I had been wanting to say something like that for a long time, and now it felt good to have done it.
Don glared at me.
“So you go on, now,” Mama said. “I won’t cry for Cletus, but Don, I won’t cry for you, neither. All I can say is I’m surprised you left the house and come this far. I’ll give you that.”
“I could take you home,” he said, acting a little bit tough. “I could make you.”
“I don’t think you can,” Helen said. “I’ll yell out for Captain Burke.”
“He ain’t going to be around all the time,” Don said.
“No, but he’s nearby right now,” she said. “And I am not afraid of you. You go get in your truck and you do what you want with your life, but I am done with you. I didn’t protect Sue Ellen like I should have, up there in that bedroom in my stupor. I’m protecting her now. I’d die before I’d let you touch her.”
“I didn’t mean nothing by that,” Don said. “I was just trying to compliment her.”
“You meant everything by it, and I should have stopped you,” Mama said. “If I see you around, I swear I’ll tell Captain Burke and say how I protected you with some lies but have changed my mind, and that you were in with Cletus to kill us and get the money.”
“Even though there ain’t no money,” I said.
“Yeah,” Mama said, picking up on what I was doing. “Even though there isn’t any money.”
“Cletus made that up on account of Jinx hitting him upside his head with a stick,” I said. “He wanted revenge.” Damn if I wasn’t getting to be a natural liar.
“And you did agree to have Sue Ellen hunted down and killed for seventy-five dollars,” Mama said. “I heard you agree to it.”
“I didn’t mean nothing by that,” he said. “Had I, I wouldn’t have killed Cletus. That’s just my way to talk like that. I wouldn’t have let nobody hurt Sue Ellen.”
“It’s your way that annoys me, Don,” Mama said. “You want me back so you can get me on the cure-all, keep me upstairs in that rotting house like a china-head doll. You won’t change. Never. You’ll hit me when you’re mad, then you’ll tell me how you didn’t mean it and you’ll change, but you won’t change. For all I know, one day you’ll do me like you did Cletus.”
Don studied Mama carefully to see if he could spot any weakness in her position, but there wasn’t any. He looked at me and Jinx. I stayed steadfast, and so did Jinx.
“You’ll regret it,” Don said. “You’ll miss me.”
“Haven’t so far,” Mama said. “I only helped you out here because you killed Cletus. That’s a murder you’re going to get away with. Now we’re all even, you and me, and we’re all done.”
Don put his greasy cap on, turned around, and walked away.
“That’s that,” Mama said.
27
Actually, that was almost that. We did see Don around town a couple more times, driving by us when we was walking on the street, following us. Captain Burke got word of it, and the last time we seen Don he was driving by us on his way out of town, his face all puffed up and bruised. He didn’t even turn and look our way.
Captain Burke set it so the town of Gladewater put us up for a few days at the boardinghouse and paid for our meals. It was a courtesy he gave to us because he said we had had such an ordeal, but the real reason was because he was interested in Mama. She even went to eat with him at the cafe several times, but one day, late morning, she come to us and said, “Sue Ellen, I want you to go with me. You two can come, too, if you want.”
Mama had got up and gone out early that morning. When she found me, I was sitting with Jinx in Terry’s room, which he had to himself. Me and Mama and Jinx had a room we shared. Missing an arm has its benefits, Terry said.
We all ended up going. It was the first time Terry had been out of the boardinghouse, having been up to that point ashamed of his missing arm. He didn’t say he was, but it was a thing you could tell by the way he had quit looking us directly in the eye. But that day he seemed stronger. I think it was because the night before, Mama and Jinx and me and him had been talking about going to get the money and May Lynn, then buying some bus tickets and lighting out for California so he could spread her ashes, a mission of his I now better understood.
So we followed Mama out of the boardinghouse and walked with her toward the town square. When we got to the center of the square, she walked us to where there was a bench and a smattering of trees, one of them a big oak. The bench faced the courthouse. We all sat on the bench in the shade of the oak.
Mama said, “Now you just sit and watch the door to the courthouse there.”
We sat there not talking, because we could tell Mama didn’t want that. There was a clock built into the top of the courthouse, and it showed us it was almost high noon. We sat there watching it click to twelve, and when it did the noon whistle was set off, and it blew loud enough I put my hands over my ears.
People started coming out of buildings along the square, including the courthouse. After a moment, Mama said, “See that man there?”
“The fat one?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s Brian. That’s your daddy.”
Now, I hadn’t thought about the fact that he had gotten older, since Mama had aged so well. But there he was; a tall man with thinning hair and a big belly. As I looked at him I tried to see my face in him, but the truth was he was too far away for me to tell much of anything.
He stood outside the door of the courthouse and put one foot behind him, so that the sole of his shoe rested on the bricks.
“Have you spoken with him?” I said.
“No,” she said. “He’s not quite the Adonis I remember.”
“It’s still him, though,” I said.
“Yes. Watch.”
After a moment a nice-looking woman who was a little thick in the waist came down the walk with two girls trailing her. I figure they were a year apart, nine and ten was my guess, but I’m no good at guessing ages.
The woman smiled and my real daddy smiled. The woman touched his arm, and he let her slip it into the crook of his as he moved away from the wall. The little girls jumped up at him, so as to look him in the face, and I could hear him laugh even from where we sat. It was a happy laugh. The laugh of a man whose life had gone right and was good.
“He’s going to the cafe with them,” Mama said. “He was in there the first time I had lunch with Captain Burke. I didn’t know it was him, but I remember looking at him and thinking he looked familiar, and the next time I was in there with Captain Burke, Brian came over and spoke to him, and Captain Burke introduced me as Helen Wilson. Then he introduced me to Brian. Course, I knew who he was by then, but he never figured out who I was. He didn’t recognize me at all. I haven’t aged that much, have I?”
“No, Mama,” I said. “You look fine.”
“I thought so…well, I think I look pretty good.”
“You look real good,” Jinx said. Terry nudged her with his shoulder, letting her know to butt out; this was just me and Mama talking.
“He didn’t know me from nothing. I found out where he had his law office, in the courthouse there, and I knew he came to the cafe for lunch, so I came here to watch for him. And the first time I did his wife and daughters met him, right there. They hadn’t gone to the cafe with him those other times, for whatever reason, but there they were, and that’s where they went two days in a row.”
“How do you know?” I said.
“I followed them. And when I did, it came to me that his life is made. It’s all wrapped up neat in a bow, and I ought to leave it that way. I let him go back then, when I had a chance to keep him, and I have to let him go now, even if he would want something to do with me-and I doubt he would. Frankly, I wouldn’t want him to. We’re different now, and he’s happy, and I’m going to leave him that way. But because I have to let him go, it doesn’t mean you have to, Sue Ellen. He is your father.”
I looked at Brian and his family walking toward the cafe.
I said, “Funny thing is, I don’t feel nothing. Not a thing.”