That he had no idea how he would do such a thing bothered him hardly at all.

Chapter 20

I SAT GLOOMILY in the car while Bobby drove us around, getting us pumped up for the selling day. He would point at moochie houses, point at lawn furniture and Slip ’N Slides and volleyball nets. Finally, he let me out at a little after eleven. He would come by the Kwick Stop to get me in about twelve hours.

There had been times when I enjoyed it, this feeling of the day being all before me, every house a potential sale, a potential $200. Some days the unanswered knocks with the low barking behind thin metal doors didn’t even bother me. Some days I all but smirked at the people who stared at me blankly as I went through my introductory speech, and I judged them. I judged them for their apathy. That’s why you live in this shithole. That’s why your kids will live in a trailer, just like you, when they grow up. Because you don’t care.

Not that the encyclopedias mattered. Sure, it was possible that they’d make a difference in someone’s life, but if a kid wanted to know some detail about the population of Togo or the history of metallurgy, he’d find out at school or in the library. On the other hand, the parents’ willingness to buy the books, to invest the money, signaled something, and there were times when I actually believed in the importance of the work.

Not this morning. I skipped houses if they didn’t look moochie. I knocked listlessly, mumbled my lines. Half an hour into the day, I’d had a smallish woman, pretty but ferociously freckled, just about primed. She was ready to bite, I could feel it, but I eased up on the pitch, excusing myself from going inside.

I knew that my days as a bookman were over. I’d go back to Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday night and I’d quit, and the thought of my impending freedom both excited and enervated me. What would I do with the rest of my day? If only there were a movie theater around here. A good bookstore, a library. A mall. Someplace I could go to cool off.

But for twelve hours? Suddenly the day stretched out endlessly. The heat hammered down on me, and I felt the sting of perspiration in my eyes. The endless expanse of time blanketed me, smothered me like the humidity. I wished I could gear myself up into book mode, just for the next couple of days. I’d still quit, I’d still walk away from this and never come back.

By twelve-thirty I was walking along a main road, not even bothering to look at the houses I passed, when I heard a car slowing down behind me. I turned and saw Melford’s old Datsun, a faded dark green in the sunlight.

He rolled down the window. “Hop in.”

I continued walking, with Melford keeping up with his slow pace. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on. What, are you going to kick rocks all day? I’ve got air-conditioning, tunes, witty conversation.”

I told myself that I had no choice, that the guy was a killer, and a person was smart to do what a killer said to do. But I’d stopped being afraid of Melford. Not entirely, maybe- I wouldn’t want to provoke him or even be around him when someone else had provoked him, but for all his killing he wasn’t like Ronny Neil and Scott, whom I actually feared.

I sighed and nodded, so Melford stopped. I went around to the passenger side and got in. He did have the air conditioner going pretty strongly, and it felt good. We sat in silence for a few minutes while Melford drove past houses and mobile homes and a shopping plaza with a Kmart and a sporting goods store and an Italian restaurant. Coming out of the Kmart, I was sure, was Galen Edwine, the man at whose house I’d sold the grand slam that didn’t work out. Not so far from where I’d been selling the day before, in fact.

Melford saw me looking at the strip mall. “God, I love Florida,” he said.

“You’re kidding. I hate this place. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

“I think you’re the kidder. This is the land without art or values or even the most basic cultural orientation. Nothing matters but real estate and shopping malls. There are more golf courses than schools, prefab housing subdivisions growing like cancers, an aging and dangerous driving population, the Klan, drug lords, hurricanes, and twelve-month summers.”

“Those sound like bad things to me.”

He shook his head. “In Florida, you get to live in perpetual irony. It keeps you from settling into false consciousness.”

“I just want to get out and never come back,” I said.

“Well, there’s that position, too, I guess.”

We rode in silence for another ten minutes until I asked where we were going.

“You’ll see.”

“I want to know now.” While I might have felt a strange liking for Melford, despite all I had seen, I couldn’t stand this. I couldn’t stand being boxed out and left in the dark.

“You’re awful curious, aren’t you?”

“I just don’t want to be shot in the head or anything.”

I regretted it the instant I said it- not because I had endangered myself, but because it seemed to hurt Melford’s feelings. His eyes narrowed and he looked away.

“Surely by now you realize I don’t solve all of my problems with violence,” he told me. “Violence is a tool. It’s like a hammer. It has its uses, and it is great for those uses. But if you use a hammer to change a baby’s diaper, there’s going to be trouble. I chose to use violence with those two because I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“Okay,” I said. “I understand.” I didn’t, and it was clear from my tone that I didn’t.

Melford shook his head. “I don’t enjoy hurting anyone, Lemuel. I only do it when there’s no choice.”

“But you won’t tell me why.”

“I’ll tell you why when you can tell me why we have prisons.”

“I don’t have the energy for your prison riddle. I want to know why.”

“And I want to tell you, but until you’re ready, there’s no point. It would be like telling a four-year-old about relativity. There may be a will to understand, but not a capacity.”

I thought to blurt out something defensive, like he thought I was no smarter than a four-year-old, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant.

“For now,” Melford was saying, “what’s important is that we’re in this together. You are in serious trouble, my friend. We both are. There is dangerous stuff going on around here, and we’ve had the bad luck to land in the middle of it.”

“But I don’t have anything to do with it. It’s not my fault.”

“That’s right. It’s not your fault. And if your house was hit by lightning and started to burn, that wouldn’t be your fault, either. So do you stand there and shout at the flames, or do you do what you can to save yourself and put out the fire?”

I didn’t have an answer because he was just convincing enough to piss me off.

Melford stopped outside a Chinese restaurant and announced that it was time for lunch. I was reasonably hungry, not having eaten much of my breakfast. The dairy-free oatmeal had tasted like Elmer’s glue, and I’d been too nervous about talking to Chitra to try to force it down.

“Chinese restaurants are great for vegetarians,” he told me as we sat at a table in the smallish dining room lined with red wallpaper flocked with gold Buddhas. There were an additional two Buddha statues by the door, a tank full of white and orange koi, and a small fountain. “They tend to have lots of nonmeat options, and they don’t traditionally cook with dairy.” He poured tea into white cups with cracked enamel.

Eating breakfast with Chitra, I’d been determined to abandon all animal products. Now, here with Melford, I wanted to be a carnivore. This morning, I’d wanted to impress Chitra with my sensitive soul. Now, I wanted to impress Melford with my defiance. I needed to decide if I agreed with the principle or not- if I wanted to be a vegetarian or if I just wanted to stay away from meat when I thought it might impress the ladies.