Taft (25 page)

"Sweet Jesus," Taft says, leaning over and then pulling himself back.

"Do you know how it happened?" Don says.

"It's those damn stock car races. Two boys were in the car with Carl and two other boys were in another car and they started racing. At least that's what Carl told me this morning. They came around that curve"—Taft points up the hill—"and Carl couldn't hold it. He hasn't been driving very long. I never should have let him go to those races. It puts too many ideas in a boy's head. For all I know, they were driving side by side. If a car had come around there I guess they'd all be dead." Taft looks over the edge again.

"It makes you think," Don says. He gives the guardrail a kick and the metal doesn't so much as shudder. "I'm glad my kids aren't driving yet."

"Don't ever let them," Taft says.

Don takes Taft back to his house. "I appreciate the lift and everything," he says. "I'll have that money for you."

Don nods. "No hurry. I'll see if I can't get things workable by Tuesday."

Taft gets out and slams the door. He wonders if he should ask Don in for a beer, but he isn't sure what they'd talk about other than the accident and Taft doesn't want to talk about that anymore.

Taft calls out hello, hello, but there isn't any answer. Everybody's gone. Taft isn't sure how this is possible, seeing as how it's Saturday afternoon and there's no car. He walks through the quiet house and looks for his family in each of the rooms. At least they bought the house. Not that they were anywhere close to owning it, but at least they weren't paying rent anymore. That was something. It's just after noon, but since Taft wondered if he should ask Don in for a beer he's starting to want one himself. He's not a drinker, not by any stretch, but seeing that guardrail bent has rattled him and he thinks that sitting down with a beer might make him feel better. If somebody comes in, he can get rid of it fast. Taft tries never to take a drink in front of his kids.

Taft finds a can of Budweiser in the back of the refrigerator. There are two left. He cracks one open and takes a sip. It's not so bad, the quiet, the beer. He feels like he's doing something racy and it pleases him. He twists the stick on the Venetian blinds in the living room to make things dim, then he goes and flips on the television. He finds a program on public television about trout fishing in Montana and he sits down to watch it. Drinking and watching TV in the middle of the day. Why the hell not?

The men on the TV are tying complicated flies made out of thread and bits of colored feathers. "Cutthroat, grayling, whitefish, rainbow," they're saying. Taft is drifting, thinking about standing in a river with those men someplace far from where he is, nothing better to do with his time than fish and get paid for it. They're standing hip-deep in water, swinging their long poles back and forth over their heads. That's when the doorbell rings.

Taft is startled for a second, realizing that he was almost asleep. He gets up to answer the door and takes the can of beer with him without thinking about it. Then he thinks he has to get rid of it. He looks around and the doorbell rings again. He runs and puts it back in the refrigerator.

When he opens up the door there's a little black boy standing there. He's wearing red shorts and dirty tennis shoes and a T-shirt that says
BOYS CLUBS OF AMERICA
on it. There's a cardboard box next to him on the front porch.

"Hello," Taft says.

"Hello," the boy says, staring just above Taft's belt, which is how high up he comes on him. "I'm selling chocolate bars for my school. They're a dollar fifty cents. You want one?"

"For your school?" Taft says, a little confused. "Not for Boys Club?"

The boy looks down at his T-shirt. "This was my brother's," he says. "They don't have Boys Club anymore."

Taft is going to say yes, maybe because it seems like a shame the kid doesn't have a Boys Club to go to, even though he isn't exactly sure what one is, or maybe it's because he always says yes to these things. Then he remembers about the money, about cutting back. "I don't need any chocolate right now."

The boy looks up at him then. Taft isn't so tall. "You sure?" the boy asks again. "Whoever sells the most gets a bike."

"That's pretty good," Taft says. He feels sorry for the kid because he knows already that he isn't going to win, at least not in this neighborhood. He looks behind him, down the street for any sign of a parent. It's not safe to let your kids go door to door by themselves. It's safe around here, but who knows where the boy is heading next. "You by yourself?"

At this the boy takes a big automatic step backwards. "My dad dropped me off and he's picking me back up again."

