“Yeah, the Indian.”
“Not once have you asked me what it was like, what I felt, what was going through my mind. You put your gun by the door, just in case—there, you’ve done your part. Did you think—I’m talking about before now—did you think I might actually have to use it?”
“You did,” Wayne said. “You handled it, you ran the guy off.”
“How do you know? Did you ask me about it?”
“You told me what happened.”
“You know what I mean. Did you think about how scared I must’ve been? You didn’t hold me or say anything. . . . I couldn’t sleep after—do you remember that? The FBI man, Scallen, he understood. I told him I hope I never have to do that again and you said—do you know what you said?”
“You mean when Scallen was there?”
“You said, ‘My wife’s a winner. That’s why I married her.’ “
“Yeah? What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s like you’re taking credit, because you picked me.”
“I was complimenting you, for Christ sake.”
“No, you weren’t. It’s always what you’re doing that’s important, your job, working on a project—what am I doing, the ironing, I wash your dirty coveralls.”
“You want me to do it,” Wayne said, “when I come home? Tell me what you want. You don’t tell me, how’m I suppose to know? You start crying, I don’t even know most of the time if you’re happy or somebody died or you got a pain, it doesn’t seem to make any fucking difference. What I need is something like your Emotional Expression Chart, a big one I can lay over you and find out what’s going on.”
Carmen picked up her can of beer and started out of the kitchen.
“Wait a minute . . . okay?”
She stopped in the hall doorway.
“You want me to talk to this moron, this asshole marshal? I will, I plan to, don’t worry. He ever walks in this house again I’ll wrap a sleever bar around his head. How’s that?”
Carmen stood there long enough to say, “That’s what you’ll do for him. What will you do for me?”
Every once in a while—like getting ice water thrown in your face—she’d get mad when he didn’t know what she was thinking or how she felt. Then he’d get mad because he didn’t see why he was expected to be able to read her goddamn mind. He had wondered if maybe it had to do with her period, mentioned it one time only and got a can of beer thrown at him. He wiped it up from the kitchen floor after she walked out of the house and across the field all the way to the far edge of woods and stood there till it was dark. They made love that night, saying they would love each other forever and everything was fine after. This evening, Wayne had another beer before going to look for his wife and get things back to normal.
She was in the bedroom. The twin beds had been pushed together and Carmen was sitting on the edge of hers, bent over close to the lamp and her can of beer on the night table. She was leafing through the chamber of commerce booklet on her lap. Or going through the motions. Wayne stood in the doorway. He asked her what she was doing.
“I’m reading.”
He kept quiet, giving her time.
“I’m finding out,” Carmen said, “what a wonderful place this is to live. The Centerre Bank is serving us with three convenient locations. Or we can see Colonial Federal for all our financial needs.”
“Are we gonna have supper?”
“If you want.”
“Carmen, I’ll talk to the guy, okay?”
She didn’t say anything. Wayne took a step into the room. “Listen, I mentioned—I started to tell you about meeting a guy when I was with the captain and the chief engineer?” He paused. If she nodded or said almost anything at all it would mean they were friends again.
She didn’t.
“Anyway, this guy, his name’s Bob Brown, he’s a detective with the Cape Girardeau Police. We’re talking, I tell him why we’re here, he says, ‘Oh, so you know Ferris Britton. What do you think of him?’ I said, ‘You want my honest opinion? I think he’s a moron.’ And Bob Brown, the cop, says, ‘You’re being polite. You want anything fucked up, Ferris is the guy you call.’ “
Wayne stood there waiting.
Carmen didn’t say anything.
“They know the guy, what he’s like. He ever walks in here again, call Bob Brown. That’s an easy name to remember.”
She still didn’t say anything.
There wasn’t a sound in the house. Wayne shook his head, still waiting. He said, “All right, tell me what you want. Will you, please? So I’ll know?”
Carmen looked up at him. “How long are we staying here?”
“Till they get the two guys—I don’t know.”
