Taft

"He'll come around," she said. "I believe that absolutely. The question is how much trouble will he be in when he finally does."

  I pulled the car into the alley behind Muddy's and we sat there for a minute. Us alone in a car together had good reason to make me nervous.

  "It didn't take all that long," she said, looking at the back of the bar.

  "Not too bad."

  "I'm kinda hungry. Could we get something to eat? Something fast?"

  It wasn't about being hungry, since Rose's food was free and plenty good. She just wanted to stay out a little while longer. Then I remembered it was her birthday. "A person ought to get taken out to eat on her birthday."

  Fay looked up and smiled. She had forgotten too, if only for that minute. "I'd like that," she said.

  I took her across the street to Doe's Place, which is big and open and bright. All the chairs were desk chairs, secretary chairs. We sat down at a table that was such a bright, fake blue it made me think of the blue paper people put behind fish tanks to make the water look like an ocean. Olie, the cook, waved to me from the open grill.

  "What does it take to get you to cross the street and come see me?" he called out.

  "I haven't seen you over there drinking much lately."

  He laughed, the big loud laugh of a cook who kept a bottle of beer going for the whole day. "I'll be over," he said. "I got to find out what's going on between you and that pretty girl." He pointed a spatula at Fay.

  Fay blushed and, with that, became a pretty girl.

  "Get yourself a steak," I said to her. "Anything you want. It's your birthday dinner." All the steaks in that place were bigger than her head, but I could get Olie to cut one down for me.

  "Are you getting a steak?"

  "I'm at Doe's," I said. All of the sudden I was glad to be there, glad to be back at Doe's after a long time away, glad to be with Fay. "You told me your birthday was next week."

  "I didn't want to tell you what day. I didn't want you to think you had to get me a present. But this is a present. You're taking me out to dinner. I walk by this place all the time. I've always wanted to go in."

  "You've never been here? Olie," I said. "She's never been to Doe's. Give us two tenderloins, and make one of them a size that won't scare her."

  "I can do that," he said.

  The waiter, who had been cut out of the whole transaction, came over to see what we wanted to drink.

  "Nobody could have told me an hour ago that this could have turned out to be a nice day. Carl's home, safe for now. Of course, he's going to have to tell Mom, go back next week."

  I put up my hand. "Enough about Carl."

  She raised the Coke that the waiter had brought to her and touched it to my beer. "Enough about Carl." She took a sip of her drink. "So, you having fun with your boy?"

  "Sure," I said. "I haven't seen him much yet, but we're going to have a lot of fun."

  She nodded. "You thinking you might get remarried to his mother?" she said, cutting to the chase.

  "That seems to be the question of the day. I was never married to his mother, and I don't expect I ever will be."

  "Do you want to be?"

  "I'm way past that."

  "Good," she said.

  Olie brought the steaks over himself. "A little one for the pretty one," he said, giving a plate to Fay. "Tell me, are they getting younger or are we getting older?"

  "I think it's both," I said to him. "Olie, this is Fay. She's a waitress over at Muddy's and today's her birthday."

  "Birthday!" Olie said. "You should have told me. I would have put a candle in your steak. How old are you today, pretty girl?"

  "Eighteen," Fay said. So much blood had risen to her face that her skin looked nearly burnt.

  "Eighteen," Olie said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Perfectly legal and completely marriageable. That's what I like to see my boys running with. Now you enjoy your dinners, both of you. He treats you bad, you come tell me," he said to Fay.

  She nodded, too embarrassed to say anything. Olie laughed and left the table.

  "You've got a friend for life," I said. "You could probably get a job over here if you ever needed one."

  "You shouldn't have told him it was my birthday." But she said it happy.

  "He's glad to know." I started to cut into my steak. A hot knife through butter, I swear.

  "So what do you think?" she said.

  "What do I think about what?"

  "About marrying me," Fay said, "now that I'm eighteen."

  My knife hung right over the steak. I had to stop and take the sentence apart in my head to make sure I'd gotten it right. This one I never saw coming.

