All Hat (34 page)

“He's dead,” Pete told her.

“So are we,” Chrissie told him, “if we get found out.”

*   *   *

There was a cold wind off the lake and a buildup of dark clouds over the green hills of Pennsylvania on the far shore. Etta parked in the driveway and got out of the car and was hit with the frigid air. Pulling her jacket around her, she hurried to the house. It had been unseasonably warm at her place.

In the kitchen, Mary greeted her with a hug and told her to sit down for coffee. Etta sat at the old wooden table. There was the smell of baking in the air, but then there always was. Today it held the promise of cinnamon and brown sugar.

“We haven't seen you for a while,” Mary said. The coffee had been brewed, and she poured two cups.

“I'm sorry about that,” Etta said. “There's been a lot going on.”

Mary sat down. “I'll have some buns in about ten minutes.”

“Coffee's fine,” Etta said. And then: “How is she?”

Mary offered a look that suggested she was growing weary of the question.

“I'm sorry,” Etta said. “Am I supposed to stop asking?”

Mary sipped at her coffee, then left the cup on the table as she got up to have a look in the oven. She used an oven mitt to pull a pan halfway out, then slid it back and closed the oven door. She sat down again, apparently satisfied that things were progressing as they should.

“Ray was here.”

“Today?” Etta asked in surprise.

“Last week.”

“Oh.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Oh, I've seen him. He's about to get himself in shit.”

Elizabeth was sitting in the studio, wearing shapeless cotton pants and a heavy pullover and looking out the French doors. The room faced the lake, and the windows were inexpertly sealed, allowing the cold drafts to penetrate. She turned at the sound of Etta entering and smiled when she saw her.

“Hey,” Etta said.

When she moved closer she saw Elizabeth tense up, and she backed away at once, knowing that physical contact was not always welcome. Etta pulled a chair up and sat down. The paintings of the lake were scattered about the room; there must have been fifty of them in all. Etta looked from one to another, hoping to find some diverse subject matter and knowing in her heart that she wouldn't. There was a half-finished canvas on the easel.

“You've been busy,” she said.

“Not really,” Elizabeth said. She was looking out over the water again. “You've been gone a long time.”

“I guess.”

Elizabeth smiled as if they had shared a joke, and she continued to watch out the window. In spite of the wind the surface of the bay was flat, with the occasional ripple skipping across the water like a series of flat stones.

“Ray was here,” Elizabeth said.

“So I keep hearing.”

“I think I've disappointed him.”

“You know that's not true.”

“He expects me to be as strong as him.” The slight sad smile never left Elizabeth's face.

“It's not about strength. It's about happiness. I think he would like for you to be happy.”

“Happiness.” After a moment Elizabeth turned her head toward Etta. “What does Ray know about happiness?”

“Well, you know your brother. I'm not convinced he believes it's available to him. He's his own version of Robin Hood—he believes he can give it to other people.”

Elizabeth's smile was genuine this time. “Hooray for Robin Hood.”

Etta looked out over the lake and saw a man in a small aluminum punt heading out into the bay. The man appeared to be elderly, and he pulled stiffly at the oars, heading for a yellow buoy a couple hundred yards from the rock point that marked the west edge of the inlet.

When he reached the buoy the man tied the boat to it and then bent over the side of the punt and pulled up an iron anchor to which was attached a plastic water line and foot valve. The man unfastened the anchor and put it and the buoy in the boat and then tied the water line to the bow. Etta watched as he started back for shore, the punt pulsing slowly forward with each stroke of the oars. The water line formed a wide arc on the surface and followed him along.

“Have you been painting?” she heard Elizabeth ask.

“Not really.”

“How long has it been?”

“A long time. I haven't painted since … it's been a long time.”

“You haven't painted since I was raped,” Elizabeth said matter-of-factly. “Isn't it strange that I still paint and you don't?”

“I don't know that I would call this painting, what you do,” Etta said, looking about the studio. “You may have fallen into a bit of a rut, kid.”

