When I heard the shower running, I got a pen and a paper and wrote Trudy a note. Gone to Leonard’s to make arrangements for leaving. Back by lunch. In case you want to come over…
And I drew her a map to Leonard’s house.
Me and Leonard went over to his place and he put some clothes and a paperback of Walden in a suitcase. He got out a thin foam rubber mattress and some blankets and rolled them up in a bundle, then got his Remington .30/06 and a box of shells out of the closet. He put the suitcase, the bedroll, the rifle, and the ammunition on the couch.
“Where’s your twenty-two target pistol, Leonard?”
“Put up.”
“Don’t you think we might need it? Maybe you know a place that’s got some bazookas and hand grenades we could buy, maybe a couple of land mines. Shit, what is all this? We’re going to swim down and get some money, not shoot it.”
“Comes to your ex-wife, I get paranoid.”
“She’s a pain in the ass, overly idealistic, but she isn’t going to ambush us.”
“I don’t know what she might get us into. I think she leaps before she looks. And I don’t know this Howard guy from nothing. He got pals, or are we the only fools in on this?”
“She said there were two others—idealists all. They’re going to take their shares of the capitalist banker’s money and give it to a good cause.”
“No shit? What cause?”
“Save the seals, I guess. Maybe the whales. Hell, I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
“I get any money out of this, I’m going to put it to a good cause too. Me. The seals got to fend for themselves. They don’t have bills to pay.”
“I hear that.”
Leonard went over to the scarred fireplace mantle, got his pipe and tobacco down, and sat in the rocking chair by the fireplace. He pulled a long fireplace match out of a metal cuspidor by the hearth and put it in his lap. He packed his pipe quickly and expertly, pulled the match over the fireplace and lit it. He puffed and considered me.
“How did I let you talk me into this?”
“My perky ass had something to do with it. Christ, Leonard, perky ass?”
“I came up with that because I though tit would annoy Trudy.”
“You being alive annoys her.”
“Old man Lacy is gonna be needing field hands in a few days, and he’ll call, and I won’t be here. I’ll be wasting my savings trying to find a dream in the Sabine river. Get back from this with no money and my tail between my legs, I might be out of a job permanently.”
“There’s always room for field hands. Look, we’re out of that crap. I think we should go out and do something, even if it’s wrong.”
“And it is. That’s stolen money.”
“All this time has gone by, the insurance company is bound to have paid off, and if it’s laundered, no sweat.”
“How are we to know one way or the other? It might all be marked stuff, or whatever it is they do to trace money.”
“We’ll take our share to Mexico. We can make some deals down there. We’ll have to lose a few thousand to get it changed to pesos, no questions asked, but we can do it. We can stay there awhile. The money will be worth ten times what it is here. We can buy senors for you and senoritas for me. We can get drunk on Mexican beer.”
“I can’t go off and leave my dogs.”
“Fuck it, I’ll go down there, get the money changed and mail you your half in pesos, and you can get it changed to dollars. Bring you and your goddamn dogs down there for a vacation. I’ll get them some of those little Mexican dogs to date. There’s some way to do business. Bank robbers do it all the time.”
“You been giving this some thought. Usually Trudy comes around and you’re ready to join the Peace Corps, tie yourself to a pine and save it from a chainsaw.”
“Bottom’s fallen out of my convictions. Trudy’s got me thinking again, all right, and maybe last night she had me thinking the way she wanted, but not today.”
“Like I said, Hap, it’s your glands. You got more control over them in the daylight. But come sundown and you’re home in bed between her legs, you might sing some different notes.”
“No, she’s got Howard on a string too. I can stand her coming back to me if I can fool myself for a while, but I won’t sit around and let her swing from one end of the string to another.”
“I didn’t think it was a string she was swinging on.”
“I’m going to make some jack out of this, then slide on out.”
“Won’t be easy. You been a bleeding heart a long time.”
