God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (26 page)

She slept alone and woke up rested, the first time
since Leon died. Joanie had moved back to her own house, Joyce had
slept on the couch. The door connecting Leon's bedroom to the
bathroom was open when she got up, and Mickey was gone.

She took a long bath, paying attention to her waist
and her legs and her arms. She had skin like a girl. No family
resemblances at all. She imagined how she would look to Richard
Shellburn.

She stayed in the tub until the water turned cool,
and then wrapped herself in a beach towel Mickey had bought her in
Atlantic City. Then she did her eyes, using lighter shades than
yesterday. Without knowing it, she painted herself happier. She began
to hum. She brushed out her hair, watching how it fell over the line
of her shoulders—a girl's hair, blowing on the beach at Atlantic
City—and then she noticed a ball of Kleenex the size of a fist
lying in the wastebasket, covered with dried blood. She had to look
twice to see what it was.

Everything stopped. She dropped the brush in the sink
and went into her bedroom, and put on the same underwear and dress
she had worn the day before. There was something inside her—as ugly
as a ball of dried blood—and it hadn't gone away. She'd thought it
was gone, but it was there, and it frightened her. She went
downstairs and found Joyce in the kitchen eating waffles. "Mickey
left early," her sister said. "It wasn't even light. Didn't
say where he was going .... "

Jeanie sat down beside the telephone and dialed the
number Eisenhower had left. The man who answered the phone was the
one who'd called Monday and said Leon was dead.

"This is Mrs. Scarpato," she said. "Leon
Hubbard's mother, and last night I received a phone call about my
son."

"Slow down, slow down," he said. "You
said your name was what?"

"This is Jeanie Scarpato. My son was Leon
Hubbard."

"Oh," he said, "Mrs. Hubbard."

She looked at her sister and shook her head. "Last
night I got a call about my son, that I should ask my husband where
the body was."

The policeman said, "Do you have reason to
believe your son has been harmed in some way?"

"This is Mrs. Scarpato," she said. "You
talked to me Monday, on the telephone, and told me that my son Leon
had been killed in a construction accident."

"Oh, the dead son. You should of said so. I
thought it was somebody else. You know, we get a lot of calls come
through AID and it helps if the complainant identifies themselves."

She said, "Is Mr. Eisenhower coming in?"

He said, “Officer Eisenhower has been reassigned
back to detectives."

She said, "Could you tell me if he had my son
taken somewhere for tests?"

"Tests?" he said.

"To tell how he died," she said. She heard
her voice shaking. "There was some question of how my son died
.... "

"Wel1, I don't think he would of took him
anywhere," he said. She could just see him looking under his
desk. "If it was a homicide, the M.E. might still have him, but
we don't take the bodies, ma'am. We're the investigative arm, and if
there was some reason to take a body somewhere for tests, I can
assure you Officer Eisenhower would of told me."

She left her number for Eisenhower and hung up the
phone. It was inside her, ugly as dried blood, and she was afraid of
it. She thought it must have been there every day of her life, a plug
in some smooth surface inside her, and then Leon had died and pulled
it loose, and let the light in behind it. In the light, all the
familiar footings inside her turned out to be ledges. In the light,
she could see the long drops, and it made her afraid even to breathe.

"Mickey seemed different this morning,"
Joyce was saying.

"Like he was sorry now for how he acted."
She fit the last piece of waffle into her mouth. "They're always
sorry when it's too late." She put her fork across the plate and
put the plate in the sink and ran cold water over it.

When she turned away from the sink, she saw Jeanie
was getting ready to cry. "You've got to get used to it,"
she said.

"You don't know what it is," Jeanie said.

Her sister said, "You're not the only one ever
had something happened. At least it was a good, clean thing. He
didn't get cancer and suffer all summer, like some of them from this
neighborhood. Think how terrible that would of been."

Jeanie said, "I don't need to borrow grief from
nobody."

And then Joyce was putting on her coat, and deserting
her too.
 

4
A
Newspaper Romance

They came for Arthur early in the morning. Sophie
recognized one of them from Monday morning. He was the man who had
gone with Arthur and Mickey to steal the truck at New Jersey. He was
wearing a very smart coat, although it would have looked better with
a tie.

It was her habit to cut a carnation for Arthur's
friends when they came to visit, but there was something about this
man—even Monday there had been something—that you didn't want to
pin a flower on him. He was quiet, but he wasn't shy. She liked shy
men, now that she was older, but she hadn't ever liked men without
manners.

It was Thursday morning, before the children started
walking past the window on their way to school. The schools made the
boys wear ties and the girls all had uniforms, different colors for
different schools. She liked watching them on the way to school,
except the ones who smoked. She did not think girls ought to be
smoking cigarettes in Catholic school uniforms.

They came in, the man from Monday morning and another
man, who was younger—just a baby, really—and bigger. She liked
his haircut. She admired the size of their shoulders and backs and
arms. They had been watching the shop, she knew because they came in
right after Arthur. He was normal again when he came in, his hair
combed nice, and he'd put on a nice smell. She thought any woman
would be lucky to have Arthur when he was normal. He'd leaned over
the counter to kiss her, and then gone into the back to take care of
his business. He'd said, "Get your suntan lotion packed, Sophie,
we're goin' to Disney World."

Nobody could make her smile like Arthur. He was in
back two minutes when they came for him. The one from Monday morning
came in first and looked from side to side, paying as much attention
to her as the flower arrangements. The younger one came in behind and
locked the front door. "Where is he?" said the one from
Monday morning.

The younger one pulled the shade over the long window
that ran the length of the door, and she stared at them in the
darkened room and understood they were going to kill Arthur. The one
from Monday morning walked around the counter and knocked seventy
corsage boxes off a card table in back.

