“Thanks,” I said. “That’s a very big relief.”
Just as I was putting down the phone I heard a terrible scream from T.R., who had decided to go swimming while I made my calls. The scream was so chilling I went into shock—my instinctive conclusion was that the young lady in Records had just told me a lie. Earl Dee was out, he had found us, and he was about to murder T.R. I managed to overcome my shock and scramble out the door. One glimpse of the pool was enough to show me my mistake. T.R.’s screams resulted from the fact that Godwin Lloyd-Jons was floating face down on the surface of the pool. The kids eyed his floating body with curiosity but little alarm.
“He’s dead, he drowned!” T.R. said in a shaky voice. “Get him out, Daddy—maybe we can give him mouth-to-mouth.”
“He’s not dead,” I assured her, wishing I could will the adrenaline that had squirted into me when T.R. screamed back into its ducts or glands or wherever adrenaline comes from.
“Get him out!” T.R. said. “I can’t stand to touch dead things or I’d get him out myself.”
“He’s just doing his breath-control exercises—it’s some kind of Eastern discipline he affects,” I said. “He’s always floating on his face in the pool and scaring people like this.”
T.R. stepped closer to the edge of the pool. Godwin seemed to be totally naked, as he often was when he chose to do his breath-control exercises.
“I don’t know, Daddy,” she said. “He sure looks dead to me.”
Indeed, he did look dead. I would have thought so myself if I hadn’t found him floating face down in the pool so many times only to see him suddenly start spurting like a porpoise, after which he would allow himself a few drags of air and then swim up and start being his obnoxious self.
Muddy came running out of the house with his AK-47 at the ready. He ran out and crouched beside the diving board.
“Where is he?” he asked, meaning Earl Dee.
“He’s still in Huntsville,” I said. “I just got the good news.”
Just then Godwin began spurting like a porpoise. Until that moment, T.R. was highly skeptical of my opinion that he was alive.
“See, I told you,” I said. “He loves to float face down in the pool.”
When Godwin lazily swam to the edge of the pool, T.R. was waiting for him.
“What kind of little freak are you, going around scaring people like that?” she asked.
Godwin was largely deaf even when he didn’t have water in his ears.
“My dear, apparently I forgot my trunks,” he said. “I do hope you’ll forgive me. No offense was meant.”
“Is that water cold or is that water warm?” T.R. asked. “I hate to jump off in a pool of cold water.”
“I’m having a little difficulty hearing,” Godwin admitted.
T.R. reached down and felt his arm, which was apparently warm enough to quell her fears about cold water.
“Swimming will feel a lot better now that I know Earl Dee’s still in prison,” she said. “How long did they say they’d keep him?”
“At least a couple of months,” I said.
“Shoot, we can enjoy the summer then,” she said, before plunging into the pool.
Muddy Box seemed a little disappointed that there was no Earl Dee to shoot at. “I guess if he’d come he’d have found out we wasn’t no easy prey,” he said.
The day that had started out so badly with my headache and T.R.’s anger and the sad story of Jill Peel turned into one of the most pleasant days the group of us had spent together. Godwin borrowed Jesse’s towel and made himself presentable. Once presentable, he soon concocted a large quantity of Singapore Slings. Gladys brought out some guacamole and then decided to go swimming herself. Her archaic breast stroke so fascinated Jesse that T.R. and Muddy had to take turns ferrying her around the pool so she could watch Gladys.
“Don’t look at me that way, Jesse—it’s okay if cooks swim,” Gladys said.
Buddy lumbered up to get Bo for their daily fishing trip. He took the news of Earl Dee’s continued incarceration philosophically.
“Somebody’ll slam his headbone, sooner or later,” he said. “Don’t matter how big and mean you are, there’s always somebody bigger and meaner.”
Anticipating the loss of his job due to this news, Buddy drank many Singapore Slings and various other things and got quite drunk. I informed him I had no intention of firing him; I wanted him to guard the house while we went to Europe.
