“Jesus Christ,” Arlene said. “Jesus, Jesus Christ.”
“Take it, goddamn it. It’s for you,” Bobby said with a crazy look. “It’s what you wanted. Boom,” Bobby said. “Boom-boom-boom.”
“I’ll take it,” I said and pulled the gun under my leg. I wanted to get it out of sight.
“What is it?” Cherry said. “Lemme see.” She pushed up to see.
“It’s nothing, honey,” I said. “Just something of Bobby’s.”
“Is it a gun?” Cherry said.
“No, sweetheart,” I said, “it’s not.” I pushed the gun down on the floor under my foot. I did not know if it was loaded, and I hoped it wasn’t. I wanted Bobby out of the car then. I have had my troubles, but I am not a person who likes violence or guns. I pulled over to the curb in front of the jail, behind the brown station wagon. “You better make a move now,” I said to Bobby. I looked at Arlene, but she was staring straight ahead. I know she wanted Bobby gone, too.
“I didn’t plan this. This just happened,” Bobby said. “Okay? You understand that? Nothing’s planned”
“Get out,” Arlene said and did not turn to look at him.
“Give Bobby back his jacket,” I said to Cherry.
“Forget it, it’s yours,” Bobby said. And he grabbed his plastic string bag.
“She doesn’t want it,” Arlene said.
“Yes I do,” Cherry said. “I want it.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s nice, sweetheart.”
Bobby sat in the seat and did not move then. None of us moved in the car. I could see out the window into the little jailyard. Two Indians were sitting in plastic chairs outside the double doors. A man in a gray uniform stepped out the door and said something to them, and one got up and went inside. There was a large, red-faced woman standing on the grass, staring at our car.
I got out and walked around the car to Bobby’s door and opened it. It was cool out, and I could smell the sour pulp-mill smell being held in the fog, and I could hear a car laying rubber on another street.
“Bye-bye, Bobby,” Cherry said in the car. She reached over and kissed him.
“Bye-bye,” Bobby said. “Bye-bye.”
The man in the gray uniform had come down off the steps and stopped halfway to the car, watching us. He was waiting for Bobby, I was sure of that.
Bobby got out and stood up on the curb. He looked around and shivered. He looked cold and I felt bad for him. But I would be glad when he was gone and I could live a normal life again.
“What do we do now?” Bobby said. He saw the man in the gray uniform, but would not look at him. Cherry was saying something to Arlene in the car, but Arlene didn’t say anything. “Maybe I oughta run for it,” Bobby said, and I could see his pale eyes were jumping as if he was eager for something now, eager for things to happen to him. Suddenly he grabbed both my arms and pushed me back against the door and pushed his face right up to my face. “Fight me,” he whispered and smiled a wild smile. “Knock the shit out of me. See what they do.” I pushed against him, and for a moment he held me there, and I held him, and it was as if we were dancing without moving. And I smelled his breath and felt his cold, thin arms and his body struggling against me, and I knew what he wanted was for me not to let him go, and for all this to be a dream he could forget about.
“Whafre you doing?” Arlene said, and she turned around and glared at us. She was mad, and she wanted Bobby to be in jail now. “Are you kissing each other?” she said. “Is that what you’re doing? Kissing good-bye?”
“We’re kissing each other, that’s right,” Bobby said. “That’s what we’re doing. I always wanted to kiss Russell. We’re queers.” He looked at her then, and I know he wanted to say something more to her, to tell her that he hated her or that he loved her or wanted to kill her or that he was sorry. But he couldn’t come to the words for that. And I felt him go rigid and shiver, and I didn’t know what he would do. Though I knew that in the end he would give in to things and go along without a struggle. He was not a man to struggle against odds. That was his character, and it is the character of many people.
“Isn’t this the height of something, Russell?” Bobby said, and I knew he was going to be calm now. He let go my arms and shook his head. “You and me out here like trash, fighting over a woman.”
And there was nothing I could say then that would save him or make life better for him at that moment or change the way he saw things. And I went and got back in the car while Bobby turned himself in to the uniformed man who was waiting.
I drove Cherry to school then, and when I came back outside Arlene had risen to a better mood and suggested that we take a drive. She didn’t start work until noon, and I had the whole day to wait until Cherry came home. “We should open up some emotional distance,” she said. And that seemed right to me.
We drove up onto the interstate and went toward Spokane, where I had lived once and Arlene had, too, though we didn’t know each other then — the old days, before marriage and children and divorce, before we met the lives we would eventually lead, and that we would be happy with or not.
We drove along the Clark Fork for a while, above the fog that stayed with die river, until the river turned north and there seemed less reason to be driving anywhere. For a time I thought we should just drive to Spokane and put up in a motel. But that, even I knew, was not a good idea. And when we had driven on far enough for each of us to think about things besides Bobby, Arlene said, “Let’s throw that gun away, Russ.” I had forgotten all about it, and I moved it on the floor with my foot to where I could see it — the gun Bobby had used, I guessed, to commit crimes and steal people’s money for some crazy reason. “Let’s throw it in the river,” Arlene said. And I turned the car around.
We drove back to where the river turned down even with the highway again, and went off on a dirt-and-gravel road for a mile. I stopped under some pine trees and picked up the gun and looked at it to see if it was loaded and found it wasn’t. Then Arlene took it by the barrel and flung it out the window without even leaving the car, spun it not very far from the bank, but into deep water where it hit with no splash and was gone in an instant. “Maybe that’ll change his luck,” I said. And I felt better about Bobby for having the gun out of the car, as if he was safer now, in less danger of ruining his life and other people’s, too.
When we had sat there for a minute or two, Arlene said, “Did he ever cry? When you two were sitting in the kitchen? I wondered about that.”
“No,” I said. “He was scared. But I don’t blame him for that.”
“What did he say?” And she looked as if the subject interested her now, whereas before it hadn’t.
“He didn’t say too much. He said he loved you, which I knew anyway.”
Arlene looked out the side window at the river. There were still traces of fog that had not burned off in the sun. Maybe it was nine o’clock in the morning. You could hear the interstate back behind us, trucks going east at high speed.
“I’m not real unhappy that Bobby’s out of the picture now. I have to say that,” Arlene said. “I should be more — I guess — sympathetic. It’s hard to love pain if you’re me, though.”
“It’s not really my business,” I said. And I truly did not think it was or ever would be. It was not where my life was leading me, I hoped.