World and Town (52 page)

That’s when people realize it’s a cue. A third cloud of smoke emanates from Chhung as he takes Carter’s arm; they raise their hands up high, like the Cinderella doubles champions of a most fantastic tennis tournament. And finally, with a small amazed roar, people start to clap and hoot and cheer.

S
uccess! The whole town is giddy. Not that Chhung won’t need support; already people are talking about an anger management course that addresses substance abuse, too—kind of a twofer. It’s in the city, but people are organizing rides for him via a sign-up at Millie’s. As for the holidays, Grace volunteers for Thanksgiving, Hattie for Christmas; other people plan to teach them to make wreaths and gingerbread houses, and to take them caroling. Sledding, too, if the snow ever comes.

“Only in America,” crows Greta.

“People have always been reborn here, but not people who’ve been reborn before,” says Hattie. “I mean, generally.”

The walking group laughs. Beth hangs two toothpicks in her mouth, one in each corner, like Chhung.

“Though it’s always been a question, hasn’t it,” says Greta. “Whom America can be America for. And who keeps America, America.”

Hattie would love to hear more about what she means. But other people want to talk about whether Carter can be made mayor. Riverlake’s never had a mayor before, but maybe it’s time to change the town charter, they say. Greta shakes her head: Would they be talking this way if Carter were a woman? Well, never mind. In the meanwhile, he has a new nickname—Professor Excavator.

Hattie laughs.

Sarun’s still in his brace, but when Hattie goes to drop off some food, he starts talking about what he’s going to do when he’s out of it—get a job, maybe. And Sophy’s making plans, too. She asks, in a mysterious voice, to borrow a turkey roaster; Hattie diplomatically doesn’t ask why. Another few days, and it’ll be time to raise the subject of school. In the meanwhile, Sophy’s tuning up her guitar in the living room, so that Hattie hears, as she leaves, not only Sophy playing and singing, but Sarun laughing and crooning, too. He sounds pretty wack.

A
ll of this renders Hattie more or less completely unprepared for Everett’s obstinacy.
A horse lost may be better than horses gained
, her father used to say—warning her, as he liked to, not to be lulled by apparent reality. One must always be prepared to find oneself unprepared, he taught; and yet Hattie, his slow student, finds herself both unprepared and unprepared to be unprepared for the climb to Everett’s hut.

She has to stop to rest every ten rungs or so—her ankle; Carter, too, shakes his head. It’s true Everett has a good ten or fifteen years on them. Still, only a madman would live atop such a climb; he might as well be living on a fire tower. They unzip their jackets. At the top of the ladder is a makeshift pulley and a platform piled with firewood. The door has a deer antler for a handle.

A Robinson Crusoe charm to it all, anyway.

They knock, perspiring.

Huge as he’s always seemed, Everett appears even huger in his doorway—so huge, Hattie wonders if this is a standard-size doorway he’s got, or a made-up size. Anyhow, he fills it—has to duck a little, in fact, so as not to bump his head.

“Well, well,” he says. “Thought I had me a bear.” Nothing cherubic about him today. He has a stubble you could scrub an oven out with, and his wiry half-gray hair, too, looks like something with a practical application.

“Do you mind?” asks Carter.

“ ’Course not,” says Everett. “Come on in. Don’t mind the mess.”

The hut is lined with foil-backed insulation, and there are frying pans hung up neatly enough on nails along the studs. Below these on the fiberboard floor, though, sit a chair, an unmade camp cot, a folding table, and a camp stove, as well as scattered stuff: Everett’s clothes, his hat, his dishes, a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, some cereal, some water, some coffee, the remains of various casseroles, and numerous bottles of liquor. The place reeks of smoke, since his woodstove will back up, he says, depending on the wind; that’s why he has a window propped open even in the cold. Hattie nods—she knows what a woodstove can be—even as she glances out the other window, which really does look right straight at Ginny’s window shade, sure enough. Carter and Everett chat. It’s late afternoon; a whiskey bottle’s open, but Everett seems sober, if subdued. He is wearing two wool lumberjack shirts—one white-and-black check, one red-and-black—a layered look, with a blue sweatshirt underneath.
REX REALTY
, reads the sweatshirt,
COME SEE THE KING
. The
I
in
KING
is dotted with a small gold crown.

“Hold it right there,” he says. “You’re telling me you want to pay the damages?”

