The Late Child (53 page)

“Dick's so proud of his barbecuing that we just thought we'd bring you some,” Neddie said. “I don't know if you have much appetite, though. I don't, when I'm upset.”

“I know how that grief is,” Dick said, looking at Harmony sympathetically. His eyes were as big as the eyes of a cow. “My oldest brother drowned in a creek when he was about Pepper's age.”

“Oh, Dick, I'm sorry,” Harmony said. “How did it happen?”

“I wish you hadn't asked him,” Neddie said. “We try not to get Dick started on that, if we can help it.”

“Sorry, forget I asked,” Harmony said quickly—Neddie had given her a look that indicated she should backtrack if at all possible. But it was too late. Dick's big face darkened and darkened
some more—Harmony had the terrible feeling that he might cry. She felt pretty guilty, just looking at him—no doubt the story of Dick's drowned brother was a family story she should have known already. Dick's face was contorted—he took his hands out of his pockets and clutched them together, as if some terrible memory was buried in his body like a root; now, because of her question, the root was about to tear out through his chest or his back. It was too late to stop the root; it seemed to be boring through Dick like a drill.

“It was my fault,” Dick said—his voice came from so deep within him it was almost as if it was the voice of the root.

“We were scuffling in the water,” he said. “It was just scuffling, Jim and me—we were always scuffling. Hell, we were brothers. Only I was huskier, I could always get the best of Jim—he was skinny. I threw him in the water and ran like hell, thinking he'd chase me. What happened was, he got his foot caught in a root and drowned. His lungs just happened to fill up, and he drowned before we could get him loose.”

“Do you feel like eating, Harmony?” Neddie asked. It was clear she was trying to do her best to ignore Dick's story.

Harmony did feel a little hungry. The corn on the cob looked tempting. But Dick was still standing there—he didn't look as if he would be capable of eating.

“Eating's a safe thing to do,” Neddie commented—she was looking at Harmony, not her husband.

Dick took his hands out of his pockets and then put them back
in
his pockets. He sighed a heavy sigh, at the memory of his drowned brother Jim. Harmony decided she couldn't resist the corn on the cob or the green beans either. Once she had eaten the corn and the beans she consumed half of the chicken, in order to be polite to Dick. He was standing in the door of the motel, looking out at the fields. Neddie shrugged, as if to say she had no idea what to do about her husband. Harmony sure didn't know what to do about him; but she was touched that Neddie and Dick had been so concerned about her that they had
brought her food, all the way to the Best Western. The food was good, too. The peach cobbler made the perfect dessert. Now that there were people around, and now that she wasn't naked anymore, she felt that she had indeed been briefly crazy. She asked about Laurie and Eddie and discovered they had gone to swim in a pond, with all the cousins—it was good they had gone off to have some fun. It made her feel a lot less guilty; at least her period of insanity had not caused Eddie to miss a swim.

Pretty soon all the food was gone. Neddie sat in a chair smoking while Harmony ate. Harmony thought Neddie must be in a depression as deep as her own, if not deeper. At least hers had a clear source—but what was the source of Neddie's?

Harmony decided it was no good holing up in the Best Western; she might as well go out into the world and be a member of her family. The sun was shining on Oklahoma, why not try to be normal for a little while? She still had her father's pickup, a source of guilt. What if he needed to go somewhere? Not having his vehicle meant that he was trapped with her mother all day. But when she asked about her parents Neddie said they were both over at her farm—of course they hadn't wanted to miss Eddie.

When they started to go to Neddie's, Dick decided he had to hurry back to his plowing—his little vacation to visit his long-lost sister-in-law was over.

“I'll just ride with you, I ain't in a hurry,” Neddie said. “How's Gary?”

Harmony had forgotten that she had had to cut Gary off. They hadn't really finished their conversation—the only thing Harmony could remember about it was that Gary had wanted the government to bomb El Salvador, on account of a stolen boyfriend.

“Gary is just the same,” Harmony said. “He's always just the same unless he's in love, and then he's crazy.”

