Paul Kavanagh - Not Comin' Home to You

“I think he would be glad for you to have it.”

He thought it over, then nodded. “Of course I won’t be able to keep it forever,” he said. “I knew that from the start. Legally it ain’t mine, and if I was to get in any kind of trouble, say a speeding ticket or anything—”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“So sooner or later I’ll have to put the car in a parking lot somewheres and mail the ticket and the keys back to the state of Texas. All I have is the use of it. Are you crying again?”

“No. I was just thinking about that poor old man.”

“Well, you know, everybody dies.”

“I know it.”

“And he had a good life.”

“But not having anybody at the end. His wife and his son dead, and not having anybody.”

“I never had anybody either. Until now.”

He pulled to the curb. “They’ll have a pay phone inside,” he said. “Here’s a dime. You call home and make sure your mother and father are both there.”

“She said they would be. When I called before—”

“Let’s make sure. No use talking to one of them and not the other. Suppose we got it all straight with your mother, and then your father came home and wouldn’t listen to a word she said, but went on and put the cops on us? And you fifteen years of age and me with a car that don’t legally belong to me, and then where in the hell would we be?”

“Okay.”

“All you got to do is make sure the two of them are home. Then we’ll drive over there and have it out with them once and for all, and you’ll grab your clothes and whatever else you want to take—”

“I can have everything packed in ten minutes.”

“Say five minutes to get over there and fifteen minutes to talk some sense into them and ten minutes to pack. Five and fifteen is twenty and ten is thirty minutes and we’ll be on our way out of this town and never have to look at it again.”

“You say fifteen minutes to talk some sense into them. I never did it in fifteen years. ”

“Go make that call now.”

When she entered the store he unlocked the glove compartment and took out the gun. It still held one bullet. He loaded it with four more, leaving the chamber under the hammer empty. You had to take chances, but you didn’t have to chance carrying a round under the hammer and maybe blowing your balls off by accident. He wedged the gun under his belt and fixed his jacket so it draped over the gun butt. He put a half dozen shells in his jacket pocket and returned the box of shells to the glove compartment and locked it again.

She came back, her face flushed with excitement. “They’re both home. It was him answered the phone. My father. He just yelled at me. He didn’t listen to anything I said. I almost hung up on the bastard without saying a word.”

“And your mother—”

“Oh, she’s there. I heard her whining in the background. I said we’d be right over.”

“You were right about that.”

She touched his arm. “Jimmie John? I know what you said and all, but maybe we shouldn’t go. Or just I’ll go and I’ll get out somehow. But he’s big, and I can tell he’s been drinking all day, and when he loses his temper he’s something fierce.”

His hand itched to pat the gun butt. “It’s got to be done,” he told her. “And there’s nothing to worry about. I can take care of myself.”

He parked the car in front of the white frame house. Betty got out of the car immediately and started up the path. He had to hurry to catch up with her. He was at her side when the door opened and a man stood blocking the doorway. He wasn’t all that big. Beefy like that Richard Sturdevant kid, but twice as old and soft in the gut. And you could see he’d been drinking. It showed in his eyes, and the looseness of his mouth.

To his daughter he said, “Get in here, you little tramp. Get in this house before I break your damn neck.” He stepped aside, and when Betty darted past him Jimmie John was right behind her, moving quickly into the living room. Frank Deinhardt spun around and glared at him.

“Now just who in the hell do you think you are?”

Softly, now, politely. “My name is Jimmie John Hall, sir, and I—”

“You been with her, you son of a bitch?”

“Betty and I love each other, Mr. Deinhardt. We—”

“You get out of this house before I beat the living shit out of your fucking little head. You son of a bitch. Just who in the hell do you think you are, anyhow?”

He rolled with it, keeping up his part of the conversation, letting the words pad around him like mood music. His eyes took in the room, and it was as if he had been in it once before. He had not tried to picture this room earlier, but now it seemed that everything was just as he had somehow known it would be. The television set with the toothless, flatulent grandmother perched in front of it, seemingly oblivious to the hell that was breaking loose around her. The other woman, Betty’s mother, standing there like some kind of idiot, wringing her hands and darting angry looks first at him, then at Betty. The framed landscape print on the wall over the sagging slip-covered davenport. The chest of drawers, the top ringed by neglected beer cans. The silk-covered pillow on the davenport: SOUVENIR OF SILVER DOLLAR CITY. A wedding picture in a dime-store frame on top of the television set.

He had never been here before. Betty had supplied no more in the way of description than to furnish the room with the television set and to prop the old woman on a chair in front of it. And yet he knew this room. He recognized it.

And now he said, “You can’t stop us, Mr. Deinhardt. Betty and I are going away together. We just came back to tell you, and so that Betty could get her clothes.”

“You little prick. You know how old she is?”

“She’s fifteen.”

“She’s fifteen, damn you! You little shit, they’ll throw you in jail and leave you there for twenty fucking years.” He whirled toward Betty, a hand gesturing wildly. “And you, you little whore, you little piece of filth! You’re worse than your sister. She was bad enough, but by God if you’re not worse. She at least didn’t have the nerve to let a boy get at her and then bring him into her own home.”

“This is not my home. My home is with Jimmie John, wherever we are. That’s my home. This was never my home.”

Good girl, Betty .

“You slut,” Deinhardt said, and moved to slap her.

Now .

He said, “Mr. Deinhardt—” And moved between the man and the girl, his hands up to block the blow. With a roar the older man swung at him, but before the blow could land Jimmie John was already falling back, going with the punch. The heavy fist grazed his jaw but he did not even feel it.

But no one could have known this. Because he went on falling, as if recoiling from a terrible clout, stumbling backwards and sprawling over a footstool and onto the floor. The footstool was one added touch of realism he could have done without. He had not known it was there. He landed a little harder than he had expected, and decided it was probably a very good idea there wasn’t a round under the hammer of the revolver.

His eyes took in everything as if the moment were frozen. Deinhardt standing there, glaring. Betty’s mother at her husband’s side, mouth open like a fish, eyes registering a mixture of shock and hatred. And Betty herself, stunned at first, then scampering to his side.

He sat up, fending her off with his left arm. “I’m all right,” he told her. And he waited a beat, then took a step toward her father.

“Get out of here, you little bastard!”

“You can’t make me leave, Mr. Deinhardt.”

Come on, damn you.

And he waited, his mind rehearsing his hand’s moves, waited while Deinhardt made up his mind. Waited while the man lowered his head and committed himself with a first step. Waited until Deinhardt, hands extended like hooks, halved the distance between them.