with an intense, if fleeting distaste. The dog’s four paws motioned in the air like beckoning fingers and she whined encouragingly. Clearly, she expected him to rub her belly. This old dog cared for nothing but that he should make contact with that area of herself that she could not reach. Kneeling, Victor tentatively put his hand to her belly, which was surprisingly cool. He rubbed in circles until the flesh was as warm as that of his own hand, and the dog wriggled in ecstasy. Victor couldn’t help laughing. After a minute he stood, groaning, and the dog, after a few more moments, clambered to her feet and trotted away in the direction of the doghouse, her mission accomplished. Victor let himself out through the gate and stood for a while in the driveway, feeling better than he had in many years, though the feeling lasted only a moment.
Once he got inside the house, he found that his grandmother and Shelby were waiting for him in the kitchen. “Honey, it’s ten till,” his grandmother said, with an edge to her voice, “We’ve got to get going.”
Victor didn’t even know what hour it was ten till, but he realized he’d forgotten completely that he was there mainly to work at the seafood restaurant his grandmother owned. She was standing in the kitchen, having changed her clothes, and a large canvas purse hung by its strap from her shoulder. Victor looked down at himself in his T-shirt and jeans. “Do I need to change clothes?”
“Naw,” his grandmother said. “Wash your hands, though. You’ve been out in back playing with Lily, haven’t you? She’s a sweet old girl, ain’t she?” her smile was thin and quick, but real.
Lily, then, was the dog’s name. Victor washed his hands in the kitchen sink.
“Shelby!” the grandmother stepped out into the hallway and screeched down its length, “Let’s go!”
In a minute they were all congregated in the living room, where Uncle Buzz lay covered up to his chest on the sofa with his gaunt head against the armrest. He was watching a raucous talk show on the TV.
“William, call me when they nurse comes, I want to talk to her,” said the grandmother to Uncle Buzz, who looked at her as if she’d appeared out of nowhere. He nodded.
“Let’s go,” the grandmother marched out the front door and down the steps to the driveway. Shelby rolled her eyes and nudged Victor. “She freaks out if we’re not there by three sharp. But it doesn’t really matter. Right, Daddy?”
Now Uncle Buzz looked at Shelby as if she’d appeared out of nowhere. “Do what?” he said.
“Bye, Daddy,” Shelby said.
Uncle Buzz nodded at the television.
Outside, the LeSabre honked. Shelby giggled and nudged Victor again. “She was worried that you’d gotten lost when you went out. She acted like you were gone for hours. Just make sure from now on you’re ready by quarter of three, and she won’t get in a tizzy. Do you have a watch?”
“No,” Victor had not had a watch since he was a little boy.
“Tell her you need one. She’ll get you one. She won’t mind.”
The Le Sabre honked again, a long, sustained, impatient honk.
“Jesus Christ Almighty,” said Shelby. “See ya, Daddy.”
Uncle Buzz lifted his hand. “Bye,” he said. His voice was very soft, and Victor wondered if this is as a result of his sickness. That along with his pronounced drawl made his goodbye sound remarkably like the bleat of a lamb. As Shelby opened the front door, introducing a gash of sunlight into the dim room, Uncle Buzz spoke again. “He can borry mine.”
Shelby turned, “What?”
“My wristwatch,” Uncle Buzz raised his head a bit from the back of the sofa where it rested. In the shard of sunlight across his face he squinted. “He can borry my Timex with the gold stretchband. It’s old, but it runs as good as ever. It just don’t stay on my wrist no more. My arms is got so thin…”
Shelby looked at Victor. Her face was calm, set, unreadable. Victor blushed.
The horn honked again. Shelby pushed open the screen door and belted out; in a voice so loud it made the hairs on the back of Victor’s neck stand up, “Just a minute! I’m talking to Daddy! Calm down!”
She tried without success to slam the pneumatic screen door, “That’s nice of you, Daddy. But I doubt your watch’ll fit Victor. Look how skinny he is. Gum’ll get him one that fits.”
She looked hard at Victor, “Let’s go before she honks at me again and I have to kill her. See you, Daddy.”
Uncle Buzz had turned back to the talk show on the television. Shelby marched out and down the steps, and Victor stood frozen in her absence. After an interminable moment he lifted his hand to Uncle Buzz. “Thanks,” he said, hardly loud enough for anyone but himself to hear. Uncle Buzz nodded, however, and Victor then hurried to the car.
The restaurant had been in the family ever since Gum’s late husband, Victor’s grandfather, bought it upon his retirement from the Coast Guard in the late nineteen-seventies, and Victor’s own father had worked there throughout his childhood until he, and shortly afterwards Uncle Buzz, entered the Coast Guard themselves. All this was explained to Victor as his grandmother showed him around the empty restaurant, pointing out the various things that would be relevant to his position as the sole busboy and dishwasher. He would have help with the bussing on Fridays and Saturdays, when, his grandmother whispered; a Mexican boy would be in to help him. “But don’t count on him too much,” his grandmother said conspiratorially, “they work hard when they come, but they don’t always come when they’re supposed to. They’re on their own time…”
Not long after his tour, the other employees began to wander in, first three blonde waitresses who all looked like the same person at different ages, a couple of bikers who did the cooking, and one small, muscular young Latino who, Gum whispered to Victor, was the one who worked hard, but only when he wanted to.
For a while there was nothing for him to do but sit at the bar and drink a coke out of a Styrofoam cup as everybody else scurried about the restaurant, getting things ready for the evening. Besides managing the place, Gum served as bartender, and she mentioned to Victor, as she set up the bar while he drank his coke and watched her, that if it weren’t for the regulars who came in every night, on season and off, to drink, she wouldn’t be able to stay in business. Shelby parked herself on a stool behind the cash register by the front door and read from a paperback book, every now and then putting it aside to chat with the waitresses, who peered curiously over at Victor.
After his grandmother finished setting up her bar, she called the waitresses over from their various stations. “Jean, Dottie, Kelli, come on over here and meet Victor, my other grandbaby. Victor’s Eddie’s boy; he lives in Raleigh with his mama. He’s going to be working here while William’s in treatment. Victor, this is Dottie, she’s been with us about ten years now, and this is Dottie’s daughter Jean, and this is Jean’s daughter Kelli. Dottie is my first cousin. So she’s family, too, all three of them are. Isn’t that something?”
“Not really,” called Shelby from the cash register, “just about all the white people down here are related. So be careful who you sleep with.”
Gum