“You told me three weeks,” Carmen said. “No more than that. But now you have a job you’re all wrapped up in, you have your whitetail, so you can go hunting. . . . I guess you’re all set, huh? But what do I have? Outside of somebody else’s house to clean.”
Wayne said, “What do you have?” getting some amazement in his tone. “Honey, you have me, don’t you?”
The way she got up and grabbed the beer can from the night table, he knew she was going to throw it at him.
15
* * *
DONNA STARTED TALKING about Elvis. She said, “If Elvis was Jesus, you know who I think some of his apostles would be? I think Engelbert would be one. I think Tom Jones would be one. And I think, going way back, the Jordanaires and the Blackwood Brothers. Who do you think?”
Armand said he’d never thought about it before.
This was while Donna was clearing the table, setting the dishes in the sink to wash later on, and Armand was waiting the forty-five minutes it took for another chicken pie to heat. They’d had one each for supper and he was still hungry. Richie was in the living room watching TV. Donna moved on from Elvis and his apostles to Elvis’s greatest hits to how she had tried one time to get a job in corrections down there to be near Elvis’s home. The West Tennessee Reception Center was her first choice because it was right in Memphis. When they turned her down she waited a year and tried again, requesting Brushy Mountain, DeBerry Correctional, Fort Pillow, any one of those, even the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville would have been better than nothing. “And you don’t think there wasn’t some kind of conspiracy to keep me out?”
Armand never said there was. He was waiting for that Swanson’s chicken pie to hurry up and get done.
Donna told him the memory of Elvis was like a giant magnet drawing her to Memphis, that if she lived there she’d visit Graceland every day, the way people visit a church and light candles to get their burdens lifted or find a boyfriend. She’d do it knowing peace of mind didn’t come cheap. “But you don’t think it wouldn’t be worth the seven bucks’ admission to have some in my life for a change, after what it’s been?”
Armand said, “I believe you,” because he could see she believed it herself. She had a look in her strange eyes behind those glasses, like she was drugged or had been hit over the head.
Donna served him the chicken pie, left the kitchen and returned with a stack of color photos taken at Graceland Mansion. She had bought the prints off a girlfriend of hers for two bucks each and kept them in that velvety box a fifth of Amaretto comes in. Armand, mopping up chicken gravy with slices of bread he’d fold over, could look at the pictures as Donna held them up but not touch them.
“This is Elvis Presley Boulevard on a rainy day. This is the Heartbreak Hotel Restaurant, it’s not too far. I hear him sing that, I get goose bumps head to toe. I mean still. Okay, this is his famous pink Caddy. This is his lavish jetliner, the Lisa Marie. This is inside it. . . . No, this is inside his tour bus. Elvis would bring some of his closer friends along on tours. They’d play cards, Yahtzee, listen to music. They’d cook right in there.”
“What’s the name of it?” Armand said, wanting to show he was interested.
“The tour bus? It don’t have a name. This is the front room of Graceland.
That couch seats fourteen people.”
“How come his airplane has a name but not his tour bus?”
“If people knew he was in that bus, like if there was anything on it to identify him? There’d be a riot every time it stopped.”
“He could’ve called it some other girl’s name, like the jetliner.”
“Bird, that isn’t just some old girl’s name. Lisa Marie’s his daughter. Her and I have the same birthday.”
“Yeah, is that right?”
“I’ll tell you something else,” Donna said. “My life number is eight.”
“What’s that mean, your life number?”
“You add up your date of birth, like February is the second month, that’s two. I was born on the first, two and one is three, then nineteen, one and nine is ten, so that’s like one. You add that to the three you got from February first, then add up the next numbers—I’m not gonna tell you the year—and it comes to eight.”
“Is that right?”
“Okay, now add up 3797 Elvis Presley Boulevard, P. O. Box 16508, Memphis, Tennessee, 38186, and you know what it comes to?”
“Eight,” Armand said.
