All Hat (15 page)

“I guess that's your philosophy in life,” he said as he walked around behind Sonny, opened the door. “I'm just saying the old man wouldn't like it. That's not the way he operates.”

“Have you seen the old man today, Jack?” Sonny said, asking over his shoulder, still sitting in the chair. “Have you?”

Jackson made no reply.

“I didn't think so. Ship that colt down to the Fort. Let's make some money.”

*   *   *

Etta's shift ended at seven in the morning, but her replacement had called and said she'd be fifteen minutes late. Either her estimate or her watch was wrong; she showed at the hospital at seven-thirty.

“I'm sorry,” her replacement said when she finally arrived. She was young and vivacious, always talking about her lively social life. She was apparently a karaoke singer of some renown in the bars of Kitchener and Guelph, and it was this distinction that led her to regard herself as a celebrity of sorts.

“It's all right,” Etta said.

“Oh well, it's not like you had anything important going on,” her replacement said.

“Just my life,” Etta said, and she left.

She stopped for coffee for herself and donuts for Homer on the way out of town. It began to rain as she drove. She turned the wipers on and was reminded at once that the wiper blade was missing on the driver's side of the Taurus. It had been gone for weeks; each time it rained, she cursed herself for not having it replaced. Of course when it wasn't raining, she never thought about it.

After a few miles, she had to pull over to wipe the windshield with a cloth from beneath the seat. Not that it would help much; the rain fell steadily. As she finished wiping the glass Ray Dokes came upon her from the opposite direction. He pulled over to the shoulder of the road and powered the window down. He was wearing his work clothes; his Tigers' cap, pulled low over his eyes, was splattered with raindrops.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Well, I'm not standing out in the rain,” he said. “You got trouble?”

“I've got no wiper on this side. I keep forgetting to fix it.”

Ray shut the Caddy off and got out, walked around and opened the trunk. There was a toolbox inside; he retrieved a slot screwdriver and walked over to the Taurus.

“You're soaked; get in the car,” he said.

“Don't tell me what to do,” she said, but she got back in.

Ray crossed over to the passenger side of the Taurus and with the screwdriver began to remove the wiper there. Etta watched from inside. He had his collar up, and rain dripped from the brim of his ball cap. He needed a shave, she saw, and he looked wonderful.

As she watched him in the rain she was reminded of the night they got caught in a downpour on the pier at Port Maitland. They'd just finished dinner—along with a couple of bottles of red wine—and had gone for a walk along the pier afterward. In the lee of the lighthouse they had begun to kiss, and in her memory it seemed as if in an instant they went from kissing to making love on a bed of their discarded clothes. When the skies opened they were both drenched at once, but they carried on gamely, laughing crazily, breathlessly, before pulling on their wet clothes and dashing for the car.

“Shit,” she said now, sitting in the car. She'd exorcized those memories a long time ago. It was the rain, she decided. The goddamn rain.

Ray brought the good blade around and slid it onto the arm on the driver's side. Etta rolled her window down.

“Why didn't I think of that?” she asked.

“You want me to answer that?”

“No,” she decided. “What are you doing out here?”

“Heading home. We got rained out at work.”

“Oh.” She hesitated. “Well, I'm just getting off work myself.”

“I figured that when I saw the nurse's getup. I'm getting wet. I'll see ya, Etta.”

“Hey,” she said as Ray walked away. “Thanks.”

He raised his hand and kept walking back to his car. She waved as he drove away, but he wasn't looking. She sat there along the side of the road for a time, watching the rain as it fell.

*   *   *

When Etta got home Mabel was watching Regis on TV, and Homer was nowhere to be seen. Mabel Anton was a heavyset woman in her fifties, and she wore her usual uniform, matching sweatpants and sweatshirt, pink running shoes. On occasion she would wear a like-colored baseball cap with a white pompom on top.

“I'm sorry I'm late, Mabel,” Etta said when she arrived.

“It's all right.”

“Where's Dad?”

“Went back to bed.”

“Good, maybe he'll let me have a nap.”

