Desiree Chisholm, Webber’s wife, was sleeping like a baby inside the little low-roofed house on Roebuck Road when Webber switched off the engine and let the patrol car drift into the driveway without any lights on. He had already dropped Louis off at the McNaughton house across from the Methodist church.
He eased to a stop, up under the porte cochère. He didn’t want to wake her up. He still had some blood on his sleeves from hauling the head-ends of the bodies out to Mr. Raney’s truck in the blanket.
He came into the house through the carport, into the little utility room, and slipped out of his shirt and dropped it in the washing machine. He felt around on the wall for the light switch and when he found it, he inspected himself all over, under the glow of the bulb.
There was blood on his shoes and on his pants cuffs, so he unhooked his gun belt—his scabbard, he called it—and slung it over a straight-back chair, and undressed down to his skivvies and dumped Oxydol into the machine and turned on the switch and started filling it up with water. It wasn’t fair to make a woman wash a stranger’s blood out of your shirt and pants. Two strangers, in this case.
He held his shoes up under the spigot in the laundry tub and watched the water turn pink and swirl around in the drain and run out. He took a brush with stiff bristles and loosened up the dried clots and knocked that off into the water, too.
He threw his socks and skivvies into the machine for good measure, just in case, although he couldn’t see any blood on them. Nobody home but him and his wife, he could walk around naked if he wanted to, give his old belly a rest from that gun belt.
Webber had a grown-up daughter, lived in Memphis, name of Honoree, out in Whitehall. He hoped some big stranger like himself didn’t go tromping his cowboy boots around in her sweet blood some day, and wondering if it got in his socks.
He turned off the light then. The house was small and built on a concrete slab, on one floor, so it was no trouble to find his way around in the dark.
He crept into the only bathroom in the house, just off the room where his wife was sleeping, and eased the door shut behind him, tick-a-lock, before he turned on the bathroom light. He still had hopes of not waking her up.
He couldn’t go to bed, not yet, he couldn’t lie beside her, and breathe her sweet breath, like clover, and smell Prell shampoo in her hair, like a field of green peas after a rain, not with all that death still on him, not with Prell from a dead boy and a dead girl still on his hands.
He turned on the water in the bathtub. There was more than just blood that Webber hoped to wash off of himself and his clothes. He would have liked to wash off the whole awful night, if he could. He put his hand up underneath the faucet and adjusted the temperature, hot and cold, until it felt about right. He squeezed a little bit of bubble bath into the water and swished his hand around until it foamed up.
Sometimes Webber could almost forget what a giant he was—six feet ten inches tall, three hundred fifty pounds, the last time he weighed himself on the cotton scales, down at the compress, probably more by now. He ate a dozen eggs and a pound of bacon for breakfast every morning. He was trying to cut back on his consumption of fig preserves, although he wasn’t making much headway. He could eat a quart of fig preserves. That was what was putting the weight on him, probably. Fig preserves was loaded with calories.
Lord, he was big. How did he get so big? Forearms like fence posts, legs like bridge pilings, a gut like—well, a gut like nothing so much in this world as a big fat enormous tub of guts, a number ten washtub full of red-blood animal guts. Jesus Lord. What happens to our bodies? And what bodies are we given? And what lives to live in them?
The Prince of Darkness told Webber, right before he drove off, “Ain’t no need to try to lose weight, Webber. It won’t work. You’ll always be fat. You’ll be fat after you are dead and gone. You got fat bones. Your skeleton will weigh three hundred pounds, when ain’t nothing else left of you. You one of them people that’s got a real fat skeleton.”
Webber said, “Well, I could of done without that ridiculous piece of information, Prince of Darkness, thank you so much.”
The Prince of Darkness said, “You don’t have to snap my head off.”
In the car Louis had said, “I like the way you look. Your bones ain’t fat.”
Webber said, “They ain’t?”
Louis said, “I’d be proud to have a daddy looked like you.”
Webber said, “We better get you on home before somebody misses you.”
Louis turned and faced straight ahead, out onto the roadway, and didn’t bother to reply to that ridiculous notion.
The water filled up the bathtub, and Webber poured in some more of Desiree’s bubble bath and swished his hand around in the water and stepped into the bubbles and submerged himself as well as he could. Wedged his big butt in, more like it.
