The highway bellied out into a wide avenue that was the main street, and the kid turned down a side street a few blocks before he reached it. The houses were small, tar-papered or sided with crumbling wood, and most times there was sheeted plastic in the windows and dead automobiles in the twitch grass of the yards. There was woodsmoke and the greasy smell of cooking. Large dogs on chains raced out to bark and growl, and he had to ease the horse forward up the street. At the far end was the farm where he liveried the horse. It wasn’t much. Five acres tucked against the sprawl of the town on one side and the jutted wall of mountain on the other. They had a pair of ponies, a jackass, a goat, and a few chickens that all bedded down in the same slumped, dilapidated barn. But the oats were good and they kept the straw fresh and they were half-breeds who’d known the old man for decades and they fed him and seemed to understand his quiet ways and let the kid be whenever he arrived. There
was no one around so he unsaddled the horse and brushed her out and left her with oats and hay and made his way back down the street toward the heart of the town.
It was evening. Purple. The autumn chill was in the air and he could smell the frost coming and the rain that would follow sometime the next day. He could hear the clink and rattle of families settling in to their evening meals and there were kid sounds at the back of most of the houses and the dogs hunkered down near the front doors and raised their hackles and growled at him as he passed. His boots scrunched on the loose gravel of the asphalt. He rolled a smoke while he walked and traded solemn nods with men standing in their yards, smoking and drinking beer out of bottles. They were hard-looking men, grease-stained, callused with the lean, prowling hungry look of feral dogs, but his size and his tattered look let them take him for one of them and they let him pass without speaking. He smoked and squinted at the jutted angles of the town. When he got to the highway again he picked up his pace and strode purposefully to the main street, where the lights glimmered in the evening haze. He made his way lower, past the shops and mercantiles into the greyer, seedier area near the river where the grim bars and honkytonks were alive with the clatter of glasses, shouts, curses, laughter, and the smoke and sawdust smell that hovered just above the blood and piss and semen of the alleys and muddied parking lots. He wrinkled his nose at it and walked on harder, looking at no one and giving no sign of indecisiveness. There was a row of rooming houses farther down that backed onto the riverbank where mill workers and itinerant drunks and fugitives stayed and it was where he knew he’d find his father. The houses sat in the gathering dark, dim and unwelcoming, and when he came to
a slatternly woman weaving drunkenly along the sidewalk he stepped to one side to let her by.
“Eldon Starlight? You know him?” he asked her.
“Got a smoke?” she said in return.
“Only rollies.”
“Smoke’s a smoke.”
He took his makings from his pocket and twisted a smoke while she watched and licked at the corners of her lips. When he handed it to her she reached out a hand and leaned on his shoulder and the fumes off her were sharp and acidic. She motioned for a light and he sparked a match and held it up for her and she put a hand demurely on his and winked at him while she took the first draw. She kept her hand on his until he had to pull it away. She eyed him lazily while she smoked and he felt awkward.
“You’re a big one, aren’t you?” she said.
“Eldon Starlight?” he said again.
She laughed. “Twinkles? What do you want with that old lech?”
“I need to find him.”
“Finding him ain’t never hard, darlin’. Standing him more’n an hour’s the trick.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“If he ain’t passed out drunk out back of Charlie’s, he’s second room on the right, third floor, third house down. But I’m way better company than old Twinkles and I like ’em young and big like you. Come on. Let old Shirl show you a good time.”
“Thank you,” he said and stepped back onto the sidewalk and turned to walk away.
“Suit yourself,” she said. “Indian.”
THE HOUSE LEANED BACK TOWARD THE SHORE
so that in the encroaching dark it seemed to hover there as though deciding whether to continue hugging land or to simply shrug and surrender itself to the steel-grey muscle of the river. It was a three-storey clapboard and there were pieces of shingle strewn about the yard amid shattered windowpanes and boots and odd bits of clothing and yellowed newspapers that the wind pressed to the chicken-wire fence at its perimeter. There were men on the front verandah and as the kid climbed the steps that led to it they stopped their chatter and watched him. He tried the door but it was locked and when he turned, three of them stood up and faced him.
“Eldon Starlight,” he said evenly.
