Arnold. That I always had been, and had only been slumming. I put the knife he gave me in a Prince Albert tobacco can and buried it out back of our house and dismissed him from my life.
I have felt that way since, except on dark nights when it’s three a.m., an chren a d I view myself in a different light. A light that shows me to be less than the man I pretend to be. A man who has never quite taken responsibility for his own actions.
If the thing with Arnold was bad, there was another whammy to come. My father began to sleep less, drink and brood and argue with my mother. But Dad’s guilt and dissatisfaction didn’t last long. One afternoon on his way home from work at a construction site, he stopped off for a beer in his favorite bar on the other side of the county line. While he was having his beer, a drunk pulled a gun on the bartender for some reason, and my Dad lost his temper because the bartender was a friend of his.
He jumped the drunk and took the gun away from him and beat him to the ground with it. He threw the gun behind the bar and the bartender poured Dad one on the house and Dad drank it. The drunk dozed on the floor while the bartender called the cops. The drunk’s girlfriend, who had been sitting calmly in a booth watching the action, took a. 22 pistol out of her purse and popped it at my father.
The shot caught Dad in the right eye and it was all over. She got a year because she was pretty, the drunk got six months because he was the sheriff’s cousin.
After all these times of driving out, just parking and looking at the mobile home, was this going to be the time I actually walked up to his door and knocked?
What was I going to say? Hey, Arnold, how’s the old hammer hanging? Haven’t seen you in ten years, and haven’t ever invited you over or called you or even sent you a Christmas card, and the knife you gave me those years ago I buried in a tin can along with you being my brother, and I know I owe you a debt I can never pay and I resent it, but our stupid nephew has his balls tacked to a board, and since it’s something illegal and dangerous, I thought of you immediately.
He’d probably have punched my lights out, and I wouldn’t have blamed him.
A big yellow dog came out from under the mobile home, squeezed past the lawn mower handle and looked in my direction and barked. I got in the pickup and pulled around in a tight half-circle, backed some, straightened the truck on the road, and started away from there.
As I went, I glanced in my rearview mirror. Through a parting in the trees, I saw the door of the trailer open and a huge, bearded man step out, then I was going around a curve and couldn’t see him anymore.
7
Before I reached home the sky grew death black and the rain slammed the truck and the wind rocked it. I drove along carefully through town and passed the city limits sign and made the subdivision called Black Oak just as the sky went strangely absent of rain and there was a split in the clouds, and the dying sun dripped off the pines and oaks and trickled over the ground as if being absorbed.
Black Oak isn’t really much of a subdivision. It’s practically in the country, and everyone out here owns anywhere from one to three acres. The residents are mostly quiet and like to pretend they’re in the suburbs, which is damn funny. A creek runs alongside our house, and behind us is a thick woods where curious deer stick their heads out now and then and cranes wade in the creek and spear minnows with their long, sharp bills.
I nosed the truck up our long drive to the garage, pressed the garage door opener, drove inside and closed up. I sat in the truck and felt warm and comfortable for a while, but the feeling passed.
I plucked the photo album off the seat of the truck and held it in my hand, but didn’t open it. I got the coat off the floorboard and wrapped it around the album and put the coat and what it contained on the floorboard on top of my guns.
I didn’t want to walk in the house with the album and have to answer questions. Not yet anyway. I knew I’d eventually tell Beverly, but not until I thought some things through and figured what to do.
When I came in the back way, Wylie met me at the door with his squeaking yellow porcupine toy. He poked it into my balls and jumped on me. I kneed him in the chest like you’re supposed to do to break a dog of the habit. He yipped in pain and dropped the porcupine and picked it up again. This time he just poked me in the balls with it and didn’t jump up on me. I patted him on the head, took it out of his mouth and prepared to toss it for him to catch, just as Beverly came in from the living room.
“I was about ready to send out the National Guard,” she said.
“We got to talking,” I said.
Wylie could see where this was leading. No porcupine tossing. I had my hand down by my side with his porcupine in it, and he mouthed it out of my fingers and left the room, looking for someone more sympathetic to a dog’s needs.
“I didn’t even know where to call or look for you,” Beverly said. “Billy moves so much I can’t keep up with him. He still in that place over on Rose?”
“No.”
“See what I mean? You should have called, you were going to be this long. I wanted us to go out to eat.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. Have you eaten?”
“No, but JoAnn has. She was hungry.”
“Well, let’s go out anyway. JoAnn never likes anything except McDonald’s, and I’d rather have my dick cut off than eat there.”
“Shhhh, the kids will hear.”
“They in the living room?”
“Upstairs watching cartoons.”
“Then they won’t hear… Don’t they watch too much TV?”
“It’s Saturday. They always watch too much TV on Saturday.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. I’m all turned around. I thought it was a school night.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve been drinking. You’re acting more like an idiot than usual.”
“Well, we going out to eat, or what?”
“The weather-”
“It cleared off about the time I drove up.”
“I guess we could… You stay away that long again, weather’s like that, give me a call, okay?”
“I’m sorry, honey.” I held out my arms and she came to me and we kissed lightly and I ran my hands over her ass.
“Keep that up, Buster, and I’m going to do you the way we have to do Wylie, only I won’t knee you in the chest.”
“Promise?”
She pushed away from me with a smile. “Don’t push your luck.”
“Ah, come on. You know you married me because I’ve got a big dick.”
“You’re a legend in your own mind, sweetheart.”
“That hurts.”
“Good. I’m going to brush my teeth. You call the kids down and get them ready.”
“Oh, great. How about I go brush my teeth and you call them down and get them ready?”
“Uh-uh. I’ve been with the sweet little shits all afternoon. It’s your turn to have fun playing Leave It To Beaver.”
“But I’m scared of them.”
“Me too.”
She left the room and I poured myself a glass of ice tea. I leaned against the fridge and drank it. Everything seemed back to normal, I was home in my warm house with my kids upstairs gluttoning out on a video tape and Bev and I had talked ourselves into going out to eat, which suited me just fine. Beverly hated to cook, and you could tell it from her cooking which tasted as if it had been purposely mistreated and made to taste memorable, if not enjoyable. That’s why I did a lot of the cooking when I wasn’t working. I had a strong sense of survival.
