A scared gray cat dashed between two oaks at the far end of the field. Danny fired at it. It sprang into some underbrush.
A jittery yellow leaf. Danny grimaced, tried to blow it away. A crooked sapling: that gimpy asshole, Smitts. Too far left. Too high.
“Steady, steady, don’t rush it,” he heard his father say. But that was the old man’s trouble: all his life, he was too damn steady, while his bosses and his woman pushed him around. He even died steady, slumping in his chair at the supper table, politely clutching his napkin.
Fucking loser, Danny thought. And I’m my daddy’s son.
At the funeral the preacher had tried to buck him up: “Your father went gently into that good night.” But the whole point was not to go gently, wasn’t it? He remembered approaching the coffin, angry, not sad — furious that his dad lay there taking it, the way he’d taken everything. All those prying mourners gaping at him. It was humiliating. Danny didn’t cry. He refused to, he felt so embarrassed. For both of them.
His hand shook.
Anna Lia didn’t go gently. Oh no. Never. And I just watched her pull away, Danny thought.
His eyes began to burn. He knelt in the grass and let the pistol fall to the dirt. His chest heaved like a tent in a storm, and he wailed to the tops of the trees. A bluejay answered him, sweetly.
If it hadn’t been Smitts, she would have found someone else — like Capriati before him. Found another way to turn her passions on herself Danny knew this was the truth.
He retched up hard little wedges of burrito. He hugged himself and sprawled on the ground. A yellow butterfly dipped above his head. The pistol nudged his shoulder.
He sat up slowly. Purple clouds wrapped the sun. Breezes wheezed among the trees. He brushed off his pants and picked up the gun. You dumb-ass son of a bitch, he thought. If you’re going to shoot someone, you ought to shoot yourself.
On her lunch break Libbie drove to Hugh’s apartment. No sign of his car. Last night he would have dropped off his daughters. He and Paula would have worked out a new monthly schedule for the girls. How long could that have taken? An hour? Two? Then what? Where could he have stayed?
Surely he hadn’t gone back to her?
No. If he’d strayed, it was with a new woman, Libbie thought, someone she didn’t know, a student, perhaps, an eager young thing lingering after class to discuss the Alamo massacre.
Unless something had happened to him. She stood in the parking lot and cried.
Maybe he’d met with Father Caskin. He’d told her once, “I’m agnostic, but religious rituals comfort me. I don’t see them as a declaration of belief so much as an admission that there are mysteries that still terrify us, and we need some kind of public something to acknowledge that.”
Ever since then she’d tried to see St. Anne’s the way he did, as a sanctuary in the truest sense. Still, it struck her as a wealthy playground. Expensive green and purple windows, wasteful fountains.
She got back in her van. Tiger, KKLT’s afternoon DJ, said that gusts of nearly fifty miles per hour were expected later today. “You gardeners take extra care tonight, and protect your tender little things,” he said.
She drove to the cathedral and parked. Inside, a honeyed smell hung in the air — incense or someone’s old perfume.
“May I help you?” said a gentle voice behind her. “Oh, Ms. Schwinn. Hello.”
She turned to see the young priest, Father Grady. His slender, boyish shoulders and Elvis ducktail made her stifle a laugh. “I was looking for Father Caskin,” she said.
“I’m afraid he’s not here.”
“You haven’t … you haven’t seen my fiancé, have you?”
The priest appraised her. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so.” The Alamo massacre is actually very sexy if looked at from the point of view of passion …
“Weddings can be stressful, can’t they? The church can be a great healer in moments of stress.”
She had to get out of here. Too much thin, heavenly air. “I’ll keep that in mind, Father.”
“If you ever need to talk …”
Right. When you’re old enough to shave. “I’ll let you know,” she said.
She couldn’t cancel the rest of her classes. She’d missed too much already. Before returning to school she drove home, pulled the box with her gown out of the back seat, and lugged it into the house. No messages on her phone.
“I’ve lost you, haven’t I?” she whispered. Bushes tapped her kitchen window.
She hauled the box upstairs and was about to stuff it into her closet, but something in the light outside — a cloudy blue-green — intensified her sadness and made her prolong her wistfulness. She tugged the lid from the box and arranged the dress on her bed.
Days ago, Hugh had made love to her here. To my body, Libbie thought. Not to me. And he knew it.
Damn you, Anna Lia.
The gown’s right arm reached across a pillow for the night table, the wine glasses. The dress lay empty, the faintest trace of who she’d meant to be.
A hand-lettered sign nailed to a tree said CATFISH BATE. Danny stopped the car. His shirt was damp. He smelled like a swamp.
An old black man sat on the porch of a little country store, strumming an unvarnished guitar. It looked like it had survived a dozen house fires.
Danny shoved the gun into his pants, against his belly. “Got a bathroom?” he asked.
“Out back.”
“Thanks.”
A small pine building with a leaky commode and a grimy porcelain sink. Danny washed his face, wetted some toilet paper and scrubbed his shirt. A cracked round mirror hung on the wall. He skimmed a hand through his hair. “Fucking loser,” he said, staring at himself. He didn’t even have the guts to do himself in.
He walked back around to the store. Maybe a Coke would settle his belly. Behind a long, Formica-topped counter crowded with candy jars, a big, dark woman stood. She was pudgy but sweetly attractive, like Carla’s sister.
He spilled some quarters onto the counter, then grabbed a can and popped it open.
“You all right, sugar?” the woman asked him. Even her voice reminded him of Betty, childlike, innocent. Well, he thought, easy to be innocent in the woods.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Thanks for asking.”
On the porch, the man picked out a blues melody on his guitar. The rhythm was like a boxer’s feint and jab, up and back, up and back. Danny stood behind him, feeling the wind’s chill. Clouds curled into fists. Pine needles filled the air, trailing behind them a dark, earthy scent. Sparrows gossiped in the trees.
In spite of his failures and the weather, Danny began to relax. Funny how mournful tunes could lift a fellow’s spirits. Happy-golucky country folk. One of the oldest clichés in the book. Fuck, Danny thought. Then: What the hell. Bless them. Thank God they’re here.
“Ain’t hurrican’ season,” said the man, still strumming. “But looks like we in for one.”
“Might be,” Danny said.
“I’d best batten down the hatches.”
“You got a good place here.”
The man laughed. “Oh, I s’pose.” He propped the guitar against a post.
“Been here long?”
“Had folks on this land since slavery times, working for someone or another. Me and Angie, we opened up this grocery ‘bout ten year ago with help from her family and money we saved picking peaches. Rent’s too damn high, but we get by, we get by.” He stretched his legs and groaned. “You’self? Look like a city boy to me.”