Songs in Ordinary Time (105 page)

Norm put his arms on the seat back and turned around. “You’re not bored, are you, Benjy?”

“No,” he said, shrugging. He’d never been so tense in his life.

“How about Stoner last night? Jesus, next thing you know he’ll be coming to take everybody’s fingerprints. I did a paper on that once, on fingerprints.

Remember? Uncle Renie knew some guy down the police station. He showed me how they do it.” He winked at Benjy. “You know those keys they found in the dead guy’s pocket, I bet they get all kinds of prints off those.” He looked over at Omar. “Hey! I hope those weren’t your keys, Omar.”

Benjy watched Omar. Norm was making that up. There hadn’t been anything in the paper about keys.

“They weren’t,” Omar said.

Omar had finally gotten them on a road with homes on it, though they were often three and four miles apart. The road ran along a river that curved out of sight now behind the tall trees. They were parked in front of a gray house that had a small red windmill spinning on its roof. Norm had gone inside with his sample bag. It was their third stop, and Benjy was getting hungry. He could smell the Tootsie Roll Omar was chewing as he wrote on something in his lap. At least Omar’s spirits were improving with each of Norm’s sales.

“How come you don’t like to use people’s driveways?” Benjy asked, again to fill the silence. He sat forward, and Omar covered the paper in his lap.

It was one of the checks Norm had given him.

“Because people don’t like it,” Omar said as he put the check into the glove compartment. He locked it, then slipped the key into a slot in the visor.

“It oversteps the bounds,” he continued, gearing up for another of his heartfelt speeches, whose rambling logic began to relax Benjy. “The driveway is for the family’s use. It’s for invited guests. Businessmen like ourselves show we know our place when we park on the street. Like everything else in life, Benjy, success starts with signs, the messages you send, which makes sense when you consider that half of life is illusion, anyway.” He sighed.

“All those things you hope you’ll do, all your dreams and promises and aspirations.” Omar turned, facing him. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think things are getting just too complicated. But then I remember our promise, each to the other.”

Benjy was conscious of the frantic horsefly hitting the glass in the trapped 514 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

heat of the back window. Its buzzing came at him with the jagged urgency of Aunt Helen’s doorbell. His father had called late last night after Norm had left his room. He had heard his mother whispering into the phone,

“Sam, please, don’t. Please don’t, Sam.” After that he had not slept. School started in a week. Eighth grade. His chest hurt at the thought of it. Yesterday he had seen Jack Flaherty come out of the drugstore and light a cigarette.

He was as big as Norm now, with a silky growth over his upper lip. In another week he’d probably be shaving. All the boys would be. He pictured himself coming into the classroom, past rows of girls with their huge breasts in pointed brassieres and boys with menacing voices, shaving nicks, and jock itch, while he grew thinner and shorter, his voice a wisp of girlish softness. Alice would be gone, and Norm would have little time or use for his cowardly brother. Everything was changing, everything but him. A wave of sadness swept through him.

“I keep worrying about that Klubock child, Benjy. What exactly did you tell him?” Omar asked over the seat.

“Nothing,” he said, recalling the day, the two of them sitting on the step in the dizzying bloom of sudden heat and blinding whiteness. This was the memory now, this flash, this image without details.

“You didn’t tell him anything?”

“No. He was just there that day.”

Omar’s narrowing eyes seized his. “Where? Where was he?”

“On the back step. We were sitting there,” he said, confused, until he realized Omar was afraid that Louie might have been in the woods with him.

Norm had come out of the house and was hurrying toward the car. “Four dollars,” he said, presenting the check to Omar.

“Good job.” Omar tucked it into his breast pocket.

“She didn’t want to give me a check, but I said with cash I’d get in trouble.

I told her my supervisor had light fingers.” Norm laughed. “I don’t know where these brilliant ideas come from!”

Omar had been staring at him. “Well, they’re certainly coming fast and furious, aren’t they, now?”

“Pop, pop, pop!” Norm said, tapping his head. “A million miles an hour!

Faster than the speed of sound! It’s a bird, it’s a plane…”

“But it ain’t Superman,” Omar said, starting the car, and Benjy laughed.

Norm gave him a disgusted look.