“Not right now.… Feel a little chilly in here?”

“Is the heat off?”

“The furnace made a loud noise and then quit about an hour ago. I called my brother-in-law; he's coming to have a look. Should be here by now, in fact.”

“Great.”

“I'll wait. See if I can get you the family discount. The old man will be screaming for his breakfast, but let him if he can't fry an egg.”

Etta drank her take-out coffee, and she and Mabel watched Regis Philbin talk to Charles Grodin. Mabel was quiet until a commercial break.

“Has Father Tim been to see you?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, he has,” Etta said. “More than once. I assume you sent him.”

“I did not.”

“Right. Why this mission to hook me up with your church?”

“Because you have no direction. You are rudderless.”

“I am rudderless? Yikes.”

“Don't make fun. You were sleeping with a married man. That's a sin.”

“I really wish you would let that drop.”

“You're the one who told me about it.”

“That was before I knew you were a nut.”

Mabel shot her a dark look. “You'd better decide where your life is going, Etta. You've been a failure at everything you've done.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Go ahead and mock. It's the one thing you're good at. But you listen to Father Tim. He's a very wise man.”

“I'm not sure how wise he is, but I find him kinda sexy, you know.”

“Etta! Father Tim is a priest. Priests have no interest in sex.”

Etta looked at her closely. “You've never actually read a newspaper, have you, Mabel?”

When the repairman showed, fifteen minutes later, he seemed to be in a hurry. He went into the basement, had a look at the old furnace, administered its last rites, and then gave Etta an estimate of four thousand dollars to replace it.

So much for the family discount.

After he and Mabel had gone, Etta sat at the table a long while, resisting the urge to lay her head on the cool surface and go to sleep. When it seemed that she could no longer stay awake she got up and went upstairs to change her clothes. She threw her scrubs in the hamper and pulled on jeans and a wool sweater.

She walked outside. The rain had stopped. The sky to the west was growing brighter, offering at least a promise of sunshine. The few remaining leaves on the maples and the ash in the yard dripped sporadically around her. She stood in the yard and took stock of that to which she and Homer could claim ownership. It occurred to her that there must be something on the old place they could sell. She walked to the barn, pulled open the large doors, and walked inside. There was an old milking machine, ancient harness, pitchforks, shovels, buckets, tools of various types and vintages. Nothing to make a buyer's pulse quicken.

As she walked back outside, her eyes fell on the Ford tractor in the orchard. After glancing around futilely for a better idea, she went over to have a look. Then she went into the machine shed and found a tire pump and a tool box. There was a pair of coveralls hanging on a peg inside the door, and she put them on.

Before going back to the orchard she went into the house and saw that Homer was now in front of the TV, his head tilted to the side as if in great curiosity. She watched him for a moment, and then, carrying her tools, she went back to the tractor.

Using the old hand pump, she worked for twenty minutes to pump air into the deflated back tire. Even then it was only half inflated, but she figured it would do for the moment. She found a spark-plug socket in the tool box and removed the plugs, cleaned them with a wire brush, looked to see that the gap was all right—pure speculation on her part—and then replaced them in the engine block. With an oil can she lubricated the carburetor and linkage. The gas tank was empty. She retrieved the can of lawn-mower gas from the shed and emptied it into the tractor. The battery was dead, of course; she doubted the tractor had moved in more than a year.

She drove her Taurus through the long grass into the orchard, spinning the tires briefly as she bounced through the shallow ditch in the lane beside the barn. She pulled up beside the tractor and then connected the old booster cables from the shed from one battery to the other.

Sitting on the tractor, she turned the key and bumped the starter switch. The engine turned over at once, whirring rapidly. But it did not start. She tried for maybe ten minutes, adjusting the throttle and the choke. Finally, she gave up.

Both hands on the wheel, she watched the clouds overhead as they raced across the unsettled sky. Something caught her peripheral vision, and she looked toward the house to see Homer standing in the backyard, a pitching wedge in his hand. She was glad for a moment to see that he was out and about and wanting to hit golf balls, but as she watched she saw the look on his face and then realized that he was staring at the wedge because he had no idea what it was.

