I didn’t want tears; I didn’t want a scene. “That’s it. I’ll tell him tomorrow.” She probably kept looking at me with those sad eyes as I left her room, but I didn’t hear any more words from her.
In the morning Monty didn’t come to breakfast. I knocked on his bedroom door and he yelled out that he felt sick. I left for work with my first headache in a long time.
Linehan didn’t come in until around noon. “Hell. It’s a Houston-humid version of hell-standing in a back alley in Montrose for six hours swatting at mosquitoes because some runaway gets herself bludgeoned over there off Avondale.”
“Yeah?”
“Same old, same old. Back of the head. Only this time he left it behind. Looks brand new-except for the brains, bone, and blood. Twenty-four-inch pipe wrench.”
I flashed back to the day voice teacher Nichols had bought his wrench. Residential work, he’d said. One-inch pipe. But the first one he’d picked up had a scratch in the handle’s finish. He’d picked out another one, saying he liked his tools perfect. What kind of man says something like that about household tools?
When I got home I went to my tool room in a sectionedoff part of the garage. All my tools were arranged on pegboard by type and size. Cleaned, oiled, ready to go. I picked up the hammer I’d tried to teach Monty how to use, the circular saw he couldn’t control. He’d never been able to learn to rewire sockets or even a table lamp, what was positive and what was negative. How a ground worked. He hated it all.
At the breakfast table the next morning, Monty chewed slowly, his large Adam’s apple bobbing an unreasonable amount. I couldn’t put it off any longer. “Son, you’re not going to voice lessons anymore.”
“What??” His Adam’s apple pumped furiously.
“That’s sir to you.”
“What did you say, sir?”
“I can’t afford to pay for your lessons. Call that guy and tell him.”
“But… but… I love my voice lessons. Dave-Mr. Nichols-says I have the voice of an angel. It’s the only time…” his voice trailed off.
“The only time what?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I just… just…” The air whistled through his front teeth.
“Your mother isn’t getting any better. I don’t see you working to help support the family. By the time I was your age, I had me one job in town, and helped Dad with the farm before the sun was up, and I had to go to school.”
He ran from the table, slamming the front door, then across the yard. I wondered where he’d go. Growing up, I’d had a place in the three-part junction of a huge oak tree’s branches out by the slaughtering tables. It had been good to get away from everyone and look from afar on the dogs and cattle. I hadn’t shown it to Lilly, who was too little to climb it by herself.
As I spread the white slices of bread with French’s mustard to make my lunch for work, I dreaded the moment when Rosalie’s door might open and I’d see the accusation in her sunken eyes. The slab of bologna smelled faintly in the early-morning heat. But her door didn’t open, and I hoped she hadn’t heard the jarring anger in Monty’s slammed front door.
I waited all morning for Voice Teacher to show up, straining my ears for his girlie whisper. For the first time in my life, I hoped I was wrong.
Just before six, when we closed, he came in. I didn’t wait on him; I disappeared to the back, so I wouldn’t queer the deal. As soon as I saw his huge shoulders disappear into a sporty white Corvair, I asked the guy up front what he’d bought. Pipe wrench, twenty-four-inch. A strong man like him wouldn’t need the leverage of the longest pipe wrench we carried. No, not a strong man like him.
That night Rosalie was up. To my surprise she had halfway cooked me dinner. She even sat at the kitchen table with me.
“Otto, Montgomery told me what you said.”
I kept chewing on the fish sticks. There was no hurry. “I’m listening.”
“He needs to sing. It’s his only happiness.”
“We can’t afford it any longer.”
“Why not to the end of summer? It’s coming up soon. He’ll start college. He’ll meet young people his own age.”
“There’s plenty of young folks around Montrose. Look at all them hippies. Our neighborhood used to be respectable. Look at what it’s become now. Love beads, hip-huggers. Long hair on girls and boys. You can’t even tell for sure which is which most of the time. Rock concert posters glued to every storefront at night.”
She sighed. “His only friend is Mr. Nichols. They have a lot in common.”
“Like what?” I didn’t like the suspicion suddenly forming in my mind.
“They both love music. They’ve learned some duets. Montgomery has something to be proud of-for the first time in years. He says their souls join when they sing together. He could be an opera singer. He’s that good…”
“I’ll think about it. That’s all I can say for now, Rose.”
She smiled her exhausted half-smile. “I promised him I’d ask you. You sleep so hard, Otto. He can’t wake you to talk at night.”
After dinner, I sat in the glider on the front porch as the evening darkened and I waited for Monty to get home. I searched my memory for what Linehan had said about the killings. All were teenage girls. All untraceable. No one cared if they disappeared. Linehan said no one at HPD was trying to solve the murders because no one cared about little whore-runaway hippie chicks. Was that why my sister Lilly never even sent a three-penny postcard? Had her body decomposed somewhere we’d never heard of, with no police officer caring enough to bring her killer to justice?
I must’ve fallen asleep sitting up because the noise of the screen door opening at Monty’s touch woke me up from a bad dream of 1943 in the Pacific.
“What you doing coming home late, son?” I hadn’t turned on the porch light earlier, so I could only see the outline of his head and the thin body that Rose called “elegant” against the screen.
He lifted his shoulders before replying, “I didn’t know you were waiting up for me.”
“Where you been?”
“Just walking.”
“Didn’t I tell you not to come home late again?”
“I needed to think.”
I was beat, too beat to put up with someone living in my house and not paying me any mind. Before I even knew what I was doing, I backhanded him. Hard. He didn’t stand up any straighter; he didn’t move at all. He stood a hunched black silhouette against the humid glow from the streetlight half a block down. “Go to sleep,” I told him, and he walked silently into the house.
I too finally walked into my bedroom, not even pulling down the bedspread. If I closed my eyes, the dream might return. The dream that had begun after that first time, and the pounding I’d given the nameless other Marine in late 1943. My unit was going island to island, taking them from the Japs one bloody inch at a time. We were on a nameless atoll, at night, after a day of fighting. The area secure and half of us cleared for shut-eye by the sergeant. Me, in a foxhole alone, sleeping. The dream was of the little honey I’d had back home. I felt her light touch on my crotch, and felt blood rushing to respond to her caress. Half-asleep, I drifted into the warmblooded excitement of it. Suddenly, I remembered where I was and woke up. I saw his face close to mine. I pushed him away and went crazy. I pounded his face until it was a bloody pulp and hightailed it out of there, almost getting shot for a Jap by Morrison over in another foxhole. Sometimes, like tonight, in a dream he comes for me again, with his soft touch and softer lips, and I awake sweaty but chilled, with an erection so hard I think I’ll die, just like the one he coaxed out of me in my sleep. Sometimes, too, I thought that maybe I had those dreams because… well, Rosalie had been sick for so long. I couldn’t ask her for what she couldn’t give.