Things returned to normal, or as normal as they could be while Clarence was around, the next day. A few days later I came down for breakfast, last as usual, as Stoney was preparing waffles with Mrs. W.’s World War II-era waffle iron. Mrs. W. was sipping coffee and looking at the first section of the paper. Clarence had a glass of orange juice, apparently untouched, and was puzzling over something on a sheet of quadrille paper.
“Hey, Henry,” said Mrs. W., without looking up. “Stuff to talk about in morning civics class so read up.” Stoney sort of waved at me. Neither Mrs. W. nor Stoney was smoking, which was odd. Stoney placed two small pitchers in front of Mrs. W., one white like cream and the other looked like his reduced maple syrup, then put a glass of whole milk next to her coffee. She looked up and smiled and handed me the first section of the newspaper. She turned her attention to sports. A few seconds later Stoney plopped a perfectly-formed round waffle in front of her, liberally smeared with butter, now melted and drooling towards the edge of the waffle.
“Okay, this is a pretty standard American waffle, which is what I can make with this waffle iron. It’ll be a little chewier, little crisper, a little eggier than a Belgian one, I hope in a good way. You have your choice of reduced maple syrup or this highly experimental yogurt-cream-vanilla sauce I kind of made up this morning because I thought it might be good on waffles, because I made some pretty good yogurt, although I tasted it and it might be better on desert crepes. Oh, and there are these.” He placed a bowl of sliced, sugared strawberries on the table, with a serving spoon. Mrs. W smiled warmly at her plate. She divided the waffle into two halves, drizzled yogurt-vanilla sauce over the right half, and sprinkled sugared strawberry slices on top of that. With her first bite she smiled and rolled her eyes like a six year-old tasting her first ice cream cone.
“Wonderful,” she said, and cut off another bite.
“Usually I’d want some kind of protein with breakfast but I couldn’t figure out what kind of meat or egg deal would go with this. Once I got fixed on the sauce, I mean.” He watched the indicator light on the waffle iron and sipped his coffee intermittently. “You’re next, little buddy,” he said, to Clarence. I looked at my paper, Mrs. W. enjoyed her waffle, and Clarence looked at his graph paper. According to the paper President Nixon was in Cairo, where President Sadat had welcomed him as an important world leader without whom the problems of the Middle East could never be resolved. After these solemn pronouncements were complete, President Sadat feted President Nixon with a performance by a belly dancer.
After a few minutes the light on Mrs. W.’s ancient waffle iron turned red and Stoney turned out another perfect waffle. He plated it in front of Clarence, after which he gave Clarence a glass of milk and a bottle of Log Cabin syrup. “Bud, you’re welcome to yogurt vanilla sauce or reduced maple syrup if you like, but you’re welcome to Log Cabin if you prefer.”
“Cool!” said Clarence, and poured at least six fluid ounces of Log Cabin syrup on his waffle.
“Hungry?” Stoney asked me.
“I don’t usually eat breakfast,” I said.
“I’ll split one with you,” he said. Mrs. W. had finished her fist waffle half and had cut the other half into two quarters. She covered the one nearest to her in yogurt-vanilla sauce and strawberries. She ate a few bites.
“You know, this would be good with blueberries, too,” she said.
“Good call, Dr. W.,” said Stoney. “We’ll have to try that. But sugared strawberry slices bleed a lot of juice out, and that helps the flavor of the sauce. Thins it a little, too.” A final waffle was ready. He split it between us on two plates. He poured a generous dollop of yogurt-vanilla sauce on his then sprinkled it with strawberry slices. I followed suit. Clarence finished his waffle. Mrs. W. still had a quarter of hers left, which she drizzled with still-warm reduced maple syrup and consumed with an emotional cast to her expression. While Stoney and I were eating our s Clarence unceremoniously dumped the remaining strawberry slices onto his plate and then spooned lots of yogurt-vanilla sauce over them. He had unsatisfactory results consuming this mixture with his fork, so adopted the strawberry serving spoon as his own. I expected Mrs. W. to object, but she didn’t notice.
