Night of the Juggler

Chapter 4

“I must have understood you when we were younger. Or maybe I just accepted you and was too stupid to ask any questions. At any rate, bein’ a young and dutiful Southern belle”-the voice dropped suddenly into a mocking, mushmouth Southern accent-”Ah just didn’t feel Ah had the right to ask my little ole hubby any questions at all ‘cept did he want anything from me before he went off to beddie-bye and sweet old dreams.”

Luther Boyd sat in his study listening to his wife’s voice as it came to him from the slowly spinning reels of the tape recorder. He sat forward on the edge of the chair, his hands locked tightly together, his elbows resting on his knees. His face was creased in a line of bitter frustration. On the table beside him was an untasted whiskey and soda and pouch and pipe, which he had put aside after listening to his wife’s first words to him: “I expect you’ve got your pipe lighted and a drink in your hand and are prepared to listen with that goddamn respectful and skeptical smile of yours to all my sad stories.”

Luther had played the tape several times and almost knew it by heart.

He punched a button stopping the tape and let it spin forward to her last few paragraphs, which contained the crucial substance of her accusations. Pressing the play button, Boyd settled back in his chair and picked up the drink in which the ice had long ago dissolved, his mood a curious and uncharacteristic blend of defeat and confusion.

He had picked up his wife in mid-sentence. “. . oh, damn it, I missed my point.” There was silence. Then he heard the clink of ice in a glass, the liquid splash of what he assumed to be vodka, since that was her preference in increasing quantities since Buddy had died. “Yes, I’m having a tall, cold one, Colonel. Well, what was my point? Oh, just this. I could understand a young boy hunting down every animal that moved just so he could kill it. And when you couldn’t do the job personally, you trained dogs and falcons to do it. After all, young boys don’t know any better. And I can understand a youngster going off to the wars. That, except for that shameful pig-sticking in Vietnam, was the patriotic thing to do. But I can’t understand a grown man devoting decades not just to killing animals and men but to teaching others to do the same thing and publishing books with diagrams to make the slaughter ugly and efficient and scientific. That’s what Buddy couldn’t understand either.” Barbara’s voice was rising emotionally. “He went into the Army and got himself killed. Not because he loved and respected you. But because he needed your love and respect. And that was the only goddamn way he thought he could get them.”

Luther Boyd heard his daughter Kate’s bedroom door open, followed instantly by a blast of music from her hi-fi set. He winced while quickly punching off the tape recorder. Goddamn it, he thought resentfully-and he was thinking now of both Kate’s music and Barbara’s attitudes-he was a square, and he hated that cacophony of raucous noise called rock music, and he was a patriot and he loved his country and had fought for it, so why should he be put on trial for his attitudes and convictions?

When Kate ran into the study wearing a quilted red robe and matching slippers, his resentment ebbed at the sight of her rosy, pretty features and her long blond hair which, released from its ponytail, fell smoothly down to her shoulders. While she came over and sat on his knee, he smiled appraisingly at her, judging her points, the soft line of her developing bosom, the good, square shoulders and coltishly slim legs, as he might assess the qualities of a thoroughbred filly. “Well, Miss Katherine Jackson Boyd, let’s see you hollow out your back,” he said.

She smiled at him and sucked in her stomach, squared her shoulders, and put her hands together on the pommel of an imaginary horse.

“How’s this, Daddy?”

“Blue ribbon,” he said, and she relaxed and snuggled herself into his arms.

“Could we talk about Buddy now?” she asked him.

“Do you remember your grandfather, Kate?”

“Just that he was tall and had white hair. And he told me to lean forward and grab my pony’s mane to help him when we were going up a hill.”

Boyd smiled faintly. “Anything else?”

“Well, he always smelled of Pears soap and tobacco.”

“I admired him because, above all, he was fair,” Boyd said. “And I’ve tried to be like him. So I believe we should talk about Buddy sometime when your mother is here. That’s the fairest way to make you understand.”

She sighed and snuggled into his arms.

“But I don’t think she’s being fair,” she said.

“Hush now,” he said and patted her shoulder gently.

And Katherine Jackson Boyd rested in her father’s arms, physically safe and secure and privileged in their electronically guarded apartment building high above the mean streets and alleys where Gus Soltik was looking for a kitten.