We awoke at dawn. The soft sunlight angled through the bedroom window as if it didn’t want to bother us. She was wearing a man’s white T-shirt. I didn’t recognize the T-shirt, but I recognized the faded oil stain on the left shoulder. The shirt was a gift to her from Walt. It was a thin, threadbare cotton, and it fit her like a silk envelope.
I tried to lift Claire’s T-shirt over her head. She resisted. “You can’t be serious.”
I assured her I was very serious. “Like a carpenter with two broken legs at the bottom of a beautiful staircase. Maybe I can’t climb the stairs, ma’am, but at least let me admire the workmanship.”
She removed the T-shirt. I let my eyelids close as a way of keeping the image of her inside me. She snuggled next to me. I apologized for being so much trouble during the night. We stayed awake and quiet for a long time.
Claire broke the silence. “My advice to you is not to win any more fights with Walt.”
I told her I planned on taking her advice. “If it hurts this much to win,” I said, “I don’t want to know what it’s like to lose.” I added, “I hope Walt has said all he has to say on the subject.”
“You had me pretty worried last night.” Her voice trembled as she spoke. “You were delirious some of the time. You suddenly got up and stood in the doorway looking into the empty living room. I didn’t know what to do. You must have stood there for fifteen minutes. I tried several times to get you back to bed. You wouldn’t go. I think you were seeing me play the cello. You had this expression on your face like you were listening to something.”
“I was,” I said. “I remember. I can still see you there. I can still hear you. Though if you asked me, I wouldn’t be able to describe what I heard.”
She had her mind on something else. I waited to hear what it was.
“You’re right,” she said. “I have to put the cello in Dennis’s hands. If I don’t, I can’t stay here with you and Walt—with my mother—in Desert Home.”
We lay together for a long time as the room gradually filled with sunlight, and I thought about the cello and her husband on his way. She didn’t tell me what she was thinking. She didn’t need to. The cello against the wall might have well been Dennis. I wondered why I didn’t hate it, all their years together standing there.
We spent the early morning lounging in bed and on the porch without much conversation as we both thought about the coming day. Midmorning Claire and I walked silently hand in hand back along the sandy lane toward the diner, pausing briefly at her mother’s grave. She let go of my hand when we reached the end of the lane and put her arms around my waist. The diner shimmered in the heat on the other side of the highway.
“Soon,” she said, “Dennis will have his cello and I’ll be here in Desert Home with you and Walt.”
I kissed her and walked across 117 to the diner. The front door was open. I turned to look back at Claire. She was gone.
Walt sat at the counter facing the front door with a cup of coffee in his hands. “How’s she holding up?”
“Do me a favor, Walt?”
“What?”
“Punch me again. I’d like to be unconscious today.”
“Funny,” he said, “I was thinking of asking the same favor of you. Except I need to be on guard duty when he shows up. That and I’m not sure you could get the job done.”
I let that comment go, partly because I agreed with it. “You think there’s going to be trouble?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he answered. “I don’t know him, but I know Claire some. I hope not.” He swiveled the stool around to face the counter. “I noticed she returned the gun I gave her. Probably a good idea.”
I agreed with him. “I need to stay busy today,” I said. “I still have freight in my truck so I’ll be out on 117 all day.”
Walt offered to cook me breakfast. I declined, and he acted as if he didn’t believe me. “You haven’t eaten, have you?” I said I hadn’t but I wasn’t hungry. “Sure you are. Your body’s healing. Bacon and eggs. Toast and butter.” He slipped off the stool and headed for the kitchen. “That will fix you up. I’ll have you on the road in twenty minutes.”
I took a seat at the counter and mumbled, “Whatever you say, Dad.”
Walt showed his head in the stainless steel pass-through. He glared at me. “What did you say?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Not a damn thing.”
In less than five minutes he put down a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast. I was hungry. He took the stool to my right and watched me eat, suppressing a grin. Five minutes after that there wasn’t a crumb on the plate. Gulping the last out of a mug of coffee, I stood up.
Walt reached up and put his big left paw on my shoulder and firmly pushed me back down on the stool. “Sit down,” he said. “We need to talk.”
When someone says we need to talk, what he or she usually means is you will listen. Any conversation that takes place will be accidental. I was listening.
Walt cleared his throat. “Just so you know,” he said, “after this husband thing is over, there are going to be some changes.”
I asked him what kind of changes.
“Changes,” he barked. “One in particular.” He made sure he had his eyes on mine and I was prepared for the significance of whatever he had to say. “No more nights in Desert Home until you two are proper.”
I was glad I had already eaten breakfast. It gave me the necessary strength to hold my face together. After a suitable pause, I said, “Yes, sir.”
My answer might have been a little too much for him. He doubted my sincerity. He shouldn’t have. I was absolutely sincere. If that was the way Walt felt, Claire could spend nights with me in Price.
“Are you mocking me, Ben?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I hope you’ll make this speech of yours to Claire, if you haven’t already.”
“I don’t need to make it to Claire. I’m telling you. If I see your ragged ass down there late at night or early in the morning, you’ll think the other night was your senior prom. You understand?”
I gave Walt another “Yes, sir.” Just to make certain, I said, “By ‘proper’ you mean married, right?”
“You know damn well that’s what I mean. That’s her mother’s house. I still own it. No hanky-panky. The people who raised her are gone.”
I had guessed as much.
“She doesn’t have anyone except that musician ex-husband.” He said “musician” as if it didn’t have a thing to do with music.
As far as I was concerned, the phrase hanky-panky was more interesting. It amused me some. I bounced it around in my head for a few seconds. It was as good a term as any and better than most.
“You don’t think you’re getting too far ahead, do you? What happens if I ask Claire to marry me and she turns me down? Or are you planning on asking her for me? Maybe on account of the hanky-panky you figure on just telling her she has to marry me?”
The idea that Claire might have a different plan was not a possibility Walt had considered. He had no intention of considering it now. “I’m just giving you fair warning,” he said, and clamped his jaw shut. The conversation was over. He picked up my plate from the counter and took the mug from my hand. “Now get to work.”
To my way of thinking, for what it was worth, I figured I now had received Walt’s blessing. Twice. He had everything all set in his head, and he was confident everything was now set in mine. If Claire decided, for whatever reason, that marriage to me wasn’t what she wanted, I would be to blame. That would be the end of my friendship with Walt forever. It was a risk I was willing to take. He would have it no other way.
The truth was, neither would I—the marriage part, not the hanky-panky. Claire would want time, and I wanted her to have it, as much as she needed with or without the hanky-panky, though preferably with. If at any point she said no, or even if she left with Dennis and never returned, a part of her would always remain with me, proper in my heart in the only way it could be. In that I had no choice.
I aimed the truck toward Rockmuse. I repeated “hanky-panky” out loud to myself a couple of times and bet that Walt and Bernice had hanked and panked up a storm, probably before they were married. Maybe not, but I wouldn’t have bet on that. Men were often far different in their roles as fathers than they were as suitors, the memories of which kept them, out of necessity, both vigilant and violent, and even tender in moments, to their daughters. I wondered if I might have that chance someday. I hoped so.