The Late Child (58 page)

“Eddie, this is your Uncle Billy,” Harmony said.

Eddie ceased bouncing at once and smiled at his uncle.

“But I wanted to come meet you in jail,” Eddie said. “The reason is that I've never been in a jail before and if I went in one I could tell all my friends about it when I get home.”

“That's a good reason, bud,” Billy said. “You can come take a look when your mom runs me back to the slammer.”

“Eddie, you should be asleep,” Harmony said. “It's the middle of the night.”

“Well, I
was
asleep,” Eddie pointed out. “Only in my dream Grandpa's black rooster was chasing me and he pecked me very hard and I woke up.”

“Are you heading out already, or what?” Pat asked, looking at Harmony a little accusingly. “How can you leave just when we all need you?”

“Pat, I have to get a job and Eddie needs to be in school,” Harmony said. “I'm taking Dad with me, too.”

“What?” Pat said—she looked disbelieving, as if what Harmony had just said couldn't possibly be true.

“I'm taking Dad with me, he wants to leave Mom,” Harmony said.

“He's always wanted to leave her—that don't mean you can just fly in here and take our dad away,” Pat said.

“Pat, he asked if he could go,” Harmony said.

“I don't doubt it—he's always favored you,” Pat said. Then she burst into tears and ran out the door.

“Aunt Pat's upset,” Eddie remarked. “I hope she remembers to fasten her seat belt.”

“I don't think Dad favored me,” Harmony said.

“Of course not, he favored Pat,” Billy said. “That's why she's so upset that he's going away.

“Maybe we better load up Eddie and toddle on back to the jail,” he said, a moment later.

“Billy, we just got here—are you tired?” Harmony asked.

“No, but I'm getting a powerful urge to grab that phone and call Mildred,” he said. Harmony noticed that he was sort of eyeing the phone.

“Who's Mildred?” Eddie asked.

“Eddie, let's just go see the jail,” Harmony said.

On the ride into Tarwater, Eddie was as bright and bouncy as if he'd had a full night's sleep.

“It's not much like Las Vegas, is it, Mom?” he said, looking at the town. “Where do all the cars go at night? I see very few cars.”

“They go home to their little dinky garages,” Billy said.

Eddie and Peewee hit it off at once—they played two games of checkers and Eddie won both games. Then Peewee let Eddie listen to the police radio, after which he locked Eddie in a cell so he could pretend he was a dangerous criminal.

While Eddie was playing, Harmony enjoyed a few more minutes with her brother. They sat on a bunk in one of the empty cells and talked.

“I think you're doing the right thing, taking Dad,” Billy said.

“What do you think Mom will do?” Harmony asked. Even though her mother was cranky she was old enough that it was natural to worry about her a little.

“Momma will be fine,” Billy said. “She'll play a little more bridge, and drop in on me and Peewee a little more often.”

Harmony still had an ache inside her, from thinking about her brother living in the jail. It seemed so sad that he had chosen to live his life that way because he couldn't resist making obscene phone calls to a woman he could have married at one time, a woman who probably would have given him all the sex he wanted.

“I just wish you'd think of a way to change, Billy,” she said. “Maybe you could get paroled and come out west with me and Eddie and Dad.”

“Harmony, don't be jumping on the bandwagon to save me,” Billy said, not unkindly. “I'm all right. Life being what it is, I ain't doing too badly.”

Harmony let it go. Billy was right. Who did she think she was, to be giving people advice? She had ignored millions of words of good advice herself, most of it Gary's advice—Gary had ignored just as much of hers. The point was, people had to live their own lives; if Billy chose to live his in the jail in Tarwater, well, she should just mind her own business.

Billy gave her a long hug, though, when it came time to go—he was a little misty-eyed, obviously he loved his sister. Peewee took such a liking to Eddie that he gave him a key ring with a tiny oil rig attached to it, and also a baseball cap that said
Tarwater Tigers
, that being the name of the local ball team. Eddie was pleased with both gifts—he wanted to go immediately to an all-night locksmith and have some keys made to put on his key ring.

