Читать книгу What Luck, This Life - Kathryn Schwille - Страница 9
ОглавлениеBostic’s was a corner store on a two-lane highway, a location that should have made for good commerce. The traffic on 91 was never heavy—deep East Texas was too lightly populated for that—but the highway ran out to Minden Lake, where the bass were lunkers and the campgrounds rarely empty. From Bostic’s gravel parking lot where the fussy gas pumps stood, it was just a mile to the road that led to Kiser.
In the rising light of a cool October morning, Carter Bostic struggled at the store’s back door, fuming over the lock she’d begged Roy weeks ago to fix. Maybe today was the day she’d call up to Eno for the locksmith to come, and with that money wasted when Roy could so easily do it himself, his attention might settle on the things that cried out for doing. He had held her up after breakfast, talking about what money they didn’t have and apparently never would, until finally she had to leave him there in the dirt path that passed for a driveway at their place. She’d sped off in the Silverado he’d picked up from the dealer the morning of 9/11—two years old and the light of Roy’s life. While the Twin Towers were collapsing, Roy had tooled around Kiser showing off their big purchase. Now they could barely make the payments.
Carter pushed in on the key, pulled back, turned slowly. Nothing. Roy had insisted on the deadbolt, though she’d told him it would never keep out trouble determined to get in. Last year, someone had broken in through a window and stolen cigarettes, shotgun shells and four bottles of iodine from the back room where Carter kept the horse supplies. The cigarettes and shells didn’t bother her, but nobody needed that much iodine unless they were cooking meth.
She tried the key with both hands. Yesterday that had worked, but not today. Inside her purse, her cell phone rang. Behind her, she heard footsteps.
“Graphite?” Grady MacFarland held out a pencil.
“If Roy doesn’t fix this lock.”
“You’ll what? Here, let me. Answer your phone.” Grady took the key and ran the pencil over its teeth. He was not much taller than Carter, the wiry sort that Roy would call scrawny. This morning she could see gray around the temples in his light brown hair, but he was one of those men who would be slow to age. The crow’s feet around his green eyes would not deter a younger woman, if he fancied one.
She let the phone ring. “So what are you needing this time of the morning?”
“No more than your sweet hello. And some batteries.” Grady put the key in the lock and when the door opened Carter gave him the smile he’d flattered her for. She’d known Grady MacFarland since she was fourteen and for a while in high school he’d shared with her his hopes and dreams and plenty more on the old plaid sofa in his parents’ downstairs den. Whatever else they’d been—right for each other but at the wrong time, or wrong for each other and lucky enough to find out—they were still friends. He had the soul of an intellect and why he’d given up on life in Tulsa to come back here, she had yet to figure out. He’d bought a piece of land near his mother, an insurance business, and just last week, two of Jimmy Hubble’s brood mares. Carter was, herself, fed up with Kiser and fed up with family obligation. It had hogtied Roy and tethered them to this store forever.
“Coffee’ll be ready soon,” she said.
Grady held the door for her. “Coffee? That’s new.” A shaving nick on his jaw was fresh. The aftershave was lime.
“Roy’s idea. Maybe it’ll help. You know Roy. He can always think of something else for me to do.”
So far, at fifty cents a cup, they were just breaking even. The one financial bright spot Carter could see was a call yesterday from Jerome, her old boss at Porta-Chow. Last February, after the space shuttle broke up and hundreds of people arrived to search for debris, Porta-Chow came in from Kansas City and set up barbecue pits and trailers with portable kitchens. They hired thirty locals. Every afternoon Carter left the store at three o’clock and went to work at four, prepping vegetables and serving up the meats. In twenty-two days she’d made three thousand dollars. Now Porta-Chow was setting up in Baton Rouge, where a tornado had just come through. “We could use you,” Jerome had said.
Carter slid her purse under the counter and unlocked the front door. She’d told Jerome she would think about it. She hadn’t mentioned it to Roy; she knew what he would say.
