chapter eight
At five-thirty Monday morning I went to Deaf Smith's sole health club, located a block off the town square in what used to be a five-and-dime store, where I worked out three times a week. I lifted in the weight room, then exercised on the benches and Nautilus machines and was headed for the steam room when I saw Mary Beth Sweeney on a StairMaster machine, by herself, at the end of a blind hallway. Her cotton sports bra was peppered with sweat, her face flushed and heated with her movement on the machine. Her curly hair stuck in strands to her cheeks.
'Good morning,' I said.
'How do you do, Mr Holland?' she said.
'Nobody calls me "Mr Holland"… Never mind… That was impressive last night. That guy in the welding truck owes you one.'
'You stopped, didn't you?'
'Can you go to a picture show tonight?' I asked.
'Why do you keep bothering me?'
'You're a handsome woman.'
'You've got some damn nerve.'
I bounced the tip of my towel on the base of the StairMaster.
'Adios,' I said.
A half hour later I walked outside into the blue coolness of the morning, the mimosa trees planted in the sidewalks ruffling in the shadow of the buildings. Mary Beth Sweeney, dressed in her uniform, was about to get into her car. She heard me behind her, threw her canvas gym bag on the passenger's seat, and turned to face me.
'You strike me as an admirable person. I apologize for my overture, however. I won't bother you again,' I said, and left her standing there.
I walked down the street toward my car. I paused in front of the pawnshop window and looked at the display spread out on a piece of green velvet: brass knuckles, stiletto gut-rippers, barber's razors, slapjacks, handcuffs, derringers, a .38 Special with notches filed in the grips, a 1911 model US Army .45, and a blue-black ivory handled revolver that could have been a replica of L.Q. Navarro's.
I felt a presence on my back, like someone brushing a piece of ice between my shoulder blades. I turned around and saw Garland T. Moon watching me from the door of a bar, licking down the seam of a hand-rolled cigarette. He wore a cream-colored suit with no shirt and black prison-issue work shoes, the archless, flat-soled kind with leather thongs and hook eyelets.
I walked back to the door of the bar.
'Early for the slop chute, isn't it?' I said.
'I don't drink. Never have.'
'You following me?'
He lit the cigarette, propped one foot against the wall, inhaled the smoke and burning glue into his lungs. He cast away the paper match in the wind.
'Not even in my darkest thoughts, sir,' he said.
I headed back up the street. The three-hundred-pound black woman who owned the pawnshop was just opening up. She saw my eyes glance at her window display.
'Time to put some boom-boom in yo' bam-bam, baby,' she said. She winked and tapped her ring on the glass. 'I ain't talking about me, honey. But I 'predate the thought anyway.'
At noon I carried a ham sandwich and a glass of milk out on my back porch. Beyond the barn I saw Pete sitting on the levee that surrounded the tank.
He heard me walking toward him, but he never turned around.
'Why aren't you in school, bud?' I asked.
'Stayed home, that's why,' he said, looking out at the water.
Then I saw the discolored lump and skinned place by his eye.
'Who did that to you?' I asked.