|
Fathers and Sons Chapter 3 I’d promised Lynn I’d take her to Tucson the next day shopping. I couldn’t see any way out of it without telling her about my visitors, so we went. The kids stayed with Mary, Becky’s godmother, who ran the Perkins Bed and Breakfast down by the park. She had a tire swing in the back yard, and a garden with big flowers and little trees just right for playing hide and seek in, and Becky loved it there. I thought about my visitors on the way down the highway. Couldn’t decide if I should laugh and lock ‘em up when they showed up on Tuesday, or if I oughta take ‘em seriously and plan on something serious happening that day. What a bozo that guy was. Even if I’da had his goddam money, I wouldn’ta just handed it over ‘cause he asked for it. Just ‘cause he said it was his. I ain’t a genius, but I’m smarter than that. I wanted to take Lynn to a nice restaurant, but she wanted to eat at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s on the corner downtown. And then she dragged me into one a’ those photo booths, where you put your quarters in, and it takes your picture four times before you’re ready. And that’s what it did, so then we had to put more quarters in, and do it again. She’s laughing to beat hell in those pictures. I look like an idiot in ‘em, but she looks like a princess; a beautiful, laughing princess. I made her give ‘em to me afterwards. I’ve still got ‘em. She had a cartful of sheets and towels and tablecloths and aprons. She picked out a couple of sunsuits for Becky, and three different sizes of trousers for Charles, ‘cause he was growing so fast. I wandered over to the toy section, and decided to get Becky a stuffed monkey, and some more Tinkertoys for Charles to replace the pieces he’d lost. Lynn put a cheap plastic doll in the cart, naked except for the top hat and the feathers around its waist. I said, “What are you gonna do with that?” “Don’t you think it’s cute?” She started to giggle. “I think we should hang it from the mirror of the police car.” “Oh, you do, do you?” She covered her mouth with her hand and giggled some more. “To remind me of you?” “That’s terrible,” she said. “She’s lots fatter than I am.” And she giggled. “Well, I don’t know….” I pretended to be looking her over. “I’d have to see you in a top hat and feathers to be sure about that. S’pose they sell feathers here?” She snorted, laughing. Yeah, I know it really wasn’t that funny. She was just having a good time. Gave me a good feeling, too. Maybe she’d forget about the baby thing, and be happy again. She put her arms around my neck. “We’ll have to ask. What color do you want?” I loved to see her smiling like that. God, what a gorgeous woman she is, I thought, and squeezed her right up next to me. “Red.” It’s been a long time since I’ve kissed a woman in the aisle at the Woolworth’s; not the best place, I guess, ‘cause you end up with an audience, and you have to quit before you really want to……but not bad. Not bad at all. We were getting close to home in the evening when she got real quiet. She had the window down. She leaned her head out the window a little and let the wind blow her hair back from her face. “I had a good time today,” she said. “I did, too.” She was watching me. I had to watch the road, but I could feel her looking at me. She slid over next to me, got real close…..licked my ear. She knew what that does to me. “Lynn…...,” I said. “We’ll be home in just a little bit.” She ran her tongue along the edge, and then inside. The car swerved. She nipped at the lobe, and licked down my neck……”Can’t wait,” she whispered…...and her hand was between my legs…..and we were real lucky I managed to get off the road onto the shoulder, and stop the car. We didn’t do any more talking for a while. I turned the key off and set the brake. She tugged at me until I slid over from behind the wheel and she straddled me. She almost had me. She kissed me, kissed me, kissed me, until I wasn’t thinking straight, and didn’t care…….until I heard the sound of the zipper…….. “Hang on, baby,” I said, and reached in my pocket. Don’t know when she managed to get her underwear off, but it was gone. Damn, she was gonna get it before I was ready…… “Wait a minute.” My arms around her, behind her back I got one out; I let the tin fall on the floor. And then I was ready. She wasn’t kissing me anymore. She wasn’t doing anything but looking at me. I leaned forward to kiss her……and she pulled back. I was breathing hard, and when she got off me and sat back on her side of the car, I had to take a big deep breath and let it out. “You’re cruel,” she said. “It’s not wrong of me to want another baby.” She sounded like she might break into a hundred pieces any minute. Her voice rose. “You’re just being cruel! Any other man would be happy to get his wife pregnant!” “Lynn……it’s not that I don’t want you to be happy---“ “Any other man would be happy to get ME pregnant. Anybody else!” She looked straight at me. “I bet Richard would give me a baby if I asked him.” One thing about Arizona that was hard for me to get used to was how quiet it is here. We were sitting in the car just about in the middle of nowhere, the sun was going down, and it was quiet. No other cars going by. Nothing to hear but the crickets, and a bird or something once in a while, and the breeze skipping along the ground. It seemed spooky to me at first when we came here. Not any more. I guess I’m used to it now. Right then…..it just seemed empty. Just a great big empty place full a’ sand and dead weeds and not much else. “Oh, god,” she said. She touched my arm. “Bud—“ “I bet he would,” I said. I tucked myself in, just the way I was, zipped my pants back up. “You’ll have to ask him.” Slid back behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. The rest of the drive home was pretty quiet, too. Arizona’s a quiet place. The kids were happy and tired and went to bed almost right away when we got them home. I stood next to our bed, and tried to decide whether I oughta do that husband thing, you know, when there’s a fight, the husband takes a pillow and a blanket and sleeps on the couch. “I’m sorry I said that,” Lynn said. “You know I’d never do that.” “Yeah, sure.” “Don’t you see how selfish you’re being?” I