shone on Dougie’s Volkswagen, Hank’s truck slowed down and the form behind the wheel leaned forward. He switched his beam to low, then back, then he drove on toward the Jackson highway.
“Hank came by last night,” I said.
Lydia didn’t deign to hear me. She was slumped back against the booth with each hand clutching a glass of tomato juice.
“And Caspar called about midnight, several hours before Hank came by,” I added so Lydia would know when Hank came by and what he saw. Her eyes quivered a moment, but the effort to open them was just too much.
“What’d Caspar want?” Maurey asked. She was eating french fries because Dot refused to bring her a chocolate shake.
“You live on coffee and chocolate shakes,” Dot had said. “That’s no food for a growing baby.”
“You’re jealous because of your diet, you can’t have shakes so you don’t want anyone to have them.”
“How about a chef’s salad?”
They compromised on french fries. Dot was on a diet because Jimmy was coming home this summer and she weighed twenty-five pounds more than she did when he left.
“Jimmy can’t stand fat women,” she said. “He won’t want me anymore. He’ll want high school girls that can eat anything and never gain a pound.” I wished she’d hurry up and lose the weight, or else give up. Dot on a diet wasn’t near as cheerful as Dot fat.
Maurey took a whole fry in one bite and repeated, “What’d Grandpa Caspar want?”
“He demanded an explanation about the Indian.”
Lydia moaned real quiet like and got her right eye open. “What did you tell him?”
“I said, ‘What Indian?’”
“He meant Hank,” Maurey said.
“I know he meant Hank.”
“Then why did you say, ‘What Indian?’”
Lydia’s left eye made it open but the right one fell back shut. “Maurey, you want some advice?”
“From you?”
“Don’t wreck your life trying to make your daddy notice you exist.”
“My daddy knows I exist.”
I’d wondered about this deal. “Is that why we took Hank in, because you thought an Indian would get Caspar’s attention?”
Both Lydia’s eyes went closed, but her left hand raised its glass and she took a sip of tomato juice. Behind her, in the next booth, a man reading a newspaper cracked a finger joint. Lydia’s face paled even more, her hand shook so hard she spilled juice.
Maurey touched the window with her index finger. “It’s raining.”
I set down my chicken drumstick to stare at the rain. In Greensboro, it rained all the time, so much that mold grew on walls and fungus between your toes. But GroVont had had nothing but snow or clear and cold for six months. I’d known I missed the ground, but until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I missed rain.
“I think it’s turning to snow,” Maurey said.
“It can’t be.”
“Or hail.”
The man behind Lydia cracked another knuckle. This time both eyes opened and she reached for the napkin dispenser. She stood over the man, holding the dispenser over her head as a weapon. “Do that one more time and you’re dead.”
“Do what?”
“Do not play stupid with me, I’m a desperate woman.”
They went into a stare-off that lasted an embarrassingly long time, until Dot noticed and brought the man a coffee refill. He turned a page in the paper and went back to reading. Lydia slumped into the booth. “God, I hate this place.”
Dot said, “I’m hungry.”
Maurey said, “What’s Hank doing?”
Hank pulled his truck into a parking space at Zion’s Own Hardware, then he came back fast across the street straight for the White Deck. For an instant it appeared the Dodge would crash through the wall. I jumped up as Maurey slid across the booth.
Dot put both hands up to protect herself. “What’s that he’s carrying?”
Lydia said, “Les.”
“Les?”
“The moose. The moose is Les.”
Hank fell from the truck onto the curb. He pulled himself up by the rearview mirror, then moved toward us, keeping both hands on the truck body.
“He’s drunker’n a skunk,” Dot said.
Maurey stood next to me. “Hank doesn’t drink, maybe he’s sick.”
Hank lowered the tailgate and sat on it, breathing hard, staring through the window at Lydia. Lydia stared back, both hands tight on the napkin dispenser. A trickle of blood dripped down Hank’s chin from a cut on his lower lip, all his shirt buttons except the bottom one were unbuttoned.
Hank stood and turned around to drag Les to the back of the truck. Then he lifted the moose above his head and ran toward us. Dot screamed, Lydia fell sideways from the booth, and Les came through the window.
Glass flew all over shit, Maurey said, “Jesus,” I took off for the door. I caught Hank as he was climbing back in the truck.
“Hey, asshole.”
His head turned to me without much recognition. I saw a Jim Beam bottle and a pistol on the dashboard.
“Maurey’s pregnant.”
He blinked.
“You could have hurt her, buttface.”
Hank blinked twice more. “Don’t call me buttface.”
“How about drunk fucking Indian.”
Hank nodded in agreement. “And your mother’s a whore.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to get drunk and hurt Maurey.”
His head kept nodding up and down. When it came up, a drop of blood fell off his chin. “I’m sorry.” He pulled himself into the truck and shut the door, then he rolled down the window. “But your mother is still a whore.”
I’d come off the initial adrenaline deal of a stuffed moose coming through the window. All I saw now was a pitiful man screwing himself up because he’d put his hopes on Lydia. I said, “Go on home.”
Hank drove away nodding.
He’d trashed the cabin. Thrown furniture into walls, broken what few dishes we owned, torn up books and scattered the pages. He got into Lydia’s panty drawer and knifed the crotch out of all sixty pairs. I found Alice mewing in my closet. Lydia turned the elk-gut chair upright and sat in it with her eyes closed. I set my typewriter back on the desk, then went into the living room and looked down on her. She looked old and skinny. Even her fingernails were a mess.
“Well, Lydia, you messed it up good this time.”
She didn’t even open her eyes. “Fuck you, Sam.”
“Fuck you too, Mom.”