“You remember asking me about being in love with Dick and I told you I wasn't?” Neddie asked. She was looking out the window of the pickup, while Harmony drove. Obviously being in
love was a subject Neddie had some difficulty talking about. She wasn't making eye contact with her sister at all.

“I remember,” Harmony said. “Pat thought you were in love with Dick's brother or something—I forget his name.”

“His name is Rusty,” Neddie said. “He's the brother who didn't get drowned.”

Then she lit another cigarette and looked out the window again. Harmony was wondering if Rusty would be as large as Dick—the thought of two men that large was interesting.

“Is he plowing, too?” she asked, wondering if she was going to meet Rusty in a field, or what.

“Oh no, he ain't plowing—he's not a workaholic like Dick,” Neddie said. “Rusty likes to spend his afternoons drinking in a beer joint. The beer joint where he's at is right down the road here. Since I have you for cover, maybe we could stay and have a beer or two. You could visit with Rusty and see what you think.”

“Neddie, sure,” Harmony said. She wanted to try and help Neddie be a little less nervous.

“That's the beer joint,” Neddie said, pointing to a little shack they were just about to zoom by. Two battered white pickups sat in front of it. One of them had a large black dog pacing around in the back end.

“Don't even look at that dog, he ain't friendly,” Neddie said. “That is, he ain't friendly except to Rusty.”

There was a heap of old tires piled by the door of the beer joint. It was a pretty ramshackly building, too—Harmony had to remind herself not to be picky; she wasn't in the big city now.

“I wouldn't never have the nerve to see him here, if you wasn't along,” Neddie said. She was nervously watching the cars that passed on the interstate, seeing if they contained familiar faces who might spot her and figure it out.

“I ain't the type to go drinking with my boyfriend in the middle of the afternoon,” she added, unnecessarily. Harmony knew her sister wasn't that type, but, even so, anyone could feel the need to break the mold, once in a while.

“It's okay, Neddie, Dick's plowing,” Harmony reminded her. “Anyway, nothing's happened, has it?”

“Something's happened,” Neddie said, glancing at the highway one more time before pushing open the door.

“Uh-oh,” Harmony said. There could only be one thing, namely sex, that had happened.

“It happened because I went away with you and realized when I came back that I can't live with Dick anymore,” Neddie said. “When I realized that, I went over to tell Rusty. Melba—that's Rusty's wife—works in Tulsa and don't never get home much before six. That leaves the whole afternoon wide open for something to happen.”

“Well, if it's what I think it was, it's happened before in this world, Neddie,” Harmony said.

Neddie still hadn't entered the beer joint. She pushed the door halfway open and then stood in it to talk.

“You know, when you travel it sort of rearranges things inside you,” Neddie said. “Then you come back and have to try to put things back where they were before they got rearranged, and sometimes it just don't work. I think that's what happened to me. I went away and it rearranged the furniture inside me and now I can't get it to fit back where it used to be. It's moved and that's that. Now what do I do?”

“Neddie, can't we just go in?—I thought you wanted me to meet Rusty,” Harmony said.

“I do and I don't,” Neddie said, still blocking the doorway, not shutting the door but not going in either. “What I'm thinking is that this is gonna tear Dick up—the trouble with Davie and the cocaine has got him all torn open anyway. It's gonna tear Dick up so bad I don't know if he'll make it.”

She took a cigarette out of her purse—she still had her hand on the door.

“But another thing I'm thinking is, I can't help it,” she said. “The furniture got moved and I'm forty-nine and that's that.”

Harmony stepped around her and pulled her inside the beer joint, which was so dark she couldn't see a thing. She had to stop
immediately and continue her conversation with Neddie, but at least they were inside.

“I'm your sister,” she reminded Neddie. “I'm no angel, either. I've had my furniture moved around fifty or sixty times. I don't know how many times.”

“Things with me and Dick look smooth on the surface, but underneath … well, there ain't no underneath,” Neddie went on; she was more interested in talking than in listening.

“Pretty much the whole family's gonna be against me, when this comes out,” she said. “If you're against me I don't know if I can stand it.”