  "I know you think I'm crazy, but I'm not. Listen," she said, putting down her fork. "I can go anywhere now. We could leave. We could go out west, California, Nevada, it wouldn't matter. Don't look like that. We could stay here, too. I really wouldn't mind. It would be all right, being in Memphis if I was married to you. We could keep everything the same as it is now. You work in the bar and I work in the bar. I like it there." She put her hand over my hand. My hand still had a knife in it. "I love you," she said. "I'm not making this up. I don't mean to scare you to death or anything here, but I think this is a good idea and maybe you just haven't thought about it before."

  "No," I said. "I hadn't thought about it."

  "That doesn't mean it's a bad idea." Fay took a bite of her steak. "This is awfully good."

  I took a bite of mine. Not because I wanted it, but because I liked the idea of having my mouth full. Then both of us were eating, cutting and chewing and saying how good everything was and not saying anything else.

  "Like that?" Olie called from the grill.

  "It's great!" Fay shouted back.

  "I can't marry you," I said.

  "I know you'd have to say that," she said, taking a sip of her Coke. "All I'm asking is that you think about it. To me, it makes such sense. You could take some time on this, not say no right away."

  "I don't see how it could change."

  "But you don't know for sure," she said.

  She seemed pretty cheerful about the whole thing. No woman had ever asked me to marry her before, if you discounted drunk girls in bars when I was playing. Even Marion hadn't asked me, even when she wanted to.

  "You don't think there would maybe be a few, well, obstacles to us?" I could think of fifty without even taxing myself.

  Fay looked at me square and gave herself a minute. "No," she said. "Think about it. Don't say anything. Just think for a while."

  We finished up our dinner. I was trying to think about it, but my mind couldn't even get near it. "We need to get back," I said, looking at my watch and not seeing what time it was.

  "You kids have fun," Olie said.

  We waved to him and walked out onto Beale like we were together. With all the streetlights going it was hardly like night.

  Fay turned into an alley. "Oh my God," she said. "Look at this."

  I followed in behind her to see and when I did she grabbed both of my hands and lifted up on her toes to kiss me. She pressed her whole self into me. I felt her through the clothes.

  "Wait a second," I said.

  She looped one of her ankles between my legs and pulled me in closer. She kissed me.

  "Fay." I pushed her shoulders back and she nearly lost her balance, standing on one foot.

  "Kiss me," she said.

  "This isn't the time. A man needs to think, all right?"

  She stepped back from me, just a little, and she nodded. "You're right," she said. "Absolutely right. I don't mean to be in such a rush."

  I was relieved. I didn't want to hurt her feelings. It had been a hard enough day, her birthday.

  "You're not mad at me?" she said.

  "No."

  She took my arm and held onto it. "That's all I need to hear."

  How could I get mad at a girl who kissed me that way?

  THE TOW WAS THIRTY. Taft let the AAA lapse last year to save a little money
. Don Holland went to high school with Taft. He's done well. Used to be he did auto body out of his back yard, but it got to where he had so many cars they were parked all over the neighborhood and he had to get a regular shop. Now he's open on Saturdays, too. He answered the phone himself when Taft called this morning asking if he could go out and get the car off the road before the police found it. Taft came down to Don's place as soon as they'd brought the car in.

  "Radiator came through it okay," Don says. "And the battery's fine."

  Taft nods. The car is right in front of him. The left front end is smashed, the headlight gone, the tire ripped and pointing in, the metal is crumpled in the front and actually ripped along the side, just waiting to rust. The front grille is hanging down on the grass. A heavyset dog with a white face and a feathery tail comes and sniffs at the grille and then walks away. There are more than a dozen cars parked out side of Don Holland's shop, not counting the Chevy truck and the Pontiac that belong to Don. They've killed all the grass. There are also four white chickens that the dog doesn't seem to mind at all. They're scratching in the dirt, wandering underneath the cars. "What are we talking about here?" Taft asks.

  Don takes out a little calculator from his pocket and punches in some numbers. Then he takes a hard look at the car and starts punching again. "Insurance pays twenty-three hundred dollars. You pay seventeen hundred."

