Cold in July (15 page)

“So you tried to reform.”

“Yes, I did. I came back to East Texas. I met Jane and we
got married. I started working at a plywood plant, and for a while there, the
work didn’t bother me. I had someone to come home to and something to expect.
Then when Freddy was born, things began to fall apart. I wanted things for the
little guy and I couldn’t see it happening at the plywood plant. I got a little
promotion, but it was so piddling it just made me mad. Like I said, I’ve got no
patience. I want everything now. Thinking back on it, I was doing pretty good
there and the promotion came pretty quick, and the next one would have too. I’d
have been off the line completely and I’d have been the redneck telling the
other poor bastards what to do. But I got empty again and started fucking up. I
stayed mad all the time and it showed at home and work, and I got demoted and I
quarreled with Jane and yelled at Freddy enough that I felt guilty. And that’s
when I started doing the little jobs. I’d take weekends and go case places
outside of town and I’d steal little piddling things. I mean, it wasn’t helping
my income much, but it gave me some kind of purpose. Damned if I can explain
it. It’s like that guy that keeps rolling the rock up the hill in hell. Gets it
to the top and almost over, then the bastard rolls back on him. My life was
like that. I’d almost have it whipped, then it would roll back on me.”

“Did your wife know?”

“She suspected something. Me going off on the weekends,
saying I was hunting or fishing. I never came back with nothing. I didn’t even
go to the fucking fish market and buy fish to bring home and fake it. It was
like I wanted to be stupid. If I had gone to the fish market, I’d probably have
bought fish sticks just so I could look even more stupid.

“Finally I robbed the payroll at the plant. It came in late
one evening and I knew all about where it was kept by then, so I came back that
night, beat the lock and the safe and stole it. One of the bosses just happened
to come back for something and he saw me going out of the building. Next day it
didn’t take them long to put two and two together. They let me off with giving
the money back and firing me. They didn’t want any stink.”

“Sounds to me as if you were lucky.”

“That’s a way of looking at it. Anyway, you know the rest. I
finally got in with some guys and did a job on a liquor store and that one cost
me about twenty years. Jane tried to stay in touch, and for a while I answered
her letters, but I wouldn’t let her come visit. I didn’t want her and Freddy to
see me in prison. I still didn’t feel like a convict. I felt persecuted. Can
you beat that? I kept thinking they’d come to their senses and let me out.”

“She sent me pictures of Freddy and kept me informed about
what he was doing. Said he did well in school and played football and was a
quarterback. Seemed to be good at everything. I was proud in one way, but in
another I felt like the shit at the bottom of a dog pile. I even burned her
letters and some of Freddy’s pictures. Decided to just let them go so they
could build a life that was worth something. It was like I had gotten worse
than empty. It was like the bottom had come out of me and there wasn’t anything
on the other side of me, just a hole to nowhere.”

“What about your wife?”

“She hung in there for a long time. She loved me. I quit
answering her letters and for a time she still wrote, but finally she quit.
With the last she sent that picture of Freddy as a young man. I never heard
from her again. I learned later that she died drunk in a motel in Dallas. I
don’t know anything else about it.”

“Freddy?”

“No idea. But I made up my mind when I got out I was going
to find him and make it up to him. I was going to mend the hole in me and fill
it up with something. Then when I got out I was told he was killed,
burglarizing your house no less, and there wasn’t just a hole in me, Dane,
there was a vacuum that sucked out my soul.”

“And now that you know I didn’t kill him?”

 “Maybe the hole’s closing up. I’ve got some hope. I don’t
know who that sucker is in the ground out at the graveyard, but it isn’t
Freddy. That means there’s a good chance he’s out there somewhere, and I want
to find him and be some kind of father to him. Convince him that loving me is
worth something. And convince myself that my life hasn’t been just a waltz of
shadows, that it has purpose. Or can have.”

“I hope it works out, Russel. I really do.”

“I know you do.”

I ordered coffee, and we drank that and had another cup. I
said, “You talked to Jim Bob?”

“Tried to, a couple of times. He’s not saying much. He told
me to put my faith in the Lord and Radio Shack.”

