Descent (23 page)

“Well?” said Billy.

“Are you going to move that car?”

“Sure I am.”

The boy waited.

“You mean now? This second? No, I don’t believe I can do that.”

The boy walked on toward the car.

“Where you going?” said Billy, following.

The boy stepped to the driver’s side and reached for the handle.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

He lifted the handle and opened the door, and Billy stepped up and kicked the door with the heel of his boot, wrenching the door from the boy’s
grip and slamming it shut again. The sound echoed down the canyon of pines, and both horses reared and Carmen held on and said Easy, easy. She watched and the mares watched wild-eyed as Billy took the boy by his jacket and spun him around and pinned him against the fender and brought his face close to the boy’s and said, “Like father like son. What is it with you people? Don’t you know any better than to touch another man’s vehicle?”

The boy had not resisted being spun around and pinned to the car. Now with Billy’s face in his face and the feel of his spittle landing on his skin, he reached up and filled his hands with the leather lapels and shoved off against the car and spun around and pinned Billy, in turn, to the car.

“Stop it,” called Carmen. “Sean, stop it.”

“Best listen to her,” Billy said. “How you gonna tap that little brown ass if you can’t even walk?”

The boy let go of one lapel and swung but Billy turned his head and the blow only grazed his chin, and before the boy could swing again Billy pulled him close and fitted his head alongside the boy’s head jaw to jaw as if he wished to say something into his ear, and the boy tried to separate but Billy held him and said into his ear: “Too bad you weren’t so tough when you lost your sister.” And he drew back and head-butted the boy’s nose. There was a brittle sound and the boy felt the blood flow hot over his lips and Billy slipped away and stepped around him and punched him once, deeply, in the back, and of some command not his own the boy dropped to his knees in the snow.

Carmen tried to turn the horse again but it would not turn, and at last
she dug in her heels and the horse burst forward at a gallop and she looked back once to see that the other mare followed, and then she released the horse to its own desperate heart and it fled up the narrow way, the huge body rocking under her and her hat whipped from her head in the wind and lost behind her.

Watching her go, Billy did not see the boy get to his feet, or the swing that caught him in the temple and sent him stilt-legged toward the trees. He planted one hand in the snow, saving himself in this tripod fashion from a knockdown, and when the boy stepped forward to kick, Billy caught his swinging boot and held on to it and the boy went down and Billy let go and stepped away with a hand to his head. The boy scrabbled to his feet and turned to him again, came forward swinging poorly with his left. Billy sidestepped and shoved him away and said, “You dumb fuck, you broke your wrist on my head.”

The boy turned and came back, the left fist raised.

“Quit now.”

He swung and Billy deflected the swing and shoved him to the car facefirst, held him there squirming and spitting blood on the windshield.

“I said quit now, for fuck’s sake. She’s gone.”

The boy tried to pivot and Billy seized the injured hand in some extraordinary way and the boy pitched forward again, his lips peeled in a red grin of pain.

“I mean it,” Billy said.

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me? Really?” He torqued the boy’s wrist. “You gonna quit?”

The boy turned his face and shaped his lips and sent a mouthful of blood spraying over the windshield, and without another word Billy wrenched on the hand and he felt the bones give way like twigs and they each heard the snapping of the bones.

The boy relaxed and Billy let go and stepped away. The boy turned and slid slowly to his haunches, then sat hard on the snow, holding his right hand in his left.

Billy stood over him, panting. He spat into the snow and wiped his mouth. He looked up the path where the girl had gone and there was no sign of her or the horses other than the fresh hoofprints and the dark shape of hat in the snow.

He looked back to the county road and he looked at the boy again heaped against his car, blood running from his nose in a dark ooze.

Billy shook his head. “A man gets out of bed in the morning and he has no idea. Just no idea.” He looked up at the high teeth of the pines, the darkening lane of sky.

The boy sat coddling his arm. Before him at Billy’s waist was a silver oval with two ruby eyes and a red enamel fork of tongue. It was the bejeweled belt of the pugilist, and staring from its polished surface was his own bloodied, distorted face in miniature.

Looking good, Dudley.

Billy took out his phone and held it loosely in his palm, as if it were a stone he might sling.

“Fuck it,” he said finally, slipping the phone back into his pocket. He bent to grab the boy by the jacket but the boy pushed his hands away and climbed to his feet on his own. They walked to the passenger’s side and Billy opened the door and waited for the boy to get in.

