“I’d say you’ve outdone yourself, Ray,” Father said. “I like a man who outdoes himself. I’ll be back with the cold cuts and bread. We might have a hankering for something hearty out there.”
As the two men made eye contact, Father chuckled, running his hand under the visor on his temples. Father was a man who spent most of his life trying to cultivate a ready laugh. Though he was built like a workhouse, when it came to conversations, he had more of a dancer than a boxer in him. “Back in a minute,” Father said, jogging up the walk to the house.
“Good man,” Ray said, with that sportiness that came from years of playing football and working in the army. In his eyes, no man who knew the burden of having a wife and kids was outside the purview of an honest day’s fish.
That day, I was to spend the morning with Margaret. Birdie would stay at home with K. Mother had made arrangements from the city, Father said. Ray was tight lipped on the matter. The bed of the truck loaded, he slammed the tailgate shut and I jumped into the cab.
“You sure you don’t want to come with us, lady?” Ray said, as he hoisted himself into the driver seat, shutting the door and turning the key to the ignition. “We’ve always got room in the dinghy for a deckhand.” “Mother arranged for me to spend the day with Margaret,” I said.
“So I hear,” Ray laughed. “Do me a favor. Tell her your old man and I went fishing without a license. That should give her something to rail on for a while.”
I looked at him for a moment. For a barber, he had a rough face. His stubble was gray and patchy. There was a thin grease in his hair, which appeared rumpled from the last place he’d run his hands through it. Despite the hour, his eyes were alive and fresh. I could tell there was nothing malicious in his jest. He was a man who woke on the right side of circumstance and liked to lend some of his humor to the day when he could.
“Scout’s honor,” I said.
Father emerged from the house. He fumbled with his keys in the lock before hustling down the walk toward the truck. He’d slung the old army backpack that he and Sterling used to take hiking over his shoulder. Father was always naming off the mountains they had peaked together. “As boys,” he’d say.
“Jeanie,” Ray said chuckling. “Be a lady and jump into the back to make room for your old man.”
I moved down the bench toward the center of the cab in order to swing my body over the rise of the seat, upsetting a loose stack of newspapers next to Ray.
“What are you hiding under there?” I said, brushing aside the papers. Ray’s Colt sat on top of a cheap low-gloss circular advertising the week’s specials. Home goods and electronics.
“You never know when you’ll find a sand shark trailing you in the water,” Ray said, taking the gun and focusing it through the windowsill in front of him. “Don’t want any predators sneaking up on our big game.” He narrowed one eye as though picking off a fish as it leapt from the water.
I looked through the windshield in front of us. Father started to run toward the truck.
“Jesus, Ray,” Father yelled through the window. “Put your gun away. That’s my kid you’ve got in here.” Father’s voice was making that jagged pant it did after he’d galloped Rebel.
“No harm done,” Ray said. He opened the door to the glove compartment and tucked the Colt under a pile of napkins. “I wouldn’t be caught dead on the open water without some form of protection.” Father slid into the cab.
“She’ll be safe in there,” Ray laughed slapping Father’s thigh before starting the engine.
The back of the cab was narrow and dirty. The floor was littered with work shirts, random utility tools, and empty cassette cases. I sat on a pile of newspapers stacked behind Father. The seats in back were short and squat. They flipped down from the walls. The rocks and dust kicked up around us as Ray sped off. The road had that type of lonely exhilaration.
As we passed the Starlings’ home, there was a light on in the kitchen. A creature of habit, Ruth kept her husband’s hours. She’d gotten up to put a pot of coffee on before Ray’d left for the fish. I imagined her sitting around their kitchen table in a thin pink bathrobe fingering a pile of cards, savoring one of the lone Parliaments she kept in the back of the junk drawer behind her make-up and the piles of bills.
The road followed the curve of a short steep hill. At the bottom sat the Young residence. Ginny was a nurse in the children’s ward at the local hospital. Dan kept house, an arrangement which was widely suspected but rarely spoken of. The renegade son of the local construction company, Dan had abandoned his share of the business. He’d thrown off his Father’s shadow in favor of Vietnam. He’d returned from the war with a back injury that kept him from steady work. Dan kept a motorcycle and a small fishing boat, which he financed by working odd hours at the auto body. Occasionally you’d see him working in the driveway, fixing somebody’s carburetor.
Something in this arrangement would’ve irked people had it not been for Dan’s service and the beauty of his wife. Petite and naturally trim with a perky bosom that she showed off while gardening in her two-piece, Ginny had a doll like quality which made men like Father clam up when they spoke to her. People respected Dan for having the courage to keep her around. Such a task required that a man of his means be around on the constant. Dan and Ginny had produced two children. Lissie, Danny Jr. and I rode the bus. The town was not required to fetch us. We offspring of an unpaved road which dead-ended at the town’s border walked each morning to the little bridge near the farm stand where the dirt met the pavement. We waited for the bus on the stump next to the stop sign at the corner. If we were early, we raced sticks under the bridge, a habit Mother had warned me against as the bridge was preceded by a blind turn around which the occasional car came speeding.
My experience of the Young’s house was based on a single exposure. I’d been invited to dinner once when Mother had class at the feed store and Father was working late. Lissie had prepared a casserole while her father slept on the couch in front of the game. Danny struggled with a load of colors in the basement. A chart of chores on the refrigerator was evidence of their father’s regiment. Despite the abundance of foil stars, bright red and blue assigned to Lissie and Danny respectively, the refrigerator gave the kitchen the effect of Christmas in the barracks of an underground war unit, the iridescent stickers glinting in the light of the overhead halogens every time anyone opened the door. When Ginny returned home from work, her lips were still glossy. Her eyes were the only thing that betrayed her. The brilliant blue replaced by tired blinders of gray.
At the table, Dan Sr. had said grace. It seemed we’d barely stopped eating when the children were up clearing and scraping.
A bungalow built in the style of the frontier with a large triangular atrium and a sleep loft that overlooked the kitchen and living area, the house itself boasted the slick and sleaze of a seventies ski cabin where people from the city went to drink bourbon and turn down the sheets on one another’s’ wives for a weekend before stumbling back into their Rolls, the fridge still stocked with dark winter brews and the carcasses of half eaten chickens. Here were the glass windows Mother dreamed of. I imagined Ginny luxuriating in front of them each evening after a long day of making the rounds, slowly undressing herself in front of the wall of glass that looked out onto the street while Dan watched from the couch, her thin chemise slipping down around her ankles to reveal her gentle curvature, which she pressed to the window, bending over so that through the part of her legs Dan could watch for the flash of headlights as they came up the street as Ginny made love to whomever might come to pass.