Lee Martin - Late One Night

“Guess it’s just my boyish charm,” Ronnie said.

“Or could be I’m just stupid.” Brandi swatted him on the shoulder and then gave him a wink. “Ever think it might be that? Maybe you’re just taking advantage of me.”

Ronnie got serious then. “Let’s get my kids something, too. Would that be all right? Something for Christmas?”

“Yes, sugar, we can do that. We won’t let them go without.”

So that knife for Captain. Ronnie found him outside mowing the grass. He waited until Captain looked up and saw him. Then he waved him over. Captain cut off the mower and came across the yard. Ronnie picked the gift tin up from the seat, and Captain opened the door and got inside.

“We going for a ride?” he wanted to know. “Ronnie, where you been?”

“I don’t live out here anymore.” Ronnie glanced over at the trailer. Della’s car wasn’t there, and he guessed she’d taken the kids over to Lois and Wayne’s for supper. “I live in town now.”

Captain scrunched up his face. He rubbed at his nose with the heel of his palm. “Why is that?” he finally said. “You get lost or something?”

“Yeah, maybe that’s it,” Ronnie said. “Maybe I’m just lost.”

“Nah, you’re not lost. You’re right here with me. Right, Ronnie? You’re where you’re supposed to be.”

Ronnie hated to disappoint him, and he knew Captain would have a hard time understanding if he tried to explain. “You got that match trick down pat yet?”

Captain shook his head. “I can’t do it like you can.”

Ronnie had tried to teach him that trick with the matchstick, but Captain could never coordinate his fingers right to get the match to light as he flicked it across the box’s strike strip.

“Keep practicing. I had to practice a lot. Don’t worry. You’ll get it.” He tossed the gift tin over onto Captain’s lap. “Here ya go. A little present.”

“For me?”

“Open it,” Ronnie said.

Captain took the lid off the tin. “It’s like yours.” He picked up the knife and opened the blade. “It’s a Case Hammerhead. It’s what I’ve wanted.”

“Now it’s official,” Ronnie said. “We’re brothers.”

“Forever?”

“You got it, buddy. You and me. Forever.”

When Shooter found the gift tin minus the knife itself hidden behind the dresser in Captain’s bedroom — Shooter had been bringing clean laundry into the room to put in the dresser drawers, and he’d noticed that the dresser had been pulled out from the wall and not put back level — he knew exactly where it’d come from, and he didn’t like it, not one bit.

He got on the phone and called Brandi Tate’s house. Ronnie answered, and Shooter said, “Looks like you’d ask me before giving Captain something like that?”

Captain was outside burning trash in the old oil drum they used for that purpose. It was the one chore that Shooter didn’t have to fuss at Captain to make sure he did it. Captain liked to light the trash and then stand over the flames, letting the heat warm him. He carried a small box of Diamond matches with him, the same kind that Ronnie used to burn his own trash. Sometimes at the barrel, Captain practiced Ronnie’s trick with the match, but he still couldn’t get it right.

Shooter watched out the kitchen window as Captain stood over the burn barrel, the flames rising above it.

“You hear me, Ronnie?” Shooter said. “I don’t appreciate what you did. If my boy gets into any kind of trouble with that knife, I’ll hold you to blame.”

“Hold on now, Shooter. It was something Captain always wanted, and I was glad to get it for him.”

“Did you ever think that maybe he’s not steady enough to have a knife as sharp as that? Who knows what might happen.” Shooter paused to let that sink in. “That’s your problem, Ronnie. You never think anything all the way out.”

And with that he hung up.

When Captain came into the kitchen, Shooter said to him, “You get a little present today? That why Ronnie came by to see you?”

Captain took the Case Hammerhead out of his jeans pocket, and he held it out on his palm, his head bowed, reaching the knife out to Shooter, expecting him to take it.

The gesture caught Shooter by the heart. How quick Captain was to surrender the knife. How easily he offered to give it up. So that was the sort of life Shooter had made for him, one he’d never intended to create but obviously had: a furtive life of secret pleasures, ones Captain feared his father would eventually take from him.

Shooter couldn’t bear to ask for the knife.

“You be careful with it, understand?” he said. “That blade’s razor sharp.”

Captain pulled out the blade and studied it. Finally, he looked up at his father and his face was a face of delight. “Sugar tits,” he said.

Shooter shook his head. “That Ronnie Black. He’s nothing but a bad influence.” Shooter could tell that Captain wasn’t listening. When did he ever listen? He was folding the blade back into the knife and then taking it out again. Over and over. “You don’t want to turn out like him. You got that, Wesley?”

Captain nodded his head. Then he walked on past Shooter, heading for his bedroom, still fascinated with that knife, not hearing, Shooter knew, a single word he said.

The night of the fire, he asked Captain for that knife, told him to hand it over pronto.

“Just look how quick trouble can come,” Shooter said. “Why ask for it? Can’t you see now how we all need to be careful?”

But Captain swore again and again, and so fiercely, that he’d lost the knife. Shooter, as uneasy as it made him, finally had no choice but to believe he was telling the truth. Of course, by that time Shooter was desperate to believe as much, eager to convince himself that trouble could come and somehow folks could get through it and make it to the other side.

“I promised your mother I’d take care of you,” he said, and in an unexpected show of emotion, he threw his arms around Captain and gave him a clumsy hug. “That’s what I aim to do. I’m going to look after you.”

He was thinking of how Della had gone back into the fire that one last time, confident that she’d save Emily and Gracie and Junior. I’m going to get them all out , she said. And then, before anyone could stop her, she was gone.

The day after Angel confronted Ronnie, and he claimed his knife, Wayne and Lois were in Read’s IGA, unloading their cart at the checkout. They heard a woman’s voice two lanes over from theirs.

“It was on the radio last night and again this morning.” The woman was Anna Spillman, who’d come down the street from the Real McCoy to buy five heads of lettuce. Here it was, almost the noon hour, and Pastor Quick had miscalculated how much they’d need for combination salads and sandwiches. And now she was talking to Roe Carl, who was working the register at that lane. “It just breaks my heart,” Anna said, “to know someone set that trailer on fire and Della and her kids inside.”

Roe shook her head and clucked her tongue. She had a pencil sticking out of her nest of gray curls, and she pulled it out and wagged it at Anna. “You just don’t know,” she said. “You never know about people. Now you can take that to the bank.”

“I keep hoping it wasn’t Ronnie,” Anna said. “Even after all the trouble he caused Della, I still think he’s got a good soul.”

Lois was reaching into the cart for the last bag of Brach’s candy — this one was Spice Drops — that she liked to keep on hand for the grandkids. Even Wayne was partial to them: Kentucky Mints, Root Beer Barrels, Star Brites. Not that she could afford them, what with Wayne having more trouble with the vertigo now. He was still having dizzy spells, which forced him to turn down jobs. The doctor said with vertigo, you could never tell. It might go away. It might hang on for a spell. Still, Lois wanted those candies. She loved their brightly colored packages and the way the Lemon Drops and Orange Slices glistened with sugar, the banana smell of the Circus Peanuts, the buttery toffee of the Maple Nut Goodies. Something to make her feel a little bit hopeful during these dark days.