Clayton stared at him. He wiped his hand across his forehead and dried it on his pants leg.
Are you going to the sheriff? he said.
No. I decided not to. On account of your kids. But I’m going to have you sign this.
Sign what?
This paper here.
What is it?
Dad removed a sheet of paper from the drawer in front of him and pushed it across the desk. Clayton read it. The paper was typed out neatly, telling how he’d stolen from the store and admitted as much and it said how many thousands of dollars the sum was and it said he admitted that too and then there was a place at the bottom of the page for him to sign his name and to provide the date.
What will you do with this if I sign it?
Oh, you’re going to sign it. There’s no question about that.
All right. Say I do. Then what?
Then I’ll keep it locked up in the safety box at the bank. In case you ever think of moving back to Holt.
But I’m not leaving Holt.
Yeah, you are.
You mean you want me to leave town too?
I’d have to run into you sometime, Dad said. I’d have to see you again on Main Street someplace.
But I grew up here.
I know. I knew your father and mother. Son, this is a sorry goddamn mess all around.
But what am I supposed to do?
You’ll have to figure that out. That’s not for me to say. Maybe you will learn something. I don’t know about that.
What about — Clayton looked desperately around the little office — what am I going to tell my wife? How can I explain this to Tanya?
That’s one more thing I don’t have no idea about. It’s not going to be a lot of fun, I know that. It wouldn’t be for me.
Clayton studied Dad’s face, but there didn’t appear to be anything forgiving or tractable there. All right then, goddamn you, he said. He took up a pen from the desk and signed the paper quickly and shoved it away from him back across the desk.
Dad reached forward and took up the paper and looked at it, examined the signature and the date, and folded the paper twice and put it in his shirt pocket.
Now I think you better go.
This isn’t treating me fair, this way.
No? I thought to myself I was being more than fair.
I deserve better. I’ve been working for you for going on five years.
That’s why I’m saying you better go now. Otherwise I might forget that.
The next day, Sunday, Clayton phoned Dad at home early in the afternoon. I need to talk to you, he said.
We did all our talking last night.
I know. But I need to have one last talk with you.
About what?
Can you meet me at the store?
What are you going to do, shoot me or something? Dad said.
No. Christ. It’s nothing like that. I just need to try to make this right.
You can’t make it right.
I’m asking you. I’m saying please will you. Just talk to me.
Dad thought about it for a moment. All right then, he said. I’ll go in by the back door and let you in the office. In one hour. Two o’clock sharp. Don’t make me wait. This is not going to make no difference though.
Thank you.
Just before two, without telling Mary what he was doing, Dad went out to his car and drove across town to the hardware store and went in by the alley and left the door unlocked and turned the lights on. He entered the little office and switched the light on there and checked to see that the gun was in the drawer of the desk and then put it back, then he heard the car and Clayton was coming in at the alley door. He sat and waited, only it wasn’t Clayton who appeared. It was his wife, Tanya, the young blond woman.
Where’s your husband? Dad said.
He isn’t coming. I’m here.
What are you doing here?
She stepped into the little close windowless office. She was wearing a long coat, a man’s raincoat, a kind of slicker. She came around the end of the desk and stood three feet away from Dad. Then she opened the coat. She was naked under it. A young woman who had had two children in rapid succession and she showed it. Her belly was round and slack and had white stretch marks. She had wide hips. Her large breasts sagged a little. But she wasn’t bad-looking.
You can have all this, she said. You can have all this as often and regular as you want it for an entire year. I know some special things too that might interest you.
If what, Dad said.
If you tear up that paper he signed last night and we all forget anything ever happened.
He looked at her face. Her face was quite pretty. She was watching him closely, her eyes fierce and hard and scared, daring him. Waiting.
No, he said. No, I’m not interested. You’re going to take this wrong but I’m not going to do anything like that. Your husband’s wrong as hell to get you into this.
I don’t care about that, she said.
You will.
She opened the front of the raincoat wider, as if she hadn’t offered herself sufficiently. She changed her stance, pushing herself forward, displaying her body. She put a hand on one hip, moving the skirt of the coat out of the way. She turned slightly to show herself in profile. Do you see? she said. Are you looking?
Yes, he said. And I’m married and my wife is all I want and all I’ll ever want.
You’re not looking good enough, she said.
Yeah I am. I think you better go on now.
You’re going to regret this. You’re going to wish you could change your mind.
No. That’s not going to happen, Dad said. Now I want you to get out of here.
She pulled the coat together and looked at Dad sitting in the swivel chair at the desk. Then the coat came open once more and her breasts swung and bobbled with the violent motion and she slapped him as hard as she could across the face. It left a bright red mark. Then she turned and went out of the office.
It snowed that night as Clayton had predicted the day before that it would. A wet snow more like one in March or April than one in February, and the next day Clayton and Tanya took the two children and some few quick belongings in suitcases and cardboard boxes and drove a hundred miles south and moved into a house with her parents.
In the spring a couple of months later on a slow day Dad received a call. He was in the little office again, in the middle of the morning. The voice on the other end, a female voice, was already screaming when he picked up the phone.
You son of a bitch! He killed himself! You son of a bitch.
Who is this?
You know who it is. He went to Denver and started drinking and took a gun and blew half his head off. He never even left a note. Because of you. You did this. You’re the one that made him. Oh I hope you rot in hell! Oh goddamn you! I hope you burn in hellfire forever.
5
MIDMORNING she was out on the front porch in the still fresh bright heat of the day with the old wooden-handled broom she kept for the porch and sidewalk, sweeping across the gray-painted wood boards, some of them warped and coming apart at the joints. At the front window she looked inside and Dad was sitting in his chair staring out into the side yard. She wondered what he was thinking about. If he was thinking about how his death would come for him, in what manner it would take him away. He never talked of it. She swept up the dead tree leaves and the dirt that had blown in. There was always dirt on the front porch, even in winter. She was glad of that, in a way. She was sweeping it off onto the bare ground next to the cement foundation of the old house when Lorraine came out and said she had a phone call.
I didn’t hear the phone.
It’s some woman asking for you.
Did she say who it was?
No. But I wish you’d let me do this, Mom. You don’t need to be sweeping out here.