“Hold on. Take care of what things?”
“When you were in the trenches, how did you get the courage to go over the top the first time?”
“I didn’t get the courage,” he replied.
“Sir?”
“I never had courage. None of us did. We ran at Fritz because we were too frightened to run in the other direction. Where are you
, son? What are you into?”
“I’ve got to get these guys off our backs.”
“Tell me where you are. Let me help you.”
“You already have. I’ll be fine. If I’m a little late getting home, don’t wait up.”
He started to argue. I took the receiver from my ear so I couldn’t hear his words. When he stopped speaking, I placed it to my ear again. “I’ll be swell. The circus is coming to town in August. We’ll be in the front seats.”
I set the receiver back on the hook and got into my heap and drove into that giant island of oak trees and wealth and faux antebellum splendor that was Grady’s homeland. There was a squall in the Gulf, and horse tails of purple rain were spreading across the blueness of the sky. I glanced in the rearview mirror. The Packard station wagon was two blocks behind me. A piece of wet newspaper slapped against my windshield and disappeared into the vortex of wind and trees behind me; the gearshift knob was throbbing like an impacted wisdom tooth inside my palm.
BY THE TIME I got to Grady’s block, the sky had gone dark. The rain was blowing in sheets, leaves floating in the gutters. All the lights were on in Grady’s house. I parked at the curb and cut the engine and waited. Two or three cars with their headlights on were coming up the street. Each of them passed me without slowing down. The station wagon was not among them. I could see two cars parked by Grady’s carriage house, but I couldn’t make out what kind. I thought about my father’s words regarding the nature of courage. I believed he was telling the truth about himself and his friends. They had been terrified, but they had stepped across a line and surrendered to their fate, whatever it might be.
The Midwestern boys who died at Marye’s Heights or the Southerners whose bodies littered the slope at Cemetery Hill would have understood my father’s statement. You had to find courage in yourself; no one could pay your dues for you.
As I sat in my heap, the rain pounding on the roof and windows, I began to feel a sense of anger. I had been the random target of Grady Harrelson and his friends and the Atlas family, though I had done nothing to harm any of them. Like the rape victim or the molested child, I’d felt that I deserved what had been done to me, that I was alone, that no one cared, that I was odious in the sight of others. I now regretted that I had dumped the shells from the cylinder of the pistol and snapped off the blade of the stiletto. I took the pistol and the knife from my pocket and placed them on my thigh. Far down the street, I saw a pair of yellow headlights wobbling through the rain.
I twisted in the seat and waited as the vehicle slowed. The rain turned to hail, clicking on the trees and lawn and street and the top of my car. There was no mistaking the vehicle heading my way. It was a Packard station wagon, its windows streaked with ice. Suddenly I felt all the rage and pain I had experienced since I had tried to help Valerie at the drive-in in Galveston. I pulled my hat tight on my head and got out of my heap and ran toward the station wagon. I couldn’t see the two occupants well, but I doubted they were expecting someone to charge at them during an electric storm. I threw the pistol at the windshield and clicked open the broken blade of the stiletto and tried to break the passenger window with it. The driver swerved toward the curb, trying to knock me sideways. I threw the knife at the back of the car as it drove away. Then I walked through the pools of water in Grady’s front yard and hammered on the door.
Grady jerked it open. Vick Atlas was standing behind him in the foyer, the crystal chandelier shining on both of them. Vick was wearing a bandage over the split I had put in his cheek.
“What are you doing here?” Grady said.
“The hired help screwed up,” I said. “How’s it going, Vick? Your face looks a little swollen. I heard you got an infection. I think it adds to your mystique.”
“Why’d you bring this asshole here, Vick?” Grady said.
“I didn’t have anything to do with him coming here. Don’t be saying I did, either.”
“Vick didn’t have the guts to come up to the Heights, so he sent his greaseballs and hid out at your house,” I said. “You guys have been working together all this time, haven’t you.”
I stepped inside. Grady closed the door behind me and looked at Vick as though he didn’t know what to do next. Vick was wearing half-topped boots, and tailored brown slacks that looked like Marine Corps tropicals, and a pink kerchief tied around his neck. “Where’s Bledsoe?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“He’s always with you,” Vick said.
“Not tonight. You guys have the convertible and the money and the gold stashed, don’t you?”
“You’re pretty dumb, coming here like this,” Vick said.
“What are you going to do that you haven’t already done?” I said. “I’m not afraid of you or your people anymore, Vick. Same goes for you, Grady. You guys are bums, and the guys who work for you are stupid and inept.”
“You think you can talk shit to me?” Vick said. “Nobody talks shit to me. That’s what you think, you can walk in here and talk shit? Answer me. I’m talking to you.”
“That’s exactly what your father said to me. Why do you imitate the person who disfigured your mouth? Isn’t that humiliating?”
“Ease up,” Grady said.