“Keep your head back.” He found him a mechanic’s rag already red to press to his face and he shut the door and walked around and swung in behind the wheel. He got a cigarette in his lips and tapped up another and looked at the boy with the rag pressed to his face and put the pack away. He lit the cigarette and looked at the boy again. Then he leaned to grope under the seat and he found the bottle by feel and brought it up and unscrewed the cap and held it out.

“Here,” he said, and the boy lifted the rag to look. It was a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, half gone. He took the bottle and tipped it up and the whiskey splashed cold into his mouth washing away the copper taste of blood and running down his throat in a cold burn. He handed the bottle back, shuddering, his eyes weeping and a great hot snake uncoiling in his gut.

Billy checked the bottle for blood and tilted down a deep swallow and restashed the bottle under the seat and turned the key. Electric guitar burst forth and he snapped it off. He sat a long moment looking at his windshield, shaking his head. At last he flipped the wiper lever and they both watched as the blood spread across the glass, smearing away the world in bright arcs of gore.

45

A
s Grant stepped out
of the truck, the red door opened and the old dog hobbled out to greet him, her wrappings gray in the dusk. He walked up to the stoop and halted. Maria stood in the partial opening, one hand on the door and one on the jamb, as if the matter of his admittance were still in question.

“I’m late,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She made him stand a moment longer, the canvas tool bag in his grip like an overnight bag, and then smiled and swung open the door. “Don’t be,” she said. “We’re not on any kind of schedule here.”

He pawed at the welcome mat with his boots and stepped in, passing near her and into the scent of her, a brief miscellany of perfume and cooking
and wine.

“Do you want to give me your coat?”

He glanced down at the old canvas jacket and brushed at it.

“The only other jacket I have makes me feel like I’m going to my own funeral.”

“I love this jacket. But you’ll get hot if you keep it on.”

“Maybe I’d better see about that door first. Unless dinner is ready.”

“There’s time. But Grant, honestly, I’ll feed you either way, you have
my word.”

“And I gave you mine.”

She led him to the back of the house, through the kitchen—the smells of seared garlic and bubbling meat sauce and baking bread bringing his stomach alive—and into the small utility room.

“Can I get you something to drink? Glass of wine?”

Behind her the dog plopped with a grunt to the kitchen floor to watch him.

“Damn,” Grant said. “I forgot the wine.”

She shook her head and pressed two fingers to her breastbone: “Italian, remember? If the sheriff saw my stash, he’d arrest me. I’ll pour you a glass.”

“I’d better not. Not yet. I’ve got some sharp tools here.”

He unbolted the back door and lifted on the knob and jerked the door open, rattling the old pane of glass.

“Can I help?”

“No, ma’am.”

She stood watching him.

“I wouldn’t mind the company, though,” he said. “Unless you’re needed in the kitchen.”

She gave a kind of glance over her shoulder. “I think they’ve got it under control. I’ll just grab my glass.”

The door sagged from its hinges and he shut it again and studied the gaps. Then he collected hammer and screwdriver from the bag and tapped the hinge pins from their thick paint encasements and lifted the door free and set it edgewise on the floor. The cold dusk poured into the house.

“I’ll try to be quick,” he said.

“No, take your time.”

He began backing out the old slot-head screws, and while he worked he told her why he was late: it was because he’d caught Emmet up on a ladder chipping at gutter ice with a screwdriver, and he’d spent about an hour talking the old man down, and then he’d gone up and finished the job, and then spent more time getting the old man inside and making sure he was in for the evening.

He looked up from his work, and Maria looked up—she’d been watching him, his hands—and she smiled. “He’s lucky you came along,” she said.

“He was doing all right.”

“I mean in general.”

“So do I.”

“If breaking your leg is your idea of doing all right.”

“It’s not that he doesn’t like help. He just can’t stand the idea of needing it.”

“He doesn’t like getting old.”

“He’s funny that way.” Grant unrolled the chisel bib atop the dryer and selected one and began shaping out the new mortises in the door edge and in the jamb, tapping gently and exactly with the Estwing hammer.

Maria sipped her wine. “I think he’s gotten younger, actually, since you’ve been around. You and Sean. There’s a light in his eye that wasn’t there before.”

“That’s the light of pure evil.”

She laughed. “The devil himself.”

“I’m serious. Not an innocent word comes out of that mouth.”

“What does he say?”

