But something woke me. There was winter wind, more November than February, and a shutter next door banging. And there were footsteps.
I began to picture one careful footstep after another pressing down on the wooden stairs leading to my back entrance.
I slipped out of bed in the darkness. Both Tasha and Crystal looked seriously disturbed.
They tried to cover their fear with yawns but I could tell they were scared.
I wore pajama bottoms. I carried the Louisville Slugger, Mickey Mantle model, that I keep next to my bed for good luck -gd luck to split open the skull of any uninvited nocturnal guest.
I crept to the back window. Eased back the shade a quarter-inch. Looked down upon the backyard.
Blue midnight snow. A sentry row of silver garbage cans. A small shed where the lawn mower and other yard equipment is kept, the smell of mown grass intoxicating and powerful inside the tiny shed, a contraband sniff of summer. A narrow alley where tots rode brooms all summer long, said brooms turned into fiery steeds with a child’s alchemy.
No sign of anybody. Everything so still, except for the wind-stirred crystals of blue midnight snow, that it might have been a painting.
No sign of anybody.
And then the inching wood-aching sound of secret steps on stairs.
My visitor was working his way up to the door.
I gripped the bat and stood next to the back door, the one he’d have to come through. Surprise is always the best weapon.
Three, four, five, six steps. I decided, given how my calves hurt from my tiptoeing, that I’d probably pass on my next chance to become a ballet dancer. That stuff hurts.
I was at the door. And so was he. The topmost step creaked.
I got my bat ready. I reached out and gripped the doorknob. And then I jerked the doorknob as hard as I could.
Forgetting that it was locked.
That’s one of the problems with being awakened from a sound sleep. You don’t think clearly.
He heard me, my guest heard me and started down the stairs about eight times faster than he’d come up them. I wasn’t going to chase him in pajama bottoms and bare feet.
I ran back to the kitchen window, flung back the shade and looked down on the backyard where my retreating guest was leaving heavy footprints in the blue snow.
No mistaking who he was. There was only one person that big in town who could run that fast: an ex-football player named Darin Greene.
Fifteen
Al Monahan lost both his legs on Guam. When he got home, he took a small inheritance he’d come into and opened his restaurant downtown. Folks didn’t have much hope for him. Much as they felt sorry for him, and much as they liked him and much as they appreciated the sacrifice he’d made as their wartime surrogate, there were already three cafes that catered to the daytime crowds. But Also surprised them. He could zip around his restaurant in his wheelchair right smartly, and he was a damned good cook. It took a year, and a couple of modest bank loans, but Also finally got the place in the black and eleven years later had the restaurant where all the local Brahmins chose to eat breakfast and lunch. Al had one wall fixed up like a war memorial. Everybody in town who’d served in the big war got his photo on the wall plus newspaper stories citing any medals or awards he’d won. Al got in a flap with some Korean War vets, Also claiming, like a lot of other Ww2 vets, that Korea wasn’t a war, it was a United Nations police action, and that they therefore weren’t really veterans of a bona fide war. People figured that he had a right to his bigotry, having lost two legs in the big war, but Also wasn’t alone. A lot of veterans’ groups didn’t want to let in Korean-era vets, either. Al came to his senses one day when the front door of his place opened up and a man rolled in a wheelchair.
Both his legs and an arm were gone, lost in Korea. A few hours later, the man’s photo was up on the wall, as well as the newspaper clipping about his purple heart and silver star, and Also had himself a new cook trainee.
Al’s was crowded as always. I sat down at the counter and ordered my four pancakes, hash browns, orange juice, coffee and
Pepsi. I’m pretty much a Pepsiholic.
Mom always says she’s surprised I don’t take it intravenously while I sleep.
Juanita, the voluptuous farm-girl waitress, took my order and sashayed to the back to call it in, her hips swinging in time to the rhythms of Jo Stafford’s cheery “Mockingbird Hill” played low on the jukebox. You would find no rock and roll on Also’s jukebox.
Al’s favorite song was “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” He never tired of the dog barking in the bridge of the song. As a culture maven, he’s a great short-order cook.
When the voluptuous Juanita brought my coffee, she asked me about falling into the pond last night, and then everybody along the counter joined in, too. The consensus was that I was lucky. A farmer said that there were places in that pond that were twenty-feet deep. Then we started talking about the dead girl in the canoe. Her identity seemed to be a mystery and it was getting on to 7cccj A.M. But they were working very hard-“they” being Cliffie, on the assumption that she was the missing girl.
He was late arriving. Most mornings, he was already here when I took my place at the counter.
Not today. He would have been busy with funeral arrangements for his daughter, Susan. But folks out here are creatures of strong habit. I knew a guy who went for a mile walk every morning and he went no matter what, even during a tornado one day. He wasn’t hurt, but he’d seen a couple of trees uprooted.
He came in late and took his special place. He wouldn’t dare have let anybody else have it.
The smells were good here. Bacon and coffee and pancake batter on the scorching griddle. Al had ventilated the place well. You didn’t get much scent of sour grease. The odors were lulling me into grogginess-two nights without much sleep had dulled me considerably; I’m always amazed at how Mike Hammer and those guys do it, go sleepless for days on end, and are keen on lots of sex and violence to boot-and then I looked over at him.
Being the Brahmin of Brahmins, Robert Frazier had his own reserved booth in the back.
Every day, the lesser Brahmins trooped back there to pay homage. Occasionally, they’d be asked to sit down and talk. This happened about as often as the Pope said, “Hey, how about a game of craps?”
This morning he was dressed in a homburg and an expensive dark topcoat. I didn’t get a chance to look at his shoes until he was about halfway back to his private booth. The shoes were the big cleated mothers he’d worn yesterday at the judge’s office, the same shoes he’d worn while paying me a visit yesterday.
I let the lesser Brahmins have at him. They were brief today. They’d walk back there, making sure their sorrow masks were in place, and then let the lies filling their mouths spill forth. How much they’d liked Susan and what a great father he’d been to her and how sorry they were for him.
Frazier was reviled but he was also feared. He wasn’t actually ruthless, I suppose; he was simply without empathy. If you made a mistake to his advantage-in a business or personal matter-he’d simply act as business textbooks said he should act. He’d destroyed any number of so-called friends and had done so without any apparent regret. I’d always had the sense that it was all one big poker game to him and there were no personal hard feelings. Not on his part anyway.
They spent twenty minutes with their various genuflections and mea culpas. His grief and rage were there to see and they fed on them: it must have been tasty stuff to many of the lesser Brahmins, Frazier’s grief and rage. Maybe he’d know now how they felt when he decided to up the ante and cause a few players to drop out, devastating family bank accounts in the process. Tasty stuff, indeed.
Juanita served him; she was his favorite.