Father and Son (35 page)

Her kitchen was neat and all the dishes had been washed. Just like his mother. He started opening cabinets and saw pots and pans, glasses and all manner of small appliances. In the cabinet next to the sink he found a bottle of whiskey and pulled it out and looked at it. It was a fifth of Evan Williams and it was nearly full. He thought about moving her car so that it would look like she was gone, but he was afraid he would meet somebody on the road and he didn't figure he'd be able to find her keys. But as he twisted the cap off the bottle and turned it up, he saw a ring of keys sitting beside the toaster on the counter.

He walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door to see if there were any Cokes in there. A small carton of six bottles rested within. He got one out and found the opener nailed to the wall beside the garbage can and he opened it and took a sip from it. He shook it the way some people do and made it fizz, then drank a little more of it. Then he filled it all the way up with whiskey and drank the whole thing in one long swallow. It heated his belly. He capped the whiskey and walked over and looked at the keys. He was wondering what the chances were of somebody picking just that time to come along, just as he got ready to move the car. He hated to chance anything, but if the car was gone nobody would think of looking around the place for her, and he would have more time. He wanted plenty of time.

He leaned against the counter, considering it. He picked up the keys and looked at them. One of them was an ignition key for a Buick. Still shiny, not worn down to the brassy metal by fingertips yet. A new car, maybe. He hefted the bottle in his hand.

“Well shit,” he muttered. Bobby was the only one to worry about coming along. He didn't know what the chances were but he thought it was worth the risk. It wouldn't take but a minute to find out.

He walked up the hall to the front door and looked out. The road was deserted. He pushed open the screen door and stood on the porch listening. He couldn't hear anything but the wind. He could see the back end of the car sticking out of the car shed, a chrome bumper, a blue trunk. When he moved he moved fast.

He ran to the end of the porch and jumped off and landed running, crossed the yard at a lope and turned the corner of the shed and went down the side and yanked open the driver's door. He threw the bottle onto the seat and slammed the door while he was cranking the car. When it fired to life he shoved it into reverse and stepped down hard on the gas. It spun gravel at first and he could hear the rocks clattering
against the walls of the wooden shed and then back into the sides of the car and he let off the gas and it lurched backward. As soon as it cleared the shed he spun the wheel hard to the right and turned it around, hit the brakes, shoved it into drive, and swung out of the yard with mud and gravel flying. He pushed the pedal to the floor and raced toward the side road a half mile beyond the house, and he didn't meet anybody. And after he was on that road he knew he probably wouldn't.

He drove slower then, sipping on the whiskey, looking for a place to hide one more car.

Things were quiet at the jail now. The coroner had taken care of the body and Harold had gone off to patrol some more. Bobby sat in the dayroom and waited for the coffee to brew and watched part of a game show with the sound off. There wasn't anything pressing to do now and he just wanted to rest for a while. He thought about calling Mary to see if she was back. He didn't like it when they argued and he wanted to see if she was all right. But he thought he'd just drive out there after a while.

When the coffee was ready he got up and poured a cup and took it back to his office and sat down, more to keep from answering all of Mable's questions than anything else. At least it was over now. He'd done what he had to do. But he should have done it yesterday. Shouldn't have let that baby lay out there another whole day. He told himself that it had just been because of what Virgil and Puppy got into, but that wasn't it. He hadn't wanted to go out there, hadn't wanted to see what the children told him was out there. But now he had done it and now it was over.

He looked up at the open door to his office. If it were closed, Mable wouldn't come back there and bother him unless it was something she thought was important. He got up and closed it, then sat back down.

There was always plenty of noise and meanness out in the world and
it was nice to be able to get away from it for short periods of time. Like now. He put his feet up and reached in his pocket for his cigarettes.

He felt bad for the two kids who were left. They'd be shunted off to somebody else forever now probably. He didn't figure the mother was much better than the father. She hadn't told on him. Maybe they'd done it together. Maybe he'd just scared her into staying quiet. Maybe he was in the process of killing her when he drove up on them the other day. And those kids there watching it. He hoped for a better life for them.