“Radio Shack?”

 “That’s what he said. He’s not going to say anything until
he’s ready. I’ve known him a long time. He’s a lot smarter than you think he
is. Don’t let that hick front and all those corny good-old-boy sayings fool
you. Back when I was doing the robberies, he knew. He tried to straighten me
out, give me some good advice. But—”

“You didn’t listen.”

“I knew he was making sense, and I still couldn’t listen.
Same old story. Know better, but can’t do better.”

I looked at the clock on the wall.

“Damn,” I said. “We need to get back to work. I doubt James
and Valerie would like the idea of me taking the hired help out to lunch and
beers and chitchat while they’re building frames.”

I put down the tip and paid the check and we got out of
there. Back at work I sat behind the counter and thought about Russel back
there sweeping up; thought about what he told me about having a hole in him
that made a vacuum that sucked out his soul.

26

It was a hot Sunday with a hot wind blowing through the
pines like a diseased cough, carrying a hint of dead fish from Lake LaBorde.
The birds were making small talk in the trees like it was more of an obligation
than a desire; they sounded like they needed air-conditioning.

I know Ann and I did. We were taking turns leaning over the
backyard grill cooking hamburgers and wishing we’d fixed tuna-fish sandwiches
inside. Jordan was taking it well enough though. He was sitting on the patio
playing with a toy car and making motor sounds.

I’d just flipped the meat when I heard the phone in the
kitchen, and I went inside to answer it.

It was Jim Bob.

“What’er y’all doing?”

“Grilling some burgers, sweating like peasants.”

“Sounds good.”

“The sweating or the grilling?”

“Both, I reckon. I been in this damn room so much I need a
good honest sweat. The bottoms of my feet are starting to grow carpet.”

“Well, come out.”

“Can you put up with Russel too?”

“Jordan’s here, and …well, you know what happened.”

“I know, but I’ve got something important to tell the two of
you. Can you make some kind of arrangements? A baby-sitter?”

“It’ll be a little inconvenient, but I guess I can talk to
the Fergusons. They still owe us a few babysittings.”

“Good.”

“This news you want to tell us. Is it good?”

“Good? Well, I don’t know if it is or not, but it’s news. I’ve
made some headway. I know what happened to Freddy, and I know how to find him.”

“That’s good news.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Is he alive?”

“I think so.”

“Isn’t that good news for Russel?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“What’s all the mystery, Jim Bob?”

“It’ll be easier to explain when I get there. I’ll bring
some beer.”

“Good enough. See you in a while.”

“By the way, I like mine well-done. When that sucker is
smoking it’s cooking, when it’s black it’s done.”

“One hockey puck coming up.”

The burgers were done long before Russel and Jim Bob
arrived, and we set them in the microwave until we wanted to warm them up
again. We fixed Jordan his, and he ate, and I called the Fergusons and asked if
it was okay if we brought him over. They agreed and Ann drove him there and came
back madder than when she left—and that was pretty mad. She didn’t want Russel
over for dinner. In her mind, it was like inviting Hitler. What she wanted was
to jab him in the eye with a pointed stick and nail his head to a post. Maybe
put turpentine on his balls and light it. Just to be contrary, she said we’d
eat outside on the redwood table. She wouldn’t have that man in her
house—again.

By the time they showed the wind had turned savage and stale
and the mosquitoes, like bomber squadrons, had started to move out of the woods
in search of prey. But it was getting late enough that the sun was moving
westward and the grill had cooled, so it wasn’t as hot as it had been. Instead
of quick frying, we were simmering.

I heard the Red Bitch come into the drive, and I went around
and met them and led them around back. When Russel saw Ann he began having
trouble with his hands. He didn’t know where to put them. He tried by his sides
and in his pockets, but they didn’t seem to fit or hang right, mostly just
fluttered about as if trying to escape from his wrists. I’d never seen him so
flustered as when he was in Ann’s presence.

Jim Bob didn’t seem to notice. He held up a six-pack of Lone
Star and Ann took it and put it in the fridge inside. She started the burgers
microwaving. I had Jim Bob and Russel sit down at the redwood table, and I went
inside and got the fixings and brought them out on a tray.

