Taft Read online

  "I'll walk you out."

  Carl pulled on an old jean jacket, took a Winston out of the pocket and lit it. For some reason I thought how glad Mr. Woodmoore would be to make a new friend who smoked. "Maybe you'll show me how to box some time."

  "Like I said, I didn't have the science of it. It was all just a bunch of hitting to me."

  Carl put his cigarette down in an ashtray on the bar. We were ten feet from the door, but that's not the same as being out the door. "I don't know a thing about hitting somebody."

  "Then you're better off."

  "I'm serious," he said. It was clear enough that he was. "Show me."

  "Jesus Carl." I didn't stay with boxing long. I was too worried about my hands, about jamming something in my wrist. When it comes to not getting punched, no group of people are more on their toes than musicians. The ones who liked to fight never lasted in the business long. Spending your nights in bars with too much booze and other men's women can be dangerous for your hands if you liked to fight. Hands were bread and butter. I put the blue bag down on the bar and took his hand. It was built like a peony, this hand. The same sort of white and pink colors, too. One strong blow would knock it all to hell. I rolled it over and looked at the other side. I remembered it then. I had held this hand already, when it was Fay's. "When you make a fist, you think about rolling your fingers in. You need to cut those fingernails shorter if you don't want to slice yourself up." I curled the fingers in, just little finger bones slipcovered in skin. I felt almost like I was bandaging his hand. "This is going to protect them. You're going to put your thumb here, in the front, right under this knuckle." I moved his thumb over. He had torn down the cuticles on either side till they were bleeding. Carl watched his hand like it was television. "That's a fist," I said. "When you hit, you hit here, from the top joint to the knuckle." I slapped my hand against his to show him where. "Hit flush. Keep it just like that and chances are you won't break your hand when you go to punch somebody."

  "How do you punch somebody?"

  "Carl," I said.

  "What am I going to do? Somebody's hitting me and I'm going to show them what a nice fist I can make?"

  I nodded. "Okay. Keep your wrist locked, keep it straight. You punch somebody with your fist tilted down and you're going to break your hand off." I straightened out his wrist. "See that? I'm figuring you're stronger than you look with all that wrestling, but you're still going to want to get behind this as much as possible. Throw it out from the shoulder. Put your whole person behind it. Spread your feet apart, like that. You want to be steady. And take good aim. If you go to all this trouble and you don't make contact, then he's going to kill you."

  "Got it."

  "Okay now, hit my hand." I put up a flat hand. I had six inches and sixty, seventy pounds on the boy. I didn't need to put up my hand. He could have hit me anywhere he wanted for the rest of the night and it wouldn't have mattered to me. Carl punched my hand. "That's good," I said. "Keep that wrist straight. Do it again." Carl punched. He brought both fists up to his face in between blows like he was a boxer. He danced around a little bit. "That's good. That's right. Put some weight behind it." I moved my hand up and down, and Carl swung into it. You could see that he'd been an athlete. At that age, it takes a long time for a body to forget all the work it's done. Carl started coughing. He stopped for a minute and took a drag off his cigarette.

  "Where do you hit them, if you want to get somebody good?"

  I thought about the day I stopped fighting, when I lost to a boy named Jono. "Jab them in the face, a little punch, and when their hands go up to their face you hit them in the throat. That'll stop just about anybody."

  "In the throat," he said.

  "You can't just think about the punch you're throwing now. You've got to think about the one that's coming next."

  "Wrestling is like that."

  "Now you know how to hit somebody," I said.

  Carl nodded. "Thank you for that. You never know when you're going to need it."

  "Try keeping out of trouble." Had I ever once tried to keep out of trouble when I was seventeen?

  "You think you might be interested in wrestling at all?" Carl said, opening up the door for me. "I could show you some holds. Just if you were interested."

  I couldn't see that happening.

