Wayfaring Stranger: A Novel (36 page)

“That house you want to build in Santa Monica. Is there somewhere we can go look at them?”

“I have to go back to work.”

“I mean later.”

“Whatever you want to do is fine, Hershel.”

“There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

“No, not at all. I said everything will be just fine.”

His reddish-blond hair was freshly barbered, his face clean-shaven, his eyes clear and devoid of guile. “I saw that tank and those biplanes out there. Where’d y’all find that stuff?”

“A contractor supplies it,” she answered. She tried to repress her irritability. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know about these things. Why was she angry at him? “I’m sorry we’re so busy now.”

“I heard some people talking about how good you were this morning.”

“Jerry helped me a lot with the particular scene. It involved the fascists killing the Republican wounded.”

“You’re talking about the Spanish Civil War? Rosita’s father was mixed up in that, wasn’t he?”

She started to reply and realized his gaze had drifted away, out the tent flap.

“Is that Roy Wiseheart yonder?” he asked.

“He’s co-producer on the film,” she said.

“I didn’t know that.”

“He just showed up out of nowhere. He surprised me, too.”

“That boy sure gets around, doesn’t he?” Hershel said. He took a bite of his hamburger, lowering his eyes, his meaning, if any, concealed.

She was sweating, the veins in her scalp dilating. “How can an architect in Baton Rouge sketch a design for a house on the cliffs above Santa Monica or Malibu?” she said. “What would he know about the soil or the building codes or anything, for that matter?”

“A house is a house. This one will be two stories. It’ll have a baby room, too.”

“A
baby
room?”

“We’re not getting any younger.” He waited.

“I don’t know what to say, Hershel. You drop in with no advance notice and bring up these things in a public place and make decisions for me without asking—”

He was looking outside the tent flap again. “Wiseheart is getting into a biplane. That guy is something else.”

She glanced at her watch. Twenty-three more minutes before she went back to work. Ten more minutes of Hershel and she would be exhausted. “I have a difficult scene to do this afternoon. I can’t talk about these other matters now.”

“What ‘other’ matters are you talking about? I just wanted to show you the sketches.”

“This is the wrong place and the wrong time.”

“We’ve got to make some choices about where we live. Our rental arrangement with Jack Valentine got canceled,” he said.

“We’re being evicted by Jack Valentine?”

“Not exactly. He’s dead. He was beaten to death two days ago in Los Angeles.”

She stared at him stupidly.

“It was in all the papers. Someone did him in with a lead pipe down in the colored district. The real estate agent said we have to either buy the place or get out. Maybe it’s just as well.”

“I can’t follow all this. Just as well what?”

“It’s just as well about the house in River Oaks. I don’t think you like it there. I don’t, either. River Oaks isn’t our kind of neighborhood.”

“Not our kind of
neighborhood
? I knew you’d say something like that. I just knew it.”

“They look down their noses at us.”

“Then fuck them.”

“When did you start using that kind of language?”

“Just now.”

“Where are you going?”

“To lie down for a few minutes. Maybe I’ll take a sedative. Or maybe not. I’m very upset. It’s not your fault. I was just telling you how I feel. But I can’t take this anymore.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No. Finish your lunch.”

“Do they have a doctor here?”

“For God’s sake, sit down and give me a few minutes alone. Please do that, Hershel. Don’t argue. For once, don’t argue about things you don’t understand.”

She walked out the tent flap, avoiding the stares from the other tables, her magenta silk blouse rippling in the wind. She saw Roy Wiseheart’s open-cockpit biplane lifting off the dirt runway, his goggled face turning toward her. He was grinning. As he flew past her, he waved and pointed upward, as though telling her his destination lay somewhere beyond the heavens, and his plane made of wires and struts and fabric would take him there. Then he began climbing almost straight up, higher and higher, until his plane became a black speck and seemed to dissolve inside the sun. She continued toward her trailer, trying to remember what Roy had said about Jack Valentine. He needed to be taught a lesson? Was that it? Yes, those were Roy’s words.

