The Last Death of Jack Harbin (3 page)

Although it's barely eleven o'clock, Jack and I both order the Mexican special, a plate of enchiladas and tamales made by Johnny Ochoa's wife, Maria. When the food arrives, Lurleen has stripped the cornhusk off the tamales so Jack doesn't have to grope around and do it himself.

Once we're eating, I ask Jack how he's going to get himself taken care of. “Looks like your brother isn't going to be much help.”

“That self-righteous son of a bitch. He wants me to sell Daddy's place and go into a veteran's home. That's so he can get half the money from the house.”

“He lives somewhere in East Texas, doesn't he?”

“Used to, but now he's in Waco with a bunch of other wackos. Gun nuts. They call themselves survivalists. I'd like to see them survive in a real fight.”

Lurleen checks on us. “Jack, you haven't eaten very much. Want me to bring you something else?” Her voice is soft. She touches his arm. She has recently had her hair cut short in little spikes all over her head like a little porcupine. It looks cute on her.

Jack smiles for the first time, tilting his head toward the direction of her voice. Damn, the boy would do well to use that smile a little more freely. “Lurleen, you're always trying to fatten me up. But you know, I don't have much appetite today.”

“Shame to waste Maria's Mexican food.” Lurleen is one of the good ones. She has continuing trouble with a belligerent ex-husband, but she always has a sweet way about her.

“Okay, here goes. Big bite. See?” Jack stuffs an over-sized chunk of tamale into his mouth.

“Oh, you're awful!” Lurleen giggles. “You're going to choke, and it will serve you right.”

Jack's mouth is too full to reply, but his lips crook into a smile while he chews.

When the meal is cleared away, I circle back to the subject of Jack's prospects.

“Daddy always banked my disability check and we lived on what Daddy made from his business.”

“So you've got money put away.”

“Yeah, it's a good bit. But Curtis thinks that full time help would run through the money in no time. That's why he's talking about a veteran's home.”

Seems to me like it's none of Curtis's business how Jack spends his money. When it's gone, there will be plenty of time to go to a veteran's home. Still, if he went now, at least he'd have company at a vet facility.

“There's one in Temple. Not that far away. Your vet buddies could visit.”

Jack kneads his hands, his thin shoulders hunched. “That's going to take some getting used to.”

“What do your friends say?”

He snorts. “Those boys are as hare-brained as I am. They all say they'll take care of me, not to worry. But all of them have families, except for Vic.”

That takes me by surprise. I had pictured them as loose cannons, as unattached as Jack. “You mean wives and kids?”

“Oh yeah. None of the wives are all that fond of me.” He grimaces. “Seems like I can't be trusted to behave like a gentleman around the kids.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

That drags a grin out of him.

It's noon and people are drifting into the café. Gabe LoPresto, a football team booster, swaggers over to our table with a couple of his cronies. They pull up chairs and crowd around, LoPresto straddling his chair backwards. He wears black snakeskin boots, a string tie, and a suede hat, but he still looks like a businessman who works in an office, which he is. LoPresto is an arrogant man, and can be annoying, but he provides fresh uniforms for the team every couple of years, which buys him a fair amount of good will.

There's nothing new that can be said about last Friday's football game, but people won't be done rehashing the subject until next Friday's game replaces it. LoPresto kicks off the discussion, declaring in an aggrieved tone that Coach Eldridge was stupid to bench the quarterback for a minor infraction of his rules. “The man's got no sense. There are other ways he could have punished that boy. Instead, he punished the whole damn town.”

“That wasn't the only mistake he made. It was one after another the whole game,” Harley Lundsford says. He shakes his head in disgust. “I swear! Letting the clock run down too long to get in another play . . .”

LoPresto says, “Jack, I heard you got into it with Eldridge after the game.”

That's the first I've heard of it, but LoPresto makes it his business to know pretty much everything people are up to in the football community.

Jack shrugs. “We had a few words.”

“I'm glad you spoke out to him. He couldn't have done worse if he threw the game deliberately. Did he ever tell you what his thinking was?”

Jack frowns. “Coach isn't much for explaining himself, but he said he wished he had it to do over, that he made a mistake.”

LoPresto perks up. “When was this?”

“He came over Sunday night to smooth things out between us. He brought a nice peace offering—a bottle of Cuervo. We did the bottle some damage.”

All the men laugh.

“Well, that says something, I guess,” LoPresto says.

“Doesn't change my opinion that he should have handled it different,” Jack says.

