Heat of Night Page 3

  “I got to help them the little I can.”

  “I wouldn’t mind ‘a little’ so much. But it’s constant. And that talk about buying diving gear and an aqua-lung so he can dive for treasure.” She sniffed, crossing her arms over her bosom. “All the beer he’s drunk, he couldn’t sink even with weights on him.”

  Al allowed himself a smile. He knew she hadn’t intended to be funny at all.

  “You might have a real point there, Bea. I’ll mention it to Big Juan.”

  “Well, don’t tell him I said it. He dislikes me enough as it is.”

  “He doesn’t dislike you, Bea. You’re just self-conscious.”

  “Oh, they all hate me. They know I’m — well, different — ”

  “Better than they are, Bea?” he inquired.

  “Well, I admit I don’t like living as they do. They know it. They resent it. That’s why they hate me.” She dabbed a lace handkerchief at her dry eyes. He’d never seen her really cry, though once he thought she’d cried. Now he knew she wouldn’t soil a lace handkerchief with tears; if she were going to cry she’d use Kleenex. “Oh, Albert, don’t make me stay here too long. We’ve so much to do at home. I want to get the swimming pool started and if we’re not nicer to the Magruders, we’re never going to be accepted in the country club…. Do you hear me, Albert? You’ve got to start being nicer to Ted Magruder.”

  “Okay. Next time I see him, I don’t spit on him.”

  “Now you sound exactly like your father.”

  Albert turned the Chevy along the shell-paved side road that led through mangroves, clustered sea grapes, wild oats and tractionless sand, white as sugar, to the house where he’d been born. He felt his heart pounding faster, an anxiety building in him to be there. He stared out at the bay, calm and flat, and the Gulf beyond the islands and the channel, lying dangerous and enticing as a whore.

  There was an odd emptiness in his voice. “Don’t worry, Bea. Once in a while I might sound like him. “I’ll never be the man Big Juan is.”

  He watched sea gulls screaming out over the piers where some of the kids had tossed fish entrails. A bored pelican perched on a pier support and watched the screaming gulls with one eye. Al could hear the children yelling; one of them was carrying a sting ray, and the others were trying to take it away from him. He was flailing at them with it and screaming as loud as he could. His left leg was bright with blood but his screams were enraged. They were trying to take his sting ray and they were not about to do it. He was going to die fending them off, and die screaming, too.

  But the stillness from the house seemed louder than the screams of the children. It was as if the frame shack sat in a vacuum of its own silence. It was as if someone were dead. No one was dead, yet the silence frightened him and he could not say why.

  He blew the Chevy’s horn loudly, once, twice, three times, not to let them know he was coming — this didn’t seem a vital matter to him — but to break that worrisome silence.

  The kids came shrieking up from the bay, spreading out over the white sand like skittering sand crabs and then crossing through the whiskery growth of sea oats tickling at their bare legs. They were as brown as sea urchins and their teeth gleamed as white as the little stars you found when you snapped open a brittle sand dollar.

  “Albert. Now remember. No money. And don’t you go encouraging your father when he starts talking about diving for treasure — ”

  “All right, Bea. All right.”

  “And no matter what the trouble is, you don’t give them any money. We need every penny we’ve got.”

  “I said all right.”

  “Sure. You said it. You’re not even paying any attention to me.”

  He stopped the car, killed the engine. They were yelling at Albert that a sting ray had slapped its pronged tail into Luis, he had cut away the flesh because this was the only way to get out the prongs that opened like saw teeth after the tail was driven into its victim, and now Luis refused to give up the sting ray. It was his and he was thinking of some way to make it die slowly and painfully.

  They scrambled over the car; the dogs lunged barking and yapping against its side.

  Bea screamed at them to keep the dogs down, they were scratching the paint. “Can’t you see? Your dogs! You horrible little creatures,” she wailed at them. “Can’t you understand they’re clawing the paint?”

  But Albert was not paying any attention to Bea or the kids. He was watching the silent house, waiting for Juan and Rosa to come out of the door.

  4

  I TELL YOU WHY we call you and Bea to come over, Alberto,” Rosa said. She had walked into the house close at his side, glancing at him with little smiles of pride, touching him, as if after thirty years she could not yet believe this beautiful man was her first-born. “We need you, Alberto.”

  “Please,” Bea said. “His name is Albert. Or Al. It is not Alberto. It never was. It isn’t now — ”

  “Oh, stop it, Bea,” Al said.

  Bea looked about the shadowy room with its ancient furniture, scuffed and marked by the children and the dogs and time itself. She hated this room, hated the religious paintings, the religious articles secured to the dark walls. She wanted to get as damned far from this as she could, and drag Al with her because it was best for him whether he knew it or not.

  “I think your people call you Alberto just to annoy me,” Bea said, sitting on the edge of a couch.

