night clerk opened the register. With a ball-point he scratched out my signature. I got up, trudged toward the exit. I left the hotel, breathed in noxious particles of neon like bug spray. Then sweet night air. Mona, a distant figure now, in the last of the arc lights, was running. I would follow her to the edge of town, catch up, we would hitch a ride to D.C. We would make D.C. by tomorrow night, find a hotel, any hotel. Crawl into a bed like a diving bell, sleep, drift on, sink deeper.
She was skipping invisible rope in the headlights of a patrol car. One officer picked up her makeup kit. I had to walk away from Spink Hotel, toward the patrol car, its flashing red and blue lights. What I had done before I would do again. Follow her, try to extricate her. See her as somehow recoverable. Or was I the seen, in a tracking shot still unrolling as the red and blue lights glided farther away, the hotel receding behind me, as I clopped over plum-colored bricks—crying Mona come back to me Mona—toward Roebuck, my Roebuck, his oblong noggin swelling, his one good eye drilled into mine.
Uncle Walton was still on the telephone. Danny Bledsoe would have to wait awhile before he could talk to his uncle about his car. He had come here right after the accident, to his uncle’s paint and body shop. He wouldn’t take the car to the trailer, not with the front end bashed in. His stepfather, Slade Futral, would be there. Slade had started in on the bourbon by now; he was engrossed in “The Price is Right.” The ladies stroking the new car, the washers and dryers, the console TV’s, that was exciting for Slade, not the mangled metal in the front end of Danny’s car.
“Just bring me one hundred dollars cash. If you haven’t got it, I’ll settle for sixty. No I’m not going to make it forty. I’m not that generous, Danny.”
Danny fidgeted in the armchair that had been his father’s, trying to make up his mind if he could get his uncle to come down to fifty. His father would sit in it watching football games, the springs creaking as he reached for a beer. Danny missed seeing his father’s boots, on the carpet beside the footstool. His mother had dumped the footstool. Uncle Walton had gotten the armchair when his mother moved into the trailer with Slade. She wanted new things in the trailer. She had an exercise bike, a little present from Slade Futral. You could stand to lose a few pounds, Lorraine, but his mother never used it. And when Lorraine refused to use it today, when Lorraine refused to get slim and trim, Slade put the exercise bike out with the trash. It sat out for anyone to steal. Slade didn’t know Danny had stolen it, taken it away and pawned it. Put money in my pocket, Slade.
Uncle Walton finally hung up. Pursed lips, freckled arms and face and neck, eyes off at something besides Danny, something distant, not worth getting but worth looking at tolerantly to pass the time. What can we do for you, Danny?
Danny had bashed in the front end of his car, rear-ending this lady’s station wagon. He couldn’t drive with one headlight. He couldn’t open the hood of the car. Uncle Walton said he had to get on the telephone, locate a header. Uncle Walton was calling used part shops. No header for that Pontiac, Danny. They stopped making them fifteen years ago. He’d keep trying, come back this afternoon. Uncle Walton could put in a headlight, chop out half the header.
His mother was vacuuming the trailer. Last weekend Slade had beat her up and stomped off to Knott’s Tavern. She had a black eye again, puffy lips. She ran the machine up and down the wall-to-wall, pennies clicking along the vacuum tube. The feathered dirt stayed where it was, no matter how many ups and downs she did. Danny had to pick up after her. Her ups and downs moved on—to the shared-with-Slade tiny bedroom, where the action was, where the price was right. Taut cord, forgot to move the plug, just thought she could stretch the cord forever like the fat lady’s bulging girdle, the long right arm of Plastic Man. Danny was out on the patio when the police car pulled up. You saw what happened. That I did, sir. Clear case of spouse abuse this time, but his mother had still taken the bastard back. And Slade had come back, dragged his sorry ass back in the rain after lying out drunk in the front yard.
Slade had tracked mud on the carpet, untied his boots in the kitchen. His mother was turning away from the stove, putting one hand on her puffy lips. She did what she’d done for his father, pulled Slade’s boots off, set them on newspaper. There wasn’t anything Danny could do.
Uncle Walton turned in his swivel chair. He gripped his eyes on you, fixed you in the armchair.
“How’s your mama doing?”
Danny felt something go slack in his jaw. “You know how she’s doing?”
“Every time I been by to see her she’s gone.”
“You must not have been by lately. She was working at Piggly Wiggly days. Try coming to see her at night sometime.”
“I’m not about to do that. No, Danny. Not as long as Slade’s still around. I know Slade’s car when I see it.”
“You’re family. You could help her.”
“Lorraine made her own bed, Danny. There’s nothing I can do for her.”
“She could go to your place if you’d take her.”
Uncle Walton looked straight at him. “Dee wouldn’t like it. She’s got little Ed and Winona and me. That’s four. You three would make seven. We couldn’t get you all in the trailer. Five’s top. Maybe six. We could take you and little Ben, but not Lorraine. Dee won’t put up with her drinking.”
“She only does it because of Slade.”
“She’s been doing it for too long now.”
The off-in-the distance look was back, Uncle Walton pondering something he would never actually get mixed up in himself. “The only way Lorraine stops drinking is Slade moves out on her. But Slade, he likes it where he is. He isn’t about to get out of her life. Not unless he got cut or got shot, and that just isn’t going to happen.”
Uncle Walton’s right hand was swinging out. He let it fall on Danny’s shoulder. “Don’t you do anything rash, Danny. You go after Slade, you’ll regret it.” No, kill Slade, you get a medal, but Uncle Walton’s right hand stayed where it was. “You got a gun or a knife, I’d stash ’em somewhere. Somewhere you can’t get at ’em.”
He didn’t have any weapon to get at. But he’d be getting one pretty soon now. Uncle Walton didn’t know this. Uncle Walton was looking to have his lunch pretty soon. He let his hand slide off Danny’s shoulder. It was time for Danny to move on.
“I’ll have to charge you for the header. If I find one, which isn’t likely. And a headlight will cost you twelve bucks. I won’t charge you for labor this time.”
“I can pay, Uncle Walton.”
“Not this time, Danny.”
Out of Uncle Walton’s paint and body shop, Danny crossed the road to Golden Acres. He stopped off at number nine. The sign on the door said disaster area.
Billy Hudmon was cleaning his twelve-gauge, running an oil patch through the barrels. He had parked himself in front of the door, the shotgun canted between his fat knees. Pull out the stock, push in the barrel, cold muzzle kissing his goat beard, pull wires attached to the trigger. Coroner’s verdict—suicide Slade. Billy Hudmon pulled out the ramrod. He set ramrod and oil patch between his legs, replaced the oil patch with another.
“This shotgun isn’t for sale.”
“You
