Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [176]
“I cannot,” the old man said. His breath smelled of clam sauce.
“What did they do to you in there?” Ellickson asked, opening the passenger-side door of the truck and easing the murderer inside. “Where were you? Was that another entrance to the gentleman’s club?”
“No,” Macfadden Eward said. “There weren’t any gentlemen in there.”
Ellickson realized that he had been tricked. “That wasn’t your parole officer you were meeting,” Ellickson said. “You lied to me.”
Macfadden Eward leaned back on the passenger side. He did not engage in any conversational effort. Behind the wheel, Ellickson started the truck and drove down First Avenue, past the former bus station where he had first met the mother of his children and then south toward his own neighborhood. On the passenger side of the truck, the old man’s mouth hung open, and his eyes were half shut as if in repose. Whenever the truck turned a corner, his head tilted to the side. This guy is just another piece of human debris, Ellickson thought, and then another thought hit him: And he’s all I have.
“Was that a drug deal?” Ellickson asked.
Macfadden Eward did not answer, but his eyes opened slightly. He was nodding off.
“I’m very far away,” the old man said in a slur. “You’re unimportant to me.”
“Come on,” Ellickson said. “Don’t bullshit me. I’m driving your truck. Was that a drug deal? A fix?”
“I … wouldn’t … describe … it … that … way.”
“How would you describe it?”
“Over and out,” the old man said. He shut his eyes, and his head lolled back.
When they reached the murderer’s house, Ellickson parked the man’s truck in his driveway, and, hurriedly, he opened the door on the passenger side and took the old man’s arm and threw it around his own neck in a fireman’s carry. Macfadden Eward grunted, and Ellickson took this as a good sign. He removed the old man from the truck and walked Eward down his own driveway out onto the sidewalk. The old man’s feet stumbled and shuffled beside Ellickson’s while his breath came in and went out in punchy oldster bursts. Ellickson headed down the street, the old man clinging to him, and he turned the corner to walk around the block, parading past the houses of all the neighbors.
“What’re we doin’?” the old man asked, waking up slightly from his nod.
“We’re walking it off,” Ellickson said. “In front of the neighbors.” They passed a house with a large front porch with a swing suspended from the ceiling; Ellickson thought of it as “the little girls’ house” because two little girls lived there with their parents, Republicans who put out lawn signs, and, sure enough, both girls were out on the porch with their rag dolls, their mother sitting in the swing reading a book, as Ellickson and the old man walked by. The girls looked at the two men, and Ellickson heard one of them asking her mother a question, and her mother answering in a low, lawyerly tone. They walked past the house of a widow, Mrs. Sherman, said to be a skinflint, who had told Ellickson about the murderer in the first place. They advanced in front of a duplex with a sharp peaked roof. Two young married couples lived there. Ellickson didn’t know who resided in the stucco Tudor beyond, but at the corner they turned again, and Ellickson and the old man stumbled past 1769 Caroline Street, where a boy was out front selling lemonade at a lemonade stand.
“I’d like some lemonade,” Ellickson said, fishing in his left pocket for some change.
The boy did not say anything. He looked frightened at the sorry spectacle that Ellickson and the old man, hanging on to Ellickson in a fireman’s carry, presented.
“Here,” Ellickson said, handing the boy two quarters. “We’d like some lemonade.” He waited for a moment. “My friend here is a little sleepy.” The boy poured pink lemonade with a shaky hand into a Dixie cup and handed it to Ellickson.
“This is for you, old-timer,” Ellickson said, reaching over and putting the paper cup to his lips.
“Stop that,” Macfadden Eward said with sudden lucid clarity, straightening up