'Honey, I don't know nothing about names. You name the baby. You're carrying the critter, you get to name it, fair enough?'
'Well, Earl, you should take part too.'
'I just don't know,' he said, too fiercely. Then he said, 'I'm damned sorry. I didn't mean to bark at nothing. You getting the money all right? You okay in that job? You don't have no problems, do you, sweetie? Hell, you know what an ornery old bastard I can be.'
She forced a smile, and it seemed to be all forgotten but he knew it wouldn't be.
That night he took her into the dining room at the Ward Hotel on Garrison Street, the nicest place to eat in all of Fort Smith.
He looked very handsome. He wore his suit so well, and he was tanned and polite and seemed happy in some odd way, in no way he had been since the war. It warmed her to see him so happy.
'Well,' she said, 'it does seem like we've come up in the world. You have a car. We get to go out at a fine place like this.'
'That's right,' he said. 'We're on our way. You know, you could probably rent a place in town. You could get out of that vets village. They're going to be building new housing everywhere.'
'Well, it seems so silly. Why move now, then move again when we have to go into Hot Springs? I assume I'm coming to Hot Springs sometime.'
'Well, yes, that's the plan, I guess.'
But a vagueness came across his face. That was Earl's horror: his distance. Sometimes he was just not there, she thought, as if something came and took his mind from him, and gave it over to memories of the war or something else. Sometimes she felt like she was in the Iliad, married to a Greek warrior, a powerful man but one who'd shed too much blood and come too close to dying too many times, a man somehow leeched by death. There was a phrase for it that she'd heard in her girlhood, and now it came back to her: 'Black as the earl of death.' Hill people talked that way, and her father, a doctor, sometimes took her on his trips into the Missouri hollows and she heard the way the folks talked: black as the earl of death. That was her Earl, somehow, and somehow, she knew, she had to save him from it.
The waiter came and offered to fetch cocktails. Earl took a Coca-Cola instead, though he encouraged Junie to go ahead, and she ordered something called a mimosa, which turned out to be orange juice with champagne in it.
'Now where'd you hear about that?'
'I read about it in the Redbook magazine.'
'It seems very big-city.'
'It's from Los Angeles-It's very popular out there. They say California is turning into the land of opportunity now that the war is over.'
'Well, maybe we should move out there when all this is over.' But the vagueness came to his face again, as if he had some unpleasant association with California.
'I could never leave my mother,' she said hastily. 'And with the baby coming?'
'I didn't mean it, really. I wouldn't know what to do in Los Angeles. Hell, I hardly know what to do in Hot Springs.'
'Oh, Earl.'
They ordered roast chicken and roast beef and had an extremely nice dinner. It was wonderful to see him in a civilized place, and to be in such a nice room which was filled with other well-dressed people. The waiters wore tuxedos, a man played the piano, it was all formal and pleasant.
'Now, honey,' he finally said.
A shadow crossed her face, a darkening. She knew that tone: it meant something horrible was coming.
''What is it, Earl? I knew there was something.'
'Well, it's just a little something.'
'Is it about the job?'
'Yes ma'am.'
'Well, so tell me.'
'Oh, it's nothing. Mr. Parker though, he thought I should come up here and take you on a nice date and everything. He's a fine man. I hope to introduce you to him sometime, if it works out. He's as fine as any officer I had in the Corps, including Chesty Puller. He cares about the job, but he cares about his people too, and that's very rare.'
'Earl? What is it?'
'Well, honey, you remember those raids I said I was never going on? Into the casinos and the book joints? Now these young men we have, they've worked damned hard and they've really become very good in the small amount of time. But two weeks. Hell, it takes two years to become a good Marine. Anyhow, these boys, they..'
He trailed off helplessly, because he couldn't quite find the words.
'They what?'
'Oh, they just don't quite know enough.'
'Enough for what?'
'Enough to do it by themselves.'
'I don't?'
'So I said to Mr. Parker, I said I should go along. At first. Just to make sure. Just to watch. That's all. I wanted to tell you. I had told you I was just going to train them. Now I'm going with diem. That's all. I wanted to tell you straight up.'
She looked at him.
'There'll be guns and shooting? These raids will be violent?'
'Probably not.'
She saw this clearly. 'No. That is the nature of the work. You are dealing with criminals who are armed and don't want to accept your will. So it is the nature of the experience that there will be violence.'
'We know how to handle the violence. If there is any. That is what this training has been about. Plus, we wear heavy bulletproof vests.'
She was silent.
Then she said, 'But what does that do for me and die child I carry? Suppose you die? Then?'
'I ain't going to die. These are old men with rusty shotguns who?'
'They are gangsters with machine guns. I read the newspapers. I read The Saturday Evening Post. I know what's going on. Suppose you get killed. I'm to raise our child alone? He's never to know his father? And for what? To save a city that's soaked in filth and corruption for a hundred years? Suppose you die. Suppose they win? Suppose it's all for nothing? What am I supposed to say to this boy? Your daddy died to stop fools from throwing their money away on little white cubes? He didn't die to save his country or his family or anything he cared about, but just to stop fools from gambling. And if you close down Hot Springs, the same fools will only go some other place. You can't end sin, Earl. You can only protect yourself and your family from it.'
'Yes ma'am. But now I have given my word, and I have boys depending on me. And, the truth is, I am happy. For the first time since the war, I am a happy man. I am doing some good. It ain't much, but it's what I got. I can help them boys.'
'Earl, you are such a fool. You are a brave, handsome, noble man, but you are a fool. Thank you, though, for telling me.'
'Would you like some dessert?'
'No. I want you to go home and hold me and make love to me, so that if you die I can have a memory of it and when I tell our son about it, I will have a smile on my face.'
'Yes ma'am,' he said. It was as if he'd just heard the best order he'd ever gotten in his life.
Chapter 13
Hard-boiled eggs (two), dry toast, fresh orange juice. Then he went over accounts for three hours and made
