Libra - Don Delillo [126]
Ten minutes passed. Lee came down the exterior wooden steps. He carried the rifle in one hand, a couple of magazines in the other. He wore a black pullover shirt, short-sleeve, and a pair of dark chinos. The revolver was snug on his hip.
Marina watched him set the rifle against the stairway and climb back up. He returned seconds later with his box camera, an Imperial Reflex he’d bought cheap in Japan.
“Why do you want to do this?” she said. “If we are seen by a neighbor. ”
“It’s for Junie, to remember me by.”
“Does she want her father in a picture with guns? I don’t know how to take a picture.”
“You hold the camera at your waist.”
“I’ve never taken a picture in my life.”
“No matter what. I want you to keep a print for my little girl.”
“Dressed all black. It’s foolish, Lee. Who are you hunting with that gun? The forces of evil? I want to laugh. It’s stupid. It impresses no one. It’s pure and simple show.”
He posed in a corner of the yard, the rifle in his right hand, muzzle up, butt end pressing on his waist, just inches from the holstered .38. The magazines, the Militant and the Worker, were in his left hand, fanned like playing cards.
She snapped the shutter.
He posed one more time, the rifle in his left hand now, the magazines held under his chin with the word Militant visible above the fold, his shadow trailing to the wooden gate and his thin smile carried forward by light and time into the frame of official memory.
Lee stood in a comer of the Gulf station on North Beckley, eight-thirty sharp, the stink of gasoline hanging low in the night. It was ninety-nine degrees. It was record-breaking heat for this date. He had a military slicker draped over his left shoulder and held a half-finished Coke in his right hand, drawn from the machine nearby, just as a reason to be here.
He kept his eye on a tan Ford turning slowly into the station and coming to a stop near the service area. It looked like a 1950 model, thereabouts. He watched Dupard get out and stand by the open door, peering. Bobby wore light-blue coveralls and a little round cap, with the words American Bakery embroidered across his shirtfront and a heavy dusting of flour on his face and clothes, whiting his eyebrows and the backs of his hands.
Lee walked toward the car, his left arm stiff beneath the slicker, the rifle held parallel to his body with the butt wedged in his armpit. They did not speak until the car was on the street, headed north, the rifle on the floor behind the seat.
“But how come, Bobby?”
“What?”
“You’re in work clothes.”
“I had a chance to make some overtime, which I’m forced to accept it if I’m not doing no laundry tonight.”
“Am I keeping you from the laundry? Is that what this is all about?”
“I’m just saying. The chance came up. I squeezed in four extra hours.”
“You can be identified. This is not a night you want to stand out.”
“Nobody sees shit. We go in quick and dark. Where’s the handgun?”
Lee took the 38 out of his belt and put it on the seat between them.
“Did you get the bullets?” he said.
“Totally,” Dupard said. “I got fifteen bullets I bought right off the street from some school kid. They’re like two different-make bullets but they’re .38 specials, so I don’t foresee no problem.”
“I don’t foresee using them. It’s just in case.”
At the first red light Bobby swung out the cylinder of the gun and took six cartridges from the breast pocket of his uniform. He inserted them in the chambers.
“I’ll tell you a good sign,” Lee said. “I order the handgun in January, I order the rifle in March. Both guns arrive the same day. My wife would say it’s fate.”
“What did you tell her about tonight?”
“She thinks I’m at typing class. I dropped out of typing class two weeks ago. I got fired from my job last Saturday was my last day. ”
“I dread getting fired, man.”
“They said my work wasn’t exact. It had to happen. Just like tonight has to happen. They’ll know about this in Havana. Before midnight the news will reach Fidel.”
They crossed the Trinity River on the