The Last Ballad(103)

But Tom looked around as if he’d just walked into his own home. He nodded at the man and woman who sat and whispered to one another. Neither of them seemed to notice him.

“Turn that music up,” Tom said to no one in particular. He leaned back in his chair and rapped his knuckles on the tabletop. “Where’s my mistress?” he called. “Is she here? Is she near?”

Albert slipped his hands into his pockets, felt the holstered pistol jostle beneath his jacket. He watched Tom, waited to see what he’d do next. A rusty tin plate half-full of unshelled peanuts sat in the middle of the table. Albert grabbed a handful.

Lights burned in the kitchen. Albert could hear the sound of feet moving across the gritty floorboards. A woman appeared, her long brown hair pulled into a nest atop her head. She wore a long, dark shift that fell past her ankles and a dirty white apron that covered the front of her dress. She wasn’t old, but when she smiled at Tom her smile revealed wrinkles and missing teeth.

She carried a tray with a jug and two glasses sitting atop it. She sat the tray on the table and divvied out the glasses and placed the jug in between them. Tom put his arm around the woman’s waist and pulled her to him so that she half-sat on his lap. He nuzzled his head against her breasts.

“What do we have here?” he asked.

The woman let the tray dangle at her side. She put her free arm around Tom’s shoulder.

“Cherry wine,” she said. “Sweet and strong, like me.” Her laugh was more of a cackle. Tom laughed too, squeezed her around the waist, rubbed his face against her breasts again.

“Speaking of cherries,” he said. He nodded across the table at Albert. “My pal here’s looking for a girl. You know any that might be free tonight?”

“If you looking for cherries you done come to the wrong place.” She cackled again, coughed into the crook of her arm. “Ain’t none free neither.”

“You know what I mean,” Tom said. “Any girls?”

The woman leaned back and craned her neck and looked toward the kitchen.

“Ain’t nobody here but me,” she said. “Me and James, and I got him out in the woodpile. Might be some girls here later tonight, but right now it’s just me.”

Tom uncorked the jug and poured a drink for Albert and then himself. Albert watched him pick up his glass and knock it back in one big swallow. He coughed.

“That’s sweet,” Tom said.

Tom looked toward the kitchen, then turned his face up to the woman who still sat on his lap.

“I probably need to get into that kitchen while it’s empty,” he said. “As an officer of the law I need to inspect it for sanitary purposes. Make sure the pipes work, make sure anything that might be wet is supposed to be wet.”

“Are you qualified for that kind of work?” she asked. Albert was drunk, but not too drunk to know that most women would blush under that kind of talk; yet this girl didn’t seem the least bit bothered.

“More qualified than you could ever imagine,” Tom said.

The woman slid off Tom’s lap and took his hand and pulled him to his feet. She turned to the couple at the table behind her.

“Y’all need anything right now?”

The man didn’t look up, but the woman with him whispered something that must have meant no. Albert watched as Tom followed the woman into the kitchen. He listened as their feet moved across the floor. Then he heard something else: the rhythmic sound of someone chopping wood outside.

He filled his glass again, knocked it back. He fished a cigarette from a crumpled pack and lit it. He smoked, tapped his ashes into the plate of peanuts. It was nice to be drunk like this, so much of the night still left. He wanted to talk to someone about something, anything.

He resolved that when Tom came back, he’d tell him what was on his mind. He’d tell him that he’d been feeling blue about not ever doing anything great with his life. Sure, Tom may have drunk and whored his way across France the same way he’d done it across Gaston County, but at least he could say he’d been to war, and by God, that meant something. Albert wanted to do something great, wanted to believe that greatness awaited him, but he couldn’t imagine what it would be or where he would find it.

But he was a patriot. He knew that for certain. He would have gone to war if he could have afforded it, but his father had needed him on the farm and his mother had been sick and his older brother had gone to the war and died somewhere in Europe and no one had wanted him to go after that. Still, he loved his country, was willing to die for it if necessary. He had always been willing to stomp out communism, totalitarianism, and fascism if anyone would have given him the chance.

And then this strike at Loray came along and he thought his prayers had been answered. He would prove the gallantry on the streets of Gastonia that he hadn’t had the opportunity to prove in the trenches of Europe. If he couldn’t fight communism abroad he might as well fight it at home. The enemy was the enemy no matter how far you had to travel to meet him.

He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there when Tom came barreling back into the room from the kitchen, hitching his pants up around his waist. He was smiling.

“Roach,” he said, “you ain’t going to believe what she just told me.” He gestured toward the back of the house.

“Come on,” he said, “we got to talk to this nigger.”