“And you wonder why I’m drawn to there?” Donna said. “Think about it. Okay, this is some of his personal jewelry, his gold Rolex watch, his Maltese cross and solid-gold I. D. bracelet. Here’s his famous American Eagle jumpsuit . . .”
“His famous queer outfit,” Richie said, coming into the kitchen. “Jesus Christ, Bird, you eating again? I’d take the Rolex and the pink Caddy, the guy did have a certain amount of class.” Richie was getting a bottle of beer from the refrigerator now. “But that fucking jumpsuit . . . Would you wear it, Bird? You’d have to get the one he wore after he swole up like a pig.”
“You’re jealous,” Donna said. “You can’t look at these without making remarks.”
“Jealous of what? You know what the difference is between me and him?”
“Yeah, you’re ignorant,” Donna said.
“I’m alive and he’s dead and that’s the only thing counts.”
You’re alive, Armand thought, watching Richie take a swig of beer, his fist wrapped around the neck of the bottle. But you don’t have to be. He noticed Richie was chewing gum with his beer.
“I got news for you,” Donna was saying. “After you die, you think anybody’s gonna visit your grave? Even if you had a mother I doubt she would. But a hundred years from now, even longer’n that, people will still be going to visit Graceland.” She looked at Armand and nodded. “It’s true.”
“Is that right?” Armand said, feeling a little sorry for her.
Richie was grinning, chewing his gum and shaking his head. “Donna, you’re so goddamn stupid. . . . Lemme ask you a question. Which would you rather have, Elvis sing to you or fuck you?” He looked at Armand and winked.
Armand stared back at him. He didn’t think Richie was funny, now or anytime before. He watched Donna squinting at Richie, showing him she was being serious.
“I know what you think I’m gonna say,” Donna said, “and you’d call me a liar. Well, I can’t help that, ’cause it’s true. I’d rather have him sing to me.”
Armand believed her. He was surprised that Richie did too, Richie looking at him saying, “You know why, Bird? ’cause he wasn’t a con. Elvis wouldn’t have been rough or smelly enough for Donna.”
“I don’t think of him that way,” Donna said. “He was a kind, generous person who helped people out, gave them cars, whatever they needed. He believed people ought’n to suffer more than they don’t have to. He read books—they say he was ever in search of the answers to life’s mysteries.”
“I heard he was in search of pussy,” Richie said. “Had girls brought to him and he’d take his pick.”
It might be true, Armand didn’t know or care, but decided that was enough. He was tired of Richie. So when Richie looked at him, fun in his eyes, wanting to be appreciated, Armand said, “Leave her alone.”
Richie said, “Who, Donna?”
Maybe a little surprised but still having fun, enjoying himself. Armand decided to push him. He said, “See if you can keep your mouth shut for a while,” and the fun was over. He watched Richie’s eyes become serious and then dull, sleepy, covering what he was feeling, no longer chewing his gum. Wanting to hit me with that bottle, Armand thought. Smash it across my face. Now he gave Richie a frown, curious, not a bad look, and said, “What’s the matter?”
Richie said, “You ever talk to me like that again . . .”
Armand said, “Yeah, what?” because he wanted to hear how this punk would say it.
“It’ll be the last time you do.”
Nothing original about that, the guy remained a punk.
They stared at each other, Armand wanting to tell him, Okay, now go watch your TV. But there would have to be more staring if he did and he was tired of it. So he didn’t say anything and Richie walked out of the kitchen with his bottle of beer. For a few moments there was silence.
Donna cleared her throat.
“This is Elvis’s billiard room,” Donna said. “There seven hundred and fifty yards of material, all pleated, covering the walls and ceiling.”
The next couple of days the Bird got her to make phone calls for them, seeing if they could locate the ironworker and his wife. Donna would say, “What on earth are you boys up to now?” acting innocent and cute for her age. The Bird wouldn’t say anything, but Richie got a kick out of Donna’s act and would give her a wink.