They drove around for a while looking for a place to eat. But there was nothing. They stopped at a gas station that consisted of one Tydol pump by a tiny cottage that had huge sunflowers growing to the roofline. When no one came, Omar honked his horn, and an old man in gray overalls and a golf cap rose sleepily from his rocking chair on the porch. Omar bought two dollars’ worth of gas and asked to use the bathroom. The old man directed him to a shed behind the house. Omar got out of the car and removed his jacket, which he folded and laid over the seat.

“Asshole,” Norm muttered, watching him, and the minute Omar was out SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 515

of sight, he tried to open the glove compartment, but couldn’t. He took the keys from the ignition, but none fit the lock.

From here Benjy could see the bulge of the key in the visor. The fly was buzzing inside his head now.

“You know what he does, don’t you?” Norm said, searching through the pockets in Omar’s jacket. “He changes the amounts on all the checks I give him.” He felt under the seat. “Goddamn it. I know he’s doing it. But I need proof. It’s the same thing he was doing with those three guys. I know it is!

He’s using me the same way he did them. He stays in the car. Nobody ever sees him. Just me.” Norm looked back at him. “Nice, huh? I probably got police looking for me all over the place. What do you think of that?”

Benjy had been watching the man clean the windshield with a clean white rag.

“Well?”

“He wouldn’t do that. I know he wouldn’t.”

“He
is
doing it! I know he is! I already saw one check he did it on. Jesus, Benjy, you’ve gotta believe me,” Norm said, turning to face him.

The old man had finished the windshield and was trying to get Norm’s attention.

“You better smarten up before it’s too late.”

“Norm!” he said, pointing.

“You want to do the inside?” the old man asked, offering the rag. “I’ll point to the spots.”

“No, thanks,” Norm said, and the old man started back to the porch.

“Because we’re probably not going to be in here for too much longer,” he said in a mock whisper, then laughed. “I won’t, anyway, now that I know what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on, Norm,” Benjy blurted. “He just doesn’t want to get mixed up in that thing in the woods. He doesn’t want Mom mixed up in it.”

“What thing in the woods? You mean the murder?”

Benjy nodded.

“Well say it, then. Say the word. Because that’s what it is. It was a murder, Benjy. A man died, and no matter what he says or how he tries to change it, he’s involved. And that means Mom’s involved, and I’m involved, and you’re involved, and Alice, goddamn it, every one of us! And that’s what he wants. That’s how he’ll keep everyone’s mouth shut. But we can get rid of him!”

“Here he comes!” Benjy gasped as Omar came around the side of the house, buckling his belt. He stopped at the porch and paid the old man.

“Look at you. You’re scared of him. You’re scared shitless.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I thought he was your hero,” Norm said, watching Omar.

“I never said that.”

The old man was pointing up the road.

“Well, you like him, right?”

516 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“Yah, I guess so.”

“But you’re scared of him, aren’t you? You like him because you have to, don’t you? If you stop liking him, you’re afraid what he might do.”

The buzzing was close behind his eyes now. He had protected Norm from Omar in the most fragile way, by bartering the truth for his mother’s happiness. And now his mother was not here, and he could not stop Norm, and he did not even possess the truth because he did not know what had happened that day in the woods. All he knew, all he would ever know were the events as Omar had told them.

“Well, don’t worry, I’m going to get this asshole right where I want him.”

“Norm!”

“Just watch me.”

“Hello, my good men,” Omar said, opening the door. “I’ve just been told where we can get ourselves a lunch. But I’m afraid it’s a half hour away.”

Here the road was hilly and rose in steep curves. The recent rain had swirled gullies of sand into the soft shoulder. Below them to the right, the river was foamy and fast-moving. They had been on the road only a few minutes when at the crest of the hill they came to a drab green cinder-block building. The Schlitz sign over the front door said MOGLEY’S CAFÉ. There were two trucks and a motorcycle in the dusty parking lot.

“Talk about luck,” Omar said, pulling in.

“I’ll say,” Norm agreed as they got out of the car.

Benjy dragged after them. He didn’t want to be here, especially in a place like this, when all Norm wanted was trouble.

There was no one inside. “How about the bar?” Omar asked, pausing by the empty tables.

“Great idea!” Norm said. “Much faster service up here,” he said, climbing onto a stool.

