“Just brang me a Co-Cola then.”
He nodded and went inside, got one from the refrigerator and unstuck a magnet-opener from the fridge door and pried its lid off and restuck the magnet and came back out. Wallace had turned his chair the right way and sat propped against the wall, his legs dangling.
“Thank you,” he said and drank most of the Coke in the first swallow. “What’s your name?”
“Larry.”
“Larry what?”
He hesitated. “Larry Ott.”
The name didn’t seem to register, Wallace polishing off his Coke and clinking the bottle back down. “Well, Mr. Ott-”
“Just Larry.”
“Well, just Larry, where’d you go to high school?”
“Fulsom.”
“Same as me. When’d you graduate?”
Larry shrugged. He didn’t want to say it but Wallace waited. “Never did.”
“How come?”
“I quit.”
“Me, too.” Wallace laughed. “How come you did?”
“Just did.”
“Me, too. Couple a dropouts ain’t we. Momma keeps saying get my GED and I reckon I might, one of these days.”
Larry stood a moment, not asking if his boss minded he drank when he drove a company van. Then went to his chair and moved the book and sat down.
“What you reading?” Wallace asked, finishing his cigarette.
He held the book up. Wallace dropped his Marlboro on the porch and toed it out. “I seen that movie. You get you a dish? You ain’t got to worry about reading.” He pecked another from the package and lit it and grinned through his smoke. “Say your name’s Larry Ott? Ain’t I heard of you?”
Larry glanced at him. “Not many folks around here that ain’t.”
“Wait.” Wallace grinning now. “You the one they say did away with that girl. Back in high school.”
Larry looked down at his feet, wished he’d put his shoes on.
“That’s how come you quit school, huh. Shit, boy,” Wallace said. “You famous.” He eased his chair down. “Or
Larry stopped himself from correcting Wallace and fidgeted in his seat. He said, “You still want to sell me a dish?”
“Hell, hoss, I don’t care what you done. I’ll still sell you a dish, you want one. Sell you two or three, you want. All I gotta do is get on your roof there, find the clearest spot to the sky, screw her in, and then run your cable down. But all that can wait to Monday.”
“Monday?”
He dug his cell phone out of his pocket. “It’s after five-thirty in the P.M. and it’s Friday. My weekend has officially begun.”
“How bout that.” Larry stood up with him. “Have a good weekend, Wallace. I’ll see you Monday?”
“Sure as clockwork.”
He gathered his clipboard and brochures and hopped down off the porch and trotted across the yard. In the van, he waved again and Larry waved back, standing with one hand on the porch post and watched him crank the van and grind its gears looking for reverse. When he got it turned around he tooted the horn and it nearly stalled as he shifted and Larry watched him weave over the road and then picked up the chair and turned and went back inside, Wallace’s engine still growling through the trees.
That night as he lay in bed he thought of Wallace and smiled in the dark. That he’d been lied to didn’t bother him. He’d placed him as the boy who’d snuck into his barn those years before. Same face, just longer and scruffier. Same small eyes. Larry remembered how he’d jumped and he smiled again. Wallace didn’t seem dangerous, just curious. Larry hoped he hadn’t stolen the van, though, remembering the fishing lures, the missing rooster.
He rolled over.
As he did each night before sleep, Larry prayed for his mother, that the following day might be a good one for her, that his cell phone might ring or that, if it was time, the Lord take her quietly. In her sleep. And that God would forgive him his sins and send him customers.
AFTER WORK THE following Monday Larry sat on his porch not reading but waiting in his usual company of bats and birds and insects, the tinkling of his mother’s chime each time the earth breathed its wind. He was disappointed but not surprised when night stole the far trees and the fence across the road and then the road itself and finally the sky, Larry’s truck gone too in the dark and stars beginning to wink in the sky like nail holes in the roof of a barn.
HE’D GIVEN UP on him by the time Wallace came back, two months later. Larry was reading when he raised his head at a buzzing over his land, the motor gnawing closer and closer and then the four-wheeler emerging where the trees broke, its bareheaded rider bouncing in the seat. He cut the engine as he approached Larry’s house and coasted to a stop, a cigarette dangling from his lips, a crumpled brown bag between his thighs.
“Hidy, just Larry,” Wallace called, sitting astride the four-wheeler like a horse.
Larry stood, one hand on the porch post, the other holding his book. “Hidy, Wallace.”
The young man rolled a leg over the gas tank and dismounted as if he were a cowboy, wearing a baggy T-shirt and shorts that looked like they might be the same pair he’d worn for his last visit. He hiked them up and brought the paper bag with him, holding it by its bottom.
“You surprised to see me?” he asked.
“Little bit.”
Wallace came onto the porch and set the bag by the post. He took a Pabst in a can from the bag and offered it to Larry.
“No thank you.”
“Well cheers then,” Wallace said, popping the tab and drinking.
“So I don’t get me a dish after all?”
“Would you believe,” Wallace said, his face contorted from the beer, “them DIRECTV bastards fired me?” He sat on the top step and leaned back against the post where he could look up at Larry, who moved his book and sat back down.
Larry said, “So you been at the unemployment?”
“Naw, painting houses. I do that sometime. What you reading now?”
Larry told him.
“Shit, that’s a movie, too. You ever seen it?”
“Yeah,” Larry said. “Book’s better.”
They sat for a while.
“Larry,” Wallace said. “You don’t like me much, do you.”
It surprised him. When he looked at Wallace he saw how acutely the boy was watching at him.
“It’s okay,” Wallace said. “Not many folks do. All thank I’m weird. Why I quit school, got tired of em making fun of me.”
Larry had begun to rock again. “It ain’t that I don’t like you, I just don’t know you.” Then he added, “I don’t get many visitors, neither.”
“Why not? You a hell of a conversationalist. I figure you’d have folks over here day and night, telling em jokes, making em laugh. Serving em beers and seven and sevens and getting high as a giraffe’s pussy.”
For the first time in longer than he cared to remember, Larry smiled in the presence of another person, and then his hand came up, the old habit, covering his mouth. He said, “Last visitor I had, apart from this DIRECTV fellow, was…well, a bunch of teenagers come through a few months ago, drunk. Bout one A.M. Drove by in a Ford Explorer, stopped out there”-pointing at the road-“started throwing beer bottles on my roof, yelling for me to come out.”
“Did you?”
