LATE IN THE evening Aaron knocked gently on the door to her room. There was no noise inside there. Nothing making even a peep. He put his ear up to the wood and listened. Goddamn rock and roll in Cully’s joint had about run him deaf.
He didn’t hear anything in there. He hated to knock again and wake her up if she was asleep. He turned quietly and went up the hall and sat down on the couch. He pushed some magazines off onto the floor and looked at them. Gardening stuff. Arlene was crazy about all that stuff. Can your own vegetables. Make pretty shit out of paper. Decorate the whole goddamn house with it. He pulled his pipe back out of his pocket. He had some more of the hash stuck down in his pocket and he stretched one leg out enough to get it out. He unwrapped it, still listening for her, then loaded the pipe and fired it up. He wished Arlene would come on home and maybe she could take care of her. He didn’t know what to do with her. Leave her alone he guessed. Let her get well.
He sucked the smoke down and looked at the door. She was probably asleep. But how did he know she wasn’t just lying in there with her eyes open, wide awake, listening to him out here, just didn’t want him to know she was awake because she didn’t want to talk to him? That was probably it.
She’d feel bad for a while over losing the baby probably. But it might be just as well. What kind of a chance would it have had and whose was it anyway? It wasn’t his. Just like Reena’s probably weren’t his. It didn’t matter that they had light-colored hair. Lots of little bastards running around had light-colored hair. Just because you fucked some woman for a while didn’t mean you had to spend the rest of your life taking care of her rugrats.
She went to see him. Oh that burned his ass. That odometer had read 89106 that night when he’d parked it at the Holiday Inn and he knew because he’d looked and the next morning before he got in the pool it read 89145. Didn’t nobody put no forty miles on a car driving it around Oxford looking for a hamburger. Well. He’d wanted to see what she’d do if she got close to him, and she’d done it. Went straight out there wherever it was and scoped out the hamburger joints on the way out or even picked it up then and took it with her. Had she seen him? Had she fucked him? Probably so. That was why he’d done it to her so hard. To make her be sorry for what she’d done to him behind his back. But if he could just keep his eye on her down here, everything would probably be all right. She could go back to helping Arlene sometime, whenever she came back. He didn’t know how long it took a woman to get over something like this but he could find out.
He looked at the door again. Was she a good actor like Wanda? Was her whole story a lie? He didn’t think it was. He thought she was just a country girl who didn’t know anything about the world. He hoped she wasn’t feeling too bad. He’d told himself all along he’d never get this close to one. And goddamn, now here he was. He guessed he was in fucking love with her. And the dope was kicking in. It was kicking in right nice right now. Oh yeah. She’d be all right. She’d get healed up. She’d be ready to do it again then. Shit. Hang on to her. Do it with her forever. Every night. Keep her away from that shithole where he worked. Keep her away from his stupid-ass brother.
He thought a drink would be pretty good now, so he got up and went back to the kitchen and took down a glass and put some ice in it. The Maker’s Mark was sitting out and he saw that a good bit was gone from it. He looked up at the stairs. Wonder it hadn’t broke her fucking neck. Then where would he be?
AND NOW ON top of everything else it looked like you couldn’t even go off and drive around for a while without some drunk son of a bitch running over your mailbox. He wished he’d been home. He wished he’d been in his uniform and had been around when this happened.
He got out and left the door open and walked around there. Somebody had moved it. Shit. He stood there looking around. There was one skid mark on the road, curving into here. Somebody coming from that way didn’t knock the mailbox over here. So why’d they move it? Unless they wanted down his driveway. And there shouldn’t have been anybody here. Unless Tony McCollum or somebody had come over.
It was misting rain on him. What if Loretta had come back over? God he hoped she wasn’t down there waiting for him right now. If she was, she was probably the one who’d knocked his mailbox down. But he hoped she wasn’t down there.
