“Jerry, you’re sure Mr. Davidson’s all right, aren’t you?”
“I said he was OK. Get packed.”
“Should I put a blanket over him?”
“You just let him be, now.” He pulled her to him with one arm, pressing hard, but that didn’t reassure her much.
She went into the bedroom and began opening and closing drawers. He shook his head and, grinning, went to the table, and heaved up the air conditioner. It was a small window model, the simulated wooden front very new. Through the open window he could see out along Holmes Avenue, glowing with spring dogwood, white and pink. Above the flowering branches spread a pale blue sky, featureless as painted wood.
He carried the air conditioner out into the hallway. From the back apartment, a radio hammered rock, violent and forlorn, into the dim air. He used two fingers to open the front door, carried the air conditioner across the porch, along a cracked brown concrete walk, to the light blue Toyota parked by the curb in the bright morning sunlight. He dumped the conditioner into the back seat and straightened up, working his fingers.
“Jesus is Lord, and salvation is at hand,” said a voice at his right ear.
Behind him on the sidewalk stood a hook-nosed old ruin, all bone and wrinkles, holding out a printed tract. “Let me give you the Lord’s word, brother. It ain’t too late for the word.”
“Ain’t that nice.” He stepped around the scarecrow, who smelled sourly of upset stomach. As he climbed the porch steps, the old voice called, “All sins forgiven in the bosom of Jesus, brother.”
In the apartment bedroom, she had pulled out all their clothing. The bed was piled with stuff that looked and smelled like specials at the Saturday flea-market.
She told him, “I don’t know what to take.”
“All of it.”
“All of it?” She snatched up a pair of shoes.
“You think we’re coming back here?”
Confusion blurred her face. “You got to open the filling station tomorrow, Jerry.”
“You think so, huh?”
He loaded two cardboard boxes of his own clothing into the Toyota’s trunk. The old boy with the wet eyes was talking Jesus at a house up the street. When he reentered the apartment, she was still staring at the clothing, jerking her arms. Impatience twisted his mouth.
“You ready?”
“Not yet. Not yet.” She blundered into uncoordinated motion.
“Like a scared blind hen,” he muttered, stepping into the kitchen.
It was a long, dirty room painted pink. A narrow window spilled sunshine across unwashed dishes, paper sacks, fruit peelings, empty cans, a squadron of flies. The room stunk sourly of garbage and cigarettes. Old Man Davidson lay on the floor by the sink, his head in a jumble of beer cans. One eye glimmered palely under a sagging lid. He was a sharp-nosed runt with reddish hair. His mouth lolled open and a fly tilted and curved above the lard-colored lips.
“Show you to bad-mouth me,” Jerry said to the figure on the floor.
In half an hour, he hustled her out the door, her arms dripping loose clothing. He put on a wide-brimmed brown hat, banded with pheasant feathers, and a shabby leather coat with the hunting knife tucked down in one pocket. It was tough that the television was too big to load into the car. “Hell with you,” he said and closed the door.
No one called good-bye. He fed the Toyota gas and they eased off between the exuberant dogwoods.
Half a block down the street, she clutched his arm. “I forgot the groceries.”
“Let ’em sit.”
“They’ll spoil.”
“So what?”
Thin brown fingers slipped across her mouth. “I used all our food stamps on them. Got some ribs for you.”
“Now, that was nice.”
“They were for you.”
He said in a flat, rapid voice, “Look, if we drive back, maybe somebody sees us in his car. You ever think of that? Then what you going to tell them?”
She stared at him, brown eyes blankly confused.
“What you going to say?”
“I... Well...”
“You got to think about that.”
She said faintly, “I just didn’t want them to spoil.”
“Well, OK. We’ll just go on.”
“I’m sorry, Jerry. I didn’t think about the car and... and all.”
“Shoot, you don’t have to think. You just sit there and have you a good time. We’re going to Florida.”
The Toyota shot around a yellow truck and picked up speed past rows of Victorian houses built close together, painted in shades of green and brown. They looked orderly and neat, like old women waiting for relatives on visiting day.
At the Friendly station, they stopped for gas and he bought a six-pack of Old Jack beer at the carryout. They drove north, then, along streets of grimy stores, small and set far apart with dust-gray windows and trash spilled along the sidewalk. The stores were replaced by narrow fields, still brown, stippled with weed stalks and bordered by trees blurred with new green. Beyond the trees, small hills humped up, dark with cedar, dappled by the dull rose and white of flowering trees.
“It’s just so beautiful,” Sue Ann said.
“Here we are,” he said.
He slewed the Toyota onto a gravel apron, jerked to a stop before a building the shape and color of a dirty sugar cube. Above the open door slanted a hand-painted sign:
In the doorway under the sign leaned a fat man without much hair, his circular face tarnished red-brown by years of sun. He watched Jerry work the air conditioner off the backseat.
“You jus’ come in here right now,” the fat man said.
Jerry plunged past him, banged the air conditioner onto a scarred wooden counter. The little room was hot, smelling disagreeably of rubber and cardboard. Orange boxes of auto parts packed the wall shelves. The floor was patched with flattened coffee cans, blue and red against silver-gray wood.
Jerry said, “Wanna sell me this air conditioner.”
The fat man worked his belly behind the counter. “It works, does it?”
“You give it a feel. Probably still cold.”
Thick brown hands deftly unfastened the grill. “She looks nice and clean.”
A door opened in back and a big old man, gone to bone and loose gray skin, limped into the room. The effort of moving thickened his breath. He inched over to a wooden chair by the counter, lowered himself into it joint by joint, said in a remote voice, “She’s getting cold out there, Dandy.”
Jerry said, “How much you fixing to give me for this beauty? Worth three hundred dollars, easy.”
“Oh, now, then,” Dandy said. He grinned at his fat hands. “It’s early for air conditioners.”
The old man grunted, spit at a blue can, looked at the air conditioner with sour suspicion.
Jerry said, “I got to get rid of it. They broke my lease.”
Fat fingers snapped the grill into place. “What do you think, Mr. Stafford?”
The old man sniffed, grunted, painfully extended his legs. “Expect she’s stole.”
“Like hell,” Jerry said, jerking his head. “What’s with you?”
“Couldn’t be nothin’ like that,” Dandy said. “I know this young fellow. He’s been in here before.”
“You know it,” Jerry said. Back stiff, hands jammed into his pockets, he stood without moving, watching them, grinning very slightly.
“Tell you what,” Dandy said. “You maybe got the bill of sale, I could give you, like, say fifty dollars.”
Stafford said in his sick old voice. “We don’t need no stole stuff.”
“Why don’t you shut up your mouth?” Jerry said to him.
Dandy said, very quickly, “No need to holler, son.”