He went into the bathroom and cleaned it all up.
Then he went back to the living room and sat in the recliner again and drank whiskey and stared at the TV. He should be tearing this fucking place apart is what he should be doing. But somehow he didn’t have the energy.
She didn’t get home until nearly three A.M.
Boze still sat in the recliner. He’d finished the bourbon and was now drinking the remnants of the scotch.
When she saw him from the doorway, she said, quietly, “I’m sorry you had to find out that way. I mean, I probably should be mad at you for breaking in that way but—”
She shook her head. She looked very sad. “Roger’s a very nice guy. He comes into the restaurant all the time on his way back from Iowa City. That’s how we met.”
Boze looked up and smirked. “That’s his name? A black guy named Roger?”
“Oh, God, Boze. He’s a very nice man. He’s assistant professor at Iowa.”
“And he lives in a place like that, all those beer cans and stuff?”
She came into the trailer, closing the door behind her.
“He had a birthday party for his nephew earlier. That’s why the mess. He’ll clean it up tomorrow. He really will.”
She came over to him and stood above him. “I want you to give me the gun, Boze. You terrified us tonight. I just couldn’t believe it when I saw you standing there.”
He looked straight up at her, all his hatred and hurt in his eyes, and said, “My own mother, sleeping with a black guy.”
She slapped him, then, harder than she’d ever slapped him in her life.
Boze should have been the one who cried, the slap and all being hard.
But it was Mom who cried. Mom who went into the bedroom and quietly closed the door and cried and cried and cried.
Boze just sat in the living room all by himself and didn’t cry at all.
A New Man
The way things worked out, it was kind of funny.
It was a warm spring day as I wheeled into town in my Ford roadster. Every once in a while I’d glance in the rear view mirror and startle myself. That doc on the West Coast had done a real good job. He’d charged too much but I didn’t have much choice. I could’ve killed him, I suppose, but believe it or not killing doesn’t come easy to me. The papers and the radio would have you believe that I kill people all the time. But that’s just hooey to sell newspapers and hair tonic.
The place was the sort of dusty little town I’d expected to find along the Mississippi River on the Iowa side of the river. Three blocks of shopping, a town square with a bandstand, three or four churches, and a lot of small boats along the river, bobbing on the gentle waves. A lot of colored people along the dam, fishing. A bunch of white boys playing baseball in the parking lot of a small factory.
And some very pretty ladies sitting at a small outdoor café drinking lemonade and smoking cigarettes and listening to Al Jolson on the radio.
Now that’s the part of my reputation I don’t mind. The newspapers always gussied me up as a ladies’ man and I guess that’s true. They say I’m good looking and while I’m not likely to argue with that, looks don’t have nothing to do with my success with women. The gals like me for a simple reason: they know I really like and respect women and know how to treat them right.
I decided to have myself a lemonade.
I carried my glass out to the porch that overlooked the river. The four gals were all in summer linen dresses the pastel colors of flowers. They all wore their hair bobbed and they all smoked like Bette Davis, you know, with her wrist angled backwards when she was just resting her cigarette. I had to smile. I was the same way. I go into a pitcher show and darned if I don’t come out imitating the mannerisms of the hero. Sometimes I didn’t even know I was doing it.
The gals looked me over and whispered and giggled among themselves like schoolgirls. They were small-town sweet and I liked them. The way they smiled at me, I guess I must’ve passed muster.
I sat there and enjoyed the river. Though we were in the shiny new 1930s, you could still easily imagine the old paddle wheelers making their way up here from New Orleans. Gambling boats filled with beautiful ladies and fast-shuffling men. Nights of music and reckless love. I guess every generation looks back on the previous times as better somehow.
It wasn’t long before the law showed up. My instinct was to go for my gun. There were two things wrong with that. These days, I didn’t carry a gun. And there wasn’t any reason to get excited anyway. My new face didn’t in any way resemble my old face.
He was young and he had just about the right amount of swagger. Too much and he would’ve been a punk and too little and he would’ve been a coward. He wore a khaki uniform with a bright silver badge that glared in the sun. His gun was a Colt. 45, the kind that Bob Steele and Hopalong Cassidy pack in the picture shows. He was probably 25 and except for a broken nose he looked like a magazine cover. The altar boy ten years later.
He sat down. Didn’t ask. Just sat down. He wore a white Stetson and doffed it to the gals. He must’ve passed muster, too. They sent him several flirtatious smiles, little invisible valentines.
“Those’re the kind of gals who could get a married man in trouble,” he said.
He was drinking lemonade, too.
“I imagine that’s true.”
He pushed his hand across the table to me. He had a strong but easy hand. He wasn’t trying to impress anybody. “Name’s Swenson. Con Swenson. I’m the acting sheriff. Hasty, Bob Hasty the sheriff, he’s laid up with some kinda heart condition so I been sort of running things for the past two months. And you’d be?”
“Paul Caine.”
“And Paul Caine would be from?”
“Milwaukee. I sell kitchen appliances there.”
He nodded. “I’ve got a wife who’s got every one of ’em. You should see our place.” Then — still and always a lawman — “You’re just passing through?”
“Staying a few days then going on to Cedar Rapids. Got a cousin there. But he won’t be back for a couple of days so I thought I’d stay here and fish. Hear it’s good here.”
“Real good. Best fishing in the state except up near Devil’s Backbone and a few places like that.” Then: “Know anybody here?”
“Not a soul.”
He watched my face, my hands, the way I moved. I knew I’d passed muster with the gals. With him I wasn’t sure.
“You find a hotel yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Hell, then, let me take you over to the Paladium. My cousin Ned is the desk clerk there. I’ll get you a deal on a room. And it’ll be a nice one, too.”
I smiled. “You’re a little bit of Chamber of Commerce, too?”
“Not Chamber. Not yet. But Jaycee and Rotary. Sheriff thinks we need to be part of our community and I agree with him. The days of a peace officer just totin’ a gun around and tryin’ to scare people are over. At least around these parts. C’mon, I’ll walk over with you.”
He was a strange one for a copper and he made me uneasy. I don’t think he’d figured out who I was or what I was doing here. But something else was going on and I wondered what it was.
I grabbed my one suitcase from the car and we walked a block east. There sure were a lot of pretty girls here. Wagons went by, horses hot in the Iowa sun, leaving sweet-scented fly-specked remnants of their passage in the road. Roadsters went by; trucks went by; a big Packard with some fancy people in the back and Chicago plates went by. “Flying Down To Rio” with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire was on the picture show marquee.
The Paladium was on the other side of the street and just as we were approaching it, a woman was coming out of a dress shop next door. I couldn’t get a good look at her.