But as the streets had filled and the parade began, Albert found himself forlorn, as if his own disappointment would suffocate him if he didn’t do something. He ate two hot dogs all-the-way and a candied apple covered in peanuts, but none of it made him feel any better.
“You didn’t miss a damn thing not going to the war,” Tom said during the ride back to Gastonia after the parade. The setting sun bronzed the waters of the Catawba River as they crossed the bridge into Gaston County. “All I did in France was drink and whore, and hell, you can do that here in Gastonia.” He laughed, looked over at Albert, slapped him on the leg. “Shit, Roach,” he said. “Come on. You need to liven up. Let’s find you a drink or a girl, one.”
Albert turned and looked at Tom. Tom had his window rolled down and the sunlight poured across his face. At forty-four he was two years older than Albert, but he was also taller, thinner, and had all of his hair, and his wife was pretty and petite, with a sweet voice. Although Albert had only met the woman on a handful of occasions, she did not seem like the kind of woman who would yell or hold a grudge. Albert pictured his own wife, Eugenia, at home, sitting at the small, greasy table in the too-warm kitchen, an apron tied tight around her neck and waist, her breasts and stomach pushing against it. In the next room, little Cicely screamed from her crib. He wasn’t ready to go back there after having what should have been a grand afternoon.
“Let’s get that drink,” Albert said. Tom looked over at him and smiled. “Maybe find a woman too.”
“Now you’re talking,” Tom said.
Miss Grady Moore’s tavern was just a few miles south of the bridge over the Catawba, an old house in a thicket of woods that could not be seen from the road, but everyone knew it was there, the law included. That’s how Albert and Tom knew how to find it. They were welcomed not as officers of the Gastonia Police Department, but as mere citizens who needed to unwind.
Albert followed Tom through the front door and into a room off the kitchen whose windows had been covered over on the outside with pine boards. It was dark and musty; an old Edison phonograph in the corner spun a tinny, whiny song. They took a table by the dusty fireplace. Several other tables sat scattered around the room, mismatched and broken chairs pushed up under them. Naked bulbs hung overhead. A man and a woman drank and talked quietly at a table in the corner. The man had pulled his bowler hat low over his eyes. The couple didn’t look up when Albert and Tom entered, so Albert didn’t look their way after he’d taken a seat.
But Tom looked around as if he’d just walked into his own home. He nodded at the man and woman who sat and whispered to one another. Neither of them seemed to notice him.
“Turn that music up,” Tom said to no one in particular. He leaned back in his chair and rapped his knuckles on the tabletop. “Where’s my mistress?” he called. “Is she here? Is she near?”
Albert slipped his hands into his pockets, felt the holstered pistol jostle beneath his jacket. He watched Tom, waited to see what he’d do next. A rusty tin plate half-full of unshelled peanuts sat in the middle of the table. Albert grabbed a handful.
Lights burned in the kitchen. Albert could hear the sound of feet moving across the gritty floorboards. A woman appeared, her long brown hair pulled into a nest atop her head. She wore a long, dark shift that fell past her ankles and a dirty white apron that covered the front of her dress. She wasn’t old, but when she smiled at Tom her smile revealed wrinkles and missing teeth.
She carried a tray with a jug and two glasses sitting atop it. She sat the tray on the table and divvied out the glasses and placed the jug in between them. Tom put his arm around the woman’s waist and pulled her to him so that she half-sat on his lap. He nuzzled his head against her breasts.
“What do we have here?” he asked.
The woman let the tray dangle at her side. She put her free arm around Tom’s shoulder.
“Cherry wine,” she said. “Sweet and strong, like me.” Her laugh was more of a cackle. Tom laughed too, squeezed her around the waist, rubbed his face against her breasts again.
“Speaking of cherries,” he said. He nodded across the table at Albert. “My pal here’s looking for a girl. You know any that might be free tonight?”
“If you looking for cherries you done come to the wrong place.” She cackled again, coughed into the crook of her arm. “Ain’t none free neither.”
“You know what I mean,” Tom said. “Any girls?”
The woman leaned back and craned her neck and looked toward the kitchen.
“Ain’t nobody here but me,” she said. “Me and James, and I got him out in the woodpile. Might be some girls here later tonight, but right now it’s just me.”
Tom uncorked the jug and poured a drink for Albert and then himself. Albert watched him pick up his glass and knock it back in one big swallow. He coughed.
“That’s sweet,” Tom said.
Tom looked toward the kitchen, then turned his face up to the woman who still sat on his lap.
“I probably need to get into that kitchen while it’s empty,” he said. “As an officer of the law I need to inspect it for sanitary purposes. Make sure the pipes work, make sure anything that might be wet is supposed to be wet.”
“Are you qualified for that kind of work?” she asked. Albert was drunk, but not too drunk to know that most women would blush under that kind of talk; yet this girl didn’t seem the least bit bothered.
“More qualified than you could ever imagine,” Tom said.
The woman slid off Tom’s lap and took his hand and pulled him to his feet. She turned to the couple at the table behind her.
“Y’all need anything right now?”
The man didn’t look up, but the woman with him whispered something that must have meant no. Albert watched as Tom followed the woman into the kitchen. He listened as their feet moved across the floor. Then he heard something else: the rhythmic sound of someone chopping wood outside.
He filled his glass again, knocked it back. He fished a cigarette from a crumpled pack and lit it. He smoked, tapped his ashes into the plate of peanuts. It was nice to be drunk like this, so much of the night still left. He wanted to talk to someone about something, anything.
He resolved that when Tom came back, he’d tell him what was on his mind. He’d tell him that he’d been feeling blue about not ever doing anything great with his life. Sure, Tom may have drunk and whored his way across France the same way he’d done it across Gaston County, but at least he could say he’d been to war, and by God, that meant something. Albert wanted to do something great, wanted to believe that greatness awaited him, but he couldn’t imagine what it would be or where he would find it.