Lucy said, “That isn't necessarily odd. You said he doesn't like you. Maybe he kept you out of the autopsy just to annoy you.”
“After the autopsy I went to see Dersh. When I left Dersh, two guys in a blue sedan were on me. It was an LAPD license.”
Pike thought about it. “You sure they didn't follow you from Parker Center?”
“Nobody knew I was going to see Dersh, so that means they were already there. Only why would they be sitting on Dersh?”
Pike nodded. “Now we're talking odd.”
“Yeah.”
Lucy touched my arm and traced her fingers to my hand. She tangled her feet with mine and smiled.
Joe stood. “Guess I'll be going.”
Lucy realized what had happened and took back her hand, blushing. “I was teasing before, Joe, really. You're welcome to stay for dinner.”
Joe's mouth twitched again, then he left.
Lucy groaned and covered her face. “God. He must think I'm a slut.”
“He thinks you're in love.”
“Oh, sure. I'm pawing at you like I'm in heat.” I had never seen Lucy that red.
“He's happy for us.”
“Mr. Stoneface? How can anyone tell what he's thinking? God, I'm so embarrassed.”
We stared at each other then, not speaking. The depth and movement that glimmered in her eyes held me until I said, “Wait.”
The Dom wasn't as cold as I wanted, but that was okay. I filled two flute glasses, and brought them out. I put Natalie Merchant on the CD player, singing “One Fine Day,” and then I opened the big glass doors. The canyon was still. The early evening air was cooling, and the smell of summer honeysuckle was sweet. I offered Lucy my hand, and she stood. I offered a glass of the champagne. She took it.
Lucy glanced at her overnight bag, still on the floor in the kitchen, and her voice came out husky. “I want to change. I've got a surprise for you.”
I touched her lips. “You're my surprise, Lucille.”
Her eyes closed as she rested her head on my chest.
I thought for a moment of dead girls, heartbroken old men, and things that I did not understand, but then those thoughts were gone.
Natalie sang sweetly about a love that was meant to be. We danced, slowly, our bodies together, floating on an unseen tide that carried us out to the deck, and finally up to my bed.
Forged
The boy sat in a green world. The broad, furry elm leaves that sheltered him caught the afternoon light like floating prisms, coloring him with a warm emerald glow. Hidden there, staring between the mask of leaves at the small frame house that was his, the boy felt safe. Three black ants crawled on his bare feet, but he did not feel them.
Joe Pike, age nine. Tall for his age, but thin. An only child. Wearing shorts cut off just above the knee, and a striped tee shirt long since grimed to a murky gray. Known as a thoughtful, quiet boy at school. A bright child who kept to himself and, some teachers thought, seemed moody. In the third grade now. His first-grade teacher had asked to test the boy to see if he was retarded. The teacher then was a young man fresh from an out-of-state teachers college. Joe's father had threatened to beat him to death and cursed him as a faggot. Joe didn't know what a faggot was, but the teacher had paled and left the school midway through the year.
Joe sat cross-legged beneath the young trees at the edge of the woods, low branches cutting his line like breaks in a jigsaw puzzle as he watched his father turn into the yard and felt the same rush of fear he felt every day at this time.
The blue Kingswood station wagon stopped by the front porch, gleaming as if he had just driven it off the showroom floor. Joe watched a short, powerfully built man get out of the wagon, climb the three wooden steps to the front porch, and disappear into the house.
Daddy.
Joe's father built the house himself, three years before Joe was born, on a plot of land at the edge of the small town in which they lived, only two miles from where Mr. Pike worked as a shift foreman at the sawmill. Not much out here except some woods and a creek and some deer. It was a modest clapboard design of small unimaginative rooms sitting on a raised foundation. The house was painted a bright clean yellow with white trim, and, like the car, gleamed spotlessly in the bright sunlight. It looked like such a happy home. Every Wednesday afternoon, when Joe's father got home from work, he washed the house. Three times every week, he washed the Kingswood. Joe's father worked hard for his paycheck, and believed in taking care of the things that he had. You took care of things by keeping them clean.