"You ought to be ashamed," she said. "This
is how you do your business? Scaring old women?"

He pushed her out of the way and looked behind the
curtain that hid the cashbox under the counter. "You going to
steal my money too?" she said. "You going to do your filth
and steal twenty dollars from an old woman too? Like the niggers?"
Aunt Sophie did not think the men needed to know there was $30,000 in
there.

The one from Monday morning said, "He's in
back," and came around the counter. The younger one had already
taken the gun out of his belt, and now the one from Monday morning
took his out too. It was a fancy gun with a wooden handle and a
barrel that was so long and black it seemed a second behind the rest
when he brought it around. He didn't need a barrel like that to kill
Arthur.

The younger one said, "You want me to go around
to the back?" The other one thought it over.

"Yeah," he said, "he can't run, but
what the fuck? Take the back to make sure.”

The old woman spoke to the one who was still a baby.
She said, "You're so young, why would you want to hurt an old
woman and her nephew?" He put the gun back in his pants and
unbuttoned his coat. “Arthur takes care of me," she said. "If
you hurt him, you might as well kill me too. Without him, who's going
to take care of me?”

The young one went out the front door. She watched
until the shade had stopped moving. "He's so young for this
business," she said.

The man from Monday morning looked at her, for the
first time. "If I was you, I'd shut my mouth," he said. "We
can leave as much behind as we want to here."

She said, "He's hardly more than a baby."

The man from Monday morning said, "You keep that
in mind, old woman." He looked at his watch, giving the other
one time to get in back. "You just keep that in mind."

She saw he was getting ready to go into the back for
Arthur now. "He never hurt you," she said. "He ain't
in nobody's way. He'll do anything you want. Please, Arthur ain't no
trouble, you don't have to do this .... "

The man from Monday looked at his watch again. It
hadn't been very long, it couldn't be time yet. He pointed the gun at
the old woman's face, but she never thought he meant to shoot her.

“
Remember what I said, missus. We're comin' back
out this way in a minute."

She crossed herself and he saw she was leaving it up
to God. He turned his back, satisfied with that, and stepped toward
the door to the meat locker. She saw him take the safety off and
noticed how relaxed he held the gun, like it was part of his hand.

And she reached through the curtain and found her own
gun—a fifty-year-old revolver her husband had given her the first
year they were married. It had never been fired. The man from Monday
morning was at the door now, and she pointed the gun at the back of
his head. The gun must have been about his age, and it seemed to her
that it must have been there all that time, waiting for him. Like God
had made one, and then the other to correct the mistake.

She held the gun in both hands and pulled at the
trigger. Her husband had taught her to shoot, but it was a long, long
time ago, she couldn't even remember where they went to practice, so
she just pulled. It wasn't up to her anyway. It was moving by itself
now, after all those quiet years, to meet him.

The noise when it went off shattered the glass door
to the refrigerated box where she kept her roses. She thought it was
the noise. The man from Monday morning turned around—he was ten
feet from the roses—and his gun was coming back for her.

She knew it was him, even though he didn't look the
same. His eyes were bigger, for one thing. She wished she'd been
wearing her glasses when they'd come in, and she wished the gun
wasn't so loud.

Her ears were ringing. She couldn't hear herself
shout to Arthur to run for his life.

The man from Monday morning must have thought she was
talking to him because his gun stopped, and he took a step sideways,
like he was going for the front door.

She jerked the trigger again, and the second shot
caught him in the neck, right below the chin. She was sure. It threw
him back into the wall, and she had to remind herself now who it was,
because he didn't look anything like he had. And then he fired his
own gun and blew out the other door to the flower box. She'd have to
get the roses out of there right away.

Then Arthur came through the door, wacko again. He
stopped in the doorway and saw the man on the floor, and the blood
sprayed all over the wall. And she thought from his face that he was
going to lecture her that this was no way to run the business.

But he said, "Sophie, I swear I never thought it
would come to nothin' like this," and then he began to shake.
She took his hand and moved him out of the way.

"Just a minute, Arthur," she said. And then
the door slammed open again and the young one came through with his
big shoulders and his nice haircut and his baby face, and she shot
him in the nose. The noise hung in the air with the smoke. "This
one is so young," she said to Arthur. "Barely a baby."

But Arthur didn't seem to hear her. He was shaking
and buggy-eyed, and then he went over and began to kick the man from
Monday morning in the face. Screaming, "This is my family! You
fuckin' hear me? My family. You fuck . . . you fuck . . .you fuck . .
." And every time he said that word, which she did not like used
in her shop, he kicked the man in the face again. He did that until
he was out of breath and sweating and his pants was all messed up
with blood where he'd missed with his shoe. When he quieted down, she
said, "Go change your pants, Arthur. The police is coming."

He said, "I swear to Christ, Sophie, I didn't
know nothin' like this was going to happen." He shook his head,
looking at the mess on the floor, and she took him by the hand again
and led him out the front door.

"Go change your pants," she said. “You
got blood all over them, and the police is coming.
You
don't want nobody takin' pictures of you like that." But he
stood in the doorway, looking back at the floor, shaking. She could
feel it in his hand, and when she touched the back of his neck, she
could feel it there too.

"Arthur," she
said, "we ain't got time to go wacko. Not now." And she
pushed him gently out the door and watched him to make sure he could
still find the house. Then she picked up the phone and called the
operator, and asked her to call the police and tell them two men had
just tried to rob her flower shop. And then she went into the closet
and found her broom and a dustpan, and began sweeping up the pieces
of glass.