Rock of Ages (15 page)

As opposed, Georgia is sure she is thinking, to the mean asshole who keeps busting my chops every time I do something wrong around here.

Just then, Georgia detects a flash of movement and turns to the window to see Kenny's car coming down the road.

“Oh, good,” she says, glad for the excuse. “Kenny's home. I wanted to go over and talk to him about last night.”

They haven't mentioned it until now. Georgia finds that it embarrasses her, makes her blame herself for somehow letting such ugliness burst into their lives. Justin, she's sure, feels the same helplessness she does in the face of such black and unassailable rage.

She goes to get her coat, telling them she will be back in a few minutes.

“Want us to come with you?” Justin asks.

“No, that's OK. You all can just, ah, practice making biscuits or something.”

She doesn't know why she said that, and she leaves before anyone can accuse her of meanness or sarcasm.

Kenny is getting ready to wash his car, an old Nissan that seems not to fit what Georgia imagines as his mid-life single-male lifestyle.

“Hi,” she says, coming up behind him as he is bending to turn the hose on. “I called earlier, but you weren't here.”

He turns and nods, squinting into the afternoon sun. He shuts the water off again and wipes his hands on the sides of his jeans. He is still a handsome man, Georgia thinks, really seeing him now. Her image of him, imprinted long ago, seems to need updating. There is more substance there, or maybe it was there all along and she didn't notice. It helps that he talks occasionally now and seems more comfortable in her presence. She used to think that she scared him, and he certainly disconcerted her.

She is relatively certain that Kenny is her never-known half-brother's son, issue of Littlejohn McCain and the dark and beautiful Rose Lockamy Locklear. Despite this, she wonders if she hasn't consigned him, all this time, to the general subset of “Lumbee,” as if he were of a different species altogether.

He is tan and fit from making his living at least partially with his muscles, but he isn't worn out the way Georgia remembers the old-time farmers, who worked like the mules with which they ploughed and were heavy on sweat, light on knowledge. Any of the latter that had come from books instead of being passed on, right or wrong, from father to son was viewed with scepticism.

He offers no explanation for his absence today.

“I figured maybe you just had a hot date last night and didn't make it home,” she says, trying to make it into a joke.

He shakes his head.

“I had a hot date all right,” he says. “Tommy.”

She knew that he had custody of the boy one day a week, plus two weeks in the summer, when they go on vacation together. She's never seen Tommy, though, and tends to forget that Kenny has a son. All she knows about him is that he is supposed to have some kind of developmental problem.

Kenny usually likes to make his day with his son either Saturday or Sunday. The boy is inside now, watching television.

“Why don't you ever bring him over to see us?” she asks. “I'd love to meet him.”

“Maybe I will sometime,” Kenny says. “Maybe I will.”

Georgia thanks him again for saving her, thinking as she says it what an old-fashioned, non-feminist notion that is. Nevertheless, he did. So there.

“I've got something I want you to have,” he tells her, a hesitant tone in his voice. “I hope you won't just dismiss it out of hand.”

He goes to the trunk and brings it out, so small it might be a child's toy, ready to squirt water on her. He hands it to Georgia, who has never held a gun before. She stares at it and wants to hand it back but is afraid of offending Kenny.

“I know it's not your style,” he says, holding his hands up to ward off the argument, “and everything will probably just smooth over, water over the dam. But it's never a bad idea just to have one around.”

He tells her it's called a Ladysmith, chauvinistically small, tiny enough to fit into a purse. It only weighs about a pound and a half empty, he tells her, but it feels heavier, as if its serious intent adds to its bulk.

“I … I can't,” she says, thinking what a betrayal this would be of every word she's ever uttered or written against an out-of-control gun culture. “I'd probably wind up shooting myself.”

“Bull,” he says, and, taking the gun from her, motions her to come with him.

Across the collard patch behind the barn is a lone pine tree, and on the tree is a target. Georgia has heard what she thought were gunshots occasionally across the field, and she guesses, from the Swiss-cheese condition of the paper, that this is where they came from.

