Taft (21 page)

Taft can't sleep until both of his children are home. It's the real reason why he won't let them stay out late on school nights. It makes it too hard for him to get up and go to work in the morning. On Friday and Saturday nights they can stay out until midnight. Taft is off guarding the lumber. His wife sets the alarm for twelve and gets herself up to look for them. She's a sound sleeper. The reason tonight is different is because yesterday was Lyle Sealy's wedding anniversary. Lyle guards the lumber on Thursday nights. He asked if Taft would switch with him so that he could take his wife to dinner in Oak Ridge. Taft agreed, even though it meant he'd work in the carpet factory all day Thursday, guard Thursday night, and make carpet again all day Friday. Taft is sympathetic to things like anniversaries. Lyle is a young man. He's right to take his wife to dinner. The truth is, Taft probably would have said yes if Lyle had told him he wanted to stay home to watch
Diamonds Are Forever
on late-night TV. Taft isn't very good at saying no.

This morning at breakfast, after ninety minutes of sleep between jobs, Taft tells Carl and Fay he'd like them not to go out tonight. "I need the sleep," he says. "It wouldn't kill us to all stay home together for once."

"Dad," Fay says, putting down her spoon beside her cereal bowl. "I can't cancel a date on Friday morning. It's rude."

"It's just one date," Taft says.

"He asked me two weeks ago." Fay starts to roll a piece of her hair between her fingers, the way she does when she gets agitated over something. "I can't break it off just because you're too tired to wait up."

"Fay," her mother says. "Just do what your father tells you."

But Fay doesn't even register the comment as part of the conversation. "Maybe you should just go to sleep for a change," she says.

"You'll never understand about things like this until you have children of your own," Taft says. He looks over at his son. "Carl? What about you, do you have plans?"

Until this minute Carl has been eating toast, what looks like half a loaf of toasted bread. He makes it in the oven because it takes too long to get the amount of toast he needs out of the two slice toaster. "What?"

"Are you going out tonight?"

"Sure I am," Carl says. He looks surprised. His shirt is covered in crumbs. "You told me I could take the car. The stock cars are in town this weekend."

Taft has forgotten this. Carl's only had his license a few months. This is the first time Taft had agreed to let him take the car out at night. It had been heavily discussed and planned. "All right," he says. "Maybe tonight's the night I'll learn to sleep with the two of you gone."

"That's just great," Fay says. "I say I have a date and you tell me to cancel. Carl says he's going to the stock car races and all of the sudden it's okay to be out."

"You got your way," Fay's mother tells her, keeping her eyes on her coffee cup. "Be happy about it."

Taft isn't worried, just tired. After the kids go out that night he falls asleep watching television, but as soon as he gets into bed his eyes spring open. All day he dreamed about sleep. On the line the carpet seemed to be coming at him in a flood. It moved like water. He had to keep stopping and blinking to get things settled down again. He's no kid anymore. He can't stay up like this. There was a time when Taft could stay up all night, sometimes two nights in a row, but that was before marriage and children. Now he wants to sleep, but he can't because he has to wait for the sound of Carl's key in the lock. Fay, now Carl. One, two. He listens for the door.

At quarter past twelve Taft thinks, Forget it, he'll be fine, but the more time that passes the less chance he has of getting to sleep. Twelve-thirty, one o'clock. Taft's wife stretches and rolls over. He pulls the blanket back over her shoulder and gets up. He finds his slippers beneath the bed in the dark. He walks down the hall in his pajamas to Fay's room and opens the door. Her single bed is pushed into the corner and he has to go in to really see her. Asleep, she is always a baby. Her knees pulled up, her face flushed pink. Taft can remember her in a crib, can see her at two and seven and twelve. Always, she slept on her stomach, her fists knotted beneath her chin. On the walls there are posters of boys Taft doesn't recognize. The boys are wearing jeans and leather jackets and no shirts. The autographs over their chests are signed in such elaborate hands that Taft can't make out their names. It used to be that only boys would hang up pictures of girls.