He eased back in his chair and lit his cigarette. Smoke drifted over his desk. His boots were muddy again and he was getting some of it on his desk. But it was his desk and he could get mud on it if he wanted to.

All he had to do was sit here, finish his coffee and his cigarette, and then he could get up and go home and take a shower, see what Mary was fixing for supper. Maybe there wouldn't be any more trouble for a while. Maybe Glen would stay out of the way and leave Jewel alone. And if he wouldn't he could always take his badge off for that five minutes. Five minutes. You could hurt somebody real bad in five minutes. But he hoped it wouldn't come to that. All he wanted was for Glen to leave Jewel alone. He'd had his chance. It was all over now and he didn't want to have to worry about him anymore.

He kept sitting there, sipping on his coffee. After a while he finished it and got up and found his hat and put it on. He opened the door, turned the light off, and pulled the door closed behind him. Mable was still working on some papers up front. He told her where he was going and then he left.

It was still cloudy outside and he wondered if the rain was over. He got into his car and pulled out into the street.

The town was still wet and there were few people about, no idlers on the benches under the oaks of the courthouse. He drove by it slowly, looking up at the high windows set into the white masonry and saw
someone peering down at him, a judge, a lawyer, a juryman, maybe a shoplifter. The man lifted a hand and Bobby nodded to him across the height and distance.

He stopped at the red light and put his blinker on. Cars and trucks passed through the intersection and he waited for the light to turn green. Tapping his hand idly on the steering wheel, watching a woman next to him in a car speaking to her child. The light changed and he went through it and turned down the hill, picking up speed and moving over into the right lane past gas stations and grocery stores and a bank and a tire shop. He had to wait for another light at the bottom of the hill and then he pushed down hard on the gas and drove to the other side of town and left the city limits. He dreaded telling Mary.

He slowed once for some puppies playing near the highway, weaving wide of them and going by carefully. Children were in yards and old people sat in chairs on their porches. Some of them waved. He waved to some of them.

Once he got deeper into the county he could see water lying everywhere, pooled in the ditches and flowing through the creeks, rain-drenched yards with their sodden trees standing guard beside the road. He felt dirty and he couldn't remember when he'd ever been so tired. It seemed to have seeped into his bones and it felt as if it were pushing him down into the seat with its weight. His eyes drooped a few times and he weaved a little and snapped out of it. For a little while. Staying awake with Jewel almost all night. He couldn't get the way she'd looked and the way she'd felt out of his mind and he knew he wouldn't be able to stay away tonight either but he had to have some sleep. An ache had settled into his backbone and his shoulder blades. He guessed he needed some more coffee.

He turned off the highway and slowed a little, splashing through a few low places that still held water. The road was lined with big trees and the
pastures were wet, the cows grazing in the deep grass and the little frogs that had come out of the ditches hopping across the blacktop. He'd seen them come out of the road at night in the rain, thousands of them, and he wondered where they came from in such masses, why they did that.

He pulled up in his yard and parked the cruiser. He got out and looked at the empty car shed and went across the gravel to the steps. He had his key out to put it in the door but he saw that it was open. That stopped him. She never left it unlocked. He stood there looking at it from the bottom step. He stared at the car shed as if that would tell him why the door was open.

“Well hell,” he said, and went on up the steps. Maybe she'd gone to the grocery store. Maybe she was quilting a quilt with some of her friends. He didn't blame her for not wanting to stay by herself at home all the time. The thought crossed his mind that she might have gone to see Virgil now that he was hurt. He didn't care, kind of even hoped that she would. He didn't want her to be lonely. Everybody needed somebody.

He pushed the door open and let the screen door flap behind him, took off his gun and dropped it in the chair and sat down and took his boots off. Took his wet socks off, too, stuck them down inside the boots and carried them back to his room and dropped them beside the bed. There were clean boots inside the closet and more uniforms. He undressed and balled up all his clothes and grabbed some clean underwear from a drawer, went down the hall and tossed the clothes into the utility room and went into the bathroom and closed the door just out of habit.