When she called the real estate company for them and asked about the house for sale, she was told it was no longer on the market. That was when the Bird finally said, “Let’s go.” But when they drove past the house—wearing their hunting outfits now, the Bird with that stupid cap on—there was the FOR SALE sign still in the front yard.
What was it doing there? Did they sell the house or not? What in the hell was going on here? The ironworker’s car and the pickup were gone, but could he and the wife still be in the house?
Richie fired one question after another, but might just as well have been talking to the fucking steering wheel. The Bird either wouldn’t answer or would grunt something like, “Unh,” and Richie was supposed to know what that meant.
So he had steam building in him by the time they got the car hidden and approached the house roundabout through the woods, the Bird leading, tramping through dead leaves and making all kinds of noise for a guy who was supposed to be an Indian. An idea began to ease Richie’s mind, that all he had to do was raise the barrel of his shotgun, squeeze the trigger and have something to tell his kids, if he ever had any, watching a cowboy movie, one of those good ones they used to have where you’d see redskins blown off their pinto ponies. “Yeah, I’ve done that. There was this time I was out in the woods . . .” And stopped the picture in his head realizing he’d already shot an Indian, the duck guide. Weird, losing count—like he’d thought of Kevin being his first when Kevin was actually his third. Which would make the last one, the duck guide, number seven. Right? . . . No, there was the 7-Eleven girl with the greasy hair. If she was Indian it would make the Blackbird his third . . . Except if he was a half-breed . . . Shit, it got too confusing. He’d be number nine. Let it go at that. Richie wondered if smoking weed all his life except for the past month or so had fucked up his head. Then wondered if it made any difference.
When they stood at the edge of the woods about a half hour staring at the house, the Indian playing Indian, Richie was antsy as hell but didn’t say a word. Why argue? This partnership would end the minute he couldn’t take any more of it. Or the ideal situation, gun down the Bird the same time they did the ironworker and his wife and make it look like they shot each other. That’d be neat, work something like that out. Read about it in the paper and see old Donna giving him her innocent look. What on earth happened to Bird. And he’d wink or else give her an innocent look back, it depended. Then she’d want to fool with his hair, do some goddamn thing. Take him out and bu
y him some new clothes . . .
The Bird said, “You ready?”
Richie said, “I was born ready,” feeling pretty good about everything for a change.
They were a couple of hunters strolling out of the woods, looking around, nothing important in mind; went up on the side porch, looked around again and became burglars. Let’s see what we have here. Richie’s idea, punch out a pane of glass in the door, reach in, nothing to it. But the Bird stopped him, saying he didn’t like that way, saying cops would come by and see the door. So Richie went around back and broke in through a bathroom window, on the first floor but high up in this old place and he had to climb a tree to reach the window. What was the Bird’s game? Outside of making him do all the work as usual, worried about leaving his fingerprints, the fucking Bird playing it safe. As soon as Richie was inside he could feel nobody else was in the house. He went through to the kitchen and opened the door.
“Well, hi there. Nice to see you.”
The Bird came in, his face set beneath that dumb hunting cap.
Richie left him again to make a quick appraisal tour of the house, see if there was anything of value lying around. What hit him right away, it didn’t look anything like a house the people had moved out of. All their furniture was here. There wasn’t anything packed in boxes ready to go. Richie went upstairs. He found all kinds of men’s and ladies’ clothes hanging in the hall closets, a silver jacket with IRONWORKERS BUILD AMERICA written on it. He remembered the guy wearing a blue one, the same words on it, when he shot at him in the store. There were clothes in the two big dressers in their bedroom, shirts and things the guy had left, couple of good-looking sport shirts Richie thought he wouldn’t mind having, hey, and a T-shirt from Henry’s seafood restaurant, IT’S NICE TO BE NICE. Look at that. It seemed like just yesterday or the day before he was sitting there eyeing the Bird eating his pickerel. Was that what started this whole thing, seeing the Bird? It was weird how one thing could lead to another. You didn’t have to plan your life, shit, just go with the flow. Richie went downstairs and stuck his head in the living room again before going out to the kitchen.