Читать книгу Coasters - Gerald Duff - Страница 13

On his way back to Port Arthur, up from the Gulf, Waylon drove the posted speed limit, adjusting his sun visor to allow him enough shade to be able to snatch glimpses of the sun setting in the west as cars, trucks, and pickups pounded by him. Two good-sized grouper, gutted and packed in ice, were riding in the floorboard in a donated styrofoam cooler not damaged enough to leak too much, and the breeze off the marshes coming into the car was not so hot he had to roll the windows up. The only lack he felt was that of a drink at the end of the day, and that would be cured as soon as he reached Charlie McPhee’s house on Helena.

He turned on the radio just at the beginning of a song about margaritas and shrimp boils, and he hummed along to the tune, remembering every other line or two, so that by the end he finished singing aloud right along with the artist word for word. “Hell, I know,” he warbled, “it’s my own damn fault.”

Would this Marsue Butler woman be worth the trouble, he wondered, if he did decide to call the number on his new pink hat some morning in the middle of a work week? She was probably a little dangerous, and that possibility had its charm, he had to admit. Nothing wrong with being scared a little.

He could imagine the scenario. The call, the conversation, the meeting for lunch at some little fern bar in Beaumont, across a small table with the martini for him and the white wine for her. She’d be wearing something tight, her eye makeup just a shade this side of heavy, her hair puffed up and worked on by a dryer and a teasing comb.

“Let me see,” Waylon said out loud to the bank of pink and orange and red clouds low on the western horizon. “Do you ever feel like things in your life are going along too much in the same old patterns? Like you’re locked in, stuck in the regular, predictable path here in the middle of where you live? Do you feel, I don’t know, restless?”

She’d have a lot to say about old Leo, too, he imagined. She would have figured him out a long time ago, this man she had let herself end up married to. Sweet to her, of course. Protective and predictable. Always there for her. In a way. In a way. That would be the problem with old Leo, really. He was eternally just there, easy to count on and ready to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted to do it. Solid.

“What I find lacking,” Waylon said to the setting sun in its progress toward the other side of the world, rehearsing a line for Marsue, “is, I don’t know . . . .” He paused for effect for a moment and then delivered the rest of her statement. “An element of surprise. I need to be made to think that there’s a possibility of the new, the unexpected, in my life.” The brakelights on the car just ahead came on, and Waylon slowed in response.

“The unanticipated,” he went on, “the sudden, a, a. . . .” The car ahead sped up and began pulling away, and Waylon let the space between the vehicles grow wider.

“What I’m talking here, in a word, is strange prick,” he said, ending Marsue’s dialogue for her and pushing the Chevrolet on toward home.

When he arrived, three cars were in the driveway, his father’s two and a Toyota he didn’t recognize, and the lights were on in the house in every room he could see from the curb. Walking through the garage to take the styrofoam cooler to the backyard and empty the melted ice off the grouper, Waylon could see through the door to the kitchen that his father was working away at something on the counter.

“I’m home,” he yelled, “and I got something to show you.”

By the time he got the slurry of ice and bloody water emptied and the fish laid back down in the cooler, he could hear the high-pitched whine of a blender coming from the kitchen and he knew what was occupying Charlie McPhee’s attention on the counter. He’s really getting into the culinary, Waylon thought. Next thing he’ll be whipping up a full meal, including meat and vegetables, maybe even a beverage and silverware on the table.

Holding the cooler to one side to be sure none of the remaining water would drip through the widening crack at the bottom, Waylon opened the door to the kitchen and stepped inside. Charlie McPhee was pouring a creamy concoction from the blender into a glass next to one already filled nearly to the top.

“Want to see my surprise?’ Waylon said and then saw a silver-haired woman sitting poised on the edge of a kitchen chair as she watched with her lips slightly parted and her chin thrust forward to monitor Charlie’s operations with the blender.

“Do be careful, love,” she said, a thing Waylon’s mother had never called his father as far as he knew, but maybe it was just British and meant nothing. “We’ll want every drop.”

“You want to see mine?” Charlie said, setting the blender down and picking up the two glasses of pink froth and ice. “Waylon, this lady is Mrs. Hazel Boles, and Hazel, that good-looking young fellow in the door is my little boy.”

“Don’t say little,” Waylon said. “I’m still growing.”

“I do detect the resemblance,” the woman said, turning just her head toward Waylon and maintaining her posture otherwise. “He has the nose and something of you about the eyes and brow.”

“Why, hello, Mrs. Boles,” Waylon said. “I’d offer to shake hands, but I’ve got fish juice all over mine.”

“Is that fresh?” Charlie said, presenting Hazel with one of the glasses. “What kind is it?”

