Taft (11 page)

"You said he was building a deck?"

She nodded. "It was nice. Even unfinished it was nice. My mother sat out there all the time. She didn't like to be in the house any more than she had to be."

"What about Carl?"

"Carl got a job at the lumberyard after school. My dad had friends down there who were looking out for us. I already had a job at the Dairy Queen and they gave me more hours. Carl and I got so worried about money that we didn't even feel as bad as we should have. I mean, we felt horrible, but it was almost like there wasn't time. My mother was sitting outside all day. I'd always have to go tell her it was time to come in, time to have something to eat. She was always stalling, a few more minutes, another half hour. I think she would have slept out there if I'd let her. She didn't even know the power had been cut off until Carl got home from work. She'd been putting all the mail in a paper sack underneath the sink. We owed money to everybody in the world, people I'd never heard of. Even after I found all those bills, I still thought I was going to be able to pull it out of the fire. I didn't think there was any other choice, we'd just figure it out somehow, make it work. I never even thought about moving to Memphis until Carl started to slip. Maybe I should have done it right away. It was clear enough my mother was having problems. But it wasn't until Carl that I figured there wasn't any chance of working it out in Coalfield. It was too much for him, trying to keep up in school and working all the time. He stopped going to school and then he stopped going to work. They even paid him for a few weeks when he wasn't showing up. Those people at the lumberyard were good to us." Fay was quiet for a little while, rolling a piece of hair between her fingers. "I should have looked after him more, thought about his feelings. I thought we would all pull through because there wasn't any choice but to pull through. But there is a choice, there're lots of them. You can choose to just lay down. That's what my mother did."

"And that's what Carl did?"

"No," she said. "Carl didn't lay down exactly. Carl just started looking for things to make himself feel better. I don't figure that's such a crime."

I told her it probably wasn't.

"Well, that's when I called my aunt and uncle and told them we'd move to Memphis. They'd offered a couple of times. There wasn't any other way. We were backed up at the bank like crazy, not paying the mortgage, credit cards. I'm hoping when they settle it all out there'll be something left, but I'm not holding my breath."

"Did you tell your aunt and uncle about Carl?"

"Lord, no. They don't have any idea. They're not the kind of people who'd pick up on something like that. They don't have children. It's funny though, how once you see something you can't believe that everybody in the world doesn't see it too. They're mostly worried about my mother. She says she's not getting over it. Never. She loved my father, that's the thing. Everybody loves my father." Fay looked up at me like she'd just that minute noticed I was driving the car.

"I'm talking too much," she said. "I'm boring you. I'm starting to bore myself."

"You're not talking too much."

"I'm boring myself," she said again and turned on the radio. We were just coming into Memphis so the reception was good, but every station she landed on seemed to be commercials or weather reports. After a while she just left it on to a woman who was talking about soup. Fay seemed like she was really listening to it, like she was trying to remember everything the woman said. Every now and then she'd repeat something she'd heard, like "celery" or "stock."

I was worried about taking her back. I would have rather we stayed in Shiloh, found some motel where she could have slept and I could have kept an eye on her. Some people might say there's no point in fooling yourself, but I would have been all for it, at least for a night.

"You want me to drop you off in the same place?"

"I guess so," she said. We were in the city. The streetlights made everything bright. "I wish I could bring you over."

"Don't be thinking about things like that," I said.

"I'd like it if you could see them, my mother and Calvin and Lily. Then you'd know what I'm talking about."

"I know what you're talking about," I said. "I've been inside their house."

That made Fay laugh. "God, what would they have done if they'd seen that?"

"They would have shot me," I said.

The corner where Fay got out was Garden and Cherokee. It was smart. The house that was there sat so far back from the street that the people inside wouldn't have noticed the girl or the car or the color of the man driving it. "I'm coming to work tomorrow," Fay said. She looked for a second like she might say something else, but instead she smiled and blew me a kiss through the window and after she turned away I sat there because I was thinking about the day I'd hired her, and how young she looked wearing that stocking cap.

