washer or dryer and usually took his clothes to Angie’s on the weekends.
He popped off the beer cap and filled the glass and drained it then poured the rest of the bottle in and put the empty on the coffee table and looked across the room to where his and Larry’s keys lay side by side. He finished the beer and got the last one from the fridge and went down the hall unbuttoning his shirt with one hand. In his room he sat on the bed, unmade, and looked at his nightstand, over which he’d thrown a white T-shirt.
He glanced at his watch. Eleven P.M. Maybe he’d call Angie, say he was too beat to meet her. He filled his glass and drank then set it and the bottle on the floor and lay back and pulled the T-shirt from his nightstand and looked at the answering machine. The light was blinking. He reached over and pressed PLAY.
“Silas?”
He sat up.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Larry Ott’s voice said. “I know you’re busy, but please call me back when you can, even if it’s late. It’s Monday morning, and I’m at the shop.” As Silas listened, he gazed across the shag carpet that had been here when he’d bought the place and that he kept meaning to rip up. In the closet, behind his two extra uniforms, where he wouldn’t have to look at it, was the Marlin lever-action.22 rifle.
Larry recited his shop number, slowly, as if he were giving the code to disarm a bomb. Then he said, “Please call back, even if it’s late. It’s kind of important, but I don’t want to say it over the phone. Thank you.”
Well, it was late, wasn’t it, Larry. Too late.
five
LARRY WOKE BEFORE his mother knocked. It was a Saturday, the first day of summer, school out and three long months of freedom ahead of him. He dressed quickly in the clothes he’d chosen the night before, an old T-shirt and blue jeans with the knees out, perfect for getting dirty. He stuck his lockblade knife in his back pocket and tied his sneakers and was down the hall and out the front door before anyone saw him. He hopped onto his bicycle where he’d leaned it by the porch and kicked away pedaling. He flew down the driveway through the trees, dodging puddles and watching for snakes. He passed the Walker place, Cecil on the porch with a cup of coffee and a cigarette that he raised. Larry waved back and kept going, skidding to a stop before the mailboxes, theirs and the Walkers’. Without dismounting he opened the little door and pulled out the letters and circulars; he got Cecil’s, too, glancing at it. Where Larry sometimes had mail, comic books or magazines, things he’d ordered, Cindy Walker never did. The Walkers usually only got junk.
Cecil was gone when he rode back by and he left their circulars on the porch. At home he laid his father’s mail on the kitchen table and took his seat. In a moment the back door closed and his mother came in the kitchen with several eggs in her apron.
“You scared me,” she said.
“Sorry.”
She began to lay the eggs on the counter and noticed the mail. “Did your funny books come?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Maybe Monday.”
Because it was warm, she was barefoot. She lit a match and touched it to the burner and a flame bloomed to life, smell of natural gas, piped from the big metal tank in the backyard, filled once a month by a truck.
“How was your breathing last night?” she asked, rinsing the eggs.
“Fine. Good.”
“Good.” She was opening drawers, lighting another burner. “You want fried?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Something banged in the back of the house and they exchanged a look. Then the television clicked on and the newscaster’s voice grew louder as Carl raised the volume, part of his morning ritual, watching the news and reading the mail while he ate.
A moment later he came into the kitchen tucking his green short-sleeved uniform shirt into his blue jeans, another sign of Saturday-the rest of the week he wore matching green pants. He often grumbled about having to work on Saturday, but Larry knew he preferred it to being here. And on any other Saturday Larry would have been anxious to go with him.
But not today.
“Good morning, Daddy,” he said, once a commercial came on, the television visible only from Carl’s end of the table.
His father was spreading the mail in front of him. “Morning.”
His mother appeared at Carl’s elbow with a ceramic coffeepot and poured his cup full.
“Thank you.” He reached for the sugar and poured a huge amount in.
She lingered at his elbow. “Honey?”
He sipped and noticed them both looking at him, the usual Saturday ritual, the two of them teaming up on him, asking without words if Larry would be able to go to the shop today.
Today, though, Larry was relieved when his father looked back at the letter in his hand and said, “Got a busy one, Ina. Two transmissions and a carburetor. He won’t do nothing but get in the way.”
Behind them, the frying pan on the stove began to sizzle.
“Okay, Daddy,” Larry said.
“Maybe next week,” said his mother. One thing Carl had made clear long ago, to both of them, was that no meant hell no from the get-go.
In a moment his mother set Larry’s eggs before him and he salted them and ate them quickly and his bacon, too. When he finished he felt his father’s eyes on his plate and said, “Can I be excused?”
“What you tell your momma?”
“Enjoyed it.”
“Go on.”
He went down the hall toward his room but heard his father call, “Hey, boy?”
He hurried back. “Yes, sir?”
“You stay outside today. Cut the grass.”
Which meant
“Yes, sir.”
He went down the hall and picked up the paper sack of trash, heavy with last night’s beer bottles, and carried it outside and put it in the back of his father’s truck, where Carl would throw it in his trash can at the shop.
HE WAS LUGGING the push mower out of the barn when Carl drove past in the red Ford and slowed to a stop, lowering his window.
“Don’t run over no sticks with that mower,” he called. “I just sharpened the blade.”
“Yes, sir.”
He waved as his father drove away, then turned to face their three-acre yard, the house centered in it and the barn back by the trees. Half a day’s work, at least.
“Dern,” he whispered.
Might as well get it done with. That way he could salvage the second half of the day and not get in trouble. He added gas to the mower and checked the oil. It cranked on his first pull and he began to push it along the edge of the driveway, shooting grass, small rocks, and mangled sticks out the side, glad again that school was over. Next year he’d go to Fulsom, the only public high school in the county.
As he pushed the mower, he thought how Alice’s car must have come from Carl, but Larry knew not to say more about it. He’d failed Carl before by not understanding that the black woman and her son had been their secret. He should have known that men do not discuss with their wives (or mothers) the business that is their own.
Since he’d given Silas his.22, he now carried a Model 94 lever-action.33 that, of all their guns, most closely resembled the.22. Though his mother couldn’t have named a difference if you’d lain the rifles side by side, his father would have noticed if Larry began to carry a gun without a lever, a pump shotgun, or one of the single-shot or automatic rifles.
