She didn’t answer the door on the first knock this time. She didn’t rush up the hall wearing a sexy red negligee either. Jimmy’s daddy wasn’t surprised. Jimmy’s daddy had to stand out there and wait. The porch light was off and it was already dark. The days were so much shorter now. Football games on all the time. Pretty soon they’d set the time back and then it would be dark by five o’clock. He had a beer in his hand and he didn’t know what the hell he was doing down here again. It wasn’t going to help anything. But he just felt like he needed to come see her. He felt like it was the least he could do. And it was so hard to talk to her at the plant. All those people watching. Probably whispering behind their backs.
He’d been working on his ’55 earlier in the afternoon, and it was cool enough that he’d worn a long-sleeved flannel shirt. He had on a clean one now. Her car was sitting beside the house, so he guessed she was home. He knocked again. He’d had to put a new belt on his generator and they’d had a hard time finding the proper one at AutoZone, and Rusty had taken off this afternoon, they said, so Jimmy’s daddy had walked up and down the aisles and looked at spark plugs and oil filters and floor mats while he was waiting for them to find the belt. And that wasn’t a bad thing to have to do. It was good to keep up with all the new products you wished you could afford. He wished he had enough money to buy whatever he wanted, to take one of those yellow plastic baskets at the front door and walk all over the whole store and load it up with Armor All, and GOJO, and STP, and that stuff you used to get bugs and road tar off the bumper, and socket sets, and Turtle Wax, and new windshield wiper blades, and anything else you needed. It didn’t look like he was going to be able to afford those Keystone mags from Gateway now. Johnette had been forced to take out another personal loan with her bank to pay for Jimmy’s teeth since he was going to need more dental work. And she was talking about maybe taking a part-time job, maybe calling down to Taylor Grocery to see if they needed anybody else to wait tables on the weekends. He hated for her to have to do that. But it might be for the best. Hell. Health insurance kept going up. Groceries. Everything kept going up except his paycheck.
A car came slowly up the street and Jimmy’s daddy hid his beer in front of him in case it was a cop. He was almost broke from having to pay the fine for having beer in a dry county over at New Albany. He’d even been wondering if maybe he needed to sell the ’55 and get something else. It always had something going wrong with it and he spent about half his off time working on it. And half his money buying parts for it. They loved seeing him come in up at AutoZone. He’d fixed no telling how many things on it already. It was hard on water pumps for some reason, and the brushes kept wearing out in the generator. And it took a couple of hours to take it off and disassemble it and put new brushes in, and then put it back on, hook the belts back up. It had some kind of electrical problem in it somewhere that caused it to blow fuses pretty often, and sometimes he didn’t know what to do to it and could waste a whole afternoon out there in the gravel in front of the trailer messing with it. But he had to have a ride to work every morning. He had to have something he could depend on. He’d noticed that Johnette’s little Toyota never gave her a minute’s trouble. But he didn’t like driving something that came from Japan. It didn’t seem American.
He knocked again and he heard something, he couldn’t tell what it was. He guessed he needed to get on home after he talked to Lacey for a while. He wanted to see how she was doing. And find out what she was going to do. He’d been thinking about it every day, at work and when he was riding around, and he couldn’t see any way around her getting an abortion. It was the only thing that made any sense. It was the only thing that would undo what had been done. Get rid of it. People did it all the time. It wasn’t like it was anything new.
Through the curtain he saw her coming down the hall. He lifted his beer and took another sip. He didn’t really know what to say to her. He guessed he’d wait and see how it went. He hoped it would go okay, but he was afraid it wouldn’t. He was afraid she’d start crying again.
He saw her wipe at her eyes before she opened the door. She swung it back and pushed open the screen door and stood there in a short kimono he’d seen her wear before. It was made from black silk and it had red dragons on it and he liked the feel of it. There was no doubt that she’d already been crying. Her eyes were red. He stood there waiting.
“Hey,” she said. Sniffled.
“Hey,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “How you doing?”