She was suddenly weary to the bone. She sat motionless for a moment, and then she began to pound on the dash of the tractor with her fists.

“Goddamn it! Why are you doing this to me?”

She managed to cut her knuckle on the sharp edge of the dash. She sucked at the blood a moment, then on impulse hit the starter button again. The tractor roared to life, coughing and sputtering, then evening out. Etta listened to the engine and gave a quick look skyward. She offered no acknowledgment, though. She was still pissed off.

Driving around to the front yard, she parked the tractor beneath the large ash trees there. In the shed she found a For Sale sign her father had painted on a square of plywood years earlier and had used numerous times to sell off a series of junk-heap vehicles he'd owned. She hosed the sign off and then carried it out and propped it against the front wheel of the tractor. Then she stepped back to have a look. She gave the half-inflated rear tire a kick.

“That's a good tractor,” she heard her father say.

When she turned he was standing along the driveway, the pitching wedge still in his hand.

“That's what they say,” she said.

“I got one just like it at home,” he told her.

11

Dean and Paulie were to be at Woodbine at nine, and they showed at half past. Jackson was on the track, walking out the horse that they were about to transport. The colt was a dark gray two-year-old, long and lanky like a standardbred.

“Just once, you could be on time,” Jackson said as they got out of the car.

“Hey, it's only nine-thirty,” Dean said. “This is the earliest we've been late yet.”

Paulie held his tongue. The reason they were late was that Dean had still been in bed when Paulie had shown up at his place at eight o'clock. Paulie had gotten him up, but Dean was irritable from lack of sleep. There were a number of stereo components, new in boxes, scattered about the apartment. Paulie looked them over while Dean was in the shower.

“Where'd you get all the stereos?” he asked when Dean came out of the bathroom.

“I'm a fucking Sears outlet, what do ya think?”

Paulie had sat in the kitchen patiently and waited until Dean shaved and then decided what to wear. Apparently, Dean felt he needed just the right outfit to deliver a horse to Fort Erie.

“Turn the colt over to Erskine,” Jackson said to them when the animal was loaded. “Barn nine. And don't dawdle down there. Get back to the farm; there's plenty to do with the old man sick.”

“Yup,” Dean said.

“And don't be driving like a maniac. The horse is pretty green.”

“We'll be careful,” Paulie said.

“Yeah,” Jackson said without conviction. “You guys better get your shit together. We gotta ship the Flash down to New York City next week. Sonny's not big on you two to begin with.”

“Not like you, eh?” Dean said.

“Just do your job,” Jackson said. “That too much to ask?”

Even with the traffic, they made it to the Fort in two hours. Erskine was waiting for them, and they got the colt settled in a stall without a problem. Erskine had other horses to see to, and he left them there. Dean and Paulie stood by the trailer and watched the activities around the barns for a moment. There was a card starting at one o'clock, and the place was busy.

“What do you think, Paulie?” Dean asked. “We could stick around and bet some of these soupbones.”

“Jackson said to get back.”

“Jackson said, Jackson said,” Dean mocked. “One of these days Jackson's gonna get something he doesn't want.” And then he saw Ray Dokes, leaning against the hood of a pickup, the next barn over.

“Look who it is,” Dean said. “Come on.”

*   *   *

Ray saw the pair approaching from between the barns, the dark-haired one wearing dress pants and a turtleneck and the other trailing in his porkpie hat.

“Shit,” Ray said.

Pete Culpepper came out of the stall, where he'd been checking the gelding Fast Market's hoof. He watched the two approach.

“Now who's that?” he asked.

“The two I told you about. From the Slamdance,” Ray said.

“Hey, Raymond—how's it going?” the dark-haired one said, and he stuck his hand out. “Like, we got our signals crossed at the Slamdance the other day. I wasn't trying to pull nothing on you. Sonny Stanton can kiss my ass, you want to know the truth. I'm Dean Caldwell; this is Paulie.”