Carter Clay (12 page)

When Carter tried to speak of such things, people tended to grow embarrassed. Carter was too sad. Carter lacked a vocabulary, a sense of pacing and narrative—those qualities that made Finis such a success as Private Rear End, Vietnam vet.

But what had happened to Rear End that left him looking so battered and down and out on the day that he came to Sabine to visit Carter Clay?

If Finis Pruitt had been willing to explain, which he was not, he would have told you:
Carter Clay
was what had happened to Rear End.

With Clay, Rear End had reached his pinnacle. With Clay, Rear End had become a deck of cards with which Finis built any number of unlikely constructions. How exhilarating to hover, with the intimation that Rear End had served in Military Intelligence! To watch Clay's eyes to see if they betrayed any misgiving about Rear End's adding MI work to an already multifaceted career as Medivac operator, grunt, and bomber!

Well? Could Finis add the card without the whole toppling?

Yes! Yes! That was cowed admiration in Clay's eyes, not doubt!

Good Dog: Finis's private name for Clay.
Good Dog, Good Dog.

And, oh, how Good Dog's lower lip trembled when Rear End revealed the story of his own mom's demise! Rear End had been only five at the time, and had to watch her fade, fade, fade—

“A terrible wasting disease,” Rear End replied after sad old Clay asked what killed her; then Rear End had to quickly concoct a sob to disguise the hilarity that threatened to erupt at the thought of the true Mother Pruitt, painted like a whore for square-dance suppers at the Las Cruces Senior Center.

Well, running that constant show for Clay had been Finis's first error. The repository of all of Finis's inventions: Clay. Finis understood this in a flash that night the guy in the Indy 500 jacket showed up in Howell Park. Finis saw, then, that Clay had become a monster who had to be expunged lest he forever threaten the existence of Rear End. Clay was no simple audience of the Now. He had become—the parrot who learned a secret password without knowing it, and thus had the potential to scream the password out at any time, day or night.

Finis's second error?

Not making sure he had actually killed Clay. And, of course, that meant he should have used a gun, not a knife. Which error had to be excused, right? Since it was that knife-toting Indy 500 guy—the perfect scapegoat—who inspired Finis to run back to the Port-a-Shed for his own knife. To hide along the service road, waiting for sodden Clay to make his way back to the shed.

The third error, however—not clearing out after the stabbing—was a true error.

The day after the stabbing, Finis and the other men from Shelter #6 were questioned by the police. That was to be expected. It was Finis, among others, who gave the police their description of the man in the Indy 500 jacket. Finis who told the police about the knife Carter Clay had thrown off toward the canal. Finis who led the Shelter #6 delegation to the Sarasota hospital
for a visit to the comatose Clay. Finis who later learned—and relayed to the group—the news that Clay had been transferred up to the VA in Tampa, and would apparently be there a good long while.

Talk of Clay died out in the two weeks following the stabbing—the men were focused on a meth dealer who had taken to hanging at Howell—yet Finis thought of little but Clay's possible return (
What if Clay figures out I'm the one who stabbed him, and he returns for revenge
? versus
This time I'll do it right
).

The former fear was his first thought that night the men at Shelter #6 rose in a group at his approach. For a moment, Finis tried to look as if he meant to veer off casually toward a group down by the canal, but when the men from the shelter began to run his way, Finis began to run, too.

In their fury, the men were a dark cloud of blows and kicks, grunted threats and accusations. (“Lying son of a bitch!” “You ain't no vet!” “Your damn lies nearly got your own buddy killed”) Finis did not understand what-all they had learned or how, but it was clear that they no longer believed in the existence of Private Rear End, and that they had determined themselves to be the only war of which he might rightly declare himself a veteran.

Who knows how long that beating lasted? Probably not terribly long, but when the men finally dispersed, every inch of Finis hurt. His nose was broken and so was one hand. Two fingers. Four ribs. Through the mush of his mouth he felt a slippery absence of teeth.

He had been beaten before, but not like that. That beating took away his sense of humor and left him shamed. Under the viaduct where he took refuge, he formulated a new notion of the perfect revenge on Clay: somehow, he would convince people that
Clay
was the false vet. Stir them to such rage that they ripped and tore at Clay until there was nothing left of Clay at all.

But how to effect such a thing?

He bought a Colt .45 at a pawnshop.

Telephoned the VA in Tampa to learn when Clay would be discharged.

“Mr. Clay has been sent home,” said the operator who took his call.

“Home?” Finis yelped, then added, ever so sweetly, “And just where would that be?”

The hospital operator was not authorized to give out such information.

Home?

Suppose that right this very minute, Clay was on his way back to Sarasota?

Immediately, Finis hauled his aching self out to the highway and stuck out his thumb. He had no cart or encumbrances in those days. It did not take terribly long for a pickup truck to stop. The man inside looked Finis over. “I'm going south,” he said, “if you don't mind riding in the back.”

After that—leery of “Rear End,” and feeling too old and damaged to invent a fresh role—Finis descended into the dankly anonymous atmosphere of the New Life Mission in Oneco. The people at the New Life Mission got him help at the charity clinic (stitched lip, cast, tape), but there was no help for the fear that followed him now. Sometimes, at night, when he finally did fall asleep, he woke with a shout, certain that one of the men from Howell stood over him and, at any moment, would hit or kick him again. Bits of smelly curd came up in his mouth without warning, perhaps because of his lost teeth; and his lost teeth—they made his speech clownish in his own ears.

