Charles Willeford - Sideswipe Read online

  "I won't take her back, Junior. Mom's your problem now, not mine. If that's the way Maya thinks about me after all these years, I don't want the woman around. She never liked it down here in Florida anyway. So from now on, she's your--"

  "Let's talk a minute, Dad."

  "There's nothing else to talk about. She made up her mind, and I've made up mine. Just make sure you keep sending me the rent money every month, and don't give it to Maya. I still have to pay the mortgage down here. Understand?"

  "Okay, Dad, but I think we'd better discuss this later, after you and Momma have a chance to cool off some. We'll work some--"

  "It's already worked out, Junior. Just give my love to the kids. You called -me- this time, and you're on long distance, you know."

  "Right, Dad. Do you need any help from me? Can I get you a lawyer? If you need a lawyer, I can check around here, and see if--"

  "I don't need no lawyer, because I'm not in any trouble. Your mother's in trouble, not me. Get a lawyer for Maya. Good night, son." Stanley hung up the phone.

  Stanley tried to calm down. He drank his coffee at the kitchen table. His heart was beating rapidly, and he could almost feel it inside his chest. He was disappointed in his son, as well as in Maya. If the situation had been reversed, and he had learned that Junior was in jail for molesting a child, he would have been on the phone, or gone to the jail with a lawyer immediately. And no matter what they said, he wouldn't have believed Junior guilty of doing something like that. But Junior hadn't even called the jail to find out what they were doing with his father.

  With Maya gone, his life would be a little harder now. He would have to cook his own meals, clean the house, and do his own laundry, but he would rather do that than take her back. That's what their marriage had come down to anyway, a division of labor, just two people sharing the same house. For months Maya had tried to talk to him about moving back to Hamtramck, and every time she brought it up he had refused to discuss it.

  "We made our decision when we came down here," he told her, "and we're settled in now. If you want to go up there on a visit, you can go by yourself. I don't ever want to see ice and snow again. Just call Junior and tell him you're coming back to visit for a couple of weeks or a month--and see what he says!"

  Maya hinted to Junior on the phone a few times that she would like to visit, but she didn't get an invitation, and she didn't come right out and ask for one because she knew she wouldn't get one, and Stanley knew she wouldn't ever get one. So this "incident" with Pammi was the first real excuse she had to leave, her first opportunity, and she had taken it because Junior couldn't turn her away if Stanley was in jail. Well, as far as Stanley was concerned, she could stay there, too. He had his pride, and he wouldn't take her back. He might if she begged him, but he didn't think she would do that. In her own way, she was as stubborn as he was; she didn't like Florida, and she didn't need Stanley any more than he needed her.

  Well, he could take care of himself. It was all over, and he was too exhausted to think about it any longer. Without finishing his coffee, Stanley went into the bedroom to lie down for a moment, to quiet the rapid beating of his heart.

  A minute later, Stanley was asleep, and he didn't awaken until morning.

  It was still dark when Stanley got up at five A.M. and shaved. He scrambled two eggs in butter and toasted himself two slices of bread. He made instant coffee instead of using the Mr. Coffee machine, because he didn't know how to work it and he couldn't find the directions in the kitchen drawer where Maya kept all of the warranties for their appliances.

  Stanley was disappointed in his son, but no longer angry with him. The boy (Junior was almost forty years old) hadn't turned out as well as he should have, even though Stanley had paid for Junior's two years of community college. Junior had been fired from both Ford and Chrysler because he had been unable to adjust to working on the line. After a series of low-paying jobs, he had finally found a job selling new cars for Joe "Madman" Stuart Chrysler in Detroit. The last time Stanley had talked to his son on the phone, the boy had been on the verge of tears. Junior worked for an unrealistic and demanding sales manager who'd had an old-fashioned cardboard outhouse built, complete with a cutout quarter moon on the door. The salesman with the lowest sales each week had to stay seated in the "shithouse" during the weekly sales meetings and pep talks. Any salesman who ended up in the shithouse for three weeks in a row was fired automatically. Junior spent one or two meetings a month in this mock-up and had barely escaped the terminal third week on two different occasions. For some time, it had been in the back of Stanley's mind to suggest to Junior that he move down to Florida when he got fired, as he was bound to be sooner or later, so he could get a fresh start in life. But that was out now. And if Junior fell behind in the rent payments, Stanley would have him evicted. It was just a token rent he paid anyway; the Hamtramck house should be renting for $325, or even $350 a month.

