All Hat (28 page)

Elizabeth went to live with Mary then, while Ray stayed with his father in the rented house on Locke Street. When Ray was big enough to run the compressor and haul the air lines and clean the spray guns, his father began to take him along on painting jobs. The first night he'd ever spent at Pete Culpepper's farm was after they'd painted Pete's barn and his old man and Pete had gotten into the rye to the point that the old man couldn't drive. Ray was maybe twelve and pretty much taken with the Texas cowboy. After that he would ride his bicycle the ten miles to the farm a couple of times a week to help out with the haying or the horses or just to sit around and shoot the breeze with Pete. In those days, Pete always had one girlfriend or another hanging around; sometimes they were nice to Ray, and sometimes they looked upon his presence as competition for Pete's attention and tried to drive him off. One even attempted to initiate him to the world of sex, but Ray had declined, partially out of respect for Pete and partially because the woman smelled, for some reason, like pickles. He found out later that she worked at the Bick's plant in town.

The summer Ray was thirteen, his peewee team was playing a tournament in Owen Sound and had made it to the finals. Ray was to pitch the championship game. His father, shooting pool in the old Royal Hotel in Milton, somehow heard of it and decided to drive up for the game. He was drunk when he left the bar and dead before he'd gone twenty miles, rolling his Chevy flatbed, with the compressors and hoses and ladders aboard, into a ravine just outside of town. After the funeral it was decided that Ray would go to live with his father's sister. Ray wasn't thrilled with the arrangement, and apparently neither was his aunt. When, after a month, he packed up his few belongings and moved out to Pete Culpepper's farm, nobody said a word in protest.

Ray drank his beer and sat and watched as the singer for the band did a sound check. The man was tall and lean, like a country singer should be, and he wore sideburns and a black cowboy hat and brand-new bluejeans.

Ray had another drink, and then he looked down the bar and directly into the face of the kid Paulie. He was wearing his porkpie hat and absently fingering the ashtray on the bar as he waited for some service. He must have just walked in. His eyes were downcast; he looked like a man who'd just lost his best bird dog.

The bartender brought over a bottle of Molson's, set it down, and took Paulie's money. After working the cash register he picked up the phone there and punched in a number. Paulie took a short sip from his bottle and then directed his attention to the TV.

Pete came back from the gents', unabashedly zippering his fly as he crossed the room, and sat back down. He took a drink of ale, and then Ray tapped his forearm with the back of his hand and gestured down the bar.

“We got a horse thief in our midst.”

“I'll be damned,” Pete said when he looked.

“The bartender gave him a beer, and then he made a phone call.”

“You don't say.” Pete took another drink of ale and then looked at Ray, who was sitting with his hands flat on the bar, his eyes dark and contemplative on the bartender.

In less than fifteen minutes the back door opened, and the bald man who'd taunted them at the auction sale entered. He looked at the bartender, and the bartender nodded toward Paulie. The man came at Paulie from behind, put him in a hammerlock before Paulie could move, and hustled him out the back door.

Pete looked at Ray and saw the angry resignation on his face. They drank off their beer, and as they got to their feet, the bartender approached.

“You guys had enough?”

“Enough of you, you fat fucking rat,” Ray said.

Sonny was out there, of course, in the back corner of the parking lot, against a rough wooden fence that separated the bar's property from the residential area beyond. The bald man had both of Paulie's arms twisted up behind his back, and Sonny had his cane in both hands and was working Paulie over pretty good with it, screaming that he wanted to know the whereabouts of his horse. Paulie's hat was lying on the ground by his feet. He had his head turned away from the blows, and blood was running down his face, but he wasn't saying a word.

Ray approached the bald man from the side and hit him on the temple as hard as he could with an overhand right. The big man let go of Paulie, and Paulie fell to the ground. The big man stayed on his feet, and he turned on Ray in a rage, his small pig eyes marked by surprise born of arrogance and then pure malice. Out of the corner of his eye Ray could see Sonny scrambling for his car.

“Where'd you get the balls?” the man asked, and he came on.

