“Next time,” Russel said, “I’ll shit in your cap and make you eat out of it. I expect you to deliver the mail right from here on out. Got me?”
Russel’s voice had been so low and straightforward, it scared me. It was the tone he had used that day in the parking lot of the day school.
“Yeah,” Jack said. All the bravado had gone out of him. He was just a big bully that had finally met his match.
“You aren’t so tough,” Russel said. “I’m a sixty-year-old man and I just kicked your ass. Get up and git.”
Jack rolled to his hands and got up. He saw me standing at the edge of the building and he turned red. I handed him his mailbag as he walked by.
“Don’t forget to pick up that mail you dropped,” Russel said. “Deliver it the way it’s supposed to be delivered. Now.”
Jack turned around and looked at Russel, and there was a hint of showdown in his eyes. But just a hint. It faded like an ice-fleck on a stove.
“Now,” Russel said in that menacing voice.
Jack swallowed, went around the corner, got his hat and picked up our mail. We followed him and watched him open the door and drop the mail inside, gently.
“Very nice,” Russel said.
Jack squared his shoulders as best he could, and walked past us. Before he was out of earshot, Russel called after him. “You have a nice day, hear?”
25
Lunch time I drove Russel over to Kelly’s, ordered hamburgers, fries and beers. I couldn’t help myself. There was something about the guy.
After lunch we had a couple more beers and Russel said, “I’m going to ask this straight out. You feel any different about me, Dane? I guess I’m saying, do you forgive me?”
“Does it matter to you?”
“It matters.”
I thought a moment. “I don’t know exactly how I feel. Obviously part of me likes you, or I wouldn’t be here with you buying you lunch and shooting the breeze with you.”
“Part of you.”
“I feel guilty liking you. Maybe I like you because you remind me of my father, or the way I remember my father. He killed himself when I was very young. Then, there are times when I think about that night you had hold of Jordan with one hand and had a knife in the other. You didn’t use it, but I still think about it. It’s like a snapshot in my head.”
“You know what I saw when I was holding your son’s shirt that night, Dane?”
“No.”
“My son. For some reason I saw Freddy, or the way I remember Freddy. I haven’t seen him since he was a boy, except that picture of him older that his mother sent me in prison. I don’t know if I really remember that much about him, or if I made it up in prison. But that’s what I thought of that night. Freddy.”
“Tell me about Freddy,” I said.
“I don’t know if there’s any more to tell. His memory is more like a parasite than anything else. It eats at me. He had little hands, blond hair, the same freckles on the back of his hand that I have.”
“And blue eyes.”
“Yeah, and blue eyes. I remember noticing that he had such little hands. Not just little for a baby, little hands. Not deformed, just small. My mother had hands like that. She also had the freckles on the back of one, just like me and Freddy. You know, the last thing I really remember about him is sort of sappy. It was Christmas and I bought him a red truck and I remember him on the floor playing with it. Even now, when I think of him, that’s the first thing that comes to mind. I have to look at the older picture of him and concentrate real hard to imagine him any older than five, and then I don’t do it so well.”
“What was the fly in the ointment, Russel? What happened?”
“I was the fly. I think from the day I was born I’ve been damaged goods. No bad cracks, but some hairline fissures. My dad was a night watchman at a factory and my mother took in sewing, later she had her own shop. They made a decent living and they were decent people. I can’t blame them for a thing. They did everything they could to encourage me, put me off in the right direction.”
“But it didn’t work?”
“Nope. I just couldn’t stick with anything. I got bored. I wanted everything now, not later.”
“We all think we’re smarter than the other guy,” I said.
“I thought it more than others. I know better in a way, but hell, I still think that deep down. There’s a part of me that just can’t understand why I’ve got to go the slow route like the Philistines.”
He drank some of his beer and smiled at me. “I’m a case, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, but you don’t sound so different from a lot of others. That still doesn’t explain what happened.”
“Maybe it’s just a lazy streak Dane, I don’t know. But I’d be working in some factory, making some machine mash aluminum pipe into lawn furniture, and I just couldn’t see beyond that. It was like whatever it was I was looking for was hiding and it could hide real good. I felt like I had been sent to hell. You know what hell would be to me, Dane? Working in an aluminum chair factory, mashing that goddamn monotonous aluminum pipe into chairs, the sound of those fucking machines going, cachump, cachump, and some redneck standing over me telling me to do it faster. That’s hell to me.”
“Lot of people have done shit jobs,” I said. “Me included. You don’t have to do them all your life.”
“I don’t doubt that, but for me I could never see beyond them. No future window, I guess. As time went on I started feeling empty, and then I got into the quick money.”
“Stealing?”
“Yep. I didn’t get caught when I was young. Just luck, no other reason. I fell in with some guys and we knocked off filling stations all over East Texas. Carried water pistols that looked like guns and we’d split the take. Even then I felt it was just something I was doing until I found what it was I was supposed to do. The thing that would take that part of me that was empty and fill it up.”
Russel raised his beer very deliberately and took a long, slow sip from it.