“You can only paint what you feel. If you're honest, anyway. Every time I sit at the easel I start a different painting, and every time I paint the same scene. My hands are no longer connected to my brain. I want to be me, and yet I can't be.”

She stopped talking and was now watching the man in the aluminum punt. She was still smiling the wan smile but there were tears in her eyes.

“Do you know what I mean?” Elizabeth asked Etta.

“Not really.”

“He didn't leave enough of me to live my life.”

Etta left with that and a half-dozen apple cinnamon buns. Following the lake road, she drove slowly until her eyes dried and her anger settled into something more manageable, resentment maybe. When she reached the highway she went into a convenience store and bought her first pack of cigarettes in ten years.

She headed back north, smoking and punching the radio buttons in search of something that might improve her mood. Maybe Coltrane would help. Or Cohen. Hell, she'd give old Spike Jones a try if she could find him on the dial.

She wondered what it would be like to feel at peace with the world. She'd long held the suspicion that she was missing out on one extraordinary truth just around the corner. So she had kept turning corners, only to find more.

It was around one such corner that she'd found Ray. And while he was not the truth she'd been seeking, he was indeed one of the things she'd been missing. Not that he'd been looking for the same. With Ray, it was never a matter of spiritual enlightenment or a quest for one shining moment. His motives were a lot simpler than that. In fact, he was a lot simpler than that. With him it was all instinct, and that was one of the things she admired about him. It was also the thing that drove her crazy.

*   *   *

It was midafternoon and sunny when Etta pulled into the driveway at Pete Culpepper's place. She drove up beside Pete's pickup, parked, and got out. There was a crowd in the corral off the end of the barn. Pete was sitting on a wooden chair just outside the barn door; he had a western saddle on a stand in front of him and he was working oil into the leather with a cloth. Ray was standing beside him, leaning against the wall. Paulie stood at the head of a bay horse, and the jockey Chrissie was kneeling down beside the animal's flank, which was splotched here and there with various shades and shapes of brown. On the ground there were two buckets of water and several packages of hair-color kits from the drugstore, all opened and scattered about. A chestnut horse was standing to one side, tethered to a post, watching the proceedings. All six of them looked up as Etta walked over.

“That horse named Joseph?” she asked.

“Who the fuck would call a mare Joseph?” Chrissie demanded.

“Well, it's got a coat of many colors.”

Etta ducked down and slipped through the railing into the corral. When she straightened up, Ray was smiling at her. She shrugged just a little, holding his eyes, and then she looked at Pete and said hello.

“Nice to see you, Etta.”

She turned to the kid Paulie and said hello. She saw that he was healing nicely, what she could see of him under the oversized hat. Then she walked over and gave the various dye jobs on the mare a close scrutiny. Chrissie was staring at her like she might throw a punch. After looking at the mare, Etta turned to her and said, “I've forgotten your name.”

“Well, it ain't Annie Oakley,” Chrissie said.

Etta smiled at that, and she nodded toward the gelding. “That the color you're going for?”

Ray walked over then, thinking he might have to get between the two women. “We're not having a lot of luck. Horse hair is different than human hair.”

“Gee, do you think?” Etta asked. “Do the people at Clairol know about this?”

She walked around the other side of the mare, where her flank was still a fresh canvas, and had a long look. Then she glanced over at the gelding.

“The race is tomorrow?”

“Yup.”

“What's the weather?”

“Cool but sunny, that's what they're saying,” Ray said. “Why?”

Etta took another look at the mare. “I'll be back.”

She got into her car and drove off. Chrissie stood by the fence, her bottom lip pushed out just a little.

Ray regarded her a moment and decided to change the subject. “You make arrangements for the track pony?”

“Yup. Cost me a hundred bucks, but it's done.”

“Good,” Ray said. He stood in the corral, thinking. “This deck could use another joker. Paulie, any chance to get a message to Dean?”

Paulie squinted across the corral, his tongue between his teeth as he considered the question. “He doesn't like me to say it, but he calls his mom a lot.”