Five minutes later, Joe's mother came out onto the porch and called him to supper. She was a tall woman with heavy hips, dark hair, and anxious eyes. She was almost as tall as her husband. She would have supper on the table at four o'clock on the dot because that's when Joe's father wanted it. He went to work early, came home after a long day of busting his ass, and wanted to eat when he wanted to eat. They ate at four. He would drink himself to sleep by seven.
Mrs. Pike walked to the lip of the porch and called without direction because she did not know that her son was watching her. “You come in now, Joseph! We'll be having supper soon.”
Joe didn't answer.
“Suppertime, Joe! You'd better get home!”
Even as she said it, Joe could feel his heart quicken as the fear spread through his arms and legs. Maybe tonight would be different and nothing would happen, but he couldn't count on that. He just never knew, and so Joe waited silently until she went back into the house. He never went when she first called. He got home from school at three, but got gone fast, and stayed out of the house until the last possible minute. In the woods was better. Safe from the fear was better.
But ten minutes later his mother reappeared, and now her face was pinched and anxious. “Goddamnit, boy, I'm warning you! Don't you make your father wait! You get your butt in here!”
She stalked back into the house and slammed the door, and only then did Joe slip between the branches.
Joe could smell the booze in the air as soon as he opened the door, and the smell of it and what it meant made his stomach knot.
His father was sitting at the kitchen table, feet up, reading the paper, and drinking straight Old Crow whiskey on the rocks from a Jiffy peanut butter jar. The table was set for dinner, but Mr. Pike had pushed the plates to the side so he could put his feet up. His father watched him come in, finished what was in the glass, then jiggled the ice in the glass to draw Joe's eye. “Fill 'er up, sport.”
Joe's big job. Filling his father's glass with Old Crow.
Joe got the bottle from the cabinet under the kitchen sink, pulled out the cork, and poured a little bit into the glass. His father scowled. “That ain't even a swallow, boy. Give a man a fit highball and people won't think you're cheap.”
Joe filled the glass until his father grunted.
His mother said, “You ready to eat?”
Mr. Pike's answer was to take down his feet and pull his plate closer. Joe and his father didn't look anything alike. Where Joe was tall and thin for his age with a lean, bony face, his father was shorter than average, with heavy forearms and a round face. Mr. Pike said, “Christ, can't you say hello to your old man? A man comes home, he wants his family to give a damn.”
“Hi, Daddy.”
Mrs. Pike said, “Get the milk.”
Joe washed his hands at the kitchen sink, then got the milk from the refrigerator and took his seat. His mother was working on a highball of her own, and smoking a Salem cigarette. His mother told Joe that she drank just to keep some of the booze from his father. Joe also knew that she poured out some of the whiskey and refilled it with water, because he'd seen her do it. His mother had told him, “Joe, your father's a damned mean drunk.”
And Joe guessed that his father was.
Mr. Pike rose at four every morning, knocked back a couple of short ones to “get his feet under him,” then went to the mill. His father didn't drink in bars, and almost always came straight home unless h
e'd picked up a second job doing carpentry, which he sometimes did. If there wasn't the second job, the old man was home by three-thirty, pouring his first one even before he'd opened the paper, knocking back two or three before supper. After supper, he'd turn on the television, settle back in his EZ Boy to watch the news, and drink until he fell asleep.
Unless something set him off.
If something set him off, there would be hell to pay.
Joe knew the signs. His father's eyes would shrink into hard, tiny pits, and his face would glow bright red. His voice would get louder, letting everyone know he was about to let go, but Joe's mother would shout back at him curse for curse. That was the scariest part to Joe, the way his mother did that. It was like his father was giving them fair warning, letting them know he was losing control of himself, that there was still time to settle him down, only Mrs. Pike just couldn't seem to see it. Joe was only nine, but he could see it coming as fearfully as you could see a hundred-car freight train bearing down on you if you were strapped to the tracks. Joe would see the signs, and watch with horror as his mother ignored them, just kept digging at the old man in that way she had as if she wanted to set him off, when all Joe wanted was for her to stop, was to say and do the things that would calm the old man, was just get the hell out of there and run into the woods where he could hide and be safe.
