Wolf Point (22 page)

“It’s not?” Lester said. He laughed and hunched up his body so that he was sitting in the boat the way he had been sitting on the couch, leaning forward and tapping his feet.

Jenny said, “I told you he’d give us the money.” She looked out across the river. She seemed pensive, as if she’d resigned herself to the situation for the moment at least and was taking some time to mull things over. She offered T a hit on the joint. T shook his head. “My uncle,” she said. “The guitar uncle. He filled up a rowboat with rocks so that it could just barely still float. Then he tied himself to the seat—”

“Why you tellin’ him that story?” Lester interrupted.

“What?” Jenny said. “Why not? Why shouldn’t I?”

“Just shut the fuck up ’bout that. I don’t want you tellin’ him that story.”

Jenny said, “You’re so out of it, Lester.” She nodded her head toward the gun stuck in his underwear. “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to blow your balls off?”

“Hey, T?” Lester said. “You know why you’re out here?”

T met Lester’s eyes for a moment and looked at him as if he might be able to understand something more about him by observing the weathered features of his face, the way his skin looked seared by time—but in the end Lester’s face told him very little. It was a youthful face, though worn and battered. A few years ago he had seen an exhibit of Richard Avedon’s photographs. He had wandered before the trademark black-and-white portraits of the rich and poor, the good and bad, famous and unknown, and he had come away with the same feeling, that in the end the body tells you next to nothing. For all its uniqueness, it reveals nothing essential at all. He forgot what Lester had asked. He laid his head down on the bow and returned his gaze to the stars.

Lester turned his attention back to Jenny. “I always liked Ronnie,” he said.

Jenny said, “He was a sweet man.”

“T!” Lester yelled.

T pulled himself back into the boat. He had been sailing up toward the stars, leaving the little boat with Jenny and Lester under him on the black river while his body floated up like one of the childhood images from church on Sundays of Christ
ascending to the heavens. He half expected Mary to appear alongside him and the cherubim to join them blowing trumpets. Yet he hadn’t missed any of Lester and Jenny’s conversation. “Must have been a mini hallucination,” he said.

“I’m sure,” Lester said. “Whatever.”

“I think so,” T said.

Lester said, “You know who I am?”

T said, “I know who you are. I’m okay. I think I might have half fallen asleep.”

“That’s good,” Lester said. “You know why you’re out here, T?”

T nodded. “Because I downloaded the wrong picture.”

Lester leaned back and laughed.

“Jesus,” Jenny said. “You’re both out of it.”

Lester opened the guitar case, found the bag of pills, and pulled out two more black ones. He handed them to T. “Take these,” he said. “You need these, buddy. One ain’t doing the trick.”

Jenny said, “What are you giving him?”

“What the fuck do I know?” Lester said. “All I know is, three of these things he should be feelin’ no pain.”

T took the pills. When he tried to swallow them, he gagged and Jenny scooped up a handful of river water and spilled it gently into his mouth. The water was soothing and the pills went down. “Thank you,” he said, and he gestured toward the open guitar case. “Snap that closed,” he said. “Will you, please?”

Jenny closed the guitar case and snapped it shut. She said, “How come you’re so worried about this guitar, T?”

T shrugged. He didn’t know why. It was beautiful. It was something beautiful in the boat with them.

Lester said, “Ronnie bought that guitar in New York. She tell you that?”

T shook his head.

“Bought it from a guy said he was a classical musician.”

Jenny said, “Ronnie tell you that story?”

“Claimed to pay a thousand dollars for it. This back 1960.”

“He did,” Jenny said. “Babs said he did. She said he came back from New York broke and with the guitar.”

“Guy was playin’ in the subway. He couldn’t believe how good.”

“He was always the sweet one,” Jenny said. “He was the one would take care of us.”

“You remember that?” Lester said. “You remember how he’d come around and get me sometimes?”

Jenny closed her eyes and sighed as if despairing.

“He’d come around and get me when Daddy on a drunk. He’d take me out campin’ by the lake. Sometimes I live in that trailer out there with him a week ’fore I could go home.”

Jenny said, “Jesus, Lester. You’re telling me this like I wasn’t out there with you half the time.”

T imagined the two of them as a pair of ragged kids playing together by the water, climbing trees in their worn-out sneakers and dirty jeans.

