Late One Night

19

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?”

“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.