“Let’s pull out all the stops,” I said. “If we have to paint the trees, fuck it. At our age, what’s to lose?”
THAT AFTERNOON WYATT Dixon drove his pickup to the Younger compound and parked in front. The grounds were empty, and he could see no movement inside the house. His 1892 Winchester rested in the gun rack behind his head. He sat in the silence, trying to organize his thoughts, the taped bandage on his stomach as flat as cardboard under his shirt. He thought he could hear voices in the backyard and smell smoke from meat cooking on an open fire. He stepped out on the driveway and felt the earth shift under him, the stitches in his stomach drawing tight against the muscles like a zipper catching on skin.
He walked around the side of the house and through a border of wood-tubbed bougainvillea and citrus and bottlebrush and Hong Kong orchid trees. He saw Love Younger sitting in a canvas chair by a picnic table, the sunlight dappling his face. Younger was wearing alpine shorts and sandals and a print shirt open on his chest. A decanter of whiskey and a silver bowl full of crushed ice had been placed in the middle of the table, along with a tray of picked shrimp. Jack Boyd was sitting across from him, his long legs out in front of him, his ankles crossed. Both men looked at Wyatt with an alcoholic warmth in their faces, although neither man spoke.
“At the fairgrounds, you said something about my folks that I didn’t quite catch. Or maybe the words got knocked out of my head when Buster’s Boogie put me in the dirt. Can you refresh me?”
Younger looked genuinely puzzled. “Whatever we were talking about, it’s flown away.”
“You was saying something about whit
e trash and the nigger in the woodpile. You was talking about making me a rich man.”
“I see. You’re here about money?”
“No, I’m here ’cause I don’t like the way you was talking about my folks.”
“I owe you an apology,” Younger said. “I thought you were someone else. What did you say your mother’s name was?”
“I didn’t.”
“Would you mind telling me now?”
“It was Irma Jean. Her maiden name was Holliday. Her people was from Georgia.”
“Like Doc Holliday, the tubercular dentist?” Younger said.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“That’s interesting. Your name is Wyatt. Maybe that’s more than coincidence.”
“You was calling us white trash?”
“No, I was saying you’re a man among men. I was saying we probably have many things in common.”
Wyatt gazed at the flower gardens and the fruit trees in the shade, and at the hand-waxed cars parked by the carriage house. “I can see our lifestyles are six of one and a half dozen of the other.”
Younger picked a sprig of mint out of a bowl and put it in his glass, then refilled it with whiskey and fresh ice. He did not invite Wyatt to join them. Wyatt watched Love Younger raise his glass and drink, his throat moving smoothly, as though he were drinking beer rather than whiskey. The stitched wound in Wyatt’s abdomen began to throb against the pressure of his belt buckle.
“Is there anything else?” Younger asked.
“Is there a reason your son has a hard-on for me, or is he just a nasty little termite by nature?”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use that kind of language while you’re on my property.”
“Where’s he at?”
“Taking a nap. He won’t be seeing you.”
“Directly, he will, one way or another.”
“Would you clarify that?” Younger said.
“He sent them men who attacked me and Miss Bertha. I don’t know why, but he done it.”
Younger put one sandaled foot up on the redwood bench. “Let’s talk another time. It’s such a fine day. Why cloud the sky when you don’t have to?”
“The name Irma Jean don’t mean nothing to you?”