“This heart’s bled out. Gone dry as toast. You don’t think so, hide in the bushes and watch me head for Mexico.”
Leonard grinned at me. “After all I’ve said about you being such a sap, don’t know if you suit me much this way. You make me a little nervous. You being Trudy’s patsy is what made you adorable. There’s a kind of ignorant charm about it. Like having a big dumb pup around that hasn’t quite learned to quit shitting off its papers.”
“That’s sweet, Leonard. I’ll try to remember that.”
We decided to take Leonard’s old blue Buick instead of my pickup. Trudy could go with us if she wanted, or go ahead in her Volkswagen. Whatever suited her. We loaded Leonard’s suitcase, rifle, ammo, and bedding into the Buick’s trunk, then tossed in some rope and camping supplies, just in case.
“We’ll need some diving equipment,” Leonard said. “Dry suits, I figure. Wet suits are probably too cold in this weather, not that a dry suit is much better. They hold pockets of air and pinch you.”
“You know more about this stuff than I thought.”
“Just enough to get us drowned. But I do know this. Cold as the water is right now, it’ll deaden your brain. Though in your case, that may not be a new experience. I know this too: it’s my goddamn savings we’re using to rent this stuff.”
“But you have my goodwill, Leonard.”
“I been wanting that something furious.”
“You rent this stuff, won’t it blow our cover?”
“Hap, my good but dumb man. We aren’t going to tell what we want it for. Just say we want the experience of a cold-water dive. They don’t give a damn if we drown or turn to ice cubes, long as we pay down good, give them enough to buy new equipment if we lose it.”
“Leonard, you’re my hero. When I grow up I want to be just like you. Can I, huh, can I?”
“Need some black paint first, but that isn’t gonna make you as pretty. And it would be nice if you were a lot less stupid. Come on, I need to call Calvin and see if he’ll feed my dogs while I’m gone. Then I’ve got to cry over using all my money to finance this dumb idea. Stick close, now. Never know when I might say something wise.”
6
When I awoke the next morning, I could hear the wind wolf-howling through the eaves of the house and the pines out beyond the field. At night I seldom kept the heat going, due to the price of butane, and the room was cold enough to make an Eskimo shiver.
I got up and put on my robe and padded through the morning air, blowing out puffs of whiteness as I went.
I looked out the window. The trees and the ground were iced over and there were flakes of snow mixed with sleet. Quite a rarity for East Texas. Most of the time you didn’t even know it was winter; generally the winters were exaggerated falls. But this year was different. The cold had blown in hard and vicious on the very day I was supposed to start toward making some money. A wiser man would have considered it an omen.
I wanted to go back to bed, but instead I struggled to the kitchen, got matches and lit all the heaters, the one in the bedroom last. Even then, with my butt backed up to the heat, I was tempted to climb under the blankets again and snuggle close to Trudy. But it might not have been any warmer under there. She certainly hadn’t been warm last night. She made love like I was paying for it and she had more customers in line, some of them important. I attempted to bring her to orgasm, but it was like trying to conquer Everest in Bermuda
shorts. She wasn’t having any. She wanted me to rut and feel cheap and miserable, and I did. But I have no pride and came anyway. When I finished, she rolled from beneath and turned with her back to me. I put my hand on her hip, but she didn’t move or say anything. I might as well have been stroking a marble tombstone.
Suddenly I felt sorry for Howard. Like me, he didn’t have a chance with a gal like Trudy. Not really. She ruled us with brains and passion and her downy triangle. It was damn demeaning is what it was.
I dressed and put on my coat and went outside and looked to see if the water in my truck’s radiator was frozen. It wasn’t. There had been enough antifreeze in there, and I parked it on the south side with the bumper pressed against the house and had put an old horse blanket over the hood.
I got pliers out from behind the truck seat, put the blanket under the truck from the side, crawled on top of it and worked the radiator screw loose so it would drain. This way, if I was gone for some time, I wouldn’t have to worry about the cold defeating the antifreeze and blowing my ancient radiator to pieces.
