God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (14 page)

T. D. thanked him and all the others, and promised to
look into it. He picked up the paper and read the story again.

"A 22-year-old construction worker was
killed yesterday when he apparently slipped and fell to his death at
Holy Redeemer Hospital.

"Leon Hubbard, 22, of 25th Street in
God's Pocket, was taken to the hospital's emergency room but,
according to police, he was dead on arrival."

Between calls, T. D. had
Brookie Sutherland find out who'd written the story. "I'll have
it for you in two minutes," he said. T. D. looked at his feet
and thought about the people who had called. For most of them, it was
the only personal contact with the newspaper they'd ever have. They
were tough, ignorant people, but he'd heard something in their
voices—every one of them—when they'd realized who they were
talking to. A long time after Leon Hubbard was forgotten, they'd
remember T. D. Davis had spoken to them personally on the telephone.
That's the way neighborhood people were.

* * *

Old Satchell, the morning bartender, was in bed with
his liver problem, so McKenna was left shorthanded again, and had—to
open up himself .The Hollywood opened at seven every morning but
Sunday, and did half its business before noon. Post-office workers,
the night shift at the refineries—oil and sugar—those people came
out of work when the sun was coming up. They walked outside, tired,
when the rest of the city was just getting started, and it felt like
they'd borrowed time against the day, and most of them would never
get used to that. Some of them said they liked it, but when they had
days off they slept at night like everybody else.

The crowd at the Hollywood had lasted right up to
closing time, and McKenna had gone home without sweeping up or
washing the glasses. He'd put the jar with the money to bury Leon in
the refrigerator with the microwave cheeseburgers that nobody but
strangers ever ate, emptied the cash register, and locked the door.
McKenna was tired at two-thirty, and he was tired four hours later
when he came in to get the place ready.

And it was no shot of sudden energy to see Ray
standing outside of the front door in a neck brace and that green
sport coat he always wore, waiting for him to open. "Don't you
ever sleep, Ray?" he said. "Fuck yes," he said,
answering his own question, "you sleep in the bar all the time."

Ray grabbed the side of his neck brace and described
the route the pain was taking through his body. He said if he weren't
the kind of man he was, he could sue the Hollywood for everything it
had.

"Now," McKenna said, "do it now .... "
He walked past him, through the door, and closed it in Ray's face.
"Open at seven,” he said, and Ray put his hands and his nose
flat against the glass to wait, so every time McKenna looked up he
saw Ray stuck there like some kind of homeless bug, and finally he
unlocked the door and said Ray could wait inside if he wouldn't talk
about his neck while McKenna was trying to count the money.

And while he was holding the door for him, a woman's
voice screamed from somewhere across the street.

McKenna said, “What the fuck, at this time in the
morning?"

Ray squinted. "It's
labor pains," he said. He looked at his pocket watch. "I'd
say they had about half an hour to get her to a hospital .... "

* * *

The drug that the doctor had given Jeanie lasted
until six in the morning. She woke up then and pulled away from
Joyce, smoothly, not to wake her up, and slipped into the bathroom.
Her sister was snoring softly, and she closed the door behind her.
The medicine left her heavy-headed, and she brushed her teeth slowly,
looking at herself in the mirror, thinking she didn't look old enough
to have a twenty-four-year-old son. Wondering if what had happened to
him would show on her face. She'd heard of that, women turning old
overnight. She didn't think she was that type.

She washed her face,
slapping her cheeks to get some color, and then, without thinking
about it, she began to put on her makeup. A base, then a little blush
in the cheeks. A natural shade of lipstick over a colorless base, eye
liner, then shadow over one eye. She was about to dust the other eye
when she noticed the door to Leon's room. It was closed, but not all
the way.  She stepped away from the mirror and pushed, and the
door opened a foot, a foot and a half, and she stood still, afraid to
go any farther or touch the door again, and then she saw him lying in
the bed, and for just a little while she thought it was Leon.

