WALT SAT AT ONE END OF THE BAR AND MADE DAMN SURE TO TALK with Earl enough so that Earl would remember him being there. He wanted somebody to see him because later on when he told Larry that he had been out and that’s why he didn’t get the message and that’s why it had taken him so long to get down there he wanted there to be others to back him up. He wanted to stay on the right side of the fight for as long as he could.
He kept one eye on the clock above the bar, trying to decide when it would be safe to go and get Larry.
Not yet.
He hadn’t liked the way it felt with the shotgun on him. And he had been shaken by the way Larry talked as they drove away from Russell’s house that first night. Point a fucking gun at me, he said. Go ahead and point a fucking gun at me and see what happens. When are they gonna learn? When? You tell me. When are they gonna learn you do not fuck with me? Go ahead and point it. Put it right on my head. Right here. Right here on this spot between my eyes. I swear to God somebody’s gonna learn. Point a fucking gun at me. He was all over the road as he went on. Spit coming out of his mouth. Finger pointing at the windshield then at Walt then back at the windshield. Think that shit scares me? That shit don’t scare me. Point a fucking gun at me. Go ahead and keep on fucking with me and see what happens. Goddamn everybody thinks they got something. Don’t they? Think they got something they just got to do. Got to do or it’s gonna goddamn kill them. Got to go fucking drive around fucked up and top a hill and kill somebody. Got to go do it. Ain’t worried about what might happen ’til it happens. Got to. Got to fuck around. Don’t matter it makes me look like a dumbass. Got to. World might stop spinning if I don’t go fuck around. Got to have it oh please God yes right there got to have it. Don’t think about shit else but keep on fucking with me. Everybody. Please keep on. You’ll find out. Hell yeah you’ll find out. I bet he thinks it’s funny right now but hell no it ain’t gonna be funny next time. Next time I take that gun out of his goddamn hands and shove it down his goddamn throat. Son of a bitch points a fucking gun at me like he rode into town on a white fucking horse. He owes me and you and Jason and he knows it. Goddamn it keep on.
Walt had always been on board with his brother. The bullying. The drinking. He liked the fights. Liked them as a kid. As a teenager. As a younger man. As a man. Particularly liked them when they had the odds like they did most of the time. He had been on board when Larry started talking up Russell’s homecoming. About how he’d killed Jason and didn’t deserve to be walking around and we’ll get even for our little brother who can’t get even for himself. Had looked forward to it. Had liked getting his hands on Russell at the bus station. Liked thinking about the next time they would get to drinking and go after him.
But he didn’t like that shotgun being pointed at him. Didn’t like the stakes that high. Didn’t like being scared. Like he’d found himself when he walked into the room and Russell was standing there with the gun. He’d played tough but something inside him had skipped. Never had a gun pointed at him before. All the bar fights and all the parking lot fights and there had never been a gun. And he had seen the look in the man’s eye who held it on them and Walt believed he was capable of shooting. He would knock somebody’s head against the wall and he missed Jason like any man would miss his brother but he wasn’t going to get shot. And he had to figure out how to tell Larry that.
He asked Earl for another one and he lit a cigarette. He had listened to his brother’s message four times. I need you down here, Walt. Down at the Kentwood jail. Come on and get me. Don’t fuck around. Get on down here. Where the hell you at anyway? Walt knew that if Larry was calling from the Kentwood jail he probably deserved to be there but that didn’t stifle the guilt he felt in ignoring his brother.
Earl brought the beer and set it down and then the door opened. Walt looked and there was Heather. Earl said hey to her and she smiled back and then she asked Walt if he had any rules about what she was allowed to drink while sitting there next to him.
“I don’t give a shit,” he said.
She asked Earl for a glass of wine and while he poured it she reached over and took a cigarette from Walt’s pack that was sitting on the bar.
“Where’s your brother?” she asked.
He took a long drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke out his nose. “Where’s your husband?”
“Same place your brother is.”
He nodded. Wondered if she knew what he knew.
Walt kept his eyes ahead on the shelves of liquor bottles. Heather sat sideways and looked around at the empty tables. He drank and then said you are a wonder.
“A wonder? Like how?”
“I’d just as soon not say,” he said. He thought about the conversations he and Larry had about her when Larry was getting ready to marry her. About how leopards don’t change their spots and all that shit and hell I know she’s fine but something fine walks in the door every night and you don’t have to marry it and worry about it like you’re gonna worry about her.
“Tell me,” she said and she bumped his leg with her leg. “How am I a wonder?”
“Not like Wonder Woman. A wonder like goddamn she makes you wonder.”
Heather laughed. She couldn’t help but laugh.
“See what I mean?” he said.
“No. Hell no, I don’t see what you mean. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Does to me. Does to Larry.”
“Larry doesn’t think about me.”
“You don’t know what he thinks about,” he said.
“You don’t either.”
“I know better than you.”
“You want to call me a wonder and then sit here and tell me you know what Larry thinks about. Nobody knows what Larry thinks about. He don’t even know.”
“All I know is you’re a wonder.”
She laughed some more. Tossed her head back and tossed her hair around. Smiled at herself in the mirror behind the bar. “You don’t even know what that word means,” she said.