“Which countries are in Europe?” T.R. asked. “Geography was my worst subject in school—I could never work up no interest in any place but Tyler.”
“I guess I know what you worked up an interest in,” Muddy said. He was not participating fully in the general good mood. Running out with his machine gun and finding no Earl Dee to shoot seemed to have left him feeling a little flat.
“How could you know, you grew up in Louisiana, you little birdbrain,” T.R. said affectionately. “You never even heard of me until after I moved to Houston.”
Godwin was having a hard time keeping his eyes off T.R., who wore a very skimpy bathing suit. In an effort to impress her, he rapidly named all the countries of Europe, starting with Iceland and working eastward until he came to Greece.
“What about Australia?” T.R. said. “You didn’t name it. I thought Australia was over in Europe somewhere. I’ve always wanted to see a kangaroo.”
Once in a while, when excited, Godwin reverted to his old professorial mode. At such times he was inclined to spew out streams of erudition, much of it unrelated to any question that had been asked, or anything that a normal human might want to know. In this instance he began to talk about Ptolemy and Strabo. Soon we were left with no choice but to admit that we were dealing with a well-educated man. Godwin’s spurts of erudition made me sulky, made T.R. sleepy, and didn’t affect Muddy at all. While he was spurting, Pedro and Granny Lin came walking up from their hut. They went on into the house in search of beer.
“You started doing it when you was thirteen,” Muddy said, apropos of nothing. “You told me you did that time when we went swimming in the ocean.”
“So?” T.R. said. “What’s it to you when I started? I didn’t even know you then.”
“Thirteen’s pretty young to start,” Muddy said resentfully. “I didn’t even start till I was fifteen, and I’m a boy.”
“There’s no law saying girls can’t start younger than boys,” T.R. pointed out. A domestic argument seemed to be brewing. Godwin went on coughing up odd facts about Strabo and Ptolemy, oblivious to the fact that none of us was interested.
“And then there’s Euclid,” he said. “Quite an amazing mind, really.”
“Muddy’s got an amazing mind, too,” T.R. said cheerfully. “He keeps it in his dick. I’ve known two or three men whose only trace of brains are in their dicks.”
“I guess you would know a few, if you started when you were thirteen,” Muddy said resentfully.
“I didn’t see no reason to wait,” T.R. said, looking him in the eye. “If you wait, all that happens is that you get older. I’ve already got older but at least I had more fun than you did, along the way. Two years’ more fun.”
“Sometimes I wish I’d stayed in jail,” Muddy said.
Ten minutes later they were smooching on the diving board. Shortly after that they disappeared for a while. Jesse brought a bucket of checkers out of the house, poured them into the pool, and watched them float. Bo had learned to swim under water and swam around and around, froglike—he was a good deal more pleasant as a grandchild when he was under water. Gladys napped on a towel as Godwin continued his lecture on Euclid.
“Godwin, I’m the only one listening,” I pointed out. “Please don’t tell me any more about Euclid. Don’t tell me any more about Strabo or Ptolemy or Pliny or Herodotus or Martial or Catullus or Euripides or anyone. It’s making my headache start up.”
“T.R. is truly beautiful,” Godwin said. “I could educate her in a year, perhaps less, were it not for
the impediment of Muddy.”
“Were it not for the impediment of Muddy, you’d be in over your head,” I said.
“Nonsense, I’m convinced T.R. and I could make one another very happy,” he said. “What a delicious irony it would be if I ended up your son-in-law.”
“Godwin, if you try to fuck her I’ll kill you,” I said listlessly. I knew perfectly well he would try to fuck her if he got the slightest encouragement, or perhaps even if he didn’t; I also knew I wouldn’t kill him—at worst I would probably only exile him from Los Dolores, a trivial response at best. What I couldn’t figure out was what difference it made, or what right I had to anything more than a simple opinion about T.R.’s choice of sexual partners. After all, she was grown, and I had made no attempt to influence her during her formative years. For all I knew she would be resentful if I even suggested that she pass up Godwin or anyone else; certainly all of my women friends would be resentful if I tried to get them to pass up anyone. They would see it as a violation of the tacit pact we had not to interfere with one another in that arena. Maybe T.R. had been right, earlier in the day, when she said she felt like one of my female friends rather than like my daughter. What was really involved in feeling like a father, or like a daughter? I didn’t know, and I was beginning to feel gloomy at the thought that it might be something I could never learn—that my daughter would never feel that I was more than a friend. I already felt that she was more than a friend, and yet it was hard to be precise about the difference.
