Cramer woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a drive shaft torquing too high. His eyes snapped open. There were headlights out in the yard. The cops, he thought, almost relieved, as if getting arrested would give his misery some real shape. But by then the screaming motor had crested the steep driveway and was clunking on bad suspension across the yard, and he knew no cop would drive a vehicle in that bad condition.
He slipped out of bed, stepped over the sopping clothes strewn across his floor, and stared out the window. Waylin Pitney’s ghostly panel truck was pulling into its usual place behind the drive shed on the lip of the hill, pulling as far forward as the space allowed to hide the truck from anyone passing by on the road.
Lights were on downstairs. And as soon as the engine was cut, Cramer heard the screen door slam. Mavis stepped out into the yellow light seeping from the front window. She was in a sleeveless summer dress. There wasn’t much back to the dress, from what he could see. Her hair was all done up. This wasn’t a surprise visit. Not to her, at least.
From around the corner of the drive shed, Waylin appeared, the yard light revealing a white tee, jeans, and cowboy boots. His long shadow was behind him and then it passed him, as if in a hurry to get to Mavis. But only his shadow hurried.
“Hi ya, doll,” he shouted.
“Hi yourself,” she said. She had her hands clasped behind her back, and she was swiveling left and right from the waist like some teasing schoolgirl. Waylin stopped halfway across the yard to look back, apparently to make sure the vehicle was out of sight. And Cramer could hear through his open window his mother swear. But not out of anger, he thought. She had sworn because she couldn’t wait one more second. Then she was running in her bare feet across the yard to Waylin, and he was twirling her in the air.
Cramer made his way back to bed and pulled the covers up over his head, hoping the party wouldn’t get too loud. Hoping it wouldn’t end in a fight.
The next thing he knew it was morning. Exhaustion had grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him down into oblivion. Not even his mother’s midnight cowboy could keep him awake.
When Cramer thumped downstairs, Mavis was making something from a cookbook, still wearing the little floral number with no back she’d had on the night before.
“There’s flapjacks,” she said in a cheery voice. But the flapjacks were cold. Cramer wandered over to the window. The Taurus was gone.
“How am I supposed to get to work tonight?”
“Since when do you work on Sunday?” said his mother, without looking up from the cookbook.
Cramer stared at her, astonished. “I work an eight-night shift and then have a four-day break,” he said. “It’s been that way for three years. It has nothing to do with what day of the week it is. I thought you knew that.”
She glanced back at him, but the resentment in his voice had not registered. “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” she said. “Merv phoned.”
“My shift manager?”
“I don’t know any other Mervs, honey,” she said. “Anyway, he said to tell you you’re laid off. Just temporary-like. He was nice about it.”
Cramer stared at her in disbelief. Then he went to the phone and made the call. It was true. Nothing to do with Cramer. A bit of a work slowdown. Only be a few days.
“I thought you were going to make me full-time,” said Cramer.
“And I am, Cramer. You can count on it. Just not right now. Relax. You take a bit of a vacation, okay? God knows you deserve one.”
And that was that.
Mavis turned toward him, holding out her arms. “And since when do you come downstairs of a morning without saying, ‘Good morning, Mama’?”
But he didn’t go to her. He felt cut adrift. It was as if someone had drilled a row of holes in Cramer himself and he was sinking.
“Ah, come on,” said Mavis. “It’s not so bad, is it?”
Something happened to her when Waylin was around. She started talking like someone from another time-another planet. She reverted to some fifties idea of Mrs. Good Wife-a southern variety, about to serve up catfish and collard greens.
“Actually, it is bad,” he said. “I’ve got this bank loan, just to name one thing.”
That seemed to jog her out of her playacting. He glanced toward the porch that was her studio. Her abandoned studio. There was still no sign of newly stretched canvases, new jars of paint. He wanted to ask her what she had done with the money, but all he had to do was look at her to get his answer. The dress was new. She lowered her eyes, then turned back to the cookbook.
Cramer strolled outside in his boxers and torn T-shirt to have a look at the day. He picked his way barefoot to the edge of the hill and looked down the bank to where Bunny should have been.
He swallowed hard, clenched his fists, and closed his eyes tight with the effort to keep the obscenities inside him. He knew who was responsible for this. Peters. It had to be. Well, Peters would pay. But first of all, he had to recover Bunny.
You can’t sink a canoe.
She’d be floating somewhere, up to her gunnels, but still afloat. He held a wet finger up. There wasn’t a whisper of wind. Good. There would be just the current to carry her, and the current in the stretch of the river where he had lost her was not strong. Carrying the weight of a full cargo of water, she wasn’t going to be moving any too fast.
He’d take the old canoe from the drive shed and a length of rope and something to stop up the holes temporarily. He’d get her to shore, empty her, and then drag her home. He’d fix her. She’d be as good as new. And hell, he had all day. Day and days!
He picked his way to the drive shed, his bare feet finding every sharp stone the yard had to offer. He wondered how drunk or high his mother must have been last night to sail across here to her man without feeling anything.
He opened the door and looked inside the drive shed. The old canoe wasn’t there. It had been straddling a couple of sawhorses last time he looked. Was he wrong? Maybe it was in the old barn? But it wasn’t there, either.
It felt like a plot.
He had dared to think his luck was changing, and it was, but it was only getting a whole lot worse! He smashed the flats of his fists against his temples. He had to get a grip. Deal with one loss at a time. The battered aluminum canoe was not the kind of thing anyone would steal. No one in his right mind. Or hers.
He looked toward the house. As if he had summoned her, Mavis appeared at the kitchen door with a dustpan, the contents of which she threw onto the path. Her eyes scanned the yard. He ducked back into the shadow of the barn door. Then, when she had gone back inside, he made his way down the hill to the creek and walked along it from his own landing place up past the outbuildings to a little glade of trees. And there it was. She had hidden the old canoe there, not wanting him to know she was using it. Why?
Back in the house, Cramer changed and made himself a few sandwiches. Mrs. Good Wife was in her room. Cramer didn’t bother to say good-bye.