“I’m doing all right,” she said real softly. And: “Come on in.”
“You want a beer?” he said.
“They’s still some here,” she said. He caught the screen door with his hand and went on in, and she stood there and waited and then shut the other door behind him. He thought maybe she’d kiss him, but she didn’t. She just turned and started back down the hall. Her house was old and huge and she’d told him once that it was almost paid for. He followed her back to the kitchen, watching her sturdy legs. She opened the refrigerator door and turned to him.
“You need anything?” she said.
“I’m good,” he said. He lifted his beer. He started to walk over there and kiss her, but he didn’t know if she wanted that or not. It was hard to tell what kind of mood she was in. She reached in for a bottle of orange juice and set it on the table.
“Just let me get me some juice,” she said. “Then we can go in my bedroom and talk. You sure you don’t want me to fix you something? I got some good bourbon.”
“Aw yeah?” Jimmy’s daddy said. “You got any Coke?”
“I got plenty of Coke,” she said. And then she walked to him with her lower lip quivering and she put her arms around him. He had to set his beer on the table so that he could put his arms around her. He could feel her breasts shaking against him and it caused him to start getting hard. This, too, had been in the back of his mind all the time. For days. At work. Riding the roads. Lying in his bed at night next to Johnette. Twisting on a greasy bolt with his head up under a Towmotor and thinking about John Wayne Payne. […]
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she said, and Jimmy’s daddy stood there holding her and rubbing her back. She turned her mouth up and kissed him and slipped his cap off. He heard it hit the floor. And then his hands went to her breasts and she started breathing harder and touching him. […] And in just a few minutes they were back in her bedroom with their clothes off fucking their brains out and she was telling him to come, that it wouldn’t hurt anything now, that she wanted to feel him come inside her, that she needed it. Needed him. And at that moment, he needed her, too. Or at least he needed whatever she wanted to give him. Maybe for the last time. Much later she put her kimono back on and he put his pants and T-shirt back on and she mixed him a drink in the kitchen. It was a little after ten. Probably time for him to get on. Where was he going to say he’d been this time? It got old, having to think up lies. It was almost more trouble than it was worth. It didn’t seem that way before. But it always did after.
From a chair at the kitchen table he watched her tip the bourbon over the ice cubes in the glass. She had those old-timey ice trays made from aluminum, with a handle built in to break the ice loose. She reached for a Coke from the refrigerator, which looked like a pretty new one. She had lots of nice things in her house. She had nice furniture and a nice stereo, and her freezer and refrigerator were always full of good things to eat. She’d made him some spaghetti once, the best he’d ever had. With buttered garlic bread. He’d wanted to ask her if she knew how to make chili but had held off. He’d told her once about his mama and his daddy cooking chitterlings in the kitchen and she said she’d always liked hers fried.
She’d made the drink in a tall water glass and now she brought it to him and set it down beside him. She pushed an ashtray close to him.
“Thanks,” he said, and took a sip from the drink. It was good, too. Just right.
“You want to set in here or go up to the living room?” she said.
“It don’t matter to me,” Jimmy’s daddy said. He pulled his cigarettes out and lit one. She’d already told him that she hadn’t had a drink or a smoke since she’d found out she was pregnant. He didn’t know how she could do that, just turn it off. Hell. Didn’t she want a beer and a smoke? How could she just quit both of them that easy?
He sat there and sipped his drink. He didn’t want to go home. He knew what that would be like. But he couldn’t just sit here all night long and drink whisky. He had to get himself back to the trailer. Tomorrow was Sunday. One more day and then back to work.
She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. She had tied her hair back with a blue ribbon and she looked like she was over her crying spell.
“You hungry?” she said. “You want me to fix you something to eat?”
“I ain’t hungry,” he said. “I just come down to see how you were. You know. How you’re feeling.”
“I’m feeling pretty good,” she said. “I went to the doctor and got my due date.”
Jimmy’s daddy sipped the drink. Maybe he’d have time for one or two more. It was comfortable here in the kitchen, just him and her. She had flowers in vases. She had a clean and shiny floor. She didn’t have dirty clothes lying around all over the place.
