Installment #17
Chapters 29 & 30
29
“Bunch of pussies,” Walt mumbled to himself as he grooved the pool cue stick through his fingers spread on the rail of the billiard table.
He worked the stick carefully. Not so much in concentration on the pool shot he was lining up but because he didn’t want to knock off the whiskey shot perched next to his hand on the railing. Before taking his shot, Walt glanced up to see his opponent, a stout young man wearing a trucker’s cap with the logo for a fertilizer manufacturer, was paying attention.
A couple of hours before, when leaving Diane’s, Walt had allowed their conversation to drive him right back to the Puritan Billiard Parlor. He was feeling better now, getting a little bit blind. And he was regaining faith in his long-held belief that he shot pool better when he was drunk.
Walt poked the cue forward, sending the cue ball over to kiss the yellow-striped nine ball, the nine then banking off the far rail. He watched the flash of yellow and white as the nine ball rolled gently home to the side pocket nearest to him.
“Hell yes!” Walt said, eyes turned up toward heaven as he downed the whisky shot. “Rack!”
A lean, older black man wearing an apron full of coins moved smoothly down the room past the other players and tables. When he reached Walt’s table, the man pulled the solid and striped balls from the leather pockets.
“How many is that?” Walt said. He was talking loudly.
“How many is what? Games you won or whiskies?” the man said, rolling the balls deftly to the end of the table. They stopped just before touching the railing.
“The whiskies,” Walt said, laughing too loud. “That’s the only thing that counts.”
The man smiling as he used a wooden triangle to rack the balls for another game of Nine Ball.
“Makes five straight you won, boy,” he said.
“You mean to tell me I’ve whipped Fertilizer Head over there five straight?” Walt said.
Walt eyeballed the young man as he snatched the kid’s ten-dollar bet off the railing.
The young man in the trucker’s cap looked farm-boy strong. Probably quick too, Walt figured. Perfect.
“Hey, kid,” Walt said. “Loser kid. C’mere.”
The other pool players and the domino players at the small tables up front and the men drinking beers at the bar all quieted. They watched as the young man grinned and, cue stick in hand, walked toward Walt.
“What can I do for you,” the young man said.
“Tell me this: Are you tired of losing your ass to me at pool?”
“Just a game.”
The young man kept grinning.
“Just a game?” Walt said. “What the hell kind of town is this? I don’t believe this. Son, I came in here tonight for three reasons. Can you guess them?
“I have no idea.”
“Come on now, I believe in you,” Walt said. “What’s number one?”
The young man looked around the room, still grinning.
“Well, it’s a pool hall so I’d have to say to shoot pool,” he said.
“Correct! Number two?”
“Well, you been hitting the whiskies. Get drunk?”
“Ring the bell, boy, ring the bell. You’re this close to the trifecta. And three?”
“I dunno.”
“Think!”
The young man shrugged.
“Think, dumbass.”
“To fight?”
With his index finger, Walt tapped the end of his own nose, smiling.
“Well, do I got to talk about your mother or something? I mean, you do like to fight, right?”
“I like to fight.”
“I got to ask then, why haven’t you decked me yet?”
“‘Cause you’re funny.”
“I’m what?”
“You’re funny.”
“Why am I still in this town?” Walt said, shaking his head, about to walk away.
“Probably ‘cause you’re looking for that dead lezbo,” the young man said. The kid was still smiling but now his eyes had grown large.
“That’s a way to put it, I guess,” Walt said.
“So, how’s it feel having a useless dick?”
Walt laughed. “You tell me.”
“Well, I never lost a beaver to a beaver,” the young man said. “Especially not some freak like Diane Cross.”
Walt smiled back at the smiling, bug-eyed young man.
“Where’ve you been all night?” Walt said.
Walt was right, the kid was quick.
A flash of arms and shoulders and then Walt was on the floor, gasping for air. Walt rolled, kicked out his legs. He felt his boot heel catch the side of a knee. He heard the young man groan.
Walt came up to his feet fast, got in a quick punch before the kid rode him back to the ground with a flawless double-legged takedown. Walt realized he’d picked himself a wrestler.
