I moved slowly toward the door that led from the kitchen to the living room. It was open, but I flattened myself against the wall. I had my flashlight ready. If I had the chance, I’d give Gerald the same treatment I gave Deeny.
“You once thought of marrying Gwendolyn?” Travis asked, distracting him from Rachel.
“Before I learned what she was really like, yes, I did. I loved her once.”
He stopped talking, then suddenly said, “You look so much like him. Your daddy. For a bastard, I’m surprised how much you come up looking like him. Nobody on earth I loved as much as him. Not even her, and I proved it. I always looked out after him, protected him. I made sacrifices. I told Arthur, he had to protect her like I protected him, against Horace DeMont and his brats. Course, he wasn’t man enough to do it.”
“But he made his own fortune,” Travis said, “and he provided for her from that.”
“For her?” Gerald said. “Or for a whore and the bastard he got off of her?”
“For all of us,” Travis said. “Even you.”
There was another sound of a blow. I must have moved, because the floor suddenly creaked beneath my feet. I got the flashlight ready.
“Why do you keep beating on him?” Rachel asked. “Just ‘cause he reminds you of his dad? I mean, what the hell is the point of all this? Is this all because we were looking for the El Camino?”
“He knows what it’s about!” Spanning said.
“I don’t-” Travis said, but there was another blow. I wasn’t sure I could stand by, just listening, if Spanning kept at it.
“You know, this is getting us nowhere,” Rachel said. “If I knew what the hell it was you wanted, maybe I could help you out.”
He paced. “Where’s Deeny?!” he shouted.
I could hear him moving, heard him open the front door, heard the squeal of the spring on the screen door as he opened it. In a soft voice, he called, “Deeny! Deeny!”
“She’s gone off on one of her pouts,” he said, coming back in, the screen slamming shut. There was the sound of the front door being shut. “Shouldna hit her, I guess.”
“What is it you’re looking for?” Rachel said.
“That whore’s the one that had them,” Gerald said. “His mother. Arthur gave them to her. He told me so. Arthur told me he gave them to this little asshole’s mother! You trust a man, you do everything in the world for him and what does he say? He needs protection from me. From me! When I was the one protecting him! They’re proof, you see? I helped Arthur. He was going to divorce her, you know.”
“My mother?” Travis asked.
“No! She wasn’t even married! Not really! She was just a whore.”
“Who then?” Rachel asked.
“Gwenie. He told me he was going to divorce Gwenie, just to marry that whore and give this brat his name. Gwenie would have taken everything and given it all to her uncle Horace.” I heard him pace to the front door again.
The door opened, then the screen door. This time, I heard him step outside. I stepped into the doorway of the living room. Travis’s eyes widened, but Rachel shook her head and mouthed the word “no.” She jerked her head toward another doorway-one closer to her chair.
I moved back into the kitchen just as I heard Spanning open the door again. He was silent. Someone started making stomping noises, and I used that to cover my progress across the kitchen and into the hallway. I was halfway down the hall when I heard Spanning shout, “What the fuck are you doing?”
“My feet fell asleep,” Travis said.
“You’re going to be asleep permanently if you don’t cut it out!”
“Did I ever tell you what happened on the night Gwendolyn DeMont died?” Travis said.
Spanning was silent.
“It was a hot July night,” Travis said, his voice taking on a slightly different quality. “So hot. Much hotter than tonight. All the windows were open, but there was no breeze. It was very late. Everything was still and quiet. But in the middle of this still and quiet night, I was awakened by a noise. It wasn’t a big noise, just a soft little noise, but I heard it. I was just a boy, already in bed, in my pajamas. But the noise woke me.
“I went downstairs, very slowly, and I saw a light on in the study. My father’s study. I was scared until I saw him. He was sitting at his desk.
“At first, I was so happy to see him, so pleased to think that he had come home. He hadn’t been there in so many days. Every night, I had waited up for him. Every night, I had hoped he would come back. But he didn’t, not until that night. I wanted to run to him, to say, ”Daddy! You’re back! You’re back home again!“ But then I saw that he was crying.”
“Crying?!” Spanning said.
“Yes, crying. I ran up to him and hugged him, but it was almost as if I wasn’t there. I asked him what had happened to make him so sad. He said, ”Do you know who loves me more than anyone else in the world?“”
There was silence, then Spanning scoffed, “You probably said it was your mother, because God knows she had him by the balls.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I said, but I was wrong.”
“Then it must have been you.”
“No-you know that isn’t true.”
“Well, if he said it was me, he was right, but he sure as hell didn’t give a damn about me. He was too busy with you and your mother to bother with me.”
“But he didn’t see me for a dozen years,” Travis said. “If he loved me so much, he would have done for me what you did for him, right?”
Spanning didn’t answer.
“If you love someone, you take care of them and protect them, right?”
“Of course you do!”
“You didn’t run away from your responsibilities, did you?”
“Goddamned right, I didn’t.”
“You were more of a father to him than he was to me.”
“Some ways.”
“He could be selfish, couldn’t-he?”
“Could be? I never met a more selfish man.”
“But even so, he loved you. We all knew that. He always talked about how much you had done for him. He knew. In his heart of hearts, he knew. He knew you’d do anything for him. He knew you even gave up the woman you loved for him. She could have had you, and everything would have been fine. But she wouldn’t take you, would she?”
There was a long silence. “You see?” Spanning said. “You see? You know, don’t you? I thought he might not have shown them to you. You were just a kid. But he came home that night and showed them to you, didn’t he? Now, where are they? I just want them back. Your mother wouldn’t give them to me, so I was going to get them myself.”
“But then those old biddies at the apartment building called the cops on Deeny, right?” Rachel said.
“Yeah. And then this cousin-one of the damned Kellys who turned their noses up at him! The whore’s family! A Kelly goes in there and takes everything out of the apartment. But then I see how it works. You planned this, Travis. You’re staying with your cousin. I know you know about them. I even tried to get old Ulkins to tell me. You saw what happened to him. Now tell me-where are they?”
“I wonder how pissed ol‘ Deeny is,” Rachel said, apparently knowing what the follow-up would be if she didn’t distract him from whatever “they” were. “Maybe she’s fetching the cops on you as we speak.”
He laughed. “She’s in this as deep as I am.”
But evidently it made him worry, because once again he went to the door. I opened my pocket knife to the sharpest blade. I heard him go out on the front porch again, and I came around the corner of the doorway. I tried to cut the ropes on Rachel’s wrists, but she whispered, “Give it to me and get out of here!” I placed it in her hand, blade side against the ropes. The screen door squeaked open and I pulled back.
“None of this whispering between yourselves!” Spanning shouted.