“To shorten this story up,” Russel said, “I didn’t stop doing it, and I did a little stretch later on for a grocery store robbery. I went in with my water pistol and the owner had a pistol under the counter, and his didn’t shoot water. He just held the gun on me while one of the clerks called the police. I did some time. Not much. I was young and the judge was lenient, and they didn’t know how long I’d been robbing places. To them it was my first offense.
“Anyway, I graduated to the big time when I got out. I went to Florida and got in with this professional hotel robber named Mick. He had a perfect scam. He had bellboys and elevator operators on his payroll, and when a good mark checked in, they’d call him.”
“Just business to them.”
“Exactly. Then he and I would come over at the right time, go to the mark’s room, beat the lock, which is something I got good at—”
“I know.”
“That guy gypped you. Those locks and bars he gave you might keep a twelve-year-old kid out, but any burglar could go through that stuff like a worm through shit. You ought to get your money back.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. What about the Florida stuff?”
“We’d go into a room and take what we wanted, put it in the mark’s suitcase to add insult to injury, and just walk out. We knew all the back routes and we had the inside help. It was nothing. Got so we were making big bucks.”
“But you weren’t satisfied?”
“Nope. Same old story. I couldn’t see beyond what I was doing. I always wanted to, but couldn’t. It was like the moment was it, and once I realized that, everything just sort of closed in on me. Robbing beat the hell out of factories, but after a while it just didn’t do it. And I could never get over the guilt. I wasn’t really a born criminal. I couldn’t rationalize it the way Mick and others could. I always saw it as wrong. My upbringing, I guess. I mean I knew I was a crook and a sleaze. I didn’t feel like a debonair cat burglar, I felt like a scumbag. One time we
were robbing this hotel room, and on the way out I saw myself carrying the suitcase full of loot in one of those full-length mirrors, and it hit me. It was like a picture of my life and I didn’t care for it.”
“So you tried to reform.”
“Yes, I did. I came back to East Texas. I met Jane and we got married. I started working at a plywood plant, and for a while there, the work didn’t bother me. I had someone to come home to and something to expect. Then when Freddy was born, things began to fall apart. I wanted things for the little guy and I couldn’t see it happening at the plywood plant. I got a little promotion, but it was so piddling it just made me mad. Like I said, I’ve got no patience. I want everything now. Thinking back on it, I was doing pretty good there and the promotion came pretty quick, and the next one would have too. I’d have been off the line completely and I’d have been the redneck telling the other poor bastards what to do. But I got empty again and started fucking up. I stayed mad all the time and it showed at home and work, and I got demoted and I quarreled with Jane and yelled at Freddy enough that I felt guilty. And that’s when I started doing the little jobs. I’d take weekends and go case places outside of town and I’d steal little piddling things. I mean, it wasn’t helping my income much, but it gave me some kind of purpose. Damned if I can explain it. It’s like that guy that keeps rolling the rock up the hill in hell. Gets it to the top and almost over, then the bastard rolls back on him. My life was like that. I’d almost have it whipped, then it would roll back on me.”
“Did your wife know?”
“She suspected something. Me going off on the weekends, saying I was hunting or fishing. I never came back with nothing. I didn’t even go to the fucking fish market and buy fish to bring home and fake it. It was like I wanted to be stupid. If I had gone to the fish market, I’d probably have bought fish sticks just so I could look even more stupid.
“Finally I robbed the payroll at the plant. It came in late one evening and I knew all about where it was kept by then, so I came back that night, beat the lock and the safe and stole it. One of the bosses just happened to come back for something and he saw me going out of the building. Next day it didn’t take them long to put two and two together. They let me off with giving the money back and firing me. They didn’t want any stink.”
“Sounds to me as if you were lucky.”
“That’s a way of looking at it. Anyway, you know the rest. I finally got in with some guys and did a job on a liquor store and that one cost me about twenty years. Jane tried to stay in touch, and for a while I answered her letters, but I wouldn’t let her come visit. I didn’t want her and Freddy to see me in prison. I still didn’t feel like a convict. I felt persecuted. Can you beat that? I kept thinking they’d come to their senses and let me out.”
“She sent me pictures of Freddy and kept me informed about what he was doing. Said he did well in school and played football and was a quarterback. Seemed to be good at everything. I was proud in one way, but in another I felt like the shit at the bottom of a dog pile. I even burned her letters and some of Freddy’s pictures. Decided to just let them go so they could build a life that was worth something. It was like I had gotten worse than empty. It was like the bottom had come out of me and there wasn’t anything on the other side of me, just a hole to nowhere.”
“What about your wife?”
“She hung in there for a long time. She loved me. I quit answering her letters and for a time she still wrote, but finally she quit. With the last she sent that picture of Freddy as a young man. I never heard from her again. I learned later that she died drunk in a motel in Dallas. I don’t know anything else about it.”
“Freddy?”
“No idea. But I made up my mind when I got out I was going to find him and make it up to him. I was going to mend the hole in me and fill it up with something. Then when I got out I was told he was killed, burglarizing your house no less, and there wasn’t just a hole in me, Dane, there was a vacuum that sucked out my soul.”
