SUNDAY MORNING. MYER SCOOPED a cup of catfish food from the bag under the carport and then walked to the pond, the dew of the thick grass wetting the toes of his boots. He tossed the feed and the pellets scattered, little wet knocks on the surface of the water. He watched the ripples and waited. The smallmouths came first. Careful and grateful. But then the bigmouths appeared, their thick gray bodies rising from the bottom and pushing the smaller fish aside. Their mouths open and their tails slapping at the water as they twisted and turned. Myer squatted. Picked a blade of grass. Watched until the food was gone and the last of the catfish had sunk back down into the muddy depths.
“Myer,” Hattie called. She stood at the back door in a dress decorated with flowers on the shoulders. She held a casserole dish covered in tin foil and she stood with her hip propped out like she did when she was aggravated. “Come on. We’re gonna be late,” she said. “And don’t get your pants dirty. I just ironed them about five seconds ago.”
Myer stood. Looked down at his pants at the hard crease running down the front of the legs. He then set the cup on the ground. Tugged at his tie and pushed at his sleeves and he began back toward the carport where Hattie was sitting behind the wheel of the truck. He then reached inside the open window of the cruiser and took out his hat and put it on. She cranked the truck and he got in. The casserole dish on the bench seat between them.
“What’d you make?” he asked.
“Macaroni and cheese.”
“Didn’t you make that last time?”
“As long as the church keeps wanting to have dinner-on-the-grounds every other Sunday I’ll keep making macaroni and cheese. I claimed it and I’m sticking with it.”
She backed out of the carport and turned around in the yard. When she pulled into the road she asked him what he was doing wearing his hat. You never wear your uniform on Sunday.
“It’s not my uniform,” he said.
“It’s part of it.”
He took it off. Set it on top of the casserole dish.
“You don’t want hathead in church, do you?”
“I don’t think Jesus would mind what my hair looks like as long as I’m sitting there.”
“You might be wrong.”
She smirked. Shook her head. They drove toward town. Tractors sat parked in fields in the tranquility of a Sunday rest. Cows stood in shallow ponds anticipating the heat of day. The land rolled in emerald hills. The sky an endless reach of bluewhite. Though she complained of being late Hattie drove casually as if the landscape was something new to the both of them. She hummed a hymn and swayed her head and Myer rode quietly. His arm propped on the door and his eyes lost in thought. The countryside slipped past and they came to town and bumped across the railroad tracks. Myer then perked up. Pointed and said take the next right.
“What for?”
“I want to go this way.”
“This ain’t the way.”
“It can be.”
She turned right at a four-way stop and the street was lined with modest houses. Some with the carport on the right. Some with it on the left. The grass needed cutting here and there and barbecue grills and bicycles decorated the yards and lazy dogs raised their heads from porches and then slunk down again as the truck passed by. At the next stop sign Hattie asked him what now.
He leaned forward. Looked in both directions. Then he nodded forward and said one more block and then turn left. She studied him for a few seconds. Waiting on him to add something more. But he didn’t and she drove on, following his directions. At the next stop sign she turned to the left and he told her to go slow.
“If I went any slower we’d be walking,” she said.
“Right there,” he said. “Pull in right there.”
She turned into the one-car driveway. Shifted into park. The engine idled smoothly as they both stared at the empty house. The eyesore of the street.
“What are we doing here, Myer?”
Weeds and antbeds owned the yard. The shrubbery grew in misshapen mobs of green. Vines of sumac had engulfed a porch column and reached up and fell across the roof. Rusted chains hung from the porch ceiling with no swing to hold. Plywood had been nailed across the windows and front door and the entire house wore the weathered and dingy look of the forgotten.
“Benny never could keep the house rented,” Myer started, ignoring her question. “Somebody would move in and the neighbors or somebody else around town would tell them about what happened out there in the workshop. Then they’d hear every little bump in the night. Call me about it. Say they heard something.”
“I recall,” she said.
He picked up his hat. Turned it in his hands.