Outside, Junior Pierce had pulled up his cab to the diesel tank. The sun was breaking through the clouds right into his eyes, and he shaded them as he looked out over the scrubby pasture at the intersection with Buford Road. Not even cattle grazed in the weeds where Pizza Hut had wanted to build, and didn’t, because Horace Chadwick, rich enough and happy with the status quo, wouldn’t sell. Last week, the pizza chain had announced it would build in Eno and the old description of Kiser had bubbled up again: twenty miles south of Eno and thirty years behind.
Carter said a quick prayer that the diesel pump would hold out long enough to fill Junior’s tank. She started the coffee and opened the last new pack of Styrofoam cups. Maybe there was no point in buying more.
“Grady,” she called, “you ever seen a white birch tree? I’ve been telling Roy we should travel. We could get someone to look after the horses and the store. He says there’s nowhere he wants to go. How can that be? Nowhere.”
“Man knows what he wants. You got any fire lighters?”
“Got these butane lighters up here. It’s just that I’ve never seen a birch tree, I’ve never seen more than three inches of snow. I want to see the prairie that Willa Cather wrote about in this book I’m reading. You ever read her? I’m not afraid to go alone. I swear I’m not. I’d get on the train with a good book and talk to strangers who sat next to me. A stranger might be nice once in a while, instead of these old boys come in here that I been knowing all my life.”
Grady had wandered into the back room and was walking out with two tubes of horse wormer. He stopped in front of the drug store supplies.
“Not you,” Carter said. “I’m not talking about you.” Grady seemed to be looking at the condoms, though more likely it was razor blades. He had married his college sweetheart and the rumor was they’d had a happy life, though one without children. Three years ago they’d split up. As far as Carter knew, he hadn’t had a single date since he moved back to Kiser. Maybe he was carrying a torch. “You know where the batteries are?” she said. “Over by the window, next to the light bulbs.” She fished into her purse for a Tums. Roy had taught her never to rush the customers, but she wanted Grady out of here, before Newland Sparks came in. Newland was running his foul mouth when no one else was in the store, about how much she wanted to give him pussy, what would happen when she did. It left her feeling the need for a shower and not ever in the mood for sex, as Roy had taken to pointing out. If Newland came in, Grady would stay until he left, thinking he could keep the creep in line. But Newland would just come back later and that meant two encounters in a day instead of one. It was making her stomach hurt, a slow burn right in the pit. She’d just as soon Newland Sparks come in now, get his jerk-ass crap over with, go shoot off his rocks if that was what he did after and she could maybe—maybe—have a little peace for the rest of the day. She’d tried to get Roy to do something. “You keep your mouth shut,” he’d told her. “All that kin Newnie’s got around here. We can’t keep open if even half of them turn against us.” Carter had lived all her life in Chireno County. If she woke up tomorrow in another state and never saw this store again, it would be an answer to prayers. Once she and Roy had driven to Tennessee. It seemed like a nice place.
Grady set the batteries and horse wormer on the counter. He saw her watching out the window. “Newland still bothering you?”
“It should be against the law, what he’s doing. Sheriff’s deputy that was in here last week, Cecil Dawson, I told him I got a gun and I’m not afraid to use it. I’d just as soon shoot Newland Sparks as shoot a bug.” She handed Grady his change, setting the coins firmly in his slender palm. “Put me in jail, put me away. At least I’d have three meals a day and a roof over my head. And he’d be dead.”
Junior Pierce had come up to the register, and now he was holding out a hundred dollar bill. “Let’s hope not,” he said.
“You know I’m just running my mouth,” Carter said. “That all you got?”
“Sorry, this is it. Sparks, the poor bastard. Black sheep of the clan.”
“They’ve bailed him out often enough, is what I’ve heard,” Carter said. Maybe Newland was like a zit to the family, a blight they wished would go away, but they had not abandoned him. There were the comfortable Sparks and the struggling Sparks, but they were all Sparks.
“Where you headed, Junior?” Carter asked.
“Eno. Picking up a load of Brangus. After I stop at Walmart.”
Carter frowned.
“You just ruined her day,” Grady said.