But no.
His mother was blind to it, and Joe would watch as she pushed harder and harder, Joe getting so scared that sometimes he cried, begging her to leave Daddy alone, none of it doing any good until the old man finally had had enough and jumped up, shouting, “There's gonna be hell to pay.”
His father said it every time.
That's when he started to hit.
Mrs. Pike brought a roast beef to the table for her husband to carve, then went back to the stove for mashed potatoes and string beans. His mother and father weren't looking at each other, and barely spoke, and that had Joe worried. Things had been tense between them since Saturday, when his father was watching the Game of the Week with Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean. His mother was vacuuming the floor around the television, which had the old man pissed off enough, but then she'd run over the antenna wire with the vacuum and screwed up the reception at the bottom of the eighth inning in a three-two game. It had been building every day since then, with both of them retreating into silence and hostility until the air in the house seemed charged with fire.
Nine-year-old Joe Pike, the only child in this house, could feel their building anger, and he knew with terrified certainty what was coming as surely as the coming of the full moon.
Mr. Pike took another slurp of his whiskey, then set about slicing the roast. He cut two pieces, then frowned. “What kind of cheap meat is this you bought? There's a goddamned vein right through the middle.”
Here we go.
Joe's mother brought potatoes and string beans to the table without answering.
His father put down the carving knife and fork. “You forget how to speak American? How you expect me to eat something that looks like this? They sold you a piece of bad meat.”
She still didn't look at him. “Why don't you just calm down and eat your supper? I didn't know there was a vein. They don't put a label, this meat has a vein.”
Joe knew his mother was scared, but she didn't act scared. She looked angry and sullen.
His father said, “I'm just saying is all. Look at this. You're not looking.”
“I'll eat the goddamned vein. Put it on my plate.”
Mr. Pike's face began its slow, inexorable crawl to red. He stared at his wife. “What kind of comment is that? What's that tone in your voice?”
Joe said, “I'll eat it, Daddy. I like the veins.”
His father's eyes flashed, and they were as small as steel shot. “Nobody's eating the goddamned veins.”
Mrs. Pike took the roast. “Oh, for Christ's sake, this is a helluva thing to argue about. I'll cut out the vein and then you don't have to see it.”
Mr. Pike grabbed the plate from her and slammed it on the table. “I've already seen it. It's garbage. You wanna see what I do with garbage?”
“Oh, for Christ's sake, stop.”
Her husband jumped to his feet, scooped up the roast, kicked open the kitchen door, and threw it into the backyard. “There's what I gotta eat. Garbage. Like a dog in the yard.”
Joe seemed to grow smaller in the chair, and wished that he was. That he would shrink smaller and smaller and finally disappear. The freight train was caving in the sides of the house, coming for them now, and no one could stop it.
His mother was on her feet, too, face red, screaming, “I'm not cleaning it up!”
“You'll goddamned clean it up, else there'll be hell to pay.”
The magic words. There'll be hell to pay.
Joe whimpered, “I'll clean it up. I'll get it, Daddy.”
His father grabbed his arm and jerked him back into his seat. “My ass you will. Your goddamned mother's gonna do it.”
Mrs. Pike was shouting now, her own face livid. She was shaking, and Joe didn't know if it was because she was scared or angry or both. “YOU threw the boy's supper out the door! YOU clean it up. I'll let it stay there for everybody to see.”
“I'm telling you, there's gonna be hell to pay.”
“You hate it here so damned much, maybe you oughta leave. Go live somewhere they don't have veins!”
