Benediction Page 3

  Does it, Dad said. Has everybody gone?

  Yeah, they’re all out. I’m ready to go too. I’m wore out today. We were busy.

  Come back here to the office first, Dad said.

  Something more to do?

  No. Just come back to the office.

  He turned and walked past the long narrow ranks of plumbing supplies and the assortment of plastic elbows and metal clamps, past the spools of chains and nylon ropes and thin cording hanging at the end of the aisle and went into the office at the rear of the building back at the alley and sat down behind the desk.

  Clayton, the young clerk, followed him and stood at the door, leaning against the doorframe, rolling down his blue shirt cuffs as he did every day after they closed.

  Sit down, Dad said.

  Something going on?

  Come in and take a seat.

  I hope this won’t take too long. Tanya’s waiting on me. We was talking of getting a sitter and going out for dinner somewhere. Having a night out.

  Were you. Have a seat first, Dad said.

  Clayton stepped into the room and sat down. What is it? he said.

  Dad looked at him and looked past him out through the open office door for a moment. A car went by in the alley, the top of it visible through the square window in the outside door. He turned in the swivel chair and took down the wide blue-backed cash receipts ledger from the shelf behind him and turned forward again, coming around slowly in the chair, and opened the book on the desk, finding the pages he wanted, and turned the book a half turn so it was right side up to Clayton. You want to say something about this? Dad said.

  Clayton looked at him and then down at the ledger pages. He studied the figures and then looked up quickly. I don’t get what you mean.

  I think you do.

  No, I don’t neither. Are you accusing me of something?

  Are you going to make this harder than it needs to be? Dad said. You sure you want to do that?

  He pointed his finger at the total for the month just finished and turned back a page and indicated the total for the previous month.

  Have you got those numbers in your head?

  I don’t get what this is about, said Clayton.

  I’m showing you. Keep watching.

  He turned back the pages in the ledger to the same months four years earlier. You see these? he said. He pointed to the total for the earlier year.

  The store’s making an average of three hundred dollars a month less than it did four years ago, Dad said. How would that be? What would be the cause of something like that, do you think?

  I don’t have no idea. People started going someplace else maybe.

  Where would they go? This is the only hardware in town.

  Maybe we’re just not as busy.

  No. We’re still as busy. Inventory tells us that.

  Then I don’t have no answer for you.

  You could be missing something.

  Like what do you mean?

  Like something you lost. Something that might of fell out of your jacket pocket when you hung it up on the back hook this morning and never noticed.

  Dad leaned sideways and stretched his leg out straight so he could reach into his pants pocket, he withdrew a small key and bent forward and unlocked the bottom drawer of the desk. He sat up again and laid out on the desktop a small receipt book that had half of the pages missing. The perforated ends inside the binding were still there but the carbons that should have been in the book were torn away.

  I found this laying on the floor below your coat back in the hall, he said. Kind of leaning up against the wallboard. So then I could see how you were managing it. A customer comes in and buys something and you give him a receipt out of this private little extra book here of yours and then after he goes out the door and the door is shut good you pocket the money and nothing shows. It couldn’t be nothing too big. Because I would notice that. And you had to be sure I was at the back of the store or back in the office here or maybe gone home to lunch, and I don’t guess you could of done it too often or even somebody as trusting as I used to be would get suspicious. Then too I suppose you had to worry about somebody returning some shovel or garden hoe and presenting this false receipt to me and not you, to get reimbursed. You had to worry about that a lot, I guess. But somehow that never happened, did it. But I figure after a while you got too greedy, didn’t you. If you was only taking three or four hundred dollars a year I’d never of noticed anything. Or maybe even a thousand dollars a year. But that would have to be only if you hadn’t of lost this little ticket book out of your coat pocket, isn’t that right.

  Dad stopped and stared at him. Clayton didn’t say anything.

  Well, I’ll tell you, Dad said. It makes me sick. That’s what it does. It makes me wonder about the whole goddamn human race. And I don’t want to think that way. What’s wrong with you anyway?

  Across from him Clayton’s round face had begun to sweat. Later Dad would remember that, how Clayton appeared to burst out in a sudden sweat, and it was wintertime, February, cold outside, and it was not even warm in the little windowless office there at the rear of the hardware store.

  How much time will you give me? Clayton said.

  Time for what?

  To pay you back.

  You can’t pay me back.

  Not right away. But I could if you gave me enough time.

  No you couldn’t. I’m not going to have you around here anymore. You don’t work here. I don’t want to see you again.

  But I got a wife and two kids to think of.

  Yes, Dad said. I know you do. You should of been thinking about them, what you brought them to by this.

  Clayton stared at him. He wiped his hand across his forehead and dried it on his pants leg.

  Are you going to the sheriff? he said.

  No. I decided not to. On account of your kids. But I’m going to have you sign this.

  Sign what?

  This paper here.

  What is it?

