I sat up in bed, swung my feet over the side. God, I just wanted to go to sleep. Hell.
I got up, paused in the hall to peek through the blinds. I half expected to see a Mach 1 cruising the trailer park then felt stupid. Some guy out for a drive and I get all jumpy. I wondered if the chief had heard about my stupidity yet. I thought about calling Billy at the stationhouse but went into the boy’s room instead.
Toby Austin Sawyer Jr. was perfect and pink. He’d kicked the blue blanket off one leg, and I saw Doris had put him in the Bob the Builder pajamas. He was the best looking boy in the world.
* * * *
At that moment the need to scoop him out of the crib and hold him firm against my chest nearly overcame me. Even if it woke him up. He was such a heavy little ham hock. Thick. He’d probably be a linebacker. Get a football scholarship to Harvard and be a brain surgeon. My boy.
I didn’t pick him up. I satisfied myself with stroking his forehead. He stirred, and I jerked my hand back, but he did-n’t wake. Doris would be turbo pissed off if I woke him up.
I pulled the rocking chair close to the crib and sat awhile looking at him. A little night light shaped like a blue fishbowl cast a soft glow on everything, all the second-hand toys and stuffed animals. Even the crib and rocking chair had come from Doris’s older sister. My folks were dead, but Doris’s mom and dad did a pretty good job bringing toys and clothes. We had enough. It was close, but we were just making it. Of course, that was probably about to change.
Toby Junior. TJ. I got this tight, anxious feeling whenever I looked at him and thought something could go wrong or he’d get sick or any little thing might not be right somehow. Like iron fingers grabbing my chest and squeezing. I folded my arms over the edge of the crib and put my head down, sat there a while.
The boy’s gentle breathing was like some kind of lullaby.
CHAPTER FOUR
Our cramped living room led right into the cramped kitchen, so Doris could stand at the counter making coffee and still see the television. She had a rerun of
I said, “You’re staying up?”
She shrugged, watching the coffee drip. “I can’t go back to sleep now.” “I’ll take a cup of that.” “When it’s finished.” “Pour me a cup now,” I told her. “It’s only halfway through. It won’t taste right.” “I don’t mind.”
“
“There’s a cut off if you take the pot out before it’s finished. So it doesn’t spill.” I put that obnoxious patient sound in my voice, like I was talking to a little kid. “The coffee maker is designed specifically so you can do that.”
“We’ve had this conversation already.”
And there you pretty much had the whole marriage. We fit together good in bed, worked together nice, folding laundry together or doing the dishes, her washing and me drying and putting them back in the cabinet. My mom had been big on companionable silence. Needless talk only causes trouble, she’d told me once. Maybe she was right because Doris and I sure got into it whenever one of us opened our yaps. Something was always eating one of us.
I decided I’d better say something nice. “You don’t look so fat.”
She frowned. “What?”
“Your ass, I mean.”
“Fuck you, Toby.”
“Shit, that’s not how I meant it, okay?” She stood there in plain white panties and my Green Day t-shirt, and I thought she looked fine. “You were looking in the mirror the other day, remember? And you said you thought it was getting big. I’m just saying I think it’s fine.”
“Whatever. You want this coffee now?”
“Okay.”
She poured two cups and brought them to the couch. She didn’t sit close to me but not so far away either. She handed me a plain white cup of black coffee. Her mug was bigger and with a sunset clouds scene and some scripture on the side. John 3:16, I think.
I sipped. She sipped. We watched
I tried some more conversation like this: “When do you go into work?”
“You know what time. Seven like always.”
Then I tried this: “How’s your sister?”
“You don’t even like her.”
I sipped coffee and shut up.
“Oh, cool,” Doris said. “I wish I’d had a big party like that when I was sixteen.”
We watched a few minutes.
Finally she asked, “What was the problem?” I looked at her. “With what?”
“What do you think? Taking off at midnight with your pistol, that’s what. What did the chief want?”
“Oh.” I sipped coffee. “Somebody killed Luke Jordan.”
I saw the blood drain from her face. Like somebody pulled a plug and it all leaked right out, her eyes round with startled confusion. I wasn’t sure what surprised me more. Her reaction or that fact she was trying to hide it.
“Dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Why did—” She paused, cleared her throat. “How?”
“Wayne said he was making a play for some Mexican chick in Skeeter’s. Jealous boyfriend maybe. Shot the crap out of him.” I didn’t tell her the rest of it, losing the body and all. I didn’t have the heart for that conversation, maybe never would.
Maybe I could get a job at the fertilizer plant. That was an hour drive each way, but I’d be full time with benefits too. Maybe I could go over there and get the job and then even tell Doris I quit the department on purpose to bring in more money. She’d be glad about that. Hell, it might even work. And if I made enough she could quit the waitress job and take care of the boy full time.
“Maybe it was some kind of mistake,” she said.
I blinked. “What?’
“Maybe he was just talking to that Mexican girl, and it was some kind of misunderstanding.”
I shrugged, didn’t see what difference that made. “Luke Jordan’s just as dead either way.”
She got up and went into the kitchen. I thought about asking her for more coffee but didn’t. The Super Sweet Sixteen girl was pissing and moaning because her daddy got the wrong boy band to play at her party. It should be legal just to punch these people. No jail time. Case dismissed.
Doris came back, stood at the end of the couch.
“Toby?”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s go to Houston. My sister will put us up until we get work. I can waitress anywhere. We have to try something different.”
