“It’s me, Mary-girl. What’s going on?” Don’s face had gone red, his jaw locked so in aggravation he didn’t notice she bit nervously at her bottom lip.
“You’re back.” Mary opened the kitchen door, but the screen door stood between them.
“Of course I’m back, honey. It’s Friday, like I told you. I’m getting soaked out here.”
“Of course. Just... I wasn’t expecting you.” She straightened her blouse, clutching it at its neck, unlatched the screen door for him, and let him inside. She smelled the whiskey on him.
“I know. I wanted to surprise you. Got you something from Atlanta.” He pulled the Sinatra record from a paper bag.
“That’s nice. Have you been drinking? That’s not like you.” Mary moved to the kitchen where she put on a pot of water to boil, hardly listening to Don at all.
“I only had a taste of this Old Crow I bought for us to share. Just enough to put me in a fine mood — that is, until I heard that racket. You know how I feel.”
“This isn’t exactly a good time, Don. I’m not feeling so good. All this rain, I guess.” Mary kept her back to Don as she fumbled with teacups.
Sensing an unusual nervousness in his mistress’s behavior, Don offered her a candy from his bag of caramels as a peacemaker. Since he was already at her house, he didn’t see the harm in wrapping himself in her intoxicating smells and staying longer than he had planned. He would just have to dream up a bigger lie for Dale when he got home.
“Well, I got something might make you feel a whole lot better. You’re going to love this so much more than that noise. Bring us a couple of glasses and some ice. And sit down, I don’t need any tea.” Don moved to the living room, sitting down on the sofa as if he lived there.
The bag of cherry sours on her coffee table gave Don Palmer his second feeling of out-of-placeness. He couldn’t figure out if it was he who felt out of place or the bag of cherry sours. He had never seen Mary Hooks eat anything but caramels and this bag of cherry sours looked like they had just then been plopped down on her coffee table and offered up.
“I didn’t know you liked cherry sours,” Don said, picking up the bag of candy, examining it as if the answer might be inside.
“I didn’t,” she said, “but I do now. I’ve had enough of caramels, anyhow.”
“Is that so?”
“It is,” Mary answered. “A person needs change once in a while.”
“Is that so?” A familiar resentment rose in Don’s throat as he recalled the music he had heard coming from her living room.
“It ain’t Christian.”
“What?”
“That music.”
“And this is?” Mary could hardly believe the words spilling from her mouth. But she recognized their truth.
“What’s that?”
“You and me. That’s Christian?”
“You know what I mean.
“Just saying, that’s all.”
Don didn’t like the defiance he recognized in his Mary’s face. “Just saying,” he said. “What’s gotten into you? Are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong, because you know I’ll do anything for you, honey. Didn’t I get you those tickets, even though you know how much I hated the notion of you sitting inside a baseball stadium, of all places, listening to that abomination?”
Don was right. Mary didn’t know what had gotten into her. She was scared; she felt like someone had come along and loosened up her head so all the pieces of it fell to the floor and she only had time to pick them up in a scramble, not one fitting together like it had before. Why had she encouraged the boy to come to her house? What good could possibly come from his being there? And how many times had she asked herself these same questions when she had encouraged other men to do the same? And Don loved her so. What devils drove her to invite his son into her home? Something was coming to an end tonight, but Mary was afraid to see just what it might be. From the kitchen, she felt detached from Don in the other room, his words like a voice on television, unreal and far away.
When Don realized the cherry sours weren’t Mary’s — he wasn’t sure how he knew, but he knew — he stood up too quickly, the taste of whiskey rising in his throat and leaving him feeling sick. He noticed Mary’s bedroom door was closed. Who would she close the door to?
“What’s going on, Mary?” Don’s sense of out-of-placeness grew. “Is somebody here?”
“What do you mean?” she answered from the kitchen. “Of course not, Don.” She steadied herself against the kitchen counter.
“Good Lord, Mary, if you’re lying to me,” he said and went looking, determined, nearly delirious with the sureness of finding something he hadn’t expected.
From the moment Don found his only son in Mary Hooks’ closet, all felt like a memory just out of reach, fuzzy and quick, a confusion he couldn’t quite sort out, as he watched himself from the outside: the quiet and determined rage that settled over his body — this was God’s punishment, he understood; a cool sweat and a subtle ache in his bones that left him feeling later as if he had come down with a cruel summer cold — drained; to the car, dragging the boy by his arm, leaving a bruise like a three-fingered plum; and home where he sat Donny down in the kitchen, holding him in the chair with one remarkably strong hand as he tied his son’s arms and legs; the hunt for scissors — in the gift-wrapping drawer, Dale answered, confused and sleepy from a nap — and the way Donny’s fine hair fell to the ground in great crescent-moon glides, piles of it scattered across Dale’s spotless linoleum; the screams of a mother; the silent but sure wrath of a father; and the dark red blood of a boy that spilled to the floor as scissors met flesh.
What Dobs Found Where the Cul-de-sac Met the Railroad Tracks
What Dobs found where the cul-de-sac met the railroad tracks was so twisted and bruised it no longer looked human, he told anyone who asked. Cut clean in two by a Southern, I suspect. Dobs found Donny Palmer as the rest of Lake Claire listened on the radio to the Atlanta Braves play baseball. And that included most of the boys in Lake Claire. They were supposed to be out searching for Donny; but it would have to wait for the game. There was no sense of urgency even after he had been missing a full day. Many figured Donny-Mop, the nickname he had been given for his over-the-ears and curled-at-the-neck hair, not to forget the bangs all the way beyond his eyebrows and nearly so he couldn’t see at all, had left town altogether, already an unbalanced teen driven by the whims of a changing nation. Always a quiet boy, most figured he had simply wandered off to Atlanta or worse. When Dobs found Donny, it felt like a run of bad luck through a good place. And a week later the people of Lake Claire found themselves a villain in Carmello the Barber.
Inside Carmello’s Barbershop the forty-six-year-old barber bent over the head of a frightened teen. Carmello’s giant hairy hand held him still in the chair, a leather strop fitted across his legs, while the other hand gripped electric shears that brought down the girlishly long locks like a thresher across a field of hay. The teenager wailed like a little boy, his father watching with a mixture of satisfaction and alarm as the giant Italian yelled, Boys is boys is boys is boys... as if to convince himself as well as others. From across the street citizens of Lake Claire saw a large immigrant barber standing anxiously in the doorway watching and waiting for adolescent heads to cut, business slow and passions aroused.