“Another triumph, Stoney,” she said. It was pretty tasty. Clarence had cleaned his plate as thoroughly as he was able without licking it, which he would have gladly done had no one been looking, then turned his attention back to his quadrille paper, which seemed to have sparked an unusually studious streak in Clarence.
“What are you working on?” I asked Clarence. Mrs. W. lit a cigarette and waited on his response.
“It’s some games Stoney made up for me,” he said.
“Yeah, I figured he’s probably bored with pretty much everything around him, so for the past week or so I’ve been setting up some puzzles for him,” said Stoney. “He should have something interesting to do, too.”
“So?” Mrs. W. asked Clarence.
“I like the crosswords and the Cryptoquotes best. Jumbles are too easy,” said Clarence. Mrs. W. looked at Stoney.
“Honestly, that’s been pretty closely based on what’s available in the Chattanooga Times,” he said. “But Clarence has done the Cryptoquote in less than five minutes twice.”
“So word puzzles?” Mrs. W. asked Clarence.
“The math ones are harder, but kind of more fun,” he answered.
“What kind of math problems?” she asked.
“At first it was like addition and that kind of stuff. How you’d graph that. Here,” he said, shuffling his papers, and handed up a list of about six graphs of linear equations. “I gotta say, that was pretty boring. But this week he added little numbers and the puzzles are a lot more … interesting,” he said.
“Little numbers?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Like…”
“Okay, well, we started with . Stoney writes the power numbers as little numbers above their variers.”
“And?”
“They’re fun.” He shrugged. “Stoney showed me how that’s the same as x plus y times x plus y, and it’s like multiplication only with letters. Kind of like the Cryptoquote substitutes one letter for another, he thinks up these puzzles where he has letters instead of numbers, and you have to figure out what the letters could be. Then to get the curves all you have to do is plug real numbers into the key. It’s keener and cooler than the word puzzles, but I think the word ones are more fun, somehow. More Yaqui.” Mrs. W. turned to Stoney.
“Mr. Jackson!” she said to Stoney.
“Yes ma’am?” Stoney asked, hesitantly.
“You’re a teacher!” she exclaimed.
“I don’t know,” he said, after a pause. “I just thought if he was stuck with us he might as well have something to do.”
“What made you think of this?” she asked.
“Well, that first night we forgot to get him a Sports Illustrated and I felt so bad I wanted to make it up to him so I made him a game sheet of stuff he could play with while you were talking to us.”
“And you’ve got him to quadratics already?” she asked.
“He’s pretty fast.”
“Well. Clarence, I’m going to leave you to Stoney’s tutelage, and you boys let me know if I can help.” She paused and thought and lit a cigarette. She looked at Stoney, contemplatively. “Sometimes you connect with a single person, and that’s great. Happens a lot with parents, as it should. Sometimes you connect with a larger group, but not with everybody. Ministers, Rabbis, Boy Scout leaders, singer/songwriters. Sometimes you connect with almost everybody in the room. Those people all need to be teachers, because nobody else can do the job as well.”
“Clarence and I are just buds,” said Stoney.
“So do you think you’re learning a lot, Clarence?” she asked.
“Oh, sure! Stoney’s like Don Juan,” he said.
“Who?”
“A character in Clarence’s favorite book,” Stoney said.
“What have you learned?” she asked.
“Well, a needle case is called an etui. The Hawaiian word for goose is nene. There’s a college in North Carolina called Elon. The easiest place to start with a Cryptoquote is to look for patterns, like ‘there’ or ‘that.’ All kinds of stuff.”
“How are ‘there’ and ‘that’ patterns?” Mrs. W. asled.
“If you have a five-letter word where the third and last letters are the same and nothing else matches, that’s almost always ‘there,’” he said. “If you look around and the first three letters match up somewhere else, you’re sure, because that’s ‘the’. And if the first and last letters of a four-letter word are the same, that’s usually ‘that,’” he said.
“Could also be ‘else,’” said Stoney. “Be careful.”
“Sons, twit, hath, barb, kink, dead, fief, gang, maim, pimp, rear, roar, sips,” I said. “Shall I continue?”
“No need,” said Stoney.
“What’s he saying?” asked Clarence.
