THIRTY-TWO

PUD POTTER'S APARTMENT was down a side street off the square, past a sandwich shop and a place that sold baseball cards and used CDs. Upstairs, in the back, with a nice view of the railroad tracks. In the little front hall, I had to step over a narrow mattress on the floor. Beyond it there was just a bedroom, kitchenette, and bath. A window air conditioner was cranking as hard as it could, but the room wasn't cool. The mattress was bare except for a pillow and a slept-under green spread. The bed in the bedroom was unmade, but at least there were sheets. The walls were painted beige. The woodwork was painted brown. There were dishes in the sink in the kitchenette, and a couple of damp-looking towels littered the bathroom floor. Pud and Cord sat on the unmade bed while we talked. I leaned against the wall. They hadn't been awake long.

"Hard times," I said.

"Pathetic, is what it is," Pud said.

He wore a sleeveless undershirt and jeans. He had weight lifters' arms and a boozer's gut. Cord sat next to him in a pair of tennis shorts and no shirt.

"Things moved pretty swiftly," Cord said. "Take us a little time to get our feet under us."

"And do fucking what?" Pud said.

"Get on with our lives," Cord said.

"Neither one of us knows how to do shit," Pud said. "All we did was service the women, and you weren't even any good at that."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Cord said.

"You think he don't know?" Pud said. "He knows. Don't you know?"

I said, "Sure."

"I ever have any trouble with you?" Pud said.

"No, never," I said. "We were fooling around once at a party at the Clive place. But no trouble."

Pud nodded.

"I drink too much," he said. "Makes it hard to remember sometimes. I know I can be a damn fool."

"Lot of that going around," I said.

"What do you know?" Cord said.

"About what?"

"About me."

Somehow the air conditioner had succeeded in making the room clammy but not cool.

"I know you are gay. I know you prefer boys to men. I know your wife was working truck stops."

Cord looked at the floor.

"See," Pud said. "I told you he knew."

Cord shook his head slightly, still looking down.

"What's the thing about truck stops?" Pud said.

"Cord can tell you," I said.

"I don't know anything about it," Cord said.

He sat motionless. His voice was very small.

"She'd have made sure you knew," I said.

"Knew what?" Pud said.

Cord began to cry softly. Pud stared at him and then at me.

"Who said what? What's the matter?"

Cord continued to cry quietly. Pud put one arm around his shoulder.

"Come on," he said, "come on now, Cord."

Cord turned his face in against Pud's shoulder and sobbed. Pud's face reddened and his body stiffened, but he kept his arm where it was. He didn't look at me.

"What's going to happen to us?" Cord mumbled against Pud's shoulder.

"We're gonna be fine," Pud said. "We just need a little time to get our feet under us, you know. We're all right. We'll meet somebody else. We'll be all right."

I waited.

"Cord's real sensitive," Pud said. "They're like that."

The room was too small. The air was too close. The emotions were too raw. I felt claustrophobic.

"I'll buy breakfast," I said.

Pud nodded.

"Some coffee," he said. "Coffee'll make us feel better."

"You take a shower," he said to Cord, "and get dressed. We'll meet you at Finney's."

He looked at me.

"Joint downstairs," he said. "They got a couple booths."

He patted Cord's shoulder once and stood up and led me out of the apartment. Cord was still sitting on the bed sniffling.

There were in fact two booths in Finney's sandwich shop. We sat in the second one. It was against the back wall, opposite the counter, where a man and a woman were eating scrambled eggs and grits, and a grill man was busy at his trade. The young woman who worked the counter had a bright blond helmet of big hair. She also worked the booths. When she came over, with her hair and her order pad, Pud requested orange juice, ham, eggs over easy, grits, toast, and coffee. I settled for coffee.

"Poor bastard," Pud said.

"Cord?"

"Yeah. I mean I knew, we all knew, that he was a chicken fucker. Walt had to bail his ass out a couple times. And we all figured he wasn't fucking Stonie."

The waitress brought Pud's juice, and coffee for both of us.

"I mean he's queer as a square donut."

"Stonie knew it too," I said.

"Sure."

"What kept them together?" I said.

Pud drank his orange juice in one long pull, and put the empty glass down.

"How the fuck do I know? I wasn't a pretty good linebacker, I'd a flunked outta Alabama my freshman year. It was like he was okay as long as she was taking care of him."

"So why'd she stop?"

"Taking care of him?"

"Yeah."

Pud did a big shrug.

"Fucking Clive raised some weird daughters," he said.

"Tell me about it."

The waitress came with Pud's breakfast. He ate some of it before he spoke again.

"After Walt died, everything got really funky around there. I don't know exactly what was going on, but the girls were spending a lot of time together."

"Stonie and SueSue?"

"And Penny. They'd go down to the barn office and shut the door, and be in there a long time."

He ate a bite of ham.

"Then one day SueSue gives me a call at the business office and asks me to come down to the barn. I do, and she's there and so is Stonie and Cord, and Penny and that jerkoff Delroy. Penny's sitting behind the desk, and she's as nice as pie, but she tells us we gotta leave. That we are no longer welcome on Clive property."

He ate some egg, pushing it onto his fork with a piece of toast, and drank some coffee, and gestured at the blond counter girl for more coffee.

"And I say, 'For crissake, I'm married to a Clive.' And Penny says, 'That will be taken care of.' And I'm looking at SueSue and she's not looking at me. And I see Cord staring at Stonie, and she's not looking at him either. They're both looking at Penny. And I say, 'SueSue, for crissake, what is this?' And she shakes her head and won't look at me, and Penny says, 'It is too painful for my sisters, I'll talk.' "

The man and woman at the counter finished breakfast, left a dollar tip, and walked out of the shop. The blond waitress scooped the tip.

"So I say, 'I'll be fucked if you're gonna just run me off like a stray dog.' And Penny nods, and she's so nice, she says, 'I have asked Mr. Delroy to see to it.' And Delroy says, 'You have until Monday.' And…" Pud spread his hands and raised his shoulders. "That's it. Monday Delroy and four guys show up at my house and walk me off the property with nothing I couldn't pack in a suitcase."

"Is it your house?"

"Do I own it? No. It's on Clive property. Walt owned it. Same for Cord's place. Walt owned everything."

"You and SueSue having trouble?"

"No more than we ever had."

"When you had trouble, was it about drinking?"

"Yeah. She was right, I drank too much."