She reached out and touched his hand for a moment. Then she pulled it back like maybe she’d done the wrong thing.
“Oh yeah?” Jimmy’s daddy said. “When is it?”
“April thirtieth,” she said. She smiled briefly. Then she didn’t say anything else. She just looked down at the table.
Now what in the hell was he supposed to say? He had only one question, and she already knew what it was probably.
“What we gonna do?” he said.
He could tell right away that maybe that wasn’t the right question. She got up and went to the refrigerator and took out a glass jar of sliced peaches and twisted off the top. She got a spoon and sat back down at the table.
“What you want me to do?” she said. She dipped up one of the peaches and ate it. Then she got up and went to a cookie jar and grabbed a handful of Oreos and a paper towel and came back with them.
“I don’t know,” Jimmy’s daddy said. He took another drink. He tipped the ashes off his cigarette. “I guess I was kind of wondering what you was gonna do with it.”
“It?” she said.
“I mean the baby,” he said. “I mean …”
“Are you asking me if I’m gonna have it?” She had a look on her face that he hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t hostile yet, but she looked like she was bracing up for something. He took another drag on his cigarette.
“Well … yeah, I guess so.”
“Did you have some other idea?” she said.
“Holy shit,” he said. “I’m just asking what you’re gonna do.”
“I’m not gonna get rid of it if that’s what you’re asking. Is that what you’re asking?” She was still eating the peaches and the Oreos. But she looked like she was getting mad. Her face was getting a little red, and she was crunching the Oreos kind of fast. Jimmy’s daddy sipped his drink.
“I guess so,” he said.
She ate one more of the peaches and then got up and put the lid back on the jar and stuck it back in the refrigerator. Then she turned around to him without closing the refrigerator door.
“I wish I could have a beer,” she said. “You ain’t got no idea how bad I’d like to have a beer. And a fucking cigarette too.”
“Well. Shit. Have one,” he said.
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t have one cause of the baby. I can’t have one for the same reason I can’t go have no abortion in Memphis or some goddamnwhere, cause I don’t believe in it, okay?”
“Okay,” Jimmy’s daddy said quickly. Shit, she was touchy.
“Just get rid of your problem, right?” she said. “I guess that’s how some folks handles it. Just kill it.”
“I didn’t say that,” Jimmy’s daddy said. But he almost had.
“I wasn’t raised that way,” she said.
“Okay,” Jimmy’s daddy said.
“Is that what you want me to do?” she said. Her voice had choked up and her face was getting red again.
“Do what?” Jimmy’s daddy said.
“Get rid of it. Have a abortion.”
“Hell naw, I ain’t said that,” Jimmy’s daddy said.
“Well, what are you gonna do?” she said.
“Do?” he said. “What the hell you mean, do? What the hell can I do?”
This wasn’t going at all the way he’d wanted it to. He thought maybe he’d better just get out of here. And then what? See her at work and try to talk there? In front of everybody? It wasn’t going to be long before she’d start showing. And then everybody would know. He’d been hoping that maybe she’d quit before then.
“Are you gonna tell your wife about us?” she said.
And that just flat out stunned him. Was she fucking crazy? Tell his wife? Tell her what? That he was fixing to have a kid with another woman? Somebody he met at work?
“I don’t much think that’s the thing to do,” he said. “I’d have to get divorced if I did that.”
“Are you in love with her?” she said.
He didn’t even have to think about that.
“No,” he said. “I ain’t no more. I told you about us.”
“Yeah you did,” she said. “And I don’t understand why you stay with her if you’re so damn unhappy.”
“I told you that, too,” he said.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “You did. You don’t want to leave cause of Jimmy.” She turned her back on him and looked inside the refrigerator, he guessed for something else to eat. He guessed she was getting cravings for food already. He wondered if she’d had any morning sickness. He remembered that Johnette had stayed sick as a dog with Jimmy. And not just in the mornings. Where had those years gone to?