Lester was quiet a while, looking off at nothing. Then he turned to Jenny again, his eyes dark and narrowed to a glare. “Why you doin’ me like this?” he said. “Jenny? Why’d you do me this way?”

“Lester, honey,” she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you do,” he said. “You got no respect for me. You show me no respect. You think I’m stupid.”

“No, I don’t,” she said. “I don’t think anything like that.”

“You know how I know when you lyin’, Jenny?”

“No, Lester,” she said, indulging him. “How do you know when I’m lying?”

“When I see your lips movin’.

“You’re just being mean,” she said. “You don’t believe that.”

Fuck I don’t,” he said. “Whether T here gives us the money or not won’t make no difference for me ’n’ you know it. Willie’ll kill me anyway, and you think I’m too stupid. You walk me right back there like I mean nothin’, like I never meant nothin’ to you.”

“That’s not true.”

“Fuck it ain’t.” He raised his voice to T. “I’m askin’ you again, T? You know why you out here?”

T’s head felt a little clearer, some of the stuffiness gone and the sense of being dazed diminishing. “Not really, I guess,” he answered. “I guess I don’t really know why I’m out here.”

“You out here because of Chucky,” he said, looking at
Jenny. “The dude whose cabin this is,” he went on, turning to T. “He’s why you out here.”

Jenny said, “What’s Chuck got to do with it? What’s going on in your drugged-up head, Lester?”

“Chuck’s got to do with it is he put you up to it. You think I didn’t know all along, Jenny? You think I’m that dumb?”

“Is that what you think happened? Oh, Christ, Lester— Is that what you think happened?”

“Is that what I think?” Lester echoed Jenny.
“Them Mexicans, Les. They won’t give you no trouble.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Lester. How could I have known what they’d do?”

“Shit.” Lester spit over the side of the boat, as if he were angry at the river. He leaned back on the engine and looked past Jenny to T. “Me robbin’ Short Willie,” he said. “I’m not that crazy. I did it ’cause I knew her uncle Chuck behind it, and I figured he might could pull it off. Chuck the biggest slime bag around. Sum’ bitch the biggest crook in Tennessee.”

“So what?” Jenny said. She crossed her arms over her chest. “So what if you’re right? How’s that change anything?”

“You set me up’s how it change things.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did. And you doin’ it again, go back there and get killed and you run back here to him.”

“For Christ’s sake, Lester.” Jenny looked over the side of the boat as if she were considering jumping out. “I can’t talk sense to you when you’re like this. What in hell would there be in it for
me if I set you up? You don’t get the money, I don’t get the money. What in hell reason would I have for setting you up? Chuck said we could make five, six thousand apiece. You’re right about that, okay? He did. I didn’t tell you that I knew about the Mexicans from Chuck because he told me not to tell you. He said what you didn’t know couldn’t come back to bite you, and I took him at his word.”

“That always a mistake,” Lester said.

“Why would I set you up, Les? Will you ask yourself that? What possible reason could I have?”

“Not just you settin’ me up,” Lester said. “Chuck doin’ it through you and you playin’ along.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Les.”

“Let me ask you this,” he said. He paused a second and stared at her. It was as if they had forgotten T was in the boat. Their eyes were fixed on each other. “Let me ask you this,” he repeated. “It occurred to you he might could be setting you up too? He might could plan this whole thing to happen just the way it happen? He figure I come runnin’ to you. He figure Willie find out me and you in it together.”

“Why?” She threw up her hands. “Why, Les?”

T picked up the guitar case and held it to his chest. He wrapped his arms around the neck and supported himself with it. “Lester,” he said, “maybe I can help.”

Lester’s eyes were sad. He looked incredibly tired. “They ain’t no help anymore, T. Kinda sorry you out here now. I was startin’ to like you.”

“I was thinking, money,” T said. “I could—”

“You not all that bad.”

“Answer me,” Jenny said. “Why would Chuck do something like that to me?”

“That a good question, Jenny. Why would Uncle Chuck do you that way?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why would he? You know something I don’t?”

“Let me ask you this, Jenny. D’you ever wonder why Johnny kept them pictures of you? Of his own daughter?”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t. He was a man. Men are like that.”

