The Train of Small Mercies (10 page)

Michael stood up, his hand now the gun, and looked around uncertainly. Walt lay on the ground, watching the scuffle but otherwise admirable in his posture of death.

“What do I do with it?” Michael asked.

“I guess you hold it,” Walt offered, “until you can give it to the police.”

Daniel was still wrestling with Ty, but Ty was ready to get up and pushed him off. “Let's do it again,” Ty said. “Only this time, both you guys need to come get me at the same time. Michael, I could have shot you, too, if I wanted to. You're supposed to charge me as soon as I shoot.”

“Okay.”

In the second effort, Walt relied on more theatrics, drunkenly staggering before slumping to the ground, and once on his back, he rolled around, moaning at the pain. Daniel got the jump on the assassin faster this time, as did Michael, but Ty managed to keep the gun out of their reach by holding it inside his belt as they pried at his arm. In the third attempt, Ty got off a shot at Daniel, which brought the insurrection to a brief pause when Daniel pointed out that Rosey Grier wasn't, in fact, shot.

“You're too technical,” Ty offered. “He could have been. Besides, we're just playing. Doesn't have to be one-hundred-percent accurate. I don't look like an Arab, but that doesn't matter.”

“Actually, you kind of do,” Daniel said, and Walt laughed.

“Blam!” Ty said and shot at Daniel again.

After another assassination it was time to switch roles. And then they switched again. When they had exhausted the possibilities, they generally agreed that Michael had been the best Kennedy because of the way he managed to collapse so violently, his arms flying behind him as if he were a bedsheet being snapped into the air, and on the ground he managed to be completely still, indifferent to the capture of his assassin. Walt had had trouble tackling anyone as Rosey Grier or Rafer Johnson, and Daniel had a particularly good turn as Sirhan because he had remembered what the shooter was overheard to shout while being pinned to the ground: “I can explain! Let me explain!”

T
he water in the pool was turquoise, and the smell of chlorine was strong, but to Edwin it was thrilling, like smelling a woman's perfume in the first minutes of a first date. All his life he wanted the smell of chlorine to fill his backyard. Lolly wore her one-piece swimsuit under a pair of terrycloth shorts and her long T-shirt with the Beatles' Yellow Submarine on the front. She had not purchased a new suit, much to Edwin's disappointment. For the last two years she had settled for her green one-piece, with black stitching on the side and unusually wide shoulder straps that made Edwin think of overalls; the suit had turned almost purple from the years of washing. She had become too self-conscious to wear a two-piece; her stomach had been flat all her life, but by her early thirties it had curved outward, and sometimes in profile she thought it looked like she was hiding a small dinner bowl under her shirt. Edwin had gained exactly five pounds since she married him, and they had settled mostly into his behind without much fanfare. He wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses that at first glance resembled a mask; Lolly sometimes kidded him that they made him look like the Lone Ranger. But his blond hair had remained the same, parted to one side, longer over his ears and collar in a way now that Lolly found slightly unbecoming.

Between the two of them, Lolly had dated more and had more romantic flings before they got married. She had been a pretty bride, and even now it wasn't uncommon for men at parties, when Edwin stepped away, to flirt with her and make suggestive comments. The flirting made her feel sexy, and she wasn't rude when she let men know she wasn't available. Sometimes she lifted her ring finger and said in a playful voice, “Ring-a-ding-ding,” then walked through the crowd knowing the man was taking a last, lustful gaze at the swing of her derriere.

But that attractive spark she could sometimes feel about herself dimmed around Ted's girlfriend, Georgia, who, with her overflow of auburn hair and Amazonian curves, could have been a Raquel Welch impersonator. That morning, as Lolly got dressed, she could already imagine how slight Georgia's bikini would be, and she knew that at all times of the day Ted and Edwin would be staring at her.

In the kitchen she began chopping vegetables when the smell of chlorine drifted through the back-door screen—sharp and acidic. Edwin came in and surveyed the preparations. The train would be coming through town at three-fifteen, but Edwin was only thinking of the party.

“Music!” he said. “We gotta have music. I'll get the eight-track out there.”

