The Late Child (54 page)

Just then the owner of the bar, a large, red-faced man wearing a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt and a cowboy hat, came over, without being asked, and sat down right by Harmony, close enough that she could smell his armpits, which could have used a squirt or two of deodorant. Harmony felt like scooting her chair over about a foot. She had been intent on her sister's situation and didn't want to have to smell some big smelly guy's armpits, just then.

“Neddie, ain't you even gonna introduce me to your famous sister?” he asked, looking at Harmony in a not too nice way.

“Fuck off, Tommy, we're having a private conversation,” Rusty said, getting a cold glint in his eye.

“Mind your damn manners,” the man said, ignoring Rusty and continuing to look at Harmony in the not too nice way. “This is my bar and there ain't no discussions gonna take place in it too private for me to sit in on.”

“Then we'll find another bar—let's go, girls,” Rusty said, standing up.

“I just asked to be introduced to Harmony, that's all,” Tommy said. “This woman's got the most famous pair of tits ever to come out of Tarwater, why wouldn't I want to sit by them for a while?”

“Don't pay no attention to Tommy,” Dill said, looking at Harmony. “Tits are his main interest in life, along with beer.”

Tommy was still looking at Harmony.

“Honey, I got a fine bar in Tulsa and you ain't too old to bring your floor show home,” he said. “We'll give you an hour or two on stage anytime you want.”

“No thank you,” Harmony said. “I'm retired.”

Before she even finished saying it Rusty grabbed her hand—in a moment all four of them were out in the bright sunlight.

“I told you we ought to find a nicer place,” Neddie said, looking at Rusty a little critically.

“How'd I know Tommy would be there—this is usually his day off,” Rusty said. “Besides, there ain't no nice places to meet in, in this whole county—you know that. All this would have come to a head years ago if we'd had a halfway decent place to meet.”

“Well, you lovebirds can yak all you want to, I'm going to work,” Dill said. “Pleased to meet you, Harmony.”

He got in one of the battered white pickups and immediately gunned it straight across the highway, right in front of two trucks, both of which honked at him angrily.

“It's a wonder Dill is still alive, he has no instinct for traffic,” Rusty said, reaching up to rub the head of the big black dog, who looked at them with his tongue lolled out.

“Do you want to come to the Best Western, so we can talk?” Harmony asked. “It's not very far.”

“Okay,” Neddie and Rusty said, at once. They were a little
overwhelmed by their situation and seemed willing to obey anyone who might make a suggestion or give them a little help.

“You ride with Rusty, it'll give you a chance to get to know him,” Neddie said. “I'll drive Rusty's pickup.”

“Remember about the clutch slipping,” Rusty said, as he got in with Harmony. The big dog jumped from the back of one pickup into the back of the other when he saw Rusty get in with Harmony.

“That's Clyde, he's obsessed with me,” Rusty said, grinning. “He's got the notion that the world might end if he lets me out of his sight.”

“Rusty, maybe he's just loyal,” Harmony said. “Iggy's that way—Eddie's dog. He gets annoyed if we go into the waffle house or someplace and he gets left in the car.”

“I hear you saw Dick,” Rusty said—maybe he was just trying to get some sense of how Harmony felt about the situation.

“He got upset,” Harmony said. “He mentioned the brother who got drowned.”

“Dick's been blaming himself for that accident for thirty-five years,” Rusty said. “Accidents like that just happen. Dick mainly brings it up when he wants sympathy.”

“I guess we all want sympathy once in a while,” Harmony said.

Rusty was silent while Harmony steered the pickup carefully across the highway and headed back toward the Best Western. She didn't want to make any trucks honk at her, if she could help it.

“Will you tell Dick for us?” Rusty asked then. “Tell him Neddie wants a divorce? I know it's a big thing to ask, but I got no one else to appeal to. If Neddie has to do it herself she'll put it off till we've lost another five years—we've already lost the better part of twenty.

“I know it's Neddie's place to do it,” he went on. “I know it's a lot to put on you, when you just lost your little girl. But I got no one else to appeal to, and this is mine and Ned's last chance.”