“Grouper,” Waylon said. “And like the TV ad says, it slept in the Gulf last night. In fact, it took a nap there this morning.”

“Where’d you get fresh grouper?” Charlie said, walking over to peer into the cooler. “Your ice box is busted on this near side.”

“At the getting place. I caught it,” Waylon said. “Twenty miles out from Sabine Pass on a charter boat. What’re you folks drinking?”

“Piña coladas,” Charlie said in a proud tone. “It’s a tropical drink I read about on a rum label. You make it in a blender.”

“I trust it’s not too strong,” Hazel said and lifted her glass for a sip at the drink. “To the contrary. There’s a lovely sweet taste to it.”

“The kind that’ll sneak up on you,” Waylon said and headed with the grouper for the sink. “Like a velvet hammer to the head.”

“Oh, I hope not,” Hazel said, taking a bigger sip which left a thin line of white across her upper lip. “I do always dread the settling up the morning after.”

Waylon found a relatively sharp knife in the drawer next to the sink and lifted the two fish out of the cooler and began looking for a cutting board. “See the eyes on this grouper, Dad,” he said and held up the larger of the two for inspection. “Clear as glass.”

“Is that a good sign, I hope?” Hazel asked and gestured toward Charlie with her free hand. “A serviette, please, love.”

“Means they’re fresh,” Charlie said and fetched two paper napkins from a cabinet to Hazel. “Cloudy eyes means they’re old.”

“Always a telltale sign,” Hazel said, dabbing at her lips with one of the napkins. “Fish, fowl, or human, I’m afraid. Do fix a drink for your son.”

“I’ll just have a beer later,” Waylon said, beginning to work on the first grouper. “I want to get these babies on the grill first.”

“Are we invited to dinner then?” Hazel asked, nearing the bottom of her second piña colada.

“Unless you and Dad have other plans,” Waylon said, slicing the first filet from the fish on the cutting board. “You certainly are.”

“We did,” his father said, “up to now. But hey, go with the flow.”

Waylon paused in the cut he was making just below the gill of the larger grouper and looked back over his shoulder toward Charlie McPhee who was pouring the last of the mixture from the blender into his and Hazel’s glasses.

“That was the very same philosophy of this grouper,” he said and turned back to widen his first cut. “It’s probably tattooed somewhere on him if you look close enough.”

Later around the table in the dining room, Charlie McPhee pointed out to Waylon how Hazel Boles used her knife and fork and explained that it was the English way to eat.

“See how she does?” he said. “Fork in her left hand, upside down, and knife in her right to push stuff onto the fork. Eat some of those peas and then a bite of grouper for him, Hazel.”

“Charlie, dear,” Hazel said after finishing the bite in her mouth, “eating one’s dinner is not supposed to be a demonstration.”

“I know, I know. I just think it’s real skillful the way you handle that fork upside down and backwards. I’ve tried, and I know it’s not a picnic. Not everybody can do it.”

“She’s right, Dad,” Waylon said. “Knowing somebody’s watching you do something’s real stressful. I’ll just keep looking at my own plate, but I’ll sneak a peek at Hazel when she’s not noticing.”

“You are the soul of courtesy, Waylon,” Hazel said and tapped the back of his hand with the tips of her fingers. The way the touch felt reminded Waylon of something, but he couldn’t figure out just what. A turkey feather, maybe, or the soft part of a cat’s paw?

“You’ve been here since the end of the war, Dad tells me,” Waylon said and took another bite of broiled grouper.

“I’m not that aged now, Mister McPhee,” she said, cocking her head and giving Charlie an arch look. “I came to the States in 1950, well after the war was over.”

“Ever go back?” Waylon said.

“Not for donkey’s years. Only one sister left alive there now. All my connections are here, and I’ve become quite the Texan.”

“I can testify to that,” Charlie said proudly. “You ought to see the western way Hazel’s decorated the living room of her house, Son.”

“Just a cacti motif, really,” Hazel said. “More Sante Fe style than western, actually. Earth tones, pottery, the odd Navajo blanket.”

“Sounds nice,” Waylon said, noticing that Hazel was using her knife and fork now like everybody else would in the Lone Star State, slicing at her grouper and putting it seriously away, her mouth as much in need of a napkin as his father’s was.

“Tell Waylon,” Charlie said and paused to take a drink of the white wine he had opened for himself and Hazel, Waylon having stayed with beer for the meal, “why you been feeling so cheered up for the last couple of days.”

“During dinner?” Hazel said. “I’m sure it can wait.”

“No, no, tell him,” Charlie said. “It won’t bother Waylon a bit.”

