Train recognized that the situation was still broke into pieces for him, though, and he couldn’t fit it together. The policeman looked again at Plural, seemed to know him now. “That man shot me,” he said.
“You aren’t shot,” Mr. Packard said, “but around the blind, you should be clear about your intentions.”
Plural nodded at that, as if it was what he was thinking too, and then something stirred the birds on the other side of the fence, the low grunting turned into shrieking, and they beat their wings and yelled, then gradually settled back down to graze the south end of the pool. No reason, the birds just did what they did. The young cop jumped at the flapping and the noise, and then looked up, and either what he saw or just the motion itself seemed to make him sick all over again.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, “how do you people live in all this confusion?”
Train heard them arguing that night again, come from downstairs in the kitchen.
“He didn’t know who it was,” Mr. Packard said. Inside, Train saw their shadows moving on the wall. “He was just protecting the house.”
No answer, though. Nothing at all.
38
SEATTLE
A
NOTHER MATCH THAT WEEKEND AT WESTERN Avenue, and then up to Seattle. Mr. Packard had the first drink before the plane ever took off.
Train was supposed to be playing a man for fifty in Seattle— that was what they called fifty thousand these days, fifty. It wasn’t the money, though, that they was going for. As far as money went, Mr. Packard seemed just as happy to took Albert Cassidy’s cowboy hat.
Still, Train had won him something everywhere he played, and when the games got bigger, Mr. Packard start to gave him five hundred or a thousand afterwards. He told Train to put it in the bank, but Plural told him to keep it hisself.
“They always somebody in this world that want to hold your money,” Plural said.
Train saw his line of thinking was connected to why he kept wondering what did Mr. Packard want.
The stewardess came past, and Mr. Packard caught her eye and pointed to his glass. She smiled at him, but he’d already turned back out the window. She let the smile spill into the next seat, and asked Train would he like another orange juice or some peanuts. He didn’t look old enough to drink— he could see that himself— and wondered if he ever would.
The pilot came on the loudspeaker to announce they should be arriving in Seattle in forty-five minutes. Train stood up to stretch his legs and walked up toward the place the stewardesses had made dinner, and looked out the windows. It was dark, and there was a line of scattered lights below, trucks and cars. Everybody going their own way, and Train up there above them, going to Seattle to bet other people’s money and then go back home. As important as Native Dancer himself, on the way to the Kentucky Derby.
Two other stewardesses was in their seats, talking away, and when they saw Train standing at the window, one of them stared at him and the other one glanced away. Both of them up here thinking the same thing, that he didn’t need to be in any airplane. They had to see him play to know he belong on the plane.
He went back to his seat and Mr. Packard sipped at his drink. “I’m afraid we got a little bit of a situation, Mr. Walk,” he said. It sounded like life had wore him out. Train waited to hear what it was. He knew somehow that it was over for him now, that he had to go find something for himself. He tried to remembered what it was like before, when he didn’t matter.
Train felt the engines change pitch, and then the plane itself pitched down with it into the night. Sometimes it seemed like everything that happened, he felt it first. Seemed like he had too many connections, knew too many things ahead of time.
“Your friend, Plural . . .”
Train waited, felt it coming.
“It’s getting to be a problem.”
Train started to say he’d get rid of him, but he stopped himself short. He thought of what that meant, how he would tell Plural he had to go.
“About them birds?” Train said, but he knew it wasn’t.
“Not the birds,” Mr. Packard said.
The man in Seattle was named Skagstead, bald as a baby and born to have a good time. The first player since they started in this business that fooled with him while they was going around, try to maintain cordiality in the game.
Skagstead and the man with the money rode in a golf cart, kept a cooler of beer in there, and he would had one and then Skagstead would had one too, like a duel of tap dancers, all the way around. They gave one to Mr. Packard and offered one to Train too, and when Train said no thank you, they ast if he want a soda pop instead. They was cheerful like that all the way around, and somehow in all the beer drinking and pleasantness, they got to number eighteen just one hole down. The bald man didn’t looked that good hitting it, but he could play.
Number eighteen was a par five, and the bald man got hold of a driver off the fairway and rolled it on in two. Train hit next, left his ball forty feet.
The bald man was away by a little bit and hit his putt, the best putt he hit all day, from the bottom edge of the green. It looked too strong, but then it took the break of the green hard left and slowed down, and then stopped right to the edge of the hole.
The ball quit on the spot, sniffing the hole, teetered half in and half out. Train and Mr. Packard look at each other, and in that same second a butterfly— not even a monarch, just a little white butterfly— floated into the picture and landed on that ball where it settled, and the ball dropped in the hole.
And none of them ever seen that before, and they all know they never were gone see it again. Just like they know the bald man never gone get this close to Train again in a golf match.
Mr. Skagstead was nicely comported, said to check the rules to make sure there wasn’t no penalty for being helped by a butterfly— which, in Train’s experience, was the kind of thing the rule book would in fact have a rule for— but that started Mr. Packard to laughing until he choked, and when he could talk again, he said, shit, he don’t care about that, what happened happened, and Train missed his putt to the high side and they left it like that, all even.
And golf felt good in a new way it never felt before. Something besides being the center of things and winning money. Train thought about how long he played this game before he found out that he liked it for itself.
Mr. Skagstead and his man knew a place with a peanut bowl on the table and sawdust on the floor, and nobody looked twice at Train when they all come in together, and they all ate dinner and drank tequila— even Train tried it, but it tasted like sweat to him— and while they was eating, Mr. Skagstead suddenly looked up, like he just remembered something, and smiled across the table, his eyes all cannonballed from the liquor, and his head was streaked with sweat, and he said this just to Train, like only the two of them would understand. “That was some fun,” he said.
39
BEVERLY HILLS
S
HE HAD A NAP THAT AFTERNOON AND WOKE up feeling clearheaded and thinking of how to decorate the nursery. An hour later, she thought about the blind man, the way he was always trying to get the car door for her, trying to help with the groceries. Trying. In the safety of the afternoon, she was surprised at herself for the way she’d treated him.
And she knew better than to say the things she’d said to Packard; she knew they weren’t all the same. She touched her stomach and wondered if he’d felt it in there, if she’d been scaring the baby too.
She fixed a plate of cookies later and went over to see him again. Practicing her apology. It was dusk; the air was hot and still. She knocked and waited, and was suddenly aware of a certain odor, something damp and vaguely metallic. A noise rose and died inside, and then the door opened, and he stood in the threshold, shirtless in his undershorts, his face aimed at the moon, his arms and chest spotted with blood and pink feathers, and there were more feathers in the air and all over the floor and furniture, and one of his hands was closed into a fist just beneath the animal’s head, and beneath that, hanging limp, twelve inches of neck that had been torn from the body.
He seemed to know what she was thinking. He grinned at her and there were bits of feathers and blood in his teeth. He’d bitten off its head. “The lady of the household,” he said. “What you got for me tonight?”
She stood still, thinking that he meant to rip out the baby too. That it would happen now.
What began on the boat had come full circle.
He smacked his lips as she backed away. “You know it’s a hungry world,” he said.
40
COMING HOME
O
N THE RUNWAY MR. PACKARD WAS QUIET and restless, and Train knew the time had come for Mr. Packard to tell him what he been trying to tell him all along— to find another place. Mr. Packard waited, though, until the plane was in the air.
“So it turns out you’re a player,” he said. “At least you got that much out of all this.” Like everything between them was settled.
“I had that already,” Train said. Not arguing, just trying to hold on a little longer.