The audience supreme: so Finis Pruitt had considered Carter Clay. Finis had been intoxicated by his power to trade false experience for the admiration of a man of true experience.

At the New Life Mission, Finis did not seek an audience. At New Life, without Rear End—in a role Finis came to think of as Persona Non Grata—Finis did not talk to anyone. Because he was quiet and took the occasional job of yard work without complaint, the mission let him stay on. One of the mission volunteers—an innocent widower with cobwebbed eyes—mistook Finis's furious silence for shyness. Would Finis allow the volunteer to buy him a
small pet, a rabbit, say, or a guinea pig? Finis could keep it at the volunteer's garage. Would he like that?

While the volunteer talked, Finis rubbed at his chin and studied the pattern of dusty shoe prints that marked the red tile floor of the mission. Perhaps, Finis thought, in time this volunteer might invite Finis to move in, might become Finis's own private volunteer. Hadn't Finis wanted a ferret as a kid? A creature capable of attack? He remembered reading with some fascination about the habits of such creatures: their clean, cozy houses; their larders stocked with live animals rendered helpless by a bite through the brain.

“Well,
a ferret
would interest me,” Finis told the volunteer.

A European polecat.
Mustela furo.
The weasel thief. Males were called hobs, explained the book Finis consulted in the Oneco library. Females were “jills.” Disappointing to learn that the creature—a beautiful gray tube of nastiness—had grown so dependent upon those who used it for sport that it could not survive more than a few days without human care.

“Are you finding what you need?” the librarian asked Finis. A fish-faced hag. Wanting him to move along, move along, now.

“Bona note,”
Finis replied, then gave the woman a wink that made her step behind the reference desk—though, in fact, he was ready to leave, anyway. His chair—some hideous fifties thing—made a satisfying screech as he pushed it away from the table. A mystery: that people had actually paid money for such ugly items. Could you explain it as a species of bragging?
You think I can't bear blond furniture and linoleum? Well, watch this!

The librarian watched as he started for the door. He let his fingers trail insolently over the carrel that held the latest
Reader's Guides.

But was that open atlas of the United States perhaps an invitation? He hesitated, then took a seat, and soon he had calculated the distance from Oneco to Fort Powden, Washington: 3,196 miles.

A funny name, he thought, as he went for the pay phone in the foyer and asked directory assistance for Fort Powden.

Two Clays were listed—a Duncan and a C.L.

“Mr. Clay, sir? This is Craig Towley with the VA. You are the father of Carter Thomas Clay, are you not, sir?”

Duncan Clay made a rustling noise very much like the noise Finis's ferret made as it turned about in its cage.

“Sir, we have several pieces of correspondence for your son. We hoped you might be able to give us a current mailing address?”

With thickened tongue, Duncan Clay managed to explain that he could not help, no, but maybe the sister could.

Yes. Once Finis managed to get hold of Cheryl Lynn Clay at the bowling alley where she worked—Rex's Bowladrome—Cheryl Lynn was only too happy to talk to Craig Towley. Her “little brother,” she called Carter. “He's such a good person,” she said in a teary voice, “but I got to tell you, your damned war screwed him up!” Oh, Cheryl Lynn worried about Carter. If he contacted the VA, would they let her know? Could the VA at least give her brother a message to call his sister?

Finis's voice of official decorum was phlegmy, high-pitched. He reminded himself of Gayle Gordon as bilious boss to Lucille Ball's scattered Mrs. Carmichael. “Though the VA can't serve as a message center,” he said, “I will make a personal note on the case, Miss Clay, and perhaps be in touch from time to time.”

For this false bone, the woman was—like her brother—stupidly grateful. Good Dog, Finis thought, but then he heard someone in the background whistling “Proud Mary,” and it occurred to him that Clay could be at the bowling alley, listening in at his sister's elbow,
knowing
it was Finis pretending to be from the VA. Suppose the bowling alley had one of those devices that revealed the number of the caller and Clay traced it and he came to Oneco and beat Finis to death?

This notion frightened Finis so much that he gave up all thought of a second call to Cheryl Lynn. He spent his days doing the yard work doled out to mission residents or reading in the volunteer's garage. Without asking the volunteer for permission, he began to leave a Winn-Dixie cart in the garage too. It had been a long while since he had allowed himself to acquire things, and, after a time, he began to take pleasure in selecting not merely
what he wanted but what he thought the homeless Persona Non Grata might want, too.

Really, life was not so bad until the middle of July, when a drugstore owner beat Finis for shoplifting the Advil he needed for the aches and pains he still suffered from the beating at Shelter #6. Sometimes, after that second beating, during the evening services at the mission, Finis found himself wanting to shriek—actually, to
caw
like a crow—which he knew would be a terrible mistake, despite the immediate relief it would provide.

The throat-clearing and leg-crossing of the other mission residents made him shiver with revulsion. The promise of an afterlife with such scum made Finis's left eye twitch.
Give me another chance to kill the motherfucker and I'll do it right this time.
Such was as close to prayer as Finis ever came during mission services, and one day in early August, he heard news that made him wonder if his prayers might soon be answered.