“I’ll bet she knew it was you,” I said. “I bet it made her feel better.”
“You think?” Bobby said.
“It’s possible. It seems possible.”
“What would you do, though?” Bobby said. He bit his lower lip and thought about the subject. “When would you let it stop ringing? Would you let it go twenty-five or fifty? I wanted her to have time to decide. But I didn’t want to drive her crazy. Okay?”
“Twenty-five seems right,” I said.
Bobby nodded. “That’s interesting. I guess we all do things different. I always did fifty.”
“That’s fine.”
“Fifty’s way too many, I think.”
“It’s what you think now? I said. “But then was different.”
“There’s a familiar story,” Bobby said.
“It’s everybody’s story,” I said. “The then-and-now story.”
“We’re just short of paradise, aren’t we, Russell?”
“Yes we are,” I said.
Bobby smiled at me then in a sweet way, a way to let anyone know he wasn’t a bad man, no matter what he’d robbed.
“What would you do if you were me,” Bobby said, “if you were on your way to Deer Lodge for a year?”
I said, “I’d think about when I was going to get out, and what kind of day that was going to be, and that it wasn’t very far in the future.”
“I’m just afraid it’ll be too noisy to sleep in there,” he said and looked concerned about that.
“It’ll be all right,” I said. “A year can go by quick.”
“Not if you never sleep,” he said. “That worries me.”
“You’ll sleep,” I said. “You’ll sleep fine.”
And Bobby looked at me then, across the kitchen table, like a man who knows half of something and who is supposed to know everything, who sees exactly what trouble he’s in and is scared to death by it.
“I feel like a dead man, you know?” And tears suddenly came into his pale eyes. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I know you’re mad at me. I’m sorry.” He put his head in his hands then and cried. And I thought: What else could he do? He couldn’t avoid this now. It was all right.
“It’s okay, bud,” I said.
“I’m happy for you and Arlene, Russ,” Bobby said, his face still in tears. “You have my word on that. I just wish she and I had stayed together, and I wasn’t such an asshole. You know what I mean?”
“I know exactly,” I said. I did not move to touch him, though maybe I should have. But Bobby was not my brother, and for a moment I wished I wasn’t tied to all this. I was sorry I had to see any of it, sorry that each of us would have to remember it.
On the drive to town Bobby was in better spirits. He and Cherry sat in the back, and Arlene in the front. I drove. Cherry held Bobby’s hand and giggled, and Bobby let her put on his black silk Cam Ranh Bay jacket he had won playing cards, and Cherry said that she had been a soldier in some war.
The morning had started out sunny, but now it had begun to be foggy, though there was sun high up, and you could see the Bitterroots to the south. The river was cool and in a mist, and from the bridge you could not see the pulp yard or the motels a half mile away.
“Let’s just drive, Russ,” Bobby said from the backseat. “Head to Idaho. We’ll all become Mormons and act right.”
“Thafd be good, wouldn’t it?” Arlene turned and smiled at him. She wasn’t mad now. It was her nicest trait, not to stay mad at anybody for long.
“Good day,” Cherry said.
“Who’s that talking,” Bobby asked.
“I’m Paul Harvey,” Cherry said.
“He always says that, doesn’t he?” Arlene said.
“Good day,” Cherry said again.
“That’s all Cherry’s going to say all day now, Daddy,” Arlene said to me.
“You’ve got a honeybunch back here,” Bobby said and tickled Cherry’s ribs. “She’s her daddy’s girl all the way.”
“Good day,” Cherry said again and giggled.
“Children pick up your life, don’t they, Russ?” Bobby said. “I can tell that.”
“Yes, they do,” I said. “They can.”
“I’m not so sure about that one back there, though,” Arlene said. She was dressed in a red cowboy shirt and jeans, and she looked tired to me. But I knew she didn’t want Bobby to go to jail by himself.
“I am. I’m sure of it,” Bobby said, and then didn’t say anything else.
We were on a wide avenue where it was foggy, and there were shopping centers and drive-ins and car lots. A few cars had their headlights on, and Arlene stared out the window at the fog. “You know what I used to want to be?” she said.
“What?” I said when no one else said anything.
Arlene stared a moment out the window and touched the corner of her mouth with her fingernail and smoothed something away. “A Tri-Delt,” she said and smiled. “I didn’t really know what they were, but I wanted to be one. I was already married to him, then, of course. And they wouldn’t take married girls in.”
“That’s a joke,” Bobby said, and Cherry laughed.
“No. It’s not a joke,” Arlene said. “It’s just something you don’t understand and that I missed out on in life.” She took my hand on the seat and kept looking out the window. And it was as if Bobby wasn’t there then, as if he had already gone to jail.
“What I miss is seafood,” Bobby said in an ironic way. “Maybe they’ll have it in prison. You think they will?”
“I hope so, if you miss it,” Arlene said.
“I bet they will,” I said. “I bet they have fish of some kind in there.”
“Fish and seafood aren’t the same,” Bobby said.
We turned onto the street where the jail was. It was an older part of town and there were some old white two-story residences that had been turned into lawyers’ offices and bail bondsmen’s rooms. Some bars were farther on, and the bus station. At the end of the street was the courthouse. I slowed so we wouldn’t get there too fast.
“You’re going to jail right now,” Cherry said to Bobby.
“Isn’t that something?” Bobby said. I watched him up in the rearview; he looked down at Cherry and shook his head as if it amazed him.
“I’m going to school soon as that’s over,” Cherry said.
“Why don’t I just go to school with you?” Bobby said. “I think I’d rather do that.”
“No sir,” Cherry said.
“Oh Cherry, please don’t make me go to jail. I’m innocent,” Bobby said. “I don’t want to go.”
“Too bad,” Cherry said and crossed her arms.
“Be nice,” Arlene said. Though I know Cherry thought she was being nice. She liked Bobby.
“She’s teasing, Mama. Aren’t we, Cherry baby? We understand each other.”
“I’m not her mama,” Arlene said.
“That’s right, I forgot,” Bobby said. And he widened his eyes at her. “What’s your hurry, Russ?” Bobby said, and I saw I had almost come to a stop in the street. The jail was a half block ahead of us. It was a tall modern building built on the back of the old stone courthouse. Two people were standing in the little front yard looking up at a window. A station wagon was parked on the street in front. The fog had begun to burn away now.
“I didn’t want to rush you,” I said.
“Cherry’s already dying for me to go in there, aren’t you, baby?”
“No, she’s not. She doesn’t know anything about that,” Arlene said.
“You go to hell,” Bobby said. And he grabbed Arlene’s shoulder with his hand and squeezed it back hard against the seat. “This is not your business, it’s not your business at all. Look, Russ,” Bobby said, and he reached in the black plastic bag he was taking with him and pulled a pistol out of it and threw it over onto the front seat between Arlene and me. “I thought I might kill Arlene, but I changed my mind.” He grinned at me, and I could tell he was crazy and afraid and at the end of all he could do to help himself anymore.