The bar closed early on Sunday nights, so I figured I'd go by for an hour and then do the money. I wondered if I could teach Cyndi how to make up the deposit, if I could trust her. It's not something you want to say about a person, but it occurred to me.

Everything was running fine without me. Wallace had come in to tend bar and Arlene was waiting tables with Cyndi. I was thinking I should put both of them on more.

"Wallace," I said, taking a spot at the bar. "Having a good night?"

"Good as the rest of them," he said. He asked me if I wanted a drink and I figured what the hell, I had been all the way to Shiloh and back. Wallace was a good bartender. He had a memory for what everyone drank. "That boy's been looking for you," he said. "He's been here since five o'clock."

"What boy?"

Wallace pointed over to the little table by the kitchen. "Carl," he said.

I picked up my drink and walked over to what I had come to think of as Carl's table. Cyndi was sitting there with him and they were whispering to one another. Their heads were bent so close they were almost touching. Carl looked up and saw me before I had a chance to say anything. They both sat up straight.

"I'm going to get back to work," Cyndi said, not especially to me or Carl, either one. She walked over to the table across from us and asked the people if they were interested in drinks.

"Where's Fay?" Carl said.

"I would think she was home."

"Wasn't home before," he said. "She said she was coming to work."

"She didn't work today."

"So where'd she go?"

"Carl," I said, "go call your sister if you want to talk to her." I wasn't quite in the mood for him just then. I'd had my fill the night before. He didn't look so bad, really. I don't think he was doing anything. He just seemed to have one of those all day hangovers.

"It could be I just didn't understand what she was saying."

"That could have been it," I said. I started to head back to the bar to see if Wallace wanted me to cover the last hour for him.

"I appreciate you coming down to get me last night," Carl said.

"Sure."

"I just lost track of the time, was all. I shouldn't have been so late."

I turned around and looked at him. I was trying to figure out just how much of an idiot he was, or how much of an idiot he thought I was. "Listen," I said, leaning into him over the table. "I make a point of keeping out of other people's business, but I'm going to tell you something. You have a real problem, son. You need to see about getting your act together. I know you've had a hard time—"

"I'm not your son," Carl said.

"You know what I meant."

"I know what you meant," Carl said.

I started to say something else, but judging from the look on his face there was no real point in trying to talk. I nodded at him, stood up from the table and went about my business. I didn't hold it against him. It was the carrying. A man shouldn't be carried that way. There's nothing to do but resent the person who picks you up when you're sleeping on the street. No one picks you up, then a time comes you either die or you get up by yourself. At least that way you don't have to worry about feeling ashamed.

The news about Fay not being there didn't seem to bother him any. Carl stayed until we closed up. He was happy there. Every now and then somebody'd stop by his table and talk to him for a while. I thought that maybe I was giving Fay a little rest by watching him. If that's what it was, then I was glad to do it.

When it was time to go Carl stopped by the bar. He must have made a trip to the bathroom because his eyes had gone all watery again. "Good night, then," he said.

I told him Fay was working tomorrow. Both of us were trying to show there were no hard feelings.

"So I'll see you tomorrow," he said.

I locked the door behind him and took the cash drawer out of the register. Then I went upstairs and did the money. It was never very much on a Sunday night. People go to church and change their minds about drinking for the day.

"Stand still," Taft whispers.

"Do you see something?"

"Hush." It's hard to see in the dark. Maybe he hasn't seen anything, maybe he's heard it. His eyes are straining to open wider. Carl isn't good at being quiet. His boots make a sound as he shifts his weight from side to side. He's young. He has too much energy to hold still. There was something, Taft's sure of that, but whatever it was it's gone now.

"Nothing," he says. "Come on."

"What was it?" Carl says.

"Doesn't matter," Taft says.