Taft had no intention of making the boy all nervous. It's awful the way kids have to be so scared of everybody these days. "Who's your dad?" he says, trying to sound nice, not that he would know his dad in a million years.

"Tommy Lawson," the boy says.

At this Taft smiles, big and open. For reasons he can't exactly name, this is the best news he's heard all day. He squats down and makes himself shorter than the boy. "Tommy Lawson at Royal Hill Carpet?"

"Yeah," the boy says suspiciously. He is a good looking boy, Taft sees that now. Pretty skin and big, round eyes. He can see how he looks like Lawson.

"Well, I know him. I work with him. Me and your dad are friends." Taft hasn't seen nearly as much of Tommy since he came back to work after losing those two fingers in the accident. He was mostly doing cleanup now, nothing with machinery. He was lucky, really, that he got to keep his job.

"You make carpet?" the boy says.

"Sure do. What's your name?"

"Tommy," the boy says. "Who are you?"

"Levon Taft," he says. "Ask your dad. He knows me."

"Taft," the boy says.

"You want to come in and have a Coke, Tommy?"

The boy looks torn now. It's hot enough outside to make a person sick at his stomach and by the nearly full box of candy Taft can tell he hasn't been having much luck with sales. "I'm not supposed to go inside anywhere."

Taft nods. There's no point in trying to talk him into it. It's a good rule. If Tommy Lawson was teaching his kids not to go inside with strangers then he shouldn't be trying to undo it. "I'll tell you what. I'll get you one and you can drink it out here if you want."

Tommy likes this idea. Taft thinks it must be his day for compromise. "Okay," Tommy says.

Taft goes back into the kitchen and gets out a bottle of Coke and his half a Budweiser. It's one thing not to drink in front of your own kids, but it didn't make much difference if they were somebody else's. He brings the drinks outside and sits down on the porch next to Tommy. "You want me to get that? Here," Taft says, and pulls off the crown cap for him.

"It's hot," Tommy says.

"It sure is that." It's only the first of June, but it's hotter today than it is in August. They sit there and drink their drinks for a while. Taft wonders what the neighbors would think if they came walking by right now, what his wife and his kids would think, and he laughs a little.

"What's funny?" Tommy says.

"Not a thing. How sales been going?"

"Slow," he says, and kicks the box lightly with the toe of his shoe.

"What's the money for?"

"Skeleton," he says. "The science teacher thinks we need to have a skeleton."

That seems pretty advanced to Taft, a bunch of little kids looking at a skeleton.

"You want a skeleton?" Taft asks.

"I want a bicycle."

Taft nods. There probably wasn't much chance of a bicycle for Tommy since his father's problems at the plant. "How's your dad doing?"

Tommy looks up at him and squints. "I thought you knew him."

"I do, I just haven't seen him in a while."

"He's okay. He had an accident, you know. He lost two fingers." Tommy holds up his left hand with the index finger and middle finger bent back so you can't see them. Taft thinks there might be nicer ways of talking about your father's problems, but who knew what kids were thinking about.

"Hell of a thing," Taft says.

"Hell of a thing," Tommy says back to him. "You got all your fingers?"

Taft puts down his beer can and holds up his hands. "Ten of them."

"My dad says that it happens to people who work in the factory all the time and so I shouldn't mind it."

"Well, he's right," Taft says. "It just hasn't happened to me yet. I expect it will sooner or later."

"I'm not going to make carpet when I grow up because I'm going to play basketball like Michael Jordan." Tommy brings his hands up and shoots a free throw from the line. "Got to have all your fingers to be a basketball player."

Taft is thinking about the black boy at the wrestling meet in Memphis, the boy who beat Carl. Taft is thinking how much he hated that boy, how much the very sight of him on the mat had made Taft hate him, but this boy, little Tommy Lawson, Taft likes fine. He wouldn't have any objections to having this boy around, so polite, so nice. And he's smaller. Taft likes them better when they're smaller.

"I oughta go," Tommy says, tilting back his Coke bottle to get to what's left in the bottom. "The chocolate's getting mushy. Thanks for the Coke." He stands up and goes for his box.

"Wait a minute," Taft says. "I've got to buy some."

"You said you didn't want to."

"That's before I got to know you. I didn't know you were Tommy Lawson's son."

