Sweet nodded, but he’d quit listening back when he saw the money. “The man told me I was supposed to take it over,” Train said.
Sweet looked up from the money. “Where you gone go?” he said.
“That’s what I was asking, where Florida live.”
“And how you gone get there if you find out?”
Train had thought about that too, and didn’t know the answer. “Take the bus,” he said.
“The bus don’t go where Florida live. He clear the hell out somewhere in the valley. And the missus is jumpy, ain’t let you in the door.”
“He must of got home somehow,” Train said.
“I tole you I’ll take care of it,” he said. “I got to go over there anyways tonight and tell them Florida passed on. That’s in my description here, what I’m supposed to do.”
Train stood still a minute, then turned around and went back to his spot next to Plural. He thought about the Mile Away Man offering to bet three hundred and fifty dollars that he would do the right thing.
Sweet gave him a good tote that afternoon, and it wasn’t till sunset, when he was walking the road out to the street and Sweet came past him in his Cadillac, blowing dust and little pieces of rock behind him, that Train remembered that five dollars of the money was supposed to be his.
It made him feel better somehow, that Sweet had stole five dollars from him too.
He went to the movies that night, thinking of Florida. The show was Gene Autry, and Train went in even though he’d sat through it one night the week before. The horse was named Champion, and it had guns for a bridle. Train preferred movies where nobody sang, but sitting in the theater kept him out of the way until his mother’s new friend went to sleep. The friend’s name was Mayflower. He had some beers last Sunday, dropped his arm across Train’s shoulders while they was all talking, his hand at the nape of his neck, and then squeezed Train and tried to pull him closer, tried to controlled his head. Train tightened himself and held away, and they fought secretly in front of his mother over that two or three inches of space, with polite looks on their faces, Mayflower squeezing so hard Train felt the shaking in his arm.
And then the squeezing stopped and the hand slid off, and he and Mayflower looked at each other with a cold understanding of what was possible between them. And his mother was sitting there the whole time, seeing what was happening, hoping that everything she knew about men and their territory didn’t apply to her own house. Train could feel the weight of Mayflower’s hand a long time after it left, and there was a numbness down the back of his head.
“You two stop that roughhousing,” she said, “before you tear up my kitchen.” She wished one of them would leave; he saw that, and knew which one it was.
Mayflower was a short, powerful man with a shiny scar that ran the width of his neck, like a collar. It rose up off his skin half an inch, and his mother kissed it sometimes and said it suited him, kept him from being too pretty. And so there was that too. Somewhere along the line Mayflower had found out he could be helpless himself, probably lying on the floor while people watched him bleed.
Train was glad of that, and when he looked back up on the screen, Gene Autry was sitting on the back of that beautiful horse, playing his guitar.
It was midnight when the last show finished. He walked out into the empty lobby and caught the bus home to Darktown. Some Mexican boys got on a few blocks later, loud and full of liquor, and they looked at Train awhile, but he had the nine iron with him, and they decided he wasn’t what they was looking for after all.
The lights were out at the house and he let himself in the back door, so the dog would hear him coming. He was half deaf now, and sometimes you came in the front way and surprised him, it scared him so bad, he pissed on the floor. The dog’s nerves was already shot from being run over when Train found him, but he got worse with age, and worse again when Mayflower moved in. Sometimes now he flinched at a shadow passing over his head.
Train slipped through the screen door, closing it quietly behind him, and then turned on the kitchen light. The dog was lying in the far corner, squinting. Train leaned his nine iron against the table and opened the refrigerator, got himself some ice tea and a piece of chicken.
The dog stayed where it was. Train pulled the skin off the chicken and held it under the table, but the dog didn’t move. “Lucky?” he said, and the animal dragged his tail once or twice across the floor, but he still didn’t come. Train stood up and took the chicken skin to him. The dog picked it delicately from his fingers— Train feeling only his breath— chewed once or twice on it, and then dropped it on the floor. Train knelt down next to him and smoothed the animal’s head.
“You got to go outside?” he said. It was the dog’s habit to eat a little of whatever Train had and then take his whistle in the yard. He didn’t eat much these days; he was old and tired. “Come on, then,” Train said, and tugged gently at his collar. The animal whined a little, and Train moved behind him, got his hands underneath, and lifted him up. He held him there a moment, feeling the heart pounding against his ribs, until he was sure the dog had his feet under him, and then let him go. He walked to the back door, unlocked it and opened it up, and called him again.
The dog moved a few steps toward the open door and then stopped, seemed like he forgot how to walk. Train went back and picked him up and carried him outside. “What’s wrong with you tonight?” he said.