  After breakfast, Stanley got a notebook from the desk and made a list of things he had to do. He used to make a similar list the first thing every morning when he had worked in the Ford paint shop, and the methodical planning of his days there had worked well for him since.

  First, he would close his bank account, move to another bank, and put the account in his name only. He would also cash in his three ten-thousand-dollar CDs and pay the early withdrawal penalty. He could then take out three new CDs under his own name. He hated to lose money to the penalty, but if Maya cashed any of them he would lose every cent.

  Should he buy a new car? No, he could wait on that for a while. The municipal bus ran into downtown Riviera Beach every hour, and he could ride it into town. He had never been without a car, as far back as he could remember, but he could watch the list of repossessed cars that the banks posted every week until a good deal came along. It didn't pay to rush into buying a car, whether it was new or used. And maybe a used car would be the best buy after all. It was the same when Saul, Maya's old Airedale, died. She had wanted to buy a new puppy to replace the old dog, but he had reminded her that at their age any dog they bought now would probably outlive them and that there would be no one left to take care of it when they were gone. Stanley had hated the flatulent Saul and didn't want another stinking dog hanging around the house and begging at the table. At his age, he wouldn't outlast a new car, either, so why not buy a cheaper, secondhand one?

  On the way back from the bank he would stop at the supermarket and buy a dozen or so TV dinners. They were simple to fix. All he had to do was put them into the toaster oven for twenty-five minutes at 4250 and his dinner would be ready. He had often asked Maya why she didn't fix TV dinners instead of preparing time-consuming meals from scratch every day, but she wouldn't hear of it. Probably because she didn't know what else to do with her time, he supposed.

  Before going into town he would do his laundry, and when he came back he could put it into the dryer. There was nothing to that. He knew how to use the washer and the dryer. Then, while the laundry was drying, he could go down to the park and tell the Wise Old Men that he was a bachelor now.

  Stanley's mind froze.

  They would know that already. They would also know by now that he had been arrested as a child molester. He was innocent, of course, but Sergeant Sneider had told him that there were two other old geezers involved with Pammi, and it was quite possible that one, or both, of them were Wise Old Men. Whoever it was would lay low now, but any man once accused--as he was, even though he was innocent--would always be suspect. He didn't think any of the Wise Old Men would actually say anything to him about it, but they would think about it--and figure it was him--and he didn't want to sit there while they looked at him sideways and speculated about his guilt. No, it would be a long time before he could go to the park again--if ever. On the other hand, the longer he stayed away from the park, the more they would consider him guilty.

  He couldn't win either way.

  Stanley separated his clothes from Maya's and put her dirty clothing into a
brown paper grocery bag. He sure as hell wasn't going to wash her things. When she got around to sending for her clothes, he would pack them up and send them to her dirty. He looked through the pockets of his bloodied shirt and came across the news clipping Troy Louden had handed him. He hadn't forgotten about it; he had merely put it out of his mind, which wasn't the same thing. This errand had priority over everything else he had to do, but he was reluctant to deliver a message like that. It wouldn't do the young man any good. But he had said that he would do it, so he might as well. There was a Big 5 writing tablet on Maya's desk. Stanley printed out the message in block letters:

  IF YOU DON'T DROP THE CHARGES, I'LL KILL

  YOUR BABY AND YOUR WIFE AND THEN YOU.

  The printed message looked sinister all right, but it also looked unreal. Stanley then printed ROBERT SMITH under the message and sealed it in one of Maya's pastel pink envelopes, along with the clipping. Then he printed Collins's address on the envelope. There was only one Henry Collins listed in the West Palm Beach section of the phone book.