He stepped over in the wet grass and kind of leaned over looking at it. He straightened up and put his hands on his hips. The mailbox itself had a big dent in it. Hell. There on the gravel in the driveway were some chips of paint that had been knocked loose. He went over and tried to pick some of them up, but they flaked away in his hand. What did he want them for anyway? Keep them? Naw. He had enough bad memories already. He didn’t need anything to remind him of them. And most of the time he tried to focus on the good ones anyway.
But he’d get the mailbox. He’d come back up here before dark with the hammer and get those nails out of the board it was fastened to and take the box down to the house like he already should have done. The damn road was full of mailboxes, he didn’t know why some asshole had to hit his.
He got back into his truck and put it into gear. She’d better not be down here waiting on him. She could go right back out a lot quicker than she’d come in. All he wanted was to get out of his truck and take off his boots and fix a drink and then start thinking about what to fix for supper. If he even had anything. The eating had gone to hell around here. He’d even kept that last piece of fried chicken Fay had cooked until it was just a withered brown nub and then he’d thrown it in the trash.
There was nothing but his cruiser sitting at his house. That was real good. He wheeled in and parked and got out. He’d have to get some music going as soon as he got back in or the television. When something was making some noise or you could hear people talking, it wasn’t like company exactly but it was something to listen to while you were going over all the other stuff in your head. He had to keep remembering that she could always call. And he’d been leaving the answering machine on but there hadn’t been any messages.
When he walked by the cruiser he just happened to look down and see an ink pen lying there beside the door. Hmmm. He stopped and picked it up. It was white with green letters and a green cap. He brought it up close to his face. Holiday Inn. Oxford, Miss. Right there on North Lamar. Bartender’s name was Clyde. He’d been in the lounge and had a beer before. Folks came in there all the time and watched the ball games. And there was nothing strange about the pen except that he didn’t remember ever having it. He looked through the window. His clipboard was in there and it always had a bunch of pens stuck on it, still did. But he didn’t know where this one had come from.
And then he did. Somebody had probably dropped it when they’d dropped off his car. He thought he’d see if it was any good because he could always use another pen. People borrowed them all the time and never gave them back.
He opened the door and reached in for the clipboard. There were some forms clipped to it and he took the pen and tried to draw some circles with it. Cheap son of a bitch wouldn’t write. He tossed the clipboard back on the seat and shut the door and gave the pen a pitch toward the woods. But it was very light and it didn’t travel very far. And he had more shit on his mind to worry about than damn ink pens.
AND THERE WAS still Reena, oh yeah. Aaron had almost forgotten about her with all the stuff that was going on. She came up to him as he was locking his car in the parking lot and he stopped with his key in the door and looked down at her. She didn’t say anything at first but he could see the wet tracks down her cheeks.
“Don’t waste your breath,” he said, and turned the key and pulled it out.
“Baby,” she said. “Please. Just listen to me for a minute. You’ll do that, won’t you?”
He didn’t want to stop. Fay was asleep again now after he’d finally gone in and tried to talk to her and taken her in some food. But he wanted to get on in.
“Make it fast,” he said.
“I ain’t been able to see you,” she said.
He didn’t even want to look at her. He knew her so well.
“Sugar pie, there ain’t nothing for you to see me about. I tried to get you the hell away from here a long time ago.”
“You mean when you were still taking care of me, Aaron? Is that what you mean?”
He faced her and backed up a step while traffic passed on the road. She didn’t need to push him any now. He didn’t want to hear anything about those kids now. And as bad as he’d seen her already, she looked like hell now. Hair hadn’t even been combed and her tennis shoes were untied and the dirty dress looked like it had been pulled out of a pile. She rubbed her forearm with her hand, taking short steps closer. He looked around. Lots of cars were already in the parking lot. He needed to get on inside.
“Let me go in with you, Aaron. Maybe just get a beer or something? I need something bad, baby. Shot of whiskey. Couple of beers. Please. Just anything.”
