The Drought (9 page)

“Barry doesn’t talk about it much.” Inside, the washing machines came to a stop. Jar got up and went inside to change out the load. She followed him and watched as he pulled a tangle of clothes free from an overloaded washer. She offered her opinion. “You know, they really don’t get clean if you overstuff the load like that.”

He threw her a derisive look and for a moment he looked just like Barry. She put her unopened can of coke on a table and asked, “Can I help?” She didn’t wait for a response, instead she grabbed a rolling cart and moved it toward the second washer. She was about to open the lid when Jar yelled, “NO, not those!’

She peeked inside and saw the whites. Realizing the source for his concern she said, “Don’t worry, I won’t look at your jockey shorts.”

He reached over and slammed the lid down. He pointed at the third machine. “If you want to help, do the towels.”

Trying to stifle her laughter, she unloaded the towels into the rolling cart and rolled them across the dirty, tiled floor. He was about to point out the last two dryers but she headed over to them on her own. “You know these last two run hotter, right?”

He nodded and said, “Yeah.”

She hung out while the clothes dried, chatting about the different teachers from the middle school. Before they knew it, they were pulling the clothes out of the dryer and starting to fold. They were finishing the last load when an ambulance screeched past.

Suzy spoke the question on both of their minds. “Barry?”

Jar waited, listening for the siren. In the distance they could still hear the faint warble. It wasn’t moving away, it had stopped. Jar looked at Suzy. “They stopped.” He folded another shirt, his head cocked to the side. “I don’t think it’s gone to Barry’s house. I don’t think you could hear the siren from here if it did.”

Folding the last towel, she placed it on top of the stack and asked, “Is there any way we could check?”

He looked at the pay phone by the door. She asked, “Do you have his phone number?” He gave her a look that was the equivalent of “duh,” then grabbed one of the quarters out of the baggy.

“What if no one answers?”

He tried to sound confident, “Someone will answer.” But he didn’t think so. He’d been trying to reach Barry for the past two weeks and each time the phone rang four times and for a heart stopping moment he would hear his friend’s voice, but it was always just the answering machine.

Jar slid the quarter through the slot and punched in his friend’s number. On the other end the phone rang, once, twice, three times, then four. Jar waited, expecting the answering machine to click on. He could save the quarter if he hung up, but he wanted to hear his friend’s cocky voice even if it was just a recording. Suzy was watching him, mouthing the words, “Is he there?”

Waving her away, Jar turned, and was about to cradle the receiver when someone picked up. Jar let out a deep breath and said, “Barry?”

He could hear someone breathing on the other end. Jar gripped the hand piece harder, struggling to stay calm, “Barry please, just let me know you’re all right.”

Whoever was on the other end let out a deep breath and whispered, “Is this Jar?”

Jar’s eyes flew open. It wasn’t Barry, but it was someone in Barry’s room, talking on Barry’s phone. Trying to contain his excitement he responded, “Yes, yes it is.”

Another ragged breath, like the person was struggling.
To do the right thing?

A low whisper, barely audible, “He’s alive. That’s all I can say.” There was a loud click, followed by dead air.

Jar slowly moved the hand piece away from his ear.
He was alive.
He cradled the receiver, and sagged against the phone.
Barry was alive.

Junction, Texas

Maryanne Cook dropped the phone back into its cradle as if burned by the plastic. She looked at the doorway, expecting Mr. Tanner to be framed there, ready to reprimand her. “I heard what you said. You violated our agreement now please leave the premises immediately.” But the doorway remained empty, as it had for the past two weeks. Mr. Tanner had not once come to check on his son.

She didn’t mind his absence, his presence and his complete lack of remorse made her uncomfortable. In her experience most abusive men came to the door with hangdog expressions, wringing their hands, exuding remorse. She’d heard all manner of excuses, some admitted to the abuse, “I don’t know what came over me. It’s never happened before.” “I just lost control, it was like being possessed.” And some were outright liars, “She fell down the stairs.” “She tripped and hit the corner of the table.”

Mostly it was men who called, high profile men in business or politics who didn’t want to answer questions in an emergency room. She’d go and patch up a bloody nose, stitch a cut under an eye, wrap broken ribs. Once in a complete turnabout she’d gotten a call from a councilwoman in San Antonio who had fairly knocked the shit out of her husband with a heavy ashtray. It shouldn’t have mattered but it felt nice stitching up a man for a change.

Most of the time it went smooth but there were a few cases that threatened to derail her private practice, she’d had a distraught father call about a shaken baby—but that one didn’t go well, there’s no being discreet with a dead baby.

They all called using the same phrase, “I heard you’re discreet.” She imagined it was like a prostitute turning her first trick. Once you got past the unpleasant thought of being bought, it all had a certain rational symmetry. A person in need; another person willing to provide a service, where was the harm?

Outside of his initial phone call, inquiring about her ability to be discreet Mr. Tanner did not act like any of her other clients. When he came to the door he didn’t offer any explanations or any apologies, he escorted her briskly through the foyer and up the stairs, showing her to her room as if she were a houseguest and not a nurse phoned in the middle of the night to fix whatever mess he had left her. She prodded him with a condescending tone, “And the patient Mr. Tanner? Where would—she be?”

Without correcting her, he led her to the next room. His hand alighted briefly on the doorknob and she caught sight of bright crimson specks on the cuff of his dress shirt. He didn’t open the door. He said, “If you need anything, I’ll be in my office downstairs.” And he left.

She nudged open the door and peered inside. She saw him on the bed, a boy, not a wife. The boy’s wounds were raw and fresh—the blood not yet congealed. Her stomach fluttered at the sight of wet blood. Mr. Tanner had called her at 11:00 p.m. She mentally calculated how long she took to get ready at home and added it to the time it took her to drive from Kerrville to Junction. The blood would have dried, started to congeal.

