Nick reached down and ran his hand through Katherine’s hair. He hugged Willie against his leg, brushed his hip holster to make sure Willie didn’t have a hand on it again. Leaned into a kiss from Katy.
“How’d it go?” asked Katy.
“Popped ’em both.”
“My hero!”
“My hero!” screamed Willie.
“My hero!” screamed Katherine.
The baby wailed and kicked.
“It’s nice to be home,” Nick said.
“Got our Sunday-”
“MY HERO!”
“MY HERO!”
“WILLIE AND KATHERINE, BE QUIET! I’VE GOT THE SUNDAY PORK CHOPS ABOUT READY, HONEY! THE PORK CHOPS ARE ALMOST READY!”
She was flushed and pretty. A couple of vodka tonics into the evening, thought Nick. He liked her that way. Loose and easy and a little goofy. She’d gained a fair amount of weight after three children but Nick liked that, too. Her flesh was firm and cool and it always smelled sweet.
AFTER PORK CHOPS they watched Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color in black and white. Nick wondered when the new color sets would get down into the three-hundred range so they could afford one. Five hundred bucks would get you a nice RCA Victor with Vista Color, but they didn’t have that kind of money.
They put the children to bed and Nick made fresh drinks and brought Katy one in the small bathroom where she was brushing her straight blond hair. Nick left the bathroom door cracked, lay on the bed, and watched her. He liked to see this, liked the way the just-combed hair stood out before settling back into place. Katy had on her slinky floral night slip, didn’t cover much. A loose robe over it. She sat on the counter with her head turned slightly toward the medicine chest mirror, one leg crossed over the other, one foot on the floor flexed to keep her balance.
Nick watched her turn off the light and come toward him. He felt surrounded by complex and contradictory emotions, like bats at dusk, swooping down from different directions.
She got under the covers and turned her back to him. “I’m tired tonight, honey. Is that okay?”
“Sure. I understand.”
“You, too?” she asked.
“Not tired, really. Lend a guy a helping hand?”
“I really am tired, Nick. Why don’t you believe me?”
“I do. I know how it is all day with the monsters.”
“Rain check?”
“Rain check.”
“I love you, Nick.”
“I love you.”
He kissed the back of her head and flipped on the reading light. Picked up an Ian Fleming paperback. Bond got laid every night or so. Nick got laid-had last gotten genuinely laid-thirty-four nights ago. Before that, twenty-eight. A hand job here and there. Nick suspected there was something out of whack with this, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you just talked about. Before the children, a whole different story. It had gone out the window when Willie was born and never come back.
Better to just not think about it. Bond wouldn’t let him not think about it. Bond pissed him off.
Last night he’d had another dream about the secretary in the district attorney’s office. Sharon. Second time in a month. In the dreams he always said something funny to her. In real life he’d never said a word to her except for a hi or two.
He offed the light and got into his robe and slippers. Sat in the rocker in Steven’s room and watched the baby sleep awhile. Liked the smells in here. Wondered what an eight-week-old human being dreamed about. Wondered how Clay was doing over there in the jungle. Just one letter, four months back. An advisor. Nick got up and made another drink.
Out in the garage were two of Nick’s favorite things. One was a wooden cabinet he had built. It was eight feet high, with double doors and shelves that slid out on ball-bearing runners. He’d painted it red to match one of his other favorite things, their Ford Country Squire station wagon with the wood-look siding. The family called the big cabinet the Odd Box and the wagon they called the Red Rocket. The car was red outside and red inside, too, with red vinyl seats and plenty of chrome on the dash. Nick kept the car inside against the weather and the box locked against the children, though the things inside it were essentially valueless.
He dialed open the padlock and swung out the Odd Box doors. The lower shelves held the dirt collection and the older things. The higher the shelf, the more recent. The top three shelves were still empty.
He glanced at the bottles of dirt from important places. The grave he and his brothers had dug for Jake the collie. The lake where he’d caught his first fish. Soil from Northrup Field, where he’d scored his first touchdown. From Prentice Park, where Katy first told him she loved him. Maui beach sand from their honeymoon. Earth from the Sheriff’s Academy range. Soil from the hospital grounds where his children were born. Each bottle was labeled with the date and the location.
And oddities: the toy panda he’d gotten for his second birthday and treasured well into third grade. The first baseball mitt his father had given him, old and shapeless and dark with oil. A pastel drawing he’d won a magazine contest with. A luminous dial pocket watch he’d gotten one year for Christmas. A hummingbird’s nest. Fossilized branches he’d smuggled out of the Petrified Forest in Arizona.
And so on. Up through his marriage and his children and his Sheriff’s Academy training and his career.
Nick pulled out the shelves one at a time, looking them over for nothing in particular. Just getting the feel of time passing. Of his life going by. A rock from near the Mercury 1 liftoff. Cool, big daddy. He’d been collecting things longer than he could remember. His mother said she’d never know what his pockets would be full of by the end of the day. She found a baby king snake in his pocket once. A field mouse. A cherry bomb. A handful of live ammunition he’d found out in one of the groves when he was five. Pack of cards with pictures of naked women on them-another orange grove treasure. Nick could never pass up a good souvenir.
He closed up the cabinet, spun the lock dial, and pulled on it once.
Back inside he sat in the living room a minute, listened to the sounds of the house. The Hotpoint was noisy but it sure froze those ice cubes in a hurry. He moved the drapes and looked outside to the houses across from theirs, the driveways and the sidewalks and the streetlights dampened by a light autumn fog. Grape stake fences. Trash cans at the curb. A white Country Squire station wagon and a blue Kingswood Estate and a brown Vista Cruiser and a yellow Colony Park and two green Mercury Commuters. Backboards and hoops above the garage doors. Kitchen lights on at the Fortners’. Off at the Sloans’. Kids in their rooms with baseball cards and Beatles cards and dolls and plastic dinosaurs. Or, one town over, two brothers molesting their sister, mom a suicide and dad not home. Poor girl drugged to the gills, trying to forget about it. Bright girl. Pretty. Dimples. Goddamned tutu and a guitar. A real shame. Nothing will happen to her tonight, anyway. Maybe I did some good.