“That’s a powerful charge,” he says, after a moment. “A heavy one. Your parents had the right idea, keeping it a secret. But I assume you had your reasons to tell?”
Alvin’s expression is a tangle of desire and wonder, wrapped around that kernel of fury that has defined him from the moment we met. It illuminates him now. “I did, sir.”
I wonder how Alvin would describe the events of the fundraising party, what he saw that passed beneath Junior’s notice, or what Junior had chosen not to tell. But I know that Alvin would never tell me. There is a mother’s ferocity in his anger. Something that he is fighting to protect.
When we get back to the house, Pea tends to Alvin’s shallow graze with matter-of-fact expertise. She offers no sympathy and he watches her unflinching, dazzled.
“You’ve been shot before,” he says.
“A few times.” She tapes down the gauze she’s wrapped around his upper arm. “There. You’re fine, kid.”
My heart bends to look at them. No matter how I met Pea, I would have loved her. I’m still falling. I can’t help it any more than Alvin can, trying not to look at her as he puts back on his shirt.
“Why ain’t you afraid of me like the others?”
I leave the kitchen but not fast enough to avoid Pea’s response, “Because I already know whatever you could tell me, and so does…”
Walter is building a fire in the living room. Tamara sits in the nearby rocking chair, her knees tucked against her chest. The descending autumn has put a bite in the night air.
“I thought you two came here for a country retirement, Dev.” The young wood catches. Walter leans back on his heels. “If tonight’s any measure, you’d have had a more peaceful time slinging drinks in the Pelican.”
“With vice squad breathing down my neck? With Pea about to go down for at least ten counts of murder one?”
Tamara’s breath hitches and Walter gives her an uncharacteristically scornful look. “Get off it, Tammy. You know what she is.”
“I just … didn’t know it was so bad, that’s all. All this for Victor.” She shakes her head.
“Not just for Victor,” Walter says softly.
The sound of running water and clinking glasses echoes from the kitchen. Walter proffers a fat, hand-rolled cigarette. Not packed with tobacco, I realize after a puff. I savor the quality and offer it to Tamara. She smiles sweetly at me and takes three hard drags before alighting from the chair.
“Got any music for that turntable?”
Pea and Alvin appear in the doorway with two bottles of wine and glasses. Already, Walter’s reefer has given my perception a pleasant distance. An instability that makes everything feel worth noticing.
Tamara puts on an old Bessie Smith album of Pea’s. Alvin coughs like an emphysemic old man. He drinks some wine and tries again. Walter and I clink glasses.
“We should talk,” he says softly. “Give me your letter, and I’ll make it my business. You can trust me with that.”
“I know.”
Pea sprawls on the couch by the fire. “So when you planning to tell us what those cards had to say, Tammy?”
Tamara was looking at me, but she glances away when I meet her eyes. “In a bit, sugar,” she says, and drinks half a cup of wine in one gulp.
Pea and Tamara and Alvin are passing the butt of Walter’s reefer. He takes another from his pocket.
“Let’s take Alvin back home,” Walter says. “No, stay, Phyllis. No need to trouble yourself. Dev and I will take care of it.”
I look back at Pea. She meets my gaze, indecipherable and hard. A Pelican look, a Phyllis look. My response is desire, now and always.
We give Alvin a ride home. There’s no hiding the old-boy exclusion of her. I only kiss her softly and promise to explain later. She grips my hand hard enough to hurt, and lets go.
Alvin gives us directions in a wandering voice that seems to emanate from the smoke filling the Packard. His house is half the size of my modest cottage, two rooms and a porch. An old tractor hulks beside a muddy pickup. A small light shines in the kitchen. Mae Spalding stands at the door. Her hair in curlers and her arms wrapped around a tiny waist.
“Alvin!” she calls. He climbs from the back seat as though from a high wall. “You all right, child? I heard things in town. I heard…” Reflected kitchen light flattens her expression. Her voice is strangled with fear.
“I’m fine, Ma,” he says. “Dev and that angel and their friends, they took good care of me.”
His voice changes when he talks to his mother. He speaks with an upward lilt, like he wishes she would smile.
“Alvin,” I say, “why did you go with Craver tonight? If you aren’t after Junior, and he isn’t after you…”
Alvin freezes comically, his right foot hanging in the air six inches from the soil. “He might be,” he says, finally.
“We both know that’s a lie. What is going on?”
“I just want—those damn Bells—”
He stops abruptly. His mother calls him again, a soft question. Alvin walks to the porch, pauses, comes back to where I’m sitting.
“That angel,” he pronounces, “she’s dangerous as a fire.”
Walter barks a laugh.
“And fire, it ain’t evil, it just is, right? But you can use it for evil. You and me, what we have is the Lord’s own strength. Maybe your angel is reformed, like she says. But if not, there’s a greater good in this world.” His cadences change to a voice older than his years, a mimicked oratory. “And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell!”
I am astonished into speechlessness. Beside me, Walter crosses his arms. “Matthew 5:30. Not very original, kid.”
“The truth don’t