  Even if the message didn't help Troy, it couldn't hurt him any. If Mr. Collins brought it in to the police station, Troy could deny that he sent it. How could he? He was in jail. Stanley put the sealed envelope into his hip pocket, collected his checkbook, certificates of deposit, and passbook, but he paused at the door. It was eight A.M., and the sun was blazing. He put on his billed cap and his sunglasses, and got his walking stick from the umbrella stand beside the door, but still he hesitated. Mrs. Agnew was out in her yard, watering the oleanders that grew close to her house. She would turn her back on him the moment he stepped outside. He could count on that. But all the other neighbors on the two-block walk to the bus stop would peer through their windows and point him out as the dirty old man who had molested little Pammi Sneider. Except by sight, Stanley didn't know his neighbors very well. But Maya knew them all because they often met at each other's houses in the morning when the bakery truck stopped on their street. The housewives would come out in their wrappers and buy sweet rolls and doughnuts and take turns meeting in each other's houses for coffee. Maya had picked up gossip this way about the various neighbors, and had often tried to tell him about how Mrs. Meeghan's dyslexic son was failing in school, or about Mr. Featherstone's alcoholism (he was a house painter), but Stanley had always cut her off. He didn't care anything about these people, didn't know them, didn't want to know them, and didn't want to know anything about them. If they had been men he worked with, or something like that, he might have been interested in their private doings, but he wasn't interested in these housewives or their husbands or their noisy children.

  But he realized now that these women would be gossiping about him and about Maya's leaving him, because that's what they did best--pry into other people's lives. Stanley steeled himself and walked to the bus stop, without looking either to the right or the left.

  Stanley got off at the Sunshine Plaza Shopping Center when the bus stopped in front of the Publix. The bank wasn't open yet, so he drank a cup of coffee in Hardee's and slipped a dozen packets of Sweet 'n Low into his pants pocket. When the bank opened (it was really a Savings & Loan Association, but it also operated as a bank), Stanley had no trouble cashing in his CDs and collected a cashier's check for the money in his savings and checking accounts. He had expected an argument. But why would they argue? They made a handsome profit off him when he cashed in his three one-year CDs early. As he left the bank officer's desk, Mr. Wheeler said:

  "We're sorry to lose you as a client, Mr. Sinkiewicz, but I suppose you need your money for bail--"

  "Bail? What're you talking about?"

  "It was on the radio this morning--your, ah, trouble, and all, you know. So I assumed you required funds for a lawyer, and to post bond."

  "No." Stanley shook his head. "That matter was all a mistake. It's all cleared up now."

  "I'm glad to hear it, Mr. Sinkiewicz," Mr. Wheeler said, smiling. "It was a pleasure to serve you."

  Stanley walked over to U.S. 1 and waited for the bus to West Palm Beach. He realized now that all the time he had been talking to Mr. Wheeler, the banker had been staring at the bandage on his lip. He had probably wanted to ask about it, but didn't have the nerve. And all the time, Wheeler figured he was dealing with a child molester out of jail temporarily, on bail. If there had been something about his arrest on the radio, maybe there had been something on the local TV newscast, too. Stanley felt his heart pound again, and he slumped on the bus-stop bench.

  The bus came at last, and he rode into West Palm Beach, getting off at the downtown Clematis Street stop. He deposited his cashier's check of $38,314.14 in a money-market checking account and withdrew fifty dollars with his new temporary checkbook before leaving the new S & L. Interest rates on CDs had dropped, and he could earn almost as much interest in the new money-market account as he could from buying new CDs. Besides, he wanted to have his money readily available in case he wanted to buy a car. He also filled out forms to have his UAW pension and Social Security checks transferred to his new account.

  Before leaving the S & L, he asked the young woman who had opened his new account how to get to Spring Street, in West Palm Beach. She gave him complicated directions that would entail two bus transfers, and he couldn't understand what she was talking about. Being without a car gave a man an entire new way of looking at the world. He thought he knew West Palm fairly well, just from driving around and going to the library, but he didn't know it at all when it came to public transportation. He walked to the Greyhound bus station and got a Veteran's cab. The driver, a black man wearing a woman's nylon stocking cap with a little topknot in it, didn't know where Spring Street was, either. He had to call the dispatcher on his radio for directions. It was a three-fifty ride to Mr. Collins's house, where Stanley got out and told the driver to wait for him.