“I’m looking to buy a cell phone.” Junior craned his neck in a mock survey of the store. “Don’t see none of those in here.”
“Long as that’s all you buy.” Carter opened a new bundle of tens and counted out Junior’s change. “Roy says that Pizza Hut would have doubled up our business.”
“Good old Horace,” Grady said. “Like they say, nothing wrong with Kiser that a few funerals wouldn’t fix.”
“Trouble is,” Junior said, “his sons aren’t no different.” He stuffed the tens into his wallet, which he slipped into the pocket of a leather jacket so new Carter could smell it in the air that stirred when he turned to go. Some people were doing okay.
Grady dropped two quarters in the coffee tin. “Grandbaby coming soon?”
“Two more weeks at least,” Carter said. “You know how first babies are.” Or maybe he didn’t, with none of his own. At forty, Carter was startled by the granny talk. She still had a pretty good figure—a little thicker in the middle now, but she looked okay in a pair of jeans with a top tucked in. Roy encouraged her to show off her ass. “But mostly I’m sitting down,” she would tell him. “You stand up often enough,” he said. “You got to pull the lever up front to clear the pumps.” Carter drew the line at cleavage, but she wore the clingy tops that Roy liked to buy her. Her breasts were still finely shaped, though she thought them a bit small.
Grady took two noisy sips from his coffee. He’d always been a slurper. “You want me to stay for a while, in case Newland shows up?”
“I know you got things to do. The creep doesn’t scare me. Anyhow, I see Teeter Minkins out there. He’ll be in soon as he tells Junior about the whopper bass he caught last week.” Grady was looking at her, like he was trying to figure, stay or go. She was wearing a V-neck top; maybe he was admiring. “Really,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
“You need me, you call me. I’ll be at the barn.”
She watched him go. If it were Grady MacFarland she were married to instead of Roy Bostic, she wouldn’t be in this fix. Carter opened her Cather book and read about winter settling in over the Divide.
Early in the morning, most of the customers at Bostic’s store were men—truck drivers stopping in before they hit the road, or farmers and small-time ranchers hoping to skip the drive to town. As towns went, Kiser didn’t offer much. It was the county seat to a friendly place that fortune had not smiled on. A few antebellum houses stood on the outskirts of town because cotton had once been king, but that heyday expired with the arrival of spindle pickers that worked best on flat land. The softly rolling hills of East Texas had lost out, and the tide of America’s industrial prosperity did not come again. The logging trucks that rumbled past Bostic’s were headed to mills in other places. The six smelly poultry farms north of town sent every chicken to Eno for slaughter. Kiser was left with a shrinking population, a stagnant tax base and people on the public dole. The new mayor called welfare the town’s biggest employer.
Carter had tried working at the Tyson plant when she and Roy were first married. She’d been a plucker. The money was paltry and after six months, when her wrists and shoulders began to give out, Roy persuaded her to quit. Then the three babies came, and now there was the store. Porta-Chow had been a dream compared to the store. There were rules at Porta-Chow: no alcohol, no swearing, no dates with the crews who were searching for shuttle debris. Jerome was fair, and people who broke the rules were dealt with. After Jodie Tulane took a married firefighter from Oklahoma home with her, Jerome fired her and got his whole outfit sent home. Jerome was a good boss by Carter’s standards, one who laughed easily and treated people like they mattered. He’d let Carter bring in a radio to get the good country station from Shreveport, though Jerome—a black man with roots in East St. Louis—didn’t care for the music. One day Carter wore a white ball cap that she’d given to Roy but he’d never worn, and she got the idea to have an astronaut sign it. Jerome said that was okay, so when Air Force Colonel Charles Bradley came through the food line, she asked him. He’d flown one of the Columbia shuttle flights and he had a kind face, though she could see he was grieving. When he handed the cap back to her the next day, there were eight astronaut signatures on it. She figured the cap was worth some money now, and she thought of it like an ace in the hole. She wanted to help Beth and Dave with the baby, maybe buy a nice stroller. If Roy didn’t let her go to Louisiana, she was going to get on eBay and sell the cap. It would break her heart.
