“Does Reuben know you consort with whores?”
The boy’s vision faded for a moment, and Bert Fuller appeared to him in wavy lines like an apparition but with a strong, solid voice that laughed.
“You got your dick wet. Now, go back inside before I stomp the shit out of you. Don’t make a scene.”
He took Lorelei as if leading a calf, half walking and half pulling, to where he’d parked his car along the banks of Moon Lake.
“Come on, you filthy little cunt,” he said. “Back to work.”
I SAT WITH MY FAMILY NEAR THE BOATHOUSE ON A RED-and-white tablecloth Joyce had packed along with deviled eggs, fried chicken, pimento cheese, potato salad, cut tomatoes, and a gallon of sweet tea. I wore a cool short-sleeved shirt and straw hat that day and pretended I was asleep, the hat over my eyes, as I heard my children trying to wake me up. I started to snore, Thomas poking me with a piece of grass in the ear, and then Anne pulling at my foot, trying to remove my shoe, before I roused and made sounds like a bear trying to catch them. Anne ran off, and Thomas grabbed another deviled egg, licking out the inside and leaving the egg white.
Joyce poured some more sweet tea and sat down next to me, and we sat there, looking out at the boats on Moon Lake and at the little bandstand where we’d met in ’38. We’d danced there until the band stopped playing, and I kept moving with her, in my own romantic, ridiculous way, taking her for more light turns across the dance floor with my nimble boxer’s feet. I reminded her of my good feet as often as I could.
“Anne wants a dog.”
“Then let’s get a dog.”
“I don’t want a dog.”
“Then don’t get her a dog.”
“Do you always have to be so damn agreeable?”
I smiled at her and kissed her on the forehead. “No, Pieface. I’ll work on becoming a real pain in the ass.”
“Won’t take much,” she said and pinched my arm. “Pieface? I wish you’d quit calling me that.”
I kissed her again. “Okay, Pieface.”
Thomas walked up and stood before us, smiling. He handed me three empty egg halves and worked on a fourth.
“Thanks, boy. I sure do appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, adding the last, and laughed.
On the small shore of the lake, I saw Anne talking to another young girl who was about her age. She stood tall like an adult, with hands on her hips. I knew the boys would be coming around soon and that was okay with me because I knew she’d gotten pretty damn good on the speed bag. And for an eleven-year-old, she had a killer jab.
“Who is that Anne’s talking to?”
Joyce squinted down to the shore, the darkness finally setting on, lights clicking on at the old bandstand. “That’s the Ferrells’ girl.”
“Are they friends?”
“I guess so. They’ve been going to school together from the start.”
“You know they officially removed Arch as county solicitor yesterday?”
“I saw that.”
I lay down on my back. “When are these damn fireworks going to start?”
Down toward the Idle Hour parking lot, I heard a woman scream and a car door slam.
BILLY FOLLOWED. HE WAS SHIRTLESS IN BLUE JEANS AND no shoes, face a bloody mess. He breathed, a hot ticking in his ears, as he watched Fuller open the back of his squad car and point inside. He saw Lorelei pull away from Fuller and shake her head, and he saw Fuller’s hand spring back and slap her across the mouth. Billy jogged toward them, yelling obscenities and picking up rocks to throw at Fuller. He ran through the crowd huddled near the shore of the lake and pushed and moved, some heads turning to Fuller, who reached for the back of Lorelei and pushed her to the car door. She clutched her hands on the door frame and pushed back, digging in her heels and refusing to get inside. Billy yelled for her and hoped others would hear and stop Fuller. But Fuller looked across at the crowd, maybe fifty people forming a circle around them, and told them all to mind their own fucking business, this was police work. Billy saw the backs turn, almost orchestrated on cue and trained, as Fuller knocked Lorelei across the ear and dumped her purse out on the sidewalk and gathered up the last two dollars in change they had.
When Fuller felt the coins in his hand, he punched her hard in the stomach and she deflated, crushed to the ground and trying to suck in air like a dying fish.
Billy pushed and ran up the slope to the parking lot, his feet cut on the stones and crushed glass but not even knowing pain, only feeling the wetness of blood between his toes. And he slowed and walked toward Fuller, his heart beating hard and steady like an Indian war drum, and he gritted his teeth and brushed the girlish tears from his eyes and yelled to Fuller that he was a fat, pig-eyed sack of shit.
Fuller smirked, red-faced. “Just because you got your dipstick working doesn’t mean you’re a man. But if that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get.”
Fuller reached for his revolver and, as Billy stepped back, turned the barrel away and raised the butt like a club, pulling back to wallop the boy.
But the butt got only halfway.
BILLY PROTECTED HIS HEAD AND WAITED FOR THE BLOW that didn’t come. He peered up to see me catching the gun in the palm of my hand and wrenching it from Bert Fuller. Fuller grinned back at me and spit some tobacco on the asphalt.
“You want to hand that back, palooka?”
I smiled back at him and then turned and pitched the gun over the crowd and into the lake. Kids and teenagers stood up on the hill of Idle Hour and looked into the parking lot. Most of the adults still turned away.
“Shouldn’t have done that.”
I looked over at Billy, the blood on his face and skinny chest and arms. Fuller shook his head.
“You know my guns come in a pair.”
“Just let ’em go, Bert.”
“Maybe that’s just what I was aimin’ to do before you came up and involved yourself once again in a police matter. For your information, this isn’t some nice little old gal. This is a common whore who was sucking this boy’s peter for a quarter out in the woods. We can’t have something like that with decent people about.”
“Decent people,” I repeated. “What’s wrong, you didn’t get your cut?”
“Take it back.”
I looked down, hands on my hips, and shook my head. “No, I don’t think I will.”
Fuller put his hand on his remaining gun and walked toward me. “Maybe you were waiting in line to get your damn cock sucked, too.”
I saw women hustling their children away. A young boy not much older than my own son stared at the scene, his jaw hanging loose. And there it was, better than television, and in live Technicolor: a bloodied girl in panties and ripped shirt, an angry boy with a bloody face, and Deputy Bert Fuller, standing and spitting, hand on his gun, ready to make his order and sense of it all.
The girl moved to her knees and found purchase against the car, one hand covering the ripped place on the thin shirt, her legs scraped bloody. Her cotton underwear had turned a damp yellow from where she’d urinated while being dragged and beaten.
“You are the worst kind of coward,” I said. “I know your secret. You hide behind the gun.”
Fuller nodded with the words and then went for the belt and unlatched it, the leather and gun falling to the asphalt.
“Come on.”
“Let them go. I don’t want to fight.”
“They’re coming with me. And so are you, after I whip your ass.”
The crowd became a ring, the asphalt the canvas, and my vision shifted from the kids and townspeople, and even the two men in khaki uniforms who stood just on top of the hill but didn’t move.
I put my hands out, showing my palms, and shook my head and turned my back.
And that’s when Fuller rushed and tackled me to the ground and pounded into my kidneys with his fat fists. But I was up and standing, with Fuller grasping for his feet and then taking huge, muscled punches toward me that I sidestepped without losing a breath. And more wild punches did not even make a bit of breeze near my ears, as I moved and bobbed and weaved with an instinct that came to me as natural as walking, although I hadn’t practiced the science for more than fifteen years.