In an hour he’d be expected at a volunteer job he had created for himself, running errands for an old widow named Jobeth Crabtree, who lived all alone on a ranch. She had been salty and suspicious at first, made him stand at a distance while she sized him up. When she found out Pastor Tom had sent him, she uttered a stiff apology and told him she wouldn’t pay a cent, but if he was doing the Lord’s work, she wouldn’t turn him away. How he hated the elderly, those walking corpses, all bones and liver spots and cloudy eyes.
Once he had ingratiated himself, she allowed him considerable access to her home. He sat with her on the porch and fluffed her pillows, brought her iced tea with mint when she got thirsty, and dosed her medicine, the print on the labels being too tiny for Jobeth to decipher. He read the Bible to her, fetched her groceries, fed her cats and a teacup Chihuahua named Churro. A few hours a week, he gave her his time and didn’t charge her for anything. Given all the value he was bringing to her, he thought it only fair to deduct a tiny tax for his troubles. For example, when he shopped for groceries, he added a few things for himself to the cart. He always offered her the receipt as a show of honesty, but she couldn’t make out the numbers. And while she napped in her easy chair he slipped a few bills from the stacks of cash she tucked under the linens, never enough to notice just by looking. This way she got to think he was there out of the goodness of his heart and for the pleasure of her company. Win-win.
Manny took in the molasses stink of the asphalt and began to walk. He would need wheels eventually, but for now didn’t mind the miles underfoot, the hellish heat. How long he had dreamed of stretching his legs like this, covering distance, when he was in prison. Free to roam, anonymous and safe. There he had jogged in place in his cell, working hard, going nowhere. A small corner of the yard, which was bare cement surrounded by thirty feet of fence and barbed wire, had been his only territory, and even those privileges were regularly stripped. They had tried to break him down, make him small. But here he was expanding. He was making his mark in this little town.
After he’d spent an hour or so doing odds and ends for Jobeth, Sandy picked him up and drove him to Kit’s, parking along the split-log fence outside her property. The wind picked up as the afternoon sun lurked behind the trees. Sandy stuffed her stale gum in the ashtray and replaced it with a fresh pink strip, then tucked her bare feet beneath her. As Manny looked at Kit’s house, he could feel Sandy looking at him.
“What do you know about those two?” he said, cranking down the window.
She pulled at her chewing gum and wrapped it around her finger. “They used to get along okay. Seems like they’ve been growing apart. That kind of thing happens to mother and daughter, I guess.”
“How do you figure?” Manny asked.
“Well, around the time a girl gets her cycle, I guess. Hormones and whatnot . . .” She tucked her chin with an embarrassed flush.
He leaned in, curious, played with the natty hem of her synthetic skirt.
Eager to help, she mustered a matter-of-fact tone and went on. “This is a small town, you know. And there aren’t a lot of men to go around. I know Miz Kit ain’t the dating type, but I think it’s just human nature for a lady to be jealous when there’s someone prettier and younger around.” She snatched a breath. “At least that’s when the trouble started with my mama. I wasn’t looking for it, swear to God.”
He looked at Sandy intently. She continued, seeming to know what he wanted.
“But I developed early, and her boyfriends . . . noticed me. I was still playing with dolls when my boobs came in. I didn’t care about men, not being with them. But she didn’t know that. She expected the worst of me. I guess I was flattered, maybe I egged ’em on. That’s right around the time she started using.” Sandy scratched a mosquito bite with a purple drugstore press-on nail.
“Manny?” She paused, as if unsure of whether to ask the question. “What is it that you see in her?” He didn’t like being baited. She probed. “She’s so rough and boyish. And, no offense, but it don’t seem like she’s interested.”
Manny lashed her with a look. “Oh, she’s more than interested. She’s bound to me. She puts up such a fight but inside, deep inside, she knows I’m all she ever needed.” He felt himself puff up with a righteous sort of feeling. “I’m the someone who sees the black thorns around her heart, who knows the wrong in her and likes her better that way. I’m the only one who won’t try to make her something she’s not.”
Sandy seemed to buckle under the load of his sentiment. Her eyes lost focus, her lips disappeared between her teeth. She began to pry the false nail from her thumb.
“Seems like a lot of work,” she said, petulantly.
“Work? The work is the reason. Once you stop having to work for it,” he said, “well, you might as well blow off your fucking head.”
Sandy seemed to take this in and changed tack. “She must mean an awful lot to you,” she said. “I forget you knew each other, back when.”
“We were a team,” Manny said, half-calmed by her approach. “She knows as well as I do that there’s no running from it.” Manny took Sandy’s sweaty hands in his and held them, felt her tug just slightly away. “See, Kit’s not a woman but a feral creature. She bites and scratches and draws blood. I saw that fierceness in her eyes the first day I met her. She and I took each other close to death and lived right there on the edge of it. We took a piss on the rules and lived free and wild like God made us. I never thought I needed anyone till I met her.”
Sandy gave him a bemused look, like she was lost in a maze groping for an opening. “I could do that for you, Manny.” She simpered. “I could make you bleed.” The words tumbled out of her mouth like foreign objects. Manny laughed and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.
“My dear, you’re much too sweet to do harm. You’re a flower, lovely, fragile.”
He got out of the car and closed the door. “Thanks for the ride,” he called, slapping the rear end of the Caprice. Tears in her eyes, she drove away.
Manny crossed the stagnant waters of the ditch and made his way to a thicket of pecan saplings overgrown with wild grapevines. Here he could sit and enjoy the shade and check on Kit. He wanted to be near her, to know her rhythms and her habits. Was she an early riser? When did she go to work? What did she like to eat? Then, a sickening thought. Were there men?
Chapter Twenty-Eight