After he leaves Fay's room he goes to check Carl's. Maybe he fell asleep for a minute. Maybe he didn't hear him come in. The floor is covered with clothes, weight disks, open magazines, empty cassette tape boxes. Carl's bed is unmade, but he hasn't been sleeping in it. The room is so torn up it looks like a crime scene, a kidnapping, and Taft hardly notices it. One-fifteen. Taft goes outside.

There's no harm in walking around in your pajamas late at night in your neighborhood in Coalfield. No one is up. It's pleasant outside, not too warm. Taft thinks in the summer maybe everyone should stay up at night and sleep during the day so as to enjoy the more comfortable temperatures. Every house on the street is dark. People here are careful not to leave the lights burning. Taft walks to the end of the driveway. He looks down the street. He steps into the street to get a better look. He comes back, opens up his mailbox for no reason and checks inside. Every day when the mail comes Taft is hopeful for a minute that it might be good news.

More time passes. Taft is so awake he can hardly blink his eyes. He decides that at two-thirty he's going to call the police. His mind is playing tricks on him, like it was that afternoon in the factory. He starts to think of Carl dead. He is thinking of his funeral, of his crying wife and daughter. He is thinking of drunk drivers reeling over the highways in pickup trucks, games of chicken, fake stock car races, late-night swims at the quarry ending up in drowning. He sees dark blue suits and newspaper notices, the wrestling team taking up two pews in the church, their crew cut heads bowed in prayer. Taft thinks how he will tell this story for the rest of his life. He'll say, I told him he couldn't go out that night and then I changed my mind. He is sitting in the kitchen, trying to remember what Carl was wearing when he left so he can describe him to the police. Then he hears a car in the driveway. A door slams shut and the car drives away. Taft meets Carl at the door.

"Dad," Carl says.

There he is, wearing a red T-shirt, not the blue one Taft had been thinking of. Taft feels like he's choking. He doesn't feel the pain in his chest, but he remembers it suddenly. His hand goes up towards Carl and then drops back before he's touched him. "You all right?"

Carl nods.

"Where the hell have you been so late?"

"I had an accident."

Carl is looking down at the floor. Taft looks behind him, through the open front door. No car. "Anybody hurt? You hurt?"

Carl shakes his head.

And just as he's about to question him, just as he's about to find out where the car is and why he didn't call, Taft is overwhelmed by the knowledge that this is Carl, here, alive. All fears mean nothing. He was wrong. Here stands his whole son, not a mark on him. He puts his hands on Carl's shoulders. He can feel them shaking. "But you're okay?"

"I wrecked the car."

They only have the one car. Taft's wife drives him to work and picks him up later. The children take the bus to school. It's a gold Buick LeSabre. It isn't a new car. It was going to need tires this year. No matter how badly it's wrecked, they'll get it fixed. The money. The deductible is five hundred dollars and that money does not exist anyplace, period. Even if they found five hundred there would be the insurance costs, which would go up and up. Carl wouldn't be allowed to drive anymore. There'd be no way to cover him. There will be a lot to think about tomorrow, a lot to figure out. He'll have to be stern with Carl then. There will have to be punishment. But it's late now and they're there together. Whatever is true tonight will still be true in the morning after they sleep.

"Go on and get to bed," Taft says. "It's late."

"Don't you want to hear about it?"

"Tomorrow. You get some sleep." He smiles at him, just the smallest bit, but it makes everything clear. What matters is you, Taft is telling him. You, alive and well, not the car.

Carl nods and heads down the hallway to his room. Taft goes back to bed, to his wife. There's a lot to figure out, money, but he's dead tired. He's sure the second his head hits the pillow he'll be asleep, but once he lies down he can't even make his eyes close. The fear, which he knows now is groundless, stays with him. Even with Carl safe in bed, Taft feels like he still isn't home.

"Dad? You awake?"

I was just holding the phone, not talking into it. The clock said six-thirty. I hadn't been awake at six-thirty since Franklin left for Florida, which could only mean that it was Franklin on the phone. "I'm awake."

"Nobody here is up," Franklin said.

"I'm up," Mrs. Woodmoore called from somewhere behind him.

"Oh," he said. "Gramma's up."

"Did you sleep okay?" I said, still sleeping myself.