"You want one?"

"I want four. There are four of us who live here. Me and my wife and my boy and girl."

"Four!" Tommy says, like every problem he had in the world has been solved. "I haven't sold four all day."

"Well, you have now. Do you know how much four cost?" He's just testing him, seeing how good he is in math.

"Six dollars."

Taft opens up his wallet, but he only has a five. Sometimes there's some change in the drawer next to the stove. Taft goes inside and sifts around through some junk until he comes up with eighty cents. Then he goes into Fay's room and takes two dimes out of the jar of change she keeps on her dresser. "I got it," he calls out, and comes back into the kitchen.

But Tommy's right behind him. "It's nice in here," he says.

"I thought you didn't come inside." Taft thinks the boy should have asked, not just come right in. If you say you don't come inside then you don't.

"I figured if you were buying four candy bars you were okay."

Taft hands him the five and the pile of change and the boy lays four soft candy bars side by side on the kitchen table. It's a lot of money to pay for candy. They're extra big, but you can get candy bars that size for seventy-five cents apiece at the Kroger. He walks Tommy to the door. It would have been plenty to buy one. Taft could kick himself. This is where the money goes.

But once they're back outside and he feels how hot it is and thinks about how rotten it's going to be going up and down the street, he starts to feel sorry for Tommy all over again. "Look," Taft says. "You need to be more specific. Don't say you're selling them for your school. Tell people that you're raising the money to buy a skeleton for your science class. Tell them that you want to be a doctor when you grow up and so you need to have a skeleton in your school. People like to know where their money's going."

"But I don't want to be a doctor. I want to play basketball."

"Doesn't matter. I'm not telling you to lie, I'm just saying people want to make some sort of connection. They want to think that if they buy the candy bar and you get the skeleton then maybe you'll be a doctor. It makes them understand better."

"What about me winning the bike?"

"The only thing you have to worry about is selling the most candy bars. You sell the most then you win the bike."

Tommy thinks it over for a minute and nods. "I'll give it a
try,
" he says. "I'm not doing so good the other way."

"There you go," Taft says.

"See you later," Tommy says.

"You tell your dad I said to say hi."

He isn't to the end of the driveway when Marjorie from next door pulls in and lets out Taft's wife and Carl, who are both carrying a load of groceries.

Taft's wife puzzles over the picture for a minute and then she smiles. "How are you?" she says to Tommy in an overly friendly voice. It isn't every day there's a little black boy in her yard.

"You want to buy some chocolate for a skeleton?" Tommy asks her.

"They're with me," Taft says, coming forward to take a sack of groceries. "And you don't say 'Chocolate for a skeleton.' It sounds like the skeleton is eating the chocolate. It's creepy. Say 'Chocolate so we can buy a skeleton for science class.'"

"Okay," Tommy says. Carl is walking forward in such a way that he looks like he's going to walk directly through Tommy, so Tommy takes a big step to the side to let him pass. He watches Marjorie pull out of their driveway and back into her own. "Is she your family?"

"No."

"Then it's okay if I sell her a candy bar?"

"Sure," Taft says. "Give it a try."

Taft and his wife and Carl head in the front door. "You've been drinking with that boy?" his wife says.

"He had the Coke," Taft says.

She stoops down and picks up the bottle and the beer can.

"That was Tommy Lawson's son. Tommy Lawson from Royal Hill. He's the one who lost two fingers on the line."

"I remember that," she says.

"I bought some candy bars from him."

Taft's wife looks at the four candy bars lined up across the table. "Four?" she says. "Isn't that a little much?"

"One for each of us, I figured." Taft is starting to feel embarrassed about the whole thing. Now that she sees them, he thinks she's right. He shouldn't have bought so many.

All this time Carl stays quiet. He doesn't look at Taft or his mother. He doesn't say a word about little Tommy Lawson. He just puts down the bag of groceries and starts back to his room.

"Carl?" Taft says. "Don't you want to hear about the car?"

Carl stops, turns around and comes back. He's not moving any too fast. "Sure," he says.

"Don Holland says he can make it drivable for four hundred dollars. That's no body work and it won't go on the insurance."