I picked up the half-eaten sandwich off the table and shoved it into his mouth, all the way in, to the last quarter inch of it, and held my hand over his face. He choked and tried to pull back and hit at my arm, but I grabbed him by the collar with the other hand and held him still. The glass bounced off the table and broke on the floor.
“Chew on that,” I said. “That’ll give you something to do with your goddamned mouth. And keep it shut.”
My hands were shaking as badly as his had been now and I could feel the fluttering in my stomach and the dry stickiness in my mouth from my breath going through it. Take it easy. Take it easy. He’s drunk and doesn’t know what he’s doing. And how does he know what’s happened since that morning you left? How could he know?
His eyes were fixed on my face, and it must have been tough to look at, for I could see the fear in them. I let go and he spat out the bread and took a deep breath and tried to push back from the table and get up, all at the same time, and he fell over backward with the chair under him. When he untangled himself he stood up and stared at me with his mouth open.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked, still trying to get his breath back. “You’re absolutely nuts.”
“Pick up your chair, Lee,” I said. “And sit down.” I had hold of myself now. “Let’s just forget the whole thing and start over. I came to town to tell you and Mary that Angelina and I were back from our trip and to ask you to come out and see us.”
“You mean you brought her back with you? She’s out there? You must be nuts.”
“You still hungry? There’s some more of that sandwich,” I said.
He sat down and stopped talking.
“Where’s Mary?” I asked.
“How the hell do I know where she is? At her grandmother’s, I guess.”
“She’s left you?”
“Yes. What of it?”
“When?”
“About two days after you left. She found out about that Angelina business somehow. I guess I spilled it when I was drunk. She was suspicious anyway, because she couldn’t quite swallow that story about you bein’ mixed up in it. I guess she always thought you were some kind of a fair-haired boy or something. Anyway, she found out the whole thing and said she was going to leave me. I’d been drinking and was still half nutty over this Angelina deal, so I told her I didn’t care, to go ahead.”
“Didn’t you even go over there afterward and try to smooth things over?”
His face was surly and he looked away. “It wouldn’t have done any good. Not after what happened. The second night her grandmother must have promoted her into coming back over to have a talk about it, because she did come back and she got here at the wrong time. I had called up an old girl I used to run around with at Rice, who was here visiting in town, and she was here when Mary came in. This babe had on one of Mary’s nightgowns and was drunker than a preacher’s bastard son, and in our bed, and you think I ought to go over and smooth things out, do you? Not that I give a damn. We were washed up anyway.”
I got up to go. There wasn’t anything to be gained by sticking around. “I’m sorry, Lee,” I said.
“Oh, to hell with it,” he said. “Did you bring my car back?”
“Yes, it’s out there.” I dropped the keys on the table.
“Well, that’s nice of you. I’m always glad to have my car when you’re not using it.”
I didn’t say anything. When I started out of the kitchen, he said, “I almost decided to report it stolen, so you’d be picked up.”
“You almost did?” I said, and went on out through the living room. When I looked back he was still sitting there at the table.
Twenty-one
The next week Lee was sentenced to sixty days in the county jail for drunk driving. He was going through the square at about forty late one night and crashed into a parked car and almost demolished it. It cost him nearly four hundred dollars to have the two cars repaired and he couldn’t get off with merely a fine this time. He’d been fined and warned too many times. He went to jail for the full two months.
Mary had filed suit for divorce. I went to see her, knowing it wasn’t any of my business and that it wouldn’t do any good. She listened to me patiently and never once told me not to butt in, but her mind was made up. She didn’t seem to blame Lee and she wasn’t bitter about it; it was just that she was through. I tried to get her to go around to the jail with me to see him, but she shook her head.
We were sitting in a booth in Gordon’s café. She toyed with the two straws that came with the Cokes.
“I’m sorry, Bob,” she said. “But what’s the use? The thing is over and done, so why prolong the agony? It just makes me feel bad to see him because I always get to thinking of how it could have been with us. It isn’t a lot of fun to look at him and think what a man he could have been if he’d ever grown up.”
“I guess so,” I said. “I always had hopes that with you he’d settle down and quit raising so much hell, but I guess that never really happens, does it?”
Her eyes were a little amused. “No, I don’t think there’s any such thing as a woman making a man out of anybody. You never heard of a man making a woman out of anybody, did you? She can take a man and make a civilized man—that is, a married one—out of him, but she has to have a man to begin with.”
“Oh, I think he’s man enough to come out of it,” I protested. “I know he’s crazy as hell and wilder than a March hare, but I wouldn’t call him a weakling.”
She shook her head with what seemed like exasperation. “There goes the professional male speaking again. A man is something that has a lot of hair on its chest, isn’t it, and a deep voice that rumbles down in its belly, and goes around trampling on its hairy brothers with cleats.“
“O.K.,” I said. “Maybe you’re right.”
When we got up to go she said something that puzzled me, and it wasn’t until long afterward that I figured it out.
“Bob, why don’t you go away from this country? I don’t think Lee ever will.”
“You mean, on account of that business? I don’t think it’s necessary. It was pretty rough at first sometimes, but I’ve about got it out of my system now.”
She gathered up her purse and I picked up the check. “Yes, I know you have. I suspect you of growing up. You’ve got over it. But has Lee?”
She wouldn’t say any more and she was quiet as I drove her back to her grandmother’s.
“Good-by, Bob,” she said. “I’ll be out to see you one of these days.”
August was beautiful. I almost forgot Lee entirely in my preoccupation with Angelina and the task I had undertaken in attempting to teach her to like the country the way I did. I went to see him once a week and took him cigarettes and some books, but he was surly most of the time and didn’t seem to care whether I came or not.
One afternoon when Angelina and I were swimming down at Black Creek, Sam came up on us, appearing out of the heavy timber with his shotgun. He was hunting squirrels and had two of them, big fox squirrels.
We hadn’t seen him since our return. Twice we had gone to visit Mrs. Harley and had taken some presents Angelina had brought back from Galveston, but both times he had been away from the house and I was pretty sure she had known he would be.
He grinned and seemed embarrassed, as though he had caught us undressed or something. “Howdy, Bob,” he said, shifting his gun to the other hand. “Howdy, Angelina.”
Angelina’s “Hello, Papa,” was as impersonal as death. I asked him how the crops were and how the hunting had been and if he’d been fishing for white perch lately, but Angelina never said another word. I felt sorry for him, the way he was standing there and not wanting to look at her, half naked as she seemed to him in her scanty bathing suit, and still wanting to look at her because she was his oldest daughter and the prettiest one and he loved her. He was talking to me but it was easy to see he was hoping she would say something to him, perhaps some word of our trip, or when she expected to be over to visit them again, or whether she was happy and liked her new home, or some question about his health, or anything at all, but no word came from her.