As he grabbed at the young man’s head, Walt had the thought that a wrestler would put a man in double chicken wings holds and scissor holds. Play cat-with-a-mouse all night long rather than get it over with and simply kick a man’s ass who deserved it and needed it.
Unless, Walt thought, he could manage to somehow really piss off the young man. Luckily, that was something in Walt’s wheelhouse.
Walt began beating on the young man’s back. He punched him in the side of the head. He tried to drive his knee anywhere he could in the young man. Walt was contemplating biting an ear when the young man’s head came up fast, catching Walt square in the jaw. Everything went black.
As he came-to a minute later, Walt felt himself being dragged. He heard a door creak open. Felt himself flying, free. He landed on the sidewalk. A second later the pain came.
He knew he had a few scrapes and bruises but not much worse. He allowed himself to lie there on the sidewalk for a long minute until his vision began to clear. He managed to sit up.
They must have stomped him some while he was out, given all the soreness that was coming over his body. He spit a few times, just blood, no teeth. His jaw was swelling.
Finally, Walt managed to climb to his feet and stagger to his truck. He climbed in and sat for a few more minutes before finally firing up the engine. He noticed how loose he felt. Relaxed in the shoulders. Calm and clear in his head. He could see every little detail in everything in the world around him.
“Bunch of pussies,” Walt said, putting his truck in reverse.
30
“Careful of your back, Oat.”
Sheriff Otis Cady, bent over in the act of pulling weeds from his vegetable garden, looked up at his wife.
Patty Cady was sitting in her patio chair off to the side of the garden, the sunset calmly exploding behind her. The sun tinted the acreage of their small farm with reds and oranges. His wife’s skirt was hiked up to her thighs, making room for the ice cream maker between her knees. She cranked the lever of the machine in flat circles. Patty Cady was five years younger than her husband and looked ten years younger.
“Add salt,” he said to his wife.
At her husband’s suggestion, Patty leaned over, scooped rock salt from a small bag and poured it into the grinder of the ice cream maker. She sipped from a cold bottle of beer before returning to her work. Sheriff Cady could tell she was growing tired of her chore, the cranking causing her to sweat lightly in the warm evening air.
“Keep cranking it,” he said. “I swear, I got to keep an eye on you. You and everybody else. You’re as bad as Randall.”
“Oh pooh,” she said, laughing at his teasing.
“I’m serious,” he said, still teasing, “It’s like if I don’t stay on you, it don’t get done.”
“Oh, poor Otis Cady,” she said. “You are the keystone. The house falls without you.”
“Well, the ice cream sure doesn’t get made. More salt.”
“No, that’s enough. Mind your own work. Your back goes out, don’t come crying to me. So what did Randall do?”
“Just being Randall. There’s this guy, I told you about him, the horse trainer. The one that showed up looking for the crazy little gal?
“The dead crazy gal?”
“The same. Anyway this guy, I’d like him to leave town. Of course, why would he leave when Randall keeps sitting down to breakfast with him. Or inviting him out to look at his horse and what have you. Just poor judgment sometimes, that’s all.”
“I mean it, Oat, use your knees. Bending your back like that, now that’s poor judgment. So. you think this man is some kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know if he is or isn’t. Just figure that if he goes, the chance for trouble goes with him.”
“Well, you let it go for tonight,” Patty said. “Oat!”
Sheriff Cady grimaced, shooting upright fast as the muscles in the small of his back locked up on him. Patty rushed to her husband, helping him over to his patio chair. He eased himself down.
“You didn’t salt that ice cream did you?” he said.
“Here, suck on this,” she said, handing her husband a bottle of beer from a small cooler. “Maybe that will shut you up.”
Lightly, she scratched the back of his weathered neck. “I can’t believe you didn’t listen. No, wait, I can believe it.”
“Oh Patty, relax. It didn’t go out on me. Just a little spasm. My back’s fine,” he said. “I’m fine.
You’re like a child. A dumb, stubborn child.”
Patty sat back down in her chair. She scooped homemade ice cream into bowls, giving one to her husband.
“It’s just ridiculous,” she said.
“What is?”
“You. You won’t sit your ass down, not until your back goes out on you. Why can’t you just leave the weeds alone? Or use your knees? Can’t just sit down with your wife, enjoy this nice sunset we got out here. It’s just plain ridiculous,” Patty said. “You should know better, a grown man like you.”
