Cold in July (5 page)

Rest of the day I worked on frames by myself and had James
and Valerie stay up front. There wasn’t that much work for them up there, and I
really could have used one of them on the frames, but I wanted to be left alone
and I wanted to stay away from bullshit conversation. Talk about the weather
and the Dallas Cowboys wasn’t going to cut it today. It would only remind me I
was putting up a veneer against the real concerns, and that would be worse.

About four-thirty, I was working on a limited-edition print,
putting 100 percent rag matt around it, when the phone rang. James answered and
said it was for me.

It was Price.

“There may be a problem,” he said.

“What kind of problem?”

“Ben Russel. Freddy’s father. He got out of Huntsville
yesterday. He knows his son is dead, knows he was killed in a burglary, and
word is he’s coming to the funeral. He could be dangerous. Don’t go to the
funeral.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Stay away from Ben Russel, Mr. Dane. He’s dangerous. You
being at his son’s funeral would just make matters worse. You stay home and
maybe he’ll just let things be and move on. He probably doesn’t care one way or
another about the boy. His type is vengeful. Just looking for an excuse.”

“Thanks for the advice, Price.”

“Heed it, Dane. Trust me on this.”

I hung up and went back to my matting. I backed the print
and got a piece of no-glare glass for it, but found I couldn’t make it fit the
frame. My hands didn’t work right.

I had James finish it. I drank a cup of coffee I didn’t
need, then went to the bathroom to think. I tried to picture Ben Russel and
imagined him long and lean with a crew cut and a scar on the side of his face.
I figured he had a gravelly voice and was the kind of guy that had killed a
fellow inmate in prison with a spoon he had sharpened in metal shop. I could
imagine the warden talking to him when they let him out, telling him, “Go
straight, Russel,” And I could imagine Russel thinking, “Yeah, soon as I finish
a little job in LaBorde.”

I washed my face and went home early.

8

Ann picks Jordan up from day school every day when she gets
off work, so when I got home he was sitting at the table eating a bologna
sandwich. Mayonnaise was dripping out of it and there was a circle of the stuff
thick as mad dog foam around his mouth. The mayonnaise jar and the table were
covered with it too.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, son.”

I looked at the table and the spoon and the jar and went
over and got a paper towel and cleaned up best I could. I made a point of not saying
anything to him about the mess. Usually I jumped him. But I was trying to put
things in better perspective this day, and suddenly the mess seemed a lot less
major than it might have the day before. And for that matter, who was I to cast
the first stone. I wasn’t that neat and organized now, and I was thirty-five.

I saw that Ted and his boys were in the living room,
painting away. They had the floor covered in plastic sheets, but there was very
little splashed on it. They had their backs to me, and as I had come in through
the garage, they hadn’t noticed me yet. I watched them work a minute, then
looked at my watch. Six o’clock. That was one good thing about hiring a man who
worked for himself. He worked until the job got done, not until five o’clock. Besides,
a painter had to take work where he could find it. They didn’t get the offer on
a daily basis.

I kissed Jordan on the head and he told me a story his
teacher had read the class that day. It was about Clifford the Big Red Dog. He
liked the story a lot. He retold it loudly and with lots of gestures. During
this time Ted and his sons turned to look and I gave them a nod. When Jordan
finished his story, I poured him a fresh glass of milk to spill, and went into
the living room for a full view of the work.

They looked to be about finished. The room was strong with
the smell of paint, a smell I normally despised, but today it seemed fresh as a
spring morning. And the old couch was gone. The new one was in the center of
the room covered with a plastic sheet as I had instructed.

Ted wiped his hands on a rag he had in his back pocket and
came over. “I’d shake,” he said, “but I might get some paint on you. We’ll be
out of your hair in about an hour or so. If you can keep your boy off the wall,
it’ll look better than new soon as it’s completely dry.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

“Locksmith came by. He put the bill in the kitchen.”

“I didn’t see it,” I said.