His father's eyes shrank to wrinkled dots. Arteries bulged in his red face. He charged across the kitchen and punched his wife in the face with his fist even as Joe shrieked, knocking her into the kitchen table. The Old Crow bottle fell, shattering in a splash of glass and cheap whiskey.
His mother spit blood. “You see what kind of man your father is? You see?”
His father punched her again, knocking her to her knees. His father didn't slap. He never slapped. He used his fists.
Joe felt liquid fire in his arms and legs, as if all the strength and control drained from them and he couldn't make himself move. His breath came in deep gasps, tears and snot blowing out of his nose. “Daddy, don't! Please stop!”
His father punched her in the back of the head then, and she went down onto her stomach. When his mother looked up again, her left eye was closing, and blood dripped from her nose. She didn't look at her husband, she looked at her son.
Mr. Pike kicked her then, knocking her onto her side, and Joe saw the fear flash raw and terrible in her eyes. She cried, “Joe, you call the police. Have them arrest this bastard.”
Nine-year-old Joe Pike, crying, his pants suddenly warm with urine, ran forward and pushed his father as hard as he could. “Don't hurt Mama!”
Mr. Pike swung hard at the boy, clipping the side of the boy's head and knocking him sideways. Then he kicked, the heavy, steel-toed work boots catching Joe on the thigh and upending him with an explosion of nerve-shot pain.
His father kicked him again, and then the old man was over him, pulling off his belt. The old man didn't say anything, just doubled the thick leather belt and beat the boy as his mother coughed up blood. Joe knew that his father couldn't see him now. His father's tiny red eyes were lifeless and empty, clouded by a rage that Joe did not understand.
The thick belt rose and fell again and again, Joe screaming and begging his father to stop, until finally Joe found his feet and bolted through the door, running hard for the safety of the trees.
Nine-year-old Joe Pike ran as hard as he could, crashing through the low sharp branches, his legs no longer a part of him. He tried to stop running, but his legs were beyond his control, carrying him farther from the house until he tripped over a root and fell to the earth.
He lay there for what seemed like hours, his back and arms burning, his throat and nose clogged with mucus, and then he crept back to the edge of the woods. Shouts and cries still came from the house. His father kicked open the door again and threw a pot of mashed potatoes into the yard before going back into the house to curse some more.
Joe Pike sat hidden in the leaves, watching, his body slowly calming, his tears drying, feeling the slow burn of shame that came every time he ran from the house and left his mother alone with his father. He felt weak before his father's strength, fearful before his rage.
After a time, the shouting stopped and the forest grew quiet. A mockingbird chittered, and tiny flying bugs spiraled through shafts of dimming sunlight.
Joe Pike stared at his house, and seemed to float free of time and place, simply being, existing invisible and unseen here at the edge of the woods, hidden.
Here, he felt safe.
The sky grew red and the forest darkened, and still Joe Pike did not move.
He took the hurt and the fear and the shame and imagined himself folding them into small boxes, and placing those boxes away in a heavy oak trunk at the bottom of a deep stair.
He locked the trunk. He threw away the key. He made three promises:
It won't always be this way.
I will make myself strong.
I will not hurt.
As the sun set, his father emerged from the house, got into the Kingswood, and drove away.
Joe waited until the Kingswood disappeared, and then he went back to his house to see about his mother.
I will make myself strong.
I will not hurt.
It won't always be this way.
11
• • •
Light from the morning sun shone through the glass steeple that is the back of my house and filled the loft. Lucy was naked, sleeping on her belly, her hair tangled from the hours before. I snuggled against her, fitting myself to the line of her hip, enjoying her warmth.
I touched her hair. Soft. I kissed her shoulder. The salty warmth good on my lips. I looked at her, and thought how lucky I was to have this view.
Her skin was a dark gold, the line of her legs and back strong even in sleep. Lucy had attended LSU on a tennis scholarship, and worked hard to maintain her game. She carried herself with the easy grace of a natural athlete, and made love the way she played tennis, with aggression and passion, yet with moments of shyness that moved me.