Paris Trout (33 page)

"
I'm sorry for them," she said. She was
leaning on the spade, her chin resting on the back of her hands.

"It's not as personal as it was," he said.
"It turned into a business, and that changes the way you feel
about them."

"
How many are there?"

"
I didn't count. Forty-five or fifty, maybe a
dozen more back there that won't make it. A hundred and fifty dollars
. . ."

She stared into the hole. "It doesn't have to be
a business this morning, Carl," she said.

"I'm not fifteen anymore," he said. He
thought for a moment and said, "Although you wouldn't know it
sometimes, the way people are in town."

"
Let them just be what they are," she said,
meaning the birds.

He took the shovel from her and began Hlling the
hole. The claywas heavy but dry — even standing water wouldn't soak
into it more than a few inches — and she winced when it first
landed on the birds. In a moment, though, they were covered, and she
walked back into the house without another word while he finished the
job.

He found her fifteen minutes later in the tub,
crying. The door was cracked open or he would not have looked inside.
The water had turned dirty orange, and she was lying with her head
half submerged, her face wet and streaked, not making a sound.

"
Leslie?"

She shook her head, embarrassed. She did not like him
to see her cry. He knelt beside the tub, finding one of her hands in
the water to hold. "It's only birds," he said. "You
don't care about them."

She got her hand away from him and then cupped some
water with it and brought it to her face.

He found her hand again and kissed it. The sight of
her digging came back to him, a direct and practical kindness.
"You'll get used to it here," he said.

She slid farther down, until the waterline was right
underneath her jaw. "Something is different here besides the
place," she said. "It changed you to come back."

He smiled at her.

"
There wasn't a purpose to everything in
Massachusetts," she said.

"
The day we unpacked our things here, you were
deciding which books we could put in the bookcase where anybody could
see them."

She found a washcloth somewhere under her legs and
ran it over her shoulders. They were like the rest of her, muscled
and soft at the same time.

"
It isn't college," he said.

"
No," she said, "it isn't."

"
I didn't have to make a living up there. I
didn't have people watching me."

She closed her eyes as if she could not stand to see
him. "What is left for them to see, Carl?" she said. "You
were the best Boy Scout in the world when you were eleven years old,
and somehow that has obligated you to be the best Boy Scout forever."

"
Eagle Scout," he said. But she did not
smile. She opened her eyes, though, looking at him in a pitying way
he did not like.

"
I was teasing," he said.

"
The other thing . . ." she said. He
waited, knowing what was coming. "You worry how I seem to people
here."

He shook his head, knowing it was true. "There
is nobody going to tell me who to marry," he said.

"We're already married," she said. "What
I'm talking about is that you wish you weren't."

He dropped the few inches to the floor as if she'd
hit him. He felt her watching him and knew if he said anything false,
she would know it. "I worry that you don't try to fit in."

That hung in the air like the heat off the bath
water.

"
I worry that you try too hard," she said
finally. He dropped his chin onto his chest and closed his eyes.

"Do you remember the football game?" she
said a little later.

He looked up and found her staring at him. She had
stared at him the same way that afternoon, sitting in a crowd of
alumni waving Tufts University banners, her hand under the blanket
covering their laps, it felt like ice on his cock. He had come off a
moment before Holy Cross scored, and the whole side of the stadium
had groaned, as if it were hoping for something else.

She groaned for the next two weeks every time he
ejaculated. "I want to be like that again," she said. "I
want to have those kinds of secrets."

"
People find out those kinds of secrets here,"
he said.

"What can they say? That I gave the first Boy
Scout in Ether County a hand job at the football game? Do you think
people hold you in less regard for something like that?"

"
l think people might not want their lawyer
having sex in public," he said.

"I would."

He felt her mood improving and took her hand again.
"That's because you don't need a lawyer," he said.

And he saw the confrontation had passed. She stood up
and reached behind him for a towel. The last thing he saw before she
wrapped herself inside it was the water dripping off her pubic hair.
 

He sat behind her on the floor, his back against the
toilet, while she combed out her hair. lt was thick and black, cut
short, and stayed exactly where the comb left it against the nape of
her neck. He saw the outline of her bottom beneath the wet towel. It
was a sweetheart of a bottom, but she was right. Somewhere in the
move it had lost its appeal.

"
Did you thank Harry Seagraves?" she said.

"
No, he wasn't there."

"
I thought he always came to Kiwanis."

"
He probably got caught in the weather," he
said. "Maybe I'll drop by his office this afternoon. I don't
want him thinking I'm ungrateful."

He stood up, stiff from
sitting against the toilet, and undressed himself to shower.

* * *

THE LAST THING IN the world Harry Seagraves wanted to
see Tuesday afternoon was Paris Trout sitting in his office. He had
been thinking about Mrs. Trout all morning, the way she had held him
still and focused him on the mechanics of his own release — a
feeling which had been going on inside him for thirty, thirty-five
years — in a different way.

He had left her place feeling, on one hand, as if it
were only the start of things with her and, on the other hand, as if
it were over. For all they had done, he hadn't gotten close to her at
all.

He'd alternated all that morning, confused over which
way he wanted it to be, then he had lunch with Mayor Horn, and then
he returned to his office and found Paris Trout sitting in the
leather couch against the wall, staring out at the sidewalk.

