Blind Tiger

She was accustomed to his being away most days, all day, often from sunup to sunset. This was the first time he had stayed away all night. Though she would rather die than own up to it, she had been afraid to be alone after the sun went down. With only a sliver of a moon, even the surrounding limestone hills had become indiscernible. She couldn’t see the road from the shack. The darkness had been all encompassing, except for the lantern she had kept burning all night.

He plopped down on his seat on top of the barrel and rubbed his bad hip, wincing with discomfort. Mollifying her tone, she said, “I saved you some cornbread and bacon.”

“I ain’t hungry.”

Laurel stood directly in front of him, making it impossible for him to ignore her. “I believe I deserve an explanation, Irv.”

“You kept me occupied half the day teaching you how to drive. Trying to teach you how to drive.”

The series of lessons had been intermittent, carried out during Pearl’s brief naps between bouts of coughing. Laurel had never sat behind the steering wheel of an automobile. The sequence of necessary steps one had to perform with both hands and feet had been more difficult to coordinate than she’d anticipated. She was right-handed, so naturally she’d reached for the crank with that hand, when Irv had told her repeatedly to always use her left on the crank unless she wanted her “damn arm broke.”

They had wound up being frustrated and fractious with each other.

She asked now, “Did you stay gone all night to punish me for not mastering how to drive?”

He gave her a withering look. “What do you take me for?”

“Then why didn’t you come home?”

“I had a project to finish up.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“How’s Pearl?”

“She’s sick, Irv. What project?”

“Putting up a wall inside an old house. It was just sold to a family moving here from Waco. The wife wanted to divide one room into two so that her daughter would have a space separate from her brothers.”

“You’re lying.”

He glowered and looked guilty at the same time.

“You went into too much detail,” she said. “Just like Derby did when he was lying.”

He got up and headed for the other side of the room, but she caught him by the arm.

“What?” he asked, pulling his arm free.

“Do you have a… Is there a woman you see?”

He huffed a humorless laugh and continued on his way over to the sink where he pumped

water into a glass and took a long drink. Laurel waited until he’d turned back to her before quietly apologizing. “I’m sorry. I had no right to ask that. It isn’t any of my business.”

He gave that same dry laugh. “I’ve loved only one woman in my lifetime. Derby’s mama. And it damn near killed me to watch her die in misery. Don’t go thinking I’ve got a romance going.”

“No project, either, I’m guessing.”

Looking done in, he returned to his seat and bent down to unlace his shoes. “No, I had a project all right.” He looked up at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “That fellow that came here this morning.”

“What about him?”

“I don’t know, and that’s why I’m worried. What the hell was he doing way out here?”

“I told you, he—”

“I know what he claimed, but I ain’t buying it. I went around tonight, checked in with people I know, asked if they’d seen him.”