Terms of Endearment (17 page)

“Be glad to run the General in too,” he added a little hesitantly.

“No, not the General too,” Aurora said. “I’ve no interest at all in how the General gets home. As he’s fond of pointing out, he’s a four-star general and I doubt in a country like ours a four-star general is going to be left to starve by the roadway. I’ve found my ride and he can find his.”

“That’s goddamned high-handed of you, Aurora,” the General said. “All right, I won’t challenge your story. My little effort was in vain, I see, but I don’t see why I have to be derided for it. You can just stop acting like that.”

Aurora opened her door and got out. “You shouldn’t have tried to blackmail me, Hector,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s had a very destructive effect on my feeling for you. You can sit in my car if you like, and as soon as I’m home I’ll tell F.V. where you are. I’m sure he’ll come and get you. Thank you very much for the lunch.”

“Now stop it, God damn it!” the General said, growing seriously angry. “We’ve been neighbors for years, and I won’t have you walking off from me this way. I didn’t do anything so bad.”

“No, nothing, Hector, not a thing,” she said. She bent and looked in at him a moment. They had, after all, been neighbors for years. But there was nothing of neighborliness in the General’s eyes. They were cold blue and angry. Aurora straightened herself and looked across the miles of grass that stretched toward the Gulf.

“Then get back in here and stop acting like a goddamn queen,” the General said.

Aurora shook her head. “I have no intention of getting back in,” she said. “The reason you didn’t do anything just now, Hector, was because you couldn’t, you know. You have no power at the moment. It’s the thought of what you might do if you were granted some that worries me. I certainly don’t intend to grant you any. I have to be going now. You look after yourself.”

“I won’t forget this, Aurora,” the General said, very red in the face. “I’ll get even, I assure you.”

Aurora walked away. The ground was somewhat uneven and she reached out and took Vernon’s arm, which seemed to shock him. Nonetheless, he let her.

“I’m sorry about that little argument,” she said. “I’ve added awkwardness to injury, I’m afraid.”

“Well, I always heard that generals was nothing but trouble,” Vernon said.

“Were
nothing but trouble,” Aurora said. “Generals is plural and were is plural. It really sounds better, you know.”

Vernon didn’t know. He looked at her uncertainly.

“Oh, well,” Aurora said quickly. “I really shouldn’t be criticizing your grammar just after I’ve wrecked your car. It’s just a habit of mine.”

She was abashed that the remark had slipped out, and also somewhat disconcerted to discover that when she turned to speak to Vernon she looked right over his head.

“The law’s managed to catch its breath,” Vernon said. “I guess we gotta face the music now.”

A very thin, very young patrolman was walking around and around behind Vernon’s car. The car was a huge white Lincoln that seemed to have a television antenna on top of it.

“Why he’s so slim,” Aurora said, looking at the young patrolman. “He’s just a boy.” She had expected someone large and angry, and the sight of such a slight young man was very reassuring.

“Why is he walking around and around?” she asked. “Do you suppose he’s dizzy?”

“He might be a little dizzy,” Vernon said. “Most likely he’s just looking at the car tracks, tryin’ to figure out what happened. He’s the one that’s got to explain smashing up that patrol car.”

“Oh, dear,” Aurora said. “Perhaps I should plead guilty. Otherwise I may have ruined his career.”

Before Vernon could do more than shake his head the young patrolman walked up to them, also shaking his head. He carried a clipboard.

“Hello, folks,” he said. “Hope one of y’all know what happened to us. Me, I ain’t got a clue.”

“My fault, first to last,” Vernon said. “You an’ the lady here never stood a chance.”

“I’m Officer Quick,” the young man said, very slowly. Then he shook hands with both of them.

“I knew I ort never to have got up today,” he said with a
pained grimace. “You know how some days you get a kinda feeling of doom? That’s just how I been feelin’ all day, an’ I was right as rain. I hope I didn’t hurt your car too much, ma’am.”

Aurora had to smile, he was so harmless. “Not seriously, Officer,” she said.

“Well, I ain’t making no excuses,” Vernon said. “Just write me out a ticket and that’s that.”

Officer Quick surveyed the whole area slowly, the pained expression still on his thin face. “Mister, I ain’t sweatin’ the ticket,” he said. “I’m sweatin’ drawing the map.”