“He’s giving you examples of other four-letter words that fit the pattern. But for the purpose of doing a Cryptoquote, ignore him. If you have a four letter word that begins and ends with the same letter, it’s almost always ‘that.’ And if it’s not, it’s usually ‘else.’ And after that, all of those words Henry said are equally likely.”
“What’s a tutelage?” asked Clarence.
“It means Dr. W. thinks I’m teaching you stuff,” said Stoney. “His fastest time on the Jumble is less than two minutes.”
“But what about factoring quadratics?” she asked Clarence. He immediately drew his face into a quizzical frown.
“What?” Charence asked, confused. Behind Clarence, Stoney waved his hands back and forth, like an unpire signalling “safe,” to wave her off from telling Clarence he was doing ninth grade math. Know your pupil.
“That’s what your Aunt Margaret calls that kind of number puzzle,” Stoney said.
“Oh,” he nodded. “They’re just puzzles,” he said to Mrs. W. “They’re fun, but once Stoney shows you the trick they’re lots easier than the word ones. I don’t think I’m really, like, learning anything from the number puzzles. They’re just fun.” He shrugged.
“Okay,” she said, smiling. “So what’s in the news?”
“Dodgers lost to the Cards 6-3 with Sutton on the mound,” I said.
“You think he’s going to last?” asked Stoney.
“Seems solid. Torre hit a homer for St. Louis and the good guys just never caught up. Brock hit a triple to seal the deal.”
“We never should have traded Torre,” said Clarence. “He was my favorite player ever. What was the Braves score?”
“They beat the Mets one zip. Both pitchers must have done well but I didn’t recognize either name.”
“Aaron homer? RBI?” asked Clarence.
“Nah, Davey Johnson singled in somebody from third,” said Mrs. W.
“Nobody’s asked about my Tigers,” said Stoney.
“They didn’t play,” said Mrs. W., Clarence, and I in unison.
“Tough room,” said Stoney.
“All right, so anybody noticed what’s going on in the world?” she asked. Stoney lit a cigarette. Clarence concentrated on some puzzle on Stoney’s sheet. She looked straight at me.
“Well, Nixon’s in Egypt,” I said.
“Good. Why is he there?”
I paused to think before answering. “Because there are fewer American reporters there?” I hazarded.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Henry,” she said. “This is a state visit. What is the purpose of the visit?” There was a pause.
“Mrs. W., I’m going to have to have to side with Henry here,” said Stoney. “Yesterday—or maybe sometime in the last day or so—one of our coffee chats was about how Henry Kissinger was going to resign if people didn’t stop pestering him about all the criminal investigations going on about White House stuff.”
“But that’s not the purpose of a state visit,” she said. We both looked at her quizzically. Clarence had lost interest. She rapped her knuckles on the table. “Clarence?” He looked up.
“Yeah? ” he answered.
“Why is President Nixon in Egypt?” she asked. He put on his game face, as though he were answering a question in class.
“To achieve peace in the middle east?” he answered, after thinking.
“Yes!” she said, happily.
“Well, so how long has this middle east deal been going on?” asked Stoney.
“Several thousand years,” she answered. Shaking her head and lighting a cigarette.
“And you think Nixon is going to work it out?” he asked.
“Well, no, but he’s trying.”
“It says here that there was a parade in which Nixon was cheered by throngs,” Stoney said.
“Yes,” she answered.
“This was in Egypt. Is there any place he might get a similar response in the US?” There was a pause. Clarence frowned and looked back down at his puzzle sheet.
“Maybe Wadley,” I said.
“Wadley?” Stoney asked.
“A little town in Alabama. They like their president. A lot,” I said.
“I do get your point, Stoney,” she said. “Peace in the Middle East is important, though, and I’m glad they’re thinking about it. What else is going on?”
“Ehrlichman can be tried with the rest of the plumbers,” said Clarence, without looking up from his puzzle sheet.
“That he can,” said Mrs. W., smiling at him. “That he can. All right, lets get to work.” We moved into the dining room and she took us through a pretty intricate double integral that had integrations over some regions that were more general than polar rectangles. It branched out a lot, and we drew some diagrams on the blackboards to reason through it. Mrs. W. observed that the notation had changed a little from when she was in grad school, but it all meant the same thing.