“Let's just not play it so loud, though,” Lolly said. “We don't have to play it for the whole neighborhood.”

“Lol,” he said. “Please don't bum me out.”

S
even hours after they had left Michael's school, his father had found the radio broadcast of the Tigers–White Sox game. “Tigers could use a win,” he said. Michael was resting his head against the cool glass of the window, his eyes too heavy to keep open. It occurred to him that he should say something to his father's remark, or just nod, since he was unsure of what passed for an acceptable silence between them. In almost everything his father had said during the long drive, Michael had worked hard to show him that he couldn't agree more, or that his father had just pointed out some colorful fact that Michael would surely make use of at some time.

“Priddy has two men on and two men out, and he's not out of this yet. Now he steps off the mound. He wants to think over this first pitch to Oyler.”

“Hey, sport,” James Colvert whispered. “Sport, wake up. We're going to pull in here for the night.” Michael was aware of the neon lights before he opened his eyes, the vibrant red turning his darkness into spots, and he thought he heard the crunch of gravel. He righted himself and put his head against the vinyl headrest.

“Okay,” he said, squinting into a motel's dark-paneled office, where he could see a man leaning over a desk, flipping through a magazine.

“We're still a few hours away from the cabin,” his father said. “I'm going to go in and get us a room. You stay put.” Michael nodded only after the car door shut and watched his father's long stride to the office. The man at the desk reached over to turn a knob on his transistor radio and waved him in. The man glanced out at their car as James Colvert spoke. When he came back out, key in his hand, his lips were puckered, as if he intended to whistle.

“Okay, one room for two weary travelers,” he said, holding the car door open. He went back to the trunk and pulled out a leather suitcase. Though Michael had wondered about it in their first hundred miles, the idea came to him now with some alarm: he had no extra clothes. He had no toothbrush, no pajamas to sleep in, no change of underwear or socks. As he got out, he said, “I don't have any luggage.”

James Colvert smiled. “Well, that's a temporary problem,” he said. “Nothing we can't fix. I did pick up an extra toothbrush for you, and tomorrow, when we get to where we're going, I know a department store where we can pick up what you'll need.” He held the plastic key in the light of the sign. “Room seven.”

They followed a pathway made of smoothed stones, and when he got the door open, James Colvert reached for a switch on the wall and, not finding one, crept to the shadowy outline of a lamp on a desk. A dim, orange light revealed two small beds with brown bedspreads and a painting between them of Indians on their horses, one with his tomahawk raised over his head. James Colvert put his suitcase down and closed the door. “Well, it's not the Taj Mahal, but it will do,” he said. All these hours later, his voice still wasn't entirely familiar to Michael.

James Colvert flipped open his suitcase and retrieved a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush still in its clear packaging. “That's for you,” he said.

Michael took it in his hand and contemplated its particular shade of green. “Thank you.” He brushed with more effort than he could usually summon, since he didn't want to appear ungrateful, and spit with a fierceness that surprised him. He sat on the corner of the other bed with more uncertainty than he had felt all day.

“Well, go ahead and hit the hay,” James Colvert said. “You're not used to being up this late, I guess.”

“Sometimes,” Michael said, but he didn't find the convincing note he had intended.

He then unbuttoned his pants, suddenly self-conscious, and slipped off his socks, placing them neatly on top. He got under the rough sheet and blanket and turned to face the wall, studying the lines in the wooden slats. He knew it would be long after the lights were turned off before he fell asleep.

E
dwin was giving Ted and Georgia a tour of the pool. Ted had been a friend of Edwin and Lolly's for five years, from when they lived in the same apartment complex. When they first met, Ted was married to a Chinese student named Mai; three years later they had an infant daughter named Ling-lee. This was during Ted's “days of haze,” as he called them now, when he was often drunk or stoned. Ted was generally a happy drunk, but when he passed out, he slept through the better part of the next day. When the baby was asleep, Mai berated him for the groceries he had forgotten to pick up, the soiled diaper he hadn't detected, the money he'd squandered, the nights he had failed to come home. A week after Ling-lee's second birthday, Mai moved back to China with her.

