He leaned forward and kissed her, and then reached into his pocket. She had a stab of apprehension that it was another ring, a real one. The one he’d given her in Mexico was silver and already turning her finger green, but that was the one she wanted. He’d bought it from an Indian on the street, and it was perfect.
What he had wasn’t a ring, though; it was Carl’s teeth.
Somewhere in the back, a baby began to squawl, and the waitress hurried through a curtain in that direction. He set the teeth on the table between them. “You don’t hear much about it,” he said, a different tone completely, “but a friend of mine, a dentist, told me that puppies chew up more dentures than shoes and slippers put together. Dentures are the hidden cost of buying a dog.”
She stared at him, and a minute passed. “You enjoyed it, didn’t you?” she said. “That whole thing in the car.”
He just smiled, moonstruck. It was like she was speaking French and he had fallen in love with her anyway, without knowing what anything meant.
“You saw what he looked like,” she said. “Why else would you get in?”
“We both got in,” he said.
“You sound like my psychologist.” She’d been seeing one of those the last couple of months, a man who thought it was interesting that she’d urinated on herself to get away from the Negroes. He’d asked her if she sensed there was a connection to her father. Twenty-five dollars an hour for that.
Packard shrugged and said, “Well, Carl’s the psychologist. How did he put it? ‘Let’s drive up this here a little ways, see what we can see’? Isn’t that what psychologists try to make you do?”
She waited a moment, feeling herself react to the mention of his name, and then she looked again at the teeth. “Jesus, that head.”
“Yeah, that was some head Carl had.” And that fast, it happened again. Somebody let out all the bats, and she laughed out loud until she was hoarse and tearing and the waitress came out of the back thinking he’d hit her, and that was funny too. She had the idea then that if she could keep laughing, everything would be all right. Laughing, dancing, drinking, smiling, just like Packard. If she could just keep moving she was safe. When things caught up, then you had a problem. Once you stopped moving, then you couldn’t move. She looked at her new husband and thought, for the first time, that she understood what he’d meant when he told her to try to think of it as a story about other people.
When the tow truck came, Miller Packard tossed Carl’s teeth to a mongrel lying in the dust near the pumps. He was already making crunching noises when they climbed in for the ride home.
10
PARADISE DEVELOPMENTS
F
RIDAY AFTERNOON, MR. COOPER WAS NOT HIS usual self. There was problems with the building permits again, problems with the bank. He didn’t have no speech today for them about being ambassadors for Paradise Developments, or how America was opportunity for the taking. He didn’t say much of nothing, in fact, just went through the alphabet, paying the men, and paid Train last, like always, and then told Train to hang around awhile, there was a man coming over later to see him.
A man that had heard about him beating Melrose in a game of golf.
“What man was that?” he said.
Train didn’t want anybody coming around to see him. He thought of Mayflower, of the policeman who stuck the paper spike through his hand. A man coming around to see him— that couldn’t go nowhere good. He looked at the door, afraid for a minute that Mr. Cooper’s wife said something to him about the barn. That the man had called the authorities, and they were waiting now for them to come pick him up.
“Have you heard of the Indiana Klan?” Mr. Cooper said. “This is the man who stood up to them. You’ll see for yourself.” Then he went back to balancing his balance sheet, and time crawled along, and then Train heard somebody coming, sounded like a man sweeping the cement as he come up the steps, and then the door opened and it was the Vengeance of the Lord in person, wearing a hat.
The man walk like it hurt him to move, dragging one leg behind him. His arms were scarred and thin, and his face was about half pink, looked like somebody sewed a quilt, and his ears were little crisp-looking nubs. His skin was creased and tucked, and some places there was too much and some places it look like they wasn’t enough. The man took his time studying Train, looking at him like he was the one that looked like a campfire marshmallow.
“This is Mr. Hollingsworth,” Mr. Cooper said, “publisher of the
Darktown Standard.
He’s been a good friend to our cause ever since we started in business.”
Mr. Hollingsworth’s eyes were small and alive in the middle of all that disrupted skin, and they was focused on Train from the minute he walked in the door.
“I hear you play golf,” the man said finally, and when he talked, he talked like a professor. It looked like a strain with his lips, which was situated like somebody sewed them on backward.
Train nodded.
“And you caddied at Brookline?” he said. Train blinked, not knowing if he could lie out of this or not. It seemed like Mr. Cooper must of told him where he come from, or how else would he know?
“Did you know those two boys well, son?” he said. “The ones got into that trouble on the boat?”
Train recoiled to be called
son
. That was another signal things was about to get worse; plus, it recalled people putting their hands on your back or shoulder.
“Everybody know them,” he said.
Next thing, Hollingsworth would be asking about the police, what happened at the station, and the conversation already gone further into the area of law enforcement than Train wished to go.
