Fay: A Novel

  There didn’t seem to be a soul in the house. She made coffee and looked through some drawers for some more cigarettes but couldn’t find any. She seemed to remember a store down the road a ways. She sat down and waited for the coffee. When it was ready she poured a cup and put sugar in it and milk from the icebox and looked at some cold pastries in there but decided against them. When she had the coffee in front of her and it had cooled down a little she lit her last cigarette and smoked it while she drank the coffee. It went too quick.

  “Well shit,” she said. She stood up and drank the rest of the coffee and turned the pot off. Back in the room she was staying in she got her purse and let herself out the front door and went across the porch and down the steps and stopped at the road. She didn’t remember which way the store lay, but she thought it was back to the east. Same old shit. Walking again. At least she was used to it.

  It was two miles to the store, actually a Shell station but she knew they sold cigarettes. She still had some money left. She went in and got a bottle of orange juice and two packs of smokes and paid and went back outside and opened the orange juice and felt an instant something crank up inside her when it hit her stomach. Right away she opened a pack of the cigarettes and lit one. It seemed a hassle to walk back down the road drinking the orange juice so she stepped down to the curbing just outside the station and sat down.

  She could see the water from there, could see the birds veering up and down in the air. Cars passed on the road and the wind moved through her hair. The juice was cold and good and men and boys kept going into the gas station and coming out of it and they all looked at her sitting there in her shorts. Most looked on the way in. All of them looked on the way out. Some of them looked at her through the glass.

  By the time she finished the juice she was feeling a lot better and thought she’d go back to the house and find something to eat.

  Cars passed her on the road. She didn’t stick her thumb out. Two miles was nothing. Boys in pickups blew their horns at her. She just smiled and kept walking but was careful not to wave.

  By late evening she’d found some tomato juice in the fridge and some vodka in a kitchen cabinet and ice in the bin and had fixed herself something to sip. She took it out in the backyard.

  When she heard a vehicle pulling in she knew it was Aaron. She didn’t even turn her head. Not until it stopped and she heard the door open and slam shut. When she turned he was already going up the steps into the house.

  If there had been a chair back there anywhere she would have sat down in it. She walked in circles back there, sipping at her drink. It looked like he’d come out and see about her. It looked like he would have said something before he went into the house.

  She went over to her purse and picked it up and carried it with her around the side of the house, up the gravel drive, and looked at the paint flaking and peeling away in white curving pieces. She turned the corner and went across the front yard close to the porch and climbed the steps and sat down on them. Her usual place she guessed. Most of the boats were in now but people were still moving around on the dock. The birds were still sailing.

  Most of the drink was gone and it was watery. She finished it off and set it down beside her. She heard his steps in the house. She could hear him moving around in there and she wondered what he was doing. It was wrong to be here with him.

  She could leave and try to get back to Sam. Get her things, walk out the door, never look back. Get somewhere and find a phone and get an operator to help her and get his number, call him, tell him where she was, see what he sounded like. Find out if it was safe to tell him where she was first.

  In the movies they could trace numbers. But what if you were calling from a gas station or something? And you just walked away from it once you had hung up? They couldn’t catch you then could they?

  “Fuck it,” she muttered. She picked up the glass and went over to the front door and opened it and walked up the hall. It was quiet in there and she thought of how old this house was and of how long it had stood here. Through wars. Through the deaths of the untold number of people who had once slept in it or made love in it or maybe died. When she stopped beside the big room where all the old things were he was standing with his back turned to the hall, just standing there with his forearm resting on the mantle over the fireplace and looking down into the empty hearth. He must have heard her but he didn’t turn. And she didn’t know whether to speak to him or not. She waited for a while, less than a minute, probably, but he didn’t turn or give any indication that he knew she was there. So she went on into the kitchen and fixed herself another drink. A bottle of whiskey was sitting on the counter beside an open can of Coke.

  She looked back up that way. She could go quick. She could be out on the road in less than five minutes. But the road led only to places she didn’t know. At least she knew this place a little bit. And in that tiny moment she decided to stay. She opened the cabinet door and reached for the bottle again.

  Just before dark she saw him walk across the street to find her sitting on the wharf with her feet hanging over the side. He was barefooted, had a drink in his hand. His cigarettes were jammed into his pocket. The shirt he wore was blue denim and the sleeves had been hacked from it so that the slabs of his arms with their freckles and pale red hair looked enormous, and were. He squatted down beside her and didn’t say anything for a minute, just looked off into the expanse of the Gulf and studied it. Finally he leaned back and sat down on the boards next to her and crossed his legs.

  “Well,” he said. “How’s your hangover?”

  “It’s better now. Did you fuck me last night while I was passed out or was it somebody else?”

  He looked up at her and seemed surprised.

  “Hell, you wasn’t passed out. You were asking me for it. You don’t remember it?”

  “I don’t remember much. I remember a little about when we left. Did y’all get in a fight?”

  “Y’all who?”

  “Your brother. Cully. And you.”

  He scratched the back of his head, looked like he was trying to remember. He looked out across the ocean.