  As tired as I was, I got precious little sleep. My wet and muddy clothes were still lying on the floor of my apartment and the bed looked like some sort of animal had tried to make a nest in it. I could smell Ruth in the sheets when I lay down and all I was thinking about was Fay. I was thinking about everything she had on her plate, and now there was me, something else to worry about. She should be in Coalfield, riding around in pickup trucks with the hillbilly boys, or the cracker boys who'd come up all the way from Georgia just to see her. She should be thinking about what dress she's going to wear and who was going to ask to dance with her next. All those boys, tall and skinny with hair that won't lie down. White boys in twenty-five different shades of pale, lined up all the way down the street, packing themselves into Taft's yard, waiting to ask Fay what she wanted to do that day, where did she want to go? Would she like a Coke or something to eat? That's what Fay should have now. Instead she's got worries and losses, a brother she can't make stay inside. And she thinks the only bright thing she's got going, the only thing she wants for herself, is a man who runs a bar and is more than twice her age. A man who could have been her father had he started early enough.

  The next day the rain finally broke, even though the sky stayed gray until midafternoon. Fay steered clear of me. She managed to spend an awful lot of time in the kitchen, hiding in Rose's skirts. Every few minutes she'd buzz onto the floor, check her tables and dart back through the swinging double doors.

  "We were better off when her brother was waiting tables," Cyndi said. There was still no sign that things were warming up between Fay and Cyndi, but then Cyndi didn't warm to much of anybody.

  I wanted to talk to her, see how she was doing, but she was moving too fast. She wouldn't catch my eye. I just saw the back of her yellow sweater as she was going by me from as far away as possible.

  I followed her into the kitchen.

  She and Rose were standing at the cutting board. Fay was talking low and I couldn't hear her. The girl would have to be pretty hard up if Rose was the one she was turning to for comfort.

  "Fay," I said. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

  But it wasn't Fay who answered, it was Rose. She looked at me in a pleasant enough way, took her purse out of the bread drawer and went out the door into the alley to have a cigarette.

  "Look," Fay said, and I waited but she didn't say anything else.

  "I just wanted to make sure you were okay," I said. "Carl told me last night you'd gotten awfully chilled." Is that what Carl had said? I couldn't remember.

  "I was out in the rain a long time," she said.

  "Didn't you go inside?"

  "With you," she said impatiently. "I was out in the rain a long time with you."

  Her face was flushed and she was rubbing her hands together like they were cold. Little white hands like Carl's. "Fay, I'm sorry about what happened. I shouldn't have, you know? I wasn't thinking."

  "Shouldn't have what?" Fay said.

  I stood there while the kitchen got bigger and bigger. "Shouldn't have kissed you," I said, like that was what I'd done, kissed her.

  She sighed and nodded her head. "See," she said, "I was going to say you shouldn't have left me there alone." She wiped off her hands on a dishtowel, even though they looked perfectly clean and dry. "I'm going to get back to work," she said, and she passed me, widely, so that she could get to the door.

  I stood there for a while and then went back to the door that led out into the alley. Rose was sitting on the stoop, smoking. When she heard me her hand darted down beside her skirt to hide the cigarette. "We're done in here," I said. "You can come back in."

  I went up to my office and shuffled papers
just as a way of hiding. I found an application form underneath a pile of mail from a boy named Teddy who wanted a job as a waiter. The date on the thing was only a week old and I couldn't figure out how it had gotten up there or who had found the application forms and given him one. I picked up the phone and called him, told him he had a job. On paper he was qualified and over twenty-one. I thought I better start hiring some more people, more boys.

  When I couldn't find anything else to do, I put my head down on the desk and went to sleep. I didn't dream about anything. That was the nicest part of it.

  It was Fay who woke me up. "Hey," she said, staying over by the door. I pulled my head up and rubbed my face with my hands. "Somebody looking for you," she said. Then she turned around and left.

  My first thought was that it would be Teddy, come to start work. I was confused. I went out into the bar in the haze of a midday nap and there stood Franklin and Marion.

  Big, big, big, that's all I could think. Bigger than the pictures ever made him out to be.

  "Bet you didn't think it was gonna be us," Franklin said, grinning, but he held his ground.

  I went to him, picked him up (heavy, too), kissed him and squeezed him until he gave a little yelp. Oh, he smelled good, sweet and warm. I kissed his neck and put him down. I was so happy that I put my arms around his mother. "Hey there, girl," I said. "Aren't you a sight." Marion looked good. She'd gained a little weight since she'd gone to Florida and it suited her, softened her up some. She had on a thin black coat that made her look stylish. She patted my arm.