She bent over and opened a bin and pulled out a hunk of cheese and closed the refrigerator door and then she went over to a drawer and got a knife. She found some crackers in a cabinet and brought everything over and set it on the table, then sat down again. She took the cheese from its wrapper and sliced off a small piece. She opened the crackers and put the cheese on one and stuck it into her mouth and chewed. Jimmy’s daddy saw one cracker crumb fall from her mouth. Then she cut off another piece of cheese.
He sipped his drink. This shit was going from bad to worse. He put out his cigarette and scratched the side of his neck. He sat there, listening to her eat, watching her slice each piece of cheese, wondering if she was wanting to maybe stick that knife in him.
“Look,” he said. She looked up.
“Look what?” she said.
“I’m just trying to talk to you,” he said. “I can’t talk to you at work.”
“Why can’t you talk to me at work? You talk to ever body else at work. You talk to people all over the plant. I see you. But you can’t stop by Porcelain and talk to me, can you?”
“You’re always busy,” he said, feebly.
“That’s horseshit,” she said. And it was. There were plenty of times when she was just standing there waiting for her line to start up. Plenty of times when he’d walked by and known she was standing there looking at him walk by.
“Are you ashamed of me?” she said.
“Naw, I ain’t ashamed of you,” he said, and took another sip from his drink. He wondered if she’d let him have another one.
“I think you are,” she said. “I know I’m fat. I know I ain’t pretty. But I guess I’m good enough to fuck on the weekends, ain’t I?”
Jimmy’s daddy didn’t answer. There was no need to.
“Ain’t I?”
“I just don’t want people talking about us,” he said.
She laughed and cut off one more enormous piece of cheese and ate it, then put the rest of it back in the wrapper, her cheeks stuffed, chewing.
“What you think’s gonna happen in about two more months when my belly’s stickin out further’n my tits? You think they ain’t gonna talk then? Them tongues are gonna wag all over that plant.”
“You gonna keep working?” he said. He sipped at the drink again.
“I got to,” she said. She glanced up at the ceiling. “I’m helping my little brother through college and I got a house to pay for. I got to have a place to raise it. What? Did you think I was gonna quit?”
“Well, I didn’t know,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “I thought maybe so.”
She looked at him like he was the stupidest thing she’d ever seen.
“I got to pay my health insurance. Unless you’re planning on paying for all the doctor visits and the hospital and everything yourself. Was you planning on that?”
She wasn’t just mad now. Now she was getting mean. And that was making him kind of mad, but he didn’t want to get mad. He didn’t feel like he could afford to. He felt like he was going to have to sit here and take whatever she dished out. If he pissed her off she might call Johnette.
“I can’t afford that,” he said. “I barely pay my bills as it is.”
“You drink plenty of beer, though,” she said.
“I got a right to drink a beer on the weekends,” he said.
She got up and went back to the refrigerator and pulled out a bag of white grapes and closed the refrigerator and sat down at the table with the grapes and started pulling one at a time from the bunch and eating them.
“Yeah you do,” she said around some of the grapes. “You also got the responsibility of a child that’ll be here fore next summer.”
She sat there eating the grapes and calmly chewing them. He didn’t like the way she was fluctuating. He had never seen her fluctuate before. Maybe it had something to do with her being pregnant. Hell. Some guy at the plant had told him one time that when his wife got pregnant, he got the morning sickness.
“Are you gonna keep it?” he said. “Are you gonna raise it?”
And that was really the wrong thing to say. She did some thing with her mouth, and she kind of resembled a mad pig in the way she narrowed her eyes at him. She lowered her voice when she leaned toward him, chewing on a grape.
“Well, who in the hell you think’s gonna raise it? Did you think I was gonna give it up for adoption or something? After I done carried it in me nine months and give it birth? You think I’m gonna give my baby to some stranger?”
“Well, I —,” Jimmy’s daddy said.
And then he just shut up.
“Are you gonna help me with it?”