“What map?” Aurora asked.

“Regulations,” the young man said. “We gotta draw maps of these accidents we find, and if there’s one thing I can’t do it’s draw. I couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler, and I ain’t no good at crooked lines either. Even when I figure out what happened I can’t draw it, and this time I can’t even figure out what happened.”

“Oh, well, let me draw it for you, Officer,” Aurora said. “I studied drawing quite seriously when I was a girl and if it will be any help to you I’ll be glad to draw our little accident.”

“All yours,” Officer Quick said, handing her his clipboard at once. “Most ever’ night I dream about some accident happenin’ and me havin’ to draw the map. That’s mostly what I dream about now, drawin’ maps.”

Aurora felt quite strongly that the moment had come to improvise. She took the pen that Vernon immediately offered.

“Goodness,” she said, for it was the only pen she had ever seen that had both a clock and a calendar on it. Once she got over the novelty of that she propped herself against the back of Vernon’s car and began to draw the accident. Apparently there was going to be no one to say her nay—Hector Scott was still sitting in her car—so she proceeded to draw the accident precisely as she would have preferred it to occur.

“You see, Officer, we were watching the sea gulls,” she said, sketching them in first, along with a cloud or two.

“Oh, I see, bird watchers,” Officer Quick said. “Say no more. That explains everything.”

“Yep, that’s the whole story in a nutshell,” Vernon agreed.

“You bird watchers is always running into one another,” Officer Quick said. “I think this here whole emphasis on not drivin’ while you’re drinkin’ is all wrong. Why I can go down to the dancehall on my night off an’ tank up till my ol’ bladder won’t hardly hold it and still be steady as she goes there at the wheel. I ain’t never hit nothin’ while I was drinkin’, but they ain’t no tellin’ what I’d hit if I was to drive along an’ try to watch a bird. I think they oughta put up a few signs sayin’ ‘Bird Watching Don’t Drive.’”

Aurora saw that the young man had bought the story before she had even had time to make it up. She did a hasty little drawing in which Vernon was backing up beneath some sea gulls while she was advancing on them obliquely. She depicted Officer Quick and his patrol car as perfectly innocent passers-by, and was not too successful at drawing her car in the process of whirling around and around. She also drew in a sizable cloud of dust, since that was her chief memory of the accident.

“It was awful dusty, wasn’t it?” Officer Quick said, studying the picture intently.

“I ort to have been a fireman,” he added wistfully while he was struggling to write Vernon out a ticket.

“Perhaps it’s not too late,” Aurora said. “I must say I don’t think it’s very healthy for you to lie in bed dreaming about maps all night.”

“Naw, no hope,” the young man said. “There ain’t even a regular firehouse in our town. It’s all just volunteer work, an’ you know what that pays.”

As Vernon was helping Aurora into the white Lincoln she bethought herself once more of General Scott. It hardly seemed fair to go off and leave such a nice boy at the mercy of Hector Scott.

“Officer, I’m afraid the man sitting in my car is very angry,” she said. “Actually he’s angry at me, but he’s a retired general and it wouldn’t surprise me if he was in the mood to say ugly things to anyone who comes around.”

“Oh,” Officer Quick said. “Y’all just gonna go off and leave him sittin’ there, huh?”

“Yes, that’s what we’d planned,” Aurora said.

“Well, I ain’t goin’ near him,” Officer Quick said. “If he gets out an’ flies into me I’ll call a couple of my local col-leagues an’ we’ll arrest him. Y’all folks try to keep your minds off birds now.”

“Yes, we will, thank you very much,” Aurora said.

Officer Quick had extracted a toothpick from his shirt pocket and was chewing on it with an air of quiet melancholy. She and Vernon both waved at him, and he returned the wave in a listless fashion.

“One last thought, folks,” he said. “Come over me like a flash. Maybe what y’all need to do is move to Port Aransas. You know they got that big bird sanctuary there. Millions of our little… feathered friends. If y’all was to move down there an’ get you one of them little houses that sits there on the bay with little balconies on them you wouldn’t even have to drive at all, in order to keep up with sea gulls an’ all that. You could just sit there with your feet propped up on the rail and watch birds night an’ day. Be easier on the public too. Adios, amigos.” And he waved again and plodded off toward his patrol car, rubbing his head as he went.