“Maybe Dick knows it already—I mean, inside maybe he does
know,” Harmony said. She wasn't sure she believed it, she was just stalling, really. The thought of having to tell that large man she scarcely knew that his wife wanted a divorce so she could marry his brother was a scary thought.

“I used to think that, but Neddie says no,” Rusty said. “Ned don't think he has a clue. Dick don't look ahead, unless it has to do with the farming. He thinks about planting and harvesting, when he thinks at all. He don't think about people—that's one big reason this is happening.”

Then Rusty stopped talking and looked out the window at the weedy plains.

“No, it would have happened anyway, no matter what Dick thought or didn't think,” Rusty said. “Me and Ned, we're just meant to be together. That's how I feel and that's how I always felt.”

“I guess I can tell him, if it will help you and my sister,” Harmony said. “I'm sure it will be a shock.”

Rusty looked out the window some more.

“The thing is, Dick, he's all work,” Rusty said. “He can be pretty happy just working that place. He don't need a woman—not like I need Neddie. I need Neddie in the worst way, Harmony.”

Harmony was remembering the look on Neddie's face, when Rusty said he loved her. It was the first look of real happiness she could ever remember seeing on her sister's face. She was also trying to remember when a man had said those words to her, with true feeling, as Rusty had said it to Neddie.

But she couldn't pull up a name, a face, or a moment when a man had said that to her. Many men had said they loved her, and some of them must have meant it, but none that she could remember had made it sound as special as Rusty made it sound, when he said it to Neddie. Rusty didn't have too good a complexion, either, but his face lit up when he told Neddie he loved her.

“What about Melba?” she asked, remembering that Rusty did have a wife.

“I think Melba may have figured this out,” he said with a sigh. “I guess I'll find out when I break the news.”

“Rusty, will she be real upset?” Harmony asked.

Rusty sighed again. “Our family's all Melba cares about,” he said. “It will just about kill her, I expect.”

“I think I better talk to my friend Gary,” Harmony said. “Gary understands things like this.”

“He's smarter than me, if he understands this,” Rusty said. “I sure don't understand it. I like my brother Dick. I don't know why in hell I had to fall in love with his wife.”

“I don't understand it either, Rusty,” Harmony said. “I guess things just don't wait for people to understand them. They just happen anyway.”

“That's about the size of it,” Rusty said.

When they got back to the motel there were complications waiting, in the form of Eddie and Iggy and Laurie and Sty and Ethel, all waiting in the blue Buick that Ethel used for going to church in. Ethel didn't like anyone else to touch her Buick, much less drive it, for any reason.

“Uh-oh,” Rusty said, when he saw the Buick. “How are we going to explain this?”

“We'll just say we had lunch,” Harmony said. “That's normal, isn't it?”

“It's normal, but it won't fool your mother,” Rusty said. “She's going to want to know why you're with me and not Dick.”

“Besides that she knows we didn't have lunch, because she was at the barbecue,” Harmony remembered. “I don't know what we'll say.”

“Where's Dick?” Ethel asked immediately. Fortunately she was so upset about having to use her personal car for a social occasion that she didn't pursue the other complications very thoroughly.

“It makes the oil dirty to drive this car on weekdays,” she pointed out at once. “You were supposed to bring the pickup home early, and here it is the afternoon. Sty's been afoot all day and I don't know where Pat is and it's just luck that Eddie didn't drown.”

“Why? Was there an accident while he was swimming?” Harmony asked, apprehensively.

“No accident,” Eddie and Laurie said, simultaneously. Laurie was still smiling; evidently she hadn't found a whole morning with the family too much of a burden.

“Well, that boy was in the deep water, he could have drowned,” Ethel insisted.

“You're cracked,” Sty said. He looked a little weary—probably he had been having to cope with a lot of complaints.

“I can swim, Grandma,” Eddie said, a little testily. “Why would I drown when I can swim?”

“You could get cramps and sink like a rock,” Ethel said. “When people get cramps they drown before anyone even notices.”

“She's cracked,” Sty said, again.