“Something’s on your mind.” Teeter Minkins plopped a bottle of headache pills on the counter and looked Carter over with approval. She gave him a smile, though no amount of feminine charms would result in him having more money to spend. His diabetic wife waddled on givenout knees and Teeter wasn’t in great shape himself.
“You smelled the wood burning?” she said. “I’m just wondering what to fix Roy for his supper.” Over Teeter’s shoulder, through the front window, she saw Newland Sparks looking in, laughing at something. He had a loud laugh and a speech impediment. His r’s didn’t come out hard enough, like baby-talk. Caw-teh, and even his own last name: Spawks. No one mocked him, and that was a sure sign no one liked him. Last week he’d discovered a new way to torture Carter. She’d taken out an ad in the Penny Pincher, hoping to to sell her Halloween decorations and the costumes she didn’t need any more since the kids were grown. The phone number she gave was for her new cell and now Newland Sparks had it. He’d called at least four times, from different phones so she’d think it was someone about the ad. He always hung up without speaking, but she knew it was him.
“Teeter,” Carter said. “Get you a cup of coffee and stay a while.” Maybe it was better to have company. Newland might give up and go do something else.
“Eleanor’s bad off,” Teeter said. “I ought to get these pills home to her.”
“A cup on the house? I just brewed it.”
“I guess one cup wouldn’t hurt. Her blood pressure’s high, and it gives her these headaches. Between that and the diabetes, keeps her running to the doctor.”
Newland slinked through the door. The pit in Carter’s stomach burned more. “Who’s she go to?”
“Doc Meadows.”
“Roy used to go to him. He didn’t like him.” Meadows was married to a Sparks, a pretty woman named Beryl. Half the town went to him because he didn’t charge as much and didn’t run as many tests. Roy thought he was lazy.
“I owe him too much to change off now,” Teeter said. “Besides, Eleanor likes him.” He lowered his voice. “Though he got some slime for kin.”
Newland came towards the register with a pack of Bugles. He laid two dollar bills on the counter and fixed Carter in his sights. “Carter looks mighty nice today, don’t she, Teeter?”
“Carter looks nice every day.”
“I had a dream about Carter last night. Want to hear about my dream, Carter?”
“I don’t want to hear it.” She dropped the change into his hand and leaned over to turn on the little radio at the end of the counter.
Newland fastened his gaze on her chest. “Nice, juicy dream.”
Teeter stopped stirring the sweetener into his coffee. He looked at the floor, where his work boots splayed out in the duck stance his bad hip engendered. “I believe you ought to keep that stuff to yourself,” he said. “She said she doesn’t want to hear it.”
“She was wearing some of them thong panties. Black ones. I bet she’s got ’em on now.”
Teeter pulled the little stirrer out of his cup and pointed it at Newland. “That’s not nice,” he said. “To be saying that kind of thing to her.”
Newland looked at the headache pills Teeter had set on the counter. “Real juicy dream,” he said. The first word came out weel. “Real results. Know what I mean?” Teeter put the pills in his pocket. Beneath the stubble on his cheeks the skin grew red.
Carter called out to Jimmy Hubble, who’d come through the door and was headed for the auto supplies. “Hey, there’s fresh coffee over here.”
Jimmy’s head disappeared as he squatted down. “I’m looking for the wiper fluid.”
“We’re all out,” Carter said. The shelves were so dusty down there. “We got an order coming in next week.” No one had bought any wiper fluid in a year. They’d stopped ordering it.
“Hell, Carter, that won’t help me today.”
“Aw, just put some water in there,” Newland said. “That’ll do just as good.”
Teeter snapped a plastic cover on his cup. “You’re so full of it,” he said. He turned to Carter with a sheepish look. “I got to get home.”
“I know. Tell Eleanor I hope she’s better soon. You come on back when you can stay.”
Newland started talking about the dream again.
“Knock it off,” Jimmy said. He put two packs of gum down hard on the counter. “Carter doesn’t want to hear that shit.”