His body dwarfed the tub. The bubbles disappeared beneath his massive hulk. His knees stuck up, in front of his face, like stanchions. His right elbow hung out into the bathroom, irrelevant as a two-by-four sticking out of a wall in a room. His left elbow banged up against the bathroom wall and he had to remember to hold it next to his body, inside the bathtub, there was no place else for it to fit. He couldn’t slide the glass doors of the tub enclosure shut, his body was so big. His chest and belly filled up the shower stall. His butt sloshed water up over the sides of the tub.
Sometimes he could forget his size, especially when he made love to Desiree, his wife, and she told him he was her beautiful boy. But not when he was scrunched up in this modern little miniature bathtub, not when his whole enormous bulk was wedged into this narrow, white, clean, maybe even womanly space, foreign, himself the alien, the outsider, as big as a drowned cow, and more out of place, his flesh soft, pink, fragile, strange. If he looked between his big legs he could see a few bubbles, so he tried to focus on these and think of this as a relaxing bubble bath. A little later he dried off and didn’t feel a whole lot better.
Desiree woke up and turned over when Webber climbed into bed. He was so heavy he like to spilled her off on his side of the bed, every time he put all his weight onto the springs.
Her voice was sleepy. She said, “Hey, Big’un.”
He got up under the sheet with her, next to her, and arranged his head on his pillow. She cuddled up next to him and put her slender arm across his big chest.
Desiree Chisholm was tiny and beautiful. She had a body like a girl, narrow hips and shoulders and small breasts. She didn’t have an ounce of flesh on her bones. She and Webber looked like the opposite of Jack Sprat.
He said, “Hey, Desiree.”
She said, “What happened?”
He said, “Aw.”
She said, “Baby, I’m sorry.”
He said, “Sometimes the Prince of Darkness—”
She said, “Just don’t think about it no more tonight.”
He said, “A boy and a girl. Texas plates. Morgan shot them.”
She said, “Tomorrow, baby-man. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
He said, “I hope I don’t have no bad dreams.”
She said, “Dream about me, Big’un.”
They lay in the darkness for a while. A dog was barking somewhere down on the lake bank.
He said, “Hydro was looking after William Tell. In a way he’s lucky, I guess. If Morgan hadn’t been there, ain’t no telling what would have happened.”
She said, “That poor boy.”
They were quiet again. The dog kept on barking.
He said, “I’m—I’m scared you’ll be the one with footprints in your blood, some day. I couldn’t live one minute without you.”
She said, “I’ll keep you safe, sweet thing.”
He said, “They ain’t no safety in all the land.”
She said, “You’re safe with me.”
He said, “How am I going to be safe?”
She said, “Crawl up in my uterus, and let your sock feet hang out, Big’un.”
He said, “I just hope I don’t have no bad dreams.”
She said, “We’ll call Honoree in Memphis tomorrow.”
He said, “Okay.”
She said, “You just lay still, now, baby-man.”
He said, “Prince of Darkness said my bones would weigh three hundred pounds when I died. Louis denied it, but that don’t take away the fact that he said it.”
She said, “Louis?”
He said, “Dr. and Miz McNaughton’s strange little child. He was reading comic books with Hydro.”
She said, “That child is ubiquitous.”
He thought about that. He said, “He might be. Seem like half the young men in town are, these days.”
She said, “Hush, now, hush up. Just relax. I’m right here. Here I am, baby-man. I’ll never leave you. The Prince of Darkness is a madman, everybody knows that. You know he lost his mind when Miss Lily brought him back from the dead.”
He said, “Don’t look like nobody would ever want to hurt Hydro.”
She said, “Hush up, now, baby-man.”
He said, “Morgan, he’s a different story. He’s a mean motorscooter. Right between the eyes, both of them. He’s pretty as a china doll, for somebody so mean.”
She said, “Let me help you sleep.”
He said, “Hydro ain’t hardly got the sense of a billy goat, but I can’t imagine nobody wanting to hurt him.”
IT WAS pretty late by the time Louis got home. The porch light was on and the key was in the mailbox. Louis let himself in and found his daddy watching TV in the den, a dark room with a leather sofa and chair and ottoman. A deer head with glass eyes hung on one wall.
Louis said, “Hey, Daddy.”
Dr. McNaughton didn’t look in Louis’s direction. Dr. McNaughton always wore a suit and tie, even at night, when he was home alone.
