There he is, Binder told her. Vern’s already promoting himself.
Vern in a crowd along the opposite wall was talking to a man in a cowboy hat. There was a young girl with long blond hair by the man’s side. Vern seemed mainly to be talking to her. The man in the cowboy hat wasn’t watching. The red slab of his face looked bored and distracted.
He’s telling them how much he took in last year, Binder said. How close he is to Disney World, how full his motel is, how many miles his black Eldorado gets to the gallon. All those alligator mouths.
What?
Never mind. Something Vern told me to impress me.
Oh, just forget him, David. For a moment I thought you were actually having a good time.
When Ruthie returned to the table, Vern didn’t. Ruthie had brought them all a tall paper cup of Coca-Cola and crushed ice. She looked about in mock caution, took a halfpint from her purse, then poured peach brandy into the Coke.
Vern just loves people, she said. He’s a great mixer, I don’t reckon he’s ever seen a stranger in his life.
Yet her voice seemed to carry a diminished enthusiasm, as if she were growing more morose. Binder didn’t see how you could get crying drunk on peach brandy and Coke, but she might. He guessed you might get sick, and that would be about as bad.
He’s not a stick-in-the-mud like David is, she said, then smiled at him, as if to diminish the sting the words carried.
I like him just the way he is, Corrie said, her hand on David’s arm.
They moved to a table near the door where it was quieter. After a while Vern glided up, seated himself between Ruthie and Corrie. He gestured toward the paper cups. Where’s mine?
We figured your new friends would buy you one, Ruthie said. You seemed to have forgotten us.
There’s a lot of nice folks here, he said, smiling broadly, winking lewdly at Binder, who didn’t wink back.
David, who is that girl? Corrie asked.
Binder looked. A girl seemed to be watching him. She was standing in the open doorway, leaning on the jamb, framed against the summer night. A slim, tall blonde with flaxen hair, pale blue eyes. She was studying him intensely.
I don’t know, he finally said.
Then why is she looking at you that way?
I don’t know, Binder said again. Maybe she thinks she knows me.
Or maybe she does know you.
Oh for Christ’s sake, Corrie. You know everybody in the county I do.
She was silent. What Binder had said was true, and Corrie knew it, yet she continued to watch the girl with a kind of annoyed perplexity.
Maybe she saw your picture on the jacket of your novel, Ruthie said.
I doubt it, Binder said lightly. I think it only sold two copies in Tennessee, and they were both sold in Blount County.
Mention of Binder’s book, especially by Ruthie, did not set well with Vern. That looks like a girl I was talking to a minute ago, he said. She may be looking at me.
She may well be, Binder said, grateful to Vern for what must have been the first time in his life. However inadvertent it had been, Vern had taken the pressure off him, but the question was suddenly moot, for the girl turned and walked out into the night.
How about stepping out for a nip? Vern asked Binder.
Not right now, Binder said.
Vern was restless. The three of them seemed to confine him. He was soon up and drifting again, greeting people, shaking hands, like a host to a monstrous party. A rawboned young man in a denim suit asked Corrie to dance. When she smilingly declined he glanced halfquestioningly across the table and Ruthie arose a little unsteadily and took his arm and followed him to the dance floor.
What time is it? Binder asked.
Nearly ten, Corrie said, glancing at her wrist. Binder was instantly sorry he had asked. It had been a long summer. Corrie had patiently been ignored by him while he was writing, and Ruthie’s promised visit and David’s promise to take her to the Labor Day dance had helped her pass time through the sweltering summer. This was supposed to be more than a dance — it was a much-anticipated event. Now they both seemed to be turning sour for no reason.
Hey, you want to dance?
Not right this minute. We better sit here and keep an eye on Ruthie. She’s getting high, I think.
When Ruthie returned, she and Corrie went off to find a ladies’ room. Binder’s head hurt worse. He watched Corrie’s small dark form become swallowed in the crowd. He took four aspirin from a tin and swallowed them with Coke. When he glanced toward the door the flaxenhaired girl was there again, watching him with calm level eyes. He looked away. There was an eerie familiarity about her, as if she were a creation from his fantasies, from his dreams — or worse, he suddenly thought, fearing madness, from the book he was writing. The face was placid and smooth, seemed touched with the remnants of a lost, corrupt sweetness, a doomed innocence, and he knew irrevocably that he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything. The book, Corrie, life itself.
She was gone before Corrie got back.
Ruthie wants you to go outside and look for Vern, Corrie told him. We didn’t see him anywhere.
Likely he just went outside for a drink, Binder said. I didn’t come here to babysit, he said to himself. Or did I?
He got up, moved through sweating shuffling couples into the night. The people were beginning to oppress him, to smother him, and outside the door he paused and breathed deeply, smelling the sere scent of Indian summer, becoming conscious of the wall of nightsounds beyond manmade noises, the crying whippoorwills and owls somewhere from a nightlocked hollow.
Vern wasn’t in the car. There was a bottle in the front seat. Binder unscrewed the cap and drank, the brandy rushing down his throat like hot sweet fire. Binder looked about. Couples strolled armlinked in the dark, the night seemed alive with them. Beyond the glassed-in cars he could hear their murmuring voices, their faces floating together weightlessly like hungry creatures underwater or in a dream. He could hear a girl’s protesting laughter from beyond the wall of pinewoods. As he turned back toward the building he heard a man’s voice with an undercurrent of threat in it, felt simultaneously a hand on his arm. He stopped.
Hey, the blond girl said. She released his arm, reached a hand up to touch his beard.
Goddammit, Cissie, get over here, a man’s voice said, and turning Binder saw between two parked cars a curious tableau: Vern leant backward across the hood of an orange Firebird, lying there unmoving and lax as if he had fallen asleep in this curious position. There were two men across from him, one draped against a truck door, arms crossed, the other facing Vern, standing almost between his feet. He was the redfaced man in the cowboy hat. He had an open knife in his hand. The girl drifted toward them.
Binder walked back to the car and unlocked the trunk. All he could find was a jack handle. He took it up and went back toward the Firebird, swinging the length of steel in his hands.
What’s going on? Binder asked.
The man in the cowboy hat looked at him levelly. Nothing that concerns you very much, he said.
That’s my brother-in-law.
What kin are you to that tire spud you got there?
Binder looked at it. There was an icy weight of panic at the pit of his stomach, and for a moment he’d forgotten the tire iron. He could feel the heavy dew cold through his sneakers.
Just close friends, he said.
Your friend here is all mouth and beltbuckle, the man said. I was just standin here wonderin what his insides was like.