It surprised Train, but it didn’t surprised him too much. In the same world where you burn down a stump and it sets the ground on fire, what could sneak up on you then?
“You remember me?” Mr. Packard said. Then he looked behind Train at Plural, who was carrying the box of Tide that he used for his personal hygiene. He got into the habit lately of showering under a hose here at Paradise Developments, where they had better water pressure than they’d had back at the gym.
“Who’s this?” Mr. Packard said. Seemed so happy, Train was afraid the man gone hug them both.
“Who’s you?” Plural said.
Mr. Packard liked that; he seem to like everything. “Nobody,” he said.
“Us neither,” Plural said. Mr. Packard held out his hand to shake, and Plural set down his bag without another word and bust him in the nose. It happened before Train could move a muscle to stop it. Train stood there remembering the gun the man had in his golf bag, which meant he got it under his coat now, but Mr. Packard just sat on the cement where Plural had put him, holding his knees, looking surprised, dripping blood onto his shirt and tie and over that smooth, shiny suit.
Presently Mr. Packard shook his head, clearing things up, the blood running out his nose into his teeth, some of it dropping off his chin— he cupped his hand beneath it, looked like he was trying to save what he could— and then he begun to hiccup. Once, twice, and then on and on. Train tried to think of a way out of this that did not end with him and Plural shot or in jail, but nothing came. The ground was on fire, they was unemployed and out of a place to stay and generally shit out of luck.
Mr. Packard hiccuped again, and then looked up from the ground, the blood coming almost black out of both sides of his nose, and Train seen he was laughing. Plural had already heard it in the sound of the hiccups, and the sound appealed to his nature, and he laughed a little himself.
Mr. Packard pointed at Plural and said, “He’s blind, right?”
“Yessir,” Train said. “He don’t know what he’s doing.”
And that just pop Mr. Packard’s toast. He leaned his head back, trying to stop the bleeding, but it only seem to made it worse. Plural gave him his handkerchief. To Train’s certain knowledge, that handkerchief had never been washed except inside the pants’ pocket, and now Mr. Packard was pressing it into his face.
“A blind man,” he said, “we should of sold tickets.” He used the handkerchief to dab at his eyes, which were tearing— you couldn’t say if it was the punch or just the man enjoying himself— and then moved it back to catch the blood. “This just gets better and better,” he said.
“It do, don’t it?” Plural said.
Mr. Packard held out his hand and then grabbed at his leg when Train helped him up on his feet, but regardless of that and his nose, it didn’t seem to be any hard feelings.
Mr. Packard loaded them into his car, put Plural up front, where he could keep an eye on him, and drove to the police station. Train lowered himself in the seat a little when he saw where they were. In the parking lot, Mr. Packard climbed out of the car, then leaned back in and spoke to Train. “You two be all right out here a few minutes? I want to go in and see if they’ll let me use the shower. I better change clothes before I go home. I don’t want to upset Mrs. Packard. . . .”
“I could used a change myself,” Plural said.
Mr. Packard looked him over and saw that he had a point. “Why not?” he said. Then, to Train: “You too?”
“I believe I’ll wait here,” Train said.
Mr. Packard opened the trunk, took out some clothes, and then got Plural out of the front seat, and then the two of them went into the station, Plural carrying his box of Tide.
Train sat in the backseat of the Cadillac, scared to death, thinking that if it wasn’t for leaving Plural behind, he could be on the way to Union Station right now, headed out of town.
They were a long time inside. Train stayed low in the seat, watching the police come and go. Sometimes they had a prisoner in handcuffs— Mexicans and colored mostly, some of them been tuned up on the way in.
Mr. Packard and Plural were gone thirty, forty minutes, and the longer they stayed inside, the more Train expected Mr. Packard would find out in there that he was a wanted man. Or that somebody would walk by and see him in the Caddy, and take him inside to straighten it out. People in that building were still looking for him; that much he knew.
A police car stopped, and two cops pulled a boy out of the backseat, had to pry him out, screaming and kicking and crying, might have been eleven years old. It took them both to carry him up the steps, one of them holding his feet.
Train remembered being taken through those doors himself. He’d tried to stop just before he went in— it seemed like he needed a little more time— and then somebody pushed him from behind, and the sounds of voices was coming at him from every direction. It was a clammy, cool place and all you heard was orders, and all the orders came too fast and piled up on each other as one noise bounced into the next. You went through the doors and found out how people went crazy— which he begun to understand wasn’t what people thought. Everything didn’t look upside down; you didn’t get no glass of water and see a fish swimming around inside. It was more like you become pressurized until you blow a leak.