“Help you how?” Jimmy’s daddy said. “You mean give you some money?”
And then she didn’t look mad anymore. She looked like she pitied him. She shook her head just a little as she studied him. Like he was a piece of shit. He imagined she was thinking that: You piece a shit.
“Is that all it’s about to you? About money?”
She was starting to cry again now and she was getting really mad, too, looked like he might not be having another drink here if things didn’t improve quickly.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said.
“You don’t give a shit about me or the baby neither one,” she said. “Do you?”
“I do care about you,” he said. Which he knew was a total lie. And she probably knew it, too. And he saw that he couldn’t sit here anymore, like this, talking. Since she wasn’t going to listen to reason.
“I think maybe I better go,” he said.
“I think that’s a fucking good idea right about now,” she said. “Why don’t you just get in your junky-ass fifty-five and get on back up to Lafayette County where you belong?”
So there wasn’t anything for him to do but get up. He had to go back to her bedroom for his boots and socks and his other shirt and then he had to find his cap. She found it for him. He didn’t even get to finish his drink since she was holding the front door open for him. Slammed it behind him. And he heard it lock. But he still had some beer in the car.
On the way home he drove under a moonlit sky that showed the cotton standing white and open in the rows, ready to be picked. The moon wore a glow around it and it had risen high in the sky. Jimmy’s daddy was sipping a beer and he had his window rolled down, even though the night air was cool. It wasn’t midnight yet, but it would be before long.
He saw some coon hunters loading their dogs at the edge of a corn-field where a picker had already swept the rows, nothing but broken stalks standing there now. He didn’t want to go home. And he didn’t care anything about riding around anymore tonight. All he wanted was for this mess to get straightened out somehow, but he didn’t have a clue on how to do that.
He crossed Highway 7 without running through any roadblocks, something he feared greatly now. He had realized that you could run up on one of them without warning, and if you were drinking, you might be in trouble. And he couldn’t afford any more of that. So he really didn’t understand why he was driving down the road with a cold beer between his legs.
He turned off onto Old 7 and followed it up the hill and turned onto Fudgetown Road, and the transmission made a horrible sound when he tried to downshift from fourth to second. He had to keep the clutch in and let it roll a little, trying to mesh the gears, and he had to settle for dropping it into fourth after revving it up pretty high. It lugged and bucked, but it went on. He should have already had it fixed. But it was always the same damn thing: money. And this car was almost fifty years old. It was no wonder that nearly everything on it was worn out. He felt sure that he’d be worn out by the time he got to fifty. If he made it to fifty. His mama didn’t.
He passed some more fields and the moon showed houses sitting dark in their yards. There were cotton pickers parked at the edges of fields and a module builder sat in one. They didn’t haul it out in trailers anymore. Now they had this new thing with a hydraulic ram that packed the raw cotton into a long tall box and then slid it out all compressed. Then they covered it with a tight-fitting tarp to keep the rain and dew off it until they could back a special truck up to it and slide the whole thing on for the trip to the gin. He thought that might be a good life, being a farmer. At least you’d be working for yourself, out in the fresh air. Instead of standing on concrete all your life and taking orders from some asshole like Collums. He’d thought about quitting. He’d thought about trying to find something else. But when you were stuck in the same place all day long from Monday until Friday, it made it hard to go out during business hours and look for a job. It was easier to just stay where you were.
He picked up the beer from between his legs and sipped on it. He lit a cigarette and coughed. He had plenty of gas. And tomorrow was Sunday. He guessed he could ride down Old Union Road before he went home. Have a few more beers. Maybe see if he could see a few wild hogs.