“Jack, you know your opinion counts for a lot. You're still the finest high school quarterback I ever saw play the game.”

We spend some time arguing over the relative merits of the teams from the years since Jack played. LoPresto finally unwinds himself from his chair, brushing off his hat before settling it back on his head. “I'd better be getting back to work. But Jack, I want you to be thinking on this business with Eldridge. Maybe we'd be better off with a different coach.”

On the walk back to Jack's place, we stop off at the funeral home. Earnest Landau is busy, but his assistant, Belle, says everything is going the way Jack wants it.

“Did Curtis call over here?” Jack says.

“I think he did.” Belle cuts her eyes at me. Belle is about five feet tall and fierce as a banty rooster. I can't see anybody getting the best of her in an argument.

“What did he want?”

“He complained a little bit.”

“Belle, don't bullshit me. What did Curtis want?”

Belle picks up a stack of papers and smacks them smartly on the desk to straighten them. “He accused Earnest of pushing you to choose our more expensive line. Don't worry, Earnest set him straight.”

“God damn Curtis,” Jack says.

“Honey, don't let him rile you up. I see family fights over all kinds of things, and it's not worth getting yourself upset.”

“Are they done fixing Daddy up?” Jack says. “I'd like to have some time with him when I can.”

“Sugar, I don't think Letitia is finished with the touch-up, but you come on by an hour before visitation tonight and you can sit there with him as long as you like.” It's ludicrous to think that Bob needs to look any particular way for Jack, since Jack can't see him anyway. But Belle's word is law.

“There's one more thing.” Jack's lip is curled. “I don't want Woody Patterson here tonight. I can't keep him from coming to the funeral, but I don't want him at the visitation.”

Belle frowns and squinches up her eyes. “I disagree with you. I think anybody should be allowed in who wants to pay respects, but I'm not going to argue with you.”

“Good.”

“What about his family? You mind if Laurel comes? Or Woody's daddy?” Her voice is as cold as dry ice.

“I don't have a problem with the rest of them.”

When we get back to the house, Jack says he's done in and needs to lie down. I'm glad for the break, and also glad that Curtis isn't around. I help Jack get settled in his bed and head into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. No sooner have I sat down at the dinette table with the coffee when the phone rings. It's Doc Taggart, Bob's doctor, with a verbal report for the boys about the preliminary autopsy report. I jot down the information and take my coffee into the living room.

I jerk awake when Curtis comes in the front door. I sit up and take a deep breath. My neck is stiff from my head flopping backwards onto the back of the chair when I nodded off. I don't usually sleep in the afternoon and I feel stupid with it.

“Don't get up,” Curtis says. He's carrying a Dairy Queen sack, which he holds out in an awkward gesture. “Got extra fries, if you want some.”

I tell him to go ahead, and about that time Jack calls out for someone to help him get up. I help him into his chair and wheel him into the kitchen where Curtis has his hamburger and French fries set up. Jack lights a cigarette.

Curtis waves his hand in front of his face. “Whole house smells like cigarette smoke.”

“There's a perfectly good motel if your delicate nose can't handle it,” Jack says. “Besides, think about the advantage to you. I'll probably die faster, so you can inherit what I've got.”

“If there's anything left after you burn through it.”

“All right boys, you can fight on your own time. There's something I need to tell you.” I tell them about the call from Doc Taggart with the preliminary autopsy report. “I hope you don't mind if I took down the particulars.”

“Fine with me,” Curtis says. “What did Taggart say?”

“Like we all figured, your dad died of a heart attack. I asked the doc if Bob had a history of heart problems and he said no, and the coroner said his heart looked in pretty good shape and it was probably an arrhythmia.”

Jack sighs. “I wish that SOB Doc Taggart had kept a better eye on him. He might have needed a pacemaker or something.”

“Too late to worry about that now,” Curtis says. How did he get to be such a cold-hearted man? Jack sits up and I can see by the set of his mouth that he's about to go off on a tirade.

“Doc Taggart is sometimes a little hard to take,” I say. “But he's a good doctor. Smart. Keeps up on things.”

There's nothing wrong with my eyesight, so I have no trouble seeing one of those smirks that Curtis passes around so freely. I can't keep my mouth shut. “He took care of my wife, Jeanne when she had cancer, and the doctors in Houston told us he did a good job.”

“I know he's a good doctor,” Jack says, unaware of the anger at Curtis that has flared up in me. “I'm just wishing for something that can't be. Did he say anything else?”