His first punch clipped Ray's forehead, and Ray lost his temper then and stepped inside the big man's advance and clubbed him with a half-dozen right hands, turning his shoulder into each punch, driving the big man back against the fence, breaking his nose, and knocking him down in the dirt. He would've hit him some more if Sonny hadn't stopped him by screaming his name.

When he turned, Sonny was standing maybe fifteen feet away and had an automatic pistol pointed at Ray. Sonny's chemical grin scared Ray a hell of a lot more than the gun. Ray put his arms out slowly to the sides.

“I knew it'd come to this,” Sonny said, his voice thin and reedy with nerves, the pistol actually shaking in his grip.

Ray saw Sonny's fingers twitch on the gun, and he knew he had to move. His eyes went to the fence, gauging the height. He was ready to leap when he heard Pete Culpepper's voice: “Take the kid and get in the car, Ray.”

When Ray turned back, he saw Pete standing at Sonny's side. Pete had a handful of Sonny's ponytail in his left fist, and he had the muzzle of his double-action Colt .44 pressed against Sonny's temple.

Sonny had a pained, frightened look on his face, and he was squinting in deference to the gun barrel against his head.

“Put the gun on the ground,” Pete told him. Sonny went to drop it. “Place it on the ground,” Pete snapped. “You want it to go off, you fool?”

Ray put Sonny's gun in his pocket and Paulie in his car. As he drove off, Ray could see Sonny and the bald man standing in the parking lot. Sonny was fuming, and the bald man was bleeding, and neither would look at the other. Ray smiled—he guessed that each was holding the other responsible for their predicament.

A couple of Ollies with no Stan to blame.

*   *   *

Ray drove Paulie to the hospital, and Pete followed in the pickup. The first person they saw when they walked into the emergency ward was Etta.

“Oh, my God,” she said when she saw Paulie's face. “What happened?”

“Sonny beat him with a cane,” Ray told her.

There was no doctor on duty, and they had to wait until one was summoned. Etta took Paulie into an examining room, where she and a nurse cleaned him up and took stock of his injuries. Pete and Ray sat in the waiting room and looked without interest at the magazines and waited for the doctor.

“Texas is looking better all the time,” Ray said.

When the doctor arrived Pete decided that there was no point in the two of them sticking around. After he left, Etta came out and sat with Ray while the doctor and the nurse tended to Paulie.

“How's he look?” Ray asked.

“He's gonna need twenty-five, thirty stitches. How do you know this kid?”

“I don't.”

Etta reached over and took Ray's right hand and looked at the skinned knuckles.

“He's crying in there,” she said. “He kept saying it's all his fault; he stole Sonny's horse.”

“I don't know whose fault it is, but it's not his.”

“He said Sonny pulled a gun on you.”

He looked at her and shook his head. She watched his eyes for a moment, but he looked away, and then she let go of his hand and left the room. She came back with alcohol and gauze and some Band-Aids, and she cleaned the cuts on his knuckles and dressed them.

“You don't need to be getting involved with Sonny again.”

“I know,” he told her.

“Just stay clear of him.”

“I couldn't figure out a way to do that tonight, Etta.”

She glanced toward the examining room, where Paulie's face was being stitched back together.

“Okay,” she said. “But from now on, just let him go. Sonny Stanton's gonna have to answer for himself one day. And when he does, it'll be to a higher authority than you, Ray.”

“Sounds like you've been reading your new Bible. But I'm not so sure about that.”

“I know you're not.”

Ray held up his right hand and examined the repair job. He flexed his fingers and felt the joints stiffening already.

“What about you?” he said. “You gonna take your own advice? You gonna let him have his way?”

“To hell with the farm.” She realized she was making the decision as she spoke. “In the end he'll win out anyway. It's all about money. If he wants it bad enough, he'll get it. I'm tired of the whole damn thing.”

“Being tired of it is not a good enough reason to let him win.”

“I don't want anything else to happen that's gonna encourage trouble between you and Sonny. His money will win that one too, and you'll end up back in jail. Or dead, if he's playing with guns now.”

