“Yessir.”
“And when she was forty-three years old and broke, she remembered about how rich he was, and she came to him for money.”
“Yessir.”
The hokum noise of the wrestling match on the television made the silence in the rest of the vast atrium seem somehow more intense. Jefferson went and got two more drinks and brought them back and gave me one. Jumper Jack never stirred. His gaze remained fixed on the television screen.
“Did he pay her?” I said.
“Don’t even know who she is,” Jefferson said. “Or he says he don’t. Hard to say what Mr. Jack know and don’t know anymore.”
“You pay her?” I said.
“Did for a while. Then no more.”
“Why’d you stop?”
Jefferson shook his head softly. “Ain’t no money,” he said.
“Jack too?” I said.
“Mr. Jack never had as much as everybody think,” Jefferson said. “And he spend what he got.”
Jefferson smiled thoughtfully, thinking back over the spending.
“Bought cars and horses, and whiskey and food and presents for Miss Abby and Miss Livvie, and he spent a lot on women. Mr. Jack always say he didn’t waste none. He say he didn’t get cheated. Horse players die broke, he say.”
“So he’s broke?”
“Yessir. This house free and clear, ‘bout all.”
“What’s he use for cash?” I said.
“Don’t need much. Feed the dogs, buy whiskey. ‘Bout all.”
“You get a salary?”
“I still do a little carpentry work, part-time, when Mr. Jack sleeping. My grandson come in, watch him for me. Put in some cabinets for people, do some finish work, that sort of thing. Can’t do too much heavy stuff anymore, but I still got the touch for finish.”
“You support him,” I said.
Jefferson took in some of his drink. I sipped mine. Bourbon wasn’t my favorite, but one made do.
“Yessir,” Jefferson said.
“And you told Cheryl Anne that there wasn’t money to give her.”
Jefferson nodded. He was looking out again past the dark fields beyond the atrium. He raised his glass and drank slowly. From the look of the drink it was mostly bourbon, but he drank as if it were milk. The rain washed down along the glass walls of the room.
“And she was unable to hide her disappointment,” I said.
“Say she don’t believe me,” Jefferson said. “Call me a thieving nigger. And she scream at Mr. Jack. He ain’t right anymore. You can see that. Anybody see that. Say he her father and he owe her the money. Say he got one week to get her some money. It upset him, her screaming at him like that.”
I sipped a little more bourbon. Jefferson finished his and looked at mine. I shook my head. Jefferson went for another and made one too for Jumper Jack. I scratched the hound’s ear that lay curled next to me on the couch. I looked at the rain that slid along the curving glass. I looked at Jefferson. He returned the look and we were silent. We both knew. It seemed as if I had known for a long time.
Seeing me scratch the hound’s ear, another dog got up and came over and put his head on the edge of the couch. The rest of the dogs noticed this change of position and stood and moved silently around the room, as if ordered by an unseen trainer, and settled back down in realigned order.
“And she left,” I said.
Jefferson nodded.
“And went back to Boston.”
Nod.
“And you took a framing hammer, with a long handle for leverage, because you’re not as strong as you used to be, and you went up there too.”
“On the bus,” Jefferson said, looking straight at me with no expression I could see. “Three days on the bus.”
“And found her address and waited until it was dark and when she walked by you beat her to death.”
“Yessir.”
Across the room Jumper Jack sat staring at his television, with three dogs in various positions of sleep on the floor around him. He drank half a glass of whiskey as I watched him and dribbled some down his chin and wiped it away with the back of his hand. It was the most active I’d seen him. He never glanced at us. It was as if he were alone in the room with his dogs and his whiskey, except that as I watched, tears rolled slowly down his face.
I put my drink down and rubbed my temples with both hands. The dog whose ear I’d been scratching looked up at me. I scratched his ear again, and he put his head back down on the couch.
“Jefferson,” I said, “I’ll get back to you.”
chapter forty-two
I STOOD AT my stove pouring a thin stream of cornmeal into simmering milk. As it went in, I stirred with a whisk.
“Cornmeal mush?” Susan said.
“We gourmets prefer to call it polenta,” I said.
I put the whisk down and picked up a wooden spoon and stirred the cornmeal more slowly as it thickened.
“What are those crumby things on the platter?” Susan said.
She was sitting at my counter going through a glass of Gewurztraminer at the speed of erosion. She was wearing a pair of fitted tan slacks, a lemon sweater, and a matching tan coat that was part of the outfit and reached to her knees. She looked like Hollywood’s vision of the successful female executive.
“Those are chicken breasts pounded flat and coated with cornbread crumbs,” I said. “And flavored with rosemary.”
“Will you fry them in lard?” Susan said.
“I will coat a fry pan with corn oil and then pour it out, leaving a thin film in the pan, then I will gently saute the breast cutlets until golden brown,” I said.
“Exactly,” Susan said.
“And for dessert,” I said, “there’s sour cherry pie.”
She poured a teaspoon more wine into her glass. Pearl reared up beside her and put her front paws on the counter and made a try for the chicken cutlets. She missed and I picked up a scrap from the cutting board and gave it to her.
“You are rewarding inappropriate behavior,” Susan said.
“Yes.”
Pearl dashed into the bedroom to eat the chicken scrap. I kept stirring the polenta waiting for it to be right.
“You haven’t said a word about things in Alton,” Susan said.
“I know. I need to think about it,” I said.
“Before you talk to me?” Susan said.
“Yes.”
Susan raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes.
“You know,” I said, “since I saw you in that guidance office in Smithfield in 1974, I have never looked at you without feeling a small thrill of electricity in my solar plexus.”
The polenta was done. I took it off the stove and let it rest on a trivet on the counter.
“Even first thing in the morning when I don’t have my face on and I have my hair up?” Susan said.
“Even then,” I said. “Although in those circumstances I’m probably reacting to potential.”
Susan leaned forward over the counter and kissed me. I kissed her back and felt the residual darkness of that atrium room begin to recede. She pressed her mouth against mine harder as if she could feel my need and put her hands gently on each side of my face and opened her mouth. I put my hands under her arms and lifted her out of the chair and over the counter. It knocked her wineglass over and it broke on the floor. Neither of us paid it any attention. The feel of her against me was rejuvenating, like air long needed, like thirst quenched. We stood for a long time, fiercely together. We never made it to the bedroom. We did well to make the couch.
Afterwards we lay quietly with each other, and Pearl, who had managed to find room on the couch where I would have said there was none.
“In front of the baby,” Susan said.
Her voice had that quality it always had after lovemaking. As if she were on her way back from somewhere far that she’d been.