Edwin and Lolly didn't know Georgia as well, and Georgia's beauty—she had once worked in the Chicago Playboy Club as a cocktail waitress—made Lolly feel more reserved. Georgia had been seeing Ted for nearly six months; she worked as a beautician and was ten years younger than the rest of them, though she looked even younger.

Edwin stood up on the last step of the ladder and narrated how he had put it all together. “And you, my fine friends, have the honor of helping us break it in.”

“Groovy,” Ted said. He wore a T-shirt with a cobra sprung to life over snug-fitting jean cutoffs, with a red bandanna around his neck. His curly hair piled upward, and since growing out his sideburns, he liked to run his fingers down the length of them when he spoke. Georgia wore flip-flops underneath her red-painted toes and a tie-dyed T-shirt that she had tied above her belly button. Her blue jeans flared at the tops of her ankles.

“Everyone in the neighborhood is going to want a piece of this,” Ted said.

“With good reason,” Edwin said.

Ted ran a finger through the water. “It's like your own private oasis, the way it's just
here
. When can we jump in?”

Edwin nodded. He wanted to be the first one. “Anytime, I guess. Lolly's in the kitchen. I'll get her to take a picture.” He went to the back door, half singing the Doors song they had heard that morning. “Lol, company's here. Party's started.” He stuck his head in. “Hey, can you get my camera? Everyone's ready to jump in, and I was thinking we would capture it on celluloid. Can you come out?”

Lolly retrieved the camera from the bedroom. “Do you want to take out some of this stuff?” she asked, pointing to the trays on the kitchen counter.

“Not yet. Let's just get in the water. It's going to be unbelievable.”

“Really, no one will believe it?”

Edwin stepped all the way in. “Come on, Lol. Already you're not making it fun.”

“Okay, okay. I know you're excited. All right, here comes the Pool Party Queen right now, ready to document this important moment in history.”

When Edwin stepped back out, he was stunned to see Ted waist deep in the pool. Edwin jerked back so violently that he almost knocked the camera from Lolly's hands.

“Holy crap, Ted! You were supposed to wait. Shit, man. What the hell?”

Ted's smile drained from his face. “What's wrong?”

“You were supposed to wait,” Edwin said. As he approached the pool, the sight of Ted and his hairy chest bobbing in the water was so painful he had to look to Georgia, who quickly turned away in embarrassment. “Lolly was going to take a picture,” Edwin finally thought to say.

“Let's all get in, then,” said Ted. “Come on. Hey, bro, I didn't mean to steal your thunder. But this pool is
happening
.”

“It's just, you know,” said Edwin. “I put the thing together. I kind of wanted to be the first one in.”

“Everyone in the water,” Lolly said. “Let's get this poor man wet before he has a breakdown.”

Lolly winked at Georgia. “Hi, honey. Do you want to come in and get changed?”

Georgia, still a bit unsettled by Edwin's outburst, grabbed her canvas bag and stepped quickly inside.

Lolly put the camera down. It was time to strip to her bathing suit, and as she looked at some distant point beyond their fence, she could feel Edwin and Ted watching her while pretending not to. The light coming through the trees was bright and unforgiving. When Lolly was done, Edwin took his glasses off and held them between his fingers while removing his shirt. In the sunlight his hairless, white chest looked like a giant egg. He climbed the steps of the ladder and paused for a moment.

“No diving, remember,” Lolly said. This was a further irritation to Edwin, who knew exactly what the safety guidelines for his pool were. It was only five feet deep, and Edwin was six-foot-two. Of course he wasn't going to dive. Instead, he inched his toes to the edge of the ladder, his arms firmly clutched to his sides, like a tin soldier, and fell cleanly through the water, making almost no splash at all. He collapsed his legs when he hit the cement bottom so that he could be fully submerged. But instead of pushing back up, he stayed in that position, knees bent, for so long that Ted and Lolly eventually locked eyes in concern. Ted pushed himself off from the side, and as he got within arm's length Edwin rocketed violently upward. After he ran a hand across his face, he let out a raucous whoop of approval. “In my own backyard!” Edwin shouted.