Taft (13 page)

Mrs. Woodmoore took a sip off her tea. Nobody at the table was eating any more except for Ruth. "But if it was true, if she was willing to come back, would you...?"

I waited for her to finish her thought. Would I what? Have her? Marry her? Help her? I was at their dinner table. These people were good to me. I wasn't about to say I wanted no business with their daughter. "I want what's best for Franklin," I said. "I'd be a lot happier if he was home."

The Woodmoores seemed to take this as the right answer, in so much as they both started eating again.

After dinner there was coffee and chess pie. Mrs. Woodmoore never did forget what I liked. She brought out about a half a dozen photos and handed them to me. "These just came this morning," she said. "I thought maybe you hadn't seen them."

Franklin at the beach, wearing his electric blue shorts. It was hard to tell how much bigger he'd gotten until the one where he was standing with Marion. He came up to her shoulder nearly. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and big sunglasses. In the picture he was standing in front of her and she had her arms wrapped around him. They were both laughing. For a minute I hated her all over again.

"He's getting so tall," Mrs. Woodmoore said.

I nodded. "Looks good," I said, and handed them back to her. They must have been taken right before he fell. There was no scar. It wouldn't be any time soon that Marion would send us pictures showing that scar.

Mr. Woodmoore said he was working on something down in the basement that he wanted to show me. "I'm putting a ship in a bottle," he said. "Harder on my blood pressure than anything I'm eating."

I got the cigarettes out of my coat pocket and followed him downstairs.

"I can always count on you," he said, peeling back the foil.

"Sure you can."

He handed me the bottle. I could see the little wooden hull of a boat sitting in the bottom. "It's the damndest thing," he said. "You put it all together inside with needles and tweezers. Buddy sent it to me from Germany for my birthday."

"More than my nerves could take," I said, and put it back in its stand.

"Everybody needs a little something to keep them occupied." He lit a cigarette and then handed one to me. "What about you? You seeing anybody?"

As soon as he said it I got a picture of Fay standing in front of my car at Shiloh. I didn't think Mr. Woodmoore would count a white girl whose head I'd held against my chest. I wasn't sure I counted it either. "Nothing to speak of."

He smiled at me and nodded. "But you're keeping busy. That's good, you should be. All I want from you is a little favor," he said, flicking off his ash into a coffee can. "It's nothing serious now. I just want you to call Marion. Tonight, tomorrow night, doesn't matter. You don't have to say anything in particular, just call and let her know you're thinking of her. The girl's having a hard time. No one would be more in their right than you to say no thanks, but it's like you said, you've got to think about the boy."

"Sure," I said. "I can do that." Maybe I was wrong to go along with him, but I figured if there was anything to be cleared up that was Marion's job to handle. I'd just as soon make the old man happy.

"Good," he said, and patted my arm. "That's good." Then we put out our cigarettes and headed upstairs.

All three of them walked me to the door.

"You still at Muddy's all the time?" Ruth asked me.

I felt sorry for her, a grown woman standing there with her mother and father on either side of her. I thought of her being up long after they went to sleep, sitting in the dark living room, watching television. I told her she should come by.

When Ruth was a kid she kissed me once. It was right before Marion got pregnant. It was August, and at five o'clock it was still 104 degrees. Marion called and asked if I'd take her to the public pool to cool off. The pool closed when it got dark and it didn't get dark in August until past nine. When I pulled up I could hear screaming coming from inside the house. The door flew open and out ran Ruth wearing a swimsuit top and a pair of cut-off shorts. She was skinny and wild looking, like a hot, hungry dog. Marion was right on her heels.

"Don't," Ruth screamed, and she ran and stood behind me. Marion stopped short.

"I can go with you, can't I?" Ruth said.

I always thought it was best to let Ruth come along when there wasn't any chance for me and Marion to be alone together. A public pool when it was 104 didn't hold out a lot of promise of privacy. "You going to be good?" I said.

"Perfect," Ruth said.