For lunch we had gazpacho and tuna salad sandwiches, but that makes it sound a little more generic than it was. Stoney made a special olive oil mayonnaise to bind the tuna salad, although he used his standard Wesson oil mayo on the bread, which he had baked the day before . I think we had a cool meal because Stoney didn’t like to heat up the kitchen too much in the middle of the day when it was hot outside. After lunch we were still working on the double integral problem—well, Stoney and I were, and Clarence was working on a second problem sheet Stoney had whipped out right after lunch—when the phone rang. It didn’t usually ring. We all looked at each other, then Mrs. W. got up to answer it. She returned after a few seconds. “It’s Nadia,” she said, “Asking for Stono.”
“Ah,” Stoney said, and got up to take the call. Mrs. W. took a contemplative drag from her cigarette and looked at the beautifully framed unsolved problem on the blackboard.
“This is the girl who came over for lunch wearing ... a tee shirt?” she asked.
“Yes, maa’am,” I said.
“She was awesome!” said Clarence.
“And he thinks this girl is a college student?” Mrs. W. asked, to no one in particular.
“She says she’s enrolled at a Junior College in Colquitt,” I said.
“She’s absolutely gorgeous,” said Clarence.
“Okay, Clarence, I’m going to tell you something about men,” she said. “I want you to remember this ten years from now.” Clarence looked up with a quizzical scowl. “Men are mysteriously unable to detect or deduce the ages of females they find attractive. I’m telling you, remember this. The fact that you find her attractive doesn’t mean she’s eighteen. Got it?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. He was trying to appear earnest, but Mrs. W. saw through it and shook her head in annoyance with men in general. Stoney returned.
“Mrs. W., if it’s okay with you, I’m gonna go pay a visit to Nadia,” he said. “Won’t be long,” he said.
“Have fun,” she said. He smiled and lit a Winston. “You know she’s underage, so be careful.”
“Oh, no ma’am. She’s enrolled in Colquitt Junior College. Twenty years old,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” said Mrs. W., without looking away from the blackboard.
“Okay, see you again in a few minutes” he said, and left. I could hear the door close behind him after a few seconds.
“Well, what to you gentlemen want to do?” she asked Clarence and me.
“I got my puzzle sheet,” said Clarence, and shrugged.
“We could take a walk,” I said. Mrs. W. frowned and smoked for a minute.
“I know,” she said. “Henry, how much Relativity do you have?”
“Philosophical principles mainly. He showed us some of the math but we weren’t tested on it.”
“I looked at your book over Christmas. The way they presented it is not the same way Albert did it. Let me show you Albert’s original thinking. It’ll make a lot more sense.” She flipped over a blackboard. “Didn’t you tell me you knew the Lorentz transformation?”
“I think so, yes ma’am. We did it in Stoney’s math club. On your recommendation, I might add.”
“Okay. So here we go. Place a rod one meter long in the x’ axis of K’ in such a way that the beginning end coincides with the point x’=0, while the other end coincides with x’=1. What is the length of the rod relative to the K system?” And with that she was off, scudding across principles vast and small, demonstrating on the blackboard from time to time. It was though she’d been hungry to talk Physics, as though dealing with geometry and pure math for so many years had starved her for something. She galloped. I could follow, but not really absorb. It was exhilarating, but frightening, in a way. I am by nature skeptical, and to inhale so much so fast didn’t brook much analysis. But it all came in so right. She went on for about three hours. By the end, general and special relativity had been planted in my brain, but I couldn’t have said I grasped it. I understood it, in a way, but I hadn’t been able to think it through.
“What do you think?” she asked. Clarence had wandered off.
“I’m kind of stunned,” I said after a pause. “It makes sense, but Jesus. I knew that mass and energy were supposed to be related. But damn.”
“Where are you on gravity?” she asked.
“Thinking it through. Everything you said makes sense, philosophically.”
“And the math?” she asked.
“Not sure yet. I need to think all this through. I understood it when you said it, but it wasn’t all math.”
“Fair enough.” The doorbell rang.