  Collins's house was a two-bedroom, lemon-colored concrete-block-and-stucco building on a short dead-end street with eleven other houses constructed from the same plans. A pudgy young woman was listlessly spreading sand on a dying front lawn. There was a baby, eighteen months or perhaps two years old, in a plain pine playpen on the front porch. The barefooted woman wore faded blue shorts and a lime-colored elastic tube top. The pile of yellow sand was about six feet high, and she was taking a small shovelful at a time from the pile and sprinkling it awkwardly on the lawn. She was perspiring freely. Stanley checked the house number against the address on the envelope.

  "Excuse me. You Mrs. Collins?"

  She nodded, a little out of breath, and looked incuriously from Stanley to the cab, then back at Stanley. The driver had his door open and was reading a comic book that had Bugs Bunny on the cover.

  "Is Mr. Collins home?"

  She shook her head. "No, he ain't. He's out gettin' estimates on the car. He had a accident yesterday, and he has to get three estimates before he can go to the insurance company for the money. At least that's what they told him on the phone. Tomorrow he has to go back up to Jax, so he has to get the car fixed today. I don't know when he'll get home."

  Stanley felt a great sense of relief. It was much easier this way, dealing with a young woman instead of a truck driver. "I don't have to see your husband, Mrs. Collins. I found this envelope downtown on Clematis Street. I figured it might be important, and since there wasn't any stamp on it, I got a cab and brought it on out." He tried to hand the woman the envelope, but she wouldn't take it.

  "I'm pretty busy right now, and I can't spend no time listening to you tryin' to sell me something. I'm tryin' to spread some of this sand around this mornin' before it gets too hot, and it's almost too hot to be out here now."

  "You better take it. I don't want nothing for my trouble, but as you can see, the meter's ticking on my cab, so I can't stay and talk with you."

  She dropped the shovel on the ground, wiped the palms of her hands on her shorts, and took the envelope. As Stanley started to back away, she tore it open and frowned as she read the short message. She
looked up, puzzled, and started to unfold the news clipping.

  "I don't understand this at all. Who are you?"

  "I'm a retired foreman," Stanley said, pausing beside the taxi, "and I was shopping downtown when I found that envelope, that's all. All I am, I guess, is a good Samaritan. But I'll tell you something else I've learned living down here in Florida. If it was chinch bugs and army worms that killed your lawn, sand won't get rid of them. You'll have to get an exterminator out here to spray your lawn, and it'll run you about thirty-five dollars."

  Stanley tapped the driver's comic book with the end of his stick, got into the back seat of the cab, and closed the door. Mrs. Collins rushed over. "Just a minute! What's all this mean? I don't understand what this is all about!"

  "I don't know either," Stanley said, pushing down the door lock. "It's addressed to your husband, so maybe he knows. Let's go, driver."

  The driver closed his door, put down his comic book, and made a U-turn back toward Pierce Avenue. The woman stayed at the curb, staring at the retreating cab for a moment, and then unfolded the clipping again.

  Stanley caught the bus back to Riviera Beach and got off at the International Shopping Mall. He watched a demonstration class of middle-aged aerobic dancers perform in the plaza section for about a half-hour, then had a slice of pizza and a Diet Coke at Cozzoli's while he waited for the movies to open at one o'clock. He got an Early Bird ticket and sat through two showings of -The Terminator- before coming out into the mall again. Because of daylight savings time, it still wasn't dark enough to go home, so he wandered around the mall until the nine P.M. bus left for Ocean Pines Terraces.

  It had been awful to walk those two blocks that morning, with all the neighbors looking at him, so he wanted to make certain it was dark before he went home. He was exhausted from the long day, and he had missed his afternoon nap. There was so much shooting going on in the movie, he hadn't been able to sleep in the theater, either. Stanley went to bed and fell asleep immediately. He forgot to put the damp wash in the dryer, and the next morning the laundry was covered with mildew and he had to wash it all over again.