My spirits sank and Godwin noticed them sinking.
“Oh, piss,” he said. “You’re getting depressed again. Your daughter’s perfectly wonderful. Why are you getting depressed?”
“Yeah, why?” Gladys said, sitting up. One of Gladys’s more startling abilities was the ability to move instantly from deep sleep to full, even prickly, wakefulness. One minute she was snoring, the next minute she was insulting you.
“Because it’s hard to know what all this means,” I said. “I sort of like to have my thinking at least roughly aligned with my feeling. Neither of you would understand that because you never bother to think.”
“That’s because you’re rich and we ain’t,” Gladys said. “You got so much money that you can think all you want to. I got to scramble, myself. If I sat around thinking, I’d never get nothing done.”
“My point exactly,” Godwin said smugly.
“Your point?” I said. “Why is it your point? You never do anything. You’re a pampered guest. You enjoy total leisure. What makes you think you don’t have time to think?”
Instead of answering, Godwin rolled into the water and began to float face down again. He often did that when confronted by his own illogic. It was a very irritating habit. I found myself wishing his breath-control tactics would fail him suddenly and that he’d just drown—or, if not actually drown, at least vomit for a few minutes.
I saw Pedro and Granny Lin walking across the hill, back to their hut. They were carrying a six-pack between them, each holding one of the little plastic loops that keep six-packs together. At a distance, at least, with the help of a lovely sunset, they seemed perfectly content. The sight of their contentment made me feel lonely and sad. I was already feeling sorry for myself because I didn’t understand fatherhood; at the sight of two evidently contented old people I plunged even deeper into self-pity. Would I ever have anyone to walk across the downward slope of life with at sunset? Or would the sun always set with me alone, brooding and miserable, as it had so many times?
“They seem happy,” I remarked to Gladys.
“Them two, they fight like tigers,” Gladys said. She kicked Bo’s beach ball into the water, hoping to hit Godwin with it, but she missed.
“I hate varicose veins,” she added. “Every time I see my own legs I wish I’d never been born.”
With that black comment she went into the house, leaving me to float in self-pity while Godwin floated in the pool. Pedro and Granny Lin fought like tigers? When did they fight like tigers? How did she know? What did they fight about? Of course, Gladys imagined things. In fact, she imagined hundreds of things. Perhaps she was imagining those tigerlike fights. Perhaps the old couple never fought; perhaps Gladys was confusing them with herself and Chuck. They certainly fought frequently, if more like humans than tigers.
I never liked fights, myself. The emotional benefits they were supposed to convey on healthy couples had always seemed overrated, at least insofar as I had ever been a part of a healthy couple, healthily fighting. The fights I had participated in, and there had been not a few, almost always signaled the demise of the couple-hood as the two of us then knew it.
Now, though, I began to see the absence of fights in my life as yet one more sign of my extreme detachment. Here I sat at fifty-one, having lived, in theory at least, only about half my life, not even close enough to anyone even to have a fight with them, unless you counted Godwin and Gladys, with both of whom I had bitter fights practically every day. In that regard T.R.’s not-so-latent belligerence might prove a great blessing; she alone might be able to tug me back into a normally conflicted human relationship. She alone might reconnect me.
While I was contemplating that possibility, she and Muddy came racing across the patio, off the diving board, and into the pool. Both were naked. The shock waves of their dives sloshed Godwin around so vigorously that he was forced to abandon his breath-control exercises. For a moment he was rather confused, but when he saw that T.R. and Muddy were naked his eyes lit up. He immediately climbed out of the pool and began to take off his bathing trunks.
