Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [80]
Lewis dug through boxes for mailing labels and, finding them, gave a final look outside. Red was pointing to something up on the ridge that Libby couldn’t see, so he nudged her into his line of sight. She nodded, and Lewis could hear a distant scrap of her laughter. Red then dropped his arm around Libby’s shoulder and gave her a paternal squeeze. That she clearly required and accepted such gestures of comfort—still, so many weeks later—evoked in Lewis a wave of pure, bone-melting guilt. He grabbed the labels and fled.
Red is giving me a house, Libby wrote, very similar to his own. She paused. Exactly what this gift implied, she and Red hadn’t discussed. She’d have a house on her property, he’d have one on his; it was, she thought, like evening up the sides before the contest began. At any rate, she needed a house. She couldn’t live forever at Billie’s, and she couldn’t move in with Red, not yet. To own her own square footage of personal sanctuary couldn’t hurt. And no matter what happened with Red—be it true love or a mutual or one-sided waning of interest—she would have a home. And that, she supposed, was the point.
She called a bulldozer man to regrade the site Stockton had surveyed. She called a house mover and applied to the county office for a house-moving permit. The house had to be moved between midnight and five a.m., when it wouldn’t impede traffic. Since this trip was only three miles on rural roads, the escort requirement was waived. Then the house mover said he didn’t want to lose a night’s sleep, so couldn’t he do the job on Sunday evening? Back to the permit office, then, for another waiver.
THE FIRST Sunday softball game ended at noon. Doodads 21, Shitheads 14. Lewis, once and always a Shithead, left amid the pleas and boos of teammates, who wanted him to stick around for game two. “Some of us,” he told them, “have inventories to write.”
He locked himself away in his room at the Mills. He crawled into bed and wrote two entries in the Money category before his mind went blank. He didn’t want to lose his job. No doubt his past was littered with crimes both grave and inconsequential; they just weren’t lining up for inspection. He thought a little nap might help.
He woke up after three in the afternoon, the room hot as a greenhouse. And he was out of cigarettes. Face swollen, hair smashed and linty, he sleepwalked barefoot across the street and smack into a late-afternoon coffee klatch at the grocería: Victor behind the register, Arvill Hartwood and Deputy Burt McLemoore perched on stools, and Billie Fitzgerald on the counter, swinging her muddy rubber boots.
Conversation stopped when Lewis entered. Victor’s eyes danced. Billie’s fabulous eyebrows inched in place. Lewis stepped between Arvill and Billie. “Camel straights,” he said, putting down his money.
Billie nudged his thigh with her boot. “Good pillow perm.”
He ignored her. Out on the sidewalk, he opened the pack. Two dogs were asleep in the middle of Main Street, a black Lab and a red dachshund. The afternoon was breezy, and when he tried to light a cigarette, Victor’s cheap-ass matches, one after another, wouldn’t stay lit.
“You mad at me?” Billie bumped up against him. “Sorry if I insulted your do.” She reached to ruffle his hair.
He dodged her hand.
“Cranky, aren’t we?”
“Not in the mood for this town.” His next match caught and he exhaled smoke. Billie was in dusty gray coveralls, her hair lumpy under a black baseball cap. “Pretty high-fashion yourself,” he said.
“On my way to check a couple irrigation pots we mended yesterday up by the lake. Try some water in ’em and see if the fuckers still leak.” She pointed to her hulking white truck. “Feel like taking a ride?”
“Got work to do,” he said. They started moving anyway. At least he could walk her to her truck.
“So, how’s it going?” she asked. Friendly, no edge.
He looked behind him, toward the Mills. The dachshund had left the Labrador retriever and was trotting up toward the stoplight. “No complaints.”
At her truck, she knocked on the hood. “Come on, hop in. Won’t take