“What the hell?” she asked.
“It’s Stoney,” I said.
“Why would he ring the bell?” she asked.
“He’s a guest.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, rising to answer the door. When she came back, the had Stoney in tow and was explaining that he was part of the household now, like it or not, and did not need to ring the bell to come inside.
“Well, thank you, Dr. W. That’s so sweet of you.” He looked exhausted, in a way that doesn’t care that it’s exhausted. He sat and lit a cigarette. “I know I planned to cook something tonight, but I can’t remember what it was,” he said.
“You said red beans and rice,” said Clarence, wandering in.
“Oh, Jesus! You’re right! I’ve got nothing like the time to cook red beans and rice! What was I thinking? Well, I guess we know what I was thinking about. But still, I’ve let down the team.” He lit a Winston in exhausted despair. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “What do we think? Omelet? Quiche?”
“Oh, Stoney, don’t worry about it. It’s time for me to repay the favor. Let’s go to the Brass Register. I’m buying,” she said.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“A bar downtown, on Fountain Square. Good burgers and omelets. Dark, with drinks and beer. You’ve been, Henry?”
“A couple of times. My friend Dennis Plumlee used to hang out there,” I said, “but he was pretty much everywhere.”
“You didn’t like it?” she asked.
“Good burgers, but no pool table,” I said.
“Will Nadia be there?” Clarence asked.
“No,” said Stoney. “The Baptists are all back, I think.”
“Damn,” said Clarence.
“Language, Clarence,” said Mrs. W.
“Sorry,” said Clarence. “Stoney, what does this mean?” he asked, pointing at something on his quadrille sheet.
“Oh, that’s something we’ll get to in a week or two. A different kind of puzzle. For now, just treat it like it’s x or y or a or b,” he said.
“But how do I say it?” he asked. “Sin?”
“It’s an abbreviation,” said Stoney. “Sine.”
“Sign,” said Clarence.
“You got it, buddy,” said Stoney. “So maybe a drink before Brass Registering?” He made Mrs. W. a massive martini, himself a gin and tonic, and brought Clarence a Coke. We retired to the living room to watch the news. Nixon and Sadat had looked at the pyramids. Things could be better in Viet Nam. Prince Charles had invited Laura Jo Watkins, the daughter of an American admiral, to hear him address the House of Lords.
“That’s just not right,” said Clarence. It was odd for him to volunteer anything. We all looked at him, surprised.
“How so?” asked Mrs. W., taking a sip of her martini.
“For that prince to go siphoning off American girls. He should stick to Brits.”
“Why so?” she asked.
“That’s a really pretty girl. What’s she going to do? Say ‘No, I’ll take a pass on being maybe the queen of England?’ It’s not fair.”
“Well, maybe he likes her,” said Mrs. W. There was a pause.
“Mutch as I love you, Dr. W., I’m going to weigh in with my little buddy on this one,” said Stoney. “Isn’t the Prince of Wales required to marry an English citizen?”
“No, no. Under the Royal Marriage Act as long as the reigning monarch approves, he can do what he likes.”
“How about under the Settlement Act?” Clarence asked. All of us looked at him in surprise again. Well?” he asked, when none of us answered.
“That just says that no monarch of England can be Catholic or be married to a Catholic,” Mrs. W. said. “Where did you pick that up?”
“I go to school,” Clarence answered, sullenly. Stoney gave him a thumbs up and Clarence brightened in response. The news came back. The world monetary fund had agreed on some changes. Nixon said Sadat would be coming to Washington in a few months. It was inextricably dull. Stoney refreshed his and Mrs. W.’s drinks halfway through.
“All right, let’s go,” said Mrs. W. after the news was done and we all piled out towards her car. She handed me her car keys without comment. It was maybe 6:00 or 6:30 and it was still light. I hadn’t spent much time in the Brass Register before, although I’d been. My high school classmates had all spoken of it as a destination of some importance, but it didn’t have a pool table and I don’t drink. It was clean and neat, though, and the hostess, who may have been behind me a year or two at City High, showed us to a nice table near the windows up front. Clarence was checking out the new and interesting environment, focusing intently on whatever pretty girl walked by. We all ordered various kinds of cheeseburgers and different drinks.