I returned the blanket to the hood and found a couple rocks to put on top of it in case of high winds, then went out to the edge of my property and pried up the water cover and turned off the water valve with the pliers. I put the pliers back, went in the house and locked the windows and back door, drained the water out of the faucets, cut down the water heater, and when I heard Leonard coming, cut off the butane heaters. The air chilled immediately.
I got my gear I had packed last night and brought it into the living room and placed it by the door.
Trudy had got up and dressed during the time I was outside, and all the while I made my inside preparations, she sat on my ratty couch and looked at the wall. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t look to be breathing.
Leonard stepped inside, looked at Trudy, then me. “I can tell now this is gonna be fun.”
“Trudy, you taking your car?” I asked.
“I’ll come for it later. I’m no good driving on ice.”
“Your VW hasn’t got a radiator to bust,” Leonard said, “but you might want to put it in my barn just the same. There’s some folks in these parts might not mind stealing a car they don’t know.”
“What about the diving equipment?” I asked.
“In the trunk. Went in and got it yesterday, and they weren’t even open. Had to talk a blue streak and wave some extra money around to get the owner out of his house and down to the shop. You owe me a hundred bucks, Hap.”
“Put it on my bill.”
“Man, your credit level is way topped out … Look, we wait a few days on this, things will be better. Ice will have blown out.”
“Howard is expecting me,” Trudy said. “And I have work tomorrow.”
“Work?” I said.
“You know. You go to a job you hate, and they pay you money for it. You think I’m kept, Hap? Contrary to what Leonard here wants you to think, I’m not a concubine.”
Over at Leonard’s place, Trudy parked the Volkswagen in the barn and Leonard made up his special dog food from three different brands, poured the contents of the feed sacks in a plastic garbage can, a little bit of each, a smidgen at a time, mixing it evenly.
While he did that, Trudy walked out to the dog pens and I followed. I felt like I ought to say something, but didn’t know what. She had a way of making me feel like a jerk when I hadn’t done anything. We both stood by the dog pens and waited on Leonard. We were at the end opposite Switch’s run, and Trudy had her fingers poked through the wire and was scratching the nose of a dog named Cal, cooing sweet things to him. The dog was eating it up. I was eating it up secondhand. She sounded very sexy making those tender little sounds, and bless my little heart, I wanted to make love to her so bad right then I thought I’d cry.
Leonard came out of the barn and started in our direction. On his way over, he stopped, knelt down to reach his fingers through the wire of Switch’s run so the dog could lick his fingers. “Get in your doghouse, boy. You gonna freeze your nuts off.”
Switch was acting like a pup, wagging his tail so hard his entire body shook. I walked down to them, and forgot Trudy. She came after me and suddenly knelt between me and Leonard and put her hand to pet Switch the way she had Cal.
Switch, quick and silent as an arrow, leapt for her extended fingers. Leonard snatched her hand back and Switch’s muzzle went against the wire. He grabbed it with his teeth, pulled, let go with a snap. Foam flecked out of his mouth and splashed on the knee of my jeans. Trudy hadn’t even had time to flinch.
Leonard let go of her hand, and Trudy stepped back. “Jesus! What’s in him?”
“Protective,” Leonard said. “He doesn’t like anyone near me he doesn’t know. That dog and men like me, probably the only males you can’t twist the way you want.”
“You think it’s funny, don’t you, Leonard?” Trudy said.
“He got your fingers, I wouldn’t. Since he didn’t, yeah, I think it’s funny.”
“You can have your old dog. I hope he freezes to death.”
“Good thing I don’t think you mean that, lady.”
Trudy walked away quickly.
“Glad you don’t like women,” I said, “because you don’t exactly have a way with them.”
“I like women fine, just not to fuck. And I don’t like that woman to do anything with. You think the dogs are gonna be cold?”