That sure was a nice rod and reel that old man had given Jimmy. Jimmy’s daddy wished he had one that nice. He’d shown Jimmy how to use it, standing out in the gravel in front of the trailer. It threw that casting plug way out there. And Jimmy was getting pretty good with it now. He’d put an old tire out in front of the trailer and had been practicing throwing the casting plug at it, and most times he could drop it into the tire. He was learning how to feather his touch on the reel button, to slow down the plug while it was in flight. And all the good shit he had in that tackle box. That old man had fixed him up. Jimmy’s daddy’s tackle box didn’t have nearly that much good shit in it. Most of it was a snarled mess of old fishing line wrapped around rusty lures and steak knives, and he didn’t have a decent collection of corks or hooks, and he’d lost all his stringers. Seaborn was bad about making off with them whenever they caught some fish together. Never would give them back. Butthole.
He had to come to a complete stop at the end of Fudgetown Road, at Old 6, and he pulled it down into first and looked both ways before he pulled out. He shifted it up into second and wound the hell out of it going toward the curve, and then dropped it down into fourth. It made another horrible grinding sound for a moment, and then it went on. Holy shit. He hoped this son of a bitch wasn’t fixing to quit on him.
The New Albany cops had taken his old cooler and hadn’t given it back to him, so he’d had to go out to Sky-Mart and buy one of those little cheapo foam models. It wasn’t worth a shit. It would keep beer cold, but that was about it. You couldn’t bang it around much or you’d knock a hole in the side of it. It was sitting in his front floorboard now on the passenger side, and he tossed out the one he’d just finished and fished another one from it. Most of his ice was melted, so that the beer was just sloshing around in cool water with a few chunks of ice floating in it. He’d have to go to the store and get some more ice tomorrow. Or either raid the ice maker in the trailer’s refrigerator. And Johnette raised holy hell whenever he did that, whenever he took all the ice and left none for them. It was always something. Work your ass off and for what? Somebody just bitching at you.
He opened the fresh beer and cruised past Pumpkin Road. It was getting close to time to start going out in the woods and looking for deer sign. He thought he was going to hunt with Rusty and Seaborn over in Old Dallas this year. Rusty had joined a hunting club and he was allowed to bring guests on certain weekends. He said it was mostly cutover but that it still had some deer on it. Jimmy’s daddy had thought of going up on the national forest and hunting there, but the only thing about it was that there were already so many people hunting on it. He’d hunted on it a few times and saw more people in orange than deer. Froze his ass off. Saw a glimpse of a deer one time, but couldn’t tell what it was. He hoped this place Rusty had was better. […]
He went by a tin-roofed shop where some eighteen-wheelers and partially disassembled bulldozers were parked. A light on a pole shone over them. He went by more houses and trailers and yards. He passed a pasture full of cows, lying on their bellies. The sky was pale and faintly lit.
He sipped his beer and went on down the road toward Yocona. He met a car once but it wasn’t a cop. Usually on Saturday nights the roads were full of kids running up and down the roads in big jacked-up pickups. He drove by another big cornfield where some trucks were parked. He was going to have a child. It seemed scary and not wonderful. What was he supposed to do? Time would pass. One day it would be ten years old. And then twenty. What if it was a boy? That would be Jimmy’s half brother. And would Jimmy ever get to know him? Or even know about him? Was he going to tell him some day?
After a few more miles he started slowing down. He was going to try and turn in on DeLay Road without going to a lower gear, and he thought he could do it if he kept his momentum going. There was a restaurant in Yocona and he often saw well-dressed people standing out beside it, drinking wine, waiting their turns to go inside, but he never had been in there. He knew he wouldn’t be able to afford it. It was a place for rich people who came out from town to eat and drink wine in the country. It was dark and closed down when he went by it.
He turned in on DeLay Road and didn’t downshift, and the transmission didn’t protest. […] He crossed over the river bridge and looked out there into the open space beside it. It was dark, the tall banks covered with tall grass. There hadn’t been a frost yet, but it probably wouldn’t be long. Already you could feel the nip in the air in the mornings. The leaves were starting to turn. Bow season was opening next weekend. He wished he had a bow. He’d seen in some magazine where Fred Bear had once killed an elephant with a bow.