A tingle of apprehension slid down her spine. She looked down the empty hallway trying to comprehend the thought forming in her head. Fresh blood meant he’d just finished, had been putting the final touches on the beating while she pulled up the driveway, parked the car and rang the bell—it meant he’d called her before he ever lifted the belt.

Run Maryanne, get out now!
The memory of the dead baby, its head lolling, neck snapped, emerged as sharp as a snapshot. Oh that night had been a piece of hell on earth, with the father howling like a wounded animal and the mother holding the baby, her vacant eyes staring off as dead as the lifeless baby she held in her arms. She kept cooing, “There now, he’s stopped crying, everything will be just fine. Mama’s precious little boy.”

She’d felt trapped that night, trapped in a nightmare. The father had begged her to do something for the dead child and when she couldn’t he’d threatened her, told her if she went to the police he’d tell them she killed the baby. In the end she accepted his money and his reasoning that his wife had been punished enough.

Out of habit she went into the bathroom, filled a pan with warm water and began to cleanse the boy’s back—she wanted to believe she stayed for the boy and not for the promised money. “
I’ll pay you double if you get here in the next two hours.”

After she had him cleaned up, the deeper gashes sewn shut, the rest dressed in fresh bandages she felt better. He moaned a few times during her work but at no point did he gain consciousness. She would have left in the morning with a clean conscience but Mr. Tanner folded his newspaper gave her a hard look and said, “Look I need someone to watch over him until he’s up and about, why don’t you stay on until he’s better?”

The word, “No” rested on her lips ready to be issued and then the fool man gave her a price he would be willing to pay. The amount made her swallow the word, her pride and any false morality she clung to. She said, “In cash Mr. Tanner. Half upfront, the rest when I say he’s better.”

Maryanne brushed Barry’s hair away from his face. If he’d been awake she would have given him the phone and let him speak to his friend, but Barry Tanner had not spoken since she arrived two weeks ago. His back was healing just fine, she had seen to that. But he had checked out. She wasn’t sure if he’d found a better place or not. Sometimes he would thrash against the sheets as if he were being restrained, and cry out,
“the gypsies, the gypsies have the baby.”
And other times he was so calm she had to check to see if he was still breathing.

Junction, Texas

After Jar rode away pulling the buggy full of clean clothes, Suzy walked along the cracked sidewalk, pushing through the thick, afternoon heat. When she got to Faces she opened the door wide and let the bright light cut through the darkened bar. She remained in the open doorway, her figure a dark silhouette. On the jukebox, Hank Williams, Jr. was singing about family traditions and someone at the far end of the bar shouted, “Shut the damn door.” If Suzy were superstitious, she would have thought the bar dwellers were really vampires. The bar was windowless, there were no mirrors, and direct sunlight hurt their eyes. She did not shut the door.

Murphy Jobes slipped off one of the barstools. “I’ve got to go,” he hooked a finger in Suzy’s direction and said, “the nag is waiting.” It was an endearment usually reserved for a wife but the guys took a moment from their beers to chuckle at the running joke. They all got a kick out of Suzy rounding up her dad when she thought he’d been there too long. Murph picked up his mug and drained the amber fluid before stepping away from the bar. Before he made it to the door, Rod Sawyer yelled out, “Don’t forget, we’re going hunting.”

Feeling a pretty good buzz coming on, Murph acknowledged him with a two-finger salute and sauntered out into the heat. Outside, the weight of the air caused his lids to droop and the sun felt like it was boring a 3-bit hole through his scalp. By the time he reached his truck, he was in desperate need of another drink. Feeling lethargic, he opened the driver door, felt under the floor mat and pulled out a set of keys.

Suzy shook her head, knowing one of these days someone was going to steal her dad’s truck. He tossed her the keys. “You drive.”

She caught them easily enough but resisted his request. “Dad…”

“Come on girl, I can’t drive. I don’t have my license.”

“Neither do I.”

“Yeah, but they’ll go easy on you because you’re just helping out the old man. If they catch me drinking and driving on a suspended, I may never see my license again.”

Suzy shook her head and clambered into the old pickup, but couldn’t resist one last retort. “You know you could always quit drinking.”

Ignoring her comment, Murph climbed into the passenger seat and pulled his hat down over his eyes.

Like most young girls, Suzy’s mind was awhirl with confusing images and thoughts. Half of those thoughts were on the afternoon at the Stop-N-Wash. And in that respect, the movie projector playing back her memories played in slow motion; each frame advanced one by one replaying everything she’d said and done. At the opposite extreme, the rest of her thoughts were fast-forwarding through time in a montage of images that included her and Jar dating, getting married and living happily ever after, with the occasional fight thrown in for texture. Those fights, of course, would be resolved quickly because of their great understanding for one another.

Those were her thoughts as she pulled out of Faces and took the right onto Hwy 377. Her heartbeat quickened as she drove past the Stop-N-Wash, where she’d spent the afternoon with Jar. She didn’t notice anything unusual when she drove past the Junction National Bank except the temperature had climbed to 112 degrees and it wasn’t quite four o’clock, which meant the end of the day temperature would be even higher.

She looked for Jar, hoping to catch a glimpse of him riding toward home but he was already gone. A thump in the back of the pickup startled her. When she glanced in the rearview mirror she noticed two things at the same time. One, the dirt bike her dad kept in the bed of the truck had shifted to the side, and two, an old yellow truck was coming up fast from behind. It wasn’t old like the one she was driving, it was really
old.
Like the cars she’d seen over in Friedburg last summer when her dad took her to the classic car show.