they hear about it from Tyree's wife, who say some kind of foolishness about her husband's daddy being left way out there frozen and all, and they pretty angry about that! Something about how the ambulance man had to blow hot air all over him to get him out of that tractor seat.' She lifted her chin defiantly at Jay. 'That's disrespectful, see, that's saying the man was dying and no one helped him! He was sitting there calling out to heaven in the cold and no one in this world knew nothing! No one cared he was dying alone, dying with no comfort! He dying of his bad heart right there, so bad he couldn't move! Tyree's wife told them all that. She was angry and she was crying and she was mad. Yes, she was! And it made them mad, too, yes, it did. I ain't going to lie about that, not where that is concerned, no I ain't. Them boys is dangerous, Jay Rainey, and they got a reason to be mad, is all I'm saying. Nobody was thinking about him, nobody was worrying about some old black man! Just assuming Herschel was always going to do what he was told no matter how cold it be outside! And your father, he never pay Herschel his Social Security. That's why he still working! And that's why he end up dead! Seventy-three-year-old man have no business being out there in that kind of cold, and the family- we is upset! You hearing me? We is upset! Now Harold, you know he always look up to Herschel. And now Harold, he gotten big, he got some kind of club or something here in the city, he got all kinds of money, and people working for him, and you don't want to cross that boy. He heard about this and I know he ain't happy. That boy has some kind of temper! The things he done, hoo! Don't get me started on that! He come out of prison five years ago and I suspect it was hi s fault, too. I don't like to think about what gets in his mind. Uh-uh, no! That boy is dangerous, I always said.' She tightened her lips, and her cheap theatrics were both utterly obvious and entirely convincing.
'Now then,' she went on, sensing her advantage, 'you was good to Herschel, Jay Rainey, so I think I owe you a warning in that respect.' She waited to see if he understood. Then she addressed me, as if I were implicated, too. 'I mean, I can't control them boys. They ain't boys no more, neither. I lost them when they was fourteen or fifteen. They men now. They live here in the city most times.' She looked away a moment. I wondered if she might be glancing down the street. 'Harold, they say he was lucky to get the time he did, that he beat a man so bad he-'
'Please tell them we'll work out a fair settlement,' said Jay.
'Huh. They want one hundred thousand dollars.'
'That's a lot of money, Mrs. Jones.'
She looked at me, eyes dark. 'So, Mr. Wyeth, tell him.'
I glanced at Jay. 'Tell him what?'
'Tell him it ain't a lot of money. Even a old woman know that! Lots of other things cost more. Lots of problems cost more.'
'Mrs. Jones,' Jay said. 'Herschel had a terrible heart. How many heart attacks did he already have? Four? I drove him to the hospital once myself. I paid for his doctor, I don't know how many times.'
She pressed her mouth tight and shook her head. 'You also asked him to go out there in the cold, do that farmwork.'
'I asked him a week earlier, when it was still plenty warm,' answered Jay, his voice tight. 'It was maybe four hours of work. I guess he put it off and then the weather got cold.'
She was already shaking her head. 'Naw, he was out there five or six days before. He was finished, because Herschel was making applesauce that day. He go picking up the grass apples in November and put them in the cellar and he always start making his sauce after the fieldwork done for the winter. That Herschel, see, I know him my whole life. I know the man. He had habits. He was done in the field! He had five bushels of apples on the kitchen counter in the morning, he had his paring knife and board, he turned on the sports, he wasn't planning on doing no bulldozing in no snowstorm.'
Jay shook his head, ready to disagree. 'But I guess he wasn't through, not if he was on the bulldozer. I hadn't been out there in a week or-'
'I talked to him about that!' Mrs. Jones shrieked. 'He said you kept calling him and saying it was important it get done by such and such a time, and he was sick one of those days and he took himself out there anyway, even though I told him he was sick. But that was almost a week ago, Jay Rainey! He was all done with his work! Yesterday he wash his apples and then go down in the cellar and say I need me some more jars and then he goes out driving and then the next thing I know he ain't coming home. And it gets later and later and we is worried sick! Then we get a call at four in the morning that he's dead! On a bulldozer! I don't know why he was out there. But the way I look at it, if he was on that thing, he was working for you.'
'But if he'd already-' Jay began, then stopped, knowing he was arguing against the memory of a dead man. 'All that's done. We'll find an acceptable settlement.'
It was a standoff. 'Mrs. Jones,' I asked, 'just out of curiosity, what game was on the TV? The Knicks?'
She looked at Jay. 'You better get yourself a new lawyer.'
'What? Why?'
'He's putting things in my mouth.'
'What?'
'Herschel always watching that Tiger Woods hit the ball far.'
One of the winter golf tournaments, in the early rounds. 'I see my mistake.'
'You do?'
'I thought this was happening at night,' I said.
'Herschel ain't going out to bulldoze at night! You think he's crazy? This was after lunch.' Mrs. Jones looked from Jay to me and back again in frustration. 'Why we talking about this? I'm going tell those boys you said you'd pay the family that money, Jay Rainey. I'm going tell them you said you was happy to pay it! I'm going tell them you thought that was a good number, that was a fair number! How you feel real bad about Herschel. Yes, that's what I'm do! They expecting a call this morning. They watching closely! They know this is your new building, 'cause I told them. Poppy told me the number and I told them. So you see? I'm going tell them you said you'd pay! I think they'll take it. But I can't be sure. I can't control them boys no more, Jay Rainey. They wild now! They go around with their girls and cars and whatnot, it's out of my hands.' She rebuttoned the top button of her coat and yanked her gloves tight. 'I'll be going, then.'
She said nothing more, turned briskly, and picked her way along the snowy sidewalk. I turned back to Jay. 'That little old lady just shook you down.'
Jay watched her go. 'I've got to do something for them. But I can't pay off Herschel's whole life. He was just supposed to grade the roadbed, maybe dump some gravel in the holes. I paid him ahead of time, I told him to do it when the weather was warm, because the bulldozer works better then, anyway. I was sure he was done. It wasn't a big job.'
'What was he doing too close to the edge?'
'Don't know. I couldn't tell what he was doing because it was all covered with snow. And hell, why was the dozer left in reverse? Don't worry about it, okay? It's my problem.'
I was glad to hear this.
Jay asked, 'What did you think of Cowles, the guy upstairs?'
'Good guy, I guess.'
'You see the family pictures? The first wife was beautiful,' he said. 'I think he loved her very much.'
It was a strangely sympathetic thing for him to say, and we stood there in a sudden, not uncomfortable silence. Men sometimes make friends this way, I think. They decide quickly. Jay gazed into his hands, then looked away. There was something vulnerable and temporary about the moment, and I was attentive to it, for a man, let us agree, is a kind of shelled animal. There is the hardened surface he presents to the world, the face and the words and the behavior, but very often these do not correlate very well with the being inside the shell. By hardened I mean coherent, deflective of attack, and capable of being recognized by others; I don't mean unchangeable- quite the opposite, in fact. But the shell is always there, growing outward from within, flaking and breaking away, and the quivering wet stuff inside remains largely hidden. Appearances are not deceiving so much as incomplete. What you see is what you get, but what you don't see is also what you get. For a moment Jay seemed unshelled, disinterested in protecting himself from my scrutiny or judgment.
'Yeah, I think he was crazy about her,' he repeated. 'You have one like that, a woman who just haunts you?'
'I was married.'
'Yeah?'