He gives her the gun. His hands are rough but warm.

“Now, just aim it. Take in a breath, then let it halfway out, and pull.”

She does it, with him helping steady her arms from behind. She closes her eyes in anticipation of the sound, which is not as loud as she had feared. She is surprised that there is not more kick. She has actually, Kenny tells her, hit the edge of the target 30 feet away.

“You'd be using this a lot closer than that if—God forbid—you ever had to,” he tells her. “Here. Try again.”

She shoots at the target 20 times and is ashamed at how good, how empowered she feels. When she has used up what ammunition Kenny brought with him, she tries to give it back again.

“Nope. It's yours.”

She doesn't argue, for now.

“Well, what do I owe you?”

“You don't owe me anything. A man owed
me
something, and I had him pay me back.”

He shows her how to load it.

“Eight rounds, no safety. Just keep pulling the trigger. And don't worry. It won't go off if you drop it or something.”

She can imagine the small, serious piece of metal falling to the floor and discharging as she reaches for her offering money at church.

“I'm never going to use this,” she tells him.

“You already have. Just remember how easy it is, for better or worse. Bad things don't always happen, Georgia, but they can happen, and it doesn't hurt to be prepared.”

“Like a Boy Scout.”

“Yeah. Right.”

She asks him if she can talk to him about Pooh, and about Jenny McLaurin's ring.

He frowns but says sure, tell me about Jenny McLaurin's ring.

She puts the little gun, no heavier than a small flashlight, in her purse, and feels changed by its weight.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

November 16

Kenny's pickup almost never touches asphalt, seldom leaves the clay road and dirt paths of the farm. Georgia suggested taking it, because it would arouse less suspicion than the Nissan he usually drives.

“You've been watching too many
Magnum
reruns,” he told her before they left. “I mean, we're just going to drive up there, right? We're not trying to sneak up on anybody.”

But he does indulge her.

She's instructed him to pull off the state highway, alongside the Campbell and Cool Spring railroad tracks. They are no more than a couple of hundred feet from the driveway to the late Jenny McLaurin's home. The yard looks neglected, especially compared with Forsythia Crumpler's next door. Georgia notices that no one has taken “The McLaurins” off the mailbox yet. There is no sign of Pooh's big truck in the driveway, but it could be around back.

“OK, now,” she says, and then stops.

“OK, now,” Kenny repeats, as if to prime her.

“He's probably not even there, but we just park in the driveway and walk up to the front door, and, if he is there, we tell him we want to make peace, that we don't want any trouble,” she says, looking to see if Kenny approves.

A shrug.

“Whatever. Maybe we'll catch him in a rare moment of sanity. Maybe he'll just shoot us. Kidding.”

Georgia does have the little gun, though. She's carrying it inside one of the pockets of her leather jacket, wrapped in a rag like Kenny told her, so it won't show. She doesn't even want to know what he's carrying.

She finally called William Blackwell yesterday. The conversation did not go as well as she had hoped.

“Well, Georgia,” he said, “the boy was a little upset. He thinks you're trying to get the house back somehow. He thinks you're trying to get the law on him again.”

“I don't want to cause any trouble.” She realized that she sounded like the boys William Blackwell used to torment before he beat them up.

William broke a long silence by telling her that maybe it would be a good idea if she came out and talked to Pooh herself.

“I expect he'll be there tomorrow morning,” he said. “He's about moved in and all. It's a real nice place, although Jenny did kind of let it go there towards the end. It was real good of her, though, to will it to us.”

“She was a saint,” Georgia was proud of herself for stopping at those four syllables when so many others yearned to free themselves.

She looked up the phone number, but no one answered, just Pooh's ill-tempered voice on the recording, inquiring of all callers, “What the fuck do you want?” followed by a beep.