Newland took his eyes off Carter and glared at Jimmy. “How’s your brother? How’s Carl?” Jimmy’s brother had once been married to Newland’s half-sister. Rumor was he had an itchy fist.
Jimmy turned his back on Newland and handed Carter a ten. “Carl couldn’t be happier. I’ll tell him you asked.”
“Don’t rush off, Jimmy,” Carter said. “How about a cup of coffee?”
“Some other time.” Jimmy ripped the tab on a pack of gum and shoved a stick into his mouth. “Too crowded in here.”
Before Jimmy was out the door, Newland started in again.
“Stop it,” Carter said. But he ran on, talking about titties and his dick against her thigh. Cawteh you make me hawd. Her legs grew weak and the knot in her stomach twisted like a snake. She pretended to dust under the counter and kept her head down until Mitzi Gander came in with her two little boys and Newland left. Carter pulled the pack of Tums from her purse and popped two. Mitzi set a carton of milk and a box of tampons on the counter. “Too much Mexican dinner?”
“Too much Newland Sparks,” Carter said.
“Oh, that. Can’t Roy do something?”
“If he doesn’t, I will.”
Roy Bostic had lived all his life in Chireno County, so a drive to the next county for beer did not seem odd. The Baptists had a choke hold on East Texas. The rest of Texas laughed, and called it the hundred miles of dry. Roy would split the Friday beer run with friends and this week, thank God, it was someone else’s turn. He was beat. His doctor had told him he had gout, and that was why his big toe felt like there was gravel sticking in it. He limped into the house. With work over, he didn’t have to suck it up and pretend.
Carter wasn’t home, and he hoped that meant she was buying groceries. They were out of everything. She’d called him at the warehouse to apologize for driving off in a huff this morning, but he suspected the real reason she’d called was to let him know that Newland Sparks had been in again. Roy didn’t like what Sparks was doing, but the guy was basically harmless. Someday he’d find someone else to bug.
Roy popped a beer and scrounged around for the package of crackers going stale in the back of the pantry. In the den, he turned on the clumsy computer and watched it dial up the online medical world. He’d never known anyone with gout. He thought it was a disease of fat old men.
Carter came in a half-hour later, no grocery bags in sight. She set her purse on the table next to him. “If your toe’s hurting, you shouldn’t be having that beer.”
“Where’ve you been?” He flipped off the website he was on.
“Reba was late for her shift again. I tried to call, but the line was tied up. I figured you were on the computer.” For once she didn’t say he ought to turn on his cell phone because otherwise why have it.
“We needed groceries,” he said.
“You could have stopped for groceries. When you went over to Phil’s to get the beer you had to pass Brookshire’s twice.”
“But you always buy the groceries.”
“Because you never do.”
Carter turned on her heel and headed for the kitchen. He heard her rummaging in the cupboard and figured she’d find the bow-tie pasta in there. He wasn’t in the mood for pasta. She would open a can of tomatoes and dump a lot of cheese on it and the whole thing would go straight to their waistlines.
Inside Carter’s purse, her cell was ringing. “Let it ring,” she called. “I’ll be right there.” He pulled out the phone and answered. It was Jerome.
“She’s not interested,” he said. “I appreciate your calling but she’s going to be tied up. Our daughter’s having a baby.”
Carter came in. “Is that Jerome? Let me talk to him.”
“I’m sorry,” Roy said into the phone, turning away from her as she reached for it. “I don’t know. Yeah, it’s just bad timing for her. Appreciate your calling.” He hung up.
“You told him no? I told you to let me talk to him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me he’d asked? You should have just told him no straight out. We’re doing inventory tomorrow so we can get it done before the baby comes.”
“Since when? Give me the phone. You were rude. Why shouldn’t I go to Baton Rouge? We need the money.”
“We don’t need it that bad. There are people down there you don’t need to be around.” He talked on about crime and city blight and for emphasis he used the n-word.
“Don’t say that word. You just hung up on one of the most respectable men I know.”
