Gerald was in the process of smacking Travis hard across the mouth. Travis’s gag was no longer in place, and Travis and Rachel were each tied to wooden ladder-back chairs. The blood from the wound on Travis’s forehead had dried, but now fresh blood came from a split lip. I took some solace in the fact that Gerald had not thought either of them dangerous enough to tie their feet or legs, and had not set up any electrical torture devices.
Gerald was talking-loudly, it seemed, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
I moved to the back of the house, thought of lighting the fire, hesitated. I crept up the back-porch steps, slowly put what I hoped was the right key into the lock and turned it. It opened with a click that sounded like a shot to me, but apparently Gerald didn’t hear it over his own voice. Slowly, cautiously, waiting for a creaking noise that would send him gunning for me, I opened the back door. There was no squeak of hinges. I made myself breathe again, and I went inside.
I was in the kitchen. I could now hear Gerald very clearly.
“Don’t look at me like that!” he was saying. “Your daddy used to look at me like that. ”Don’t hurt me.“ Don’t hurt him! You know what I did for him? You know what I did? Everything. I fed him. I put clothes on his back and a roof over his head. I read for him. I wrote for him. You know that? You know your own father couldn’t read or write?”
“Yes,” Travis said wearily. “I knew.”
“Well, then! Maybe he told you who it was that was always doing everything for him! Always giving up everything for him! I raised him, tried to make sure he stayed out of trouble. And he was always in trouble! I had to go in and spend my time talking to the teachers when he was flunking everything. I was the one who saved him, you see? Whenever he was in trouble, I saved him. Then I had to find something to do with his sorry ass when he dropped out of school-didn’t even finish elementary school!
“Old Papa DeMont, he used to try to teach him things just by talking to him. If it weren’t for Papa DeMont, he wouldn’t have known a thing. That sweet old man used to let him follow him around like a pup. Taught him all kinds of things. I’m not saying Arthur was stupid, he wasn’t. He was about as dumb as a fox, and twice as sly. I’m out there working my ass off, and Arthur’s running around in Papa DeMont’s pocket, soaking up everything that old man will show him or teach him.
“And you know how he repaid that kindness? By fucking the man’s daughter! That’s how! Now, I’ll admit, he was just a kid, and he can’t bear the blame entirely, because she was always tempting him. That was her way, to tempt and tease a man.”
“Sounds like you wished you’d got there first,” I heard Rachel say.
There was an ominous silence, then Travis shouted, “Don’t hurt her!”
Gerald laughed. “Listen to him. ”Don’t hurt her!“” he mimicked. “I want to, but I got plans for that dirty mouth of yours, you wop slut, so I’ll teach you some manners later.”
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?“”