The sun is coming up fast. It'll be pitch dark and then a minute later, nearly day. Taft keeps his flashlight pointed down. All you need to see are your feet. There's nothing else to look at. Just watch your feet and concentrate. They had come in the day before and tracked to a good spot, a meadow at the bottom of a sloping hill, closed in by trees on all sides. Better to get your shot when they're out in the open. Deer are always on the alert. He tells this to Carl all the time. They're on the alert so you have to be on the alert. It's October and there's no walking through so many leaves without making some noise. When Taft was a boy he liked to read books about the Indians, the Cherokees and Chippewas who lived in east Tennessee and could walk through the leaves without crushing them beneath their feet. He had practiced, but he never could do it. He thought it must be something in the blood. He had given the books to Carl, but Carl wasn't so interested. Reading meant keeping still.

"Up here," Taft says.

Carl comes up next to his father and they make their way down the slope together, up to the front line of trees. The dogwoods there still have their leaves and the leaves, Taft can see in the first of the light, are blood red on the branches. There are a few white birches, pretty trees, he's always thought. Most of the other ones around are black walnuts. The last to get their leaves in the spring and the first the lose them in the fall. His wife sent a net bag with him, asking could they pick up some black walnuts on the way back if there was time. Taft doesn't know why she fools with walnuts. Once you line them up to dry, the squirrels make off with half and whatever's left is damn near impossible to get into. He feels for the bag in his pocket. It's still there.

"How long you think we'll have to wait?" Carl whispers.

"Depends on the deer." There are two types of hunters, the ones that rim after the deer and the ones who stay still and wait for the deer to come to them. Taft says he's a lazy hunter because he waits. He's seen those fools, trailing after a herd, breaking their necks in the underbrush. Doesn't matter how well you know the woods. The deer know them better.

They stand there, looking. The light is coming up fast now. All around them things start to take shape, the trees and grass, tough jewelweed growing nearly waist high. It was good for poison ivy, something else he'd learned from his Indian books. Taft smells the air and wishes he were a Cherokee who could smell the deer a mile away.

"Hope some come soon," Carl says.

Taft sits down and takes a thermos of coffee out of his pack. "It's black," he says.

"That's all right," Carl says.

They each take a cup of coffee and enjoy holding it more than drinking it. "I'm going to shoot us a deer," Carl says, and he pulls up his Winchester and looks through the sight, through the meadow, and takes aim at a white birch on the other side. "Pow," he says softly.

"You've done real well shooting targets."

"I can knock off the cans," Carl says. Carl shoots better than Taft. He has a natural talent for it. He can hold himself steady, concentrate once he's looking down a gun. And it's not just cans he's good at. Taft bought him some paper targets and tacked them up to a piece of plywood. Carl shot in the three inside rings every time and usually he nailed the bull's eye. Taft couldn't understand how a boy who couldn't sit still for more than a minute could take such aim. He thought it must have something to do with the wrestling.

"Go ahead and load up," Taft says. Carl has an ammunition belt he bought for himself with money he made doing chores. Taft keeps a handful of loose shells in his pocket. He brought the soft-tipped Spitzers. That makes it easier. Makes a nice big hole going out. He'd given his old rifle to Carl, a Winchester .30–30 lever-action that he'd had ten years. It's a good gun for a boy. His wife doesn't like it, says Carl's too young to have a gun of his own, but Taft had his first gun when he was thirteen. Here Carl is, sixteen already. Besides, Taft wanted that new Remington .270.

They wait in the quiet. In the trees.

Half an hour goes by before Taft touches Carl's leg and points. It's a buck, maybe two years old, a hundred and fifty yards from where they're sitting. Not a huge deer, but a good deer, a nice four corn.

"Wait," Taft whispers. He wants the deer to come out a little so Carl can get a clean shot. The deer is grazing. There's plenty of time. Carl gets up on one knee, raises his gun.

"Wait," Taft says. He has been on hunting trips where the men sat in the same spot for hours. Sometimes they camped, went two or three days without catching sight of a deer. Now Carl's first time out, it's right there. It would give the boy the wrong idea about how things went. Waiting for them, that was most of the fun.