Marion rolled her eyes and raked her toes across the gravel on the driveway, but she wasn't going to make a scene about it. Marion had a habit of going along with anything I said back then. "I've got to go get my towel," she said, glaring at her sister.

Ruth hopped in the front seat, giving a little squeal when the hot vinyl hit the backs of her thighs. That's what you get for wearing shorts like that. She leaned out the window. "Get me one too!" she called.

I got in the car and turned the ignition on to listen to the radio.

"Too hot," Ruth said.

"That's August."

"Well, I don't like it."

I looked at her. She had her bare feet up on the dashboard and was trying to fan herself with her hand. When she saw me looking she leaned over and kissed me straight on the mouth, pressing her whole self up against me. It was the kiss of somebody who knew a couple of things about kissing.

"She's going to chop your head off," I said, pushing away from her.

"There wasn't a whole lot of time," she said, readjusting her swimsuit top, "or I would have done it better."

"Jesus," I said. "What are you thinking about?"

Marion opened the front door of the car and stood there holding a bunch of towels under her arm. "Get in the back," she said.

Ruth crawled over the top of the seat rather than go to the trouble of getting out and then in again. She made a real point of dragging one of her legs across my face as she slid over, but that was that.

I said my good-nights and Mrs. Woodmoore tried twice to give me her umbrella. "You should just stay in Buddy's room," she said to me. "Nobody should be going out in weather like this." When I finally got away I ran across the street for my car. From where they were standing, they would have thought I was running from the rain.

A bar can be a nice place to wind up on a night like that. Business was good. Wallace was pouring me a drink as I was walking in the door, and even though I'd been meaning to tell him about my policy against drinking where you work, I took it anyway.

Things always ran smoothly when Wallace was behind the bar. That's because people liked him and were afraid of him at the same time. It occurred to me all of the sudden that he would be the man to hand the money over to. Nobody was going to bother Wallace at the night deposit box, unless they were planning on shooting him, in which case we all stood an equal chance.

"How'd you do in math?" I asked him.

"Better than I did at some other things," he said. "Is there going to be a test?"

"I was wondering how you'd like to learn to close the place. I can't keep doing it every night myself."

Wallace was a solid character. Football had made him tough. I'd seen him play when he was a star at Memphis State. If it hadn't been for those bad knees, I think he would have gone pro. "I could do that," he said.

"Good." I took a sip of my drink. "We'll get started on that then."

"Tonight?" He said it in such a way that made it clear that it wouldn't be the best time for him.

"Not tonight," I said. "There's no hurry."

This would work out better than Cyndi. She was smart, but she was a moody girl. There was always the chance she wouldn't do what you told her to.

When I went through the kitchen to go up to my office I found Fay and Rose staring in a pot. Fay was stirring.

"Hey," she said. "Look at this. Rose is teaching me how to cook."

"You're teaching her to cook?"

"She asked me," Rose said.

"I'm only coming in for short lessons, just on my breaks," Fay said. "You were so late, we'd about given up on you coming in altogether."

I didn't like the way she was looking at me, so clearly happy to see me when Rose was standing right there.

"Don't stay back here too long," I said. "I'm going up to the office."

I wasn't three steps past them when Fay told Rose she'd be right back and followed me. When we got upstairs she closed the door.

"Something wrong with you?" she said.

"I just don't think it's such a good idea, you coming up here with me when Rose is standing right there."

"She doesn't care."

That much was true. The rest of it I didn't feel like explaining. "Okay," I said. "Never mind."

"Where'd you go tonight?" she said, not like she was prying, more like she was shooting the breeze.

"I had dinner with some friends."

"Did you have a good time?" She was stalling, wanting to stay in the office with the door closed.

"Good enough."

"Carl told me last night that you have a kid."

Carl must have liked that. "I have a son."

"You never told me about him."

"Never came up."

"Do you have a wife to go with this son?"

"Awful lot of questions," I said.

"Are you married?"

"No."

She nodded her head and then sat down on the edge of my desk. Her legs were pale and bare and she had on white socks and black tennis shoes. I watched her leg swing back and forth. "I know you think there's nothing going on here, and probably you're right. But I'm glad you don't have a wife."