“What an amazing young man,” Aurora said. “Are all policemen like him?”

“Yep, ever’ one of them’s crazy,” Vernon said.

CHAPTER VII

1.

B
EFORE AURORA
could more than catch her breath Vernon was going ninety. She thought it felt very fast and looked over to make sure. Ninety it was. They had zipped past her Cadillac so fast she had barely had time to glance at Hector Scott, who was sitting there rigid as ever. The car itself was unlike any she had ever ridden in. It had two telephones and an elaborate radio of some kind, and one of the doors in the back had a television set built into it. Vernon handled the wheel rather casually, she thought, considering how fast they were going. Still, she felt more amazed than frightened. Vernon seemed perfectly confident of his driving and the car was so impressive and well-padded that it was probably more or less impervious to the vicissitudes that might befall normal cars. The doors locked themselves, the windows rolled themselves up, and it was all so comfortable that she found it hard to worry about the world outside, or even to remember that there was a world outside. The seats were
covered in very soft leather, and the general color scheme was maroon, which suited her fine. The only thing tacky that she could see was the paneling of the dashboard, which was in cowhide—the sort with the hair still on.

“Well, I’ll have to call you Vernon, I believe,” Aurora said, settling back. “This is a very nice car. In fact, I don’t know why I don’t have one like this myself. The only thing wrong with it is that dreadful cowhide. How did that happen?”

Vernon looked abashed, which was rather affecting in a small freckled person, Aurora thought. He was pulling nervously at one ear.

“My idea,” he said, still pulling.

“I must say I think that was a small lapse of judgment,” Aurora said. “Don’t do that please, you’ll just stretch your earlobes.”

Vernon looked even more abashed and stopped pulling at his ear. Instead he began to pop his knuckles.

Aurora held her peace for thirty seconds, but the sound of popping knuckles was more than she could tolerate.

“Don’t do that either,” she said. “It’s just as bad as stretching your ears, and it makes a noise. I know it’s dreadful of me to be so outspoken, but I will try to be fair. You can criticize me as soon as I do something that you find intolerable. I just don’t think you ought to go around pulling on various parts of your body all the time. I noticed you doing it just after we had our wrecks.”

“Yeah, I get the fidgets,” Vernon said. “Nervousness is what it is. I can’t slow down. The doctor says it’s my metabolism.” He stared hard at the road, trying to keep himself from pulling anything.

“That’s a vague diagnosis at best,” Aurora said. “I really think you might consider changing your doctor, Vernon. Everybody has a metabolism, you know. I have one too, but I don’t pull on myself. You’re obviously not married. No woman would allow you to fidget like that.”

“Naw, never settled down,” Vernon said. “Always been restless as a jack rabbit.”

Ahead, to the northwest, the skyline of Houston had appeared, with the afternoon sun shining on its tall buildings, some silver,
some white. Soon they were in a river of traffic, flowing with it toward the city. Vernon managed to control his fidgets by keeping both hands on the wheel, and Aurora leaned back in the wonderfully comfortable maroon leather seats and watched the city flash by with a good deal of contentment.

“I’ve always liked being driven better than I like driving,” she said. “This is obviously a trustworthy car. Perhaps I ought to have been driving Lincolns all these years.”

“Well, this here’s my home,” Vernon said. “Kind of a mobile headquarters. It’s got a writing desk that pops out in the back seat. Got an icebox back there an’ a safe under the floorboards to keep my winnings in.”

“Goodness, Vernon, you seem to have my fondness for gadgets,” Aurora said. “Could I make a call from one of your telephones? I’d just like to call my daughter and tell her I’ve been in a wreck. It might make her a little more considerate.”

“Help yourself.”

“How delightful,” Aurora said, a sparkle in her eyes as she dialed. Something new was happening.

“I really don’t know why I haven’t had a phone put in my car,” she said. “I guess I supposed it was something only millionaires could have.” She paused, reflecting on her remark.

“I must be in shock from my wreck or I wouldn’t have put that quite so stupidly,” she said. “Of course I don’t mean to imply that you aren’t a millionaire. I do hope you won’t consider anything I say an insult while I’m in this state.”

“Oh, well, I got a few mil, but I ain’t no H. L. Hunt,” Vernon said. “Don’t like to work that hard.”

Just at that moment Emma answered the phone.