He stood and began walking around the edges of the room. Every now and then he took a hand from his back pocket to pick up a figurine or a photograph. “Who’s this?” he asked.
“My mother.”
“She dead? Who’s this?”
“My uncle.”
“You got a real nice place here. You reckon your father might let me sleep on the couch?”
“Well, no, I doubt it.”
“How about your porch?”
“Not there either, I’m sure of it.”
“He’d never know.”
“He might,” said Evie. “If a neighbor saw you, or he went out on the porch some night.”
“I’d be real careful.”
“But I was just getting all straight,” said Evie. “How can you ask me a thing like that?”
All Drum did was pick up a china goose girl and lay it against his cheek, as if it cooled him.
“Oh, go ahead, then,” said Evie. “I don’t care.”
So he slept on the porch, on the heavy, flattened cushions in the wooden swing. Not just one night, but all week. Evie would lie awake until midnight or so, when she heard through her open window the rusty sound of boots on the floorboards and then the creaking of the swing as he settled himself. The creaking died away immediately, with nothing following. He seemed not even to turn in his sleep. He would be one of those people who lay down without a fuss and lost consciousness until morning, frustrating whoever was with them, the way Violet did when she spent the night. It was Evie who stayed awake. She listened to crickets and breaths of music and other people’s parties, and she thought of a hundred different things that could happen if her father came upon Drum. Would he shout? Call the police? Or only apologize for disturbing Drum’s sleep and tiptoe back to bed? She expected to have nightmares about it, but when she finally slept her dreams were of struggling in water as thick as gelatin, running from a fire on boneless legs, climbing a ladder which swooped backwards under her weight but never quite fell over. When she awoke in the mornings, Drum was always gone.
After the first night she came out on the porch in her bathrobe and stared at the swing, whose cushions were not even dented. She was still there when Clotelia came. “He gone?” Clotelia asked. No one had told her Drum was staying there, but she seemed to know anyway. Evie nodded.
“Well, go on get dressed. Nothing attractive about sitting out here in your bathrobe.”
At ten o’clock, her father went off for an errand. As soon as his car was out of sight Drum opened the front screen door a few inches and slid into the hallway. “I wonder if I could have breakfast?” he said. Evie was at the foot of the stairs, sorting out the mail. It was the first time all morning that Drum had not been in the center of her mind, and she raised her head and stared at him a minute. Then Clotelia called, “Come on out, it’s on the table.” She had set a place, even — a dinner plate heaped with ham and biscuits, which Evie and her father never ate. When Drum walked in, Clotelia looked up from the sink to say, “It’s waiting on you, over there. I know you.” Then she emptied the dishwater and walked out, peeling off pink rubber gloves. Drum shrugged and sat down.
“She is a mite uppity,” he said.
“Did you sleep all right?”
“Sure. It’s little short, but better than the ground. You got any syrup?”
Evie handed it to him and then sat down. “Have you been to see David yet?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“How about your friends?”
“How about them?”
“Well, you do have some.”
“Sure.”
“Are they worried about you?”
He frowned at her over a biscuit. “What you getting at?” he asked.
“I’m not getting at anything.”
“You want me to clear out?”
“No, of course not.”
“What you asking about friends for, then?”
“I just wanted to know—” said Evie. She drew rays out from a coffee ring, with Drum watching. “I was wondering why it was me you came to,” she said finally.
“Oh. I don’t know.”
“There must have been lots of other people.”
“Sure.”
She gave up. She waited until he had finished eating, and then she brought him an ash tray. Drum tipped back in his chair to smoke a cigarette. At his elbow was the back door, unlocked and waiting in case her father should appear. There was no telling when he might walk in. She sat braced to move suddenly, her mind tracking down and identifying every sound from the street, so that when finally Drum decided to answer her question she didn’t take it in. “You and me really had some fight that night,” he said. Evie said, “Mmhmm.” She was listening to a jingling noise that could have been her father’s Volkswagen. When it passed she said, “What?”
“You and me really had some fight, I said.”
“Oh, well.”
Drum blew out a funnel of smoke and watched it dissolve. Then he said, “I thought about it later. That fight is where I went wrong, I thought.”
“Oh, well, it’s over now,” Evie said.
“It came to me the night I got fired. I said, Oh, damn, I missed all the signs, will you look at that?’ ”
“What?”
“Are you listening to me?”
“I just don’t see what you’re saying,” Evie said. “It’s all right about the fight, really. I’m the one that should apologize.”
“I ain’t apologizing, I meant every word. You weigh on my head. But you bring luck, too. Or take it away, like when you hoped I would mess up at the Parisian.”
“Well, wait—” Evie said.
“If I’d of took you to the Parisian like you asked, they wouldn’t have fired me.”
“That’s just silly,” Evie said.
“Nothing silly about it. Except I wish if you bring me luck you wouldn’t have to weigh on my head. Don’t you ever smile none?”
“Of course I do.”
“Not to notice. Just sitting there paper-faced with your forehead showing. Now you’ve cut bangs.”
“I thought it was time to.”
“Does that mean you were serious?”
“Serious about what?” Evie said. “I don’t understand what we’re talking about.”
“The fight. When you said I couldn’t play the guitar.”
“Oh, that.”
“I can play one hell of a lot better than Joseph Ballew, I’ll tell you that. And sing too. If you don’t agree, you got no ears.”
“Well, I was just angry,” Evie said. “I never really meant it.”
“Did you know I took lessons? Up at Farnham’s Music Company, where I got my guitar. Then I won a talent show before I had even finished my lessons. Fifteen dollars and a medal.”
“You know I never meant it,” Evie said. “It was just one of those things you say when you’re angry. I could listen all day when you play.”
“Well, then,” said Drum. It seemed to be what he had come for. He stubbed his cigarette out and then just sat there, tipping his chair against the wall, until they heard Evie’s father climbing the porch steps. “See you around,” Drum said. He was up from his chair and out of the house before Evie could answer. He must have taken note of that door right from the beginning.
When he was gone, she felt she had made a mistake. He had come to make sure she still liked his singing; if she had had any sense, she would have kept him wondering. She plodded from room to room pulling sharply on one strand of hair, muttering under her breath when she was sure she was alone. “Was I serious? I don’t know. I’ve forgotten what you sound like by now.” Clotelia passed her several times, and threw her a look but said nothing. Her father asked if she were bored. “No, why?” Evie said.