They'd remodeled the bathroom two years before and he liked the shower. He turned the water on and stepped in under the spray, feeling the heat soak into his skin. He put his hands against the stall and just stood there under the spray with his head down. It felt so good he didn't want to get out from under it, but after a few minutes he shut it
off and stepped out.

Back in his room he found an ironed pair of uniform pants and put them on, found some fresh socks and put them down on the bed. He combed his hair in front of the mirror and slipped on a ribbed undershirt and patted at his hair again, then went down the hall into the kitchen and looked around. The first thing he noticed was the pan of spaghetti sauce on the stove. He frowned a little when he walked over to it. The stove was cold. He stuck his finger into the sauce and it was cold, too, but burned around the edges. A faint trace of something acrid still hung in the room. It wasn't like her to forget about something on the stove and let it burn. Unless maybe she was out in the yard. But she wouldn't have been out in the yard with it this wet. He picked up the pan and felt around on the bottom of it. There was no trace of heat there. He set it back and turned slowly around in the kitchen. Nothing was out of place. All the dishes were washed. He began to be just a little worried about her. He looked at his watch and saw that it was time for her soap operas to come on. It was strange for her not to be home at this time of day. She never missed her soap operas, never forgot to lock the door, never burned anything on the stove. He thought he ought to walk out in the yard.

He stepped out on the back porch and tried to remember what time he'd tried to call her. It looked like she'd be back by now. It just wasn't like her to go off and not tell him.

“Damn, Mama,” he said softly. “Where the hell you at?”

The yard was wet and her flowers were bending from the weight of the rain that had fallen on them. He looked down toward the barn. But her car was gone. If her car was gone she was gone. Wasn't she?

He didn't have his boots on, was still barefooted, but he went down the steps and stood at the edge of the yard and looked out over that old familiar place. He couldn't imagine where she could be. And she shouldn't
have gone off like this without letting him know where she was. Maybe she was over at Virgil's and didn't want him to know. But wherever she was, it wasn't any big deal. For once in her life she'd left something on the stove and she'd forgotten to lock the door. She was a grown woman, not some child he had to take care of. She'd probably be in after a while. He went up the steps and back into the house.

He found the coffee in the cabinet and poured some water into the pot and fixed it all and put it on the stove to start it. While it was warming up he went back to his room and put on his socks and his boots and got a clean shirt. He pinned some brass on it at the kitchen table while a cigarette smoked in the ashtray. He hung the shirt on the back of his chair and waited impatiently for the coffee to be ready. He kept listening for her car. He crossed his legs in the chair and leaned back and looked at the walls, tapped the ashes into the ashtray. The coffee perked quietly on the stove. After a bit he got up and found a cup and poured it full, spooned in some sugar, and reached into the icebox for the milk and poured a little in it. He sat at the table and sipped his coffee. He didn't want to go back to the jail now unless something came up. What he really needed was a nap. Needed one bad. He got up and walked up the hall to the little table where the phone sat and called Mable. He told her he was going to be at home for a while, that if she needed anything to call him there.

In the kitchen he found a pen and a piece of paper and wrote her a note and left it on the table:
Wake me up when you get in Love Bobby
. He stretched and yawned and went back to his bedroom and took off his boots.

The bed he slept in was the one he'd slept in all his life. It was an old cord bed with high wooden posts at the corners and the spread over it was white and laced with little fuzzy knots of yarn. On the walls hung a few pictures of a young Bobby standing in jeans and cowboy boots in
the sawdust of showrings holding black bulls with leather harnesses on their muzzles, first-place ribbons in his hand, staring blankly into the eye of the camera. Sharp old black-and-white photos that had been in the local paper years back. His mother had gone to every event, had helped him wash the bulls like cars in the yard, soaping their black hides and running the water hose over their backs as the soap foamed up and ran down their sides, their legs, both of them combing out the hair and brushing it until it gleamed, leading them into the covered cattle trailer that was his high school graduation present a year early for the rides to the livestock barns in Jackson and Tupelo and Grenada.