I got the motor running, albeit raggedly, and then pulled away from the curb. A forest of middle fingers poked the February air at us.
Darin sat up. “I coulda handled that cracker with a gun if I needed to.”
“Yeah, you were doing a great job, the way you slipped and fell down.”
He glared at me. “You better watch that white mouth of yours.” Then, “And anyway, you be drivin’ my car, asshole, so I’d keep that tongue of yours real civil.”
There wasn’t any point in arguing with him. He was speaking gibberish way most drunks eventually do. Being near clinical death-his usual alcoholic intake was enormous-he should have passed out. But he just kept right on going. That was the kind of drunk both he and his pal Kenny had been. If they’d gone through everything alcoholic in the house, they’d go into the bathroom and start on the hair tonic that was 14.2 percent alcohol.
We went two blocks and then he muttered something.
“What?” I said.
“Pull the car over!” he screamed at me.
I whipped to the curb. Even before I had the car stopped, he had the door open and was vomiting into the gutter. A couple of lawyers were walking by.
They looked pretty disgusted. Then they saw who was driving the Olds and they smirked. There’d be all kinds of jokes about the kind of clientele I had.
He puked for quite a while. He was pretty good at it. He’d puke and then raise his head a little and then puke some more. Then he’d spit. He was almost as good at spitting as puking. I was glad that my next meal was still several hours away.
When he was done, he leaned back inside and said, “Gimme a smoke.”
“Yes sir, commander.”
I gave him a Pall Mall.
“Light,” he said.
I took out the nice silver Ronson my folks had given me for Christmas. I’d already lost it twice but luckily it had kept turning up.
“How much your lighter cost, man?” he said.
“It was a gift.”
“Lady friend?”
“My folks. Look, Darin, I have to get going. But there’s something I need to do first.”
“I coulda handled those two crackers, man.”
“When you were sober, yes. Not as drunk as you are now.”
“I sound drunk, McCain?”
Actually, he didn’t. He sounded, in fact, almost cold sober.
“It’s the puking,” he said. “It never fails.
I just puke my guts up and I’m fine.”
“Well, you can never underestimate the medical benefits of puking.”
“Straighten me right up. That’s how I can last thirty, forty hours drinkin’. I just puke every once in a while.”
I started driving again. I pulled into a Dx station.
“What you doin’?”
“I need to make a phone call.”
I jerked the keys out of the ignition.
“Hey,” he said.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Where you goin’ with my keys?”
“I told you. To make a phone call.”
“How do I know you ain’t gonna try and sell this car or some shit like that?”
“Oh, yeah. I could probably get twenty, thirty grand for this baby. I think the stale beer smell in the backseat is what folks are looking for in a car these days. Not to mention the puke.”
“There’s that white mouth of yours again.”
“Just shut up and sit there, Darin. You’re almost as big a pain in the ass as Paddy, Jr.”
That quieted him down for some reason.
The pay phone was next to the john. I looked up the hospital number and called. I asked for Lurlene and the operator said just a minute. Out in the car repair section, the greasy silver hoist was raising up a very cherry 1953 DeSoto. A kid in a clean Dx uniform was using his wrench to point out various things on the undercarriage of a car. I was getting sentimental. Nothing I’d rather do than spend a warm afternoon on my driveway working on my ragtop.
Lurlene came on and I told her who I was and what had happened.
“Did he throw up?” she asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, he did.”
“Then he should be all right to drive.”
“He may be all right technically. But I’ll bet that Sykes still comes after him.” I was sure that Paddy, Sr., had called Chief of Police Sykes, and I was sure that Sykes would be waiting for Darin Greene to get behind the wheel.
They’d hit him with several charges, including drunken driving and, for sure, resisting arrest, which would justify the beating they would certainly put on him.
“I’m sorry, Mr. McCain, it’s just that they don’t like me takin’ time off at the hospital here. They’re real nice and I hate to take advantage. And you know, with Darin not workin’, I’m the only support our family’s got.”
“All right. I’ll run him home.”
“That’s very nice of you, Mr. McCain.”
I hesitated, knowing what I was about to say would disturb her. “Does Darin have a gun?”
“A gun? He has a hunting rifle. I bought him one at Sears a couple years ago.
For his birthday. Jeff, he’s the oldest boy, he’s eight, he’s startin’ to take target practice with it in the Cub Scouts.”
“How about a handgun?”
“He’s got that Army. 45 his daddy had in the war.”
That must be the gun he was referring to when I’d gotten into his car.
“Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“Not at all,” I said. “He just mentioned it in passing.”
Another pause. “Is he in trouble, Mr.
McCain?”
“No. He really isn’t, Lurlene.”
“Would you swear to it on the Lord’s name?”
“I swear to it on the Lord’s name.”
“Oh, thank God. I just got so scared there.” She sounded about to cry. “The boys, they’re just always afraid somethin’ bad’s gonna happen to that daddy of theirs.” Now she was crying, not hard, but with the soft, earnest sounds of a good and weary woman. “He ain’t like people say he is, Mr.
McCain, not when he’s sober. When he’s sober, he can be the nicest man in the world.”
When I hung up, I dropped in another nickel and called my dad and asked him if he could meet me out at Darin Greene’s place in about twenty minutes. And that I’d explain later.
When I went back out to the Olds, Darin was leaning against the front of the car, one heel hooked on the bumper. He had to be cold in his short-sleeved red shirt and tan slacks. He did not look happy.
When I got close, he held his hand out.
“Keys.”
“I’m driving you home.”
“Keys, man. Or I’m gonna make you very sorry.”
I looked at him. He wasn’t a bully, as Kenny had been. But he had a much deeper and meaner anger. He could make me very sorry indeed.
“Sykes is going to be laying for you.”
“I don’t give a damn about Sykes right now, man. I just want my keys back.”
“You want your kids to have to come and visit you in county again?”
That got to him. Say what you would about him, what he was or wasn’t, he was a man who loved his kids.
“You son of a bitch.”
But he got in the car. The passenger’s side.
When we were going again, he reached under the seat and brought up a pint of rotgut whiskey.
“You really need that?”
“You’re pushin’ your luck, man. And that’s no shit.”
“I take it you heard about Kenny.”
“‘Course I heard about Kenny.
Everybody’s heard about Kenny.”
“I don’t think he killed her.”
“What’re you talkin’ about, man, of course he killed her.”
“We’ll see.”
“If he didn’t kill her, why’d he kill himself, then?”
“I was hoping maybe you could help me out a little with that one.”
He glowered at me again. He looked angry, as he often did, but now there was a sense of fear about him, too. I wondered what he was afraid of.
We were out on the river road now, heading toward the trailer court where virtually every Negro in the county lived. The rent is cheap, I guess.