  "We came early," she said.

  "I see that."

  "Franklin hadn't missed any school all year," she said, and she put her arm around him and drew him into her. He put an arm around her waist. Marion knew without even thinking, knew this would feel strange to him, and out went the arm and pulled him to her. "I got the days off work and we were talking and we said, Why not just go?"

  "Just got in the car," Franklin said.

  I put my hand on the side of his head and ran my thumb over his scar. It was a thin half moon, just the size of half the bottom of a bottle of Coke, sitting dangerously close to his right eye. It wouldn't have been so bad at all except it was pink.

  "The doctor says it's healing up real well," Marion said. "You know, they all look that way for a while. It just takes some time. I rub vitamin E on it before he goes to bed at night, softens it up."

  "It smells," Franklin said.

  "I don't think it looks so bad," I said. "Nothing like what I was imagining."

  "This your little boy?" Cyndi said. She was looking at him the way girls look at children and dogs, something cute for the future.

  "Franklin, Marion, this is Cyndi." I looked over towards the bar where Fay was standing, frozen into a pillar of salt. "That's Fay."

  "Nice to meet you both," Marion said. Franklin stayed quiet, stepped on his own toe and twisted. "It's been a long time since I met anybody who worked in this bar."

  I hadn't thought about it, but it was true. Marion didn't come to the bar. Marion didn't even call the bar. "Have you been to your folks yet?" I said.

  "Franklin wanted to stop here first thing," she said. "Wants to see his daddy."

  "You'll go over with us?" Franklin said.

  "Come on and have dinner," Marion said. "You know my mother wants you."

  Franklin let go of his mother and clamped onto my waist. "Let me call Wallace and see if he can come in," I said. "It should be fine."

  "I probably should have called you first," Marion said. "It's just that Franklin wanted it to be a surprise."

  "One call," I said. "Everything's going to be fine."

  Franklin and Marion sat down at a table and Cyndi went and got them each a Coke while I called Wallace. A good man, Wallace, a good sport, said he could come in, no problem. When I came back I saw that Fay was still standing there. "He looks really nice," she said in a small voice. "Good looking. Looks like you."

  "He's a great boy," I said.

  Cyndi came up to where we were standing. "You go on with them," she said, so pleased about meeting my family. "We'll be fine."

  "I'll be back to close," I said. "It'll be an early night."

  "Just have some fun," Cyndi said. She shook her head. "I never even knew you were married, much less had a kid."

  Fay got pale, paler, and headed off to the kitchen. There was plenty of time to worry about her. I was making a science of it. For now I wanted to see my son.

  When we got outside Marion told Franklin to ride over with me. He seemed happy to do it. "I'm going to be teaching you to drive before too long," I said as I unlocked his door.

  "I don't want to spend any more time in that car," he said. "It's a long way from Miami."

  "Do you like it there?"

  "It's okay," he said, getting up on his knees and pressing himself against the window.

  "Put your seat belt back on."

  Franklin slid back into place and did as he was told. "I like Memphis better than Miami."

  "That's because you're from Memphis. You always like the place you're from best." This wasn't true, really. I knew plenty of people who hated the place they were from. "Maybe you'll move back."

  "That's what I want to do. I keep telling Mom."

  "And what does your mother say?"

  Franklin looked at his hands carefully for a minute and then took a deep bite out of one of his fingernails. "Stop that," I said.

  "I think she wants to come back. She misses everybody. She says Miami is full of old people and hoods."

  "Hoods?"

  "Bad guys," he said casually. "Am I going to get to stay with you while we're here?"

  "If it's okay with your mother," I said. "I sure think you should." And that's when it came back to me. I thought what a wreck my apartment was and then I thought about why it was a wreck and then I put it all together, that I wasn't just going to have dinner with Marion's parents, I was having dinner with Marion's family. With her sister. Marion was right behind us at the stop light.

  "There's Mom," Franklin said, and he started waving like a madman.

  Nine is maybe the last good age. Your children will still kiss you and let you pick them up every now and then. They still get in your bed at night when they're having dreams. They can still get excited over seeing somebody. I barely had the car stopped when Franklin tore up the walk to his grandparents' house and started banging on the door. Marion and I followed behind with the bags.

