“He said something about Linda Gail?”
“Ask Valentine.”
“You’re my friend, Weldon. I’m asking you.”
“A man like that has no credibility. Why should we care what he says or doesn’t say?”
I took the beer opener out of his hand and snapped a cap off a Jax and drank.
“What did he say about her?”
My blood was throbbing in my wrists. “He said he slept with her. He said it happened on the same day he filmed her on the front porch of the general store.”
I saw the lump in his throat and the color draining from his cheeks. “You weren’t going to tell me? You were going to let me walk around not knowing while this kind of thing was going on behind my back?”
“I considered the matter closed.”
“You believed him, or you would have told me he was spreading lies about her.”
“Don’t let a guy like this hurt you, Hershel. Two federal agents accused Rosita of being a Communist. You think I believe them? You think I’m going to empower J. Edgar Hoover’s errand boys?”
“You’re saying he was just drunk and shooting off his mouth?”
“I don’t know. Give Linda Gail a chance. Talk with her. And stay away from Valentine.”
“You know what would happen to a guy like that where I grew up?”
“Yeah, I do. And I don’t agree with it.”
“At the least, he’d get the skin taken off his back.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere. Hershel had gone into a mind-set I had known all my life. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that no one could understand the United States without understanding the graves of Shiloh. The penchant for vigilantism and the slaying of our brothers went all the way back to the colonial era. I had no doubt the hot coals out of which we forged our country were still glowing in the breast of my friend Hershel Pine. I could see his confusion growing in the silence, his forehead knitting.
“People make mistakes,” I said. “Too much to drink, wrong situation and wrong people, a decision made in anger after a domestic fight, who knows what? A person makes one bad choice at an intersection and spends a lifetime grieving over it.”
“You’re saying forgive Linda Gail?”
“I’m saying we should have the willingness to forgive. That’s ninety percent of the battle. You’re not even sure she did something wrong.”
He sat down at the writing desk. His forearm lay across the bag of cracklings he had brought. He seemed to have forgotten where he was or why he had come to my room.
I opened another bottle of Jax and pushed it in front of him. He watched the foam run over the lip and down the neck, without picking up the bottle. “She was too young to get married,” he said. “I’m seven years older than she is. I came home a cripple. That’s a lot for a girl in her teens to deal with. Maybe that’s the way I should look at it.”
I hoped one day Benny Siegel would run into Jack Valentine again and put a bullet in him. I looked through the window at the Gulf. The western sky was aflame, seagulls hovering like sketch marks above the surf. “There’s Rosita,” I said. “Why don’t the three of us have a seafood dinner at the café?”
“You meant what you said?”
“I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”
“That maybe all this is smoke. That Valentine was drunk and trying to mess us up.”
“Yeah, it could be that simple,” I said, avoiding his eyes.
“Okay,” he said, and took a deep breath, like a man stepping out of a bathysphere. “Okay. Right. I get myself wrapped in a knot sometimes. I’m glad I talked with you.”
I prayed silently that our conversation about Linda Gail was over. I also prayed that I would not have to tell him another lie.
“You wouldn’t lead me on, would you?” he said. “Everything you told me is on the level?”