“Hell yeah. But the way you’ve got their houses fixed up, they’ll be all right. Warmer than we’re going to be. Calvin comes to feed them, sees they’re uncomfortable, he’ll do something about it.”
“Yeah … guess so.”
Then we were all in the Buick, easing along with Leonard at the wheel, me in the front, leaning on the door as if contemplating a leap, and Trudy dead center of the backseat with arms and legs crossed tight as the coils of the Gordian knot.
The car leaked carbon monoxide through a hole in the floorboard and we were all a little dizzy from it. The wipers beat at the snow and ice and the near-bald tires whistled a tentative funeral march. We made it slow and easy, without much talk, into Marvel Creek about half-past noon.
7
The town really started before the city limits. There was a line of beer joints on either side of the highway, ramshackle fire hazards with neon pretzels on their roofs and above their doorways.
Among them were two places I well remembered: The Roundup Club and The Sweet White Lilly.
Next came the long, wide river bridge and the city limits sign that read POP. 5606. Then we were on Main Street, coasting past closed businesses with boarded windows and bolted doors, service stations with oil spotted drives and greasy-capped men with their hands on gas nozzles or leaky tires.
As we went deeper into town, it got better. Open stores and more people. But the place still looked sad. Not that it had been any budding metropolis when I lived there.
Trudy had us turn on a brick street slick as vaseline, and we went past the bank, around a curve and past what had been a Piggly Wiggly but was now called Food Mart. I used to buy Cokes and peanut patties there, hang out with the boys and lie about all the fights I’d been in and all the tail I’d banged.
We glided past car lots and the empty spot where the Dairy Queen had stood and old Bob used to make us chocolate shakes with more water than milk in them. On down the highway we went, onto a blacktop and back into the pines, and finally down a soggy clay road that ended at a small house that was mostly weathered gray with strips of paint peeling down its sides like melted candle wax. The front porch leaned starboard and the smoking, crumbling chimney was held upright by the slanting support of ten feet of warped six-by-six. Pine sap corrosion had turned the mouth of the chimney dark as the devil’s shadow.
Parked off to the right on the dead grass were a red, dented Dodge mini-van and a jaundice-yellow Volvo with a sheet of cardboard in place of the left front window. Two more letters on the end and the writing on the cardboard would have read MONTGOMERY WAR
D.
Leonard killed the engine, looked at me, and said, “And I thought we lived like trash.”
Trudy got out of the car without saying anything and we stayed where we were. Before she was all the way up the porch steps, the door opened and a big, handsome blond guy with a slight gut, wearing jeans, a gray sweat suit, and old hightop white tennis shoes came out. He took Trudy in his arms and kissed her in a more than cordial fashion.
“Flexible, ain’t she.” Leonard said. “And you know, bubba, he’s prettier than you are.”
The guy who had to be Howard looked at us. He said something to Trudy and then came out to the car. We got out before they could get there and leaned on the hood and tried to look thuggy.
“This is Howard,” Trudy said.
“You must be Hap,” Howard said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
We shook hands.
“This is Leonard,” Trudy said.
It was obvious from the expression on Howard’s face he was trying to picture Leonard’s role in all this. “So, you gave Trudy and Hap a ride up. You ought to stay for dinner before you go back. I’m going to fix my famous spaghetti dinner.”
“He’s in on it,” I said.
“Ah,” said Howard, and looked at Trudy.
She wouldn’t let him catch her eye. “He’s a good swimmer,” she said. “Hap wouldn’t come without him. It’s like they’re married or something.”
“Just engaged, “Leonard said. “We’re still picking china.”
Howard had gone mildly red-faced with irritation. “So, you swim, huh?”
“Like a goddamn eel,” Leonard said.
Howard nodded, tried to keep it pleasant. “Where’s your car, Trudy?”
“Leonard’s. I didn’t want to drive on ice.”