T. Parker - The Famous and the Dead

Beth left for her new position at Scripps Medical Center in San Diego late in July. It was a solid promotion and a vote of confidence and a nice hike in pay and benefits. A package arrived for Hood the day she left, a small rectangular box that contained a tissue-wrapped red apple and a note that said, “I love you.”

Hood saw himself as freakish and alone. He remained proud and encouraging of her, though what he felt most of all was flattened. He imagined letting Mike go free, then hustling off to San Diego, maybe apply at some car dealers for a sales position. The fantasy would linger for a few minutes or hours, then be dashed the next time Hood looked through one of the grates at the little man reading, watching TV, listening to music, reading, reading, reading, writing, writing, writing.

I can do this a lot longer than you can, Mike liked to say. He often wore a wry smile and even from the Hood-to-Mike distance his eyes were blue and clear and merry. He’d grown a beard and mustache and favored plaid flannel shirts with the sleeves rolled up, which gave him a woodsy, lumberjack kind of look.

• • •

Over the summer Hood traded phone calls with Mary Kate Boyle once a week. Today it was her turn to call and she told him opening night was just a week away and she’d have two tickets for him at will call. She gave him the address of the Lowell and the box office phone number, just in case he needed it. She was happy to have been promoted to front-of-shop supervisor at KFC, which was worth seventy cents more an hour, and she’d bought a used car, the first car she’d ever owned. They talked about the car, then there was a long silence. “Charlie? Just so’s you know? I’m not going to be badgering you or waiting around on you anymore.”

“Please don’t.”

“Not that I’ve minded it. But I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m too young and dumb for you.”

“You are younger and smarter than I am.”

“I’m nineteen years old. Quick figurin’ says I’m twenty-five and ready for babies when you’re forty. And I’d be forty years old and still hot as a tamale when you’re fifty-five. And so forth. The difference is the same year to year, but the relativity of it gets smaller. God, I sound like Clint.”

“It’s not that, Mary Kate.”

“That I sound like Clint? I’m funnin’ with you, Mr. Former FAT agent. I know what you mean. You mean it’s not my age. So okay, then, what exactly is it?”

Hood slid the end table out of the way and unlatched the grate lid with his toe. He knelt and slid it open and looked in. “Move her right in, Charlie,” said Mike. “Party central. ”

“Who’s that?” asked Mary Kate.

Hood slammed the grate closed and set the latch and walked outside. “I want the best for you, Mary Kate. I want you to live and love and act and let your heart run free in the world. I want you to get your dreams. I’m sorry to sound so corny but I can’t say it better than that.”

“Dreams aren’t corny! And what if you’re one of my dreams?”

“Get a bigger one, Mary Kate.”

“It is me, then.”

They said nothing for a long while. Hood sat on the rock wall and looked out at the Devil’s Claws and the downy white clouds in the west.

“Okay, Charlie. I’ll put in for a dream upgrade but I’m still holding two tickets for you at will call. You bring whatever guest you want, and it can be a woman or a man.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I don’t want an upgrade, Hood.”

• • •

Hood applied for jobs online so as not to be drawn away from his duties, but the rough economy and his questionable terminations didn’t help. He did have a few thousand dollars left in the bank and wasn’t particularly worried. There were security positions listed often, as well as janitorial work and a veterinary hospital night-attendant job that ran in the Buenavista Beacon classifieds every week. He figured that the job was noisy and stinky and sleep-robbing and difficult to fill.

Accepting Owens’s offer to stand guard in his absence, Hood started leaving the house for an hour a day. He worked his way up to four and sometimes five-hour breaks. He’d go for a run or to the library and sometimes even a movie. He had the diamonds in his tooth removed and had his biannual periodontal cleaning. These excursions went without a hitch back home. His design of the vault, and the workmanship of the builders, had apparently been more than adequate. When he came home from hours away, Mike would sometimes glance up at him in irritation at the intrusion and continue his conversation with Owens, and sometimes ignore Hood altogether. The three had occasional conversations and drank some wine, Hood lowering the recorked bottle and a foam cup into the dungeon with a kite string. Of course Hood never entertained or invited anyone into his home, and at first he worried when the mailman came trundling up the road in his delivery Jeep. But the vault soundproofing was excellent and he would always leave the living room stereo on at some volume when he was gone. No calamities so far, though he truly missed Beth. Life was livable.

• • •

Mid-September Hood got a call from Erin with a dinner invite for the coming Saturday. The occasion was the nearly completed rebuilding of the barn. It would be her and Thomas, Owens, Reyes, Beatrice, the Little Chiefs from next door, and the contractor who’d done the barn, whom she said she hoped Hood would like. Hood’s antenna vibrated at this.

He drove out through the Imperial County heat and arrived at Valley Center well before sunset. The memories ganged up on Hood as always when he was here-and now he had the flamboyant shedding of Bradley’s past, his unsolved murder, and Beth’s departure to add to the canon. For a while they all sat in a circle on the thick grass in the shade of the big oak tree and let Thomas crawl from one pair of outstretched arms to another. He laughed and slobbered and the light in his eyes flared with young life.

Hood sipped a margarita and let Thomas climb on his crossed legs. The infant’s hands seemed remarkably small and well formed. Hood could hear the contractor, Jason, spitting away with a nail gun inside the barn, still “putting on the frosting,” as Erin put it. She said Jason had quoted six weeks for a complete rebuild, shown up with a three-man crew and brought the job in, under budget, in four weeks. Well, almost brought it in. She said he had some good ideas how to improve it, such as turning Bradley’s old bunker into a wine cellar. Hood saw him come through the barn door, a man with square shoulders and big safety goggles and thick blond hair held back in a bandana. Hood handed his margarita off to Owens and stood Thomas up in front of him and let the boy stand upright, clutching Hood’s thumbs for balance. Hood saw that Thomas had Erin’s lithe frame and Bradley’s head. Murrieta’s head. Don’t start , thought Hood. Don’t remember. William had it only half right. Sometimes the past is dead and should be.

They ate on the big porch. Hood sat next to Owens and they talked about everything but Mike. She was working again, doing a series of commercials for Hyundai, where she appeared to be piloting a two-hundred-and-fifty-horsepower sports coupe through the curves of California 1 near Big Sur. She never actually drove it, just got in and out. Tonight she wore a retro dress of big black polka dots on a white background, and shiny black bracelets that didn’t hide her scarred wrists. In the yellow glow of the bug lights her black hair looked touched by gold and Hood silently noted her beauty. He liked it that she wore her scars as trophies, not shames, because, as she had explained-she had finally chosen life.