As soon as Neddie got out of his white pickup, Rusty got in it. The big dog jumped back across, into his master's pickup. As soon as he did, Rusty waved and drove away.

“I'd like to know what that lazy no-good was doing alone with you?” Ethel asked, loudly, looking at Harmony. “Everybody knows he runs around on his wife. You don't need to be stirring him up.”

“Everybody does not know any such thing, Momma,” Neddie said. “That's just idle gossip and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for repeating it.”

“Where there's smoke there's fire,” Ethel said. “That's a true saying if there ever was a true saying.”

“Don't argue with her,” Sty said, getting out of the Buick. “Just leave her alone and maybe she'll drive off down the road and get lost for a month or two—then we could all have some peace.”

“This car's got dirty oil in it now,” Ethel informed them. “I'm going up to the filling station and see if I can get them to change it—they better not charge me for it, either. It's just oil.”

“Why shouldn't they charge you for it, Momma?” Neddie asked—Harmony could tell she was incensed with her mother because of the remark about Rusty running around on his wife.

“Because I'm a good customer, why should they charge just for changing the oil?” Ethel said.

“I have to get Eli out of this blue car,” Eddie said. “Grandma's too cranky and she doesn't like Eli anyway.”

“Ooops, I think Eli may have crawled under the seat,” Laurie said, reaching under one of them. “He's sensitive to argument.”

“Get him out before he pees, we'll have to trade this Buick in if an old turtle pees in it,” Ethel said. “We won't get much trade-in either, not with the dirty oil.”

As soon as Laurie got the turtle out from under the car seat, Ethel began to back up. As everyone watched, she backed all the way across the parking lot and kept on backing until she was way out in the middle of the field that the young man had just mowed, a little earlier in the day.

“She's cracked—she don't even know she's going backward,” Sty said. “Let's all get inside before she starts coming forward again. Ethel makes real wide turns. She'll mow us all down if we stand here and give her a target.”

Eddie leapt into Harmony's arms and gave her a kiss. “It's fun here, Mom,” he said. “My cousins all like me and I like them. Iggy tried to swim but he bogged and got himself muddy and Grandma hates him and she hates Eli too.”

Ethel got the Buick into a forward gear and was executing a wide—very wide—turn through the little field. They all stood and watched as she drove across the field, in the general direction of the highway.

“Maybe she'll get lost and drive to Oz, and the Wicked Witch of the West will get her, only the Wicked Witch won't get me and she won't get Iggy and she won't get Eli,” Eddie said. As soon as they went inside he began to bounce on the king-sized bed, bouncing as high as he could. Sty sat in a chair, Neddie smoked, and Laurie lay down on the bed despite the fact that Eddie was bouncing on it. She put the turtle on the bed but it soon crawled so close to the edge that she had to put it on the floor.

“I'm tired,” she said. “We swam a lot.”

Harmony had the sense that Neddie was watching her closely—probably she wanted to know whether Harmony had promised Rusty that she would tell Dick that she wanted a divorce. At times Neddie could be pretty intent on getting her way.

“Riding around with your mother always wears me to a nub,” her father said. “I can't keep up with Eddie anyway, and I sure can't keep up with him if I have to ride around with Ethel very much.”

“Just rest, Grandpa,” Eddie said. “She's gone.”

He stopped jumping on the bed and climbed up in his grandfather's lap. Sty smiled.

“What a boy,” he said.

Harmony had a sort of “What next?” feeling; it was a time when the pieces of life just didn't fit together too well. Maybe they never had—probably they never had, but definitely they weren't at the moment.

Just as she was having the “What next?” feeling the phone rang. Harmony thought it was probably Gary calling back; he hated to have his phone calls interrupted, no matter what the circumstance. Gary always preferred long phone conversations, an hour or two was nothing to him. She was a little nervous about picking up the phone, he was probably going to bawl her out for cutting him off so abruptly. At the very least he was apt to be a little moody—Gary's interpretation would be that he wasn't getting enough attention. Still, the phone was ringing and it was her room. She finally picked it up.