Billy stood and removed the cigarette from his lips. “Damn it, Pops. Don’t you think I know my own damn dog?”
Emmet stared at him, then looked away.
Billy picked up his beer and tipped it back, the sharp knob of his throat working until the bottle was emptied.
“All right then,” he said. “Can you loan me a few bucks, Pops?”
“What for?”
“What for. So I don’t starve. All I got is eight bucks and a check I can’t cash till Monday.”
“Why didn’t you cash it before you come up here?”
“Because I didn’t, that’s why. Now can you loan a man a couple of bucks or can’t you?”
Emmet pulled his billfold from his hip pocket and adjusted his glasses to peer inside. “All I got is a twenty.”
“That’ll do.” Billy stashed the note in his shirt pocket and looked at the dog again where she’d resettled herself on the floor next to Grant. When he stared at her the dog pinned her ears.
He began tugging at the patch of hair under his lip.
“Well, Grant,” he said. “It’s good to see you again, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“Why would I mind?”
“Why would you mind?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you—?” He looked from Grant to Emmet, and back. “Because seeing you here means that that brother of mine still hasn’t found that daughter of yours, that’s why.”
Grant looked at the young man. Held his blue eyes. The first he’d known of Billy Kinney was in the mountains, in those early days when they lived in the motel—the sheriff stopping by one day to say he’d be gone for the day, driving down to Albuquerque. Angela staring at the sheriff with eyes that held only one concern, one question, always: What did he know? It’s nothing, said the sheriff, I gotta go get my little brother out of jail, be back as quick as I can. It had stunned them—the first time since they’d known him that the sheriff had not seemed to be entirely theirs, devoted exclusively to their needs. They could not object, they could not blame the sheriff, but neither could they bear it, this abandonment, because within it was the message that, in time, the investigation, the manpower, the reporters, the world, would all move on.
“God damn it, Billy,” Emmet said, leaning forward in his rocker, clutching the armrest with one hand. “What in the hell is the matter with you?”
“What? Nothing’s the matter with me. What’s the matter with you? I’m just trying to be friendly here.”
“Why don’t you go be friendly somewheres else?”
“Jesus Christ, I didn’t mean nothin. He knows that. Don’t you, Grant.”
Grant sipped his coffee. “We’ll see you later, Billy.”
Billy looked from one to the other and shook his head. He flicked his cigarette into the dirt and went nimbly down the steps. A moment later the El Camino roared and a red stain of taillights spread over the dirt at the corner of the house. The tailgate came briefly into view and then lunged forward, throwing up red fans of dirt. They heard the car progressing down the drive, heard it idling at the county road, revving throatily, but there was no squealing of tires, and after a few seconds the sound of it faded away altogether.
Across the way, over the doors of the machine shed, the automated farm light had come on, lighting up a scrim of grit in the air they could taste.
“I gotta say I’m sorry for that, Grant.”
“No you don’t, Em. I got a boy too. He’s just young.”
“He ain’t that young. And I’m too old. I was already old when we had him. I wonder if that’s why.” Emmet stared into his coffee. Grant stared out at the night. A bat dove blackly into the light to snatch a moth and wheeled away again. Soundless as a thought.
“I’ll say one more thing,” said the old man. “Though I know a man ain’t supposed to say such things aloud. But if it come down to just one of these boys coming home, yours or mine? I’d of voted for yours.”