“I am,” says Carter.

“But you didn’t do nothing.”

“Good point.” Carter’s nod is less cursory than usual, more congenial. “Maybe we should sit down.”

“Be my guest.”

Everett sits on the chair, spilling out over its arms; what with the chair legs so skinny, his legs look to be holding them up rather than the other way around. Carter and Hattie perch on his cot, slipping their jackets off and nesting them around their bums.

“I’m only doing it for a girl,” says Carter.

“Hattie?”

They all laugh.

“Do I look like a girl?” says Hattie.

“I wouldn’t have guessed boy,” says Everett.

More laughter.

“ ’Course, I’ve done a few things for her myself, now,” says Everett. “Shoveled her out every now and then.”

“All the time,” says Hattie. “You shoveled me out all the time.”

“Well, if I’m not an official member of the Hattie Kong fan club, please sign me up,” says Carter. “But the girl I meant is Sophy Chhung.”

“The Cambodian girl?” says Everett.

“Precisely.”

“She need help?”

“She lit the mini-mall fire.”

“No kidding.” Everett looks surprised but not entirely. “What for?”

The wind shifts; the window shuts; ragged sheets of smoke leak out from under the top plate of the woodstove. Hattie rubs her eyes.

“She seems to have gotten the idea that she could pin the crime on her brother and get him locked up in jail,” says Carter. “Where she wanted him, for some reason.” He coughs into his elbow.

“She thought it was God’s plan,” supplies Hattie, starting to hack, too. She can feel a rawness in her nose and throat. “She thought Sarun was ruining things.”

“What things?” Everett props the window back open; the air clears. “Sarun’s her brother?”

Hattie nods and explains about the Chhungs, as well as about Sophy’s conversion, and her relationship to Ginny.

“So Ginny thought, Great. Use the girl to bring me down, what the heck.” Everett nods a bit to himself.

“Exactly,” says Hattie.

“But now what, right?” says Everett. “The girl’s guilty, but you don’t want her charged. You don’t even want Sarun and his friends charged. ’Cause in the course of their getting cleared the truth might sneak out.”

“Exactly,” says Hattie again.

“On the other hand, we’re trying to make sure you get your damages,” says Carter. “Because your site was burned down and you definitely deserve compensation.”

“But Ginny’s the one who owes me.” Everett’s jaw tightens. “Not you. Ginny.”

Carter glances at Hattie. “At some level,” he says, but then stops.

And Hattie, too, hesitates. Should they start explaining how they owe him, too, actually—Carter, especially? On the one hand, they certainly contributed to the situation—hedging as they did, hemming and hawing when they should have been intervening. On the other, Ginny’s sins were sins of a different order—sins of commission. And truth to tell, Hattie feels it, too—that Ginny was wrong, that Ginny should pay.
Kept you around when it was convenient but kicked you out when it wasn’t
, after all.

“Ginny should pay,” says Everett, as if reading her mind.

“Probably,” allows Carter.

“But you’re hitting for her. What for?”

“Because it’d be hard to prosecute her successfully,” says Carter.

“Much as we wish we could,” says Hattie.

“Why?” demands Everett. “Ain’t she guilty?”

“Because she didn’t actually do anything,” says Carter.

“She was just an influence,” says Hattie.

“An influence,” says Everett.

“And influence is hard to prove,” explains Hattie.

“All we have is Sophy’s word,” agrees Carter. “It’s ‘he said, she said.’ ”

Everett stands and paces as much as a man his size can in such a small space. His head barely clears the ceiling. “Ginny’s getting off.”

“Probably.”

“She’s getting off.”

Carter looks at Hattie, who is already beginning to wish they’d taken a different tack. Because Everett, she can see, is heating up.

“It ain’t right, Ginny getting off.” Everett looms over them, his voice even and low. “It ain’t right.”

“No,” says Carter, looking rueful. “It ain’t, as you say. But there’s no law to nail her with, sadly.”

“Why the hell not? What’s the point of law if people like Ginny are going to get the hell off?”

“You want the law to be just,” says Carter. “But, as my ex-wife used to say, the law doesn’t make things just. It just makes things better.”

“Better than what?”

“Better than if we had no law. Better than if we had corruption, which is what they have in many parts of the world, unfortunately.”

“You’re helping her,” says Everett, glaring. “You’re helping her get off.”

