Billy could have something. Reuben wouldn’t need forgiveness. His goddamn scorecard was already so punched full of holes that even Jesus Christ himself wouldn’t cut a loser like him a break. Lamar had taken the first shot and it had been a sucker punch, and when you sucker punched a man the comeback would be tenfold. Reuben told himself things like that, trying to think about the killing as a strategy. He lifted up the lock on the screen door with a pocketknife and turned the knob in the kitchen, smelling coffee, hearing the slurp of it perking, and as he turned he saw Lamar sprawled out and repeated the word palooka in his mind. Lamar being a big, bald, laid-out palooka, looking like he’d just hit the canvas and gone to bed.
It would be easier like this. He’d never even have to look him in the eye.
Reuben moved for him, the moonshine making his skin glow, his face sweat, smelling the way you only did when you were fearful, like a skunk. His own odor making him catch some bile in his throat. Some reason, thinking about that crazy old Kid Weisz and what he would think about this final bout between his two boys, but telling himself the Kid would understand. He’d understand what it meant to be neutered by someone, to be cheated, to be lied to. Lamar Murphy was a coward, and if it wasn’t Reuben it would be Johnnie Benefield. And Johnnie didn’t have the goddamn right.
He had the right to take the lights of the big palooka, snoring it up in the chair. So comfortable in the chair, with the knitted armrests and the little silver picture frames and the china settings hung on a wall. He moved into the family room and nearly tripped over his feet, Lamar grumbling and shuffling. The television talking about the Auburn University Tigers taking on Georgia Tech this weekend and hearing Coach Jordan’s voice sounding like that of God, saying that “the boys needed to take apart the offensive machine” and that “they’d shown some real spunk in drills and to expect a real contest in Atlanta.”
Reuben froze. He staggered again and moved backward, no longer thinking but moving backward, feeling his stomach lock up and feeling that steak and eggs and ole Moon’s formaldehyde whiskey. It was the thought of the formaldehyde and stiff dead people and blood that made him rush for the closest door and bust on in through it and stick his head right in the commode and puke his ever-living guts out.
He heard a girl scream and scream and he looked over at Anne – a girl he’d first seen at no more than knee-high when he got back from the Pacific, about a million years ago – and she screamed and kicked herself back into the corner of the tub, Reuben ignoring her until the big shadow appeared in the doorway, looking down on him – without fear or pity – but Lamar with that curious look on his face as he pointed an Army-issue.45 down at the man in the toilet.
Reuben fell back to his ass and wiped his lips with his shirt. He didn’t know if he was crying or not, just saying the first thing that came to his mind: “You think that coffee is ready yet?”
20
“SO WHAT DID YOU DO?” Hugh Britton asked, sitting across from me in a booth at Kemp’s Drive-In.
“I poured him a cup of coffee.”
“When did you know he had a gun?”
“He told me,” I said. “We sat down and didn’t talk for a long time. He left the gun in the kitchen, and we watched the Tonight Show. Steve Allen can really play the piano. He played that song before Gene Rayburn did the news, ‘This Could Be the Start of Something,’ and that kind of made Reuben loosen up.”
“The man came to your home to kill you,” Britton said.
“No, he didn’t,” I said. “He wanted an excuse. He was drunk, wasn’t thinking straight.”
“You sure are making a hell of an excuse for him.”
“Do you know what he asked me?”
Britton shook his head. It was morning, a couple days after finding Reuben in my bathroom, and the light was still gray, a cold mist outside, what the Irish call a soft day.
“He wanted to know why Joyce and I never invited him to dinner.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him that I didn’t think he’d come. I said our life was pretty boring. About the only excitement came on Wednesday night, when we have pot roast and mashed potatoes. I told him we don’t drink, just watch television, sometimes the kids get to eat off these TV trays. Funny how someone can be offended by the smallest thing.”
“I don’t think it was not having him over that ticked him off.”
I took a sip of coffee and looked out at the soft day, the brown leaves fluttering and spinning down from the trees. A couple of guardsmen laughing and coming into the diner, taking their hats off and putting them on a rack by the door.
“He stayed for breakfast,” I said. “Joyce cooked up some bacon and eggs with grits, and then he rode on with me right to the jail.”
“And he’s been there ever since.”
“He’ll stay there until he goes before the grand jury.”
“Who knows about him?”
“Only John Patterson and Sykes. We’re keeping it under wraps even from Sykes’s team right now. We don’t want any of those newspapermen to get hold of it. The only thing they’re good at is turning the world into a circus.”
“So what exactly did he see?”
I lit a cigarette, keeping it burning in one hand, and rubbed my bald head with the other, getting comfortable in the booth.
“He was going to the Elite to have dinner, and when he passed by the alley to park he saw Arch Ferrell and Bert Fuller talking to Mr. Patterson. He said he parked on the other side of the street and was listening to the end of a radio show out of Montgomery, some kind of gospel hour, and because it was June he had the windows down.”
“He heard the shots?”
“One, two, three. He said he knew right off, didn’t think there were damn firecrackers or any of that mess. Reuben knows the sound of a gun.”
“I bet.”
“He see any other witnesses?”
“He mentioned that big ole black car Ross Gibson saw. He thinks it was a Lincoln. Said a man and a woman were in the front seat, parked right at the mouth of the alley.”
The waitress came over and set down our plates and heated up our coffee. I smiled and thanked her. Britton craned his neck over the table and waited for me to finish, not even noticing her or the food.
“Did he see them run away?”
“He said he saw Fuller. Ferrell must’ve ducked back through the alley.”
“Where Quinnie saw him.”
“It fits.”
“Did he see them arguing?”
“He said it looked like they were just talking and didn’t think nothing of it until he heard the shots.”
“And so what does this mean?”
“John says it will be enough for Sykes. He knows he’s gonna have a battle with Reuben’s record. He said the defense will shred his character on the stand. But I’m just glad he wasn’t caught for half the things he’s done. Can you pass the ketchup?”
I lifted my hand out.
“But he was there.”
“Yes, sir.”
He handed me the bottle.
“When does he go before the grand jury?”