“I’d have to get up. Come over here and look around to make them happy but there was never anything to see or hear. Pretty soon the house would be empty again and Benny would find somebody to rent it again and then the same thing. Over and over. He finally quit on trying to rent it. Knew he didn’t have a prayer to sell it. Told me he was going to let it sit here and let the badness leak out of it before he bothered with it anymore. Looks like it didn’t work.”
“How do you let the badness leak out of a house?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“Who was the one who started calling it the house of fools?”
“I don’t know that either. I guess it was a group effort. Some excuse to come over here and act like one. Then it was the neighbors calling all the time. Said they’d seen some kids over here in the backyard. Going in and out of the workshop and then finally locking themselves up in it and then running out squealing and hollering. Some scary game they had started to play. Soon enough the teenagers figured it out too. Except when they went inside the workshop and shut the door, they pulled beer out from under their shirts or coats. Thought it was real funny to sit in there and hide until somebody got buzzed enough to get panicked and haul ass. It got to be pretty entertaining to go over there, knowing it was a handful of them sitting in there in the dark, sneak up on the workshop, and then just slap the hell out of the wall and listen to them squeal like pigs and then crawl over each other trying to get out.”
He set his hat down. Reached for the door handle but he didn’t open the door. He shifted his eyes around to the side of the house. Imagined himself walking back there. Imagined what he was going to find. He crossed his arms and said the fun ended finally when a couple of them decided to go in the house instead. They broke in the back door. God knows how long that went on because when I finally caught two of them over there in stages of undress, the floor was littered with old beer cans and cigarette butts and condom wrappers. Benny damn near lost his mind when I told him about the condom wrappers. He stomped all over that house hollering about fornication and the devil’s work and he swore that every sin that had happened inside those walls had descended straight from the crazy man who hung himself. I used to rent this house to families, he said. Sweet little families with sweet little babies. Now it’s turned into a haunted whorehouse. I laughed. Told him that was a little strong. But his mind was made up and it wasn’t a week before he had plywood nailed across the doors and windows. A lock and chain on the workshop door. NO TRESPASSING signs tacked to all sides of the house. I don’t see them anymore though. Maybe people took them as souvenirs.
Hattie picked up his hat and the casserole dish and set them on the dashboard. She then slid across the bench seat closer to him. Touched her fingers to the sharp crease of his trousers.
“When’s the last time you sat here?” she asked.
He rubbed his cleanshaven chin. Wrinkled his face in thought and said I wanted to make sure I remembered Colburn’s name right so I pulled out the file. I was right. But I kept looking, trying to find something else I could say when I got ready to talk to him. Something besides you must be that boy all grown up. Something besides I came over and helped with your daddy. I looked for something interesting about the family but there wasn’t anything. So then I figured I’d see what his life had been like, from the perspective of law and order anyway. And I wish I hadn’t. He dropped out of high school right about the time he got arrested for petty theft. Then there was a whole list. Burglary, assault resulting in injury, resisting arrest, public intoxication, disorderly conduct. Most of them listed more than once. And the geography of it was all over the place. Arrests in Mobile, Hammond, Memphis, Hattiesburg, Jackson. He put together a pretty busy ten or so years but then the last five years have been quiet except for one simple assault. Some bar fight down in Vicksburg. He’s a man now and I can go see him in the flesh and blood. But when I read his rap sheet all I could see was that boy, sitting right up there where that porch swing used to be. Looking at anything but me.
Myer pulled a cigarette pack from his shirt pocket. Tapped one out and held it in the corner of his mouth.
“You’re not smoking in my truck,” she said.
“I’m familiar with the rules.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“Colburn. He done anything wrong since he’s been here?”
“If he has, I don’t know about it.”
“Maybe he just wants to see. Like you.”
“Maybe.”
She scooted back across the seat and nestled behind the wheel.
“We’re late,” he said.
“Yep.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Yep.”
“We’re running out all your gas sitting here with it running.”
“I know a man I can get some money from.”
“Let’s go then. He probably don’t have as much as you think.”
Hattie shifted into reverse and backed out of the driveway. In the street, she paused. Both of them giving a long stare at the house of fools. Then she said you can smoke that cigarette if you want but only this time. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and said I wouldn’t dare break such a covenant. Especially on the Lord’s day.