He studied her not without sorrow for what she was now. Even fondness for what she had been. The last traces of it were almost gone, but there might still be time for somebody to see some of it if she stopped now, if she got it together by some miracle and hauled ass out of here and took the kids someplace else and got away from these fish bums she kept bringing home.
Then there was that thing about something being for old times’ sake. He guessed this could be one of those times. But it needed to be the last one. She’d want money again. This little tramp would always want money again.
“Look what a favor I did you, Aaron. I got her for you, didn’t I? And it only cost you five hundred bucks. I bet she’s settled in out at Arlene’s, ain’t she? I bet it’s still nice like it was.”
She was crying again, a weepy mess with strange hair.
“All right, damn it,” he said. “Come around back.”
He didn’t wait for her but went right in and among the people with the door letting a diminishing wedge of light come across the stage where the lights were dim and a girl was hard to see dancing and looking like she didn’t know what was going on either. People were yelling about the lights, yelling for them to turn the lights up. Eddie was busy at the bar. Aaron waved at him even when he heard Eddie calling to him and went right on through the door behind the bar and down the hall, the door banging back behind him, its ratchet-down swivel of noise dying in a last rusty croak for a sup of oil.
He tried Cully’s door and it was locked. He twisted the knob. Locked. His piece was behind his back, a fluffy sweatshirt with the sleeves gone over it. She was just getting to be too big a pain in the ass. He wished he knew some way he could just get rid of her. But messing with her was going to have to wait for him to get to his stash over here and he didn’t even want to think about what might be going on out front with the lights.
He stepped to the back door and opened it. She was waiting in the sand, small waif now, luster gone from her eyes. She reminded him of a sparrow hanging around a doorstep in winter, hoping for crumbs.
“Get in,” he said, and she slipped past his wrist and outstretched arm, scooted in. He pulled the door shut, got her by the arm, and took her into the dressing room.
He locked that door behind them. There was an open bottle of whiskey on a table and she went straight for it. It was plain that she’d already gone through all the money he’d given her on that first night, when Fay was waiting for her to come out of the supermarket. And she evidently didn’t even care about how she looked anymore. He remembered the good clothes she used to have and how she looked in them, how men turned their heads and watched her. Nobody would give her a second glance now. It wasn’t all his fault.
Reena had the whiskey bottle turned up. And Fay wouldn’t even talk to him. He’d opened the soup himself and put it in the pan and got it good and hot and took it in to her in a nice bowl on a plate with crackers and had propped up her pillows and offered to help her eat but she’d just shaken her head for him to leave her alone. So he’d left the soup. He’d tried to touch her, but she’d just drawn back and looked away. He hoped she’d eaten some of it.
He moved past Reena to the cabinet in the bathroom and got the stash out and pulled his pipe from his pocket. People were still yelling out front and they’d raised the volume on the music probably to drown out some of the yelling but that just made them yell louder. Fucking place.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. It hadn’t been made up in who knew how long. He loaded the pipe and saw her watching him. She never had gotten too heavy into the dope. It had mostly been just the booze. He saw her slipping toward him and then she got down on her knees awkwardly and crawled over to him. He felt her touch at his ankle. She turned up the whiskey and took another drink from it.
The yelling out front stopped, chopped off short by something. The stage lights must have come back on. Good. Maybe they wouldn’t knock on the door now.
Her hand went up into his shirt pocket from the floor, pulled out his cigarettes and lighter. He never had liked her doing that. A son of a bitch had done that to him on a boat dock one day when he was nineteen and he’d broken his fucking arm for him and told him to ask next time. He waited for her to light it and then got the lighter back and struck it over the bowl and pulled hard on it and the little nest of brown stickiness glowed and smoldered and he drew on it and pulled it deep into his lungs. There was just too much shit to deal with. She was mad at him because of the damn videotape. It had still been in the VCR and he’d backed it up far enough to make sure of what she’d seen. Had watched those images of this one or that one again for only a few seconds, because it seemed now to be the kind of thing you couldn’t take back and once it was done it was. It was taking a picture of it. And it might be possible for almost anybody to see that picture. It might even go to other places in the world, maybe to be watched by foreign eyes, spoken over by foreign tongues.