“Stop, what do you think you’re doing?” T.R. asked. She looked rosy and very cheerful.
“You’re skinny-dipping, I supposed I could, too,” Godwin said.
“Forget it, if there’s one thing I don’t want to see, it’s some old man’s old dick,” T.R. informed him merrily.
“My dear, what a harsh thing to say,” Godwin replied.
“Not from her, that’s almost a compliment,” Muddy said. T.R. whirled, wrapped her arms around Muddy, and ducked him. The two of them sank from sight.
“What a remarkably pretty girl she is,” Godwin said.
10
“When are we getting off to Europe?” T.R. asked the next morning. She and I and Godwin and Gladys were breakfasting on the patio. Jesse had been breakfasting too but had fallen asleep in her high chair in a puddle of Cheerios. Bo had gone off with Buddy to run the trotline they had set the night before.
“We have to apply for your passports,” I said. “We could go to Fort Worth and get the applications today. Then we can send them up to the Senator I know. He can probably get them processed in two or three days. We could all go to Europe next week.”
“A whole week’s a long time to sit around out here on this hill thinking about how empty it is,” T.R. said morosely. “Some days I miss the Mr. Burger. At least there were people around to talk to at the Mr. Burger. And there was places to go dancing at night.”
Actually she and Muddy and Godwin had gone dancing the night before. They had driven all the way to Dallas, but failed to find a dance hall that came up to T.R.’s standards. Then they had come home and watched Fassbinder movies all night. Muddy was still inside, somewhere around the halfway point in Berlin Alexanderplatz. By all accounts—that is, by T.R.’s and Godwin’s accounts—he was completely engrossed.
“Now he says he wants to go to Berlin,” T.R. said. “The little fucker never even heard of Berlin until last night.”
“That’s good, though,” I said. “It means he’s got some curiosity.”
I had stayed awake most of the night, too, buffeted by the high surf of a migraine. With morning, the surf had receded, though now and then I felt a departing wavelet. T.R. was not exactly sulky, but she was clearly restless.
“If it’s merely a matter of picking up passport forms in Fort Worth, then there’s obviously no need for everyone to go,” Godwin said. He had on one of his seersucker suits. After so m
any years of seeing him naked at breakfast, it was definitely an irritant to have him looking like a colonial administrator. His ill-concealed designs on my daughter were also irritating.
“T.R. and I could accomplish that task quite efficiently,” Godwin said. “There’s no reason for anyone else to be inconvenienced.’”
“It is just a matter of picking up passport forms, and if you’re volunteering your services I accept them—you can do it perfectly well alone. Why would T.R. need to go?”
“Shoot, I’d go just to see some people,” T.R. said, oblivious to the fact that I didn’t want her to be alone with Godwin.
“I ain’t workin’ out as a country girl,” she said without hostility. “I’m starting to miss Houston. I wouldn’t even mind being in a traffic jam—at least there’d be other people around.”
“A nice trip to Fort Worth would be better than nothing,” Godwin said. “We wouldn’t need to take the children, necessarily.”
“Maybe I should call my friend the Senator,” I said. “Senators have amazing powers. His staff might facilitate this for us—we could be in France by the weekend.”
“Let’s go someplace real crowded,” T.R. said. “I’m getting itsy from sitting around here on this hill.”
“There are some very nice beaches on the French Riviera,” Godwin said. “Nudity is quite acceptable there.”
“Who cares?” T.R. said. “If there’s one thing I don’t need to see, it’s a bunch of dangling dicks. I’ve already told you that fifty times, so shut up about it. Jesse might hear you.”
“That precious thing,” Gladys said. “I’ll miss her so much I’ll probably just sit around here and cry the whole time you’re gone.”
“No you won’t, because you’re coming,” T.R. said. “I ain’t dragging my kids around a bunch of foreign countries without some help.”
The thought of Gladys in Europe had never occurred to me. Nor had it occurred to Godwin, or to Gladys herself. The thought was so novel that all three of us were paralyzed by it briefly.