Those two things were not mutually exclusive.
“Y’all have a good evening,” Titus said.
* * *
When he pulled into his yard, Darlene’s two-door hatchback was sitting next to his father’s truck and Titus’s off-duty vehicle, a Jeep Wagoneer. Titus parked the SUV and walked over to Darlene’s car and touched the hood. It was still warm.
He walked into the house.
Albert and Darlene were in the kitchen. Albert was sitting at the table like he’d been that morning. Darlene was sitting across from him in the chair that Titus usually occupied. They both had a container of Chinese food in front of them.
“Boy, you don’t know how to use a phone?” Albert growled. He got up from his chair, limped over to Titus, and grabbed him in a vise-like embrace. Why had he ever thought his father had given in to infirmity? Albert was squeezing the air from his lungs like he was trying to pop a balloon.
“I heard about the shooting on the news. I was scared something had happened to you, big head,” Albert mumbled into his neck. The bristles of his father’s beard rubbed against his bare cheek. The sensation took him back to his childhood. Another hug, another prickly sensation, but this hug came with the scent of whiskey. Sharp and pungent as green isopropyl rubbing alcohol. His father taking him into his arms as they lowered his mother into the cold ground.
Titus hugged him back with his free arm. He was carrying the bag with the food in it in the other.
“I ain’t going nowhere, old man,” Titus said. His father gave him one more squeeze before releasing him. When he stepped back Titus saw him pass his hands over his eyes. He made his tears disappear like a magic trick.
“You okay?” Albert asked.
“I’m all right,” Titus said. His mind played him images of what Jeff Spearman had on his phone and made his statement a lie.
Darlene stood up from the table and moved past Albert to encircle him in her arms. She was shorter than his daddy and her head came to rest on his chest.
“I hate this. Every day I’m so scared something is going to happen to you,” Darlene said. She hugged him, and Titus hugged her back. Titus respected her honesty. Darlene didn’t pretend that his job was normal. She never denied that it made her anxious. She spoke about her concerns often and yet she never asked him to choose between her and the badge. She was able to separate her fears from his needs. He knew that was a quality as rare as hen’s teeth and it was one of the reasons he found himself still falling in love with her.
“I know. But I’m here and I’m okay,” Titus said.
“I got you food. I didn’t know you were going by Gilby’s,” Darlene said. Titus frowned. He should have called her back.
Albert coughed. “I think I’m gonna take my food upstairs. Let you young’uns have time to yourselves.”
“Pop, you ain’t gotta go nowhere,” Titus said.
“Eh, I’m tired anyway. I went out to the garden and fooled around with those collard greens and snow peas. There’s a rabbit eating them damn carrots like Bugs Bunny, so me and Gene put up some chicken wire. Took more out of me than I thought. Don’t ever get old, boy,” Albert said. He and Gene Dixon ran the church’s community garden. The garden itself was carved out of a plot of land across the road from Emmanuel. The church gave away most of the vegetables to the county Social Services Department. His dad had taken up gardening in place of his carousing and drinking after his mother had passed. After he and Marquis moved out, he’d volunteered his skills to the church. He used to give some of his bounty to Gilby until one day he stopped.
Titus was fairly certain his father and Gilby had once been involved. If pressed, he would have guessed it started around his junior year in high school and had ended around his sophomore year in college. She’d never been over to the house, but his father had spent a lot of time at the diner.
Gilby had started coming to Emmanuel around Thanksgiving of his junior year, even though she was a member of Calvary Baptist Church. That Christmas his father took them to Gilby’s for dinner. Titus didn’t begrudge his father’s need for companionship. He hadn’t liked it, but he didn’t begrudge it. He never thought his father was trying to replace his mother.
Marquis never stepped foot in Gilby’s again after that Christmas dinner.
“You sure, Pop? You don’t have to go,” Titus said over Darlene’s shoulder. His father smiled at him.
“Yeah, I’m sure. You take care of him, now. He think he ten feet tall and bulletproof,” Albert said to Darlene.
“I always take good care of him, Mr. Crown,” Darlene said. Both she and Titus were over thirty, but these moments with his father always made him feel like they were teenagers again. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sensation. There was comfort in nostalgia, however fleeting it was.
“I know that, darling. Just keeping you on your toes. Good night, y’all,” Albert said. They watched him shuffle upstairs with his beef and fried rice. Darlene stood on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on Titus’s lips.
“He was so worried about you I thought he was going to pass out,” Darlene said.
“And you weren’t?” Titus said. He hugged her again.
“Of course I was, but I had to stay strong for him. Now give me that bag and sit down. I’ll make your plate,” Darlene said.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to. Go change. I’ll meet you back in the living room in five minutes,” Darlene said. Titus handed over the bag without any further protest. He went upstairs and changed out of his uniform and into a pair of gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt. He came back downstairs in his bare feet, savoring the coolness of the laminate flooring that extended from the kitchen to the living room.
He sat on the couch, laid his head back, and closed his eyes.
“Don’t fall asleep before you eat, Smokey,” Darlene said. He snapped his eyes open and took the plate from her hands. She also handed him a beer from the fridge. His father didn’t really drink anymore, but he didn’t mind Titus having beer in the house. He twisted the cap and took a long swig while balancing his plate on his lap.
She sat down next to him and watched him eat. He glanced at her as she stared at him. Her wide eyes took him in, studied him, saw him through the prism of adulation. He teased her that she had anime character eyes. Her skin was a deep dark brown as smooth as fresh ice on a mountain lake. Her hair was cut short in the back and piled in curls on the top of her head. In the past few months, she had started going natural, eschewing chemical relaxers for more organic hair products. Titus thought his mother would be skeptical of Darlene’s new hair care regimen. Helen Crown had been devoted to her Dark & Lovely relaxers.
He took another long sip of his beer and finished it off. She took the bottle from him with her left hand and carried it to the trash can in the kitchen. She told him she was born right-handed, but after an accident at her mother’s flower shop that took the tip of her little finger, she used both hands equally. Titus had his suspicions about the flower shop accident story. The last time he’d talked to Marquis, his brother had told him word around the county was Darlene’s ex had slammed her hand in a car door.
Titus didn’t press the issue. Part of him wanted to believe Darlene’s story. That way he wouldn’t be tempted to find the ex. She only talked about him in vague anecdotes, but he knew it wouldn’t be hard to get a name from her. It wouldn’t be difficult to pull his record. It would be barely an inconvenience to find his address and pay him a visit.
It would probably be immensely satisfying to pay him a visit.
But Darlene had never given him any indication that was what she wanted. She stuck to her story about a mishap with a sharp pair of shears and he allowed himself to believe it even though she never looked him in the eye when she talked about it.
A tapping erupted against the living room window and they both jumped. A large horned owl was sitting on the windowsill. Titus felt a chill run through him. His granddaddy—who used to regale him and Marquis with murderous historical lessons about Charon County—was a repository of folkloric legends and used to tell him owls were harbingers of doom. Titus didn’t believe in superstition any more than he believed in the wizard in the sky, but seeing the owl staring at them through the window with its silver-dollar-sized eyes made him think of dark portents and ill winds. Titus stomped his foot. The owl extended its wings, then took off in a silent explosion of power.
“Well, that was creepy,” Darlene said.
“Yeah. I think he’s after the squirrels in the backyard,” Titus said. He ate a forkful of succotash.