Songs in Ordinary Time Page 64

  But their mother insisted they stay put. “They got no use for their brother. He’s a no-good, and they’re better off knowing it.”

  The boys watched with sober impassive expressions.

  She led Sonny and Heinze into the small kitchen, where she threw open every cupboard door, one after another, then went back and slammed them all shut. “See, I told you!” she said.

  “Where’s that go?” Sonny pointed to a door.

  “The cellar,” she said.

  “That where you keep the booze?” he asked, and she darted to place herself between him and the door. He reached behind her and pulled it open. He counted ten cases of beer stacked at the foot of the stairs.

  “That’s my private property,” she said from behind. “I can keep a hundred cases here if I want.”

  She had him there. For now, anyway. “What you’re doing here is wrong, Hildie. Not only that,” he said, pointing at her boys, “but what about them?”

  “You get out of here,” she growled, “and leave me the hell alone.”

  “I don’t know,” he sighed. “That’s just getting harder and harder to do lately with people.”

  They were getting into the cruiser when Heinze told Sonny he’d be right back. He’d just thought of a way Mrs. Carper could help them and maybe herself as well.

  The sun set a minute earlier every night. Here on the winding mountain roads it seemed dark already, even though it was only seven-thirty. Blue Mooney was on his way to his mother’s house. He had spent the last few days looking for work in Burlington. At least up there, the minute he said his name doors didn’t slam in his face. Two prospects looked good: one was for a moving company and the other on a demolition crew for a small company that specialized in large buildings. That was the job he wanted most. It not only paid twice what he’d gotten from Colter, but it contracted for projects all over the country. At first he thought the interviewer was a wise son of a bitch until he realized the guy was pushing him, testing his steadiness. He could tell the guy was impressed. He had given both places his mother’s telephone number. If he did get a job in Burlington he planned to surprise Alice Fermoyle one night at her dorm. He’d be all dressed up like a college guy himself in a suit and a tie, and he’d hand her a dozen long-stemmed red roses and take her out to eat in the classiest restaurant in Burlington.

  As he came up the last hill to his mother’s house, two cars loaded with kids roared past. His hands tightened on the wheel. Both cars slowed as they approached the house. The bug light was off, so the cars drove on. Smiling, he pulled into the driveway.

  His youngest brother, Carl, was playing cards. His other brother, Peter, lay on the floor watching television. They glanced up warily as he greeted them. “Where’s Ma?” he asked, hearing her voice like a low tremble in the walls.

  “In there,” Carl said, pointing toward the kitchen.

  “She’s mad as hell,” Peter said. “She’s tryna get a job.”

  “No kidding,” he said, grinning.

  “Where you been?” Carl wanted to know.

  “All over.” He smiled, pleased that he’d been missed. The older they got, the better he liked them, though he was amazed the way she was dressing them up in chino pants and button-down shirts, trying to make them look like town boys. At least they didn’t have crew cuts. He knelt down and gave Peter a playful jab in the shoulder.

  “Ow!” Peter cried, shrinking back.

  Outside, a car honked its horn, then drove off. Maybe someone he knew had seen his car. “Here, hit me back,” he offered, hiking up his sleeve. “Go ahead. Hard as you can. Come on!” He laughed as Peter pummeled his arm. “See, I can take it. I’m not crying ‘Ow, ow, ow, ow’ like some faggot. Come on. I’ll take the two of you.” He hooked his arm around Carl’s legs and pulled him onto the floor. He covered his head and giggled as they began to tickle him. It was an old game. In the entire world, only these two little boys knew he was ticklish. “Oh God,” he squealed. “Oh God. Stop it! Stop it!”

  They were laughing so hard they kept collapsing onto him. “You’re the faggot,” they gasped, scrabbling their fingers under his arms and down his sides.

  “No, no, I’m not,” he cried. “You are.”

  “You are!” they said.