Georgia didn't leave a message. Instead, she talked Kenny into accompanying her to her cousin's old house. She wanted to go at 9 in the morning.

Kenny convinced her that 11 would be a better hour.

“You're not likely to wake him that late, and the bars won't be open yet.”

Now, as Kenny's pickup rises over the single set of tracks and then dips into the yard itself, she feels her stomach sink along with the truck.

She gets out and waits for Kenny, and they walk up to the front door together, neatly dressed like some couple trying to lure a sinner to their church.

Kenny rings the doorbell three times, then knocks twice.

He starts walking around the side of the house, headed for the back yard. Georgia scurries after him, staying close.

No one answers the back door, either, and after a minute or so, Kenny shrugs and turns around.

“Can we just take a look at the pond?” Georgia asks. “I haven't even been here since the day she drowned.”

“Don't see why not. I didn't see any no-trespassing signs.”

“Actually, I think there is one, over there in the weeds, but Harold put it up. Can you be arrested for disobeying dead people's trespassing signs?”

Kenny laughs.

“Come on.”

A faded green rowboat sits upright and exposed to the elements on the raised bank, one of the few evidences, other than broad-based neglect, that someone of a different nature has taken over Jenny McLaurin's home. The boat has water standing in it from the weekend's rain. Kenny turns it over, as if he can't bear to do otherwise, and lets the dirty water out.

They walk along the edge of the pond and are halfway down the side nearest the house when Georgia sees something.

She walks out through the weeds where Harold and Jenny used to raise tomatoes and beans. Just as Kenny is about to ask her what she's doing, she reaches down into the vegetation and comes up holding a shoe.

It is a sensible shoe, of the kind that would have been worn by an older country lady with bad feet and not enough money, flat-heeled and apparently of a dark blue color originally, although the elements have taken their toll.

“A dog probably drug it up,” Kenny says. “It looks like it's been there awhile.”

Georgia doesn't say anything at first. She doesn't even know what drew her to the pond, other than a chance to see it one last time, unlikely as she is to be invited to brunch or cocktails by the present owner.

She carries the shoe with her as they do a full lap around Harold McLaurin's prized pond. In the distance, across the road and in the direction of Maxwell's Millpond, she can hear a loon's sleepy call, as languid as if it were a July day instead of the week before Thanksgiving. Georgia looks down into the brown water, seemingly too stained and debris-filled even for the catfish it allegedly still sustains. All she sees are two reflections—hers staring into the pond, Kenny looking into the distance as he jingles the change in his pocket. And the carpet knife, she's thinking.

It doesn't hit her until they are almost back to the house.

“Kenny,” she says, stopping and grabbing his arm, forcing him to make a whiplash stop, “when I went over to the funeral home, after Jenny drowned, I took over the burial clothes, and they gave me a bag with what she had on when they brought her to the undertaker's. I thought it was such a crazy thing for them to do.”

Kenny nods his head, waiting.

“I never opened it, but I know this much: There was a shoe in there. One shoe. I guess she'd had it on when she went in the water, and I figured she just lost the other one when she was thrashing about, as much as I thought of it at all.”

“There are a lot of shoes, Georgia.”

“Well, maybe I have been watching too much television, but I swear that shoe looks just like this one.”

“Well, even if it is, which it probably isn't, she could have just, you know, kicked it off when she started to fall.”

Georgia shakes her head.

“It was at least 20 feet from the bank,” she says. “And how come if one shoe just flies off like it had wings, the other one stays on all the way to the bottom, like it was glued on?”

“Well, it might not be a match at all. I'll bet you could go to just about any old place like this and find all kinds of things in the weeds out back that didn't look like they belonged there. It's like those kids' shoes you see thrown over the power lines for some damn reason. Or you'll be driving down the road and there'll be one just lying there in the middle of the highway.”

“Well, I'm going to see.” And she puts the shoe into her jacket pocket, opposite the Ladysmith. The shoe doesn't quite fit; its toe sticks out, pointing upward.