picked up my pillow. “Yeah, I’m being selfish. Just thinking about myself.” I walked out to the linen closet to get a blanket. She followed me. “I’m thinkin’…….if something happened to you---“ “Nothing’s going to happen to me.” “---if you went into the hospital and didn’t come home again…….what would I do? Huh? What would I do, without you? And how could I explain to the kids it was my fault?” “Nothing’s going to happen to me, baby.” “You think I wanna say, your mama’s dead because Daddy couldn’t keep it in his pants?” I walked past her to the stairs. “Bud…….don’t---“ I turned around before I started down and said, “It’s not gonna be my fault. If you wanna baby so damn bad, I guess you can find somebody to give you one. But it ain’t gonna be me.” I threw the damn blanket down. Didn’t need it, wasn’t gonna be sleeping anyway. Wanted to be outside. After a few minutes, Lynn came out, too. She stood behind me, and when I didn’t look around, sat down on the step next to me. “You think if I get pregnant again, I’m going to die?” She wrapped her arms around one a’ mine. “Oh, baby…..where did you get that idea?” “That’s not gonna work,” I said. “You know it as well as I do.” A dog barked down the street. In the alley, a pair of green eyes caught the light from the back door for a moment, and then they were gone. Wispy clouds passed in front of the moon, made moving shadows on the grass. “OK,” she said. “OK. You win.” She lay her head on my shoulder. I didn’t feel like I won anything. I ended up sleeping on the couch. Sat down, thinking I’d never get to sleep…..and the next thing I knew it was morning, and I could hear the coffeepot sputtering and grumbling on the stove. We didn’t have too much to say to each other. I ate some toast and drank a cup a’ coffee. The kids were done with their breakfast and playing in the other room when I stood up to leave. Took Friday off to go shopping; so I was working Saturday. I wanted to ask her what she had planned for the day. Wanted to ask her what she was gonna do. Wanted to ask her…….but I couldn’t. She showed up at the station a couple of hours later, with the kids in tow, and sacks of greasy cheeseburgers and fries from the Dairy Dream. “What are you doin’?” I said. She had that stubborn look on her face. “We’re spending the day with you.” Whether I liked it or not, I guess. “So you won’t have to wonder where I am or what I’m doing.” “You don’t have to do that—“ “I can straighten up your office and do your filing, if you want me to.” “Betty does that.” “I saw that look on your face this morning. I said what I said yesterday just because I was angry. I don’t want to have babies with anybody but you, Bud, I want to make sure you know that.” Sudden coughing and slamming of drawers from the outer office. Somebody turned on the radio. “Don’t you have to be at the shop today?” “We stopped there already, and Sybil’s doing just fine. I think I can leave her there by herself today.” “I don’t know, Lynn, I’ve got a lot of work to do today—“ “We won’t get in your way.” Uh-huh. Sure. After Becky climbed up in my lap for the 10th time, and did her little Becky-war-dance there to the music on the radio, I was ready to surrender. I was pretty happy to see the Rev come in the door. He didn’t look so good, though. Kinda gray. He sat down in the chair closest to the door. Betty said, “Reverend, you ok?” “My car stalled,” he said. “I thought I could walk the remaining distance…..but it was farther than it looked.” “You need to get rid of that old clunker, and get something a little more dependable,” I walked out of my office and got him a glass of water. Becky was riding on my foot, her arms and legs wrapped around my good leg. “I’ve had that car 17 years. I’m used to it.” “You’ll have to get another one sometime.” “No, it only has to last another 3 or 4 more years, maybe less; and there’s no reason it can’t do that.” “What happens after that?” He looked at me like I’d just said something really dumb. “I won’t be driving after that, son.” He looked better in just a few minutes. I told him we’d go down and see if we could get it started. “But then take it to a shop and let a professional work on it, OK? What if it had broken down out in the desert?” “I seldom go out into the desert, Bud.” “That’s not the point. And it would only take once.” He held up his hand. “All right, I’ll do that. If only to ease your mind.” Charles wanted to go with me and the Rev insteada staying at the station and eating brownies with the women. I think he thought we might be doing some guy stuff, and he wanted to make sure he was in on it. I drove east, thinking the Rev’s car would be somewhere between his house and the station, and he didn’t tell me any different. Didn’t see it. It wasn’t there. “Where’d you leave it?” I asked him. I was looking behind me before making the U to go back the way we came, so I didn’t see the look on his face at first. He didn’t answer me. “Rev? Where is it?” I looked over at him. He looked more perplexed than I’d ever seen him, and I’ve seen him pretty confused. “Well…….I….I can’t tell you.” “Why not?” “’Cause I don’t know.” Charles giggled. “You don’t know where you left the car?” He giggled some more. “It does seem a little strange, doesn’t it?” the Rev said. “Well, it can’t be too far away,” I said. “You walked to the station.” Drove around some more, all around the station. Didn’t find it. Drove down Main Street, and Charles yelled, “There it is!” just about the time I saw it, parked on a side street, around the corner from the barbershop. It was running. Sitting there under a tree, nobody around…..running. “I thought you said it stalled,” I said. The Rev looked perplexed again. “I thought it did. It couldn’t have started back up again by itself, could it?” I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I also wasn’t sure I oughta let the Rev jump in and drive off. “Say, Rev, how about you let me give you a ride home, and we’ll have somebody look at the car. Just to see what’s going on with it.” “That sounds like a good idea,” he said. “A car that starts up by itself will waste a lot of gas.” Uh-huh. “Right.” I didn’t see the men that came strolling around the corner until one of ‘em said, “Havin’ car trouble?” Great. Goons.
|