The front door opened and Rex walked in, alone, looking for someone.. He scanned the bar several times before he noticed me, then waved and came over. Something about his bearing suggested he had been drinking for some time.
“Yo, Henry,” he said. “Hello, Mrs. Wertheimer. Henry have you seen Buster in here tonight?”
“Buster Wilhoite?” I asled. Rex paused for a few seconds to think about this.
“Is there another Buster?” Rex asked, confused. He was a little unsteady and he was moving his lips in this odd way that made his handlebar moustache look like it was moving across his face like a caterpillar.
“Haven’t seen him. Why?” I asked.
“Buster has a skeet machine for sale and I was going to look at it tonight.”
“If I see him I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”
“Cool.” Rex wandered off, more towards the bar than in search of Buster.
“Did he say Buster Wilhoite?” Mrs. W. asked.
“You remember Buster,” I said. “He went to City.”
“Buster didn’t take much math,” she said. Stoney was waving at the waitress, who showed up with a smile.
“Hey freak,” she said, to Stoney.
“Hi, Janie,” said Clarence.
“Oh, hey, little fella’. How’s your Coke holding out?”
“Oh, it’s fine,” he said. He stared at her in a way that manners would have forbidden if he had any.
“Okay. So this was a gin and tonic,” Stoney said, pointing at his now empty drink. “So what I’d like is another gin and tonic, only this one with like three or four shots of gin in it. Make it four. And so for there to be any room for tonic water, you need to do this in a Collins glass.”
“Lime?” she asked.
“Yes, but just one wedge,” Stoney said.
“Got it!” she said, smiling, and walked off. Clarence watched her leave longingly.
“Knock it off, Clarence. You boys have to talk to him about the way he looks at girls,” Mrs. W. said.
“What?” asked Clarence, confused.
“What’s he doing?” Stoney asked, oblivious.
“I’ll explain it to Stoney and Stoney will explain it to Clarence,” I said.
“You’ll do what?” Stoney asked.
“I’ll explain later.”
“Yo-ho-ho!” said a loud voice to my right. “How in the hell are you, my badass dog Henry?” It was Buster, bellowing.
“Hey, Buster. Rex is looking for you,” I said.
“Fuck Rex!” he yelled.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“What in the fuck have you been up to, Henry Beta?” he demanded.
“I’m in college,” I said.
“No shit?” he asked, obviously uninterested. “Where’s Rexie? I got a machine I gotta unload.”
“He was headed for the bar a few minutes ago,” I said.
“Cool.” Buster headed towards the bar and I lost track of him. He, too, looked as though he might have been drinking. A lot. Janie brought Stoney’s second drink as Mrs. W. sipped on her first. After a few minutes our burgers came, and we all enjoyed that first few minutes you get with hot cheeseburgers and hot, salty fries. As we were doing so, Rex and Buster, who certainly did not seem less intoxicated than when I first spoke to them, left the bar together.
“They’re looking at a skeet machine?” Mrs. W. asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Oh, dear,” she said. We continued working on our burgers. Mine, with bacon and cheddar cheese, was good, but then how could a hamburger with bacon and cheddar cheese not be good? Mrs. W. had a worried look on her face. Stoney drained his gin and tonic and ordered a pint of draft Lowenbrau.
“So what—” Clarence began but was interrupted by the booming sound of a shotgun blast coming from the street. Clarence jumped, terrified, and Stoney appeared to be considering taking refuge under the table.
“It’s okay, boys,” Mrs. W. said to Clarence and Stoney. “They said skeet machine, after all.” She looked at me and shook her head.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll go see what’s up.” I took another big bite of my bacon cheeseburger and went outside, still chewing. It was about 7:30. The sky was a little dark, but you could still see. Buster had parked his pickup next to the fountain for which Fountain Square was named. The skeet trap machine was in the bed of his pickup, and Buster had flipped down the gate so the clay pigeons wouldn’t graze it on their way out. There was a 100 foot orange extension cord running from the skeet machine to an outlet in front of the Brass Register. Both Buster and Rex were armed with shotguns. I observed all of this from about twenty yards away and was not interested in getting any closer. Jimmy Pelfry, Buster’s running buddy, was standing near Rex and Buster but did not seem to be otherwise participating in the evening’s events.
