As Good As Gone (9781616206000) (25 page)

TWENTY-­NINE

“
O
h!”
Beverly can't help it—she cries out when she sees a tired, bedraggled Ann limping barefoot across the lawn toward the Sidey back door. That lovely, lovely girl with her arm encased in a chunk of plaster, her hair matted and tangled, and her eyes downcast—she looks as though she's lost twenty pounds and put on twenty years since she was home last. The mother in Beverly wants to run out and put her arms around the girl. But Beverly stays by her kitchen window, waiting and watching for Calvin to follow his granddaughter.

Minutes pass before he appears, and then he too walks toward the house, but slowly, hesitantly, and he keeps looking back toward the garage. Beverly watches him until he passes from sight. She turns away from the window and goes into the living room, determined not to call or go over. He'll need a few minutes to get Ann settled, and then she'll allow him an opportunity to call her or come over on his own. Her resolve lasts for less than three minutes, and then she jumps up from her chair.

Beverly bursts through the Sideys' back door and immediately begins to search for him in room after room. When she can't find him, she has to decide between the basement and the upper floor. Ann is probably upstairs, but Beverly runs toward the basement steps. A light is on at the bottom of the stairs, and she grabs the handrail and goes down as quickly as she dares.

It hardly seems possible that all the emotion that has sprung up in Beverly Lodge, sprung up and swirled around in her until she feels it not as emotion alone but as physical sensation, as if she's ready at every moment to be touched and something in her is yearning and rushing out to meet that touch, that all this change in her began when she first descended these steps.

She sees his bare legs first, pale, thatched with dark hair. He must know it's her because he doesn't startle or cover up at her approach. She steps down onto the concrete and finds him standing next to a chest of drawers. He brings a pair of Levi's out of an open drawer and steps into them.

“I didn't hear your knock,” he says.

“I didn't knock. Or ring the bell.”

“You must be here on a matter of some urgency then.”

“Not anymore.”

Beverly can't see clearly into the shadows where Calvin's discarded clothes lie, but she has no doubt why he's taken them off. A teenager soaked them with a garden hose.

“I heard about what happened with that boy.”

He jams the hem of his T-­shirt into the waistband of his jeans. “News always did travel fast in this town.”

“That doesn't worry you?” Beverly asks. “That the police will be involved?”

“It's hard for most folks to reconcile themselves to a beating. Instead of letting it go, they say they're going to call the sheriff. Or the police. They're going to press charges, they say.” He cinches his belt tight. “But they seldom do.”

“Is this something you've had experience with?”

“Anyone lives to my age they're bound to see and hear a few things.”

“So you're not worried.”

He scrapes a handful of coins from the top of the dresser and puts them into his front pocket. Into his back pocket he wedges a wallet. “I'm not worried.”

“So what my friend told me is true. You beat up a boy.”

They're not far from the bed where they lay naked together, yet the gaze he turns on her now is as blank as the bulb burning overhead.

“If he'd been the one left standing, someone would've said to him, ‘So you beat up an old man.' I didn't go over there with the intention that it would come to blows. That was his call.”

“But you were ready?”

If he shrugs again, Beverly believes she'll begin to beat on him herself. So before he can offer another response that will frustrate or anger her, she rushes to ask another question. “Did that incident have to do with Ann? With what happened to her last night? I assume it did.”

“She didn't want to talk much about it.”

Beverly has a sudden memory of Ann's presence at Beverly's table, stretching forth her plate to receive a helping of roast beef, the plate at the end of a long, graceful, tanned arm. Yes, Beverly might well want to punish anyone who would cause harm to that girl. She would want to, but she wouldn't.

“But what
did
she say?” Beverly asks. “Did he hurt her in some way?”

“She didn't come right out and say.”

“Then what—how do you know—?”

“I made a guess. And once I got a look at him I didn't see a goddamn thing that made me think I guessed wrong.”