Lester’s face twisted up sour. “He was your father.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“That don’t matter,” Lester said. “He was your father, and I don’t think he had them to look, like everyone said.”

“You don’t? You got a different theory?”

“Chuck stopped hangin’ around with you, didn’t he? I’m told Chuck stopped turning up with you places like he used to.”

“What are you trying to say, Les? Spit it out.”

“I don’t think Johnny was lookin’ at those pictures. He never struck me a sick sum’ bitch like his brother.”

“So what do you think, then? Let’s hear it.”

Lester looked away from Jenny, first at T and then out to the water and up to the stars and then back to T. He seemed to be recalling where they were, out on the Saint Lawrence, a mild October night under a bright field of stars in a small boat with a man he’d shot. “I think Johnny must’ve stole them pictures away from Chuck. I think he kept those pictures to blackmail him,” he said softly, almost reluctantly. “To make
him stay ’way from you,” he added. “To make him leave you ’lone.”

It took Jenny a minute to respond, and in the silence a breeze rippled over the water and rushed through the boat, pushing her hair off her face and wrapping her dress tight to her body. She nodded to Lester, as if to say he was right. “And to extort money from him,” she added. “So he could drink it up and spend it on whores, like he always did.”

“Jenny,” Lester said, his voice dropping into a deeper register, coming from someplace low in his body. “He’s your uncle, Jenny. The bastard your uncle.”

“No, he’s not,” she said. “You know that.”

“But you didn’t,” he said. “You didn’t know that until the trial. And it don’t matter anyway.”

“Yes, it does,” she said. “And I did know. I’ve known since I was thirteen that Johnny wasn’t my father and Chuck wasn’t my uncle. Chuck told me, first time, when I was thirteen.”

Lester stared at her in silence a long moment. “Since you were thirteen,” he said. “That how long it been going on?”

“Since I was thirteen.”

Lester looked deeply sad. He shook his head. “Hey, T?” he said, and he pointed out over the gunwale. “That the ocean out that way?”

T looked out where he was pointing, down the center of the wide channel, east toward the ocean. He nodded.

Lester squeezed the bulb on the gas-tank line a few times and then positioned himself to pull back on the engine cord.

“What are you doing?” Jenny asked.

“What’s it look like?” He pulled the cord and the engine started easily.

“So what did any of that have to do with why Chuck might set us up?” The boat started moving, and Jenny pushed her hair off her forehead and held it out of her face with one hand pressed flat over the top of her head. “You think he knew they’d rob you, the Mexicans?” she said. “You think he knew Willie’d come after both of us? That’s what you’re saying?”

T wanted to interrupt them a moment, just long enough to tell Jenny how beautiful she looked that way, with her hair pushed back, in the moonlight, the wind riffling her dress.

Lester said, “I’m nothin’ but shit to you.” He leaned a little closer to Jenny, as if to be sure she’d hear him over the growl of the engine. “Chuck’s disrespected and fucked with you your whole life,” he said, “and you in love with that ugly son of a bitch.”

Jenny said, “You got a simple mind, Lester. You think everything’s simple.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but I’m seeing clear now. I’m inside it now,” he said. “Now it all perfectly clear.”

“You’re spun, Les. That’s the only thing perfectly clear.”

Lester’s face seemed to sink into itself. He looked suddenly old and worn as he leaned still closer to Jenny. “He tired of you,” he said. “You weren’t so blind about him, you’d see it too. You come back to town, go back to school. You expectin’ that job he been promising you since forever…” He stopped and wiped away sweat from his upper lip. “He tired of you, Jenny. He got rid of you. That’s all. He tired of you and he got
rid of you and it don’t mean nothin’ someone like him someone like me gets killed. And don’t hurt either he’ll make a few dollars in the deal.”

“That’s crazy,” Jenny said. “That’s just crazy.”

“No, it’s not,” he said. “Once you get clear about things, it obvious really.” He sat back on the transom with the engine rudder in his left hand and steered the boat out toward the ocean. “It all perfectly clear to me now,” he said. “I ain’t shit to you, I ain’t never been. I see that now. It clear now. You twisted around that evil fuck and he played you and I got played with you. That’s all. That’s all this is.”

“You’re wrong,” she said. “Chuck wouldn’t do that to me.” She looked out over the bow. “What are you doing, Les?” she asked. “Where are we going?”