  Dad removed a sheet of paper from the drawer in front of him and pushed it across the desk. Clayton read it. The paper was typed out neatly, telling how he’d stolen from the store and admitted as much and it said how many thousands of dollars the sum was and it said he admitted that too and then there was a place at the bottom of the page for him to sign his name and to provide the date.

  What will you do with this if I sign it?

  Oh, you’re going to sign it. There’s no question about that.

  All right. Say I do. Then what?

  Then I’ll keep it locked up in the safety box at the bank. In case you ever think of moving back to Holt.

  But I’m not leaving Holt.

  Yeah, you are.

  You mean you want me to leave town too?

  I’d have to run into you sometime, Dad said. I’d have to see you again on Main Street someplace.

  But I grew up here.

  I know. I knew your father and mother. Son, this is a sorry goddamn mess all around.

  But what am I supposed to do?

  You’ll have to figure that out. That’s not for me to say. Maybe you will learn something. I don’t know about that.

  What about—Clayton looked desperately around the little office—what am I going to tell my wife? How can I explain this to Tanya?

  That’s one more thing I don’t have no idea about. It’s not going to be a lot of fun, I know that. It wouldn’t be for me.

  Clayton studied Dad’s face, but there didn’t appear to be anything forgiving or tractable there. All right then, goddamn you, he said. He took up a pen from the desk and signed the paper quickly and shoved it away from him back across the desk.

  Dad reached forward and took up the paper and looked at it, examined the signature and the date, and folded the paper twice and put it in his shirt pocket.

  Now I think you better go.

  This isn’t treating me fair, this way.

  No? I thought to myself I was being more than fai
r.

  I deserve better. I’ve been working for you for going on five years.

  That’s why I’m saying you better go now. Otherwise I might forget that.

  The next day, Sunday, Clayton phoned Dad at home early in the afternoon. I need to talk to you, he said.

  We did all our talking last night.

  I know. But I need to have one last talk with you.

  About what?

  Can you meet me at the store?

  What are you going to do, shoot me or something? Dad said.

  No. Christ. It’s nothing like that. I just need to try to make this right.

  You can’t make it right.

  I’m asking you. I’m saying please will you. Just talk to me.

  Dad thought about it for a moment. All right then, he said. I’ll go in by the back door and let you in the office. In one hour. Two o’clock sharp. Don’t make me wait. This is not going to make no difference though.

  Thank you.

  Just before two, without telling Mary what he was doing, Dad went out to his car and drove across town to the hardware store and went in by the alley and left the door unlocked and turned the lights on. He entered the little office and switched the light on there and checked to see that the gun was in the drawer of the desk and then put it back, then he heard the car and Clayton was coming in at the alley door. He sat and waited, only it wasn’t Clayton who appeared. It was his wife, Tanya, the young blond woman.

  Where’s your husband? Dad said.

  He isn’t coming. I’m here.

  What are you doing here?

  She stepped into the little close windowless office. She was wearing a long coat, a man’s raincoat, a kind of slicker. She came around the end of the desk and stood three feet away from Dad. Then she opened the coat. She was naked under it. A young woman who had had two children in rapid succession and she showed it. Her belly was round and slack and had white stretch marks. She had wide hips. Her large breasts sagged a little. But she wasn’t bad-looking.

  You can have all this, she said. You can have all this as often and regular as you want it for an entire year. I know some special things too that might interest you.

  If what, Dad said.

  If you tear up that paper he signed last night and we all forget anything ever happened.

  He looked at her face. Her face was quite pretty. She was watching him closely, her eyes fierce and hard and scared, daring him. Waiting.

  No, he said. No, I’m not interested. You’re going to take this wrong but I’m not going to do anything like that. Your husband’s wrong as hell to get you into this.

  I don’t care about that, she said.

  You will.

  She opened the front of the raincoat wider, as if she hadn’t offered herself sufficiently. She changed her stance, pushing herself forward, displaying her body. She put a hand on one hip, moving the skirt of the coat out of the way. She turned slightly to show herself in profile. Do you see? she said. Are you looking?

  Yes, he said. And I’m married and my wife is all I want and all I’ll ever want.

  You’re not looking good enough, she said.

  Yeah I am. I think you better go on now.

  You’re going to regret this. You’re going to wish you could change your mind.

  No. That’s not going to happen, Dad said. Now I want you to get out of here.

  She pulled the coat together and looked at Dad sitting in the swivel chair at the desk. Then the coat came open once more and her breasts swung and bobbled with the violent motion and she slapped him as hard as she could across the face. It left a bright red mark. Then she turned and went out of the office.

  It snowed that night as Clayton had predicted the day before that it would. A wet snow more like one in March or April than one in February, and the next day Clayton and Tanya took the two children and some few quick belongings in suitcases and cardboard boxes and drove a hundred miles south and moved into a house with her parents.

  In the spring a couple of months later on a slow day Dad received a call. He was in the little office again, in the middle of the morning. The voice on the other end, a female voice, was already screaming when he picked up the phone.

  You son of a bitch! He killed himself! You son of a bitch.