“Who the hell are you?” the tallest one asked and spit tobacco juice at the kid’s feet.
“Franklin,” he said. “Starlight.”
“You his kid?” the one beside the tall one asked. He had a lazy eye and it made the kid check over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” the kid said.
“Never knew Twinkles had a kid,” the tall one said.
“Neither’d Twinkles,” a fat one said from behind them and they all laughed.
“Hell, kid, have a drink,” the tall one said and motioned for him to lean against the verandah rail.
“No,” the kid said. “Thanks, but no.”
“Damn. Polite and he don’t drink. Can’t be Twinkles’ kid,” the fat one said, and they laughed again.
The kid watched while they passed a gallon jug of wine
around and when they’d all had a drink the fat one sat forward on the lawn chair he occupied and took a draw on his smoke. He breathed it out in a long stream and scratched at his chin with a big-knuckled hand.
“What brings you here, kid?” he asked.
“I’m aiming to see him.”
“He ain’t right.”
“I heard.”
“Not all of it, you didn’t.”
“Guess I’ll see.”
“I guess. But just so you know.”
“I heard,” the kid said.
The fat one rose and waddled to the door. He was tall but equally rotund and the boards of the verandah sagged and creaked with the weight of him. When the kid stepped to pass he blocked the kid’s view of the street. He had a sour smell of old tobacco, stale whisky, and unwashed feet. The kid moved back a step and the man grinned.
“You get used to it,” he said.
“Don’t expect to.”
“Your pap’s no better.”
The fat one unlocked the door and pushed it open with one wide arm and held it for the kid, who looked at him and nodded. The man nodded back and when he eased the door closed behind him he farted, loud and wet, and the men on the verandah laughed and the kid strode quickly to the shabby stairs across the small foyer. He stood there a moment and looked around. It was drab. There were low lights in the ceilings and they served only to add a level of shadow to the murk of the decor. The walls were panelled a cheap laminate brown and the threadbare carpets had faded from pumpkin
to a sad, mouldy orange and the newel of the staircase was split and cracked. He could smell cooking and hear the jump of fat in a fry pan. Spiderwebs. Dust. An old cat slunk out of the corner and eyed him warily, and when he turned to the stairs it hissed and arched its back and the kid shook his head at it and began to climb.
There were men sounds coming from every room. Belches, curses. The pale blue light of televisions seeped through the cracks of half-closed doors and it gave his movements a spooky, out-of-time feel. He could hear a man’s raised voice. It was something addressed to a woman and the kid was embarrassed to hear it and when he came around the corner he tried to creep by but the door was open and the man who spoke turned to look at him. He kept rambling loudly. He stared straight at the kid and his eyes were crazed and the bush of his beard was mottled with tobacco and he had no teeth so the words were garbled some and crazy-sounding. As the kid eased past he saw into the room and there was no one else there. The man laughed suddenly, sharp like a bark, and he stood and shook his fist at the kid and stepped forward to slam the door.
He came to his father’s room. The door was shut. Across the hall a tall, skinny man stood at a hotplate, turning baloney in a fry pan. He looked at the kid flatly and eased a foot up and pushed the door closed. The kid pressed an ear to his father’s door. He could hear murmuring voices and for a moment he thought it was a television or a radio but there was a guttural laugh and then a woman’s voice and the glassy thunk of a bottle set hard on the floor and the complaint of
bed springs. He knocked. Silence. He heard whispers and scurried movements.
“Well, come in, dammit.”
The kid turned the knob and eased the door open. The room was bare except for a dresser, a wooden chair, and the bed, where his father lay with a woman leaned against his chest. There were empty bottles lined along the dresser mirror. Clothes had been flung and were scattered every which way along with empty fast-food boxes and old newspapers. There wasn’t a square foot of open floor in the entire room. The closet door dangled off its hinges and there were tools hung on nails and piled on the shelf. Saws, hammers, wrenches, a chainsaw, a rake and a shovel, and looped yards of electric cable. There was an old bicycle sitting up against the far wall partially disassembled with the wires and gears of it strewn around the back wheel and a rusted scythe with its hook bent up to the ceiling. The hot plate was crusted with grease and dribbles, and a coffee can overflowed with butts and ashes and a few jelly jars stuffed full of the same. A black-and-white television was tuned to a snowy channel. The man in the bed just stared at him and the woman eased her chin down and looked at the kid through the top of her eyes and batted her eyelashes.