“And now that you know I didn’t kill him?”
“Maybe the hole’s closing up. I’ve got some hope. I don’t know who that sucker is in the ground out at the graveyard, but it isn’t Freddy. That means there’s a good chance he’s out there somewhere, and I want to find him and be some kind of father to him. Convince him that loving me is worth something. And convince myself that my life hasn’t been just a waltz of shadows, that it has purpose. Or can have.”
“I hope it works out, Russel. I really do.”
“I know you do.”
I ordered coffee, and we drank that and had another cup. I said, “You talked to Jim Bob?”
“Tried to, a couple of times. He’s not saying much. He told me to put my faith in the Lord and Radio Shack.”
“Radio Shack?”
“That’s what he said. He’s not going to say anything until he’s ready. I’ve known him a long time. He’s a lot smarter than you think he is. Don’t let that hick front and all those corny good-old-boy sayings fool you. Back when I was doing the robberies, he knew. He tried to straighten me out, give me some good advice. But—”
“You didn’t listen.”
“I knew he was making sense, and I still couldn’t listen. Same old story. Know better, but can’t do better.”
I looked at the clock on the wall.
“Damn,” I said. “We need to get back to work. I doubt James and Valerie would like the idea of me taking the hired help out to lunch and beers and chitchat while they’re building frames.”
I put down the tip and paid the check and we got out of there. Back at work I sat behind the counter and thought about Russel back there sweeping up; thought about what he told me about having a hole in him that made a vacuum that sucked out his soul.
26
It was a hot Sunday with a hot wind blowing through the pines like a diseased cough, carrying a hint of dead fish from Lake LaBorde. The birds were making small talk in the trees like it was more of an obligation than a desire; they sounded like they needed air-conditioning.
I know Ann and I did. We were taking turns leaning over the backyard grill cooking hamburgers and wishing we’d fixed tuna-fish sandwiches inside. Jordan was taking it well enough though. He was sitting on the patio playing with a toy car and making motor sounds.
I’d just flipped the meat when I heard the phone in the kitchen, and I went inside to answer it.
It was Jim Bob.
“What’er y’all doing?”
“Grilling some burgers, sweating like peasants.”
“Sounds good.”
“The sweating or the grilling?”
“Both, I reckon. I been in this damn room so much I need a good honest sweat. The bottoms of my feet are starting to grow carpet.”
“Well, come out.”
“Can you put up with Russel too?”
“Jordan’s here, and …well, you know what happened.”
“I know, but I’ve got something important to tell the two of you. Can you make some kind of arrangements? A baby-sitter?”
“It’ll be a little inconvenient, but I guess I can talk to the Fergusons. They still owe us a few babysittings.”
“Good.”
“This news you want to tell us. Is it good?”
“Good? Well, I don’t know if it is or not, but it’s news. I’ve made some headway. I know what happened to Freddy, and I know how to find him.”
“That’s good news.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Is he alive?”
“I think so.”
“Isn’t that good news for Russel?”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“What’s all the mystery, Jim Bob?”
“It’ll be easier to explain when I get there. I’ll bring some beer.”
“Good enough. See you in a while.”
“By the way, I like mine well-done. When that sucker is smoking it’s cooking, when it’s black it’s done.”
“One hockey puck co
ming up.”
The burgers were done long before Russel and Jim Bob arrived, and we set them in the microwave until we wanted to warm them up again. We fixed Jordan his, and he ate, and I called the Fergusons and asked if it was okay if we brought him over. They agreed and Ann drove him there and came back madder than when she left—and that was pretty mad. She didn’t want Russel over for dinner. In her mind, it was like inviting Hitler. What she wanted was to jab him in the eye with a pointed stick and nail his head to a post. Maybe put turpentine on his balls and light it. Just to be contrary, she said we’d eat outside on the redwood table. She wouldn’t have that man in her house—again.
By the time they showed the wind had turned savage and stale and the mosquitoes, like bomber squadrons, had started to move out of the woods in search of prey. But it was getting late enough that the sun was moving westward and the grill had cooled, so it wasn’t as hot as it had been. Instead of quick frying, we were simmering.
I heard the Red Bitch come into the drive, and I went around and met them and led them around back. When Russel saw Ann he began having trouble with his hands. He didn’t know where to put them. He tried by his sides and in his pockets, but they didn’t seem to fit or hang right, mostly just fluttered about as if trying to escape from his wrists. I’d never seen him so flustered as when he was in Ann’s presence.
Jim Bob didn’t seem to notice. He held up a six-pack of Lone Star and Ann took it and put it in the fridge inside. She started the burgers microwaving. I had Jim Bob and Russel sit down at the redwood table, and I went inside and got the fixings and brought them out on a tray.
Ann brought the burgers and some beers, and we each fixed our buns with mustard, lettuce, tomatoes, the whole shooting match. The only one that really did any talking was Jim Bob. He talked about the weather and the price of gasoline and about how the LaBorde police had been following him around like a baby duck following its mama, then he turned to Russel and said in the same tone of voice, “I found out what happened with Freddy, Ben.”