“It’s stuck to your refrigerator with one of those fruit
magnets. I looked. He overcharged you. He said he’d be back tomorrow to try and
finish. And, you can see the couch came.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re all right, I suppose?”

“Sure.”

“Well, get so you think you aren’t, give me a call. Hell,
remember how we used to talk about things in high school? I’m still here. We
ought to just get together for a beer anyway. It’s been a long time.”

“You’re right, it has.”

Ted went back to work and I went over to the door to look at
the lock. It was pretty serious looking. Good. And there was a sliding
grillwork that could be pulled across the glass at night and locked in place,
just in case a rhino charged you. I didn’t know if I felt secure or stupid. The
only thing I knew for certain was I wasn’t going to mention Ben Russel to Ann,
least not now.

I got the portable television out of the storage closet in
the kitchen, put it on the drainboard and plugged it in. I tuned in Bugs Bunny
and left Jordan watching that and drinking the milk he hadn’t spilled yet.

I found Ann in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed,
her back to me. Her elbows were on her knees and her hands were supporting her
head as if it had grown too heavy. I closed the door and sat down beside her.

“I hate the couch,” she said.

“Sorry. I can take it back.”

“You should have asked me what I wanted. Don’t we always do that?
We want something, we make up our minds together. Right?”

“I just wanted the other one out of the house.”

“You could have waited on a new one until I could look with
you.”

“I’m not thinking clearly.”

“It wasn’t very considerate of you.”

“I’ll have them take it back. Could we talk about something
besides the couch?”

“I just don’t like it, that’s all.”

“You talk to the police?” I asked.

“You’re changing the subject, but yes, I talked to them.
Lieutenant Price was very nice. It went quickly.”

“Want to go out to dinner?”

“Jordan made himself a sandwich.”

“I thought maybe Dorothy could keep him. She owes us a
babysitting, doesn’t she? What say just you and I go? Mexican food maybe.”

“I can call her and see.”

“Good. I’ll wash up and shave. I feel sort of grungy.”

“Brush your teeth too. Your breath has hair on it… Do you
really think we need bars on the doors and windows? Alarms? Did you see that
bill?”

“No, I haven’t seen the bill. But right now, the way I feel,
I wish I could put this house on Mars.” I got up and started out.

“Richard. I still don’t like that couch. It looks like it
was designed by that guy who did the sets for Alien.”

“It goes tomorrow,” I said.

          
· · ·

After dinner, we picked up Jordan and got him to bed early,
and Ann and I made love. It was good. Our sex life had never turned bitter, but
it had turned quick, spaced between too many obligations and performed far too
often when we felt the least like it.

But this wasn’t like that. It was like the old times when we
couldn’t wait to get at each other. It reminded me of college and the back of
my old battered ‘61 Ford; worn out when I got it, worn out more by my neglect.
We used to do all our loving in the backseat of that car at the drive-in
because we both had strict dorms and roommates. I remembered that Ford with the
sort of reverence a monk reserves for a shrine.

I lay there with Ann asleep on my arm and looked at the
space between the curtains and saw one of the burglar bars banded against the
window glass like a strip of cancer across a pale eye. I looked at the bar
until I made it go away. I made everything go away. I imagined us in the
backseat of the old Ford with pieces of ripped roof cloth dangling down like
limp stalactites. It was a cold December night, not the dead of July, and Ann
and I had the old patchwork quilt across us and the Ford’s windows were all
frosted.

I lay there believing that for a long duration, traveling
backwards by mental time machine to a time when all was right with the world
and I thought Ann and I would live forever and that our future would always be
as bright as the chrome on a brand-new Buick.

9

So the next day the alarms were installed and the couch went
back and Ann and I picked a new one. And by the next day I was able to tell
myself it was time to get on with life, and it was foolish of me to consider
seeing Russel buried. That wouldn’t make things any better, and I just might
see his old man, and I didn’t need that.

