During our second day go-round, Oona told me that Bert Poole hadn?t shot Jimmie Horn.
?Ben Toy told me the same thing,? I said.
?He doesn?t know.? She disputed that. ?He thinks Tom?s going to come take him back to Texas in the Mercedes.?
The back porch ran along the entire length of the house, and that was where we usually talked. We would sit on wicker porch furniture, facing out at the ocean. Thinking about it now, I can remember her bony, wool-socked toes wiggling in and out of leather clogs. It was her nervous tic, she said.
More often than not, a khaki-uniformed gardener would be working on the lawns as we taped.
A rangy, suspicious Jamaican, he thought I was getting into Oona?s pants behind Berryman?s back. He was fiercely loyal to Thomas Berryman, and said it was none of my damn business how come, mon.
One afternoon I noticed Oona handing the man several twenty-dollar bills. It gave me the uncomfortable feeling that Berryman was somewhere close by, supervising, maybe watching us from the mountainous dunes all around his house.
For her part, Oona Quinn would shrink up all vulnerable and wallflower-like whenever we talked. She?d sit on her long legs, hugging herself. She?d rock, and the wicker chair and porch would creak in unison.
She?d be very much in control, even haughty, until I pulled the tape recorder from its leather case. But something about the tape recorder got to her. Something about having her words recorded put a big, hard lump in her throat.
She was a lively storyteller though; she had a natural sense for ironic detail. I thought, in fact, that she was feeling ironic about herself, and I hoped to use that to get closer to Thomas Berryman.
Hampton Bays, June 18
Under a fat red sun, Thomas Berryman straddled the roof of his sea captain?s house and watched down where whitecaps were breaking all over a rough, stony Atlantic Ocean. The high air was clean, thick with salt, blue to look at. It was late June now.
Working at about fifty percent consciousness, Berryman?s mind kept drifting back to sugary Sunday school scenes from Texas. He wondered what was becoming of himself.
After a while, his eyes focused on a small piece of tar patchwork he?d completed, and he thought it was good work to patch your own roof. His gardener had refused to do the high roofing job, and now Berryman was pleased.
He looked over at sand dunes?rising fifty or sixty feet on the other side of the highway?and his eyes followed a white Mustang tooling along the pigeon-gray road at their base. The Mustang scampered away between the sand hills like a cartoon car. At one time, Berryman remembered, he?d threatened his father with bodily harm over the issue of a Ford Mustang.
He lit a rare cigarette and let himself float in warm, afternoon sensations. He could see Oona walking down on the beach in a white string suit. Very chic-chic. Now and again his mind drifted to the subject of Jimmie Horn.
He shimmied over to the dark stone (cool) chimney, and began to install a new screen over its big mouth.
Because the old penny loafers he was wearing slipped on the roof slates, he had to ride the apex horseback style. The danger of possibly slipping off the three-story roof?missing the sun porch?hitting patio furniture that looked the size of pocket change?was part of the job and part of its pleasure.
He placed his face inside the musky hole and in the light of a match saw that the chimney screen was clogged closed with soot. With sooty sand. With sooty seagull feathers and a child?s deflated balloon.
The white Ford sports car passed down on the road again. He flicked his cigarette butt at it, then yanked up the chimney debris with both hands on the inky screen.
He and Oona ate a good dinner of white spaghetti and red wine. He drew on a stogie joint and passed it to her across their dinner table on the front lawn. They were both dressed rather hautily, in white, and together looked like a page out of a fashion magazine.
On closer examination, he was wearing red, white, and blue track shoes. Oona was wearing no makeup. She had promised to chase his blues away that night.
?Oh,? she said before beginning her exorcism, ?Ben Toy called.? Her lips were slightly blistered from sunbathing. She drew daintily on the fat joint.
Tom Berryman held smoke in as he spoke. ?While I was on the roof??
?Didn?t believe me when I told him ? that you were on the roof. Sounded weird.?
Berryman continued to hold the smoke in.
?All he said was, something about, he read about the Horns. What good people the Horns are. Who are the Horns??
Berryman blew out smoke and talked to himself.
?? Ben?s flipping out on me.?
?Yeah??
?Yeah.?
Oona passed the cigarette and cocked her head like a pretty bird. ?So who are the Horns??
?They ?re nobody,? Berryman said. He took up the joint. His eyes twinkled with dope dust. ?Really they?re twins,? he smiled. ?We used to go out with them in Amarillo. Patsy and Darlene, High Plains High,? He started to laugh. ?Darlene had a pretty little red mustache. Nice personality, too.? He laughed some more. ?Great little talker, that girl.?
