rolled out of the bed and stood up. All he had on was a pair of white jockey shorts. Orville seemed momentarily startled at that, and how tall and big he was.
Mrs. McCrory saw it plain as day. He was! He was Jesus, only he didn’t have a beard, and, anyway, Mrs. McCrory had always wondered how all those people knew Jesus had a beard anyway, and what he looked like with that long hair like a girl and all.
“I’m gonna call the sheriff on you, boy,” Orville said, “breakin into an old lady’s house, standin around half naked. What are you up to, anyway?!”
“I’ve seen tallywhackers before, Orville,” Mrs. McCrory said, “it ain’t like I ain’t cleaned yours plenty of times.”
“All right, that’s it! That’s it! Where’s the phone?” He looked around. “Rape, is what it is. Or attempted rape. Whatever you want to call it. Where’s the phone?” He looked around. “Well, shit, there ain’t no phone,” he said.
“Don’t be stupid, Orville,” Mrs. McCrory said. “You call the law, I’ll tell em you broke in, that I don’t know who you are.”
“They know me, Mama. I grew up here, remember? No, I don’t guess you do.”
“Mr. McCrory,” Lester Ray said. Both of them looked at him. He was pulling on his blue jeans. “I’ll leave.”
“No, you won’t” she said, “he ain’t runnin Jesus off.”
“I’m not Jesus, Mrs. McCrory,” Lester Ray said.
“You are, too. Don’t I know who you are?”
“Apparently not,” said Orville under his breath.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” Lester Ray said, slipping his T-shirt over his head. He didn’t want any trouble—not for himself; he wasn’t afraid of Orville McCrory—but he was concerned for Mrs. McCrory. He figured the man had caused her enough heartache. He was familiar with that kind of heartbreak, of course, except from the other direction, his own pain being caused mother to son and not the other way around, and Lester Ray could not understand what Orville was doing. He hated it, because he knew that if he just had one minute with his mother, could even just see her for the briefest moment, even if it had to be just a glimpse, he would give anything he had or ever hoped to have. And so he could not comprehend Orville McCrory’s obvious disdain and lack of feeling for his mother. If that’s what it was. Lester Ray would be the first to admit that he didn’t comprehend Orville; the man just seemed to dislike his mother intensely, for no reason that Lester Ray could see. Else he wouldn’t talk to her the way he did and make her go to an old folks’ home when she so desperately didn’t want to.
“I don’t guess you do want to cause trouble, hot shot,” Orville said.
Lester Ray was fighting the rage that had begun to seep into him. He knew that his remark about not wanting any trouble had emboldened Orville, had made him almost cocky. He wanted badly to smack the smug look off of his face, to flatten his already wide and flat nose even more. He wondered if the man was a success as a salesman; he wouldn’t buy anything from him. Maybe you had to be a complete asshole to make it in the business world. That wouldn’t surprise Lester Ray.
“You go on downstairs, Lester Ray,” Mrs. McCrory said, “I’ll fix you some breakfast.”
“Awwww, Mama, you gonna fix him some breakfast? What is this, anyway?”
“I’ve told you, Orville, it’s not your concern.”
Lester Ray walked out the door and walked slowly down the stairs, the old boards creaking as he went.
“And I’ve told you, Mama,” Orville said, after he was gone, “I’ve got the authority to put you in a home if you can’t take care of yourself, and here I find you takin in a boy off the street that you don’t know from Adam’s house cat, and let me tell you somethin, there ain’t a judge in this world that wouldn’t see that exactly the way I see it, dangerous and irresponsible, crazy as hell is what it is, not able worth a damn to take care of yourself. That boy could knock you in the head and take everything in this house, and he would, too, in a minute.”
“What’s he gonna take? You already hauled off the silver and my good China.”
“That’s family stuff, Mama—valuable antiques—and you ain’t in any shape to be responsible for it, and if you need proof of that he’s down there in the kitchen right this minute, waitin to be served breakfast like some prince.”
“Orville,” she said, interrupting him, “you break my heart.”
“What?” he said. He was startled. He could see tears rising in her eyes, glistening. He was momentarily taken aback; what she said was like a kick in the chest. He was suddenly aware of the room they were in; it was the sun porch, and it had been his old room. The same massive old live oak outside the window that he used to climb down, the branches evenly spaced like a well-planned ladder. The bed was his bed. He felt a jolt of nostalgia that moistened his eyes, at the same time a sharp, bitter resentment that his old room had been desecrated. The warring emotions froze his tongue, confused his mind, and he stood looking helplessly at his mother. The depth of his feelings astonished him. He felt vulnerable, naked and open, frightened. Tears were running down his mother’s weathered cheeks, that looked chapped and rough, not smooth the way he remembered them from his childhood. He had to protect himself.
“Don’t pull that on me, Mama,” he heard himself say, “I can see right through it.”
His mother just stared at him. She did not bother to wipe the tears from her face. They just looked at each other for a long time. Then, she said, “You’re a sad man, Orville. Very sad.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “I know my responsibility. Don’t think I don’t.”
Lester Ray and Mrs. McCrory sat at the table for a long while after Orville had left, drinking black coffee. It was already hot and stuffy in the kitchen, the sun higher in the sky, moving toward mid-morning. “He said two or three weeks,” Mrs. McCrory said. “I’m on a waiting list.” Her mind seemed particularly sharp this morning; possibly it was seeing her son, being mentally jerked back into a time when her thinking was clear.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lester Ray said. Maybe there was something he could do. If there were, he would do it. In a minute. He was well aware that Mrs. McCrory was his only friend, unless you counted the several guys that hung out at Saddler’s Lounge, and he didn’t consider them friends at all. He only just stopped in to pick up a six-pack now and then. She was the only person in the world he felt comfortable with, could relax around, the only person who, even in her sometimes addled way, seemed to understand him.
“Maybe you could fix Mr. McCrory’s old car,” she said, “and we could just take off.”
It was a thought that Lester Ray had had before. He had no idea if the old car would ever run again. It was an Oldsmobile, a 1939 model sedan, and it had been sitting in her sagging garage for as long as Lester Ray could remember. She had once told him that it had never been driven one time since her husband had died, twenty years ago, so it had been there that long. And she did not remember how to drive it if she ever knew. It was black and had a huge back seat, the kind of old hump-backed car that would be noticed anywhere it went, Lester Ray was sure, not an ideal car for a getaway. Lester Ray had spent a few nights sleeping in the back seat, when his daddy had come home drunk and mean and wanting to beat him up,