“Why don't we give that a try?” Ray said.

“Sure.”

Ray turned back to Chrissie, who was still sulking.

“What the hell does she figure on doing?” she demanded. “She thinks she's pretty goddamn smart.”

She turned to glare at Pete Culpepper. Pete looked at her and then at the mare with the twelve or thirteen splotches of different shades of brown on her flanks and at the packages of ladies' hair coloring on the ground. He got to his feet and put the cloth on the saddle he'd been oiling.

“I'll fetch a bottle,” he said.

The bottle was half empty by the time Etta came back, and they would open a second before she was through. She backed the Taurus up near the corral fence and unlocked the trunk, and they all watched as she took out various powders and water bottles and misters. Then she crawled through the rails into the corral and had a hard look at the gelding, who looked back at her like he was the only one there who knew what she was about to do. Turning to Ray now, she said, “I'm gonna need a table of some sort out here, and some warm water.”

Ray hauled an old harvest table out of the shed while Paulie went to the house for the water. Etta set everything up on the table and then walked to the mare and ran her hand over the horse's hide.

“Just what're you fixin' to do, ma'am?” Pete asked the question, but it could have come from any of them.

“Well, first I'm gonna mist the animal,” Etta said, her hand still on the mare. “Then I'll combine some burnt sienna, some alizarin crimson, maybe a touch of umber. Mix it good and then just sift it over the horse.”

“Speak English,” Chrissie said.

Etta looked over, and she smiled. “I'm gonna paint him.”

It was nearly dark by the time Etta got the color close to what she wanted. Chrissie pulled her horns in a little and helped out, mainly with keeping the mare still, allowing Etta to experiment. Paulie pulled another chair out of the barn, and he and Pete sat side by side in the sun along the barn wall. Ray knelt in the dirt along the wall beside them, drawing pictures in the dust with a stick.

“Why did you ask about the weather?” he asked at one point.

“I was worried it might rain. This is water-based paint,” Etta said. “I just thought you'd want your horse to finish the race the same color that he started.”

“That would be nice,” Ray agreed.

She went back to her mixing. “How you gonna make the switch?” she asked.

“Well, we got a plan,” Ray said.

“Is it gonna work?”

“Ask me Monday.”

Pete poured himself another drink and began to mutter into his glass.

“What is it?” Ray asked after a while.

“I'm still worried about Sonny.”

“Sonny'll be in the bar.”

“Maybe he will, and maybe he won't,” Pete said. “He could damn well show up at the paddock. He likes to make a show. And even Sonny's gonna recognize his own horse.”

Ray fell silent. Etta, mixing powders together, looked over at him. Then she glanced at Paulie, his battered face beneath the hat. She thought about Sonny's hand on her throat, Elizabeth's sad and resigned face.

“I'll take care of Sonny,” she said.

Pete looked at her. “How do you figure to do that?”

Etta stood up from her work and looked at him. “I'll take care of him, Pete.”

When she got the color close Ray walked over and untied the gelding and led him next to the mare for a closer comparison. Etta stood back and had a look, then shook her head and went back to the mix. While she was working she gave the gathering in the corral the once-over.

“Quite a gang you've assembled, Mr. Culpepper,” she said.

“You betcha,” Pete said. “Old Jesse James himself would cut a wide swath around this bunch.”

About the time Etta was finishing up, the stallion in the barn began to snort and whinny and soon after that kick the walls of his stall. Paulie went in and fed him some grain and watered him, and he settled for a bit but started up again. Etta got the mix the way she wanted it, and then she packed up her paints and put them in the barn.

“I'll do the racehorse in the morning,” she said. “I'll have to go into town for more paint. This is a bigger canvas than I'm used to.”

The mare was getting antsy now, sidestepping around the enclosure, bumping into Etta, nearly knocking her down. Then the horse in the barn started up again. Pete got to his feet and took the mare by the halter and then called Paulie over to hold her quiet while he walked around behind her. After a moment he looked at Ray.