* * *

The scream woke Mickey up first. He was closest, and
it was aimed at him. She was standing in the doorway to the bathroom,
looking at him, screaming. It took him a second or two to figure out
where he was.

Then there was a sister behind her, looking scared
and angry, and then he heard the other one running up the stairs. She
came in out of breath, carrying a tennis racket so old it could have
been a snowshoe, looking side to side for somebody to swing at. They
turned Jeanie around so she wouldn't have to look at him, and that
seemed to calm her down. "It's all right," one of them
said, "it's all right now."

Mickey sat up in bed, keeping himself covered with
the sheet; The only thing he had on was a pair of shorts, and he
didn't want Joyce and Joanie seeing him in his underwear. "It
must of been the light," Jeanie said. "I got up and looked
in Leon's room, and I thought it was him. I looked in there and I
thought it was Leon in his bed .... "

The sisters led her out of
the doorway. Mickey was still sitting in bed with a floating head and
a sheet that smelled like cat shit wrapped around his waist. When
they closed the door he got up and put on the pants he had left on
the floor.

* * *

She couldn't point to a particular time when she
began to think that Leon hadn't died the way the police said he did.
When the thought came to her organized, though, so she could
recognize it, it was half an hour later over breakfast.

Joyce had fixed waffles and opened up a fresh box of
powdered donuts, which she and Joanie used to move the pieces of I
waffle around in half an inch of maple syrup, the way other people
use toast to push eggs. Jeanie sat between them, poking at her food,
thinking like a slide projector. She'd stare at the sink, hearing
everything Joyce and Joanie were talking, Mickey was moving around in
the bathroom upstairs—but she'd stay frozen on the sink until
gradually she'd remember Leon there, remember how he'd bent over it
one night to eat dinner. And a few minutes later she'd find herself
staring at the refrigerator, or the grease spot on the wall where he
rested his head. It was like being in the same place at two different
times.

She saw him nervous, and in a hurry, and she saw him
one day in the street when he'd suddenly dropped behind a car to
hide. And then, while she was sitting at the table with her sisters,
it came to her, in words, that Leon didn't just let something drop on
his head and kill him.

And when it came to her, she realized she'd known it
all the time; "What's wrong, honey?" Joyce said. Both of
them had stopped eating waffles and were looking at her face.

"Something's happened to Leon," Jeanie
said. Joyce put her fork down and covered Jeanie's hands with her
own.

"I know, baby, I know."

She shook her head. "I mean something else
happened. They didn't tell the truth." The sisters looked at
each other across the table.

Joanie said, "Why
don't you eat something, hon? You need to eat .... "

* * *

Mickey was in no hurry to get downstairs. He shaved,
showered, brushed his teeth, shaved again. He spent ten minutes in
his closet, deciding between three yellow shirts. He dressed slowly,
fitting the ball and heel of each foot into the pockets of the socks,
tucking in his shirt so it was smooth down the front, hanging his
keys from two or three places on his belt to see where they looked
best.

Downstairs the sisters were talking in the kitchen.
He couldn't make out the words. He looked out the window, and an old
one-legged man named Petey Kearns who was dying of cancer was
crossing the street, favoring his plastic leg, headed for the
Hollywood.

He was two-thirds of the way there when the bus blew
past, honking, and when he turned to see what was after him, he fell.
Mickey watched him slowly get his legs under him, push up with his
hands and arms, and finally, life and death, he stood up. Downstairs
somebody was crying. Petey Kearns, Mickey said to himself, you want
to walk good for a couple of days? Be me, I'll be you .... He watched
Petey Kearns go into the Hollywood, he watched a kid that couldn't
light his cigarette, he watched the trucks and the cops and the
deliveries until there wasn't anything left to watch, until he
realized the sisters would be wondering if he was up there playing
with himself No hurry to get downstairs at all.