  Taft sits down on the hood of a Mazda that's behind him.

  "The best thing is that he didn't hit another car." Don stops and thinks about this. "Well, the best thing is that nobody was hurt. He hit a guardrail and not a tree. That's good. That's metal. See the way that looks in here?" He points to the whole bashed in left front of the car. "We could say it was a hit-and-run and that way Carl doesn't become completely uninsurable."

  "At least that's something," Taft says.

  The way Don is biting his lips Taft knows there's more coming. "The problem is your blue book. I looked it up. In top condition the car is worth twelve hundred, which means the insurance company is going to total it. Five hundred for the deductible and you get seven hundred."

  "I pay four hundred in premiums."

  "That's them figuring you're going to hit somebody in a Jaguar. That's not them replacing your car."

  Taft nods and pulls down the brim of his Caterpillar hat. He tries to look like he's thinking things over, but there's nothing to think about. They have to have a car and seven hundred dollars doesn't cut it. There is not seventeen hundred to fix it.

  Don Holland likes Taft. He liked him when they were in school. He knows you've got to be careful about doing people favors. It winds up being bad business and bad friendship. "I'll tell you what," he says. "I make it drivable. Not good looking, but drivable. I'll realign the front end, straighten out the frame and put on your spare for four hundred dollars, and that's just between you and me. No insurance."

  "I don't want to be cheating you."

  Don holds up his hands. "I'm telling you, the car looks just like that. We can maybe rig up some sort of headlight for the front so you don't get pulled over. It's going to drive, but you won't be winning any beauty contests in it. I can do that much, if that's what you're interested in."

  This is exactly what Taft is interested in. "I don't care about anything else," he says.

  Don squats down next to the spot where the metal is ripped. When he touches it Taft holds his breath, thinking that he's going to find something else. Mechanics can be like doctors in this way. "I can show you sometime about pounding out some of those dents," Don says, "maybe trying to find a secondhand fender. Even a little Bondo would work." He puts his finger through a round hole in the metal. "The truth is, you don't have to do it all at once. Little at a time, you can put it together."

  Of course, do it piece by piece. Taft feels the panic starting to move away from him. Sure, he can do it this way.

  Don looks around the yard. "How'd you get over here?"

  "Walked."

  Don stands up and brushes off his hands against his jeans. "Let me run you back. I'm supposed to pick up some things for my wife anyway. I might as well drop you off."

  "It's nice enough out."

  "Come on," he says. "It's frying hot. I'm going and I won't feel good about driving past you on the road. I'll take you by the place we picked up the car."

  Taft was going to say no, but now he agrees. He hasn't gone out to River Road where Carl had the accident and he wants to see. Don tells his two mechanics that he's going out. Then they get in the pickup together and go.

  Taft is thinking on the ride over that he has to find a way to move his family in from the edge. It can't keep being like this. Every time something happens they're scrambling around like a bunch of headless chickens to get back on their feet. There has to be a cushion, a little something there to fall back on. In his mind he starts to look for ways to cut back, things to save. His wife was right, he shouldn't have started that deck, but the wood was already paid for and he got it all at a good discount anyway. He could open a savings account, put in everything he made at the lumberyard. That was the whole point of taking the job in the first place. But as soon as a little more money was there, a little more money was needed. It would have to be something else. He would have to figure that out.

  "It's up here," Don says, and pulls the truck off to the shoulder of the road. They get out and walk over to see what might have happened.

  "Those guardrails," Don says. "They can take a hell of a lot."

  The guardrail looks nearly as bad as the car. It's stretched and bent. You can see the shape of the fender, little flecks of gold paint where Carl had brought the car to rest. What's bad though, really bad, is looking over the other side. Taft feels like he's going to be sick. It's nearly a straight drop down fifteen feet. It is a beautiful drop. The grass is dark green and thick and at the bottom there is a wide creek that's full of water from last week's rain. Turns out he hadn't been so crazy after all, thinking about Carl being dead that night.

