Desperation Road(39)
Her mother and the children were on the front porch. The boys tugged at each other and argued as they walked toward the car. The girl stood next to her grandmother with her arms up and ready to go. She said thanks for watching them and got them all to the car and got them all buckled in and she drove away quickly and knew she had to return. That having them in the car would give her an excuse to keep it running. Just get out and tell him it was a mistake and apologize and ask if he’ll give it to you and you know he will. Only make it quick. The boys would ask who he was and later on they might bring it up with their father in the room. Mommy stopped at some man’s house, one of them would say. And the other would say who was that man, Mommy? And then he might ask the same and she would say I stopped by so-and-so’s house to see if she wanted to go to a movie this weekend but she wasn’t there and so-and-so’s husband was pulling in and stopped and said hello before we drove off and so what are we going to do about supper tonight? She processed her answer and it felt fine so she drove toward Russell thinking of the best way to say it. She was nervous when she turned onto his street and defeated when she noticed that he wasn’t on the steps any longer. She slowed in front of the house and she noticed that the truck wasn’t under the carport. What are we doing? one of the boys asked and she didn’t answer him. Then the other boy asked the same question. What are we doing?
She was quiet as she stared at the steps where he had been sitting. Where she had been sitting with him. Where he had held her hand.
Momma? What are we doing?
27
RUSSELL PUT THE SHOTGUN BEHIND THE TRUCK SEAT AND HE DROVE downtown to the café. He sat at the counter and drank coffee as the Saturday evening crowd grew with each jingle of the bell on the door. The waitress kept topping off his coffee and he tore a napkin into tiny pieces and formed a tiny white hill.
At the table behind him a young girl knocked over her glass of tea and it caused her sister to jump and she knocked her glass and both fell to the floor and broke. The mother frowned at the guilty girl and the girl said it was an accident. Sims came over with a towel but it wasn’t enough so he hurried back to the kitchen and then a woman returned with him. She held a busing tray and her hair was in a ragged ponytail. The family stood back as she knelt and picked up the broken glass and then she cleared away the plates that had been covered in the spilled tea. Sims helped the family move to another table and the woman took the tray and set it on the counter and then she went into the kitchen and returned with a mop and bucket and cleaned the spill underneath the table and chairs.
Russell paid for the coffee and went outside. Lit a cigarette and looked up at the early moon and then he walked to the Armadillo and sat down at the bar. Two young men with greasy shirts and black under their fingernails sat at the other end. The bartender leaned on the bar and talked with them. No one else was in the bar and the music was off. Russell called out for a beer and the bartender took one from the cooler and brought it down and left it without a word and returned to his friends.
A group of women came in and sat at a table and two boys came in and left when the bartender asked for their IDs but other than that the place remained tranquil. Russell watched the clock over the bar move past eight and close to nine and he couldn’t figure out why the place jumped on Thursday night but not Saturday. The group of women laughed big about something and Russell turned to look at them and then he noticed another woman standing in the doorway. She stepped inside and looked around with timidity. Scraped knees and bony shoulders. The group of women scanned her up and down and whispered as she walked over to the bar and sat down three stools away and she held a twenty-dollar bill tightly in her hand. She turned toward Russell and caught him looking and he recognized her from mopping the floor in the café. She asked how much a beer costs and the bartender said a dollar fifty and she thought about it a second and then said she’d take one. The back of her shirt was wet with sweat from the evening’s work. The bartender gave her the beer and when she lifted it to her lips her hand shook slightly.
The place was different without the band and without the crowd and he wished now that he would have gotten a phone number from Caroline the night before last. That he wouldn’t have snuck away in the middle of the night. He imagined how good it would feel to crawl into the bed with her now with the air conditioner turned low and the covers around his neck. He looked at the skinny woman and he noticed her squeezing the change the bartender had given her as if the bills were capable of taking flight. She no longer sat on the bar stool but stood next to it. When she finished the bottle she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. Cut her eyes around the room and then walked out.
Russell motioned to the bartender and said one more.
28
LARRY CALLED WALT AND SAID HE WAS GOING TO BUDDY’S AND Walt said he’d meet him there. Buddy’s sat on a wide curve along Delaware. A boxlike brick building with neon beer signs in the front window and it had once been a pet store and then a record store and then other things but the red brick had been painted a dark purple and the drunks staggered and shoved until the doors shut at 3:00 a.m. Larry walked inside and scanned the place. A bar lined the wall on the left and tables made from old wooden doors filled the front room. Televisions hung on the wall behind the bar and in the corners and the brick walls were decorated with photographs of football players in Ole Miss and Mississippi State and Saints jerseys. Something bluesy played over the speakers and two ceiling fans circulated the cigarette smoke and he didn’t see anyone he knew.