“Uh-huh.”
“Huh-uh.”
“Really?”
“Really. Just pissed.”
“Because Cushing’s getting away with it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know those two days when he was taking me for rides and stuff?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He wasn’t that bad a guy.”
“Yeah, he only killed Roy in cold blood and stole all that money.”
“My mom says that’s my problem.”
“What is?”
“That I feel sorry for too many people.”
“I feel sorry for a lot of people, too, Barney, but Cushing sure isn’t one of them.”
“When you watch him up close sometimes there’s this kind of sadness about him. You know that book by Cain that I liked so much?”
Barney couldn’t ever remember titles. “Double Indemnity?”
“Yeah. That’s who Cushing reminds me of. The guy in that. He’s real angry and tough but he’s kind of sad, too, in a strange way. You know, how George gets when he gets drunk and cries sometimes about World War Two and how his buddies died and all that stuff. You ever notice how there’s something sad about real mean guys, even like Maynard? Like they get so pissed that they don’t know what to do with themselves?”
And I had to admit that I had noticed that.
When we got to the corner where he went east and I went west, I said, “I’ll meet you here right at six-fifteen.”
“OK.” He looked at me then and said, “George went after Mom again last night.”
“Beat her up?”
“Yeah.”
“Bad?”
“Pretty bad. Black eye. Got a bruise on her cheek. Chipped tooth.”
I could see he wanted to cry.
“I’m sorry, Barney.”
“My little brother saw it and he really got scared.”
“God, Barney.”
“You know the worst thing?”
“What?”
“I feel sorry for him, too.”
“For your old man?”
“Yeah.”
I smiled bleakly and said, “Your mom’s right, Barney, you feel sorry for too many people.”
Barney called just as we were finishing dinner.
He was whispering and that usually meant only one thing. George was still drunk and on a rampage. I heard Barney’s mom crying softly in the background. Barney sounded like he was crying, too. “I better not go out tonight, Tom. I better stay with my mom.”
“She gonna be OK?”
“Long as I’m here to protect her,” he said. Then, “I better go.” I went up to my room and did my homework. A couple hours later I heard the phone ring and Mom called from downstairs and said it was for me.
Barney said, “Sorry I had to whisper when I called.”
“Is everything all right?”
“He passed out. That’s when everything gets back to normal. He sleeps it off for a day and then he’s real sorry. You know how it goes.”
“Did he hurt your mom?”
“He slapped her a couple of times is all.”
That would sound funny to anybody who didn’t know Barney and his family — how George had slapped her a couple of times “is all” but given the fact that he’d put her in the hospital a few times, “is all” was pretty modest.
“You up for tomorrow night?” Barney said.
“Yeah. Are you?”
“Can’t wait. I need some excitement.”
That was the only time Barney really liked to get into trouble, after a bout with George. It was like the only way Barney could forget it all was to lose it in doing something risky.
The next night, Barney was at the right corner at the right time. We took alleys and back roads out to Cushing’s, not wanting anybody to see us, liking the idea that we were skulking even when we didn’t necessarily have to.
We stood behind the oak tree across the street from Cushing’s. All the windows were dark.
The wind in the chimney made a neat moaning sound.
“You ready?”
“Yeah,” Barney said.
So we stepped out from behind the oak tree and started to cross the street and just then the car turned the corner several yards away, and shone its headlights on us.
“Just keep walking,” I said.
And so we did. Across the street. Onto Cushing’s lawn.
And then the car stopped even with us and somebody rolled down the passenger window — you could hear a radio play low and smell cigarette smoke — and then a voice said, “You boys up to anything in particular?”
I couldn’t make out a face inside the car. “Who is it?”
“It’s Michaelson, is who is it. And I’m curious what you boys are doing out here at this time of night.”
And then he hit us right in the face with the spotlight he had mounted on his driver’s door.
Michaelson was this fat slob who sold appliances during the day and was an auxiliary policeman on the side. Now everybody in Somerton knew that the most an auxiliary policeman ever did was direct traffic at the county fair and things like that. What they got was a uniform and a badge and a billy club. What they didn’t get was a gun or a car or any respect. Michaelson had been on the steps of the police department the night Roy was killed — hanging around his supposed friend Cushing. Even Cushing didn’t seem to like him all that much.
Of course, Michaelson pretended he was a pretty big deal strutting around the fair city of Somerton. He had a whip antenna on his ’53 Ford fastback and he wore his uniform just to go buy a loaf of bread and the way he walked around with his gut hanging over his hand-tooled western belt, he gave the impression that he was one tough guy.
“You boys hear me?”
“Huh?” Barney said.
“I asked you what you was doing out here?”
I dug in my pocket and took out my Lucky pack and held it up in the beam of the spotlight.
“This is what we’re doing out here. Smoking. We don’t want our folks to find out.”
“Oh,” he said. Then, “You’re too young to smoke.”
“That’s why we’re sneaking around.”
“I could run you two in.”
Michaelson always said that. About running people in.
Then he did just what you’d expect somebody like Michaelson to do. He killed the spotlight, rolled up the passenger window, and then took off — laying a strip of rubber that must have run thirty feet.
“What a clink,” I said.
We were in the dark again.
“I don’t think we’d better go down to the barn tonight.”
“Neither do I,” I said.
“He’s gonna tell Cushing he saw us out here sure as hell.”
I agreed.
We walked back home.
On the way, he said, “Mom said she’s gonna get a divorce.”
“She always says that after something happens.”
“He knocked her down and kicked her this time. Then I jumped him. This was the other night.”
He sounded confused, and like he wanted to cry again. “I wish I was like Mitch. I wouldn’t take shit from anybody. Not from anybody.”
When we reached the corner where we always said good-bye, I said, “You’re a good guy, Barney, you know that?”
“If I was a good guy, I’d help my mom better.”
“You’re doing all you can.”
“Yeah but when I see her down there on the floor with blood all over her face—”
And this time he took off running, vanished in the darkness outside the small circle of streetlight, loping slapping footsteps in the winter gloom.
Because of Michaelson telling Cushing about us, we decided to wait for another week before going back out to the barn.
The night was somewhere in the low teens. Barney was in a better mood, anyway. George was deep into his penitent role now, begging his wife to forgive him and not toss him out. This was the only time the family really had any peace, when George was like this.