“Yes,” French Edward said.
They went back to Vicksburg. On the second day of the tournament, they got a call at the Holiday Inn. Fat Tim Emile had died. Nobody had known he was dying but him. He had written a short letter full of pride and appreciation to Cecilia and French, thanking French for his association with the family and for valiant contests in the tennis world. Fat Tim left them two hundred thousand and insisted on nobody giving any ceremony. He wanted his remaining body to go straight to the Tulane med school. “This body,” he wrote, “it was fat maybe, but I was proud of it. Those young doctors-to-be, like Baby Levaster, might find something new in me. I was scared all my life and stayed honest. I never hurt another man or woman, that I know of. When I made money, I started eating well. Baby Levaster warned me. I guess I’ve died of success.”
“My poor Cecilia,” said French.
“Cissy is fine,” said Levaster. “She said for you to finish the tournament.”
So he did.
Levaster looked on in a delirium of sober nostalgia. Through the trees, in a slit of the bluffs, he could see the river. French’s mother and father sat together and watched their son. Dr. Word, near eighty, was a linesman. They are old people, thought Levaster, looking at the Edwards. And him, Word, he’s a goddamned relic. A spry relic. Younger brother Wilbur was not there because he was dead.
Whitney Humble and French Edward met in the finals. Humble had aged gruesomely too, Levaster saw, and knew it was from fighting it out in small tournaments for almost two decades, earning bus fare and tiny fame in newspapers from Alabama to Idaho. But Humble still wanted to play. The color of a dead perch, thinner in the calf, Humble smoked cigarettes between ad games. All his equipment was gray and dirty, even his racket. He could not run much anymore. Some teeth were busted out.
A wild crowd of Vicksburg people, greasers and their pregnant brides from the mobile homes included, met to cheer French. Humble did not have a fan. He was hacking up phlegm and coughing out lengths of it, catching it on his shirt, a tort even those for the underdog could not abide. The greasers felt lifted to some estate of taste by Humble.
It was a long and sparkling match. Humble won.
Humble took the check and the sterling platter, hurled the platter outside the fence and into the trees, then slumped off.
The image of tennis was ruined for years in Vicksburg.
Dr. Word and the Edwards met French on the court. Levaster saw Word lift an old crabby arm to French’s shoulder, saw French wince. Mr. Edward said he had to hurry to his job. He wore a comical uniform and cap. His job was checking vegetable produce at the bridge house of the river so that boll weevils would not enter Mississippi from Louisiana. Levaster looked into the eyes of Mrs. Edward. Yes, he decided, she still loves Word; her eyes touch him like fingers, and perhaps he still cuts it, and perhaps they rendezvous out in the Civil War cemetery so he won’t have far to fall when he explodes with fornication, the old infantryman of lust.
“Mother,” said French, “let’s all meet at the bridge house.”
Levaster saw the desperate light in French’s eye.
“Don’t you, don’t you!” said Levaster afterward, driving the Lincoln.
“I’ve got to. It’ll clear the trash. I can’t live in the world if Word’s still in it.”
“He’s nothing but bones,” said Levaster. “He’s done for.”
“She still loves him,” said French.
They all gathered at the bridge house, and French told his father that his wife had been cheating on him for twenty years, and brought up his hands, and began crying, and pointed to Word. Mr. Edward looked at Word, then back to his son. He was terribly concerned. He asked Word to leave the little hut for a second, apologizing to Word. He asked Olive to come stand by him, and put his arm over his wife’s shoulders.
“Son,” he whispered, “Jimmy Word, friend to us and steady as a brick to us, is a homosexual. Look out there, what you’ve done to him. He’s running.”
Then they were all strung out on the walkway of the bridge, Levaster marveling at how swift old Word was, for Word was out there nearing the middle of the bridge, Mrs. Edward next, fifty yards behind, French passing his mother, gaining on Word. Levaster was running too. He, too, passed Olive, who had given out and was leaning on the rail. Levaster saw Word mount the rail and balance on it like a gymnast. He put on a burst of speed and caught up with French, who had stopped running and was walking toward Word cautiously, his hand on the rail.
“Just close your eyes, son, I’ll be gone,” Word said, looking negligible as a spirit in his smart tennis jacket and beret. He trembled on the rail. Below Word was the sheen of the river, the evening sun lying over it down there, low reds flashing on the brown water.
That’s a hundred feet down there, Levaster thought. When he looked up, French had gotten up on the rail and was balancing himself, moving step by step toward Word.
“Don’t,” said Levaster and Word together.
French, the natural, was walking on the rail with the ease of an avenue hustler. He had found his purchase: this sport was nothing.
“Son! No closer!” bawled Word.
“I’m not your son. I’m bringing you back, old bastard.”
They met. French seemed to be trying to pick up Word in an infant position, arm under legs. Word’s beret fell off and floated, puffed out, into the deep hole over the river. French had him, had him wrestled into the shape of a fetus. Then Word gave a kick and Olive screamed, and the two men fell backward into the red air and down. Levaster watched them coil together in the drop.
There was a great deal of time until they hit. At the end, Edward flung the old suicide off and hit the river in a nice straight-legged jump. Word hit the water flat as a board. Levaster thought he heard the sound of Word’s back breaking.
The river was shallow here, with strong devious currents. Nothing came up. By the time the patrol got out, there was no hope. Then Levaster, standing in a boat, spotted French, sitting under a willow a half mile downriver from the bridge. French had drowned and broken one leg, but had crawled out of the river by instinct. His brain was already choked.
French Edward stared at the rescue boat as if it were a turtle with vermin gesturing toward him, Levaster and Olive making their cries of discovery.
Carina, Levaster’s teen-ager, woke him up. She handed him a cold beer and a Dexedrine. At first Levaster did not understand. Then he knew that the sun had come up again, seeing the grainy abominable light on the alley through the window. This was New York. Who was this child? Why was he naked on the sheets?
Ah, Carina.
“Will you marry me, Carina?” Levaster said.
“Before I saw your friend, I might have,” she said.
French Edward came into the room, fully dressed, hair wet from a shower.
“Where do I run, Baby?” he said.
Levaster told him to run around the block fifty times.
“He does everything you tell him?” said Carina.
“Of course he does. Fry me some eggs, you dumb twat.”
As the eggs and bacon were sizzling, Levaster came into the kitchen in his Taiwan bathrobe, the huge black sombrero on his head. He had oiled and loaded the.410 shotgun/pistol.
“Put two more eggs on for French. He’s really hungry after he runs.”
Carina broke two more eggs.
“He’s so magnificent,” she said. “How much of his brain does he really have left?”