  Who is this?

  You know who it is. He went to Denver and started drinking and took a gun and blew half his head off. He never even left a note. Because of you. You did this. You’re the one that made him. Oh I hope you rot in hell! Oh goddamn you! I hope you burn in hellfire forever.

  5

  MIDMORNING she was out on the front porch in the still fresh bright heat of the day with the old wooden-handled broom she kept for the porch and sidewalk, sweeping across the gray-painted wood boards, some of them warped and coming apart at the joints. At the front window she looked inside and Dad was sitting in his chair staring out into the side yard. She wondered what he was thinking about. If he was thinking about how his death would come for him, in what manner it would take him away. He never talked of it. She swept up the dead tree leaves and the dirt that had blown in. There was always dirt on the front porch, even in winter. She was glad of that, in a way. She was sweeping it off onto the bare ground next to the cement foundation of the old house when Lorraine came out and said she had a phone call.

  I didn’t hear the phone.

  It’s some woman asking for you.

  Did she say who it was?

  No. But I wish you’d let me do this, Mom. You don’t need to be sweeping out here.

  Yes I do. I have to get outside. This gives me an excuse to be out here. She leaned the broom against the house wall and Lorraine handed her the phone and went back inside.

  Yes. This is Mary. She stood facing out across the street.

  This is Doris Thomas calling. I saw Frank.

  What did you say?

  I saw Frank.

  What do you mean?

  At the airport in Denver. He was in the lines at security where they make you walk back and forth between those straps and we kept passing each other and I knew right away it was him. He was wearing a cap so I couldn’t see the top of his head but it looked exactly like him. Like your husband used to look when he was that age.

  What did you say to him?

  I didn’t say anything to him. I didn’t want to embarrass either one of us.

  He was flying someplace?

  Yes. I just thought you’d want to know.

  When was this?

  Two weeks ago. I was on my way to Seattle to be with my daughter. She had her baby.

  Did he look okay?

  Frank? Yes, I think he looked okay.

  I mean, did my son look happy?

  Oh. I wouldn’t be able to say about that.

  She stood facing out across the fence and gate and the street to the empty lot on the other side. Inside the fence the shade under the silver poplar trees was shifting and moving on the grass. There were tears in her eyes now and she stayed for a long time crying quietly and thinking. Then she wiped her face and went back into the house. Lorraine was upstairs in her bedroom. At the foot of the stairs she called up to her. Will you come down now?

  Is something wrong?

  I want to tell you and Dad at the same time.

  What is it?

  She turned and went into the living room. Dad was sleeping and she went over and put her hand on his arm and held it there until he opened his eyes and looked up at her. Are you awake, honey? she said.

  I am now.

  I want you to hear something.

  Lorraine came into the room.

  I want to tell you both something, Mary said. About a phone call I just got from Doris Thomas. You remember her.

  No. I don’t, Dad said.

  Yes, you do. She had the daughter that moved out to Washington State. She and her husband lived over on Detroit Street until he died.

  Don Thomas.

  That’s right.

  He always talked a lot, said
Dad.

  Well, I don’t know about that.

  They had a boy my age, Lorraine said. I never heard what became of him.

  What about this phone call? Dad said.

  Mary looked from her husband to her daughter. Doris said she saw Frank. At the airport in Denver.

  How could she see Frank?

  That’s what she said. She said she saw him at the airport.

  When?

  Two weeks ago.

  Why is she just calling now?

  Because she was in Seattle seeing her daughter. Her daughter had her baby. She just got back.

  What did he look like? Dad said.

  She said he looked like you when you were his age.

  I doubt that.

  That’s what she said.

  I doubt it.

  Dad, she said she saw him.

  I don’t believe any of this for a minute. It isn’t possible.

  But, honey, what if she did.

  No. Frank’s gone off someplace far away. He’s not coming back here or anywhere near here.

  I don’t think she saw him either, Mom.

  Oh why do you say that?

  I don’t think she could have. I don’t think Frank would be flying anywhere.

  Mary looked from one to the other, her eyes filling again with tears. Shame on you both, she said. Shame on you.

  She left the room and went out through the front hall to the porch and carried her broom to the swing and sat down.

  In the house Dad said, Go see about her, will you? She won’t talk to me now.

  Lorraine went out to the porch. Can I sit with you, Mom?

  No, I don’t want any company. I don’t want to speak to you or anybody else right now.

  6

  THE NURSE from hospice was a small active woman with beautiful teeth and shiny hair. She came into the living room on a sunny morning in her pink shirt and vest and blue jeans and came over to Dad, walking slowly so as not to surprise him, and he turned from the window to look at her. Lorraine brought her a chair and she sat down in front of Dad and took his hands and examined them, inspecting his fingernails, and smiled and he looked at her soberly, not smiling but not frowning as he sometimes did. She said, Mr. Lewis, how are you this morning?

  About the same.

  You’re out of bed and in your chair. You still feel well enough to sit up.