He stood watching me.
"Really, man? Why would you want to do that for me?"
Hell if I knew.
"Any reason I shouldn't?"
He shook his head.
"Thanks," he said after a moment.
Maybe because I hadn't tried to help LaVerne, hadn't been able to help Alouette or my own son?
"Thank me after you decide and something comes of it."
He nodded. Seemed quite settled in there. Neither of us spoke for a couple of minutes.
"So…" he said.
"So."
"Few days ago you were looking for Shon Delany. That still up?"
"Till I find him, yeah."
"Figured. Well…"
That well went on and on, stretching taut like a clothesline, looping back on itself, suggesting all sorts of things. LeRoy had this way of squeezing a single word, so, well, for all it was worth.
" 'Round seven this morning my beeper goes off, and when I haul the body out of bed to a phone it's Delany on the other end, wondering when he can pick up his final check.
"I'm half an inch from telling him we don't do finalchecks-out of sight, out of mind, right? Invisible and insane, like the old joke goes-when I remember how you came 'round asking. So who knows why, but I decide to hold off, stall him. Told him maybe tomorrow. You got a number, I can call you then. I'll call you, he says. Right…"
Another verbal net thrown out. Dragging towards the boat, wriggling, sliding over one another's smooth bodies, a hearty catch of suppositions, implicit gestures, possibilities.
"How bad you want to talk to this Shon Delany?"
"His family asked me to find him."
"Family."
"Brother, actually. He's the one that takes care of them all. Shon's mother, some smaller kids."
"I used to have a brother, couple of years younger than me. Really smart. We all thought, this kid can do anything he wants to, anything at all. One Saturday night they shot him down in the parking lot outside Wal-Mart. Took him for someone else, maybe-or just drove by and he was there. We never knew. He'd just turned fourteen."
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah. Yeah, sure you are. Everyone is. Delany do something."
"I don't think so. Not yet."
"But you're thinking he hangs where he is, it's only a matter of time."
I nodded.
"Good kid."
"I know."
"But he has that hitch in his eye. Looking for something. Hungry."
I nodded again. Wondering if I had ever come across anyone, any age, who understood people the way Keith LeRoy did.
"Well. You are what you eat. Nothing larger than your own head, right?"
He smiled.
"Delany told me he had to have the money. Don't hold your breath, I said-anyway it's only a few dollars. He says, hole he's in, a few dollars could just make a difference."
LeRoy saw the question before I asked it. He shrugged.
"Who knows? That kind of need, it's got its own language."
"You think he'll call back?"
"I think he would of, yeah. But I told him I wouldn't be there-got my rounds to make, pickups and deliveries and the like. Be gone most of the day. Asked what part of town he was in, maybe we could meet up somewhere nearby later on. First he didn't answer. Then he said, 1 don't know…'"
Keith LeRoy grinned.
"You free 'round six o'clock, Mr. Griffin?"
"I could be."
"Good. Then you just might want to come along with me to the Funky Butt Bar, midcity. Have a sandwich, maybe a couple of beers, see what happens?"
Someone at the office door cleared his throat.
"I'll come by where you stay," Keith LeRoy said, "pick you up. That okay? 'Round five, five-thirty."
He nodded to me, then to my newest visitor, who stepped back out of the door to let him pass.
One last dance on my card, this time strictly %, a fox-trot, maybe.
Dean Treadwell wondered aloud just how serious was my dedication to teaching, to the university. He knew that I had a drinking problem, of course-and raised his hand when I started to protest. He understood, too, that my creative work, my own novels and stories, were of primary importance to me. He'd read and admired several of them himself, at his wife's urging. And devoted as it was to liberal arts, the university was happy to make certain concessions and accommodations. But.
Surely I understood that the university's obligation.
That the department must.
That I, as an untenured assistant professor, perhaps especially as an untenured assistant professor.
After all, we're all of us, students and faculty alike, on campus for.
Mind you, Treadwell's as fine a man as you're likely to pluck out from among these academic brambles and thickets. I'm sure he resented giving the lecture as much as I did receiving it.
So when he was done, I said "You're absolutely right" and handed over the office key. "You have to hold on to the lock, push in on it, to get it open. There's probably a trick to getting the computer to work too, but I haven't found it. The students pretty much take care of themselves."
"Mr. Griffin," he said. "Lewis. Please. Wait."
But I was in the doorway now, canceling out the rest of my dance card.
"I have been," I said. "Waiting. For far too long."
23
SO, NEWLY UNEMPLOYED, I lay on the couch belching beans and Crystal hot sauce, waiting for Keith LeRoy. Bat kept strafing the room: he'd dash in, jump on a rug and ride it across the floor till it crashed into wall or furniture, then retreat I'd fed him, so this had to be some kind of higher complaint. Maybe he was afraid I'd no longer be able to provide for him in the manner to which he'd become accustomed.
I drifted as though on a raft: asleep, awake and somewhere in between, sounds around me settling in half-acknowledged, setting off sparks that caught at the dream-tinder.
Clare sat at the table by me. The sound of cars passing outside became her fingers on the keyboard. I'd just surfaced from a quart of gin, lying on the couch: she was home. Another review? Yes. It's going well? Fairly well, yes. Then, in the dream, I was again asleep.
Without transition I stood inside the ER doors, watching all those people rush towards Clare's room. White tile and bright light everywhere. Her overnight bag in my hand. Hairbrush and toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, one of the oversize T-shirts she wore to sleep in, all her usual meds.
Then in a dimly lit room I sat beside LaVerne as she poured martinis from a chilled pitcher, telling me about her childhood, her mother, and trains.
I looked up at her photo, the one Richard Garces gave me.
So many things I wanted to tell you, Verne.
I know.
I loved you more than any.
But with the same disabilities. Yes.
We can make up for our actions. But for our inactions, what we fail to do…
Do you think it's any different with me, Lew? With any of us? Let it go. This new woman you've met.
Deborah.
She makes you happy?
Yes.
Then cherish Iwr, Lew. Tell her the things you never told me. Hold her close. And let her hold you.
I'll try… Verne?
She was gone.
When I was a kid, twelve, thirteen, my father built a shoe-shine box for me. I'd said I wanted to earn my own money and a week later he handed me this thing. Solid hardwood box with a drawer for supplies, steel footrest above, a rod on the side for shoe-shine rags. Amazing piece of workmanship. He'd even stocked it with polishes, a brush, pieces of old towels. That Saturday he took me along on his usualrounds, Billy's D-light Diner, Clcburne Hotel Barber Shop, Blue Moon Tavern, DeSoto Park, and introduced me to his friends, many of whom, it happened, needed shoe-shines. I came home that day with almost eight dollars. I don't think I ever touched the box again. I spent the money on books. Paperbacks were a quarter back then. Seven dollars and change bought a lot of books. And earned a lot of grief from my mother, who for weeks complained of my wasting all that money, buying more books when I had a room full of them already.