofa of the beach cottage and listened to the radio and held each other, kissing like teenagers. Every song some variant of oh baby baby. But if Stubblefield went beyond a certain line, Luce was off to the bedroom to sleep with the children. Sweet about it, and sort of regretful, but off. Leaving Stubblefield to read and try to feel sort of gallant until he fell asleep.
Except one night, toward the end, she came back. Stubblefield dozed on the sofa with a paperback from his car library. He woke to Luce’s hand on his face, and then sliding down past the collar of his shirt to his shoulder. She gripped him at the muscle above the collarbone, and pulled him to her, which kind of hurt. Kissed him deep and said, One of these days it could be so good.
Before Stubblefield even roused awake, she was gone again. The door already closing behind her before he thought to say, Wait. Afterward, a restless late night for Stubblefield, with only the thin substitutes of poetry and Top 40 tunes on the radio.
Day by day, the money ran out. The last night, on the sofa before bedtime, Stubblefield told Luce a fairy tale about how they wouldn’t ever go back to the lake. Just start driving, and before you know it, be blasting westward at dawn down two-lane Nebraska blacktop. A pale moon setting up ahead and a bright yellow sun rising behind. Drinking truck-stop coffee and sharing a box of doughnuts for breakfast, three apiece. Listening to a radio station out of Red Cloud reporting wheat prices, and then Spade Cooley followed by the Sons of the Pioneers so as to capture in just two songs the exuberance and melancholy of the famed lone prairie with its match-strike daylight and night skies deep as the mind of God. You the tallest thing standing for miles across the sweeps of grass. And to let the place enter their dream lives, camp on blankets in a wheat field and watch stars and planets move westward across the slopes of convex space until they all fell asleep.
—Great, Luce said. Let’s do that, baby. Someday.
THEY WAITED UNTIL late afternoon to leave. By the time they were driving back through the dismal pine forests at the state line, it was dark. The kids slept on the backseat mattress, exhausted from another day on the beach. Luce spun the radio dial up through the frequencies and back down, over and over. Fractional blips of voice or music phasing in and out, interrupting the overall hiss and warp of interference. She wouldn’t say a word. She didn’t cry, but with every mile they drove north, dread filled the car like floodwater rising.
Stubblefield tried to draw her close. She felt like one solid muscle resisting the pull. But as soon as he took his hand away from her shoulder, she let go, quit clutching into herself, and leaned to him.
Luce said, I asked why you’re not married, but you didn’t ask me.
—I’ve been too glad about it.
—Yeah, well. There’s probably about twenty reasons, but do you want to know one of them?
—If you want to tell me.
—I’m not talking about what I want. Do you want to know?
—Yes, I do.
So Luce gave him the story in brief. The room over the drugstore beside the movie theater. The library with the tiny librarian. The telephone office in the former hotel with the dark hallways. The wall of Bakelite plugs, the cot, and the quilt. Mr. Stewart and the Saint Christopher medallion. No anger, no emotion. Just the facts.
By way of conclusion, Luce said, I lived through it, so if you can’t stand to hear it, you can take me home and go to hell. Men get so damn strange sometimes.
Stubblefield kept driving, trying to think of the right thing to say. Like a magic spell in a story. A few perfect words that make your wishes true. But they wouldn’t come. He said, all at once, I’m sorry, I love you, I’ll kill that bastard.
—He’s moved on, Luce said.
—I found Lola. I could find him.
—Nice offer, but tha
t’s all long gone.
She fiddled the radio up and down again and then switched it off and twisted in the seat until she was lying on her back, her head in Stubblefield’s lap, looking up at a full moon above pine trees, flowing bright and dark through the windshield until she fell asleep.
CHAPTER 12
SHOULD HAVE BEEN A NIGHT DRIVE like any other, but as soon as the beer and pills kicked in and the stars started jittering and pinwheeling, Lit set in on the same questions he had asked in the summertime when he came sniffing around for uppers. The difference was, now the trees were nearly bare and back then he hadn’t really cared about the answers.
Lit couldn’t possibly have a concrete clue to go on, Bud thought, only pool hall rumors and bullshit lawman instinct, thus far clouded by his need for pills. And the suspicions were the consequences of Bud’s own actions, primarily getting drunk and running his mouth to the wrong people. Nobody to blame but himself, except possibly Lily’s bitch sister, if she ignored his warning and set a fire under Lit’s skinny ass, either getting him all sentimental about his little baby girl from the way back years or the idiot grandchildren. Which gave Bud pause, since he’d never entirely clarified that last relationship to himself. Lit a granddaddy. Nevertheless, a deep disappointment for Bud that even his best friend had started acting strange.
Lit probed on and on into Bud’s past, but he didn’t mention Lily. Or Luce’s suspicions about the kids. But they were back there in the history Lit wondered about. However evasive Bud tried to be, however hard he squirmed to change the subject, Lit kept circling around. Every question had to do with Bud’s identity. What was Bud’s full name? Where all exactly had he lived in his life? Had he ever been married? In his previous life, had he ever encountered anybody who grew up here?