“Eddie, I don't think they have all-night locksmiths in Tarwater,” Harmony informed him.

“But I need a locksmith and I need one now because there are
no
keys on my key ring,” Eddie said.

As they were driving out of Tarwater, back toward the Best
Western, Harmony noticed that the sky to the east was tinged with light. The night was ending, and it was probably going to be her last night in her hometown for a very long time. Already there was a yellow band of sunlight on the horizon, across the plains.

Eddie was watching her closely, as bright-eyed as if it were not five o'clock in the morning. He was watching with a special look he had, a look that meant he was gauging how much pressure he would have to apply to get his mother to do what he wanted her to do, in this case get him a few keys for his new key ring. There was no ignoring Eddie when he wanted something. It was a question of saying no and taking the consequences. In this case, seeing that it would soon be sunup, she had what she thought was a good idea.

“Eddie, Grandpa gets up early—he probably has some keys he could give you,” Harmony said. “Why don't we go to the farm and see if he's milking the cow or something.”

“Okay,” Eddie said. “That's a good suggestion.”

They found Sty down by the barn. He had finished milking the one milk cow—a foamy pail of milk sat by the water trough. The chickens were gathered around him, and a few guinea hens. Four heifers and two goats stood nearby, as well as the old brown mule. In the pigpen the three pigs had their snouts through the rail, watching. The two turkeys were foraging in the dust, not far away, and the black rooster that had appeared in Eddie's dream was out in the grass trying to catch grasshoppers.

“Hi, Grandpa,” Eddie said.

“Morning, Eddie,” her father said—when she came closer she saw that he had tears in his eyes.

“What's wrong, Dad?” she asked—she was not used to seeing her father in such an emotional state.

“Oh, I guess I was just thinking how much I'll miss these critters, when you and me and Eddie head out west,” Sty said.

“We're going tonight, Dad,” she said. She was hoping he wouldn't change his mind—it would be too big a disappointment for Eddie.

“But you could take some chickens, Grandpa,” Eddie suggested.
“I have Iggy and Eli—why don't you bring some chickens if they're your family?”

“Nope, these chickens need to stay here, where they can peck grasshoppers and bugs,” Sty said, wiping his eyes with the same old cotton handkerchief he had used the day before. “There might not be enough grasshoppers for them, out in Las Vegas. I hear it's kind of deserty, out there.”

“Well, we don't have grasshoppers but we do have many ants,” Eddie reflected. “The chickens could peck the ants.”

“Oh, that's okay, Eddie,” Sty said. “I'll be so busy talking to you and meeting all your friends that I wouldn't have much time to devote to a chicken, even if I had one with me.”

Harmony began to feel some qualms—it was obviously going to be a big change for her father. What if he got to Las Vegas and missed his cows and his mule and his pigs too much? What if he was miserable without them? It was nice in Oklahoma. Birds were chirping, and the sun was shining on the dewy grass. Her father looked so in place there, with the prairie behind him and the deep sky overhead. After all, he had been born on the farm—he had lived his whole life in that very place. Maybe he would miss the breeze and the sunlight and the animals so much that he'd wither up and die. The thought of moving him sort of gave her qualms.

On the other hand, she hadn't come to Oklahoma planning to remove him; he himself had asked to go.

“What will you do with all your animals, Daddy?” she asked. The animals expected him to be there when the sun came up, only the very next time it would be coming up he wouldn't be, to feed and milk and do the chores.

“Dick is going to take them—Dick's reliable,” Sty said. “He'll come over and do the chores for a few days, and then he'll move the stock over to his and Neddie's place.”

“Daddy, I don't want this move to be a thing that makes you sad,” Harmony said. “I worry that you won't be happy without your animals.”

Her father picked up the pail of milk and carried it over to
the pigpen—he poured it into a wooden trough and the pigs immediately began to slurp it up.

“Oh, I expect I'll miss them a little bit, but Dick will take fine care of these critters,” Sty said. “I ain't really farming anymore—I'm just piddling. I'd rather spend the time I have left talking to Eddie. He's got a lot more to say than these critters and this poultry.”