Emma Grandy — his secretary — looked up as he
came in the door, plainly relieved not to be alone with Trout. Trout
took his time turning away from the window. Seagraves saw the lump in
his coat pocket. It was square, like a forty-five.

"We got new business," Trout said.

"What's that for?" Seagraves said, nodding
at his pocket.

"Protection," he said. He stood up suddenly
and walked into the inner office. Seagraves followed him and shut the
door. He sat in his chair. Trout paced the length of the room,
checking the street from the window each time he arrived at that end.

Seagraves watched him, holding himself still and
apart, trying to see if Trout would be revealed in a new way. He was
not, and in a moment Seagraves was impatient.

"What in hell are you doing, Paris?" he
said. "You come in here armed, peeking out the windows like a
crazy man."

"Trout reached into his pocket and Seagraves
froze. When his hand came out, though, it was holding an envelope
from the United States government. He dropped it on the desk and went
back to the window. Seagraves took the letter out and read it.
Official notification from the IRS that Trout was the subject of an
audit. "An audit?" Seagraves said. "You come in here
like this over a notice of an audit?"

"I'm here for legal protection from my enemies."

"
The Internal Revenue Service isn't just your
enemy, they're everybody's. There isn't a reason in the world to take
this personal. All you got to do is see your accountant, and then you
both sit down with one of their people and work it out. They aren't
all that unreasonable .... "

Trout left the window and stood on the other side of
the desk.

"
There ain't nothing to work out," he said.

"
You paid your taxes?"

"I pay my lawful bills," he said. "I
don't take a thing from the government, and I don't give a thing in
return."

"
Never?"

Trout put his hands on the desk and leaned over until
Seagraves leaned back. He smelled like tomato soup. "Sit down,
Paris," he said, "so I don't need my reading glasses to see
who I'm talking to."

Trout moved away but did not sit down. "How long
has it been since you paid?" Seagraves said.

"He shook his head. "I never started,"
he said.

"You been making a living in this country since
World War One, and you never paid taxes?"

"I never took a cent," he said.

"
You filed?"

"
No."

Seagraves closed his eyes. "I heard of dirt
farmers did this," he said. "The Negroes, they don't pay,
they don't have Social Security numbers. I never heard of anybody ran
a business of any size that ignored the government. I know plenty of
them that cheated, but just to pretend like it wasn't there . . ."
He scratched his head, thinking of the legalities.

"
Technically," he said a minute later, "you
don't have to file if you don't owe."

"
That's what I told you," Trout said. "I
pay what I owe."

"
The government doesn't leave that to you to
decide."

Seagraves looked at the letter again, then pushed it
back across the desk at Trout. "They going to want to look at
the books," he said. Trout looked at the letter but did not pick
it up. "I keep my books in my head."

Seagraves said, "You've got to show them your
books, or they can say you're worth any damn thing they want."

°'I don't have two cents in any bank in the United
States," he said. "I don't keep things where just anybody
can turn over a rock and find them."

"
They're going to want to see what you made —
"

"
They're welcome to hunt it." He went to
the window again, the gun in his pocket knocked against the sill as
he bent.

"
That's the wrong way to handle the IRS,"
Seagraves said. "You make it personal, and it gets personal.
They know places to look. The government is like the law: It isn't
exactly smart, but it's relentless."

It was quiet in the room for a moment, then Trout
slapped the wall.

"
Everybody in the state of Georgia is after my
assets," he said softly.

"
All over that girl."

And that fast Seagraves could see her again, lying on
the sheet in the photograph. The bones under her skin.

"
A person gets mixed up in your business, and
then they are your business," Trout said. He spoke as he looked
out the window. "We need to get this appeal settled. Get out
from underneath this case."

Seagraves was affected by the memory of the pictures.
"The easiest way to settle it is to serve the time," he
said.

"Easiest for who?"

Seagraves waited a moment, holding himself still and
watching, and then he said, "I gone over this, Paris, and I
don't think we're going to win."

"
You said they made a mistake."

"They did, but sometimes it isn't enough."

"
I ain't going into any work camp."

"
That isn't voluntary either," Seagraves
said. "The government's got its hands on you now, and I can tell
you it's a hell of a lot easier to avoid them in the first place than
it is to get loose."

"
That's what I paid you for."

Seagraves shook his head. "I've done what I can
for you," he said. "I tried and I worried, but we aren't
doing a thing now but putting it off."

Trout came back to the desk one more time. Seagraves
saw he was shaking. "I'm the one that decides," he said.

"
You been deciding this from the minute you
stepped onto Mary McNutt's porch."

Trout sputtered. "That girl . . . those people
brought this on themself. I didn't go out there shooting them for
nothing."

A long moment passed. "That is exactly what you
did," Seagraves said.

"
I can do it again," he said.

"
It's worn me out, Paris," Seagraves said.
"You've worn me out. It's time to get away from you and your
case."

"
You can't quit me in the middle," Trout
said.

"
It isn't the middle. It's the end."

"
The hell it is."

Seagraves did not answer. He looked from Trout to the
letter still lying on his desk. "You like me to, I could direct
you to one of the other lawyers here on this. If it was me, I'd get
somebody in Atlanta that specializes in tax law."