But on the other hand, what if no one went to the funeral
but the grave diggers? That didn’t seem right either. Even the executioner
would be more welcome, I thought. I had at least seen his face, and it was a
face that would be branded on my memory forever.

Still, I wasn’t going. And I wasn’t going all the while I
drove over there, telling myself I was only driving by. And I wasn’t going when
I parked under some oaks across the blacktop from the graveyard, and I wasn’t
going when I got out of my car and leaned on it, looked across at the burying.

It wasn’t funeral weather. It was hot and gummy. The oaks I
was under didn’t provide much relief. It was as if they were dripping hot ink
instead of shadow, but I knew if I stood out of that shadow, out in the bright
sunlight, it would be even worse; molten honey. For this kind of business it
should have been rainy and cold and the graveyard should have been full of
people dressed in black, at least some of them crying. But it wasn’t like that
for Freddy Russel.

What he got were two grave diggers, and a hired preacher
waiting impatiently beside the cemetery fence in a bright, black Buick with the
door open fanning himself with what looked like a church tract, which was
probably its best use.

The grave was already dug, most likely the day before, and
there was a contraption over the hole that was used to crank the coffin down.
One of the grave diggers wore a Hawaiian shirt with red and yellow parrots on
it. He and the other man were laughing about something, probably an off-color
joke about preachers, and they worked very fast, cranking at the rig, lowering
Freddy down. For all they cared the coffin could have been empty.

When they had the coffin in the hole they waved the preacher
over, and the preacher stood by the grave and cracked his Bible and started
reading. When he finished, he said a few words, and damn few at that, and
wrapped it up with an “amen.” The whole thing had all the conviction of a
hooker’s lovemaking. The preacher checked his watch and made for the Buick,
cranked it, and he was out of there. Probably had a late free lunch somewhere.

I was about to follow suit when an old, blue Ambassador
drove up next to the cemetery fence and a big guy got out and stood beside it
watching the grave diggers toss dirt on the box. He lit a cigarette, turned and
saw me. He looked to be in his late fifties, slightly paunchy, but handsome in
a workingman sort of way. He stood there smoking his cigarette and staring at
me, then he gave up on the smoke, put a heel to it, and started across the
road.

As he neared, I saw that he was older than I first thought.
Perhaps his late sixties. But it hadn’t hurt him much. His face had the look of
a comfortable, old shoe, and there was something about the way he walked that
defied age; weary confidence preceded him like the figurehead of a great ship.

“You’re Dane aren’t you?” he asked as he came to my side of
the road.

My pulse quickened. I knew who he was, though he wasn’t the
fantasy image I had conjured two days before.

“Yeah, you’re Dane,” he said, answering his own question.
“You know me?”

“I’ve got a hunch,” I said.

“I know you. I’ve made a point of it. When I came to town,
first thing I did was ask around. People told me what I wanted to know. Said
you got your picture in the papers a lot. Good citizen stuff. I went to the
newspapers and asked to see their morgue, said I was interested in local
history, said I was a writer researching a book. I saw your picture in quite a
few issues. Big man here in LaBorde, Dane. And by the way. You take a good
picture.”

“It won’t make it any better for you, but I didn’t want to
kill your son. I had to.”

“You’re right. I don’t feel any better. Good of you to come
out though, so you could see the shit go into the hole. Real nice of you.”

“He broke into my house, for God’s sake. He had a gun. He
tried to kill me. I shot him in self-defense.”

“I don’t think that sounds like him. He was my only son.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That tidies it up. I feel better already, you having said
you’re sorry. You have a son, don’t you?”

I felt a tingle at the base of my skull, as if some kind of
cold borer worm were working itself inside my head.

“Ought to be about four now. I read the birth announcement.
Nice name, Jordan. And I like your wife’s name too. I had an aunt named Ann.
She got hit by a truck.”

“Russel, listen to me—”

“People around town I’ve talked to say your boy looks a lot
like you, that he’s really something. God, wouldn’t it be awful if something
happened to him?”