He started pulling the Hartsfield hill and he had to stomp on the gas to make the ’55 take it. But he’d waited a little too long. It lugged. He didn’t want to have to downshift on this hill but it looked like he didn’t have any choice. The transmission made a terrible grinding sound when he pulled it down into second, and then he had to just keep it in second and get up the hill, and it went on and on, onto another hill, and then another hill, and he was only doing about 20 mph by then, but there wasn’t any choice. When he finally crested the very top and looked left down into the river bottom, he could see the white cows that lived on that farm sitting like white dots among the grass, and he dropped it down into fourth. There were bulls in a pasture. There was a bobcat that walked across the road in front of him. […]
Two days later he was standing in front of the Coke machine in the break room when the big-tittied heifer walked up. He was putting some money into the machine and he glanced at her.
“You piece a shit,” she said in a very low voice.
“You talking to me?” Jimmy’s daddy said.
And then she was up in his face. Leaning over him. He hadn’t realized she was so tall.
“I don’t see anybody else standing here,” she said.
And then he saw Lacey sitting at a table in the back with some other women. They were all looking at him and he figured they had been talking about him. That made him feel kind of small.
“You know what I’m talking about,” she said quietly.
“I don’t know what the hell you talking about,” Jimmy’s daddy said, speaking quietly, too, and pushed the button for a Coke. Nothing happened. Piece of shit! He almost slammed it with his fist.
“I’m talking about Lacey,” she said. “And how you’re treating her.”
He looked over at Lacey. She was eating her lunch and she wasn’t looking at him now. And now that he was up close to the big-tittied heifer, he could see that she wasn’t as young as he’d thought. Originally he’d thought that she was in her early twenties, but now that he was up close to her, he could see that she was no spring chicken after all. She had some wrinkles around her eyes. She even looked a little used. She wasn’t a college student unless she was an older college student.
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business, lady,” he said, and flipped the lever on the coin return. Nothing happened. No money came down. No Coke appeared. His chili was getting cold again.
“I’ve met men like you before,” she said. “You just want to have your fun and you don’t care who you hurt.”
Jimmy’s daddy flipped the coin return lever again. He looked over at her. She was still standing there and over her shoulder Jimmy’s daddy could see people looking at them. Enjoying the show?
“Why don’t you just get out of my damn face?” he said.
“Because Lacey’s a friend of mine, that’s why,” she said. “Are you not going to take any responsibility at all?”
Jimmy’s daddy was about to get pissed. He considered slapping the piss out of her. But they’d probably fire him if he did that. On the other hand, would it be a disaster if they did? The sons of bitches didn’t pay him nothing. He’d had only a fifteen-cent raise in the last year. What did that translate to? A dollar and twenty cents a day? Six dollars a week? And the income tax got most of that anyway. Bastards.
“Look,” he said.
“No, you look,” she said, still speaking quietly, and she leaned closer. “Lacey’s in love with you. Do you know that?”
“Naw, I don’t know that,” he said. He glanced over at Seaborn sitting with the Tool-and-Die guys and he saw that Seaborn was watching them. He was chewing slowly on what looked like an egg salad sandwich.
“Well, she is,” the big-tittied heifer said. “I don’t know why she is, but she is, and she’s going to have your baby. I think you ought to be a man about it.”
Now what the fuck did that mean? Be a man about it? Be a man about it how?
“You don’t know a goddamn thing about me,” he said.
“Oh yes I do,” she said. “I know what kind of man you are.”
“You don’t know shit about me,” Jimmy’s daddy said. He hit the coin return lever again, but nothing happened. He just wanted her to get away from him. Leave him alone. Let him eat his chili and have a few cigarettes before he had to get back to work. The goddamn toilet in the ladies’ bathroom was stopped up again and he was going to have to go up there and unplug that son of a bitch again.
“And what kind of man am I?” Jimmy’s daddy said.
She didn’t even bother to answer that.
“I wouldn’t let my dog piss on you if you’s on fire,” she said, and walked away. She went back to the table with Lacey and the other women and she sat down and then leaned over and said something to Lacey. And Lacey laughed! He was afraid she was going to tell them about him shitting in his britches.