6
Just to fill in another blank, I pulled into the gas station in Floral Beach and asked the attendant to top off my tank. While the kid was taking care of the windshield, I took my wallet and went into the office, where I studied the vending machine. Nothing but Cheetos for $1.25. Cheatos, I thought. There was no one at the desk, but I spotted someone working out in the service bay. I went to the door. The guy had a Ford Fiesta up on the lift, whipping lug nuts off the right rear wheel with an air-driven lug wrench.
“Can I get some change for the vending machine in here?”
“Sure thing.”
The fellow set the wrench down and wiped his hands on a rag tucked into his belt. “Tap” was stitched in an embroidered script on the patch above his uniform pocket. I followed him back into the office. He moved in an aura of motor oil and tire smell, giving off that heady scent of sweat and gasoline fumes. He was wiry and small, with wide shoulders and a narrow butt, the type who might unveil a lavish tattoo when he took off his shirt. His dark hair was curly, combed into a crest on top, the sides swept into a ducktail in the back. He looked about forty, with a still-boyish face getting leathery around the eyes.
I handed him two dollars. “You know anything about VWs?”
He made eye contact for the first time. His were brown and didn’t show much life. I suspected car woes were going to spark the only interest I’d be able to generate. He flicked a look out to the pumps, where the kid was just finishing up. “You got a problem?”
“Well, it may not be much. I keep hearing this high-pitched whine when I get up around sixty. Sounds kind of weird.”
“You can hit sixty in a tin can like that?” he said.
A car joke. He grinned, punching open the register.
I smiled. “Well, yeah. Now and then.”
“Try Gunter’s in San Luis. He can fix you up.” He dropped eight quarters into my palm.
“Thanks.”
He moved back out to the service bay and I pocketed the change. At least I knew now who Tap Granger was. I paid for the gas and headed up two blocks to the motel.
As it turned out, I didn’t talk to Royce at all that afternoon. He’d retired early, leaving word with Ann that he’d see me in the morning. I spoke briefly with her mother, filling her in on Bailey’s current state, and then went on upstairs. I’d picked up a bottle of white wine on my way through San Luis and I stashed it in the small refrigerator in my room. I hadn’t unpacked, and my duffel was tucked in the closet where I’d left it. I tend, on the road, to leave everything in a suitcase, digging out my toothbrush, shampoo, and clean clothing as the need arises. The room remains bare and unnaturally tidy, which appeals to a streak of monasticism in me. This room was spacious, the designated bedroom area separated from the living/ dining/kitchenette by a partition. Factoring in the bathroom and a closet, it was bigger than my (former) apartment back home.
I rooted through the kitchen drawers until I came up with a corkscrew, and then I poured myself a glass of wine and took it out on the balcony. The water was turning a luminous blue as the light faded from the sky, and the dark lavender of the coastline was a vivid contrast. The sunset was a light show of deep pink and salmon shades, gradually sinking, as if by a dimmer switch, through magenta into indigo.
There was a tap at my door at six. I’d been typing for twenty minutes, though the information I’d collected, at this point, was scant. I screwed the lid on the white-out and went to the door.
Ann was standing in the corridor. “I wondered what time you wanted supper.”
“Anytime’s fine with me. When do you usually eat?”
“Actually, we can suit ourselves. I fed Mother early. Her meal schedule’s pretty strict, and Pop won’t eat until later, if he eats at all. I’m doing pan-fried sole for us, which is a last-minute thing. I hope you don’t object to fish.”
“Not at all. Sounds great. You want to join me in a glass of white wine first?”
She hesitated. “I’d like that,” she said. “How’s Bailey doing? Is he okay?”
“Well, he’s not happy, but there’s not much he can do. You haven’t seen him yet?”
“I’ll go tomorrow, if I can get in.”
“Check with Clemson. He can probably set it up. It shouldn’t be hard. Arraignment’s at eight-thirty.”
“I think I’ll have to pass on that. Mother has a doctor’s appointment at nine and I couldn’t get back in time anyway. Pop will want to go, if he’s feeling okay. Could he go with you?”
“Sure. No problem.”
I poured a glass for her and refilled my own. She settled on the couch, while I sat a few feet away at the tiny kitchen table where my typewriter was set up. She seemed ill at ease, sipping at her wine with an odd cast to her mouth, as if she’d been asked to down a glass of liniment.
“I take it you’re not crazy about Chardonnay,” I remarked.
She smiled apologetically. “I don’t drink very often. Bailey’s the only one who ever developed a taste for it.”
I thought I’d have to pump her for background information, but she surprised me by volunteering a quick family time line. The Fowlers, she said, had never been enthusiastic about alcohol. She claimed this was a function of her mother’s diabetes, but to me it seemed in perfect keeping with the dour fundamentalist mentality that pervaded the place.
According to Ann, Royce had been born and raised in Tennessee and the dark strains of his Scots heritage had rendered him joyless, taciturn, and wary of excess. He’d been nineteen at the height of the Depression, migrating west on a succession of boxcars. He’d heard there was work in the oilfields in California, where the rigs were springing up like a metallic forest just south of Los Angeles. He’d met Oribelle, en route, at a dime-a-dip dinner at a Baptist church in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was eighteen, soured by disease, resigned to a life of scriptures and insulin dependency. She was working in her father’s feed store, and the most she could look forward to was the annual trip to the mule market in Fort Smith.
Royce had appeared at the church that Wednesday night, having hopped off a freight in search of a hot meal. Ann said Ori still talked of her first sight of him, standing in the door, a broad-shouldered youth with hair the color of hemp. Oribelle introduced herself as he went through the supper line, piling his plate high with macaroni and cheese, which was her specialty. By the end of the evening, she’d heard his entire life story and she invited him home with her afterward. He slept in the barn, taking all his meals with the family. He remained a guest of the Baileys for two weeks, during which she was in such a fever pitch of hormones that she’d twice gone into ketoacidosis and had had to be briefly hospitalized. Her parents took this as evidence that Royce’s influence was wicked. They talked to her long and hard about her giving him up, but nothing would dissuade her from the course she had set. She was determined to marry Royce. When her father opposed the courtship, she took all the money set aside for secretarial school and ran off with him. That was in 1932.
“It’s odd for me to picture either one of them caught up in high passion,” I said.
She smiled. “Me too: I should show you a photo. She was actually quite beautiful. Of course, I wasn’t born until six years later-1938-and Bailey came along five years after me. Whatever heat they felt was burned out by then, but the bond is still strong. The irony is, we all thought she’d die long before him, and now it looks like he’ll go first.”
“What’s actually wrong with him?”
“Pancreatic cancer. They’re saying six months.”
“Which he knows?”
“Oh yes. It’s one of the reasons he’s so thrilled about Bailey’s showing up. He talks about heartbreak but he doesn’t mean a word of it.”
“What about you? How do you feel?
“Relieved, I guess. Even if he goes back to prison, I’ll have someone to help me get through the next few months. The responsibility’s been crushing ever since he disappeared.”
“How’s your mother handling this?”
“Badly. She’s what they call a ‘brittle’ diabetic, which means she’s always been in fragile health. Any kind of emotional upset is hard on her. Stress. I guess it gets to all of us one way or another, myself included. Ever since Pop was diagnosed as terminal, my life’s been hell.”