“I’ll tell you what it means,” he said. He met her smile with a serious stare and his brow had the same bend of Larry’s brow when he meant business. He shifted on his seat. Took a drink from his beer. Looked back to her and said it means that I wonder why the hell you just can’t give him a break. I wonder why you gotta do the things you do. Why you gotta shove it in his face. Why you gotta make him a big joke. I wonder why. That’s what it means. I wonder why you can’t give him a break every now and then. And I’m getting the hell out of here and you can pay Earl. You got Larry’s money in your pocket. You got everything. And I’m a son of a bitch for sitting here talking to you when I should be somewhere else.
They had stuck Larry in the holding cell with the rest of the Monday night roundup. There were ten of them. No window and a bench on each wall. The floor slick and stained. The smell of beer and worse. Larry sat with his arms folded, furious that no one had answered his calls. Furious that it was damn near midnight and he was still sitting there. Three guys in the corner across from him had begun to watch him. Everyone else kept to themselves. Cigarettes and anxious feet tapping and faces in hands.
There were two big ones and one little one. The little guy did the talking and pointed at Larry while the two big ones nodded and grinned. Larry sat with his elbows on his knees but when the two big men walked over to him he sat up straight. There was more girth than muscle on the two men and one of them had his head shaved while the other wore pigtails and it looked as if he might have been wearing a soft shade of lipstick. They both wore overalls. Shirtless underneath. The little guy stayed across the room with his legs crossed and his hands folded on top of his knee as if he were posing for a portrait.
“My friend over there likes your boots,” said the big one with the shaved head. The one with the pigtails pointed at Larry’s feet as if to clarify.
Larry leaned around the men and looked at the little man. Eye shadow and mascara and his jeans were rolled to his knees and he wore sandals.
“Good for her,” Larry said.
“What size are they?”
“They’re my size.”
The man with the pigtails began to rub his hands together.
“Maybe you could let him try them on.”
Larry looked around the cell. Thought that some of the others might come over and even the odds but he was on his own.
“How about twenty bucks instead?” Larry said.
The big man with the pigtails sat down next to Larry and put his arm around him and said how about I give you a big juicy kiss right on that pretty mouth of yours. Then the other man sat down on his other side and Larry tried to hop up but they pulled him back down. He wondered if it’d matter if he yelled for someone. They squeezed him like he was their favorite doll.
“You want me to take them off for you or you want to do it?” said the shaved head.
“Let me go and I’ll take them off.”
“Take them off and we’ll let you go.”
“Let’s take him home,” said the pigtails and he blew into Larry’s ear. “I been thinking we need a cowboy around.”
Larry kicked off the boots.
“Socks, too.”
Larry pulled off his socks and tucked them into the boots.
“That’s some ugly ass feet,” said the shaved head.
“They ain’t that bad,” the other one said.
“Let me fucking go,” Larry said.
“You better be nice now,” said the pigtails. “We might end up spending the whole night together.”
The big one with the shaved head stood up and took the boots and told the other one to come on. They left Larry and went over to their friend and their friend gave a playful wave to Larry and then he sat still while they put the socks and boots on his feet.
Larry stood up and grabbed the jail bars. “Walt, you son of a bitch! You son of a bitch! Take me to the telephone! Hey! Somebody take me back to the goddamn telephone!”
Half an hour later the jailer opened the door and motioned for Larry and he followed him down the hallway and into an office where he signed some papers and was given back his keys and wallet. They took him out the door and down another hallway and then through another door and there stood Walt.
Walt looked down at Larry’s feet. “Where the hell are your boots?”
Larry walked past him and out the door. Walt followed and asked twice more about the boots but quit when they reached his truck and Larry still hadn’t answered.
They left the station and drove through Kentwood and to the interstate. When Walt turned north Larry said my truck is at the ballpark you dumb shit.
“Don’t call me a dumb shit,” Walt said. He didn’t wait for the next exit but cut across the median, the headlights bouncing across the night and Walt gunning it to beat an oncoming car. He turned onto the ramp and Larry said I’ll call you what I want. Neither made another sound until they stopped at the ballpark at Larry’s truck.
When Larry reached for the door Walt said hold on. You gotta know something and I don’t want you to go flying off the handle when I say this. You and me both know Russell has got to pay for what he did but I’m drawing the line at shotguns and pistols. I ain’t looking to die and you shouldn’t be neither. And if we push that hard then that’s what is gonna happen and I ain’t ready to be buried. That wouldn’t do me or you or Jason no good. I’ll do whatever else.
Larry opened the truck door and stepped out. Stared at Walt.
“What?” Walt said.
“So. You’re one of them,” Larry said.
“One of them what?”
He glared at Walt and felt his blood rising as if he were beginning to melt on the inside, his rage stoking the heat in his veins until he became nothing more than some torrid and molten puddle of flesh and bone. He glared and didn’t answer and then he slammed the door. Walt didn’t wait around for a convoy back to McComb and he stomped the gas and his back tires spun on the rough pavement. Larry walked around to the back of his truck and let down his tailgate and sat and stared at the empty ball fields. At the empty bleachers and walkways. He then walked barefoot along the walkway and he entered the gate at the first base dugout and he ran. He ran and slid headfirst into second base and then got up and went for third and slid headfirst again. Red dirt streaked down his shirt and jeans and arms and neck. Heart racing and breathing hard and he took off his shirt and ran and slid. Ran and slid. His chest and arms scraped and bleeding and the dirt in his nose and ears and under his fingernails and the raging eyes of hate.