“I'm not against you, can't we just go meet him?” Harmony said. Her eyes had adjusted a little, enough to let her see that there was almost no one in the bar. At a table by the jukebox there was a lanky man with a dozer cap turned backward on his head. Another man was with him, a small man who seemed to have a flat nose. It was as if someone had banged his nose with a hammer a few times and flattened it against his face.

“Hi, this is Rusty and this is Dill,” Neddie said, in a shaky voice. “This is my long-lost sister Harmony that everybody's been wanting to meet.”

“Howdy,” Rusty said, standing up. He had a nice smile sort of shy.

“Hi,” Dill said. He stood up too. “I wish they'd turn the lights up in here, so I could see you. What's the use of being with two beautiful women if it's so dark you can't even give 'em a thorough looking over.

“All I can see of you two girls is an outline,” Dill went on.

“Why do they call you Dill?” Harmony asked.

“They call him Dill because he's such a sour son of a bitch, most of the time,” Rusty said. “I work with him every day of my life, I ought to know.”

“You don't work with me, because you don't work,” Dill said. “Chewing toothpicks ain't work. I've been in your employ twenty years and you've only done about three solid days' work that I can remember.”

“He's a liar,” Rusty said, smiling his shy smile at Harmony. “I admit I don't work any harder than I have to, though. Why work harder than you have to?

“Harmony, I'm in love with your sister,” he added, looking Harmony right in the eye.

“That ain't as big a secret as you think it is, Rusty,” Dill said, looking not at all embarrassed by the intimate turn the conversation had taken.

“It may not be no big secret to you, but that don't mean it's been said aloud in public, like Rusty just said it,” Neddie pointed out. Though she was still a little nervous, her face lit up when Rusty said that he was in love with her. Even in the dim bar, Harmony could see a look on her sister's face that she had never seen before.

“Well, Neddie, it's been said in public ever since I've been working for Rusty, because
I've
said it in public,” Dill said. “Unless you don't consider Rusty the public.”

Neddie had no comment on that point.

“The truth will out, they say,” Rusty said. “I guess me and Ned are just tired of hiding our feelings—wouldn't you be?”

He looked at Harmony when he asked the question. Harmony got the feeling that Neddie and Rusty were relying on her to help them with their life. They were in a situation and needed her wisdom to help them get through it—only why did they think she had any wisdom? Wise was not a quality she would ever assign herself. But she liked the way her sister looked when Rusty said he was in love with her. Also, she liked Rusty—he was definitely cute, in his lanky way, with his dozer cap turned backward. He had big eyes, direct and a little sad, but now and then they twinkled when he saw the humor in something. On some level it seemed to amuse him that he had fallen in love with his brother's wife.

“Well, if you love Neddie, that's good,” Harmony said. She felt they needed to know that they had her approval.

“Good from Ned and Rusty's point of view, maybe,” Dill said. “What about Dick's point of view—and what about Melba's?”

“Dill's always been a good one for asking awkward questions,” Rusty commented. “He couldn't fix a broken-down tractor if he had a year, but he can ask those awkward questions a mile a minute.”

“What's Melba like—she's not from Tarwater, is she?” Harmony asked. She was pretty sure she didn't remember any Melbas from her high school years.

“Oh, Melba's from Ardmore—she's practically a Texan,” Dill said.

“I ain't gonna be losing much sleep over Melba,” Neddie said. “If she'd ever been halfway good to Rusty I doubt this would ever have happened.”

Rusty looked a little pained when Neddie said what she said. “Neddie, it would have happened even if she'd been an angel,” he said, with a note of sadness in his voice. “You can't say it's Melba's fault or Dick's fault—hell, I was in love with you even before you and Dick married, and I hadn't even met Melba yet, when that happened.”

“If you was in love with me that long ago, I wish you'd spoke up,” Neddie said—she sounded a little put out. “If you had maybe I would have married the right person in the first place.”

“Honey, I was just a brat when you married Dick,” Rusty said. “I was six years younger. You would have laughed in my face if I'd even asked you for a date.”