She heard the plane’s engine sputtering, as though the fuel line had clogged. She shielded her eyes and stared up at the sound, then saw Roy coming out of the west, over brown hills that looked like clay sculptures of a woman’s breasts, his plane upside down. As he roared past her, low over her trailer, he let his arms hang loose from his body, his full weight hanging against the leather safety harness, his shadow and the shadow of his plane rippling like an effigy of a feathered serpent across a field of green corn.

Then she turned and saw Hershel behind her. He was watching the biplane disappear over the hills, a look of resignation on his face. “I didn’t come out here to cause you problems, Linda Gail,” he said. “I missed you, that’s all.”

Chapter

22

I
CAN’T TELL
you
what evil is. I’ll leave that to the theologians. But I can tell you what it looks like in human form. In this instance its name was Hubert Timmons Slakely, the uniformed cop who arrested and molested my wife.

We had left Grandfather at home and driven to a miniature golf course a few blocks away. There was still light in the sky, and it was cool enough for a jacket. The stars were out, and families were putting golf balls down felt-lined corridors into imitation greens outfitted with toy windmills and tiny bridges over watercourses and tunnels that plunked the ball into a cup. I had no reason to worry about Grandfather. He enjoyed listening to the radio by himself and reading his encyclopedias and putting up preserves from our garden or the vegetable market, and we had told the next-door neighbor where we would be in case of an emergency.

Earlier I’d said I didn’t expect to see Officer Slakely again. I was dead wrong. Wicked men do not go away of their own accord.

Grandfather was sitting up in bed with his spectacles on, the King James Bible propped open on his stomach, when he heard the house creak and felt the air in his room decompress. Someone had just opened and closed the front door.

“Is that you, Weldon?” he said.

A tall man wearing a pearl-gray short-brim Stetson and a sharkskin suit and a black shirt with red flowers on it appeared in the bedroom doorway. His hands were big, the back of the right hand tattooed with a string of blue stars. He was smoking a cigarette. “Howdy,” he said.

Grandfather nodded.

“Where’s your ashtray?” the tall man asked.

“I don’t have one,” Grandfather replied.

“You must be the former Texas Ranger.”

Grandfather didn’t reply.

“I didn’t figure you for a student of Scripture,” the visitor said.

“I was looking for the loopholes.”

The visitor’s cigarette was almost down to his fingers. “I got to remember that one. Where’s your grandson at?”

“He comes and goes. Mind telling me what the hell you’re doing in our house?”

“I’m Detective Hubert Timmons Slakely of the Houston City Police Department.”

“You knocked and walked in? Or you didn’t bother to knock and just walked in?”

“I knocked and thought I heard someone say come in.”

“Are you the one who arrested Rosita in Hermann Park?”

“It’s my opinion she got herself arrested.”

“When did you become a plainclothes?”

“I passed the test a few months back but only got promoted recently. It’s a little late for me, though. I’m fixing to retire and buy a beach home down by Padre Island.”

Grandfather worked himself up on the pillow, one hand propped behind him. The detective wore a half smile on his face. He unhooked the window screen and flipped his cigarette into the yard. “What’s an old fart like you doing by himself?” he said.

“Listening to the radio.”

“You
were
listening to the radio.” The detective clicked it off. “When are they due home?”

“Who?”

“Your grandson and his wife.”

“They didn’t tell me.”

“Then why did you just look at the clock?”

“I listen to
Lux Radio Theatre
every Sunday night.”

“It’s not Sunday.”

“That’s probably why it didn’t come on. What do you want with my grandson?”

“I’d like to make things easier for him and the little woman.” Slakely sniffed and pinched at one nostril. “What’s that odor?”

“A pot of stewed tomatoes and peppers I have on slow boil.”

“I think it’s you. Somebody hasn’t been taking care of you. You need somebody to wash you. You want me to take you to the tub and do it for you?”

Grandfather could see the neighbor’s lighted windows through the live oaks and pecan trees in the side yard. He could hear music playing on his neighbor’s radio and leaves tumbling across the yard, striking the screens.

“An old man is a nasty thing,” Slakely said. “He yellows the sheets and leaves his stink in everything he lies on.”

