“I don’t mean about what you did to get the money to become a policeman, Sherman. I mean, I already knew you. I’m ashamed of myself. For what I was thinking before. I don’t know how you knew, but…”
“I know you, Ruth. Like you say you know me. I don’t know how I know, or how you know. But… I want you to hear… what I have to say. It’s important to me.”
“It’s important to me, too,” Ruth said.
Sherman watched her eyes for a long moment, polygraphing. Ruth dropped her curtain, let him in. Sherman nodded slowly and heavily, as if taking a vow.
“Remember what I said about my mother?” the big detective began. “Remember what I said about her shaming a preacher? Well, that’s the opposite-the reverse, really-of what happened. The preacher, in the church we used to go to, he shamed her. That sanctimonious dog stood up before everyone and denounced my mother. For the crime of feeding her child, he said she was going to burn in hellfire for all eternity.”
“What could possibly have made him-?”
“My mother went with men for money,” Sherman said, tonelessly. “It started when I was little. When my father wanted to bond me out. You know what that is?”
“Yes,” Ruth said. Some children get sold to farmers, she thought. And some get sold to pimps.
“My mother knew what that would mean. She and my father fought about it. I could hear every word. In that house, you always could. She told my father she was going out to get some money. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I knew it was a bad thing. My father didn’t say anything.”
Sherman lowered his head, dropped his voice.
“When my mother came back, it was real late. Almost morning. I remember my father calling her that word. ‘Whore.’ He whipped her. With his belt. Then he took the money she brought home.”
“Filthy pig,” Ruth whispered.
“No pig would do what he did,” Sherman said. “My mother kept me from being bonded out, but it cost her… everything.”
“What happened to him?”
“How do you know something did?” Sherman asked.
“I just know, Sherman.”
“He had an accident. Out in the barn. He was drunk. Must have tripped and fell down from the loft. Hit his head against an anvil. Right after that, he ran off.”
“Oh.”
“That was when I was thirteen. I wanted to quit school, but my mother wouldn’t let me. I pleaded with her, but she wouldn’t budge, and I couldn’t go against her. You know what she told me, Ruth? She said she was already damned. I couldn’t save her; nobody could. But if I ever became a… bad person, then all her sacrifice would have been for nothing.”
“You really loved her,” Ruth said.
“I always will. My… I was going to say ‘friends,’ but that would be a lie… the kids I went to school with, they knew what my mother did. So I turned into a pretty good fighter. Everyone said I would end up in reform school, but we made them all eat crow at the end. My mother was so proud when I became a cop.”
“Is she still-?”
“She died a couple of weeks after I got sworn in,” Sherman said. “She’d been sick for years. It was like she was holding on, just waiting for that.”
“Is that why you…?”
“Feel the way I do about you?” the big man said, meeting the challenge head-on. “No, Ruth. Listen, my mother never was a whore. I don’t care what people called her, or called what she did. She was a mother, protecting her child. My father was the whore, selling his honor and his name for a few dollars, then drinking up all the money because he couldn’t look himself in the mirror.
“My father wasn’t a man,” the big detective said, “but my mother, she was a woman. A real woman. And so are you, Ruth. Understand?”
“Yes,” Ruth said, between her tears.
1959 October 06 Tuesday 19:04
“Wow! Where did you get this jalopy?” Tussy said, as Dett held the door of the ’49 Ford open for her.
“I just borrowed it,” he said. “From a guy I met. Actually, we traded. He had a big date, and he thought the Buick would help him impress the girl.”
“And you don’t want to impress me anymore?” Tussy said, smiling.
“I wish I could,” he answered. “Only I know you. And I know a car would never do the trick.”
“Even after I got you to take me to the most expensive restaurant in town?”
“Well, that was like… an adventure, right? It wasn’t how much it cost, it was just that you hadn’t done it before.”
“Yes! And now this,” Tussy said. “I feel like a teenager. I mean, in a car like this-boy, those mufflers are loud-dressed like we are, going to the drive-in…” Her voice trailed away into the silence. “Do you feel like that, too? A little bit?”
“No,” said Dett. “But I don’t look like it, either.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you do, Tussy. You look like you’re sixteen.”
Tussy pulled a cigarette from her purse, put it in her mouth. Before Dett could react, she reached over and patted his jacket pocket, then extracted his little box of wooden matches. Christ! Dett thought, his mind on what else he was carrying. I didn’t expect that.
“You know what?” Tussy said, thoughtfully, once she got her cigarette going. “If I was sixteen, and my folks were still… with me, I wouldn’t be going to any drive-in.”
“Your father wouldn’t let you?”
“I don’t think he would have. I never asked… never got the chance to ask him. A couple of boys asked me, when I was around fourteen, but I didn’t even dare to mention it. Dad would have hit the ceiling.”
“Nice girls don’t go to drive-ins?”
“I don’t think that was how he felt. He took us, and there were always plenty of girls there. But he never said anything, except…”
“Except what?” Dett asked, as his eyes swept the mirrors for any disturbance in his visual field. He could not have explained what he was looking for, but the years had taught him to rely on his sense impressions, and the scanning habit was now so encoded he wasn’t aware he was doing it.
“Well, he did say that nice girls didn’t wear skirts to a drive-in. I didn’t even know what he meant until I was older.”
“And you’re still taking his advice,” Dett said, nodding at Tussy’s jeans.
“Well, it’s not that,” she said, blushing in the darkness of the front seat. “It’s just more comfortable than a skirt. I should know: I have to wear one every day. But at least they’re nice and loose.”
“The skirts?”
“The waitress skirts. In some places, they make the girls wear tight ones. And you know what happens: men get all… grabby.”
“Where you work?”
“Oh, no. We get a very nice crowd. Families, mostly. Or couples, on dates. Now, my girlfriend-”
“-Gloria?”
“Yes!” she said, laughing softly. “Gloria used to work over at the Blue Moon Lounge. They made her wear these outfits that were just… scandalous, my mother would have called them. Gloria said, some nights, when she got home, she was too sore to sit down, from all the men pinching her.”
“Is that why she quit?”
“No. She was… Well, you have to understand Gloria. I’m not saying she liked strange men pinching her, but she would have been pretty annoyed if none of them even tried. I don’t mean she’s like a… loose woman, or anything, but she likes it when guys notice her.”
“I’ll bet you don’t go out together much.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I know girls like her. Gloria, I mean. It’s like you say, they’re not… sluts, but they want the attention. And, standing next to you, she wouldn’t get any.”
“Oh, stop it! You don’t even know what she looks like.”
“It wouldn’t matter.”
“You make out like I’m Marilyn Monroe or something, Walker.”
“You’re prettier than she is.”
Tussy turned to face Dett’s profile, curling her legs onto the seat so she could move close despite the floor shift lever. “I know I’m not so gorgeous, okay? But I also know you’re not lying. I mean, you mean what you’re saying.”