He watched the boy and felt a certain pity, but then, things happened when they did, and sometimes you could do something about it, and mostly you couldn’t. He wondered what crime a boy that size did to be in so much trouble with the law in the first place. Train leaned back and closed his eyes, just trying to get out of the way of things and let time move them along, the way it does.
He heard them before he saw them, right next to the door. Plural was wearing a clean white shirt, a tie, and new pants. The pants was half a foot too long and cinched just under his chest with a belt, and the shirt was buttoned all the way to the collar. Mr. Packard was carrying the clothes they been wearing before. He had on pants of a lighter color than Plural’s. He also washed the blood off and combed his hair. His nose was swole by now to where you couldn’t exactly say it started somewhere and his forehead stopped. The swelling had moved under his eyes too, give his whole face a flat look, and colored the skin under his eyes.
Mr. Packard didn’t seemed ashamed, though, to be walking around looking like pudding. He opened the door for Plural and took his arm to help him into the car, like they on the way to the big dance.
They drove all the way into Beverly Hills before Train could breathe in and out again without reminding himself to do it. Mr. Packard seemed not to lost the amusedment of the situation while he was inside. He whistled along awhile; then he turned to Plural and asked him about a fight, like he was continuing on a subject they been talking about inside.
“So what were you thinking with this guy, then?” he said. “Climbing into the ring, I mean.”
Plural puckered his lips and thought it over. “The first thing is,” he said, “you always think, This can’t be the motherfucker
I’m
fightin’. They got to made some mistake. He look as big as two of me.”
Train was leaning into the door, his cheek against the window, listening to the hum of the tires. He could feel a little push of cool air somewhere, couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from. Plural talked a little longer about fighting at the Olympic and finding out he didn’t have no tank, and then for a little while it was quiet.
“You ever do any building?” Mr. Packard asked, still talking to Plural.
“What kind of building you mean?”
“I don’t know. Carpentry, electricity, plumbing, roofing. There’s always things to do around a house. They don’t take care of themselves.”
“I don’t touch electricity,” Plural said. “I helped a man stole a roof once, but I don’t touch electricity.”
Stole a roof?
Train sat up at that.
“Stole a roof?” Mr. Packard said, like he wondered why he hadn’t tried that himself.
Plural shrugged. “A man puts it up, a man can take it down,” he said, “although as it develop, I don’t enjoy the height.”
Mr. Packard drove them along the road awhile, turning here and there, and then he looked in the back, where Train was, and said, “Your man and I were talking about your current situation, and I told him I have a guest house nobody’s using, and there isn’t any reason you couldn’t stay there. At least until you get on your feet. Except you’ll probably want to fix the roof.” He drove on a little longer and then said, “Maybe keep an eye on Mrs. Packard for me if she needs anything while I’m not at home.”
He caught Train’s eye in the mirror and said, “She had a bad time of it the last few months. Lost her first husband.”
Plural said, “I wonder does she know Digger Love.”
“Who?” Mr. Packard said.
“A man in the funeral business,” Plural said. “Out in Ohio. Sometime he put on boxing shows too.”
“No,” Mr. Packard said, “it was here. It happened here.”
“All I know,” Plural said, “that Digger, he gets around.”
25
BEVERLY HILLS
A
SMALL GUEST COTTAGE SAT JUST INSIDE THE iron gate, behind the garage. Weather-yellowed stucco with fingers of ivy growing all the way to the roof. The roof itself was bleached of its intended color, warped and cracked by the ivy, and leaked when it rained.
The cottage was divided into four rooms, and the floors listed to the south, as if it were sinking. The place had termites and spiders and a hornets’ nest under the sink. Alec had intended to gut the whole thing and remodel, and they’d argued when she asked him to leave it alone. She was new to money then, and liked the way the place looked, liked the idea of an eyesore in the landscape.
She woke up, still half in a dream about throwing the good china at Packard. He was dodging and laughing. She lay still, trying to remember why she was throwing china, and then she heard a sound from the backyard, something breaking.
She rolled out of bed, feeling swollen, and looked out the window. A Negro on the roof of the cottage, holding a crowbar. Shirtless and smooth, a boy. She watched him for a few minutes from the window, not even wondering at first why he was there. He took the shingles off one at a time and dropped them down into the yard. They fell on top of one another with a clapping noise like a rifle. Sometimes they broke.