“How much do you want?”

“How much what?”

“Money.”

“I was thinking more in terms of stock options. You know what? I’m going to bring a washcloth in here and wipe you down.”

“Have you ever been shot?”

“A few have tried.”

“I killed six men. I wish things had worked out otherwise. But they didn’t give me much selection. Has it ever been that way with you?”

“Is there supposed to be some kind of message in that?”

“You could call it that. You’re about two seconds away from getting your head blown off.”

“Get up, old man. I’m taking you in the bathroom. I think you messed yourself.”

Grandfather peeled the sheet off his hand and forearm. “I had it converted for conventional ammunition in 1880. I shot one of Bill Dalton’s gang off a windmill with it. He fell straight down into the cattle tank.” He raised the barrel of the revolver so it was pointed at Slakely’s face. He cocked the hammer with his thumb.

“It looks like a relic to me,” Slakely said.

“If you can see into the chambers, you’ll notice there’s an ‘X’ cut in the nose of each round. It’s more or less the equivalent of getting hit with four pieces of buckshot. The exit wound is the size of a silver dollar. In your case, there won’t be an exit wound. Your skull and your brain matter will be on the wall.”

“Hold on.” Slakely stepped back involuntarily, trying not to raise his hand in front of him.

“I think you should not move around too much,” Grandfather said.

“I just came here to talk, not for trouble.”

“No, you’re here to bring grief to innocent people. You put me in mind of an egg-sucking dog. There’s no cure for your kind. Where’s your weapon?”

“I’m not carrying one,” Slakely said. He opened the flaps of his coat. His face was tight, the color gone, his pulse jumping visibly in his throat, like a damaged moth. “See? You need to put that thumb buster away.”

“Where’s your throw-down?”

“I don’t carry one. I don’t do that sort of thing.”

“Pull up your pants cuffs.”

Slakely tugged on his trouser leg, his face turned to one side, his forehead and profiled cheek shiny with moisture.

“Unstrap it with your left hand and let it fall to the floor,” Grandfather said.

Slakely leaned over and released the strap on a small holster attached to his right ankle. It contained a .32 revolver. The sight was filed off, the grips wrapped with black tape.

“Step away from it,” Grandfather said.

“Whatever you want. My visit here is according to protocol. There’s no need for—”

“How many times have you planted one of those?”

“I never had to. I never shot anyone. Not as a police officer.”

“I think you’re a liar. Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Because if I pull this trigger, I don’t want to see the look in your eyes. The men I killed all had the same look when they died. They knew their lives and souls were forfeit and there was no way they could change what was about to happen. That’s why I read Scripture. It allows me to forget that look. Then a simpleton like you shows up and taints my spirituality.”

“I apologize.”

“You’ve got another problem. Like most white trash, you’re disrespectful to your betters and proud of your stupidity and ignorance. If you didn’t have the nigras to feel superior to, most of y’all would kill yourselves. I’m done talking. You want to say anything before I shoot you?”

W
E CAME THROUGH
the front door seconds before Grandfather probably would have pulled the trigger. I wished Grandfather had killed him. There is no downside to the death of a man like Slakely, except the body is an insult to the earth in which it’s buried.

“Get that gun away from him,” Slakely said.

“What are you doing in our house?” I asked.

“I offered to take him to the bathroom. He pulled a revolver on me. This man belongs in an asylum.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I came here to make your problems go away. I’m not a bad man.”

“Yes, you are,” I replied.

“Tell him to point that gun somewhere else.”

“Grandfather, it’s all right,” I said.

He rested the revolver on his thigh and released the hammer. “This boy strikes me as highly excitable. He doesn’t seem to do well in manly confrontation. I think he should stick to abusing women and cripples and children and such.”

I picked up Slakely’s ankle pistol and holster and handed it to him. “Out of my house.”

“You need to talk to me, Mr. Holland.”

“I already know what you’re going to say.”

“I don’t think you do.”

Rosita was standing in the doorway, her eyes fixed so intensely on the back of Slakely’s head that he seemed to feel their heat. He turned and looked at her. “We meet again.”