Sty suddenly picked Eddie up and sat him on the back of the brown mule. The mule stood by the water trough, occasionally dipping its nose in the water.

The old mule paid no attention to the little boy on its back, but Eddie looked very surprised to find himself on top of a mule. His eyes widened and he gripped the mule's mane with both hands.

“I hope he doesn't run away with me, Grandpa,” Eddie said.

“He won't run away with you because he's too lazy to run,” Sty said. “This here is a walking mule.”

“Dad, do you really want to come?” Harmony asked. The thought that she was taking him away from the place where he had lived his whole life suddenly seemed a big responsibility.

“I'm coming and I'm coming happily,” Sty said. “I've gone as far with your mother as I can go—that's what it amounts to. I'll miss the place and the critters but I won't miss the hostility.”

“It's going to be a big change, Dad,” Harmony said—she was not quite reassured.

“I expect so,” Sty said. “But nobody really needs to be a dirt farmer all their life. I'm ready for something different.”

“The plane's at eight-thirty tonight,” Harmony told him. “Is that enough time?”

“Plenty of time,” Sty said.

“What about telling Mom?” she asked.

“Well, we'll just see if it comes up,” Sty said. “I may just leave her a note. She won't read it because she can't see, and she ain't interested anyway. It might take Ethel a week or two to notice that I ain't around, if she
ever
notices. We run on separate tracks most of the time anyway.”

Harmony thought of all the times she had been left by men—even if it was a boring man who left, someone at the level of Jimmy Bangor, there was still no missing it when a man departed. Her mother wouldn't fail to notice, Harmony was sure of that.

“Okay, Dad,” Harmony said. “I have to go talk to Dick about something. Do you want Eddie to stay with you?”

“Why, sure … leave Eddie,” Sty said. “I want to walk him around the place and tell him a few things nobody but me remembers. I can show him the spring where his great-grandmother drew water, when she and Dad settled here, in the pioneer days. I can show him a skunk den and a badger den and where all the bones are of the livestock that have died on this place in the last fifty or sixty years. There's just a few things about this old place that it would be good for Eddie to have in his head.”

“Well, I've milked already but I don't like the pigs,” Eddie said, from his perch on the mule. “They look like evil animals to me. And that black rooster is an evil animal too—it pecked me in my dream.”

“Yep, that rooster is a little on the mean side,” Sty said, looking across the pastures and the fields.

“You go on, honey,” he added. “Leave me and Eddie to our own devices. Maybe his grandmother will be in a mood to make us lunch, but if she ain't we can get by on cheese and crackers.”

“Bye, Mom, Grandpa is going to show me all around the farm now,” Eddie said. He had a tendency to be unsentimental when there was something he really wanted to do.

Sty helped Eddie off the mule—they walked off toward a line of trees a few hundred yards from the barn, where the old spring was.

Harmony drove up to the farmhouse, thinking she might go in and have breakfast with her mother. Ethel
was
her mother—when would she get another chance? At least it would allow her to put off telling Dick that Neddie wanted to divorce him and marry his brother.

When she opened the screen door and stepped onto the back porch, her mother was standing in the kitchen, an electric toothbrush
buzzing in her mouth. She was watching Sty and Eddie walk off toward the spring.

“Now why is he taking that boy off in that tall grass?” Ethel asked, taking the toothbrush out of her mouth for a second.

“Mom, he's just showing Eddie the spring,” Harmony said. “It's where his mother got water when she was a pioneer.”

“That grass is soaking wet and they'll be lucky not to step on a snake down there in those rocks by that spring,” Ethel complained.

Then she fixed her eye on Harmony.

“I think it's a disgrace that you're staying in that motel when you could be staying with your parents,” she said. “You must have some old man or something—you never were interested in anything except seeing some old man and letting him get in your pants.”

“Bye, Mom, I just came in to say good morning,” Harmony said.

“That boy of yours has hardly said two words to me the whole time he's been here,” Ethel said. “He ought to love his grandmother more than that. He won't even sit on my lap. I tried to bribe him with an all-day sucker but it didn't work. He just looked at me as if I was a fool, and I'm his own grandmother.”