  “I don’t guess you remember that shit either.”

  “What was in that drink he give me?”

  “Hell if I know. You was already shitfaced when I come out. Somebody started a fight on the way out. When I was trying to get you into my car. Cully like to broke his toe kicking him.”

  “I remember that.”

  “And some bastard had a pistol and shot at us. Some sumbitch who claimed Julie robbed him.”

  She let some time pass, let the birds cry some more.

  “Seems like it’s always a lot of trouble over there,” she said.

  He nodded and looked down at the planks he was sitting on.

  “I tried to get you not to go.”

  “Don’t you ever leave me alone again with your brother. You hear me?”

  “Well what am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care neither. I just don’t want to be around the son of a bitch.”

  He raised his hands in a backing-off gesture.

  “All right, damn. Take it easy.”

  She sat there in silence and looked at him. The wind had risen and his carefully combed hair was blowing loose and it was longer than she’d thought. She reached one hand out and rubbed her fingers against his cheek and then took them away. He scooted closer.

  “Listen. Mama’s gone up to Winona for a couple of days to stay with Henry. Her boyfriend. She left me a note but I didn’t find it and then she called. His ticker’s been acting up. She ain’t got any guests and I want to get out of town for a few days. You up for it?”

  “Where we going?”

  He pulled back from her and looked out across the water. He pulled his cigarettes and lighter from his pocket. When he looked back at her there was nothing showing on his face.

  “Gulf Shores,” he said. “I done called for a reservation. We can get into
the Best Western right on the beach if we get there tonight.”

  “I need to go to the doctor sometime,” she said.

  “I know you do. We’ll do that when we get back. But let’s go over for a couple of days and lay on the beach and eat some oysters. Few days ain’t gonna make no difference about you seeing the doctor. Is it?”

  “I reckon not,” she said. “I just need to go sometime.”

  “All right, then.” He stood up and reached out his hand to her. He took her back across the road, watching for traffic both ways and holding tightly to her hand, and she went back into the house and took a shower and washed her hair and packed her swimming suit and some clothes and underwear into her suitcase. Got her toothbrush.

  While she was checking to see that she had everything in her suitcase she heard something pull in. She stepped back out into the hall and saw Aaron talking to a man in a pickup, a new Dodge, tan and brown, with a big camper hull bolted over the bed. It was Arthur, the bartender, that Aaron was talking to. She saw them raise the hatch on the camper hull and stand there looking and talking. Then they closed it and Aaron handed him a set of keys and Arthur got into the El Camino that was parked under the old oak tree and he left.

  She went back to the room and got her suitcase. She set it down in the hall and walked over to the front door and turned the bolt in it, checked it. She went back to her suitcase and picked it up and carried it to the back door. Aaron was getting a few beers from the icebox and he asked her if she wanted one.

  “Not right now,” she said. She stood there waiting. It was just dark and the yard light had come on so that she could see a sort of blue glow over the gravel out there.

  “You ready?” he said.

  “Yeah. I’ve got all my stuff. I locked the front door.”

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s go, then. We’ll be there in about two hours.”

  She went out and stood on the back porch and watched him turn out a few lights and then come out with the keys and put one of them into the lock on the back door and turn it and check it. He helped her down the steps and opened the hatch and put her suitcase in and slammed it shut and then opened the door on the pickup for her and went around to the other side and slid in and cranked it up.

  “How come we’re going in this?” she said.

  “More room,” he said, pulling on the headlights and rolling down his window so that he could see how to back around. “Plus if it rains your stuff won’t get wet like it would in the Camino.”

  It was full dark now. The headlights showed the gravel on the drive and the peeling paint on the side of the house and he pulled out to the street and down the hill to the coastal road and pointed it east. He had to wait for two cars and then he mashed down on the gas and they headed out. He opened a beer and pushed a tape into the deck. She looked over at the gas gauge. It was full.

  He reached out for her leg and she slid closer to him in the seat.

  “Rest if you want to,” he said. She put her head back and leaned against him.

  “Do you have any of the movies she made?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Gigi.”

  He waited so long to answer that she thought he wasn’t going to. But finally he said, “That ain’t nothing you need to see.”

  BOOK 3

  JOE PRICE PICKED him up at the hospital in his cruiser and drove him home down the lake road with the trees standing under their masses of leaves, the shade beneath, the dark forms of spotted horses flicking their tails at flies, and horned bulls chewing their cuds while rocking their horns gently and lying in the cool black dirt. Farmhouses, fences, tall waving grass and people with mowers in their yards.

  “We done took your car home,” Joe said, and glanced at himself in the mirror. Some of the troopers called him Pretty Boy and never behind his back. “I guess you got some more time off now, huh?”

  “I reckon so,” Sam said. “How about pulling in up here and let me get some smokes before I get home?”

  “I will if you’ll pick me up somethin cool to drink while you’re in there, sport.” He put on his blinker and slowed going into the curve. Boats were for sale out to the side of the store, party barges with colored fabric tops and aluminum rails and big pontoons. Joe stopped right in front of the door to let him out.

