I drank my coffee, sorted my junk awhile longer, put on my sweats, and Leonard and I went jogging along the road in front of his house and past my place, which now consisted of a bathtub. It was the only thing the tornado hadn’t taken away. And good thing too. Brett had been hiding in it.
Sad as it was to pass the place by, I remembered the tub fondly. I had found Brett there after the storm. We had lain together inside the tub, and after the rain passed and the sky cleared, we held each other beneath the bright stars and the cantaloupe slice of quarter moon. Early in the morning, before full light, there in the cool damp tub, we had made love.
“You’re dragging ass,” Leonard said, jogging ahead of me.
“I’m getting fat,” I said.
“I’ve noticed. Too many doughnuts. Too much late-night eating.”
“It’s a habit I’ve got. I eat when I think about Brett. I think about not being with her, I eat. I think about moving in with her, I eat.”
“Frankly, Hap, ole buddy, I think you just eat.”
“I hate it when you’re right.”
We jogged down the road a ways, then back again. It was a cool September morning, moving toward a warm afternoon, and the lovebugs were so thick in the air, you swatted at them, you brought down a whole squadron. They were present every year, but this was a bumper year, and according to old weather philosophy, the year they were the thickest meant the fall and winter would be extremely cold or rainy or both.
I was puffing pretty hard when we got back to Leonard’s place. Leonard wanted to hang the heavy bag in the barn and work it some, but I decided it was time I bucked up and went over to see Brett, made a decision one way or another. She wasn’t expecting me at an exact time, just before lunch, and it was now ten o’clock.
I showered, had another cup of coffee, went out to the barn and watched Leonard hammer the heavy bag for a while, then drove to Brett’s in my junky Chevy Nova. I had owned the wreck about three months, and it was already due for the scrap yard. It clattered and coughed and blew black smoke out the rear like an old man with a gastric condition. I was ashamed to be seen in it, ashamed to pollute the air like that.
I had purchased the rolling calamity for three hundred dollars after my truck got destroyed during the tornado, and the way I saw it now, I’d paid about two hundred and ninety-nine dollars too much, even if it had come with a pack of rubbers in the glove box, half a cigar in the ashtray, and air in three tires.
I had put air in the fourth tire, and one of these days I was going to toss out that cigar and the rubbers. There was also a row of hardened gum that had been mashed underneath the dash, and I had plans to remove that as well. So far the urge hadn’t hit me. The most I had done to redecorate the Nova was put my .38 Smith & Wesson in the glove box on top of the pack of rubbers.
As I drove over to Brett’s, I tried to decide what to say. What to do. Everything I thought of struck me wrong. Maybe we could just keep things like they were? Then again, I did that, eventually I’d lose her. I had to make up my mind one way or another, and suddenly I knew what the problem was.
I didn’t feel worthy.
I worked a night job at a club, beating people up who misbehaved. What kind of job is that for a grown man? What did that offer a woman like Brett? I didn’t even have a home, a decent car, or, for that matter, any decent clothes. I was just a goddamn vagabond living day to day on the grace and goodwill of friends like Leonard and Brett.
I had been raised by solid blue-collar folk, and they had reared me to respect and like myself, to have confidence, and for years I had plenty. But these past few years, it had begun to erode. I was a middle-aged man who still didn’t have a career, and it looked less and less like I would ever have one.
What could I do? I was smart enough, but what were my credentials? Lifting big rocks? Eating dust in the rose fields? Slapping drunks upside the head, twisting their wrists, and throwing them into a parking lot? It wasn’t much of a resume.
And my looks weren’t going to carry me through either. I was graying at the temples, balding at the crown, growing thick, and my face had a look of hound dog sadness about it, as if I had second sight and knew bad things were coming.
When I got over to Brett’s she was sitting in an aluminum chair on the front lawn fighting lovebugs and mosquitoes. I could see her from the curb where I’d parked. I got out and went over there, smiling. Brett wasn’t smiling, however, and I got a nasty feeling in my gut, like maybe I’d waited too long to make up my mind one way or another.
“You like bugs?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said, and this time she smiled. It was a little strained, but it was a smile.
“You look like maybe you’re smiling around something sour.”
“I’m glad to see you,” she said. “Especially now.”
“Something wrong?”
“Yeah. Let’s go inside.”
Inside, we picked lovebugs out of each other’s hair and opened the screen and threw them out. There was a pot of coffee on, and Brett poured us cups. We sat at the table, then she looked at me and tears began to squeeze out of her eyes and run down her cheeks.
“Brett, what’s wrong, honey?”
“It’s Tillie, Hap.”
Tillie was Brett’s wayward daughter. A young woman who had gotten mixed up in drugs and prostitution and whose last letter home was hopeful because her pimp had stopped beating her as much and her limp was better. Brett had tried to talk her out of the life, had offered to have us come get her, but she didn’t want out, or didn’t know how to get out, or it was some kind of stubborn pride thing. It was hard to say. Frankly, I tried not to involve myself unless Brett involved me.
“What’s the score?” I asked.