“A
guess
? Did you ever consider—”

From the top drawer of the dresser Calvin lifts out a pistol, an automatic she believes, an ominous oily dark steel rectangle. Next he brings out a smaller rectangle, and this he jams into the gun's handle.

“Oh, no,” Beverly says. “No, no. Please. What are you doing with that?”

He jerks back on the pistol's action, making a clacking sound that in the basement's smothered quiet is loud enough to make Beverly flinch. Calvin tucks it into the waistband of his jeans.

“I have to go,” he says, and tries to step past her.

Beverly grabs his wrist, and though it's done impulsively, something in her mind pulls her back and reminds her that she's clinging to a man with a gun. It might have been a comical observation were she not trembling with fear. Her feelings for him have carried her so far from what has been her life that she might as well have descended into this basement to be entombed.

“Haven't you done enough?” she says. “You've beaten him, you said so yourself.”

He hasn't shaken off her hand, but neither did he stop when she took hold of his arm. She fears he might simply drag her along until the weakness of her grip causes her to drop away.

He stops and faces her. “The boy? That's done. I guarantee you, he won't bother Ann again. No, I'm making another call on Brenda Cady.”

She points to the gun. “With that?”

“The matter has grown more serious.”

Beverly once pressed her hand on the bare flesh of his abdomen where the gun's barrel is now making its own impression. Perhaps because she touched him there before, she can grab the gun. And do what with it? Run, run as fast and as far as she can and hope that even if he catches her he might be too exhausted to proceed with his mission? Or perhaps she can get a hold of his belt and haul him over to the bed. And if she can work that buckle . . . Oh, this is the thinking of a desperate woman! Beverly knows she has neither the physical charms nor the seductive powers to make him tarry, much less stop. She cannot, she has to admit, make him choose her.

“Don't,” she pleads. “Please don't. Whatever your reason, set it aside. Please. If you go after someone with a gun, you could be the one who gets hurt. Or gets in trouble, bad trouble.
Please
. I don't want anything to happen to you.”

Calvin looks steadily down at her, at this version of her he has never seen before, tear-­streaked and begging like a child.

“All right,” he finally says. “You come along, and after you see what I have to show you, maybe you'll feel different.”

He leads her out of the house and across the back yard, and though with her long legs Beverly has always been able to match anyone's walking stride, she has trouble keeping up with Calvin in his march across the grass.

He enters the garage, and it takes a moment for her eyes to make the switch from the sun-­blasted yard to the dark rafters and splintered studs of the garage.

“Come here,” he says sternly from the back of the garage.

As she walks toward him, the garage's assorted smells take turns assaulting her senses—weed killer, oil, dry rot. Gasoline.

Calvin points down to the gas can. “This is what we're dealing with.”

She's not sure what she's supposed to see.

“
This
, God damn it!” He squats and lifts a string that's coiled next to the red can. For her inspection, he drapes the string over his finger.

“I . . . I'm not sure what you're showing me.”

“A bomb. The sonofabitch made a bomb, and this was supposed to be the fuse.” He stands stiffly, still holding the string. “He had one end of this in the gasoline and the other end over in your lilac bushes. That's where he likely planned to light it. And then run like hell.”

Beverly has trouble comprehending what he's showing her. It's frightening, of course—it
is
a bomb, after all—but there's also something preposterous about it. In its overelaborateness, it reminds her of her sixth graders, how the boys are always hatching ingenious schemes of destruction and revenge.
Wouldn't it be neat if we dug this trap, real deep and at the bottom there'd be these poison stakes and over the top
. . . But they never implement any of these plans; all the satisfaction comes from talking about what they
could
do.

“Would this . . . would it have worked?” she asks Calvin.

“Probably not. The string isn't fuse material, and it isn't likely it would burn that distance. But that's not the point, is it? You've got someone out there who's not content just to barge into someone's house and scare the hell out of folks. Now he's looking to make good on his threats.”

“You think Brenda Cady's husband did this?”