The animal yipped when Train set him down in the yard, and Train checked his hands for blood. It wasn’t like him to complain. Train had found the dog in the road, run over and left for dead, and carried him home, squeezing him to keep him from falling out of his arms, and the dog never made any noise at all. That was eleven years ago, and his mother said when she saw him coming up the road that day, the dog looked as big as he did. Strangely, when he remembered it, he saw it through her eyes too.
It was a small yard, enclosed in a wood-plank fence eight feet high, and there was grass back there, a curiosity in Darktown. Train had brought the seed home from the course a little at a time in his pants pocket. The dog stood still a moment, almost like he was lost, and then sniffed the ground, found a spot he liked and squatted to take his whistle. Train had never seen the dog squat before— even after he been run over— and it troubled him, the way small things were changing. The things he was losing a little at a time. He heard his mother behind him then, coming into the kitchen.
She had brushed her hair and was wrapped up in a Japanese robe Mayflower said he got in the war in Korea. Risked his life overseas and then gave her the souvenir. There was a sleep line across her face, but except for that, she was perfect. Her skin was tender, like a girl’s, and her features looked good, even when she didn’t fix herself up with lipstick and rouge.
“I heard you talking, baby,” she said. She spoke softly, not wanting to wake Mayflower up. “Thought maybe you’d brought somebody home.” Seemed like one way or another she was always pushing him now to grow up faster, get on with his life.
She came over and kissed his cheek, her slippers sliding against the floor, and Train smelled Ipana toothpaste. If burglars woke her up at four in the morning, she’d go to the bathroom and brush her teeth before she called the police. “There’s some chicken in the icebox.”
Train looked out at the dog. “Something wrong with his legs,” he said.
“Sometimes it happens like that, Lionel,” she said. “All at once.” She seemed to wanted the dog out of the house too.
He was quiet, staring out the screen door, blinking tears. The dog stood up by himself and began slowly walking back toward the kitchen. “It isn’t right to let a creature suffer,” she said.
“He was rolling in the grass this morning,” he said.
She nodded, weighing that. “Still . . .”
He waited, but she’d finished. He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve.
“Even if he ain’t much at night,” Train said, “if he’s rolling in the grass in the morning, then he’s still got his mornings.”
“Floyd says he could take care of it for you.”
Train was shaking his head. “No,” he said.
“Save you that heartache is all.”
“No,” he said again. Floyd was Mayflower, his given name. Train said “No” one more time, louder than before, and she looked back toward the bedroom and lowered her voice, knowing he would lower his.
“His intentions is good, Lionel,” she said quietly. And now they were back in another conversation, one they’d been having off and on ever since Mayflower moved in. The day he brought his things into the house, that was the same day he let Train see who he was. Until then, he was courting them both.
“Tell him not to bother the dog,” he said.
“Lord, Floyd ain’t gone do nothing to that poor hound. He ain’t like that.”
Train nodded, and then opened the screen door, and the dog came through slowly and then limped over the linoleum floor to his spot in the corner.
“You see?” she said. “That’s how they go, baby. They legs up and quit.” There was a noise from the other end of the house, and she kissed him on the cheek again and said she had to get back to bed.
He got up at 4:30, his eyes sleep-crusted in the corners, worried about the dog, and walked out to the kitchen and found him more like his old self. He stood up at least, and walked outside on his own to whistle. Train made himself some bacon and eggs, and dropped a piece of white bread into the pan afterwards, soaking up the fat, and held it in front of the animal’s nose until he took it. He didn’t swallow it whole like he used to, but he didn’t spit it out either.
Train ate his own breakfast, scraped the dishes, then washed his face and hands in the sink— there was almost no water pressure again this morning, not nearly enough to shower— and caught the 5:30 bus to work. He decided in the night to get there early and talk to Sweet about the money before anybody else showed up. Sweet had a hair trigger, but Train noticed that usually his temper had a purpose— it wasn’t the kind of temper that made him blind and crazy— and he might not go off at all if there was nobody there to see it.
The bus let off just as the sun came up. The sprinklers was already on in the fairways, the water moving back and forth in perfect high arcs, not a breath of wind. Not even the grass had water pressure troubles in Brentwood. He walked from the street down the service road toward the caddy shed, practicing what he was going to say. Halfway there, though, he noticed Sweet’s car wasn’t in its usual place in the parking lot. Sweet never parked anywhere but that same spot— he was more jealous of the spot than the Cadillac itself— and he was always at work before they turned on the sprinklers.