“So maybe he’s not like a lot of them. But we can’t afford to hire somebody to cover for you in the store.”
“Which just proves we’re not making any money and never will. Inventory? You just made that up.”
“We’re doing it tomorrow. Sunday, too. We talked about it last week.”
“You said you were thinking about it. I thought you had to work.”
“I’ll be done by noon. I told you that.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Carter stalked into the kitchen. He heard her running water into the pot for pasta, probably twice as much as she needed. It would take forever to boil. He stayed on the computer, looking for a new doctor. There was one over in Toledo Bend he hadn’t heard of so he wrote down the phone number. He was only forty-one; he felt like his body was moving toward ruin.
Across the highway from Bostic’s store, high on a grassy knoll in Horace Chadwick’s weedy pasture, a clump of rocks poked out where the members of Spring Creek Baptist Church liked to gather for Easter sunrise service. Pastor Will Simpson would take his place on the granite and face west toward Truman Wally’s dilapidated barn, grateful he could skip a hot sanctuary blotted by twice-a-year comers. A mile behind him, as the choir sang the sun into the sky, light would break through the trees into the brown waters of the Atoka River, nothing left of its Ayish past but Indian legend and white man’s guilt. To the pastor’s left, seventeen miles away, was Yellowpine Reservoir, a man-made flooding that sixty years before had covered twenty-odd buildings, scores of junk cars and the unmarked graves of six black families. A sprinkle of boaters would be there at sunrise on Easter, trading Jesus for sport. Pastor Simpson, acknowledging so much of the Lord’s work still to be done, would raise his arms to the sky and declare that the Maker had blessed them all with a front row seat to the miracle of resurrection.
On a different Sunday morning, also at sunrise but weeks before Easter, Air Force Col. Charles Bradley had climbed the grassy knoll and looked out over the torn bits of a splendid, gargantuan, trouble-prone spacecraft. It had been his privilege to fly this particular dream of man, a collection of high hopes and low bids. Now a scatter of tiles from its skin lay in the weeds. He thought he could make out something gray that might be the arm of a flight deck chair. He could not remember, at this startling moment, whether the flight deck chairs were gray, or if those were blue. The white box he saw, that he knew. It was part of a cabinet for keeping clothes. Perhaps it had once held his, the golf shirts and shorts he favored in zero gravity. Half a mile from where he stood, though he did not yet know it, was the secluded sanctuary of Spring Creek Baptist, so out of the way that one of its downspouts held a dime bag in transit. In the woods beside the church lay another small bundle, this one much more troubling. It was a handful of flesh that would soon be identified as most of the heart of Mission Specialist Brian Goodwin.
The astronaut walked back to his car, which he’d parked by the gas pumps in front of a low-slung store. He would spend a week in Kiser, driving north to Eno late each night, where a bad mattress in a third-rate motel was his weary haven. He would autograph a ball cap for a friendly woman in the Porta-Chow line, and take it around to the other astronauts, his fellow survivors. It was the least he could do. The people of Kiser had spread their arms around his disaster and accepted the great burden of its grief.
As soon as Carter opened the store the next morning, she called Jerome. “I’ll be there Monday,” she told him. “I can stay the week.” Reba had agreed to sub for her and pull double shifts. That would take more than half of Carter’s earnings, but she didn’t care. Roy would blow his stack.
Jerome asked if she could stay longer. “I wish,” she said. She told him about the baby, and he didn’t give her any of the granny business about getting old. Jerome was a professional. But he hadn’t minded that she had thanked the searchers, every one of them, every night. “You have a good heart,” he told her once, smiling in a way she hadn’t seen before. “I try,” she said. She’d wished then she could kiss his cheek, because of how hard everyone had worked, because of all they’d been through. Later, when they were cleaning up for the last time, she took off her astronaut cap and put it on Jerome’s head. “You’re really something,” she said.
