God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (23 page)

He turned toward the window, but his eyes were almost
shut and he couldn't see. The door to his office opened, and he heard
the girl who worked behind the bakery counter. She came in and made a
noise like she'd found a kitten. "0h . . ."

He sat up straight and faced the voice. "Lock up
the store and go home, child," he said.

She said, "Oh, Mr. Ribbocini . . ."

"Go home," he said. And for a few minutes
he listened to the sounds of the cash register and the window blinds
and then the front door being closed and locked. He was still
shaking, but he wasn't scared.

"I shouldn'ta gave
you up, Arthuro," he said out loud. "But we're all dead
now, so it don't matter, and I need to see these monkey cunts dead
too. Humor an old man on this .... "

* * *

Shellburn stopped at a bar near the Wilmington
airport and bought a six-pack of Schmidt's. There was a phone booth
outside, a few yards from the highway, and he opened one of the beers
before he dialed the number in God's Pocket. He deposited seven
quarters, a dime and a nickel and got a busy signal. So he went over
uninvited, which would have seemed like bad manners to him if he
hadn't been who he was.

He found a place to park the Continental on the
sidewalk just outside a dark, wet-looking hole in the block called
the Hollywood Bar. There was a faded rainbow painted across the
window. The six-pack of beer was working, smoothing him out, and he
went inside to use the bathroom so he wouldn't have to ask Leon
Hubbard's mother if he could use hers.

There were a couple of old women drinking rock nips
at one end of the bar, a couple of old men drinking the same thing at
the other end. Shellburn got the idea they were married. They watched
him come in. There was a wasted rummy. in a neck brace, standing by
himself in the middle, talking to the bartender. The bartender was
tired of listening and looked played out when he brought Shellburn
his can of Schmidt's from the cooler.

When he said "Schmidt's," one or two of the
men had looked at him again. They drank Rolling Rock or Ortlieb's at
the Hollywood. Shellburn drank half the beer and went into the
bathroom. The toilet was cracked and leaking and rotting out the
floor, and when he stepped inside, the wood gave underneath his feet.

There was a mirror in the towel machine and a bare
orange light bulb over the sink. Standing on his toes, Shellburn
could see the top half of his head. He patted down his hair and saw
that his eyes were a sunset over Key West. Reds, pinks, lovely. He
tucked his shirt into his pants and brushed some of the dust from
Maryland off his shoes, and then went back out and finished the beer.

"Is that Leon Hubbard's house across the
street?" he said.

The bartender cocked his head, to see who was asking.
Then he said, "You aren't Richard Shellburn, are you?"
Shellburn nodded, the bartender reached across to shake hands. "I
knew it," he said. "I read you every day. You look
different from your picture, but I knew it was you."

"Is that the Hubbard place?" he asked.

"Scarpato," the bartender said. "The
mother's remarried. Jeanie Scarpato."

Shellburn looked at the narrow brick row house across
the street. The windows were all covered, like nobody lived there
anymore. "How's she taking it?" he said.

The bartender shrugged. "He was the only child,"
he said.

Shellburn had another beer, then put a five-dollar
bill on the bar and walked outside. They watched him cross the street
and knock on the door. Then the door opened, and a few seconds later
he went inside. One of the old women said, "Richard Shellburn is
the only one ever come down here, to the Pocket," Ray shook his
head. "Adlai Stevenson was right on this spot," he said.

"Well, I never voted for him," the woman
said. "I like Ike."

"Dwight David Eisenhower had the third-lowest
I.Q. of any U.S. President since Grover Cleveland," he said.
Then they ordered more Rolling Rock beer and watched the street so
they would know how long he was in there with Jeanie Scarpato before
he came out.

Shellburn knocked on the door and waited to see the
grief` stricken mother, so he could put her red eyes and shaky hands
and her tear-stained cheeks in the newspaper, along with the harsh,
naked light in the bathroom of the Hollywood Bar, where Leon Hubbard
drank. And then she opened the door and Shellburn was struck stone
dumb. "Mrs. Scarpato?" He heard his voice but he didn't
seem to be the one talking.

"Yes?" It wasn't that she was the most
beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She was pretty, but it took him a few
seconds to see that.

"I'm Richard Shellburn,
Daily
Times
." She opened the door for him and
smiled. He curled around that smile like he was paper on fire.

"Thank you very much for coming," she said.
He followed her into the living room, where two darker, older women
were sitting on the couch, drinking hot chocolate. "You don't
know how good it is to talk to somebody that understands .... "

"I understand," he said.

The women sized him up, heavy and suspicious. Jeanie
Scarpato offered him a chair and then sat down near him on a
footstool, hugging her knees, looking up. It wasn't that she was
beautiful, it was like he'd looked into her face and found a perfect
lit. She looked like the other half of whatever piece he'd been
broken off of.

She had eyes that were harmless and couldn't make up
their mind. And her hair was soft and touched the hollows of her
cheeks and neck, and he could see the edges of her ears poking
through farther back. And he wanted to touch the hollows too. He
cleared his throat. "I was very sorry to hear about your son,"
he said. The bottom rim of her eyes went dewy and teared over. She
wiped at the tears and he noticed her hands. Great hands, they just
fit her.

"Thank you," she said.

The women stood up and cleared the cups off the
coffee table. The bigger one said, "We've got to go now, hon,
run some errands .... " Showing themselves a little sweeter for
the newspapers, and a minute later they both went out the front door.
She was talking, something about Leon. “It didn't happen like they
said, Mr. Shellburn. I know Leon, he was my boy."