  "Sweet Jesus," Taft says, leaning over and then pulling himself back.

  "Do you know how it happened?" Don says.

  "It's those damn stock car races. Two boys were in the car with Carl and two other boys were in another car and they started racing. At least that's what Carl told me this morning. They came around that curve"—Taft points up the hill—"and Carl couldn't hold it. He hasn't been driving very long. I never should have let him go to those races. It puts too many ideas in a boy's head. For all I know, they were driving side by side. If a car had come around there I guess they'd all be dead." Taft looks over the edge again.

  "It makes you think," Don says. He gives the guardrail a kick and the metal doesn't so much as shudder. "I'm glad my kids aren't driving yet."

  "Don't ever let them," Taft says.

  Don takes Taft back to his house. "I appreciate the lift and everything," he says. "I'll have that money for you."

  Don nods. "No hurry. I'll see if I can't get things workable by Tuesday."

  Taft gets out and slams the door. He wonders if he should ask Don in for a beer, but he isn't sure what they'd talk about other than the accident and Taft doesn't want to talk about that anymore.

  Taft calls out hello, hello, but there isn't any answer. Everybody's gone. Taft isn't sure how this is possible, seeing as how it's Saturday afternoon and there's no car. He walks through the quiet house and looks for his family in each of the rooms. At least they bought the house. Not that they were anywhere close to owning it, but at least they weren't paying rent anymore. That was something. It's just after noon, but since Taft wondered if he should ask Don in for a beer he's starting to want one himself. He's not a drinker, not by any stretch, but seeing that guardrail bent has rattled him and he thinks that sitting down with a beer might make him feel better. If somebody comes in, he can get rid of it fast. Taft tries never to take a drink in front of his kids.

  Taft finds a can of Budweiser in the back of the refrigerator. There are two left. He c
racks one open and takes a sip. It's not so bad, the quiet, the beer. He feels like he's doing something racy and it pleases him. He twists the stick on the Venetian blinds in the living room to make things dim, then he goes and flips on the television. He finds a program on public television about trout fishing in Montana and he sits down to watch it. Drinking and watching TV in the middle of the day. Why the hell not?

  The men on the TV are tying complicated flies made out of thread and bits of colored feathers. "Cutthroat, grayling, whitefish, rainbow," they're saying. Taft is drifting, thinking about standing in a river with those men someplace far from where he is, nothing better to do with his time than fish and get paid for it. They're standing hip-deep in water, swinging their long poles back and forth over their heads. That's when the doorbell rings.

  Taft is startled for a second, realizing that he was almost asleep. He gets up to answer the door and takes the can of beer with him without thinking about it. Then he thinks he has to get rid of it. He looks around and the doorbell rings again. He runs and puts it back in the refrigerator.

  When he opens up the door there's a little black boy standing there. He's wearing red shorts and dirty tennis shoes and a T-shirt that says BOYS CLUBS OF AMERICA on it. There's a cardboard box next to him on the front porch.

  "Hello," Taft says.

  "Hello," the boy says, staring just above Taft's belt, which is how high up he comes on him. "I'm selling chocolate bars for my school. They're a dollar fifty cents. You want one?"

  "For your school?" Taft says, a little confused. "Not for Boys Club?"

  The boy looks down at his T-shirt. "This was my brother's," he says. "They don't have Boys Club anymore."

  Taft is going to say yes, maybe because it seems like a shame the kid doesn't have a Boys Club to go to, even though he isn't exactly sure what one is, or maybe it's because he always says yes to these things. Then he remembers about the money, about cutting back. "I don't need any chocolate right now."

  The boy looks up at him then. Taft isn't so tall. "You sure?" the boy asks again. "Whoever sells the most gets a bike."

  "That's pretty good," Taft says. He feels sorry for the kid because he knows already that he isn't going to win, at least not in this neighborhood. He looks behind him, down the street for any sign of a parent. It's not safe to let your kids go door to door by themselves. It's safe around here, but who knows where the boy is heading next. "You by yourself?"