Sixteen
A BANK OF COTTONWOOD fluff had drifted in against the river-rock foundation, and when Paul parked beside the cabin it huffed up in the headlights, skittering away into a brake of wild roses. He cut the engine, sitting quietly in the darkness, the sawing of crickets, the gentle exhale of the night winds feeling like an embrace.
He flipped his cell phone open, the face and number pad glowing amber in his hand. He’d turned the ringer off while he and Griff were at the drive-in, and there still weren’t any messages. He dialed and she answered on the first ring.
“Hey, baby.” It was her half-phony, half-seductive voice.
“This is Paul.”
“Well then, hey, baby brother.”
She laughed, and he could hear others laughing around her, the click of glassware against a faint background of conversation.
“Don’t you check your messages? I’ve been calling since this morning.”
“I sure wish I would’ve looked at my caller ID. Right now, for instance.”
“Most people wouldn’t admit that.”
“I’ve never for a minute thought I was like anybody else.” The background noise dimmed.
“Where are you?”
“I’m enjoying a cocktail.”
“Where?”
“At a lovely home in Seattle.”
“How lovely?”
“Very,” she said. “The poor can’t afford enlightenment.”
“You want to tell me why you shipped Kenneth south?”
“He wasn’t shipped anywhere. He’s with his father.”
“I know where he is, and as far as fathering goes, Rodney’s just a guy you met at a powwow in Lodge Grass twelve years ago.” He heard the sizzle and buzz of rainfall. “You drinking outside?”
“I am now. How did dear McEban take it? When Rodney showed up with the papers, I mean?”
“He absorbed the blow.”
“The Guides thought it was best.”
“It’s me, Rita. You don’t have to act like you believe your own bullshit.”
“I believe if you were more in touch with your higher self, this is something you’d understand.”
“What I understand is that Rodney got a wild hair up his ass and decided he wanted to play father for a month.”
“The man has his own children.”
“So, this was your idea?”
“Mrs. Rodney thought it was a good idea too. After I explained the situation to her.”
“Jesus Christ, Rita.”
“Her name’s Claire. Unlike you she’s a person of deep compassion.”
He could hear the hiss of a car passing in the street. “I can’t believe you did this to your own kid.”
“Mostly it’s important for Rodney. Growth-wise, that is.”
“Why don’t you just say you wanted to punish him for knocking you up.”
“I was never meant to bear a child. I don’t have the hips for it, or the temperament.”
“Really?”
“Bye now,” she said.
He snapped the phone shut, tossing it on the dash and sliding the seat back. He thought he’d sit just long enough to allow the sound of her voice to drain out of his mind, but he didn’t want to be out here all night, and the kitchen lights were still on at McEban’s.
He stepped up onto the porch and looked in through the window. The aluminum shelving from the refrigerator was tilting out of the sink, the countertops stacked with dishes. He let the door slam coming in and stood in the mudroom. McEban was on his knees on the floor. He’d stripped off his T-shirt, his pale torso as thickly muscled as an ape’s.
He sat back on his heels. “How was the village?”
“Hopping.”
“Were they showing anything good at the movies?” There was a bucket of soapy water at his side.
“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
“Jimmy Stewart was in that, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah, he was. They’re going to play an old Western one day every week all summer long. Mostly for the tourists, I guess. Will you go to bed if I help you?”
McEban looked around as though gauging the amount of work left. “I think I would.”
“You wouldn’t sneak back down and start another project?”
“I believe I’d be satisfied along those lines.”
He bent to the floor again, and Paul slipped his shoes off, tiptoed across the worn linoleum and pulled a rag from a box full of them underneath the sink. His eyes watered from the stink of the cleaning solution.
“I’m going to Africa,” he said.
McEban quit scrubbing, still hunched forward on his hands and knees, his back wet as the floor, sweat dripping from his nose. He sat back again, drawing an arm across his face. “Where to in Africa?”
“Uganda. For an NGO.”
“Good for you.”
“You know what NGO stands for?”
“Nongovernmental organization.” He reached out to wipe a spot he’d missed. “I don’t know why I know that, but I do. You going to be gone for the rest of your life?”
“For a year.”
McEban slipped a can of Copenhagen from a back pocket, pinched out a dab and settled it in his lip. “Do you think the boy’s all right?”
“I think he’d have called if he wasn’t.”
“I’m worried he’ll feel miserable and just hang on until he can’t stand it anymore.”
“Like you would.”
“Yeah, like that.” He took a cloth out of the bucket, wrung it out and wiped off his face and chest, then dropped it back in the bucket.
“I miss him too,” Paul said.
McEban got up and stepped to the sink, pulled the shelving out and emptied the bucket. “Maybe Kenneth and I’ll go see a movie when he gets home. I guess he’d like anything with horses in it.” He was rinsing the bucket with the spray nozzle.
“I hope you’re not taking it personally, but she doesn’t give a f*ck about anybody.”
McEban shut the water off, turning the bucket upside down in the basin. “If you mean Rita you ought to say her name.”
“Who else would I mean?”
McEban was watching a miller moth circling the light over the sink. His hands and face were so darkly tanned it looked like those parts of him came from another race.
“Is Griff going with you?”
“I don’t think so. What’ll you do if Kenneth grows up like me? Takes off for some other continent?”
He was remembering nights as a boy, waking from a bad dream, and McEban coming in and lying down next to him, holding him until he got back to sleep. He used to wonder if the man sat up at night just waiting to help.
“He told me the other day he’d like to keep on here.”
“Isn’t that what I said when I was his age?”
“I guess, when I’ve thought about it, I thought he might stick around. Maybe until I died.” He started stacking the plates back into the cupboard.
“You know that’s f*cked up, don’t you?”
“Not entirely I don’t. You ought to take the digital camera with you, send back some pictures.” He smiled, the tendons standing out in his neck, his ears lifting slightly. “Maybe one of Lake Victoria if you got down there.”
He lifted the bucket out of the sink and the strainer basket out of the drain, spitting a stream of tobacco juice against the porcelain and then running water over it. “You think you’re going to be okay without Griff?”
“I don’t know.”
The moth fluttered against McEban’s neck and he snatched it out of the air, held it for a moment loosely in his fist and then threw it hard against a cupboard door, and it fell quivering on the countertop. “I hate those little sons of bitches.”
“Especially when they fly around your ears.”
They could hear the horses moving in the pasture outside the window.
“I’m scared shitless.” Paul pinched the moth up by a wing and dropped it in the disposal side of the sink. “I guess I came up here tonight to say something about that.”
“You mean generally?”
“No, I mean when Griff and I start fighting about something.”
McEban wet a paper towel, wiping the gray smudge off the cupboard. “I used to feel like that sometimes.”
“Should you have said ‘Rita’?”
“Before her. There was a woman I cared about who lives in Nebraska now.”
A horse snorted, and then another, and they could hear them pounding away toward the far end of the pasture.
“Then it goes away? Feeling like this?”
“Yeah, it does. But you miss it.”