After Carter hung up, the store was quiet until Roy’s friend, Phil, showed up with two men she didn’t know. The one they called Mick went in the back where the horse supplies were, brought out a bottle of iodine and handed it to Phil. Phil Lockwood didn’t have any animals. He’d bought another bottle only last month. She’d said that night to Roy, “We should take out the iodine. Just not sell it. People can go to town if they need it.”
“It’s not up to us to police what people do,” Roy told her.
“We don’t need to make it easier. Phil’s your friend. What’s he up to? I know he’s hard up, but come on.”
“If Phil needs money that bad, how else is he going to get it?”
For a while, Carter had kept a list of who bought iodine, figuring maybe the sheriff would want to know. One day a friend of her father’s came in. Arthur Kenny, a man she’d looked up to all her life, bought a six-ounce bottle that day and came back for another in two weeks. She gave up the list then.
Now she was ringing up Phil’s iodine and two bags of chips, and he wouldn’t even look at her. “Jenny doing all right?” she said. His wife was sweet, the quiet type, who had her hands full with three boys.
“She’s good,” Phil said. “I’ll tell her you said hello.” The other two were halfway out the door.
After they left, Carter made a list for Baton Rouge: hair net, the new stretch jersey top with the sweetheart neckline, her good jeans. She added the astronaut cap, for old time’s sake. Mostly it had sat on her dresser where she could see it every morning, but today she had put it on and stuffed her hair in a pony tail through the back opening. If she was going to sell it soon, she might as well be wearing it. She’d looked again at Col. Bradley’s signature—more like printing than cursive. At the one-week remembrance of the disaster at the VFW, Carter had watched his eyes brim with tears he wouldn’t let fall. Jenny Lockwood’s youngest boy had walked right up to him and handed him a rabbit’s foot. “In case you go back up there,” Richie said. The colonel thanked him, stroked it once or twice and gave it back. “I might not go again,” he said. “Maybe you’ll get there.”
When Grady came in around ten, Carter couldn’t help complaining about Roy. “I’m going to Baton Rouge,” she said. “He can’t stop me.”
“That’s no way to be. He thinks it’s for your own good.”
Carter had gone to the front window to pull the lever on the gas pump. “I’m leaving Monday. I swear.” Newland Sparks was outside, just sitting in his truck, looking in. She felt the whole bulky mess of his family. “I hate it here. This store, this job, this town.”
“Roy loves you. It counts for something.”
“I know.” She thought of the rumor that Grady’s wife had booted him out. Not everyone lived with someone who loved them. “It’s just that Roy is so backward about some things.”
“Might be he’s afraid.” Grady had come over to the window, and now he could see what she was watching. Newland Sparks had gotten out of his truck and was leaning against it, talking on his phone. Six months ago, he wouldn’t have had cell coverage this far from town. Then Sprint came, and Pizza Hut didn’t. This place never got what it needed most.
Grady put his arm around Carter’s shoulder. She could smell the Tide on his fresh shirt. He was chief of the volunteer fire squad, and when the shuttle came down, he’d become a local hero. He was a good guy, and some other woman was going to make him happy. In high school, though he ran with the college-bound crowd, he’d never let on there was any difference between the two of them. Maybe back then, there wasn’t. Maybe she’d had more possibilities than she thought.
Carter’s cell phone rang under the counter and when she answered, she heard Newland on the line. “Your hero Grady, he’s seeing Sara Farnsworth. How about that, Carter? Another man’s wife.” She pressed the end button. Grady had followed her to the counter. “Okay,” she said into the dead phone. “Okay.” Outside, Newland had put his face right up to the window, framing it with his free hand, peering in. He was smiling. Carter shoved the phone into her purse.
“That was quick,” Grady said.
Carter picked up a rag and began wiping the counter. “It was Roy. He’s on his way in.”
“I’ll stay ’til he gets here.”
“No.” She’d said that too fast. Grady looked startled, then hurt. She rubbed harder into the counter. “Roy’ll get so pissed when he sees all these coffee stains.”
“No? One minute you want my help, the next minute you don’t.”