  Outside, a car had pulled in alongside the fence. A horn honked for the third time. He sat up so suddenly that the boys rolled onto the floor. But by the time he got to the door, the car had raced off, its tires spinning dirt and gravel back against the fence slats. “Hildie!” someone shouted from the car. He ran into the kitchen, where his mother was talking on the phone.

  “Somebody’s here,” she said, holding his stare. “I gotta go.” She hung up and lit a cigarette.

  “Ma, what’s going on? They’re out there honking their horns and calling your name.”

  She picked a shred of tobacco from the tip of her tongue. She took a long, steadying drag. “What do you want?” she said, exhaling smoke through her mouth and nose.

  He explained what had just happened. If they did it again, he said, he was going out there with the sledge hammer, and then, remembering, he smiled and gestured behind him. “But the kids said you’ve been looking for a job. That’s great, Ma.”

  “Yah? And did they tell you why? Did they tell you how the police ride by here every five minutes, how one’s probably parked up in the grove right now?” she growled as she stepped toward him now, jabbing her finger in his chest. “They tell you how the Chief and a cop went through the house looking for that electric mixer you stole?”

  “What’re you talking about? What electric mixer?”

  “You’re so damn worried about them in there, how do you think they felt seeing their whole house searched?”

  “What mixer? What the hell’re you talking about?” he bellowed in her face, enraged at the thought of cops humiliating his family.

  She told him about the break-in at the appliance store and since then the steady stream of cruisers by here. He swore he hadn’t broken into the appliance store, or anywhere else, for that matter. “Not since the gas station,” he added quickly, before she could say it.

  “Just like Kyle, you’re nothing but trouble, Travis, and I can’t have you around. It’s that simple.”

  He laughed. “All you ever believe about me is what people tell you.”

  “I tried. But there’s a limit, and I’m at it now.”

  “You tried! Yah, you tried real hard when you let them send me to reform school!”

  “Let them! What the hell could I do? You and your brother were always stealing and breaking windows and—”

  “Ma! I was eight years old! The same as them in there. You could’ve done something! You could’ve tried!”

  “What? What could I have done?” she screamed.

  “You know, all I ever wanted those five years was one thing.” He looked at her. “Just one thing.”

  She stared up at him.

  “You know what that was?” he asked, but she didn’t even blink. “You don’t want to know, do you?” he said with a bitter laugh. He was both relieved and embarrassed. He felt flat. There was a loaf of bread on the counter, so he took a slice, then opened the refrigerator for the butter. All but the top shelf was jammed with beer bottles. He spread the butter, determined to ignore the beer. The police couldn’t be too much of a harassment, he thought. “How’s Kenny?” he asked, trying to get things back on track. Kenny was Carl and Peter’s father. She called him her husband, but he doubted there’d ever been a marriage. Summers, Kenny was a logger in Maine. Off-season, he collected unemployment and fixed cars on the side. But at least he was around some of the time for Carl and Peter. When Kenny was here, Blue stayed away. They’d never gotten along. His own father had died in a roofing fall soon after Blue’s birth.

  He sat at the table and told her how Sonny, like everybody else in town, had it in for him. It’d be a help, he said, if she’d just listen to his side of it for once. He tried to explain what had happen
ed with his DI, but it was hard because she kept going to the window, and then she’d pace back and forth, smoking and sighing. He was losing his train of thought. He didn’t want to get her mad again. So far she’d let him do all the talking, and it felt good. He was telling her things he’d put out of his thoughts for months, years even. He was hopping so from subject to subject that he was afraid she was getting confused. She looked distracted. A couple of times she went into the other room and yelled at the boys to turn down the television.

  He smiled now as she passed him. In spite of her harsh way and the bad dye job, she was a good-looking lady. It pleased him that they had the same wide mouth and square chin. She stood by the window again. She leaned forward as if peering at something, then came quickly to the table and sat across from him. Maybe it would be the same with Alice Fermoyle. It would take persistence. He was just going to have to keep coming back and coming back, no matter the obstacles.

