Devon turned away from the sea and quickened her pace. It was then that she spotted Estivar. He was sitting alone on a bus-stop bench under a silver dollar tree. At the slightest stirring of air the silver discs of leaves twitched and jumped, eager to be spent. Their quick gay movements altered the lights and shadows, so that Estivar’s face from a distance appeared very lively. As she drew closer she saw that it was no livelier than the concrete bench. He rose slowly at her approach, as though he was sorry to see her.
She said, “Aren’t you having lunch, Estivar?”
“Later. The others wanted a picnic at the zoo, they left me a sandwich and an avocado. Will you sit down, Mrs. Osborne?”
“Yes, thanks.” As she sat down she wondered if the bench had been made of concrete because it was a durable material or because its cold roughness would discourage people from remaining too long. “Don’t you like the park?”
“Live things shouldn’t be put in cages. I prefer to watch the sea. All that water, think what we could do at the ranch with all that water... Where is Mrs. Osborne?”
“She went home to rest for a while.”
“I know she resented some of the things I said on the stand this morning. But I couldn’t help it, they were true, I was under oath. What did she expect from me? Probably some of those nice lies she believes herself.”
“You mustn’t be too hard on her, Estivar.”
“Why not? She’s too hard on me. I heard her at recess this morning talking to the lawyer. I heard her clear across the room speaking my name like a dirty word. What’s she got against me? I kept that place going for her when her son was too young to be any help and her husband was too—” He drew in his breath sharply, as though someone had given him a warning poke in the stomach.
“Too what?”
“He’s dead, it doesn’t matter any more.”
“It does to me.”
“I thought you’d have found out on your own by this time.”
“I only know he died by accident.”
“That was the verdict.”
“Didn’t you agree with it?”
“If you go around looking for accidents, asking for them, they can’t be called accidents any more. Mr. Osborne’s ‘accident’ happened before ten o’clock in the morning, and he’d already drunk enough bourbon to paralyze an ordinary man.” Estivar spread his hands in a little gesture of despair. “It wasn’t a case of bad luck killing him when he was just forty-three years old, it was a case of good luck keeping him alive that long.”
“When did he become an alcoholic?”
“I’m not sure. Between the two of them they managed to keep it secret for years. But eventually it reached a point where a new crew would take one look at him and label him a borrachín.”
“Is that why Robert spent so much time with you as he was growing up?”
“Yes. He’d come over to my house when things got too rough. I didn’t say any of this on the witness stand, naturally, but I told Mr. Ford last week. He was asking me a lot of questions about the Osbornes. I had to tell him the truth. I knew she wouldn’t, she never told anyone. She had this game she played. If Mr. Osborne was too drunk to come out and work, she said he had a touch of flu or a migraine or a toothache or a sprained back. Once he had to be carried in from the fields, out cold and reeking of whiskey, but she claimed he must have suffered a heat stroke, though it was a winter day with a pale cool little sun. She couldn’t bring herself to admit the truth even while she was hiring my boy, Rufo, to haul away the bottles every week.” He raised his head, frowning up at the round silver leaves as though they represented the dollars and half- dollars Rufo had been paid to dispose of the bottles. “It was silly, the whole cover-up business, but you couldn’t help admire how hard she worked at it and what guts it took, especially when he got quarrelsome.”
“How did she handle him then?”
“Oh, she tried lots of things, same as any woman married to a drunk. But eventually she developed a routine. She’d maneuver him into the living room one way or another, close the doors and windows and pull the drapes. Then the arguing would start. If things got too loud she’d sit down at that piano of hers and start playing to cover them up, a piece with good firm chords like ‘March of the Toreadors.’ She couldn’t admit that they quarreled any more than she could admit that he drank. Everybody caught on, of course. Even the men working around the place, when they heard that piano, they’d look at each other and grin.”
“What about Robert?”
“Lots of the arguing was about him and how he should be brought up, disciplined, educated, trained. But they would have argued even if the boy had never been born. He was just a peg to hang things on. When he got older, ten or eleven, I tried to explain this to him. I told him he hadn’t caused the trouble and he couldn’t stop it, so he might as well learn to live with it.”
“How could a ten-year-old understand such a thing?”
“I think he did. Anyway, he used to show up at my place when he sensed trouble on the way. Sometimes he didn’t make it in time and he’d be caught between the two of them. One day I heard the piano music start in real loud and I waited and waited for Robbie to show up. Finally I went over to the ranch house to find out what was happening. She had forgotten to pull the drapes across a side window and I could see the three of them inside the room. She was at the piano, with Robbie sitting on the bench beside her looking sick and scared. Mr. Osborne was propped up against the mantel, the veins in his neck sticking out like ropes. His mouth was moving, so was hers. But all I could hear was the bang bang bang of that piano, loud enough to wake the dead. ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what she was playing, over and over, ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’ It seems funny now, her using a hymn. But it wasn’t funny then. That fight was the same as all the others, long and mean and deadly, the kind nobody can win, so everybody loses, especially the innocent. I wanted to get Robbie out of that room and away from that house until things quieted down. I went inside and started pounding on the living-room door as hard as I could. A minute or so later the piano stopped and Mrs. Osborne opened the door. ‘Oh, Estivar,’ she said, ‘we were just having a little concert.’ I asked her if Robbie could come over and help my son, Cruz, with his homework. She said, ‘Certainly. I don’t think Robbie cares much for music anyway...’ Sometimes when I wake up in the night I swear I can hear the sound of that piano, though it isn’t even there any more, I helped the movers take it out of the house myself.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“No one else will, and it’s time you knew.”
“I didn’t want to know.”
“You wanted to know more than I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Osborne, especially today. But who can be sure? I may not get another chance to talk to you like this.”