Louis said, “What you watching?” He closed the door behind him and stood in the dark room looking at the lighted screen. Dr. McNaughton just kept watching the television screen.
Louis looked at the screen too. It was an old movie. George Raft was dressed up in a double-breasted suit and a fedora. He was smoking a cigarette and holding a pistol in his hand.
Louis said, “Guess what happened out at William Tell tonight.”
Dr. McNaughton leaned towards the TV a little, to hear it better.
Louis said, “Two robbers, all dressed up in black clothes came in and pulled out guns.”
Dr. McNaughton said, “Watch this.”
Louis looked at the TV screen again. All the men were wearing baggy suits and slouchy hats. There was one woman, blond-headed, wearing a tight dress. George Raft shot one of the men in a baggy suit, and he fell down on the floor. His hat didn’t fall off. The woman held the fingertips of both hands over her mouth. The men backed away and looked scared.
Dr. McNaughton said, “What did I tell you?”
Louis said, “Where’s all the blood?”
Dr. McNaughton looked at Louis for the first time. He said, “Blood?”
Louis said, “It looks like there would be some blood.”
Dr. McNaughton said, “Are you being a know-it-all?”
Louis said, “I’m just asking.”
Dr. McNaughton said, “I wish you wouldn’t be so critical.”
George Raft told the men the same thing was going to happen to them if they didn’t watch out. He told them to put the dead guy in the car, so they picked him up and hauled him out the door and slung him in the trunk of a dark-colored, old-fashioned-looking car.
Louis said, “They could use a pickup. It would be a little more dignified.”
George Raft and the blond-headed woman were still in the apartment talking about what they were going to do next.
Louis started making up dialogue. He said, “This place smells like a raccoon got loose in here.”
Dr. McNaughton looked at him.
Louis said, “This guy has got fat bones. His skeleton will run three hundred pounds.”
Dr. McNaughton said, “Louis, if you’re going to make fun of the movie, just step out of the room.”
“I sure do hate to call up the Prince of Darkness.”
“I mean it, Louis. There is no point in spoiling the movie for everybody.”
“We better call the hoodoo lady instead.”
“Are you just trying to hurt me, son, is that what this is all about?”
“Miss Lily, we was just wondering, could you please bring this gentleman back from the dead?”
“Get out! Get out of here, Louis. I don’t deserve this.”
“I got a better idea. Call Dr. McNaughton. Get Dr. McNaughton to identify the body.”
Dr. McNaughton jumped up out of his chair. He tried to grab Louis, but Louis got away from him.
Louis said, “Look!”
He pointed to the TV. The men in baggy suits were throwing the dead man off a pier, into dark water.
Dr. McNaughton was looking at the screen. He watched the body hit the water. He watched it sink beneath its dark surface. He went back to his chair and sat down, slumped there, his eyes fixed on the images on the screen.
Louis eased from the room and down the long dark hallway, into the depths of the house.
The TV music grew louder, so Louis was finished with his father-son talk. That was the end of that.
When Louis got back to the rear of the house, he saw his mama sitting at the kitchen table. His mama’s name was Ruth. Ruth McNaughton was wearing a silk kimono, peach colored, which she had probably had on all day, maybe several days. The lights were on in the kitchen, bright as sunshine. Mrs. McNaughton was pouring a drink of bourbon into a glass from a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Louis said, “Hey, Mama.”
Ruth McNaughton looked up. She smiled her bright, alcoholic smile at him and then screwed the cap back on the tall bottle. She said, “Well, hey there, Snerd, what are you doing up this time of night?” She called Louis Snerd after a character on “The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show.” She was by far the most beautiful woman Louis McNaughton could imagine.
He said, “I been out at William Tell, reading comic books with Hydro.”
She laughed a quiet laugh and shook her head. She said, “That shows you where my head is. I thought you were in bed asleep.” She held the glass of amber fluid up to the light and then bared her teeth and took a dainty gulp from the glass. She said, “Yah.”
Louis said, “Where’s Katy?”
Ruth McNaughton said, “Katy?”
He said, “You know.”
She said, “Well, of course I know, Snerd. I guess I haven’t forgotten my own daughter’s name. I just mean—”
He said, “Is she in bed?”