  “I think I got a job in Burlington, Ma,” he said. He told her about the demolition company, exaggerating their interest in him.

  “You shouldn’t have screwed up with Colter,” she said. She sat way back in the chair and looked toward the window.

  “Yah, well, listen, Ma, I gave them your number here to call.”

  She glanced back at him. “You’re not moving in! I told you that!”

  “No. I just want you to take a message, Ma. That’s all.” He smiled. “You know, just take a message.”

  She chewed her lip. A car was slowly passing the house. Its headlights shone on the wall behind her, and she looked up. “I just want you to know…” she began, then shook her head with frustration.

  “What? What?” he kept asking, a knot in his throat.

  She had been twisting her fingers, and now she stared at him, both defiantly and fearfully. “That electric mixer. I mean if it was for me I could understand. You could give it to me. Then, then I could understand. It would make sense.” She kept wetting her lips. She tried to swallow, and her eyes widened. “Do you have it?” she asked, her voice so thin it seemed to seep out of her. “Or maybe you could go get it and bring it here.”

  He rubbed his eyes a minute. They hurt. Right now everything hurt, yet he couldn’t help laughing. “You’re a real sweet ma, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Well…” She shook her head, and sighed, and now couldn’t look at him.

  They both looked toward the window as a car braked to a squealing stop in front of the house. He stood up. “What would you do with the mixer, Ma? Make me something? A cake or a pie or something?” He chuckled. “Tell you the truth, I didn’t even know you wanted a mixer. But now that I do, I’m gonna get you one.” He went to the front door and flipped the switch. The bug bulb flooded the little porch and the yard and the road with warm yellow light.

  “Hey!” he called down to the three couples in somebody’s daddy’s big new red sedan. “How much you need?”

  “Three six-packs,” called back the girl in the front seat. Her short blond hair was cut like a boy’s.

  “Be right out!” he said, aiming his finger like a gun. The girls in the car laughed. The boys watched warily.

  “No!” his mother said, turning off the light and slamming the door shut. “You can’t.”

  “Ma! There’s customers out there.”

  She followed him into the kitchen, continuing to insist no, he couldn’t, not tonight, the cops: they kept coming by looking for him.

  He had filled his pockets and now he was loading more cold bottles into his arms. “They’re not just looking for me, Ma,” he said, opening the door. Carl and Peter watched from the couch. “They want me with an electric mixer, right? That’s your deal with them, right? So why not do a little business? Don’t let me stop you, Ma!” he called as he went down to the car and unloaded the bottles into the blonde’s lap. “Whatever you got,” he told the driver, who held out a five-dollar bill.

  “Hey!” the driver called as he started back toward the house. “What about my change?”

  “Oh yah!” He turned and fished the rest of the bottles from his pockets. “Here you go!” One after another he hurled the bottles, smashing them on the car. Inside, the girls screamed and covered their faces. Beery crystals of foamy glass ran down the side of somebody’s daddy’s brand-new car.

  Headlights flared on from the nearby grove. And then came the red roof lights with sirens as three cruisers raced in to surround the red sedan.

  “Sorry,” he said with upturned palms to the approaching policemen. “No mixer. I just been too busy selling beer to these minors here.” He looked back at his mother’s cold face in the doorway. His brothers watched from the window. “Sorry, Ma. But maybe you can go back to business now.” He saw Officer Heinze wince, and he laughed. “That was the deal, right? Sorry, beautiful,” he called, bending to the blonde, who sobbed out her name to one of the policemen.

  “Come on,” Heinze said, nudging him toward his cruiser.

  “Hey! Where’s my hero?” he said, looking around. “Where’s Sonny?”

  Heinze looked at him and took a deep breath. “His wife just died,” he said as he clamped handcuffs over his wrist.

  “Aw, too bad! I’ll bet that really broke old Sonny’s heart, huh?” He chuckled with the image of Eunice Bonifante’s fist plunged down the back of the good Chief’s trousers.