I look at my notes. “Just that if Bob had lived longer he might have had some prostate problems. And he mentioned alcohol in his system—you told me you two shared a bottle of tequila with Coach Eldridge Sunday night.”

“Daddy didn't drink that much, but he had a little to be sociable.”

“And he must have been fighting off a cold, because Taggart said he had a fair amount of Benadryl in his system.”

“No, that can't be right,” Jack says.

“What do you mean that can't be right? Nothing wrong with taking something for a cold.” Curtis is talking with his mouth full.

“There's nothing
wrong
with it,” Jack says, “except he wouldn't take something like that.”

Curtis pops the last French fry and wipes his mouth. “What makes you think you know what daddy would and wouldn't take?”

“He told me he wouldn't ever use any drug that might make him sleep so sound that he wouldn't hear me if I needed him in the night.”

Curtis slurps the last of his soft drink. “Well, looks like this time he did.”

I recognize the stubborn set of Jack's jaw. “Still,” he says, “I'd like to double-check on that autopsy report. If they got it wrong about the Benadryl, they could have gotten other things wrong, too.”

About then Dottie Gant comes in to relieve me. She's a retired nurse as big as a linebacker. She won't have any trouble helping Jack in and out of his chair.

On the way home I think about the Benadryl and decide I'll give Taggart a call to make sure I heard it right. Then I brood a little about Jack's insistence that Woody Patterson not attend his dad's visitation. Time was, the two boys were best friends. But that was a long time ago.

“What the hell have you boys gotten yourself up to? You two know how to handle guns! How could you have let this happen?” I'm driving like a bat out of hell toward the county hospital at Bobtail. Jack Harbin is lying in the backseat, groaning, while Woody Patterson leans over the backrest holding a blood-drenched towel onto Jack's foot.

“It just . . . we just . . . ,” Woody stutters, sounding like he's going to cry.

Jack groans louder. I've seen men who are hurt a lot worse make not nearly so much noise. You can't accuse the boy of being stoic. “Jack, you got hit every which way on the football field this year. Did you make that much racket every time?”

“This is different, it burns like the fires of hell.”

Their story is that they went out to the woods to bag some squirrels and somehow Woody managed to shoot Jack in the foot. Woody drove Jack to the bait shop, but said he was too shook up to drive all the way to the emergency room in Bobtail, so he called me.

There's something fishy about their story. I've known both boys since they were in diapers, and they started learning to shoot as soon as they could hold a gun. How did an accident like this happen? Jeanne told me a while back that these boys both think they are in love with Taylor Brenner. I hope the boys didn't think their rivalry could be solved with rifles. It's a done deal anyway. Woody and Taylor are getting married in a week.

Jack has just finished army boot camp and will be deployed soon. I wonder how this injury is going to affect whether he can rejoin his unit. I almost hope it keeps him back. Rumors are high that there will be war in the Persian Gulf and it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if Jack was unable to go.

Both the boys signed up for the army fresh out of high school. All the way through school they were big sports heroes—quarterback and receiver, pitcher and catcher. They must have figured the only way they were going to continue to be heroes was to join the service.

And then, out of the blue, the army rejected Woody on account of a knee injury he suffered in his sophomore year. Who would have thought that a boy who broke the school record for yardage gained in his senior year would be judged unfit to serve in the armed forces? Some folks said Taylor was marrying him as a consolation prize.

We screech to a halt at the emergency room, and get chewed out for parking in the driveway until I show them my badge as police chief of Jarrett Creek. Attendants start to haul Jack away, but he stops them. “Chief Craddock, don't tell my folks about this. Please.”

“How the hell do you think they're not going to know? It'll be all over town in no time.”

“I'll tell them I stepped on a nail or something.”

He insists so much that I finally agree to keep quiet. When the attendants take Jack away, I tell Woody to come with me to park the car. After we park, he reaches over to open the door, and I clap him on the shoulder to make him stay put.

“What the hell were you two boys really up to?”

Woody shakes his head.

“Was this on purpose? Is it about Taylor?”

Woody stays quiet.

“All right, you're not telling. It goes down as an accident either way, but I don't like it.”

We're stuck in the waiting room for a couple of hours before a grinning nurse comes out to say, “That is one lucky boy! Shot went right through his foot without hitting anything major. Couple of small bones that should be good as new in no time.”

“That should make you feel better,” I tell Woody.

But he groans and drops his head into his hands, which makes me wonder if he intended worse.

At Woody and Taylor's wedding, Jack serves as best man. He is on crutches with his foot all bound up, but the story that he stepped on a nail seems to have taken hold.