The Julius House

with my husband, and I’d been within an ace of hitting him, something I’d also never done. This was so trashy.

I had to do some thinking, and now. Our relationship had always been more emotional than any I’d ever had, more volatile. But these bright, hot feelings had always served to leap the chasms between us, I realized, sitting on the end of our new bedspread in our new house with my new wedding ring on my finger. I took off my shoes and sat on the floor. Somehow I could think better.

“He’s still not telling me the truth,” I said out loud, and knew that was it.

I could hear him faintly, stomping about downstairs. Fixing himself a drink, I decided. I felt only stunned wonder-how had I ended up sitting on the floor in my bedroom, angry and grieved, in love with a man who lived a life in secret? I remembered Cindy Bartell saying, “He won’t cheat on you. But he won’t ever tell you everything, either.”

I had a moment of sheer rage and self-pity, during which I asked myself all those senseless questions. What had I done to deserve this? Now that I’d finally, finally gotten married, why wasn’t it all roses? If he loved me, why didn’t he treat me perfectly?

I lay back on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. More important, what was I going to do during the next hour?

A creaking announced Martin’s progress up the stairs and across the landing.

“I won’t knock at my own bedroom door,” he said, from outside.

I stared at the ceiling even harder.

The door opened slowly. Perhaps he was afraid I’d throw something at him? An intriguing mental image. Maybe Cindy had thrown things.

He appeared at my feet, two icy glasses of what appeared to be 7- and-7 in his hands. I saw the wet stain on his off-white shirt, where he’d tucked the extra glass between arm and chest while he’d used his other hand to open the door.

“What are you doing, Roe?”

“Thinking.”

“Are you going to talk to me?”

“Are you going to talk to me?”

He sat on the stool in front of my vanity table. He leaned over to hand me a drink. I held it centered under my breasts with both hands gripping the heavy glass.

“I still…” he began. He stopped, looked around as if a reprieve would come, took a drink. I looked up at him from the floor, waiting.

“I still sell guns.”

I felt as if the ceiling had fallen on my head.

“Do you want to know any more about it than that?”

“No,” I said. “Not now.”

“I don’t think Bill Anderson is who he says he is,” Martin said.

I cut my gaze over to him without turning my head.

“I think he’s government.”

I looked back at my glass. “I thought you were government.”

His mouth went down at one corner.

“I thought I was, too. I suspect something’s changed that I don’t know about. That’s why I need to go to Guatemala. Something’s come unglued.”

I struggled with so many questions I couldn’t decide what to ask first. Did I really want to know the answers to any of them?

“Are you really a man with a regular job with a real company?” I asked, hating the way my voice faltered.

He looked sad. “I’m everything I ever told you I was. Just-other things, too.”

“Then why couldn’t you be satisfied?” I said bitterly and futilely.

I sat up, tears coursing down my cheeks without my knowing they had started, not sobbing, just-watering my dress. I took a drink from my glass; yes, it was 7-and-7.

When I could bear to, I looked at him.

“Will you stay?” he asked.

We looked at each other for a long moment.

“Yes,” I said. “For a while.”

I never finished that drink, yet the next morning I felt I had a hangover. I had to take my mind off my life. I dressed briskly, putting on powdered blush more heavily than usual because I looked like hell warmed over, and went to Parnell Engle’s cement business.

It was a small operation north of Lawrenceton. There were heaps of different kinds of gravel and sand dotting the fenced-in area, and a couple of large cement trucks were rumbling around doing whatever they had to do. The office was barren and utilitarian to a degree I hadn’t seen in years. There was a cracked leather couch, a few black file cabinets, and a desk in the outer office. That desk was commanded by a squat woman in stretch pants and an incongruous gauzy blouse that was intended to camouflage the rolls of fat. She had good-humored eyes peering out of a round face, and she was dealing with someone over the phone in a very firm way.

“If we told you it would be there by noon, it will be there by noon. Mr. Engle don’t promise nothing he can’t do. Now the rain, we cain't control the rain… No, they cain’t come sooner, all our trucks are tied up till then… I know the weather said rain, but like I told you… All right then, we’ll see you at noon.” And she hung up with a certain force. There was an old Underwood typewriter on the desk, and not a computer in sight.

“Is Mr. Engle in?” I asked.

“Parnell!” she yelled toward the door behind her. “Someone here to see you.”

Parnell appeared in the door in a moment dressed in blue jeans, work boots, and a khaki shirt, his hand full of papers.

“Oh,” he said unenthusiastically. “Roe Teagarden. You enjoying all that money my cousin left you?”

“Yes,” I said baldly.

After a moment of Dodge-City staring at each other, Parnell cracked a smile. “Well, at least the Lord has shined on you,” he said. “I hear you got married last month. God meant for woman to be a companion to man.”

“Amen,” I said sadly.

“You need to talk to me?”

“Yes, if you have a minute.”

“That’s about all I do have, but come on in.” He made a nearly gracious sweep with his handful of papers, and I went across the creaking wooden floor to Parnell’s sanctum. I felt a surge of fondness for Parnell; his office was exactly what I expected. It was as dilapidated as the outer room, and there was a large reproduction of the Last Supper on the wall, and plaques with Bible verses were stuck here and there, along with a huge map of the country and a calendar that featured scenery rather than women.

“You know I bought the Julius house,” I said directly. Parnell neither expected nor appreciated small talk. “I want to know about the day you poured the patio there.”

“I went over and over it at the time,” he remarked. “And I don’t know why you want to know, but I suppose it’s none of my business. It’s been a long time since I thought of that day.”

He leaned back in his chair, wove his fingers together across his lean stomach. He pursed his thin lips for a moment, then began. “I was still working most of the jobs I got myself. I’ve prospered in the last few years, praise the Lord. But when T.C. called, I was glad to come. He’d made the form himself, it was all ready, he told me. I knew he was trying to set up his own carpentry business, handyman work, that kind of thing, so I knew he’d have done a competent job. So I went out there with the truck and the black man working for me then, Washington Prescott, he’s dead now, had an aneurysm. We got there. The form looked fine, just like I expected. There was some rubble down in it, like people throw in sometimes, extra bricks, things you want to get rid of; but nothing like a body or anything that could have held a body. Stones, old bricks, seems like I remember a couple of pieces of cloth, rag. The girl Charity came out and said hi, I’d met the family before at church so I knew her. She said her dad had gone on an errand and called to say he wouldn’t make it back in time, I should just go on and pour and send