“I guess the fire set off some strange things in his head. I don’t know. Sometimes people see the same thing differently.”
“What do you mean?”
“He got wiped out after I followed his old man into the barn and he stayed outside. So I guess he thinks he froze and so he’s a coward. After anything like that, you go back over it in your head and try to understand what you did or didn’t do, but he doesn’t have the experience to see it for what it was.”
She didn’t understand what I was saying, and I wished I hadn’t started to explain.
“Buddy’s not a coward,” I said. “I’ve seen him go up against yard bullies at Angola that would have cut him to pieces in the shower if they had sensed any fear in him. He laid it on pretty heavy in the car this afternoon about the Bronze Star I got in Korea, but what he doesn’t understand is that you go in one direction or the other, or just stand still, for the same reason—you’re too scared to do anything else. It doesn’t have anything to do with what you are.
“Look, I shouldn’t have brought him here. It’s not his fault. He just fried his head today And I think I better cut.”
“No, I have more beer and some sandwiches in the icebox. Just a minute.”
She walked toward the kitchen with a cigarette in her hand, her thighs and smooth rear end tight against her jeans, and her uncombed hair tangled with light. She came back with a tray and sat on the couch next to me with one bare foot pulled under her leg.
“How did you stay sober while you were carrying around the mad man of Ravalli County?” she said, and laughed, and all the anger with Buddy and Frank Riordan was gone.
“I got some good news about my arm this morning. They’re going to saw the cast off next week. I’ll probably have to play finger exercises like a kid for a few days, but I ought to have my act back in gear at the beer joint if that fat sheriff doesn’t nail me and get me violated in the meantime.”
“Have you run into Pat Floyd again?”
“He eased himself out to the ranch yesterday afternoon to show me a spent shell he said he picked up across the river from the pulp mill. I might have my signature burned right into it.”
Her eyes passed over mine with a gathering concern, then lowered to the ashtray, where she picked up her cigarette.
“Can you go back to prison?” she said.
“If I left that shell and my print is on it. It might not get me time here, but it could be enough for my P.O. to have me sent back to Louisiana.”
When I saw her expression and realized the casual tone of my voice, I also realized something about the impropriety of speaking out of one’s own cynical experience to people who are not prepared for it.
“Buddy thinks he’s just trying to turn on the butane and get me to jump,” I said.
“Pat Floyd will put you away,” she said.
The seriousness of her voice made something drop inside me.
“Well, you said he wasn’t a hillbilly cop.” But the detachment that I wanted to show in my voice wasn’t there. “What do you plan to do?”
“Nothing. What the hell can I do? I can sweat this fat man or run, and if I run, I have another three to pull in Angola for sure. I figure I’ll hang around and let Gordo Deficado do his worst.”
“He can do it, Iry.”
“I’ve known some bad men, too.”
She poured some of her beer into my glass and lit another cigarette from my pack.
“I’ve got to roll, kiddo. I’ve burned up too much of your evening,” I said.
“Buddy will need a ride home tomorrow. There’s no point in making two trips.” She looked away from me, and I saw the nervous touch of her finger on the cigarette.
“I don’t want to cause an inconvenience.”
“Oh, shit,” she said, and stood up from the couch and turned off the lamp on the table. In the darkness, she paused momentarily, listening for a sound from upstairs, then began to undress. She unsnapped her blue jeans and pushed them to her ankles, then pulled off her denim shirt and tried to reach for the back of her bra. In her hurried movement, with the glow of the kitchen light against her white stomach, she looked like an embarrassed contortionist in front of an audience of dolts.
My heart was beating, and I felt the heat come into my face when I looked at her bare legs, her white line of swollen stomach above the elastic of her panties, and her wonderful soft breasts pressing against her bra. I looked up the stairs, where my friend was asleep after his day of dissipation, and before I could reflect on whether my quick glance was a matter of concern for Buddy or personal caution for myself, I looked back at Beth again and felt all the weak ache of two years stiffen into an erection.
I rose uncomfortably from the couch in a bent position and unfastened her bra, and she turned toward me and put her arms around my neck as though she wanted to hide her huge white breasts. I pulled her close, with my face in her hair, and kissed her ear and ran both my hands over the small of her back, down inside her panties and over her butt and thighs. I felt like a gorilla bent in an ugly position over a pale statue. I smelled her blue-black hair, her perfume, the dried perspiration on her neck, her breath, and I felt the backs of my thighs start to shake.