Ann brought the burgers and some beers, and we each fixed
our buns with mustard, lettuce, tomatoes, the whole shooting match. The only
one that really did any talking was Jim Bob. He talked about the weather and
the price of gasoline and about how the LaBorde police had been following him
around like a baby duck following its mama, then he turned to Russel and said
in the same tone of voice, “I found out what happened with Freddy, Ben.”

Russel paused, tried to find what he wanted to say. “Is he—”

“Far as I know he’s right as rain in the health department,
but I’m not sure you’re gonna like what I have to say.”

“Say it,” Russel said.

“All right. There’s a whole flock of ways to find a missing
person, and if I don’t know all of them, I ain’t short of the rest of them by
more than one or two, and I figure if they were any good I’d know them.”

You don’t lack for confidence, do you?” Ann said. “No,” Jim
Bob said. “I know what I can do, and what I can’t do, and one of the things I
can do is find people. It ain’t because I’m such a smart sumbitch, though I
guess I’ll do in a pinch, it’s because I got connections. You get lots of connections
when you been in this business long as I have. But I’ll get to the connections
later.

“I moseyed down to the newspaper here for starters. Figured
as this was Freddy’s last known stomping grounds, least according to the
police, might be mention of him in the papers somewhere. Not just counting
obituaries, damn near everybody shows up in the rags eventually, in some manner
or another, so it’s a good place to start. Same method of research you used,
Ben, when you were finding out about Dane here.”

“Don’t remind me,” Russel said.

“Yes,” Ann said, “don’t remind us.”

“I went over to the paper to see what I could turn up, and
damn if I didn’t find a couple mentions of Freddy. One of them was about Dane
shooting him, which we know he didn’t, since it was some other poor bastard,
and that one didn’t get front page, but it didn’t get last page neither. It was
placed a little too casually in the middle. Meaning, they wanted a lot of
people to see that dude, but not get the impression they were advertising. It wasn’t
a big article and it didn’t go into details, but it managed to mention Freddy’s
name four times.”

“Just in case someone might miss it,” Ann said.

“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “The paper, or whoever was instructing
the paper, wanted to be right sure someone out there thought Freddy had bit the
big one. That’s why the cops took advantage of this burglar thing and tagged
the body with Freddy’s name. If Freddy’s dead, then there’s nothing but a cold
trail, and ain’t no use in anyone looking for him.”

“Why would anyone be looking for him in the first place?”
Russel said.

“Getting to that. I said I found two mentions of Freddy.
Other was about a month earlier. Said one Freddy Russel was going to turn
state’s evidence on a bunch the paper called the Dixie Mafia.”

“Hell,” I said, “I remember seeing that. Went in one eye and
out the other. And I sure don’t remember Freddy’s name.”

“No reason you should. That article was tucked on a back
page and was about a paragraph and Freddy’s name was mentioned once. I’m sure
if the FBI had its way, it wouldn’t have been mentioned at all. But they took
some pains to correct that a month later when they gave that dead burglar
Freddy’s handle.”

“The FBI?” Russel said.

“Those are the fuckers behind all this,” Jim Bob said.
“That’s why Price let you out, Ben. It was the wiser thing to do under the
circumstances. They didn’t want you and Dane raising a stink that would point
to Freddy again. Price is probably like most local law. He don’t give a damn
for feds, but he’s got to grease their assholes if he wants to or not. And when
this burglar came up colder than a carp, he saw what the FBI was looking for. A
goat. And better yet, the fucker’s killed right here in Freddy’s own town. It’s
a match made in fucking heaven’s what it is. His identity for ole Freddy’s. The
guy you killed, Dane, probably didn’t have a family or anyone he could be
hitched to easy, so they gave him Freddy’s name.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I still don’t understand why.”

“What I got from that little paragraph in the paper,” Jim
Bob said, “is that Freddy was with these Mafia types, doing whatever Mafia
types do, and things got shitty and the shit got over his head, and the law
came down on him, and to keep from getting mashed under their boot heels or
those of his ole buddies, he sang like a fucking parakeet with a hot coat
hanger up its ass.”