The door next to the beer cooler opened, and the bartender squinted out from the back room. Behind him four men were playing cards in a fog of cigarette smoke. “Yah?” the bartender asked.

“We’d like some lunch, please,” Omar said, eagerly rubbing his hands.

“Lunch? What do you mean, lunch?” the bartender said with a scowl.

“Well, let’s see.” Omar squinted up at the curled cardboard sign. “Hamburg, hot dog, grilled cheese, that kind of lunch.”

“The sign’s old.”

“Well, whatever you’ve got, then.”

“I’m all out of the usual. All I got’s pretzels, potato chips, pork rinds.”

“Okay!” Omar said with a sporting nod. “Then that’ll have to do for now.

A bag of each,” he said, laying his money on the counter. “Oh! And two beers and a Coke.”

The bartender peered at Norm, then looked at Omar. “How old’s the kid?”

“He’s almost ni—” Omar started to say.

“Sixteen,” Norm said. “I’m a little underage, sir.”

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 517

The bartender let the door swing closed behind him. He put his hands on the bar and glared at Omar. They were the biggest hands Benjy had ever seen. “What do you want?” the bartender growled. “You trying to set me up or something?”

“Absolutely not,” Omar said, and Norm snickered.

“What? You think I’m a shithead or something?” He glanced between Omar and Norm, and Benjy held his breath. Omar had asked the old man for directions to the nearest bar. Their arrival here was deliberate, and Norm knew it.

“Of course not,” Omar said, sliding off the stool. “Obviously the misun-derstanding’s between me and the young man here.”

“Obviously,” Norm said. He leaned over the bar. “You see, it’s me he thinks is a shithead. He thinks all it takes is a beer and I’ll shut up and look the other way.”

“C’mon, boy, let’s get going now,” Omar growled.

“Yah, I’ll be right with you,” Norm said, then turned back to the bartender.

“Norm!” Benjy warned.

“You see, he’s got this thing going, this crooked check—”

“Get out of here!” Omar snarled, yanking him so forcibly from the stool that it started to fall.

Benjy caught it and hurried after them as Omar steered Norm outside by the back of his shirt. Any minute now, Norm was going to explode.
Don’t
, he wanted to shout.
Don’t. Don’t. Don’t
.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, boy. You have no idea,” Omar panted. He opened the door and shoved Norm inside.

Benjy scrambled into the back seat. He sat there, shocked by the pleasure and exhilaration on Norm’s face.

“The trouble with you is you’re too damn cynical, boy.” Omar glanced over his shoulder as he backed up, then pulled out of the parking lot, tires churning up a squall of dust and grit. “I like you! That’s the only reason I wanted to buy you a beer. If I have any other reason it’s your mother, and I don’t hide that fact, and you know it. She wants us to be friends, and I’m trying the best way I know how.”

Norm continued smiling as the car sped up the steep incline. His grin widened as Omar declared his love for their mother and his desire to make her happy at any cost. “Whatever it takes,” he said so passionately that in the next moment’s silence he seemed to be weeping. “Do you understand?”

he whispered. “Do you?”

“No!” Norm chuckled. “Not really. Because when she finds out what you’re really doing, she’s not going to be happy. She’s going to be bullshit!”

“See, you don’t understand,” Omar said, pulling the car to the side of the road. They were just over the rise. “You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know how it is between a man and a woman when they have complete faith and trust in one another.”

“Okay!” Norm said, still smiling. “Then let’s just drive back and tell her.

Let’s see what she says.”

518 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“Tell her what, Norm?” Omar asked, looking genuinely puzzled. “That in my campaign to make you like me, I maybe went a little overboard? Believe me, that’s not going to be news to your mother.” He put his arm over the seat and patted Norm’s shoulder. “That woman knows me like a book.

Like a well-worn, well-thumbed book.” He sighed, squeezing the back of Norm’s neck. Benjy could not take his eyes from the long, undulating fingers.

“Get your hand off me!” Norm snapped, jerking away.

“I’m sorry, Norm. I didn’t mean to make you feel…Well, that is, I didn’t mean to arouse any…any troubling feelings.”

“You asshole!” Norm cried. “It’s all over, Duvall. I know what you’re doing with those fucking checks and I’m not going to be part of it anymore!”