“From what I’ve been told, those boys didn’t have anything to do with it,” Mr. Hollingsworth said. “Innocent victims. The police just took them out in the ocean and shot them, pure and simple, to cover up what really happened.”
Hollingsworth seemed to think of something and went to write it down, and Train looked at the man’s wrist, narrow and strange-colored, and the watchband hung loose and jiggled. On top of everything else about him that was fucked up, it looked like something was eating him away. It looked like grave robbing.
“The woman was white and rich,” he said, almost a question, but not quite, “and she shot her own husband. Pure and simple. Somebody had to be blamed.” Then he sat there waiting, and Train seen what he was waiting for was him to say it happened just like he said. Waiting for
verification.
Train looked at the door. He wanted out of the room and away from this man Hollingsworth and his fucked-up ears. Wanted to stay away from the subject of Brookline and everything that happened over it. But all he did was nod along.
“Yessir,” he said.
Hollingsworth sighed. “The ones with enough money can always find one or two of us to blame for a shot husband, right?” he said. Mr. Cooper seem to agree with that version of it, like he had a vote in what happened out there too.
“Was there much talk about it afterwards?” Hollingsworth said. “Perhaps speculation from a superior, or another caddy who works there? Someone I might contact . . .”
Train didn’t say so, but they wasn’t no question that whoever shot Sweet had their reasons.
All he told him was there wasn’t no work out there after that. “They took away all the jobs. They said they were making a clean breast.”
Mr. Hollingsworth nodded like that was exactly what he expected. “That’s the pattern,” he said, “as old as time. Divide the people. Divide and conquer.” He looked across the table and dropped his voice to a place you couldn’t argue with what he said, no matter what it was. “I promise you this,” he said. “Your friends Clarence Holmes and Arthur Tobin, those lives will not be lost in vain.”
Train saw that the time was past to mention Sweet had done two years at Vacaville and stole $350 from old Florida’s widow. He only stood still, tried not to look at the man’s ears, and waited. The man leaned closer and touched him. “You’re a good boy,” he said. And Train thought he could smell something burnt.
Sunday morning Train was at the club at dawn. Whitey came in about 6:30 and opened the gate, looked like she slept in the woods.
Hollingsworth showed up two hours later, right after Melrose, still wearing the hat, raised the question in Train’s mind of what things looked like underneath. He walked that painful way down to the first tee, where the golfers were waiting. Dragging his bad leg.
“Might you have another moment?” he said to Train.
Melrose and the two players he brought with him were sitting on the bench; they seem to enjoy the way the man spoke. One of the players called Alexander Pokey was a jockey, little bowlegs, look like a child from a distance. The other one was older and took up as much space as a Steinway piano. The jockey called him Girth, but that hardly did the spectacle of him justice.
Train waited politely and Hollingsworth said, “I was wondering if you might remember anything about the younger boy. The one who was killed.” Train thought of Arthur, didn’t know a thing, even if he did want to say it. Just the slow eyes and smell of baby powder, the way the boy’s flesh moved under his shirt.
“What do you weigh, Girth?” the jockey said behind him, “four hundred?”
“Didn’t talk to nobody,” Train said.
Hollingsworth waited, wanting him to try harder. “Did he have any family you knew of? Mother, father, siblings? Any idea where I could find them?”
“The reason I’m askin’,” the jockey said to the big man, “there’s a mare in the barn, bit me on the back.” He lifted his shirt, exposing muscles Train never would have guessed was there, and turned on the bench to show them the bandage. It was about the size of a washcloth, and the bruising spilled out of the bottom halfway to his waist.
“I’ll pay you to come around once and sit on that bastard for me,” the jockey said. “Just put the thought in her head.”
“I can’t get on no goddamn horse, Poke,” the big man said.
“This bastard bit me so bad, I had to sleep sitting up,” the jockey said. “I just want a little satisfaction.”
“Shoot it,” Melrose said.
“No sir,” Train said to Hollingsworth. “I never heard him talk about nothing like that.”
Train stood on the tee box, swinging the rental clubs, getting used to the weight. Some of the irons were Wilsons, some were Spalding, and while Train got used to the way they felt, Girth and the jockey sat on the bench and talked about ways other than being sat on by a four-hundred-pound rider to surprise a horse. Melrose chuckled along, and bent over and spit between his shoes. He had a way of laughing like he knew more than anybody else. The newspaperman stood by, ignoring them, still hoping Train had something to tell him.
Suddenly Melrose said, “You come out here to watch the boy lose all his money, pop?” The newspaperman turned his stare on him, and then on them all. A little while passed and it got less comfortable, and then Girth decided to retie his golf shoes, and then Melrose stood up and swung his club, said it was making him queasy to be looked at by somebody all burnt up.
He looked down the fairway awhile, waiting for the foursome ahead to hit and clear. “Gone be slow today,” he said. Then he turned to Train. “I hope that don’t bother you, man, to play slow.”