"I know," he said, "I know .... "

She was looking down at
her hands now, as still and white and fancy as Sunday gloves you
might find in a trunk in the attic, and before Shellburn had realized
he was doing it, he had reached down and picked them up, and was
holding them against his cheek.

* * *

Richard Shellburn had knocked on the door in the
middle of what was about to be a scene. Joyce had just said everybody
had their crosses to bear, like Leon was already old news, and then
there he was to save her. He looked older than she expected, but
friendlier than his picture. "You don't know how much good it
does to talk to somebody that understands," she'd said, for her
sisters.

"We're going to go home and do some errands,"
Joyce said. She and Joanie waited, and when Jeanie didn't answer,
they left her there in the living room with Richard Shellburn. She
noticed he was sweating. He smelled like he'd been drinking.
"Something is wrong about what happened to Leon," she
started. "I don't know how I know, but it didn't happen like
they said."

He was looking down, she was looking up. Vulnerable.
He liked her.

"It isn't money," she said. "Ever
since it happened, everybody says, sue the hospital, sue the
construction company, but I need this cleared up for myself. "
She stopped to see if he was following her. It was hard to say, but
then he said, "I know, I know. . ." and then he got her
hands. He'd held them against his cheek and closed his eyes. She
waited him out, and in a minute he sighed and let go.

He took a note pad out of the inside pocket of his
coat and found a soft-tip pen in another pocket, and asked about
Leon. "What kind of a boy was he?" he said.

Jeanie was glad to see the note pad. There was a
moment, while he was holding her hands against his cheek, that the
thought had crossed her mind that it might only be somebody who
looked like Richard Shellburn. And not even that much.

"He was mechanical," she said. “Even
though his father died when he was a month old, so he never had the
kind of help in those things that most boys get. Do you have
children, Mr. Shellburn?" She saw he was writing, and it made
her feel satisfied, in a way, to think she would be down on paper
someplace.

"No," he said, "I'm not married."'

"Leon's father was killed on duty," she
said. "He was a Philadelphia police officer, and we had been
married eleven months. I didn't know what I was going to do .... "
She stopped herself. This was about Leon now. He was looking up at
her, waiting.

"Anyway," she said, "I did what I
could. He was always a sickly child, which was why he never got very
big, the doctors said. There were big people on both sides of the
family .... "

"I noticed your aunts,” he said.

She left them aunts. "Yes. Well, he was like
other children, I suppose, except small for his age. And he never
liked anybody else around the house, you know. My friends. He never
brought any of his little friends by either, even when he got older.
He had a girl friend, a lovely girl, but we never met her. She's a
flight attendant for U.S. Air."

Shellburn was writing words on his pad, sometimes
looking at the pad, sometimes looking at her. "Is this helping?"
she said.

He smiled at her, and she thought he might hold her
hands again. He seemed so sad about it.

"And he went into the service, but he didn't
stay in long. They sent him to Korea, I know that, but he got
discharged for his nerves." He looked up. "That's how I
know something happened," she said. "Leon wasn't anybody to
have things fall on his head. He used to check the street before he
went out the door, he was always looking around behind him, over his
head, getting up and looking out the window."

Shellburn said, "He was a bricklayer, first
class?"

"It was a month and a half," she said, "I
don't know. But he was mechanical. He would have picked it up fast,
if he wanted to. Anything Leon wanted to, he could pick it up fast
....

"He never finished school, though. With Leon,
nothing was ever quite finished. Every time you thought you got close
to understanding him, there was still something he held back. Do you
know what I mean? You could never say this or that was Leon, not all
the way."

She was quiet for a minute, looking at Shellburn's
pad, wondering how it would all look written down. "Since he
died," she said, "I get the feeling I didn't know him that
well. It makes it lonelier, in a way, but things were beginning to
straighten out. He had a lovely girl friend .... " `

She saw Shellburn looking around the living room
then, and then he spotted Leon's picture on the table beside the
sofa. It wasn't the handsomest picture she had of him, but it was the
one she liked to look at. He was sitting almost sideways from the
camera, wearing a suit and a narrow black tie, smiling like he didn't
have a care in the world.

"That one makes his ears look bigger than they
were," she said. She stood up and brought him the picture.
"There's others around. He had nice, even features." And
saying that, she thought of her own.

He gave her the picture back. "Did he live here,
with you?"

She said, "With me and my husband? Then, "Would
you like to see his room?" He followed her up the stairs. He
walked heavier than he was, she thought, like he was tired. She
opened the door to Leon's room.

Shellburn said, "Did he have a cat?" She
shook her head, and then she noticed the smell too.

"Leon didn't care for animals," she said.
"Even when he was a little boy, he was always frightened of dogs
and cats. I used to wish we could of lived in the country and had a
few animals around so he could of gotten used to them. I think the
country air would have been better for him. There's so many his age
that already died of cancer, from right here in the neighborhood. It
must be the air from the refineries, but then, people have to have
jobs .... " `

She was about to repeat the whole argument over the
refineries that was argued every time somebody from the Pocket got
cancer, but then she noticed that Richard Shellburn had stopped
whatever he was doing and was standing beside Leon's unmade bed,
staring at her. He'd completely changed channels.

"Mr. Shellburn?" she said. He didn't move.
He had the exact complexion of a moth, and he was tired and sad at
the same time. Mostly he looked sad. "Mr. Shellburn?" She
reached out and touched his arm, and he sat down on the bed. And then
he got her hands again, just like he had downstairs, and she let him
have them. He looked so sad. He held her hands against his cheek, and
began talking about a place by the water,

"I just came from there," he said, “this
afternoon. There's a cove where the river empties into the bay, and a
meadow above it. I've had it a long time, and nobody knows."