“That might be true,” says Hattie, after a moment. “We might be helping her. But we’re not trying to help her.”

Everett stops.

“Any help she gets is inadvertent. We’re just trying to protect Sophy and get you back on your feet, if that’s possible. Especially as the situation was complicated.” She plunges on. “Especially as a lot of people who could’ve stepped in, failed to.” She pauses.

But if ever Everett could have heard this, he can’t hear it now.

“Ain’t I on my feet?” he says. “Or is this someone else with my same boots?”

The window claps shut.

“No, no,” says Hattie. “Of course you’re on your feet.”

Smoke spills from the stove. Hattie reaches to prop the window back open with the broken-off stick Everett’s been using—part of a paint stir stick, actually, with some white paint still on it—as Everett starts to pace again.

“I don’t need your help unless it’s to burn Ginny up.” The whole hut shakes as Everett starts to pace again.

“Perhaps you should become a Buddhist,” says Carter.

Hattie kicks him.

“That some kind of a joke?” asks Everett—swaying himself, now, like the hut.

“Actually, no. Actually my ex-wife felt much the way you did and really did become a Buddhist after a while. Before that she was a judge.” Carter stares at the black stove as if at an apparition—Meredith in her robes. “She was mad.”

“Sick of the world,” guesses Everett. “Sick of a world where people like Ginny get off.”

“Precisely.”

“She dump you?” asks Everett, stopping.

“She did.” Carter looks thoughtful.

“Didn’t you just want to kill her?”

“I suppose one part of my brain did, yes,” says Carter. “But other parts, happily, thought better of that plan.”

“Yeah, well, I just want to kill her.” Everett paces.

“Yeah, well, don’t.” Carter gives Everett an El Honcho look, and for a moment Everett seems to heed him. “Let us help you instead,” Carter goes on. “So the world’s unjust. You can still get some projects going.”

“Don’t get hung up, you’re saying.”

“Precisely.”

“I gave her my life.”

“That was generous of you, but perhaps it’s time to take it back,” says Carter, drily.

Hattie kicks him again.

“Take it back!” Everett laughs. “All them years.” He shakes his head. “Maybe you have some way of getting them back, now, being a professor. But the rest of us’ve got to just kiss ’em good-bye, see.
Sayonara
. Good-bye.”

Hattie looks at him. “ ‘Thirty-seven Years Wasted, You Could Say My Whole Life,’ ” she quotes.

“You got it.” Everett smiles.

“Actually,” Carter starts, but stops when Hattie puts a hand over his mouth. “You loved her,” he says instead, unmuzzling himself.

“Jackass that I was.”

“You loved her,” Carter says again. And slowly, after a moment: “You gave her your life.”

“Wasn’t such a great plan, to be frank.” Everett yawns. “You probably would’ve thought better of that plan.”

“Probably,” agrees Carter.

Everett shifts slightly. “I loved her but, well, now I just want her burned to a crisp, see.” He stretches a little. “Now I’m aiming to send her right to hell.” He hesitates, then wedges himself back into the chair.

“Everett, we want to help.” Hattie sits forward.

“That’s kind of you, Hattie. Generous. I always said you were generous.”

“We’re just trying to help you reach the tacos, if you know what I mean. Pay you back a little for all that snow shoveling you did.”

“I can reach what I need to just fine.”

“You mean, you don’t want help,” says Carter.

“Guess I’ve taken all the help I want to in this life. Guess I don’t need any more, no. No thanks.”

“You’d rather have your pride. Is that it?” asks Hattie.

“My pa lived his whole life with no pride so’s his son could have some,” says Everett.

“You’d rather have your rage,” says Carter.

“Guess I’m planning to have it for breakfast.”

“You plain don’t care for a world where people like Ginny can get off,” says Hattie.

“Guess I don’t.”

“Where nobody sees,” she goes on. “Is that it? Where you can build a big tower and still have nobody see. Where you can talk and talk and still have nobody hear.”

“You got it,” says Everett. “You know what I want?”

Hattie and Carter exchange glances.

“You want Ginny burned to a crisp,” guesses Carter.

“That church,” says Everett, evenly. “I want that whole Christian fucking church burnt up in their own righteous fire.”

“Well, whatever you do, don’t go lighting any matches.” Carter raises his eyebrows and his voice. “You are no doubt uninterested in a professor’s opinion, but I will share mine anyway.”