  “What you want? A Coke?”

  “Yeah. Can you get out that door?”

  “I ain’t that damn crippled,” he said, and got out.

  A boy was tending the register and he got two short ones in green glass bottles and a pack of cigarettes and paid. The cruiser door was still open when he went back out.

  After they’d been on the road for another mile or so Price answered something on the radio, but Sam wasn’t paying any attention. Tomorrow was a week since they’d found Alesandra. Fay’d had a week to get somewhere. And he’d had a week to get ready to talk to somebody from the sheriff’s department. That day they’d sat out behind the hospital sipping the whiskey Joe had told him there was plenty of talk around the department. But he hadn’t wanted to ask any questions. He’d wanted to keep Fay’s name out of it. He was hoping that maybe Tony McCollum would just forget about her and be satisfied with the answer he’d given him at the boat landing.

  Price was studying him now, sipping his Coke, wanting to ask him something, he could tell. Joe’d been careful with his questions about Alesandra and Sam had given him short answers that let him know he needed to shut up about it. They had the windows cracked and some wind was whipping the short ruff of Price’s hair.

  He guessed Joe couldn’t stand it.

  “They called you?” he said, glancing at him while he drove.

  “Who?”

  “Hell, you know who. Don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter.”

  “You mean the sheriff’s department?”

  Price took another sip of his Coke and rested the bottle on his creased trousers. He had on a really nice gun. He flashed his lights at an oncoming car and it slowed.

  “Asshole,” he said, to the person in the car. “I mean Tony. Our boy Tony who’s so hot to get on the highway patrol. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  He thought about it for a few seconds.

  “Naw.”

  “Well he is. He aspires to be one of us.”

  Some more road went by. Somebody was raking hay in a field. They entered the park boundary and drove by the lower lake. It was jammed with campers and tents. He slowed at the curve where the spill-way went under the road and Sam looked down to see people in work clothes and shorts and T-shirts fishing over the rail.

  “What do you think that means?” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Price tooled the car around the curve lazily. “Might be he’s ambitious. Grayton wouldn’t let him come over to the hospital. He wanted to. Tried to.”

  “Now how you know all this?” Sam said.

  “Shoot,” Joe said. “Little birdies fly around. Once in a while one comes around and shits right on your head.”

  Sam waited. They turned left to go up on the levee.

  “Loretta told me,” he said. “She saw it.”

  “I met her one time.”

  “She’s a fine piece of ass ain’t she?”

  Sam nodded. “She looks pretty fine. I don’t know how fine her piece of ass is.”

  “You’d probly skeet off before you ever got it in, buddy boy. If I was you, I’d be looking for Tony pretty soon.”

  “I already told you, Joe. I don’t know what happened.”

  Price just nodded. They went on down the road and stopped to get the papers at the end of his driveway. He got out in his yard and Joe waved going out the drive with his sunglasses and his shiny cruiser, the tires crunching in the gravel and one hand hanging out the window, his fingers spread to grab the wind.

  IT WAS THE hottest sun she’d ever felt. Kneeling there in the sand wearing the white visor he’d bought her the night before at a local Wal-Mart she watched him talking to the browned boy with the
tattoos who furnished umbrellas and foam pads for the wooden recliners that were rented by the day. Aaron pulled money from the pocket of his white shorts and gave it to the boy, who picked up a big blue umbrella and together they headed over to where she was.

  She turned her head and gazed out at the water. The waves were rolling in high breakers and even though it was only nine o’clock in the morning the sand was covered with people—children, swimmers, and waders. Out in the dark green swells she saw the humped backs of dolphins coursing up and down. She’d thought they were sharks until Aaron laughed and hugged her with one arm and went to talk to the boy with the umbrellas.

  Now he came over and tipped his hat to her and said Good morning ma’am and she smiled and got up and waited. There were two of the wooden recliners and another boy came jogging with the foam pads and put them down, one on each, and the other boy stepped between the recliners and started wedging the umbrella down deep into the sand. Aaron rubbed her back with his hand.

  “I went ahead and got it for two days,” he said. “Cheaper that way. You think you can take two days of this?”

  She looked around. As far as she could see up the beach both ways there were big hotels and decks and houses and restaurants that backed almost to the edge of the water. People walking and wading everywhere or just lying on their towels, sitting in their beach chairs, reclining under their umbrellas.

  “This is great,” she said. “I can tell I’m gonna hate to leave already.”

  He just laughed. He was in a good mood, had been ever since last night when they’d first pulled into town. He’d left her in the truck right in front of the hotel lobby just long enough to check in and get the key, then he’d gotten back in with her and took her to a place called Coconut Wally’s where they had to stand in line for ten minutes before they could get a table. But once they were seated there were tall frosted margaritas and fat fried oysters. She ate them this time and was surprised how good they were. She had boiled red shrimp on beds of ice and cocktail sauce with horseradish. And then back at the hotel they moved with each other in the darkened room with only the moonlight showing through the opened curtains on the third floor.