“Pull!” yelled Rex. Buster yanked something and a clay pigeon sailed off into the darkening sky off towards the Hamilton County sheriff’s office. Rex shot and reduced it to dust.
“Pull!” yelled Rex again. As the clay pigeon sailed through the courthouse lights Rex fired and missed, so Buster quickly sighted and shot the bird right before it got tangled in the large oak trees in front of the courthouse.
“Hey, Jimmy!” I called out. He looked over his shoulder at me and waved, and then as Rex and Buster shot off another clay pigeon and commenced shooting at it, he left them to come talk to me.
“Hey, Henry,” he said, approaching me and shaking my hand. “How’s it going?”
“It’s okay,” I said. The skeet machine hurled out another clay pigeon, which Rex rendered into dust with another shotgun blast. “So what’s going on here?” I asked.
“They’re both drunk,” Rob said.
“Yeah, I’d say so,” I said. Another clay pigeon went flying, both Rex and Buster shot at it at about the same time, and then began to argue about who had hit it.
“They’re shooting pretty good for bein’ as drunk as they are,” he said, watching them. Another clay pigeon. Rex missed, Buster got it. It was far enough downrange that he shot some leaves off of one of the stately oak trees in front of the courthouse.
“Okay. But doesn’t the idea of shooting skeet with 12 gauge shotguns on a city street in the dark seem like a bad idea in many ways?”
“Oh, sure. It’s a terrible idea. And you left out the fact that the sheriff’s department is right over there,” he said, pointing. “Any minute cops are going to show up and arrest them both.”
“Aren’t you and Buster friends?” I asked. Buster and Rex were arguing about something. Rex took a clay bird from the machine and threw it into the air, and they both shot at it. You could hear the bird shot raining down around us a few seconds later.
“Oh, yeah. Been pals since junior high. We were in Little League together. We roomed together when we were in college.”
“And you’re not trying to stop this?” I asked. There was a pause while to watched them shoot at another clay pigeon. Neither hit it this time.
“Buster’s practical joking has got to stop,” Jimmy said, eventually.
“What?”
“Buster’s always been bad about practical jokes,” he said, as they reloaded.
“There’s a connection between practical jokes and this skeet tournament?”
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “In high school and college if he put Dinty Moore Beef Stew® in the pockets of my tux or hid all my underwear before we went to play a road game. I’d just beat the snot out of him and he’d stop it for a few months.”
“And you no longer feel comfortable beating the snot out of him?”
“Oh, hell. I can still beat the snot out of him and am willing to do so at the drop of a hat. It’s just gotten out of hand, though, so I suggested he bring his shotguns. I brought an extension cord so they could test that skeet machine Buster stole. Made sure Buster got good and drunk. He’s pretty stupid when he’s drunk. And of course Rex is an idiot.”
“And?”
“Well, you can see,” he said. “I also told them I wasn’t aware of any law against firing shotguns inside city limits. I’m surprised the police are taking so long,” he said, glancing at his watch.
“May I ask about the nature of the practical joke?”
“Buster picked up a case of the crabs from this Russian girl he met at that bar he goes to down by the river. Before he used the de-lousing shampoo pulled some of them off and put them in a jar and then put them in my bed,” said Jimmy.
“I take it you did not see the humor in this,” I said, as a police car pulled up, lights on but no sirens. Buster was now showing Rex how to operate the machine.
“Pull!” Buster called out. Rex yanked the cord and a clay bird sailed out into the indigo sky. Buster shot just as two uniformed police officers emerged from their car, one with a shotgun aimed at Buster and the other with a pistol aimed at Rex.
“No, I found no humor in it,” said Jimmy. “But what I failed to get Buster to grasp was that Carrie found no humor in it, either.” Buster was trying to explain that it was all okay, that they were just shooting skeet, as it was their right to do. He cited the Second Amendment. The police did not seem to see it that way, and were instructing Rex and Buster to lay down their weapons. Rex, the more experienced criminal defendant of the two, was complying, but Buster was refusing on the grounds that this was his good shotgun and he didn’t want to scratch it.