He dry-fit the hinge and picked up the chisel again and began teasing up fine curls of wood.

“He’s got a thing or two to say about this here,” he said. Not looking up.

“This here?” She would not help him. “What do you mean by this here?”

He brushed a curl to the floor and reset the chisel. “My coming over here. Over to the cafe.”

“Does he now.”

“Not outright. Never outright. He’s too sly for that.”

“I see.” She watched him. “Does it bother you?”

“Does what?”

“Him being so sly.”

“Nope.” He replaced the hinge and tapped it with the butt of the chisel and it sat dead flush to the wood. “Sean might, though. If the old man goes down that path.”

“What path?”

He rigged his cordless with a bit and predrilled for the new screws. “Oh, he was very sly today about Sean and Carmen.”

“Sean and Carmen?”

“My son and your—”

“Yes, thank you. What about them?”

“It seems those two mares went out for a walk today with those two kids on their backs.”

She lifted her glass and said into the bowl of it, “Does that bother you?”

“Does what?” Grant changed bits and looked at her. “Why should it bother me?”

When the screws were set he lifted the door upright and walked it to the jamb. The hinge barrels slipped together and he slid the upper pin into place and then the lower, and lastly he tapped the pins down and swung the door to with a neat and solid click. He tested it again, and as there was no binding he threw the deadbolt and put the tools away and took up the broom and began to sweep.

“Let me do that at least,” she said, but he shook his head. Cleanup was part of the job, he said, and sometimes the best part, although not this time. She asked him what was the best part this time and he smiled and said he didn’t know yet, but so far it was the smell of that food while he worked. Then he reconsidered and said no, it was talking to her while he worked, and she smiled, but it wasn’t the way she usually smiled.

“Listen,” she said after a minute. “I want to say something.”

He held the broom.

She’d not eaten anything but two Greek olives and she could feel the wine in her tongue and she could hear it in her words but she went on anyway. “Listen,” she said. “I know this isn’t exactly happy-couple land here. You know? I don’t know what it is but I know it’s not that. And I know that’s not why you’re here. In Colorado. You and Sean. And I just want you to know that I know it. Everybody knows it.”

“Everybody?”

She sipped her wine.

“What do they know?” Grant said.

“They know that you—” She met his eyes, and held them, and smiled, and shrugged. “They know that you aren’t here for us.”

Grant looked down on the meager pile of paint and wood chips at his feet, then turned to look out the old pane of glass in the door, but the night had come down and there was nothing to see in the glass but his own skewed face and the shape of the woman behind him.

“I don’t believe she’s gone,” he said without turning. “Did you know that?”

Maria nodded—then said, “Yes.”

“How did you know?”

She watched him. “Because you’re her father.”

He nodded to the images in the glass.

“Without evidence,” he said, “without definitive proof, a father would never give up believing, would he.”

“No.”

“Long after everyone else has given up and gone home and gotten on with their lives, he would keep on believing because, without evidence, you could never kill his belief.”

“No, you couldn’t.”

He nodded again and said nothing for a long time. She watched his back, his shoulders.

“But it’s not belief,” he said. “It’s not belief. Whatever belief is, whatever it once was, it’s been destroyed by something else. It’s been kicked all to hell by something else.”

She watched him. She held the glass of wine in both hands.

“Belief never stood a chance against disbelief,” he said.

After a moment she said, “Disbelief?”

“Disbelief in the world,” he said. “The way it is. The way it works. Its god.”

She waited for him to go on.

He said: “I stay because I disbelieve. I disbelieve. I don’t hope. I don’t pray. I disbelieve. I disbelieve and I reject and I renounce, and there’s nothing more to say about me.”

He turned and his face was perfectly composed, his look detached and calm. Then he saw her and she saw the change in his eyes, in his face, as if he’d stepped out of one kind of light into another.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. You’re a good person. A good woman.”

She stared at him, and then she looked about the utility room—at this and that, at nothing. She wiped at her cheek and sniffed, and then smiled. “All I wanted was to cook you a decent meal, for God’s sake, and you lay this on me.”

He held her eyes. He could think of no reply.

He took a step toward her, but just then the dog labored to its feet and clicked off across the kitchen floor, and they heard the front door slam and a moment later Carmen appeared in the kitchen, the dog at her heels, and she came to the threshold of the utility room and stood taking in the strange scene: her mother wet-eyed, holding a glass of wine, and Grant Courtland in his canvas jacket behind her, holding the broom.