“Well?” the man asked and raised a bottle to his mouth.
“I’m Franklin,” the kid said.
“Jesus,” was all he said and took another pull at the bottle. “Got big, didn’t ya?”
His father’s face was slack, the skin hanging off the bones like a loose tent, and there were lines and creases deep with shadow. There was stubble on his chin. His hair was weedy, gone to grey, and curled at his neckline, with bangs combed
over one eye. He grinned and the teeth that remained were stained and crooked. When he raised an arm to wave him in it was rail-thin, the bones of it stuck out jarringly, the hand large with long, splayed fingers that told of the size he once owned, gone now to a desiccated boniness. But the eyes burned. They sat behind the twin fists of cheekbones hard and bright as marbles, and the kid was struck by the coyote amber of them, going to hazel but wild, intent, and suspicious. He stepped into the room, kicked a sweater out of the way, and shut the door behind him.
“The old man said I should come,” he said.
“Grab a chair,” his father said and pointed.
The kid pulled the chair away from the wall. He spun it and sat with his arms folded across the back of it, looking at his father and the woman.
“Drink?”
“Got no use for it.”
“Smoke?”
“Got makin’s.”
“These are tailor-mades.”
“Makin’s smoke better.”
His father laughed. It came out raspy and hoarse and he coughed a few times and the woman laid a hand on his chest and looked at him, worried and protective. The cough eased and his father leaned up on one elbow and pushed himself higher in the bed and looked at the kid.
“This here’s Deirdre,” he said, hooking a thumb toward the woman. “She’s a whore.”
The woman slapped playfully at him and blinked at the kid girlishly and it turned his stomach some. She pushed herself up in the bed to sit beside his father, smoothed down her
lank blond hair and raised the bottle to her mouth, and the sheet tumbled down so that her breasts bobbed openly and the kid felt himself stiffen and blush.
“You could have some. She’s okay with it.”
“Thanks. No.” the kid said.
“Go on. It’s free.”
“Not havin’ to pay don’t make it free.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I will.”
They looked at each other and the woman eased the sheet up. They could hear the raving man down the hall and the sound of someone’s radio playing an old country waltz. The room was directly over the verandah and he heard one of the men shout at someone passing in the street and a woman’s voice let go a string of curses and the men laughed and hooted.
“Well, I’m here,” the kid said.
“I can see ya.”
“So? What is it you got to say?”
“I gotta have a whattaya call … agenda?”
He shook a cigarette loose from the pack behind his pillow and lit it and blew a series of smoke rings and then raised the bottle to his face and drank. The kid waited.
“Don’t like me much, I guess,” he said and set the bottle on the floor.
“Don’t know you much is all,” the kid said.
“I’m your dad.”
The kid looked at him blandly. He took out his makings and rolled a smoke while his father and the woman watched. He lit up with a wooden match and when he blew it out he stuck it in one of the jelly jars filled with butts and ash. “Just a word to me,” he said.
“We gotta talk, and I don’t aim to do it here.”
“Where then?”
“You hungry?”
“I could eat.”
His father prodded the woman with an elbow and she shrugged and pushed the sheet back and slipped her legs over the side of the bed. She was thin but her breasts were full and bobbed when she moved and the kid kept his eyes on her. She caught him looking and winked. Then she stood and turned to face him and stretched full out and he took another long draw on the smoke. She bent to retrieve her clothes and began to dress. His father slid out of bed and the kid could see the gauntness of him, his buttocks like small lumps of dough and the rest of him all juts and pokes and seams of bone under sallow skin. He watched him dress and finished the smoke and the woman took another jolt out of the bottle and walked to the door.
“Later?” she asked.
“Not likely,” his father said.
She looked at him and the kid thought she was going to say something more but she just nodded and opened the door and stepped out and shut it quietly behind her. He could hear her move down the hallway. The raving man stopped suddenly then started up again once she’d passed, and he could hear the clunk of her steps on the rickety stairs.