“I'm damn sure of it.”

“So you're . . . What are you going to do?” She hopes that if she forces him to declare his intentions, to move them from the dark tangle of his brain to the open air of speech, he might realize how inappropriate they are and then he'll slow down or back off completely.

“I'm going to do the job I was hired to do,” Calvin says.

“Hired? Hired! Who
hired
you? You're here to watch your grandkids while their parents are out of town. You're a babysitter! You're not some kind of gunfighter here to clean up the town!”

He says nothing but merely glowers at her. In the dim light of the garage, his eyes gleam like a polished, sharpened tool. She knows she hasn't made any impression on him whatsoever.

“Call the police,” she says. “It's their business to handle matters like this.”

He digs into the pocket of his Levi's and brings out the keys to his truck. “I have to go.”

It's about as much reply as she expected, but then she knows by now how his counter argument would run:
The police? This is no job for the police. They're bound by the laws of the civilization they've sworn to protect
.

“I'll go with you then.”

He shakes his head, a little sadly she thinks. “Not this time.”

“I'm afraid of what could happen,” Beverly says. “To you.” The last two words she speaks softly.

He nods gravely, as if he knows as well as—better than—she the import of what she's saying. And of what she is
not
saying: This time you might not get away with murder.

“I've got to get this done,” Calvin says.

He has taken years off Beverly's life, back to a time when passion and desire ran as hot in her as a fever. And now he's taking her back even further. She feels like stamping and screaming, Don't go, don't go! Please, Calvin! I don't want you to go! Not that she believes he'd be any more susceptible to a child's tantrums than to an aging woman's importunities of love.

She steps aside so he won't have to walk through her on his way to climb into the truck.

The engine coughs to a start, and then in that grinding interval while Calvin tries to get the correct gear to engage, Beverly jumps behind the vehicle, and gets one foot up on the bumper, in the process feeling the truck's tired springs sag with her weight. With both hands, she grabs the top of the tailgate and is about to climb into the back of the pickup when Calvin sees her in one of his mirrors. He yanks on the emergency brake, gets out of the truck, and grabs Beverly around the waist before she can get her leg over the gate.

“I said,
Not this time
.” He tries to pull her loose, but she holds onto the truck's hot metal as if she's hanging over a precipice.

“Come on. Down you go.” He isn't tugging as hard as he can. Like a parent, he's trying to use force and restraint simultaneously.

“All right, Beverly.” He speaks her name, his voice so soft that she can allow herself to believe his will is weakening. If she just keeps holding on, perhaps he'll relent and let her go with him.

But then he lifts her up and away from the truck with such ease that Beverly can't help but make the comparisons—he carries sheep to shearing and wrangles calves to branding.

Beverly doesn't struggle. She can tell he's trying not to hurt her. He's also trying not to let his hands come up too high near her breasts or drop below her waist. He can't take a chance on confusing her—or himself—about the nature of this touch. He carries her into the shade of the lilac bush, and there he sets her down gently. He continues to hold her, but Beverly knows it's not affection that causes him to linger. He's trying to convey to her—without words since he's wary about the power and efficacy of them—that it's essential she make no more effort to follow him. If he could, he'd probably chain her to the spot. But why not take the animal metaphor in another direction—why doesn't he simply command her: Stay! Stay!

“I mean it,” Calvin says sternly, and then he backs slowly from her, watching to make certain she doesn't make another attempt to come after him.

Among the virtues that humans and animals are likely to share, Calvin Sidey probably values none more highly than obedience, at least among women. Beverly knows that, so she doesn't move while he climbs back in the truck and drives away. She remains perfectly still and listens as gravel pings against the truck's undercarriage and the gears clash and the transmission whines. She doesn't move as the cloud Calvin left in his wake drifts back to her, and she knows that his dust would adhere to her tears and together they'd leave their own dirty trail on her cheeks. Beverly stands exactly where he put her until she can be certain he's exited the alley.