“And a pillar of the community no less.”
“You mock what you fear, Otis Cady.”
“My back didn’t go out, all right? If I used my knees, then they’d be hurting. Enough.”
They sat without speaking, looking out at the sun disappearing below the horizon. Their spoons clinked against the sides of the ice cream bowls. Sheriff Cady put down his empty bowl and sipped his beer.
“Beer and ice cream, “he said. “Nothing better.”
“Grandkids sure like it.”
Sheriff Cady laughed. “That’s not funny.”
“You’re not funny.”
“Hey, look over yonder,” he said, pointing off in the distance toward the east where the sky was darker. “Can you see the fires?”
“Tell me you aren’t heading out again to supervise Mike and Mike? I would like to sleep in my bed with my man tonight. If you don’t mind.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be gone before he crawls in with you.”
“Now that’s not funny,” she said, laughing.
“You don’t even know funny.”
“I sure as hell know funny looking when I see it.”
Sheriff Cady laughed again. “You did well with that ice cream. You’re hired. Love vanilla.”
“Thank you. And you’re fired. No more work tonight. No weeding. No sheriffing. How’s your back?”
“It’s all right.
The outside ringer on the telephone at the house pierced the quiet twilight. Sheriff Cady and his wife looked at each other. Each waiting for the other to rise, trudge up to the house and answer the telephone. They were in no hurry. Everyone knew to let it ring. No telling how long it might take one of them to get up to the house from wherever they might be on the farm.
“Your back is okay,” Patty said. “You go answer it.”
Sheriff Cady went to stand but his wife put her hand on his arm. He sat back down and took two big gulps of his beer. He counted the rings of the phone as he watched Patty walk up the stone path to their white, two-story house. While he counted, his back muscles relaxed a little.
Patty caught the phone on about the twentieth or so ring. A few seconds later she appeared at the railing of their deck after flipping on the floodlights above their back door.
“It’s for you, Sheriff. Damn it.”
On his way up to the house, he passed his wife heading toward the garden.
“Who is it?” he said.
“I’ll bring up the ice cream and everything,” she said.
Sheriff Cady could tell from her tone she was angry. Not at him. At his job. But she’ll take out on me, he thought. Not too concerned about my back now, is she?
He continued up the stone path to the house. There was no pain in his back, just a soft twitching in his muscles. A vague threat to clench again at any moment. He was surprised when he reached the top of the deck stairs without pain or spasms.
On the phone, Willie, owner of the pool hall, spoke quickly and briefly. Sheriff Cady hung up, meeting his wife just as she reached the top of the deck. He took the ice cream maker and small bag of rock salt from his wife’s arms.
“Going out, I guess,” she said.
He gave Patty an apologetic look but said nothing. She moved past him to the recycle bin, where she let his empty beer bottle fall from about waist high. It crashed noisily into the bin but without breaking. She drained her beer before tossing it in. He knew her well enough to know she was making a point.
“What’s the crime this time?” she said. “A cat illegally up a tree?”
“No, it’s our boy. Instead of getting out of town, he got himself into a fight.”
“And with which of Eden’s fine young gentlemen did he scrap?”
“Les Davis.”
“That boy is an animal. A criminal. While you’re running people out of town, you should run that boy off too.”
“Well, he’s from here so what are you going to do?”
“Les hurt him? The guy?”
“Don’t know. I need to take a drive into town, make sure he’s okay.”
“Wait a minute. Is this just some elaborate scheme so you can get up to the pool hall?”
“Trust me, I’d much rather stay home with you,” Sheriff Cady said.
He came up behind his wife and put his arms over her shoulders.
“I’m not going to the pool hall anyway. Both brawlers took off. Dumb as they both are, they had sense enough to go their separate ways, at least. I’ll swing by the motel, make sure he ain’t dying from a blood clot in the brain or something stupid like that. Who knows? Could be he wants to press charges. From the sounds of it, he was asking for an ass-kicking maybe.”
“You going to arrest him?”
“I don’t plan on arresting him. Just check to see he’s okay,” Sheriff Cady said. “I’ll arrest him if he needs it though.”