Late One Night

9

The Firebird’s tires squealed and laid black marks on the pavement when Ronnie left Della’s.

“He sure took out of there a-hellin’,” Shooter said to Captain. They were outside rounding up one of Della’s goats. The pen she had behind the trailer had a wood fence, and there was always a plank or two busted out and those goats would get free and wander across the road and Shooter would have to get them back in the pen. He’d take over a hammer and some nails and patch things up enough to hold them until the next time he’d find a goat or two in his garden, chomping up anything they could get to. It didn’t set right with him. None of it. Ever since Ronnie had left Della for Brandi Tate, the place had gone to hell.

Shooter had tried his best to do right by Della, helping her out with this and that when she needed it, trying to be someone that she and her kids could count on, but as the weeks went on it began to wear on him and he started to see Della as someone who was incompetent. She was a problem he couldn’t solve, and Lord knew he had enough worries of his own as Captain got older and more headstrong.

The Firebird shot up the blacktop, tires squealing and smoking, and Captain and Shooter listened to Ronnie let that engine out for a good long ways.

“Sugar tits,” Captain said.

“Don’t talk like that, Wesley.” Shooter hated to see that hangdog look on Captain’s face, that look that said he knew he’d done wrong, but he just couldn’t help himself. “Come on, Captain,” Shooter said. He only called him Wesley when he wanted to be stern. “Let’s get after that goat.”

Missy met Ronnie’s Firebird on the blacktop outside Goldengate. She was waiting behind the school bus that’d just put out its stop sign when Ronnie went roaring past, no regard for that bus at all.

On the bus, Angel saw the Firebird shoot by and she said to Hannah, who was sitting beside her, “There goes Dad.”

Hannah came up on her knees and squirmed around in her seat to look on down the blacktop. Her braid swung out and hit Angel in the face.

Some of the other kids on the bus had seen the Firebird, too. Angel grabbed Hannah by the arm and pulled her down.

“He’s been to see Mom,” Hannah said. “Do you think—”

“No, I don’t think,” Angel said. “Not with him driving like that.”

“Hey, Angel,” a boy called from the back of the bus. It was Tommy Stout, a boy Angel secretly liked. “There goes your dad,” he said, in a voice that wasn’t mean, but it called attention to what Angel had spent months trying to forget. Her dad had walked out and was living with someone else. “Looks like he’s in a hurry,” Tommy said, and Angel closed her eyes.

Missy used her cell phone to call Pat on his job site. “It’s a wonder no one got killed,” she told him. “I’m sitting here right behind the bus, and I’m shaking. I’m watching one of the Thacker girls cross the road, and I’m thinking about what might have happened. That Ronnie Black is out of control.”

Pat was a quiet man, and, when he spoke, he said his words slowly, as if he’d given them a good deal of thought and wanted to make sure he got them right. “He was just out here looking for work.” Pat’s construction company was building a house near Goldengate. “He said Della had papers served on him, and that girl he’s living with — that Brandi Tate? — well, she’s got a baby coming. He seemed pretty shook up.”

“Don’t make excuses for him. He’s only getting what he’s had coming.”

“I was just giving you the facts.” Pat’s voice shrank and got that little bit of hurt in it that always startled Missy whenever she heard it. “I didn’t mean to stand up for him.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to jump on you. I’m just so mad at Ronnie for doing Della the way he is.”

On up the road, Della threw on an old John Deere jacket that Ronnie left when he moved out, the first thing she grabbed from the coat pegs by the front door, not even noticing what it was until she was out in the cold. The buses would be coming soon — first Angel and Hannah’s, and then Sarah and the twins’—and she wanted to be there waiting for them, the way she managed to be every day no matter that she felt like her life had blown to pieces. She wanted her girls to know that nothing was going to change. They were going to get along as a family for a good long time.

Shooter had a rope around the neck of the billy goat, Methuselah, who was always butting his way through the rotten fence. Captain was walking alongside. When he saw Della, he gave her a big wave. His face lit up, the way it always did whenever he saw her. He swept the shaggy blond bangs away from his eyes.

“Della, we got your goat,” he said, and even though she was embarrassed about the stray goat, she felt a warm glow inside because to Captain it meant nothing that this was the umpteenth time that he and his father had to round up one of her goats. It was something he was glad to do, and he didn’t have it in him to pass judgment on her or anyone else for that matter. She was the same Della to him that she’d always been and this business with Ronnie — even though she knew Captain missed having him around — didn’t matter at all.

Shooter, though, was a different story. She knew that Shooter thought she should keep a better grip on things. “Damn it, Della,” he said to her once. “You’ve got to get things under control.”

She’d done her best to keep those goats inside their pen, but Methuselah was always breaking through the boards.

“Well, Della, looks like I’ve caught another one,” Shooter said, and though he said it with a smile, she knew that deep down he was tired of chasing goats. “I’ll put him back in the pen and see what I can do to patch it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and he gave a little wave of his hand as if to say he didn’t want to hear her apology.

At least he didn’t say anything about the way Ronnie had driven out of there like a crazy man. At least Shooter left that alone.

“You’re going have to come up with a better arrangement for your animals,” he said. “Come spring, I’m not going to have them eating up my garden. I mean it, Della. You’re going to have to find some way of making sure they stay where they’re supposed to be.” Then, as he led Methuselah around back of the trailer, he said something she wasn’t sure he meant for her to hear, but maybe he did. Maybe this was his way of saying he was tired of the whole damn deal. “Some people,” he said. “Captain, best thing would be to put a match to that fence and start over.”

Something about the way Shooter said some people struck Della wrong, and though she was generally a good-natured person, she snapped. She knew it was the bad feeling inside her after her run-in with Ronnie that made her so angry with Shooter. In fact, she was more embarrassed than anything, ashamed to be the woman who caused so much trouble. She followed Shooter and Captain behind the trailer.

“You don’t have to do anything to that fence,” she said. “In fact, you don’t need to do anything for me ever again.”

Shooter turned to look at her, and the wind bit at his face. The sharp tone of her voice caught him by surprise and made him get his back up even more.

“Damn it, Della. I’m trying to do the best I can for you, and you talk to me that way?”

“I know what you told Missy.” She took a step toward him. “I know you wish I wasn’t your neighbor.”

For a few moments, he didn’t know what she was talking about. What had he said to Missy? Then it came to him. Just a wisecrack. That was all. Just something he said and didn’t think for a minute that it’d ever get back to Della, and even if it did, wouldn’t she know he’d only been joking? You know, I’d like those people a lot better if they lived somewhere else. That’s what he’d said to Missy one day when he’d rounded up those stray goats and patched that fence again.

“Hell, Della. That was just a joke. I didn’t mean any harm.”

“You know what they say,” she told him. “In every ounce of jest there’s a pound of truth. If I’m so much trouble to you, just leave me alone.”

She whipped around and stomped off toward the road.

“That woman needs to learn to be more grateful,” Shooter finally said to Captain. “Come on. Let’s patch that fence while we’ve still got good light.”