Lee Martin - Late One Night

Angel knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t stop herself from hating her father for having told her what her mother had said. He should have kept it to himself. It was nothing she needed to hear. He said it to hurt her, and she couldn’t forgive him. She wouldn’t, not even if he said he was sorry a million times. A billion times. Not even then.

She heard the footsteps falling hard on the floor outside, and then her door came flying open. Her father stormed in. She knew it was him without having to look — those heavy steps, the whistle of air as he breathed through his nose, the bitter smell of coffee on his breath.

“Get that pillow off your head and look at me,” he said. “You’re going to clean up that broken glass, and you’re going to apologize to Brandi. Do you hear me, Angel? I mean right now.”

She wouldn’t budge. She held tight to the pillow and said in a muffled voice, “Leave me alone.”

Apologize? No. Not now. Not after what her father had said. She heard Brandi in the living room pleading for some calm—“Ronnie, no,” she said. “Please, let’s just eat our supper.”

It was too late, Angel thought. In fact, it’d been too late for a long time, ever since her father walked out on her mother. They were playing at being a family now, but the family Angel knew was the one in the trailer out the blacktop. Sometimes she thought of them, that family, doing their best to love one another, not knowing what was coming at them from the future. She couldn’t say they were happy, but she couldn’t say they were unhappy either. They were doing the best they could, and she liked to think of them — the parts of her and Hannah and Sarah and Emma that they’d left back there — going along again with their mother and sisters and baby brother. That was their family, the ones who tried their best to love one another when their father made clear that he couldn’t love them enough.

Now he grabbed the pillow, but she wouldn’t let go of it. He tried to get a grip on her so he could lift her from the bed, but she squirmed away from him. She tried to curl into a ball, but he got an arm around her waist and another arm under her knees. She kicked her feet at him, and he said, “You stop that.”

But she wouldn’t stop, and finally he grabbed her by the arm and shook her. The pillow fell to the floor. She was screaming now. She was telling him to stop. She was saying, “No, no, no.”

“It’s time you took responsibility for your actions,” he said. “Damn it, Angel. Everyone else is trying.”

She jerked free from his grip. “Don’t talk to me about responsibility.” She went after him with her fists. He crossed his arms over his face and tried to move out of her way. She followed him across the room, hitting him again and again. She hit him on the bones of his hands and arms, hit him until her own hands were sore. “What were you doing out at the trailer?”

He was backed into the wall now. He lowered his arms and said, “When?”

“That night.”

“I was there earlier in the day before you kids got home from school. I had to talk to your mother.”

“That night,” she said again. “Tell me.”

“Angel, I wasn’t anywhere but here.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Angel.”

She took the knife from her coat pocket, the Case Hammerhead. She held it up to his face. “Say this isn’t yours.” He wouldn’t answer. She was crying now, practically pleading for him to explain that he was innocent. “Say you didn’t drop it behind the trailer that night. Say you weren’t there.”

Her father reached out his hand, and she let him take the knife.

“You know it’s mine,” he said, and that was all he said, his eyes going hard before he turned and walked away, leaving Angel trembling with the thought of what might happen next.

Ronnie stormed out of Brandi’s house and drove out the blacktop to Shooter Rowe’s. The Case Hammerhead was in his pocket. He was thankful for the dark and the little bit of ground fog starting to gather and swirl in the low-lying areas. He didn’t want to see the ruins of the trailer, nor to remember the night it burned. He pulled into Shooter’s driveway and saw a shadow pass over the closed drapes at the living room window. The porch light was dark, but there were lights burning inside the house.

Ronnie got out of his Firebird and felt the cold and damp around his face. The air smelled of fuel oil, and he took note of the flicker of flames at the trash barrel behind Shooter’s house.

It took a long time for the porch light to come on after Ronnie knocked on the door, and when that door opened and Shooter saw who was waiting on the steps, he didn’t waste any time. He said, “I won’t let you talk to him.”

Ronnie knew Captain was inside the house. He could hear what sounded like dishes being washed in the sink.

“You heard the talk?” Ronnie asked. “About me? About the fire?”

Shooter started to close the door, but Ronnie shot his arm out straight and braced it with his hand. Shooter frowned. “Can’t stop people from wanting a story,” he said.

“What did you tell my girl tonight? Have you talked to Ray Biggs?”

Shooter pushed against the door, but Ronnie pushed back.

“Your footprints were in the snow behind the trailer,” Shooter said. “You think Biggs hasn’t made plaster casts of those prints? You think he’s not on your trail?”

Ronnie stared at Shooter a good long while. His voice went hard. “Go on. Tell Biggs everything about that night. Let’s see if you’ve got the nerve.”

“You think I won’t? You want the whole story to come out?” Shooter waited a while for Ronnie to answer, and when he didn’t, Shooter said, “That’s what I thought.”

“Merlene was right about you, Shooter. You’re a hard man. No wonder Captain never felt close to you. Merlene, too, for that matter. She—”

Shooter put his shoulder to the door and drove it shut, Ronnie no longer able to stop him.

The porch light went out, and Ronnie stood in the dark, his wrist aching from where he’d tried to keep the door from closing. He shouted at the house. He said, “My prints weren’t the only ones there. You know that, Shooter. If you’re going to tell it, tell it all.”

No one in town knew about that visit Ronnie paid Shooter, nor did they know that Captain had a knife like Ronnie’s. That he had a Case Hammerhead lockback because Ronnie had bought him one.

“Now you’ve got your own,” Ronnie said the day he gave it to him.

It was an evening shortly after Ronnie had moved into town, a warm Saturday evening in late September, one of the last warm days before fall set in for good. It wouldn’t be long before the farmers were cutting their corn and soybeans, not long before the hickory nuts fell from the trees, not long before the time changed and the dark set in early and the countryside smelled of wood fires.

Ronnie drove out the blacktop with his windows down. Captain’s knife, along with a leather sheath, a pocket stone, and a bottle of honing oil in a gift tin that said XX Tested, W. R. Case & Sons Cutlery Company was lying on the passenger seat. Ronnie had paid over seventy dollars for the set, money he’d asked Brandi to give him. He wanted to do something special for Captain, he told her.

Ronnie explained that he’d always let Captain keep him company when he was working on his car. “He’s sorta an orphan now, just like I always was. I know how he feels. Captain always admired my pocketknife. I’d like to give him one as a gift. Just something to give him a boost. It’s a nice thing I can do for him, and if you could spare the money—”

Brandi laughed. “Why in the world can I never say no to you?”