She said, “Well, sure. That’s where she is. In bed. Must be. I remember now. She went to bed. Katy’s a good little girl. She’s her mama’s girl. She puts herself to bed. I don’t even have to remind her. You ought to try to be more like your sister. She’s her mama’s precious angel. You know that already, don’t you? Katy’s not going to run off. Katy’s my precious angel.” She said, “Well, come here, Snerd. Come on in the kitchen. Let me get a look at you. Looks like to me you’re growing up and not even telling anybody about it.”
Louis moved a couple more steps into the kitchen.
She reached out her slender arm and wiggled her fingers in the air. She was talking baby talk. She said, “Come to your mommy. Come to your mommy who loves you. Who wuvs you cho much. Are you shy? Did my handsome boy turn shy? Did he?” She puckered up her lips and made kissing motions in the air. She said, “Come to mommy. Give mommy a kiss. One weensie-beensie kiss. Mommy’s going to teach you to kiss like a movie star. Kiss kiss kiss.”
He said, “Mama, I’m going to check on Katy.”
Mrs. McNaughton flushed with anger. She said, “Are you ashamed of me? Is that why you won’t kiss me? If that’s it, just tell me. You might as well go on and break my heart. I gave birth to you. I’m not ashamed of you. Why should you be ashamed of me? Is it because of this?” She held up the glass of whiskey. “I’m having a cocktail, for God’s sake. What’s the great crime of having an evening cocktail? Where’s the shame in that? Mamie Eisenhower has a cocktail at night before bed, for Christ’s sake.”
Louis thought: Mamie Eisenhower?
Katy was eight years old, and her mother was right, she was sound asleep in her little bed, beneath its green comforter with the print of tiny wildflowers. And her mother was right, too, about something else: Katy looked like an angel lying there, slender as a reed. She was the pretty child in the family, everybody said so. Louis agreed.
Louis crept into her room and sat beside her on the little bed. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and then pulled at the plastic earpieces, where they pinched the tops of his ears. Katy’s hair had never been cut and was orange-colored red, all over her pillow, thick as a Shetland pony’s mane.
Katy woke up when Louis sat down. She turned over on her back and looked up at him. A nightlight made the room bright enough for Louis to see her.
He said, “Goodnight, Katy.”
She said, “Tell me a bedtime story.”
He folded back her covers and smoothed them with his hand. He said, “Mama and Daddy are still awake.”
She said, “You can whisper.”
He took off his glasses, which had started to hurt his ears, and rubbed his eyes. He said, “I saw some people get killed tonight.”
She said, “Killed?”
He said, “Out at William Tell.”
She said, “Oh.”
For a while they sat without talking.
She said, “Is that the story?”
He put his glasses back on. He said, “No. What story do you want to hear?”
She said, “Little Lulu.”
Louis told her the one where Alvin and the other boys in the club trick Little Lulu into walking on a leash and carrying a ball in her mouth like a dog. Little Lulu and Annie then steal the boys’ clothes while they are swimming in a pond and leave them only diapers to wear home. Everybody in town sees them, and Little Lulu and Annie get the last laugh.
Katy said, “Was Little Lulu mean?”
Louis said, “No. It was a trick. It was funny. The boys got what they deserved.”
She said, “It was funny. I know. I was smiling.”
He said, “I saw you smiling.”
She said, “Now tell me Plastic Man.”
He said, “Tomorrow, okay?”
She said, “Did the people who got killed get what they deserved?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
She said, “You don’t know?”
He stood up and said, “No.”
He sat down beside her again. He said, “I’m too young. There’s still stuff I don’t know yet. Did you say your prayers?”
She said, “Yep.”
He said, “Did you kneel down?”
She said, “Yep.”
He said, “Well, that’s good.”
She said, “Like Timmy.”
He looked at her. He said, “Timmy—right.”
She said, “Can we get a dog like Lassie?”
He said, “It’s late, Katy-did. I love you.”
She said, “Please?”
Louis kissed her on the cheek. He said, “Now say it back.”
She said, “No.”
He said, “No?”
She said, “Okay, I love you too.”
He said, “That’s better. Good night, precious angel.”
AFTER LOUIS had put himself to bed, his room lit up with the glare of headlights through his windows, from a pickup pulling into the driveway. Louis sat up in bed and listened. The room darkened again when the lights went off, and when he heard the sound of the pickup door slam, he knew it was Morgan, the sharpshooter, his mother’s lover.
Morgan came clumping up the back steps, he didn’t even bother to be quiet, even though he must have known Dr. McNaughton would be home. Louis heard him stop and stand outside the kitchen door.
