Bridge of Clay(72)

Clay looked over and half smiled. “No, no one roughed Henry up at home. No one here would ever do anything like that.”

I had to walk across. “Give me the Goddamn phone.”

He did it.

“Ms. Kirkby?…Okay, Claudia, no, it’s all okay, he just had a small problem in the neighborhood. You know how stupid boys can be.”

“Oh, yes.”

For a few minutes, we talked, and her voice was calm—quiet but sure—and I imagined her through the phone. Was she wearing her dark skirt and cream shirt? And why did I imagine her calves? When I was about to hang up, Clay made me wait, to tell her he’d brought back the books she’d lent him.

“Does he want new ones?”

He’d heard her, and thought, then nodded.

“Which one did he like the most?”

He said, “The Battle of East Fifteenth Street.”

“That’s a good one.”

“I liked the old chess player in it.” A touch louder this time. “Billy Wintergreen.”

“Oh, he’s so good,” said Claudia Kirkby; I was standing, caught in the middle.

“Are you two quite all right?” I asked (not unlike between Henry and Rory, the night when Clay had come home), and she smiled inside the phone line.

    “Come and get the books tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll be here for a while, after work.” On Fridays the staff stayed for drinks.

When I hung up, he was weirdly smiling.

“Stop that stupid grin.”

“What?” he asked.

“Don’t what me—just grab that Goddamn end.”

We carried floorboards up the stairs.



* * *



—

Next afternoon, I sat in the car when Clay went into the schoolyard.

“You’re not coming?”

She was down by the side of the car park.

She held her hand up, high in the light, and they made the exchange of books; she said, “God, what happened to you?”

“It’s okay, Ms. Kirkby, it had to be done.”

“You Dunbars, you surprise me every time.” Now she noticed the car. “Hi, Matthew!” Damn it, I had to get out. This time I took note of the titles: The Hay-Maker.

The See-Sawer.

(Both by the same author.)

Sonnyboy and Chief.

As for Claudia Kirkby, she shook my hand and her arms looked warm, as evening flooded the trees. She asked how everything was, and was it good having Clay back home again, and of course I said of course, but he wouldn’t be home for long.

Just before we left, she lasted Clay a look.

She thought, decided, and reached.

“Here,” she said, “give me one of those books.”

On a slip of paper, she wrote her phone number and a message, then placed it in Sonnyboy and Chief:


In case of an emergency (like you keep running out of books)



ck





And she had been wearing that suit, just like I’d hoped, and there was that sunspot center-cheek.

Her hair was brown and shoulder-length.

I died as we drove away.



* * *



—

On Saturday the moment came, and all five of us went to Royal Hennessey, because word had gotten around; McAndrew had a gun new apprentice, and she was the girl from 11 Archer Street.

The track had two different grandstands: The members and the muck.

In the members there was class, or at least pretend-class, and stale champagne. There were men in suits, women in hats, and some that weren’t even hats at all. As Tommy had stopped and asked: what were those strange things, anyway?



* * *



—

Together, we walked to the muck—the paint-flaked public grandstand—with its punters and grinners, winners and losers, and most of them fat and fashionless. They were beer and clouds and five-dollar notes, and mouthfuls of meat and smoke.

In between, of course, was the mounting yard, where horses were led by grooms, doing slow, deliberate laps. Jockeys stood with trainers. Trainers stood with owners. There was color and chestnut. Saddles and black. Stirrups. Instructions. Much nodding.



* * *



—

At one point, Clay saw Carey’s father (known for a time as Trackwork Ted), and he was tall for an ex-jockey, short for a man, as Carey once had told him. He was wearing a suit, he leaned on the fence, with the heft of his infamous hands.

After a minute or so, his wife appeared too, in a pale green dress, and ginger-blond hair that flowed but was cut with control: the formidable Catherine Novac. She bounced a matching purse at her side, uneasy, part angry and quiet. At one point she put the purse in her mouth, and it was something a bit like a sandwich bite. You could tell she hated race days.



* * *



—

    We walked up and sat at the back of the grandstand, on broken seats with water stains. The sky was dark, but no rain. We pooled our money, Rory put it on, and we watched her in the mounting yard. She was standing with old McAndrew, who said nothing at first, just staring. A broomstick of a man, his arms and legs were like clock hands. When he turned away, and Clay caught his eyes, and they were crisp and clean, blue-grey.