She turns to me as if she couldn’t possibly have heard right.
“I’m sorry, hon,” she says. “I think something must have gone a little haywire with my hearing aids because IthoughtI heard you say that Briar Crockett had offered my grandson a job.”
“You don’t use hearing aids,” I say.
“Well, if I did,” she says, and sips more bourbon.
I take her through most of my conversation with Briar then, all the way until the end, his remark about Burt and Taylor’s dinner party.
“He’s afraid of you,” EJ says when I’ve finished.
“He doesn’t act as if he’s afraid of anything,” I say. “Or anybody.”
“He was afraid of your daddy, I’ll tell you that right now,” she says. “And now he’s afraid of you.”
“He came to listen to my speech,” I say. “I saw him.”
“And he heard you, loud and clear,” she says. “He always thinks he’s the smartest one in the room, and I mean any room, but now the dumb bastard thinks he can buy off a Tucker.”
She gives a quick shake to her head.
“You know what I think?” EJ says. “I think he knew he was wasting his time with that offer, and the point of the breakfast was to let you know that he had eyes on you and me and everybody else. Like he’s the one who’s got us under surveillance.”
We sit in silence now. I’m more fixed than ever on the sun, a truly brilliant combination of red and orange today, still floating above the horizon like a balloon. I toast it with my beer.
Neither of us speaks for a long time, comfortable with this silence and with each other. It occurs to me all over again how comfortable my father was with silences like this, as if his thoughts were enough.
“I hate that man,” EJ says finally. “I hate him and his sons and don’t give adamnabout this second chance to be a better person that he thinks he has because he’s got girls now. It won’t make him a better person because nothing ever will.”
“They’re bad people,” I say. “Him and Roof and Lynyrd.”
“Worse than you think,” she says.
She gets her legs out from underneath her, like it’s one of her yoga moves, then carefully reaches down and places her highball glass on the ground. She stands up, her back to me, those little-girl hands stuck in the back pockets of her jeans, and stares out again at the end of the day.
“I’ve never told you this,” she says, “because I knew I couldn’t prove it, and because I was afraid of what you might do if I everdidtell you, especially after you grew up to be the big man you are, in all ways. Or maybe, and more likely, I’ve always been afraid of what might happen to both of us if I ever said it out loud.”
She turns back around to face me.
“But I believe it was Roof Crockett who shot your father,” my grandmother says.
FIFTY-SEVEN
AFTER DINNER, I call Vince Tarplay and ask if he’s up for meeting me at Rowdy’s.
It’s not because I want to talk about what EJ had told me, because I don’t, not to anyone, not even her. It’s just because I don’t want quiet tonight. Don’t want to fill up on quiet, thinking about what she thought about my father’s death and what to do about it if I’m able to prove she’s right.
I just want some loud around me.
Loud music and loud conversation, even if it’s about the upcoming football season. Shooting the shit and maybe some pool.
I don’t even have the urge to drink a couple of beers, just to level myself off.
Vince has already ordered a beer of his own, sitting at one of the two stools he’s scored for us at the end of the bar.
As I move down the bar, I run into an old teammate from Cross Rivers High. T. J. Rhimes had been my center senior year. I haven’t run into him since I’ve been back, but he gets me into a hug and tellsme, “I still like to tell people you’re the only man I ever let touch my butt.”
“Not what I hear,” Earl the bartender says, grinning at both of us.