Oh, no, Waylon told himself, here it is the first time I’ve met Charlie’s lady friend, and I’ve already let Terry and Beth down in my role as house spy. The old man’s popped the question to her before I got a single chance to report developments to headquarters. They’ll say I let it happen.

“It’s a long story,” Hazel said to Waylon, looking down at her plate to butter a roll, “and I won’t subject you to all of it. Let’s just say it’s come to a satisfactory ending.”

“Oh,” Waylon said. “Good.”

“It’s her daughter,” Charlie announced. “Her daughter’s boyfriend, actually. Go ahead and tell him, Hazel.”

“He’s been quite a burden, has Dwayne,” Hazel began. “In trouble with the authorities constantly. Abusive to Louise. Unemployed as a way of life. An alcoholic and a drug abuser. The catalogue of his shortcomings goes on and on.”

“Sounds like he’s from Port Neches,” Waylon said.

“Pardon?” Hazel said. “No, Dwayne’s from Vidor.”

“He’s not from anywhere now,” Charlie McPhee chortled. “He’s dead.”

“Dead?” Waylon said, pausing with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Did your daughter shoot him?”

“No, no, hardly,” Hazel said. “Louise is such a shy girl. Always too agreeable for her own good by half. And she’s very small, slight even.” Hazel gave Waylon an appraising look over the bite of grouper perched on her fork. “About your size, I should judge. Or only a bit under your height.”

“I bet she’s strong, though,” Waylon said. “Wiry.”

“Yes,” Hazel said, drawing the word out for a space and then popping the bite of grouper into her mouth. “I suppose.”

“What killed old Dwayne, then?” Waylon asked. “Car wreck? That gets a lot of Vidor natives.”

“You’re right the first time, Son, about the method,” Charlie said. “They shot him stone-dead in Beaumont night before last.”

“Who?”

“The man with the shotgun in the Premier Parts warehouse Dwayne was breaking into there just off of Railroad Avenue.”

“A shotgun,” Waylon said, reaching for his glass of beer. “A bad way to go, even for a man from Vidor named Dwayne.”

“You’ve seen these signs, haven’t you, Waylon?” Charlie said, “up in windows of places, saying something like ‘This store guarded by shotgun three nights a week. You guess which ones.’ Well, old Dwayne, he guessed wrong.”

“He would always work on his cars,” Hazel said. “He would spend his last cent on something shiny to attach to the motor, even when the car was in perfectly good running order.”

“Car nut,” Charlie pronounced. “You know the type. Had to have everything new that comes out for his engine. Everything chromed.”

“You mean he was stealing a part for his car when they shotgunned him?’

“No, dear,” Hazel said, touching Waylon’s hand again in that way which reminded him of something powerful disguising itself as weak: a big man with a limp handshake? a thin cable with a steel wire inside? “Dwayne was breaking into that store to take away auto parts for resale,” Hazel went on. “I’m quite certain of that. That was his livelihood.”

“So your daughter’s troubles with her boyfriend are over, then,” Waylon said. “A happy ending, like you said.”

“One that’s final, at least,” Hazel said. “Oh, dear, I’m eating so much of this wonderful fresh fish.”

“Is Louise happy about it, too?” Waylon asked. “Must’ve been a shock to her about old Dwayne.”

“She’ll get over it,” Charlie said. “Life goes on after somebody dies. If you’re alive, you got to go on living. That’s the way to look at it. Life is a river. It keeps on flowing.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Waylon said. “Right up to the point where they put the shotgun to you.”

“You ought to’ve heard how Hazel acted when she read about Dwayne in the Port Arthur Enterprise yesterday morning,” Charlie said fondly, smiling across the table toward the woman loading up a fork with peas and stove-top stuffing. “She just hollered, didn’t you, Sugar? I thought she had hit the lottery jackpot.”

“I was surprised and delighted,” Hazel said, transporting the forkload toward her mouth. “I’ll grant you that.”

“There’s a last piece of that grouper filet left,” Waylon said and pushed back his chair to head for the kitchen. “You have to eat fish while it’s hot to get it at its best, Mrs. Boles.”

“Do call me by my given name, please,” Hazel said. “And I will share that last bit of fish. It’s indeed my policy to eat while the dish is still hot, always.”

A nibble, Waylon thought as he scooped up the last bit of filet from the baking sheet with a spatula, that’s what that little tap on the hand feels like, a nibble from a keeper-sized grouper right before it hits the bait for real and starts to back up into the rocks to eat what it’s caught, down on the bottom in the dark where nothing can bother it.

“Here it comes,” he announced, balancing the plate on the palm of his hand like a waiter as he returned to the dining room. “The last little bite of the late Mister Grouper.”