Shelly pulled up a chair at a dining room table piled high with papers. There was an electric typewriter on it along with a number of records, slips, boxes, a roll of bubble wrap, and postal equipment, including a scale.
I riffled the pages of a paperback called I Ain’t Much, Baby — But I’m All I’ve Got. It was well thumbed, busted binding, many underlines. It looked like the typical self-help book written by the typical screwed-up psychiatrist.
“You can read it if you want,” Shelly said. “That book saved my life. It’s my Bible.”
“Maybe I oughta write one of these things,” I said, setting the book aside. “I Ain’t Much — But at Least I Ain’t Killed Myself Yet.”
Shelly’s cackle punctuated the air.
“I’m serious, man,” I said. “If this yo-yo can write one, why can’t I?”
Shelly, taking fast sips from his beer, said, “Self-help shelves are pretty crowded.”
“I’ve got an angle. A murder self-help book. Just kill all the people who made you feel bad. That would sell.”
Shelly, sipping faster and faster, seemed to be drinking my words as well. I heard the rattle of beer getting shallow in the can. “Throw the sex in there, babe, don’t forget the sex.”
“Sex and Murder Self-Help book,” I mused.
“That’s it. You’d sell a million of ’em. I’d buy one. You want another brewski?”
“All right.”
He waddled off to the fridge. “So how you think Marvelle got rich?” he called over his shoulder.
“Real estate. Drugs. Maybe her daddy is a chicken tycoon. What part of the South you think she’s from?”
“Ozark twang,” he said. “Arkansas maybe.” He handed me a beer and heaved a sigh. “God, now my nuts really hurt.”
I cracked my fresh beer and took a pull. On the top of the TV were two photographs, one a girl, the other a family portrait, both filmed with dust. I couldn’t resist. I set my beer down and navigated the path to the television. The girl I picked up first, tilting the heart-framed photo in the dim light. Shelly watched me, slurping from his can. “Old girlfriend?” I said.
Shelly nodded. I put it down and took up the family photo. Shelly had not changed: same part in hair, same fallen lock over forehead, same ill-fitting brown corduroys, sleepy detached green eyes, and square chin. I’d never met his parents. His father was a beefy man, florid, with a navy haircut, a civil servant as I recalled, somewhere in his fifties in this picture, which had to be at least twenty years old. His mother was a small woman in a dress that looked like something a cardboard doll would wear. She wore a sun-squint expression, though the pose was indoors. Shelly used the term “airhead” more than any other to describe her. Standing next to Shelly was a swarthy young man with slicked back hair. He was a good six inches taller than Shelly, and with his cool and confident air didn’t seem to fit in the picture. “Who’s this?”
“My family.”
“I mean the dark-haired kid.”
“My brother, Donny Ray,” said Shelly, stifling a yawn. “Donald Raymond Hubbard.”
“Brother? I didn’t know you had one.”
“Yeah.”
“Younger?”
“Four years.”
“Same parents?”
He nodded drowsily. “Far as I know.”
I looked back at the photo. “Looks like an athlete.”
“Oh yeah, Donny did it all. Sax player, varsity football, swim team. Happiest kid I ever met. Got all the girls, too. Dad used to beat the tar out of me, but he’d never touch Donny Ray. My whole life I was convinced someone left him at our doorstep. Dad was always pretty nice to strangers.”
“Where is Donny Ray?” I asked.
Shelly hauled back on his beer. “Dead.”
I nodded, holding the picture, waiting for him to tell me the how and the when.
“How?” I said, finally.
“Dove off the Clam. Know it?”
“Yeah, of course.” My head continued to nod as if the spring had come loose.
“Thirty-foot jump. Went face first into the rocks.” He shrugged and looked away.
“How old was he?”
“Eighteen.”
“You’ve never mentioned him before.”
“It’s not something I like to talk about.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
He tipped his can back, draining it. “That’s the kind of luck I’ve always had.”
14.Jimmy Is In Good Hands With God
I WOKE LATE THE NEXT DAY AND STARTED A POT OF COFFEE. BEATRIZ had sewn me a pair of pajamas, blue tops, plaid orange bottoms, synthetic fabric that caused static electricity that felt like bugs crawling up and down my legs. I got her newspaper and fed Sweets, who’d told me he liked tortillas better than meat. Beatriz had driven up to Temple City to visit her daughter, so Sweets and I had the Island to ourselves. I thought I might take a long nap in the sun with him today. Sparrows were flitting among the splashes of sunshine in the orange tree in the central yard. The tree cast such a deep and realistic reflection in my front room window that the little birds would occasionally fly straight into the glass and fall stunned to the ground.
I opened the paper to look at jobs, then I leafed over to the sports. What a joy it was to recount the trip to Santa Anita and to see those payouts! If I moved up to L. A. I could probably make my living just standing at the rail and listening to the horses think. It was a notion that should’ve invigorated me, but I kept getting pictures of Shelly’s brother, Donny Ray. I had dreamt of him all night, a tattered brown reel of cliff-diving dreams. In some of the dreams he was still alive, petitioning me, as if I could help him somehow. If he was
