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“Give it a minute. Bobby’s not going anywhere,” he said. But he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were still on Vic Benson, who was hunkered forward on the folding chair under the oak tree, drinking another glass of whiskey as though it were Kool-Aid.
“I don’t want him to think we’ve forgotten his birthday,” she said.
“Maybe he’d like for you to forget it, Bama. Maybe that’s why he has the wrinkles chemically rinsed out of his face,” Weldon said.
“I think that’s an unkind remark to make, Weldon,” she said.
But he wasn’t listening to her.
“You know, the old fart did a lot of bad things to us,” he said. “But there’s one that always stuck in my mind.” He shook his head back and forth. “He caught me whanging it when I was about thirteen, and he clipped a clothespin on my penis and made me stand out in the backyard like that for a half hour.”
“Hey, ease up, Weldon,” Lyle said.
“I insist that we not continue this,” Bama said.
Bootsie was already excusing herself from the table, and I was looking at my watch.
“You’re right, damn it,” Weldon said. “Let’s drive the nail in this bullshit, give Bobby his present, then come back for some serious drinking.”
Weldon got up from his chair and walked toward the tree under which Vic Benson sat.
“What are you going to do?” Lyle said. Then, “Weldon?”
But he paid no attention. He was talking to Vic Benson now, his back to us, his big hands gesturing, while Benson looked up at him silently. Then Benson set his glass down and rose to his feet. Clemmie poured the water from the caldron into the fire pit, and steam billowed out of the bricks and drifted across Benson’s and Weldon’s bodies.
We couldn’t hear what Weldon said, but the puckered skin of Benson’s face was pulled back from his mouth in a leer of teeth and blackened gums, and his thin shoulders were as rectangular and stiff as if they were made of wire. Then Weldon walked back to the bar, pulled a sweating bottle of Jax out of the ice bin, and cracked off the cap.
“Quit staring at me like that, Lyle,” he said.
“I ain’t here to judge you,” Lyle said.
“What’d you think I was going to tell him?” Weldon said.
“You got a lot of anger. Nobody can blame you for it.”
“I offered him a job,” Weldon said.
“Doing what?”
“Roustabout, driving a truck, whatever he wants to do. I also told him no matter what he decides the past between him and us is quits.”
“What’d he say?” Lyle asked.
Weldon blew little puffs of air out his lips.
“I already forgot it,” he said. “I tell you what, though. If I were you, I’d either buy that man an airplane ticket to Iraq or put bars over his doors and windows.”
After Bama and Weldon were gone, Vic Benson stared at us for a long time from under the tree, then he turned and mounted the stairs to the garage apartment. The trees were deep in shadow, and down the street, against the lavender sky and amid the flights of swallows, you could see the sun’s last red light reflecting on the chrome-plated cross atop Lyle’s Bible college.
We were leaving also when we heard someone start a car engine immediately below the garage apartment.
“What’s he doing with Clemmie’s car?” Lyle said.
We turned and saw Vic Benson backing an ancient, dented gas guzzler, with red cellophane taped over the broken taillights, out the driveway. Smoke poured from under the frame.
“Oh, boy, I got a bad feeling,” Lyle said.
He headed for the garage apartment, and I followed him.
