Lee Martin: Late One Night

A few sheets still remained, three to be exact. Shooter plucked them from the box and held them to his nose. He swore he could still smell a faint scent of Merlene’s perfume, White Shoulders, but then he thought it was just his imagination. When he went to put the sheets back in the box, he noticed a piece of gray cardboard, cut to fit, snugged into the corners. He ran his finger over it and felt the outline of something in the shape of a rectangle. He pried at the corner of the cardboard with his fingernail and finally got it so he could pull it free.

Underneath that piece of cardboard was an envelope, nothing written on the outside of it, no stamp or postmark, just a plain white envelope. Inside was a greeting card with two blue flowers on the cover. Forget-me-nots, Shooter knew, because it was Merlene’s favorite flower.

Apparently someone else had known that, too.

Shooter opened the card and read the printed verse:

Just wanted to let you know

That I am thinking about you!

Below it, Ronnie had written a personal message:

M., we both know Captain is a gift,

a forget-me-not of the angels, like you always say.

Some people just can’t see that. Shame on them.

Don’t let Shooter get you down—♥, R

That exclamation point, that heart. The fact that she’d saved the card and secreted it away. That snapshot. What was Shooter to make of all that except that in her heart of hearts she’d wished for a different sort of husband, had harbored a crush on Ronnie, had told him things meant to stay inside their house.

Shooter tore the card in half and then tore it again. He kept tearing at it, realizing, finally, that he was making grunting, animal sounds, keening cries coming from a place deep inside him where he felt betrayed.

It was then, though he wouldn’t be aware of it until later, that he began to build an idea — it would come into focus a little at a time — that he would find a way to hurt Ronnie, a way to make him wish he’d never given Merlene that card, never said those things, never opened the door to this rage in Shooter, a rage he wasn’t sure he could stop, even though he was afraid of where it might take him.

The trouble between Ronnie and Della came to a head one evening in early September when she showed up at a Kiwanis Club pancake supper with her long blond hair hacked off and ragged, tufts of it sticking out from her head and hanks hanging down along her slender neck. Lord God. It was a sight. Like someone had taken a knife blade to her hair and sawed and hacked until the job was done. That’s right. Della Black. Walked into the grade school cafeteria as big as day.

“How you like my new hairdo?” she asked of no one in particular.

Just stood there in the middle of the cafeteria, blue jeans too big on her skinny hips, a chambray work shirt, sleeves rolled to her elbows. She turned this way and that like a fashion model. Even put a hand to her head and gave a hank of hair a little fluff.

No one said a word. Everyone was sitting at the cafeteria tables, where only moments before they’d been talking about crop prices, and Lord couldn’t we use some rain, and hell, yes, it was hot. Too hot for September. That was for damned sure. It was just now coming on dusk, and the cafeteria lights were on. Della stood there in that fluorescent light, and everyone shut up so for a while there was only the sound of pancakes on the griddle in the kitchen and the cash drawer on the register going shut.

Then a single low voice — a woman’s voice — said, “It’s got something to do with Ronnie. I’ll wager you that.”

The woman was Laverne Ott, who had taught Della in grade school. Now Laverne was a caseworker for Children’s Protective Services. She knew trouble when she saw it.

She came down the center aisle and put her hand to Della’s face. Washed out and not a lick of makeup. “Oh, honey,” she said, “where are your kids? They’re not with Ronnie, are they?”

Della shook her head. “They’re with my mom and dad.” She raised her hand to her head. Her fingers were trembling. She touched her hair, patting the tufts. “Stylish,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

Laverne leaned in close and whispered, “Did Ronnie do this to you?”

“Why Miss Ott,” Della said, “why in the world would you think that?”

Laverne thought it for the same reason so many others were thinking it. Ronnie Black had a temper, and he’d used it in the past to cause misery for Della. Lord knows, he’d had his brushes with the law — accusations of stolen gasoline from farmers’ tanks, domestic disturbances in the middle of the night, bar fights — but nothing that ever landed him in a jail or a courtroom. He was that kind of man, troubled in the heart and full of fight. Pissed off at his life because he couldn’t manage to hold down a job, and there were all those kids — yes, seven of them — and folks had witnessed more than one tussle and throwdown between Della and Ronnie out in public.

He’d left her stranded in Goldengate one night when they got in a snort and holler because she wanted to buy a doll baby for their littlest girl and he said there wasn’t money enough for something extra like that. Right there in Inyart’s Sundries, Della told him there’d be more money if he could do a better job of providing it.

“The way I see it,” she said, “it’s my money anyway since I made it from cleaning houses. I’ll spend it however I please.”

All right then, he told her. She could just walk home if that’s the way she wanted it. And with that he stormed out of the store.

She was a few miles up the blacktop in the gathering dark when Missy saw her and stopped to give her a ride. Della had been friends with Missy and Pat ever since grade school and thought so much of them that she’d made them godparents of all her kids. Missy had always been such a dainty girl, with her dark hair and her brown eyes, and though she’d grown to be a beautiful woman, the years had put enough vinegar in her to make her say exactly what she thought.

“I don’t know why you put up with that man,” she said to Della once she’d heard the story of the fight. “I really don’t.”

Della turned away from Missy, and her voice, when she finally spoke, was the soft voice of a woman who was embarrassed but determined to speak the truth. “Well, we’re a family. That’s what we are. I know it might not seem like it all the time, but we’re who we have and that counts for something, doesn’t it?”

“I guess it’s up to you to decide if it counts enough,” Missy said.

Said Della, “I’ve been married so long. I wouldn’t know myself without Ronnie.”

In his heart Ronnie often felt all scraped out and empty over the way his life with Della was — too much want, too much lack, too much desire running up against the no-way-in-hell of it all. The truth was he’d loved Della once and loved her hard and still could from time to time when there came a snatch of breath in the suffocation of trying to provide for her and all those kids. Sure, she’d told everyone that it was him who’d wanted to keep trying until they had a boy, but Ronnie would tell them, if they’d ever listen, that it was Della who kept wanting to get pregnant. “I just love ’em to death,” she kept saying. “Ronnie, I love having a baby in the house.”

“We can’t go on like this,” he told her in the summer when he was having trouble finding construction work — the work was there, but he’d proven himself too unreliable in the past for contractors to take a chance on him — and it was getting harder and harder to feed everyone. “We just can’t, Della. We’ve got to stop. You’ve got to get back on the pill. We just can’t be having any more babies. Do you understand?”