still married to Myrlie Hudson?”
“Yeah,” Bobby Shepard said in the direction of his beer glass. “What of it?”
“Well, nothing. I just figured from your expression of interest in cheerleaders of the swamp variety that you still had to be a married man, that’s all.”
“Yes, I am, and that ain’t got nothing to do with nothing else.”
“Bobby,” Waylon said and killed the last swallow in his Regal bottle, “that is the very definition of the married state.”
The message light was blinking on the answering machine as Waylon walked through the kitchen, but he knew it had to be for his father so he didn’t slow down on his way to the hall leading to his room. The last thing he wanted to hear before he tried to sink into sleep was the voice of some female being coquettish with Charlie McPhee.
He cast his voice into the higher ranges and began to speak out loud as he imagined whoever the lady was as she recorded her message to his father. “Hello, Mister Man,” Waylon said as gained the door to his room. “This is you-know-who just wondering why you haven’t returned my call. Are you the kind of man who doesn’t keep his promise? You said you had a reason to ask for my telephone number at the. . . .” Waylon stopped to think of a good location for the imagined meeting between Charlie and his lady friend to have taken place before going on. “At the, at the,” he said and then forgetting how he achieved the particular tone of female coyness in his voice, dropped the attempt and stepped through the door.
Just then the telephone on the table beside the bed made a muted chirp and he moved to pick it up. “Hello,” Waylon said. “I’m not the one you want. This is not Charlie McPhee.”
“Well, I know you’re not,” the voice of the younger of his two sisters said. “You think I don’t know who I’m talking to?”
“Terry,” Waylon said. “How you doing?”
“Fine, but that’s not the question. How long have you been there? Is he around?”
“No, do you want me to tell him something for you?”
“That’s the problem, Way. I can’t tell him anything anymore.”
“Well, whoever could?”
“Mama, that’s who.”
“That’s true, all right,” Waylon said, calling up an image of his mother dropping her head to look over her glasses at her husband fixed half-turned before some door leading to the outside. “But she’s not around anymore.”
“Don’t tell me that. You haven’t been here to be able to say anything to me.”
“I am now, though.”
“For how long this time?”
“Don’t worry, little sis. Just until I can lick my wounds and achieve escape velocity.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Terry said. “I don’t care if you stay there the rest of your life. That’d suit me and Beth just fine.”
“What’d suit you and Beth’s not what concerns me, Terry,” Waylon said and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m thinking about my own prospects.”
“Is that a change?”
“Nope. Just a reminder.”
Terry was silent for a space, and Waylon was about to move the conversation toward farewell when his sister spoke again. “Have you met her yet?”
“Who?”
“You must not have talked to Dad yet since you moved back in if you have to ask who. I mean Hazel. Hazel Boles, that’s who.”
“The lady from Groves? Charlie mentioned her to me.”
“Well, if he was awake when you came in the house he mentioned her all right. And he only just met her less than two months ago.”
“No, then. I haven’t met her yet. I guess you have the way you’re talking. What’s Mrs. Boles like?”
“She is like the first cousin to the Queen of England,” Terry said. “To hear the way she talks and carries on. The way she acts and all.”
“So she has lots of occasions to refer to the old country, huh?”
“Every other breath she draws,” said Terry. “If you call that lots of occasions. Tell me something, Waylon. You been over there before. Do they all, the English people now I mean, just talk about their country and their customs and how they do just all the time?”
“Well, Terry,” Waylon said. “I didn’t notice it all that much. I mean when they’re over there in their own country, they don’t have a good reason to talk about being where they are all the time. They’re there, you know. They’re not like Texans living in Texas.”
“I know about Texans in Texas,” Terry said in an annoyed tone. “I see them every minute of the day everytime I go out of the house. I just don’t know a thing about Englishmen in England. That’s what I’m asking about.”
“It’s different,” Waylon said. “Best I can remember about it. They’re not the same as each other, either. Everyone of them’s got his own personality.”
“Is there anything to eat in the house over yonder?”
“In England?”
“Ha ha,” Terry said. “Is there anything to eat there?”
“Yeah. Patio beans. A great big old bowl of them.”
“That’s what I figured. You can come over here and get something.”
“I had my supper already. Thanks, anyway.”
“What? Not those beans, I know.”
“A hamburger at the Nederland Club,” Waylon said, “and it was real good, too.”
“Yeah, and you’re liable to coil up and die by morning from it,” Terry said pensively. “Listen, call me as soon as you’ve met Hazel Boles. Better yet, come over here. We got to talk about this business.”
“What business? Dad dating this English lady?”
“Don’t say dating. It just sounds infantile to call it that when a man his age is running around chasing a woman.”
“I’d say it’s dating when a fellow dresses up in spiffy clothes and leaves the house whistling to crawl behind the wheel of his car and go pick up his girl.”
“Oh, hush, Waylon,” Terry said. “That’s not really the part we’re concerned about. We’ve got serious business to discuss, us three kids. Money business.”
“Money?” Waylon said. “I’d rather talk about the mother country myself.” By the time he got that out, though, he was speaking to a dial
