Lee Martin - Late One Night

He’d been there. At the trailer .

The night it burned?

That’s right. Ronnie Black .

People started wondering what they might say if asked. If the sheriff, Biggs, came wanting to know something about Ronnie and the months leading up to that fire, what would they recall that might be of use? They thought on the matter over lunch at the Real McCoy Café, getting their hair set at the Looking Glass, picking up a gallon of milk at the IGA, working their shifts at the oil refinery in Phillipsport, drinking shots and beers at Fat Daddy’s.

Tweezer Gray, who tended bar there, remembered one night close to Christmas when Ronnie stayed until last call, and then said to Tweezer, “You know how much this divorce is going to cost me? Plenty, I can tell you that. A wife and seven kids. Jesus, what was I thinking?”

Willie Wheeler, who lived next door to Brandi, said he saw Ronnie come out the door the afternoon of the fire and take up the street in his Firebird like there was no tomorrow. “He was steamed about something,” Willie told anyone who’d listen. “I’ll tell you that much for sure.”

“He’s got a temper,” Alvin Higgins said. “I was uptown at the hardware store one day back in the fall — this must have been around the time he moved out on Della and took up living with Brandi — and he wanted to buy a snow blower on time, and Jingle Johnstone told him his credit was no good. ‘I can give you fifty dollars right now,’ Ronnie said, ‘and twenty a week until I pay it off.’ Jingle wasn’t going for it. ‘Nah, Ronnie,’ he said. ‘The word’s out around town. You’re a bad risk.’ Well, that set Ronnie off. ‘Goddamn you,’ he said. ‘Goddamn you and everyone else like you.’ There was a box of two-inch flat washers on the counter. Ronnie picked it up and slung it down the aisle, scattered those washers all the way to kingdom come. Then he just walked out, pretty as you please. I heard he came back later and apologized to Jingle, said he was just going through too much and sometimes he felt like he was going to bust, but still, there’s no call for an outburst like that.”

Anna Spillman from over at the Real McCoy Café said Ronnie used to come in winter days when he hadn’t been able to scare up work, and he’d sit in a booth way back in the corner like he didn’t want anyone to see him. “He’d order coffee, and sometimes, if Pastor Quick wasn’t around, I’d let Ronnie have a piece of pie on the house because I felt sorry for him. I knew what he’d done to Della, but it was hard for me to think bad of him. He looked like he didn’t have a friend in the world, and one day I told him that. ‘Della’s out to get me,’ he said. ‘She’s going to make sure I pay for a good long while. She better be careful. Paybacks are hell.’ I thought he was just talking big, but now I’m not so sure, particularly after what I heard from Taylor Jack.”

Taylor worked down the street at the Casey’s convenience store, and he saw Ronnie at the pumps the morning of the fire, filling a five-gallon gas can. He’d come back that night and bought five gallons more. That was the most damaging story of all. Two cans of gas in the dead of winter. What would a man who hadn’t been able to buy a snow blower, and who didn’t own a generator that anyone knew of, need with that gas?

And there was everyone who’d seen Ronnie come up the blacktop the afternoon of the fire, gunning that Firebird, not even stopping for the school bus. The driver, Lucy Tutor, reported it to the principal. “Ronnie came up that blacktop just a-hellin’,” Lucy said. “Like if he killed someone he wouldn’t care.” She’d picked up all the latest lingo from the kids. “Trust me, that boy needed to slow his roll.”

_________

That’s what Ronnie was trying to do in those days after the funeral. He was trying to get his life back on an even keel. He had the girls, and he and Brandi were determined to make them a home, even if Angel wasn’t sure she was ready to accept it. The other girls were coming along just fine. Hannah, true to her good nature, accepted Brandi right away, weaving her a friendship bracelet from green and orange threads. She put it around Brandi’s wrist and fastened it by looping one end around the green button sewn to the other end.

“You’re supposed to wish for something now,” Hannah said.

“Like money?” Brandi asked. “Is that what I should wish for?”

Hannah shrugged. “Something you really, really want,” she said. “Keep this bracelet on until the yarn wears out and it falls off your wrist. Then your wish will come true.”

They were in the living room on the couch, and Ronnie was eavesdropping on them. He lay on the bed in his and Brandi’s room and listened to the sounds of the house after supper was done and the girls were chattering. Sarah was learning her part for a class play. She was the voice of the bridge in The Three Billy Goats Gruff . She kept saying, “Trip, trap, trip, trap, trip, trap.” And Ronnie thought it was wonderful to hear those words again and again, to know they came from his daughter. Even the angry bounce of a basketball in the bedroom that Angel shared with Hannah was a sound that pleased him. Emma passed by in the hallway, singing the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” song, only she was trying to sing the special verse that Della always sang to her, and she kept stumbling over the first line about a sweetie-weetie butterfly. Ronnie sang the verse in his head:

A sweetie-weetie butterfly

Flew around and ‘round;

A strong wind came along and blew it to the ground.

Out came its Daddy and gave it a kiss and hug,

And the sweetie-weetie butterfly was as happy as a bug .

Ronnie couldn’t say he was happy — no, not exactly that. It hadn’t been smooth sailing. Angel was still sullen and hateful sometimes. “Patience,” Brandi told him. “It hasn’t been easy for her. It hasn’t been easy for any of them.”

Sarah woke some nights, screaming from nightmares about the fire. Hannah sometimes went quiet in the midst of playing a game or watching TV and tears filled her eyes. Nights, when Ronnie was tucking Emma into bed, she might claim she’d seen Emily somewhere in the house — Emily skipping rope in the living room, Emily hiding in the closet, Emily in the kitchen eating Oreos. Little bumps, Brandi told him. Little by little, they’d smooth out. Only Hannah — dependable, level-headed Hannah — seemed beyond ruin.

If he wasn’t happy, then at least he was thankful. He had his girls, and Brandi had opened her heart to them. They were back in school, and each day brought them closer to retrieving at least some of the life he’d taken from them when he’d left Della back in the fall.

A few days after he’d gone to the bank and tried to withdraw some of the money from the account set up for his girls, Missy paid him a visit.

She had a check she’d written out for him. Three hundred dollars for him to spend on the girls however he saw fit.

It was midmorning and the girls were in school. Brandi was in Phillipsport at work at the Savings and Loan.

Ronnie had just got home from the Real McCoy Café, where he’d sat drinking coffee and talking to the waitress, Anna Spillman. He’d just kicked off his boots when he heard the knock on the door.

He stood in the open doorway, studying that check.

“Missy?” he said.

She looked down at his feet and then over to the side of the porch. “You should know I’m the one who holds that account at the bank.” She had her head turned toward Willie Wheeler’s house, a squat bungalow with brown asphalt shingle siding. The curtains were open at all the windows. She was having a hard time facing Ronnie. She wondered whether he’d heard the gossip and whether he could guess that she’d helped start it. She wanted to be done with her chore and on her way. “I’d like to see that money build up interest and be there for the girls when they get out of high school,” she said. “They might need it to help with college, or just to start their own families. I don’t know. I just don’t want to spend it down just for the sake of spending it.” She turned her head and looked him in the eye for the first time. “If they ever need anything between now and then, something you can’t afford, you let me know. How’s that?”