He went to the top of the stairwell and started down.
He thought of the way he'd scared Jeanie that morning and coughed so
they'd know he was there. Nobody can blame you for coughing.

As he reached the bottom, the talk stopped in the
kitchen. He walked in, and the sisters and Jeanie were sitting
together at the table with dirty dishes and an open box of powdered
donuts.

"Morning," he said.

The sisters didn't answer. Jeanie said, "Hello,"
all the color washed out of her voice. He poured himself a cup of
coffee and drank it over the sink. "Jack Moran said he'd be over
this morning," Mickey said. Jeanie just looked at him. "He
thought maybe it'd be easier talking about the arrangements over here
.... "

At the word "arrangements," Jeanie began to
shake. The sisters moved over her, putting themselves between her and
Mickey. "Maybe you'd feel better in the living room," one
of them said. They left him there, Jeanie keeping out of range as she
went past in case he tried to touch her. For half a minute Mickey
thought he was going to throw up in the sink. He got his stomach
settled and followed them into the other room and sat down in a chair
by the window. The three of them were on the couch, Jeanie in the
middle. It was a tight fit—the couch was made for two people—and
the sisters' butts seemed to be climbing the arms.

He noticed Jeanie had put on her makeup. Her hair was
brushed down and back, and the sun lay in it on her shoulder. It
wasn't his. For a little while, he was back to nothing.

Jack Moran came by forty-five minutes later, wearing
a black suit and black loafers and black socks. At first, Mickey saw
him coming up the sidewalk and thought it was a foreigner.

When he opened the door, Jack Moran's hand was
already there, waiting to be shook. He came in, making nervous bows
with his head, like a foreigner, and then he went to Jeanie and took
her in his arms and held her.

He'd gone to her, but she'd gone to him too. Mickey
watched her holding on to  him—shit, she barely knew Jack
Moran—saw how naturally she'd gone to him. He wished they'd hurry
up and let each other go. The day was two hours old and moving along
like a tour through the art museum.

"We were so sorry to hear," Jack said to
Jeanie. "It was such a waste .... ” He half let go of her
then, held her by her shoulders and looked into her face. "You
wonder about God's plan." The makeup over his black eye looked
an inch thick. "I've brought some things we can look at,"
he said. "So you can decide what you'd like .... "

So Jeanie and the sisters sat back down on the couch,
and Smilin' Jack kneeled in front of them, like he was fitting them
for shoes. He opened his briefcase and began showing the pictures of
the different units he had available to bury Leon in. The units he
had pictures of were mostly topped with some sort of flowers or
plants, and there was a cross beyond and behind each one.

It was hard to tell which unit Jeanie liked. She sat
on the couch, holding a sister in each hand, and stared at each
picture as Jack Moran held it in front of her. He looked up at her
for some sign one way or the other. She sat still, almost without
blinking, while he went through all the pictures, and she didn't say
anything or move anything, and when he had shown her what he had, he
smiled, turned around to Mickey and said, "I think she likes the
mahogany."

He handed the picture of the mahogany unit to Mickey,
who remembered it from the day before, sitting in the display room
with a $5,995 price tag on it. That included a funeral, of course.

Then Jeanie was looking at him too, like there was
still hope for Leon, and he was holding the picture of the mahogany
box, and then he was nodding. "Sure," he said, "sure.
If that's what Jeanie wants."

Jack Moran took the picture back, put it in with the
others, and fit them all back in the briefcase. "Now," he
said, "did you have a particular suit in mind for the service?"
Jeanie began to shake again and the sisters threw him looks that
promised revenge. Mickey suddenly felt like he'd just got out of the
dentist's chair. He took Jack upstairs to Leon's room to look in the
closet.

Leon had spent a lot of time getting dressed, but
Mickey never noticed that he had more clothes than anybody else.
Mickey didn't particularly notice clothes at all, except Jeanie's.
The first time he'd looked into her closet he'd got a hard-on. Some
of her dresses, they smelled like she was still in them.