“You got stuff to do. I know you do. Plus it’s Saturday. Don’t you have something planned?” Please, she thought. Tell me you’re watching a movie with Gloria Boland or even Jodie Tulane. Some woman who’s safely divorced.
“No plans. But it seems like you don’t want me here.” He glanced out the window.
“It’s not that. I’ll be fine. Promise.”
“Is it Roy? Is he suspicious of me? Because I can talk to him.”
“He’s in kind of a strange place these days.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.
Grady looked closely at her. Then he shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “but remember what I said.”
She watched him walk out and get in his truck, saying something to Newland over his shoulder. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t do any good. It might even make things worse. As soon as Grady drove off, Newland came through the door.
“You want to see Roy?” Carter said. “Roy’s in the back.”
“That’s funny. Didn’t see Roy’s truck.”
“He’s in the back. He drove in with me.”
Newland roamed around the aisles making junior high jokes about Sara Farnsworth. He brought a pack of crackers up to the register. “Don’t hear Roy back there,” he said. “What’s the matter, Carter? Don’t want to be alone with me?”
Carter rang up the sale and held out his change. When he grabbed her hand and pulled it to his crotch, pennies spilled to the counter. She was leaning awkwardly across the counter, her head close to his. With his other hand he pulled off her cap, then he let her go.
He was a child with a treasure, grinning like a schoolyard bully. Carter reached under the counter for her Glock and held it there. “Give it back,” she said.
Newland held her cap in the air, laughing. “Come and get it,” he said. When Carter pulled up the gun she aimed for the space between his arm and the floor, but just at that instant, he lowered his hand. The bullet went through the cap where Col. Bradley had signed it, grazing the tip of Newland Sparks’s thumb.
Roy hunched on a low stool by the fishing supplies, a laptop warming his knees. He counted the flipping jigs and spinnerbaits, and straightened a row of Trilene. Carter had turned on the coffee maker. Its muffled puts and his laptop’s hum gave the air its only life. When his cell rang, Roy hauled himself up and limped outside to where the reception was better. The gout was killing him.
Carter sat cross-legged on the floor, beside the batteries. She was writing over the faded price tags with a black pen, careful not to make it look as though the price had been raised. The screen door slammed as Roy came back in, the “Closed” sign rattling behind him. “He’s not pressing charges,” he said. “I suppose he’ll lord that over us, too. Him and his kin.”
Carter reached for another row of batteries and spread them on the floor. “These flashlight batteries are almost expired.” She made a pile of the oldest ones. “It’s the double A’s people buy now, not so much the C’s and D’s. A lot of things take double A’s. I bet we sell three times as many A’s as all the others.” She set aside two packs of C’s.
Roy stood for a time beside Carter and looked about the store. His grandfather had made most of the shelves from two big oaks that fell in a neighbor’s back field. Roy had climbed on the shelves when he was small; their freshcut smell and sanded edges were a vivid memory. Since he’d taken over the store, he would shop now and then for modern shelving with hooks and nooks and movable parts, only to realize the old shelves were just fine. Probably they could use a good shellacking. It wasn’t going to happen now.
Carter’s hair had fallen about her face as she leaned over her stacks. He could see her scribbles on the clipboard, the numbers he would have to work at deciphering, the nines that resembled fours. She picked up the batteries she’d set aside. “I’m going to put these in the truck,” she said.
“Okay,” he said.
She stood for a moment, studying him. The crease he’d noticed lately between her brows was more pronounced today. Shadows rimmed her eyes. “We could still get by,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said, shifting onto his right foot, the one that wasn’t hurting. “I just don’t know.”
Carter went out, her shirttail a mess of dust from the floor. She moved toward the Silverado, where the harsh October sun, low in the sky, glinted off the hood that hadn’t been washed in a month. The day she’d sat with him in the dealer’s showroom, jittery about the numbers, flustered over add-ons, they’d agreed right away to order the metallic blue. They thought they would never tire of that, the color of sky. The morning Roy picked up the truck, he’d climbed into the driver’s seat, stuck a CD in the changer and turned the music up high. He flew down the highway on top of the world.