  "Look at this!" Mr. Woodmoore said. "Who's this big boy?"

  "What a sight," Mrs. Woodmoore said. "The three of you walking up together, just like a family." She was practically putting off light she was so happy. I couldn't remember a time the three of us walked anywhere looking like a family, but I was glad to see her so pleased.

  "Aunt Ruth!" Franklin called.

  And there she was, lipstick on, hair done right. "Everybody's home," she said, smiling. She kissed Marion on the cheek and picked Franklin up. "Lord, what do you feed this boy to make him so heavy?"

  "Cement," Franklin said.

  "Good to see you," she said to me, like I was a distant cousin who came around once a year at Christmastime, like it hadn't been just last night she was looking for her bra underneath my bed. She leaned over and gave me the lightest kiss on the cheek. It didn't even last a second.

  "You've got lipstick on your face," Franklin said.

  I reached up and wiped the spot away with my hand.

  "Of course we didn't drive straight through," Marion was telling her father. "We spent the night outside Atlanta."

  "So what do you think we're having for supper?" Mrs. Woodmoore said to Franklin.

  The circus went in to eat.

  "Everybody knew about this except me?"

  Ruth smiled. "Not everybody," she said, taking a sip of beer. "I didn't know a thing about it. If I'd known Marion and Franklin were coming in"—she reached over and tickled him behind the knee which made him laugh hysterically—"I wo
uldn't have gone out last night. I would have stayed here and gotten ready."

  "Well, we couldn't tell you," Mrs. Woodmoore said. "Marion told us that there wasn't to be a word to anybody. She wanted it all to be a surprise."

  "I wasn't thinking about you not telling Ruth," she said.

  "There you go," Ruth said, giving a deep nod to her sister.

  "Well, you didn't send a list of who to tell and who not to tell so we just didn't tell anybody. It's not like there was any harm in it."

  "No," Ruth said, looking at me. "No harm done."

  Under normal circumstances, I think I would have excused myself and gone into the bathroom to cut my throat, but there was Franklin. I couldn't stop looking at him, his long legs and clear eyes, the way he clapped his hands when he got excited. It didn't keep me from knowing I was in a room with two sisters I'd slept with, one who didn't know and the other who might be on the verge of telling, but it soothed my fears enough to keep me seated.

  "Franklin," Mrs. Woodmoore said. "You pass your daddy the pot roast, and take some more for yourself. Both of you, thin as rails. Marion, you've got your work cut out for you, fattening this one up."

  Only Ruth flinched. Me and Marion, we were used to hearing this stuff from her mother. We didn't even notice it anymore.

  When it was time for me to get back to work Franklin wouldn't let me go. "I'll come over tomorrow," I told him.

  "I want to go," he said, holding onto my waist. "You said I could sleep with you."

  "I said if it was all right with your mother and tonight's not the night."

  "Just let me go down to the bar for a little while," Franklin said. Suddenly, there were tears all over the place.

  "Somebody's getting sleepy," Marion said.

  "Stop the waterworks," Mrs. Woodmoore said. "You're going to have to stay here with me tonight. That's all there is to it."

  I kissed him on the pink horseshoe scar near his eye. "I'll be back tomorrow," I said. "Count on that."

  Franklin nodded. The storm had passed and he seemed just as happy to stay as to go. "Come on," he said to me, and took my hand to walk me out. Nobody in that house could say good night from their chair in the living room. They had to get up, all of them together and walk right out the door with me. Sometimes they would walk me to my car and lean into my rolled down window and keep on talking until I was forced to let out the clutch so the car could inch away. That night they only went as far as the porch, what with Franklin so sleepy and the air still wet and heavy from the storm. They were all waving as I walked away, calling out good-byes like I was going to war, because that was the way they did things. Maybe people come back quicker if you make them feel like you can't bear to see them go. I looked back from the middle of the street and waved. Ruth and Marion were standing together at the door underneath the dim forty-watt glow of the front porch light. The hems of their skirts were touching. If you looked quickly there would be no saying which was which and since I wanted to kiss them both I kissed neither.