Morgan said, “Ruth, can I come in?”
He had been driving around in his truck for a long time, out in the country, shining his headlights down country roads. He flushed out a deer. He saw a polecat. The reason he ran off to Texas in the first place was Ruthie. She said she didn’t want to see him anymore.
Louis scrambled back down under his covers, where he had been reading Wonder Woman, with a flashlight.
Even beneath the covers he could hear the muffled sound of his mother’s voice.
What are you doing here? she might have said.
I’m in love with you, I can’t forget about you, Morgan might have answered.
Louis shined his flashlight onto the colored pages of his comic book. It was an old Wonder Woman he had picked up in a trade with Hydro. It told about the handsome Brad Spencer, who had black hair and wore a suit. Brad had a girlfriend named Carol. Sometimes the strap of Carol’s dress would have fallen off her shoulder, and then a couple of frames later, it would have been pulled back up. Louis burned to see the undrawn panels.
You have to leave Louis’s mother might have said, standing at the back door.
Please Morgan might have said.
Brad and Carol walked on breezy city streets together. They ate meals in restaurants. They went on a picnic. Once they even kissed. Louis checked Carol’s shoulder strap and found that it had slipped a little. Louis thought of his mother speaking with Morgan in her peach-colored kimono. He thought of his mother’s bare shoulder, then pushed the thought out of his mind.
One day Brad Spencer just happened to be walking past a secret atomic generator, all by himself, and he got hit with “a sizzling voltage of secret current.” It was a completely unexpected malfunction, electrical and atomical. No one could have predicted it. Secret current. Sizzling voltage.
You have to leave Louis’s mother might have said.
Please Morgan might have said.
The sizzling voltage of secret current turned Brad Spencer into a woman. Into Wonder Woman.
Louis could not concentrate on the comic book. The conversation at the kitchen door kept getting through. He put the book aside. He turned off his flashlight and sat in the darkness beneath his covers.
He listened to the faint sounds of his father’s television set down the hall. He thought of the Prince of Darkness’s anger at the Breck Shampoo company. Louis was angry too, but he was not sure at whom. His father? His mother? Morgan? Breck Shampoo? He really did not know.
Don’t send me away
Don’t ask me for what I can’t give
One more time just once please
Louis switched on his flashlight and shined it on the comic book again. He read that the jolt from the atomic generator gave Brad Spencer access to powers that were already within him, including amazing will power. It made his body “a block of steel.” Louis wished a sizzling voltage of secret current would hit his mother and give her amazing will power. She would stop drinking. She would forget about Morgan. She had powers within herself that she didn’t even know about, he was sure of it.
He put the comic book aside. A block of steel.
Please
I can’t
Louis heard the back door open and close. He heard fierce whispers. He heard a rustle of clothing.
Oh
Louis thought of Carol’s errant dress strap. He thought of the kiss Brad had given her. He thought of his mother’s peach-colored kimono. He heard a kitchen chair scrape on the floor. He heard something fall, truck keys maybe, onto the floor.
He’s right down the hall he might come in
Louis snapped off his flashlight and sat beneath his tent of covers in the dark. He hoped Katy was asleep. He heard sounds from the kitchen he could not identify. He thought they were doing the same thing as the girl had made Hydro do, though he had not seen that either. He imagined his mother’s kimono on the floor, his mother naked. He could not, he would not, imagine Morgan.
He snapped the flashlight back on. He shined it down onto his cotton underpants and saw his own aching little pecker poking at the cloth. He listened to his father’s television set. He imagined George Raft on the flickering screen. He wished he had a gun to kill Morgan, as Hydro had killed the girl.
Much later, after Morgan’s headlights had brightened his room once more, and after the truck had pulled away, out of the driveway, he heard his father walk down the hall to the kitchen and help his mother up off the kitchen floor, where apparently she was still lying. He wondered if his mother was naked. He could not think of his father at all.
His father helped his mother to bed—set her on the edge of the bed, lifted her feet then and helped her stretch out, covered her with a light spread. Louis heard all this, imagined what he did not know. He heard his father walk back down the hall to the den, where the television was still playing. Louis knew that he would fall asleep there, on the leather couch. He would still be there in the morning, long after “The Star-Spangled Banner” had played and the flag had waved and a hillbilly preacher had said hillbilly prayers from Memphis.