“No, but I don’t expect to be mugged in broad daylight.”
The broker offered a dark smile. “On Greenville Avenue you can never tellwhat’sgonna happen. Man blew his own head off just a block and a half from here a few years ago.”
“Really?”
“Yessir, outside a bar called the Desert Rose. Over a woman, accourse. Don’t that figure?”
“I guess,” I said. “Although sometimes it’s politics.”
“Nah, nah, at the bottom it’s always a woman, son.”
I’d found a parking space four blocks west of the pawnshop, and in order to get back to my new (new to me, anyway) car, I had to pass Faith Financial, where I’d laid my bet on the Miracle Pirates in the fall of 1960. The sharpie who’d paid off my twelve hundred was standing out front, having a smoke. He was wearing his green eyeshade. His eyes passed over me, but seemingly without interest or recognition.
2
That was on a Friday afternoon, and I drove straight from Greenville Avenue to Killeen, where Sadie met me at the Candlewood Bungalows. We spent the night, as was our habit that winter. The next day she drove back to Jodie, where I joined her on Sunday for church. After the benediction, during the part where we shook hands with the people all around us, saying “Peace be with you,” my thoughts turned—not comfortably—to the gun now stowed in the trunk of my car.
Over the Sunday noon meal, Sadie asked: “How much longer? Until you do what you have to do?”
“If everything goes the way I hope, not much more than a month.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
I scrubbed my hands through my hair and went to the window. “Then I don’t know. Anything else on your mind?”
“Yes,” she said calmly. “There’s cherry cobbler for afters. Would you like whipped cream on yours?”
“Very much,” I said. “I love you, honey.”
“You better,” she said, getting up to fetch dessert. “Because I’m kind of out on a limb here.”
I stayed at the window. A car came rolling slowly down the street—an oldie but a goodie, as the jocks on K-Life said—and I felt that harmonic chime again. But I was always feeling it now, and sometimes it meant nothing. One of Christy’s AA slogans came to my mind: FEAR, standing forfalse evidence appearing real.
This time a click of association came, though. The car was a white-over-red Plymouth Fury, like the one I’d seen in the parking lot of the Worumbo mill, not far from the drying shed where the rabbit-hole into 1958 came out. I remembered touching the trunk to make sure it was real. This one had an Arkansas plate instead of a Maine one, but still… that chime. That harmonic chime.Sometimes I felt that if I knew what that chime meant, I’d know everything. Probably stupid, but true.
The Yellow Card Man knew,I thought.He knew and it killed him.
My latest harmonic signaled left, turned at the stop sign, and disappeared toward Main Street.
“Come eat dessert, you,” Sadie said from behind me, and I jumped.
The AAs say FEAR stands for something else, as well:Fuck everything and run.
3
When I got back to Neely Street that night, I put on the earphones and listened to the latest recording. I expected nothing but Russian, but this time I got English as well. And splashing sounds.
Marina: (Speaks Russian.)
Lee: “I can’t, Mama, I’m in the tub with Junie!”
(More splashing, and laughter—Lee’s and the baby’s high chortle.)
Lee: “Mama, we got water on the floor! Juniesplash!Badgirl!”
Marina: “Mop it up! I beezy!Beezy!” (But she is also laughing.)
Lee: “I can’t, you want the baby to…” (Russian.)