"I slept fine. I slept on the sofa. Aunt Ruth is sleeping in the room she used to share with Mom and Mom is in Uncle Buddy's room. Gramma said Mom and Aunt Ruth should share their old room like they used to, but they didn't want to."

I nodded into my pillow, thankful at least for the fact that I didn't have to picture them sleeping in the same room.

"Are you coming over?"

"Not this early."

"But you're coming over?"

"Have your mother call me when she wakes up. Then we'll decide what the plan for the day is."

"Putt-Putt golf," Franklin said.

"We'll see. Wait till she gets up. And don't wake her up. Do you hear me?"

"Yessir."

"I'm glad you're back."

"I'm glad I'm back," he said to me.

I knew he was going to wake up Marion. Even if he didn't actually go into her room and shake her, he would stomp back and forth in the hall and pretend to trip and fall into her door. I didn't have much choice but to get up and shower.

There I was, getting ready to spend the day with my son, thinking about where I was going to take him to eat and when we'd go down to the river, and as happy as I was I couldn't help but feel Carl like a dark shadow in the room. Fay had told me at the start, it was just that he was trying to find a way to deal with his pain. I hadn't thrown him out when I knew he was using drugs. I hadn't gone to his family or talked to him about getting help. I was plenty understanding of his problems then. But when he was dealing in the bar, that was that. I didn't want to reconcile with him, try to bring him back. What I wanted, really, was never to have known him. Looking at Carl was like looking down a well. There was not time or love or money enough in the world to fill that hole, and even knowing that, the need and soreness of him followed me around. Fay would be working that night, and I wondered if for once he'd give her the car to drive herself home, or if he'd just park across the street somewhere when she was due to get off and wait for her.

I took my shower and set about cleaning up the apartment. I needed to do the laundry. I was thinking about it when the phone rang again.

"I'm up," Marion said.

"Sorry to hear that."

She yawned, such a long yawn that she finally put her hand over the receiver. "You'd think I'd be used to this."

"I hear once they get a little older they sleep all the time."

"I'm not counting on it," she said. "Come on over and take us to breakfast. You don't have to be at work for a while."

"No hurry."

"Good. I'm hungry. I'm starving."

"You're always hungry when you wake up," I said. "I used to think I should leave a bowl of food on the bedside table so you could just roll over in the morning and feed yourself."

Marion laughed. "If you'd done that," she said, "things might have worked out differently for us."

I took them to the Shoney's. Ruth was still asleep when I picked them up, or she was staying in her room. Carl and Fay and Ruth. I felt like I needed to make myself a schedule so that there'd be time to smooth things out with all of them. Funny that there was comfort in being with Marion, the person who always headed up the list of people to be soothed.

"You getting waffles?" she asked Franklin.

"Waffles," he said.

The waitress showed up and she smiled at Franklin. "You on vacation already?" she said to him. She was a tall black girl with a head full of shiny curls. She looked so cheerful, so completely free of personal problems standing there in her brown and orange striped polyester uniform. I was wondering why I couldn't find myself such a happy waitress.

"I left early," Franklin said.

"Now that's smart thinking," the waitress said, pen waiting in the air just above her order pad. "Hang out with your mom and dad. What'll you folks be having this morning?"

We gave our orders and she brought us our own pot of coffee. She filled our cups and left the rest on the table.

"Stop staring at that girl," Marion said when she left. She was laughing. "You're getting too old for that."

"It's not what you're thinking," I said.

"You don't know what I'm thinking," she said, trying to make herself sound bad and laughing again. She stretched like she was still in bed and then stared out the window at a clear day and a lot full of parked cars. "Memphis looks good. You wouldn't believe how tired you can get of all that sunshine and those pink buildings."

"Everything's pink," Franklin said.

"I imagine that would wear on you."

Marion nodded, smiled again. "I'm going over to the hospital this afternoon, say hello, see if I still have any friends in this town."

"See if you still have a job?" I asked.

Marion gave Franklin a light push on the shoulder. "Go wash your hands. The food's going to be here in a minute."

"My hands are clean."

"I saw you petting that dog outside. Go on." She shoved him a little so that he slid out of the booth seat. He nodded and headed off.