He held his hand out for the bottle and she passed it reluctantly and watched him drink from it. He welcomed its fire. She had her hand out for it back and when he passed it over she turned it up, leaned toward him on the floor, the other arm holding her up, her thinner thighs showing in glimpses and even the dark thatch, the still perfectly usable mystery monkey.
She lowered the bottle and picked her other hand up and put the cigarette between her lips to draw on it. He could remember her feeding the first baby with one hanging from her lips. He hadn’t even gone to the hospital with the second one because by then there had been others. There had always been others. A place like this stayed full of them because girls like this always moved on. All except this one.
Fay might not want to be around any of the women he’d been with. But Gigi was gone and Wanda might leave now, too. But this one. What would it take for her to leave? Not bad treatment, he knew that. He’d wiped his feet on her for so long she didn’t even feel it anymore.
“You smoke that shit,” Reena said. “You talk crazy. But you love that shit.”
He looked down on her.
“Fay saw your movie. Ain’t that just great?”
“I’d like to see the part with me and you again,” she said.
“I don’t think she got to that part.”
“You know I still got some good lovin for you, baby.”
He turned his head away from her.
“I don’t need it.”
“You don’t need it cause you got Fay now.” She nodded her head to agree with herself and her head started to sway, she already humming the words to a song the whiskey was writing in her brain. “She’s still pretty and young. She’s still got her body. She ain’t had any babies yet. Not yet. Aaron, can I have some money to buy me something to drink?”
And he looked down at her as if seeing her for the first time. He leaned toward her. Great howls rose beyond the satin teddies hanging by sixteen-penny nails driven into the wall, and the music was beating welcome on the air like a great velvet drum.
FAY SLEPT AND dreamed love near a field that bordered a creek where the water ran clear and moving
schools of fish darted under the trees, a boy tall and lanky with black hair who drank their water with them from a tin dipper hung in a barrel, a rounded iceberg floating and bobbing in it, knocking deadly against the wet wood of the sides. He took her away at noon and she walked barefooted in a skirt and blouse into the cool shade with him and on a bed of soft grass he slid one leg at a time out of her panties and lay kissing her to make even nicer the opening of her blouse. And her legs were around him and she was filled up with him and the birds were fluttering up in the trees and bushes around them and the creek bubbled and made a kind of music with the wind that came through the limbs. They married and lived in a little brick house near a branch and the first baby wandered off into it and drowned because it didn’t know how to swim. And she remembered her daddy telling her everybody needed to know how to swim and then Sam came out from behind him on a horse and she swung up with him and left her husband. The next time she looked over her shoulder they were riding through a high meadow where all manner of flowers reared their pretty faces to the sun and sometimes one brushed against her shoulder as if asking her to take it and she did and wove each into her hair. There was a cabin on a mountain where supper was ready. He had a red-and-white checked tablecloth and they ate with candles and wine and laughed in the candlelight, sat on the porch where the horses waited at the hitching rail and on the porch a bed with good quilts and clean sheets like those you get in a hotel and he loved her through the night because they were making another baby. She pulled him as far up inside herself as she could get him, leaned up and grabbed a handful of him on each side and pulled him in as deep as she could. And panted, twisting in her bed, small moans escaping her lips as they finished and more children appeared until sometime soon there was a whole snowy-headed flock of them, boys and girls with Zebcos and dolls. Or she’d have them all in the pool, a bobbing gang of them around like puddle ducks. They all seemed to be about the same size and their names are Frank, Freddy, Francisco, Florentine, Fonda, Felicia, Francis, Floyd, Faison, Ferlin.