“And Carrie is a girlfriend?”
“She was at the time, yes. Unfortunately, she and her mother share clothes from time to time, and her parents are happily married, so it was only a matter of days before the entire Kershaw household, Carrie, her mom, and her dad, were all crawling with crabs.”
“Unfortunate.” I said. Rex was now lying on the street face down with his hands cuffed behind his back. Buster was clutching his shotgun like a five year old girl clutches her favorite doll, pointing at Jimmy, apparently trying to explain that Jimmy had told him that it was okay for him to fire his shotgun downtown on a June evening. Jimmy waved.
“Really, really, unfortunate. Given the nature of the crab louse and how it spreads, Carrie’s parents eventually came to question her on the specifics of her pledge to stay a virgin until marriage.” Another police car pulled up. Buster was pleading for permission to return his favorite shotgun to the gun rack. The police advised him not to move. He began stroking the shotgun, a two-barrel with an elaborately carved stock, the way drunks and stoners do with objects they decide they like. A third police car pulled up as an officer emerged from the second one, shotgun aimed at Buster. Rex tried to say something but the officer accompanying him placed his shoe on the back of Rex’ neck to encourage him to exercise his right to remain silent and refrain from exercising any others.
“Alas,” I said.
“Yes. A great girl. Pretty as a picture. Sweet-natured. Took the Pill. She was even a Baptist. My folks loved her. Now my chances of seeing her naked again are as good as my chances of becoming pope.” Buster had negotiated some kind of deal with the policeman that had been talking to him. He broke the double-barrel, which shucked both shells, at which point officers seemed to converge on him from all over, tossing his shotgun aside and forcing him to the street, cuffing him.
In not too many seconds, he was in the back seat of one police cruiser and Rex was in the back seat of another, but on the way, Buster called out to Jimmy “Bail me out!” to which Jimmy called out
“No!” Buster looked confused and hurt.
“Why?” Buster demanded.
“Crab lice!” Jimmy called back. Buster shook his head as they handed him into the back seat.
“He’ll have to call his father for bail,” said Jimmy, “so he’ll remember this one.” Jimmy unplugged the extension cord from the outlet and began coiling it up.
“This isn’t going to go well for Rex, either,” I said. Jimmy shrugged.
“Rex is an asshole,” he said.
“Good catching up with you, Jimmy,” I said.
“Same here, Henry,” he said. “I loaned him this extension cord and don’t want to lose it.” All of the police cruisers seemed to turn off their flashing lights at once and silently roll off into darkness.
“About the girl Buster got the crabs from,” I said. “Any chance she was Bulgarian rather than Russian?”
“You think Buster would know the difference?”
“Good point. See you later,” I said, and returned to the Brass Register. A crowd had apparently been watching at the window and looked at me nervously as I came back inside. I rejoined our table. Mine was the only plate left on the table. Mrs W. and Stoney both had cigarettes lit and brandy snifters filled with brown liquids, and Clarence had another Coke. I still had a third of my burger and half of my fries.
“Anything odd?” Mrs. W. asked.
“It was more elaborate than it looked but just as stupid.” She nodded. I took a bite of my not-entirely-cold burger and followed it with a few entirely cold fries. I poured ketchup on the fries.
“So do people, like, fire shotguns into the air all the time around here?” asked Stoney.
“It’s rare,” said Mrs. W.
“Not in a town as big as Chattanooga,” I said.
“Sometimes,” said Clarence.
“’Cause in Detroit we only do that sh— … that stuff on New Years.” We all looked at him curiously.
“Shouldn’t there be some limitations?” he asked.
“Why’s New Years’ a good time?” Clarence asked. Mrs. W. looked at him by way of acknowledging that he’d asked a good question without giving much else away.
“Better than June,” Stoney answered, draining his snifter and waving to the waitress for another.
“Why?” Mrs. W. and Clarence asked, simultaneously.
“In Detroit in January it’s like zero degrees outside,” said Stoney.
“So?”
“So everybody’s inside. Fewer targets.” We all nodded.
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