"Me too," I said.

"How old's this son?"

"Nine."

"What's his name?"

"Franklin."

"Franklin," she said. "I like that. I could see naming a boy Franklin. If I had a son, I'd name him Levon."

I never knew what it was about women that made them pick out names for children they didn't have.

"I should get back out on the floor," Fay said. "You don't mind Rose teaching me to cook, do you?"

"It's okay as long as she doesn't mind."

"My mother was always going to teach me," she said. Fay had a way of talking that made it seem like her mother was the one who was dead.

She hopped off the desk and stood in front of me. Neither one of us had any idea what was going on or what we were supposed to do about it. "I had a good time yesterday," she said. I nodded at her. She waited for me to say something, but I didn't. It was better that I didn't get started. "I guess I'll see you downstairs, then," she said.

There's no getting overtime in the factory where Taft works. He's lucky to still be full-time. Plenty of people with just a year or two less have been cut down to part-time and lost their benefits. There's been talk of getting a union in there for years. Back in the beginning, Taft was all for it, but he doesn't see that there's much point in it now. You can't get blood from a turnip, and Royal Hill Carpet didn't have enough orders to keep everybody on. It isn't like it used to be. Taft is lucky to have gotten the job as night watchman down at the lumberyard two nights a week. Sometimes he thinks it's wrong, him having two jobs when other people can't find one, but he needs the money. Friday and Saturday nights he's down there ten until five in the morning. Five dollars an hour to wear a uniform and walk around. Sometimes he sits in the office and watches part of "The Tonight Show," but he always winds up shutting it off. He thinks he hears things.

Taft walks between the stacks of lumber. There are floodlights outside that make it light as day in some areas. Then you turn a corner and it's dark again. Part of Taft's job is just to make himself seen, let anyone who may be driving by know that they spent the money to hire a night watchman. He whistles when he can think of a song he feels like hearing. He isn't looking for anybody, he's just trying to stay awake. He wonders what things are coming to when you need to hire somebody to guard wood. Nobody's going to steal anything, he tells himself. No one is coming.

To keep himself occupied he thinks about his family. He thinks about what kind of husband Fay will have. She has too many boyfriends now. Everybody likes Fay. He's hoping she waits at least until she's twenty. Girls get married too young. They fall in love and that's that. They don't see all this time they've got ahead of them. He thinks about Carl and his wrestling. He sees him winning the state championship next year, going on to the nationals. He is pinning boys from Texas and California, the referee circling them and counting. He wonders if Carl could get a wrestling scholarship and go to Iowa and work with Dan Gable. Taft has no idea what kind of grades a boy would have to have to get a wrestling scholarship. Then he remembers Carl's deer, how they hung it up for two weeks to age in the yard from the pole that held the clothesline because it was cold enough. Fay acted miserable about it the whole time. She'd only go in and out the front door and demanded they keep the curtains drawn in the back of the house so she wouldn't have to look at it. It costs money to shoot a deer. The license costs, the rifles, the ammunition, but when your freezer is full up with venison you can't help feeling like a rich man. Taft boned the whole thing, showing Carl how to cut around the bone. Then his wife came out with freezer bags and helped to cut the meat into steaks. She wrapped the roasts and ribs. She cooked the tenderloin for dinner that night.

Taft thinks about his wife the least because in a way she stays outside his thinking. She is a fact, as much as his own life is a fact. The things she does that used to annoy him he hardly ever notices now. The things she does that thrill him he has come to expect. They are together. They have been together since they married, the first Sunday after their high school graduation. They were together before that. It is so true that it's barely worth mentioning.

When Taft is too tired to think about his family he thinks about lumber. It is everywhere. Plywood sheets and two-by-fours. Four-by-sixes and pressboard. Stacks of fir and knotty pine in a separate section near the office. Boxes of trim and quarter-inch dowels. Whenever he lets his mind wander, it goes to the wood. This is how he decides to build the deck.