Ray got to his feet and walked across the room. He took his cigarettes from his pocket and put one in his mouth, but when he turned back to her she shook her head and he put it away. He stood there watching her for a moment, in her green scrubs, her blue eyes steady on his.

“Pete's headin' back to Texas,” he told her. “I been thinking about tagging along.”

“I think you should.”

He nodded, and he didn't ask her why she thought that. He thought that he knew, and if he was wrong he'd rather not know he was wrong. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out Sonny's little automatic and handed it to her.

“Can you get rid of this for me?” he asked. “Sonny maybe went to the cops, like last time. I'm on parole—I get pulled over with this on me, I'm right back in stir.”

She took it without hesitation. He watched her eyes for a moment. He was hoping for a smile or something, he wasn't sure what. Something to tell him that things were the way they were because there was no other way for them to be.

“So Sonny wins—you can live with that?” he asked.

She looked away, and he could see that she wasn't any happier with the notion than he was. But when she turned back, her eyes were clear and her voice was even. “This isn't about what I can live with, Ray. It's about what you can live without.”

*   *   *

Ray took Paulie home with him to Pete Culpepper's spread. Stitched up, Paulie's face didn't look nearly as bad as Ray would have thought. There was a sizable gash across his left cheekbone and another above his left eye; other than that he had a few bruises and minor cuts. He'd be sore as hell in the morning, but it could have been a lot worse. No doubt it would have been a lot worse.

“You feeling all right?” Ray asked as they left the hospital lot.

“Yeah, not too bad,” Paulie told him.

Ray drove the back roads out of town, not knowing if the cops would be out for him, or if Sonny had rounded up a posse. It was a moonlit night, and as he drove he could see the cattle grazing in the fields and the stark, leafless limbs of the trees along the road silhouetted against the sky. He smoked a cigarette and offered one to Paulie, who declined.

“I'm really sorry,” Paulie said.

“Don't be sorry.”

“I'm glad Sonny didn't shoot you.”

“Hey, me too.”

When they got to the farm Pete was already in bed and asleep. Ray opened a bottle of rum, and he and Paulie sat in the kitchen and had a drink. The hound got up when they came in, and he walked directly to Paulie and lay down at his feet.

“What were you doing in town?” Ray asked.

“I left Dean and them,” Paulie said, looking into his glass, his eyes heavy. “I just didn't like it.”

“They still got the horse, I assume.”

“Yup.”

“How's Dean making out collecting semen?”

Paulie looked at Ray and smiled. “Not too good.”

“I bet.” Ray smiled back at Paulie.

“Who was the guy with you?” Paulie asked after a time. “The guy with the gun?”

“That was Pete Culpepper. You met him at Fort Erie.”

“He looked like a cowboy.”

“That's what he is.”

After the first drink Ray made another, but pretty soon Paulie's eyes started to flutter shut. Ray made him up a bed on the couch, and Paulie lay down and was asleep in a heartbeat. The hound lay down on the floor beside the couch and went to sleep too.

Ray took his drink out onto the porch and sat in one of the old ladderbacks, his boots up on the porch railing. The night was warmer than recent nights, and he saw now that it had clouded over since they'd driven home. There was a smudge of light in the clouds where the moon had gone to hide, and the air was heavy with the promise of more rain.

Well, the weatherman could do whatever he damn well pleased. This time next week, he and Pete Culpepper would be sitting on another porch in West Texas, drinking bourbon and branch water. Maybe eating some of that rattlesnake chili Pete liked to brag on.

Tonight had cinched it. Let Sonny have his way; let him use his money and his deceit and his nasty disposition to get what he wanted. In the end it wouldn't make him happy because Sonny didn't have it in him to be happy.

And if Etta was resigned to Sonny taking her farm, then let him have that too. Sonny was always going to get what Sonny wanted. He had his money, and he had his lawyers. So he could smack his women around and get away with it, and he could beat on kids like Paulie and get away with that, too. Well, let him. Ray didn't give a hoot in hell anymore.

“Goddamn it,” he said out loud.