  “You bastard! You no-good son of a bitch!” Heinze cried, pummeling the side of his head, the blows so sudden and sharp that he sank to his knees, his eyes rolling as his head bobbed up and down. He toppled onto his side.

  His mother stepped back, and with the click of a dead bolt, the door closed, and all the windows came down in the little gray house, and then all the shades, and the yellow bug light went out, and then it was dark, mercifully dark.

  The morning paper had been thrown on the dewy grass and now the wet pages kept tearing as Robert Haddad looked for the obituaries. Here it was. Carol Stoner. The picture was of a younger, happier woman, whose smile seemed to mock him. Her policy was for twenty thousand dollars. Every time the phone rang he held his breath and looked toward the kitchen, where Astrid worked at the table. Sonny wouldn’t call until after the funeral, so he had a few days, anyway. First off, he’d tell him the company needed a death certificate; then he’d explain how the submission and processing were often delayed by red tape. But the Chief couldn’t be put off for too long. Haddad figured he might have a week, two weeks, a month at most, and then what? Where the hell was he going to get twenty thousand dollars? Of course, this whole thing was eventually going to blow up in his face. Hadn’t he known that? Now he needed a big hit. What had he been thinking? Holy shit. He’d leave, that’s what he’d do, just start driving; but she’d never come. No, this had been his big chance. It just wasn’t fair. Here she was, happy with him for the first time since their wedding night, oblivious to the shame and ruin that lay ahead. Okay. Okay. He had to stay calm and try to think straight. There had to be a way to put this all back together. And once he had, everything would be on the up and up. Everything. He wouldn’t put so much as a penny of petty cash into his pocket. The thing was…the difference here…the reason he deserved a chance to set this straight was that he wasn’t a criminal. It had all been circumstance, lousy timing, one bad break after another. Same thing had happened to Jimmy Saultner at the Chevy dealership, plowing sales receipts into the big new house, the snooty wife, the kids’ prep schools, the girlfriend’s surgery, cover here, patch up there, until the bank’s knocking on the front door while Jimmy’s sucking a hose down in the garage. Well, not him, no sir. He’d use his head and wrench this runaway life back on track. What he needed here was a big hit. A very, very big hit. And from then on, no more. He’d take his lumps, get another job—selling used cars, mopping floors if he had to. Hell, he wasn’t proud.\

  Astrid wandered in again from the table, where she had been making lists of people to invite to her soap parties. She planned to have one a week. Fifty a year. There’d
be refreshments, door prizes, games, entertainment. What did he think? she mused, her rhinestone-studded glasses slipping down her nose as she studied the list for her first party. “I have so many names,” she sighed, “but what if I don’t really know them?” Looking up, she frowned. “Bobby, what’s wrong?”

  “Mrs. Stoner died,” he said, gesturing at the paper. “The Chief’s wife. They’re policyholders.”

  She kissed the top of his head. “Well, aren’t you something, caring so much for your customers.” She pointed to the picture on the page opposite the death notices. “I met him,” she said, reading the caption: “‘Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland Hinds, co-chairs of the hospital’s annual Winter Ball.’ He came in the store once.”

  “He’s president of the Atkinson Savings Bank,” Haddad told her, adding, as she scribbled the name onto her list, “It’s the second-largest bank in the state.”

  “Might as well go for the big ones!” Astrid laughed, dotting the i with a flourish.

  “That’s right!” he said loudly, because suddenly the room seemed swollen with noise and turbulence.

  Mount’s Funeral Home was crowded with mourners. The lot was full, so cars had begun to park on adjacent streets, some of which were no-parking zones, but no one complained or called the police.

  Alice waited in the long line that moved slowly into the old brick building. She wore her graduation dress and her squeaky heels. She chewed the edge of her thumbnail, then winced when it tore too close to the flesh. She hated this. She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to see Mrs. Stoner’s corpse, and dreaded seeing Lester again. She’d been the first person he called.