  Rosa shook her head, looking at Al as if he were some fine statue she’d never seen before. “Always I call him Alberto,” she said, tilting her head. “This is the name of my grandfather. My grandfather hold me on his lap when he die. I am sitting on his lap and talking with him, the way a little child will, and I think he has fall asleep. But is dead. Sitting there dead. Is fine old man. My grandfather.

  For him I name my first son. I always call him Alberto.”

  “Well, you can stop.”

  “For God’s sake, Bea,” Al said. “It don’t matter. It makes no difference.”

  She listened to the children yelling in the yard. Luis would allow them to bury the sting ray if they were sure it was the most horrible death possible to it. She felt her nerves drawing taut.

  “It does make a difference and you know it.”

  Al exhaled, spread his hands. “Go on, Mama. Tell us about it. Why’d you call us over here?”

  Rosa glanced at Big Juan. He tried to smile but after a moment shrugged and nodded.

  “Is because of Dolores,” Rosa said.

  Al walked to the front screen door and back. He had not known what to expect but it had not been this.

  “What’s she done?” Al was worried. After all, Dolores was just at that age; men wouldn’t let her alone. Hell, the wonder was she’d kept it this long. He’d heard those men calling her name from the mangroves. Not even Big Juan could drive them away.

  “She’s a-fall in love.” Rosa’s mouth pulled down.

  “This is bad?” Bea said. “Everybody falls in love sooner or later — even in this Godforsaken place.”

  “Yeah.” Big Juan paced the room. “But not every girl — nineteen years — like Dolores — must fall in love for a man twice her age.”

  “My God,” Al said. “I thought she was nuts about Ric Suarez.”

  “Shu.” Rosa lifted her arms, let them drop. “This we all believe. But you should hear Dolores talk about this now. This was something that happened many years ago when she is a child — nothing but a child. Then she does not even know what is love. This is what she tells me. Ah, but now. Now she knows what is love. With this old man — over thirty — why, almost as old as me — o? you papa.”

  “Why don’t you have a talk with this man, Papa?” Al said. “A real strong talk.”

  “Is not so simple.” Big Juan spoke in a weary way, a man who has considered all the angles and still has his insoluble problem to face.

  “You want me to talk to him?” Al said.

  “Now, Al, you promised,” Bea said from t
he couch. “We were not going to stay — ”

  “Shu. Of course you stay. You spend the night. You have Al’s old bed. All to yourself.”

  “Al. You promised.”

  “All right, Bea. All right.”

  “What’s this you promise?” Rosa said.

  “Nothing, Mama,” Al said. He turned, facing Juan. “Who is this guy? I’ll talk to him. This afternoon.”

  “Is not so simple,” Big Juan said again.

  “Why not?” Al stared at his father. He’d never heard the big man admit defeat before. It worried him. It was as if he returned after an eternity to find Big Juan old and feeble. He studied him, troubled. But Big Juan looked the same, physically as strong as ever. “Why you keep saying that?”

  Bea said, “Now, Al, if Juan wants to handle this his way, you just let him — ”

  “Shut up, Bea,” Al said across his shoulder.

  Big Juan padded to the screen door, stood staring at the glazed sheet of the bay and the churning Gulf beyond the channel. Clouds piled black along the horizon. There was the smell of a storm in the air.

  It was hot and still in the room. He turned his back on the clouds, stared at his family.

  “We try to talk to Dolores — you mama and me. Both try. But she say if we interfere, if we open our big mouth — this she say to her mama and me — she will run away and live by herself so she can see this man any time she like.”

  “This is why we got to be so careful, Alberto,” Rosa said, chewing at a hangnail.

  “Oh, she’s just gone nuts,” Al said. “A dame falls for some guy and she won’t listen to anybody. Beat her. Hell, take her over your knee, Papa, pull down her pants and beat hell out of her.”

  “Oh boy,” Bea said. “That’s what I love about you, Al. Your realistic approach to your problems.”

  “It’s what she needs,” he yelled at her.

  “Oh. Oh. Ohh.” Big Juan shook his head. Here was one of the first angles he’d discarded. “She’s got one big bad temper — ” he tried to smile — “must be she gets it from her mama. But I can see in her eyes. She would love to have me try this — try to beat her. Her eyes dared me. Just try to spank me, Papa, say her eyes. This is all she needs. She really walk out then…. We cannot stand to lose her. It would kill me…. I would not want to live if any one of my kids hated me. It is something I cannot take. All of you are more than my flesh and blood. Part of my heart — each of you. So we got to do something. But what? Is drive Rosa and me out of our senses.”

  “Keeps-a me cry,” Rosa said. “When I cry my nose runs. All the time, find myself crying, my nose running.”

  Al shook his head. “Well, if you can’t talk to Dolores, there’s the guy. If he’s in his thirties, he ought to have sense enough — ”

  “Do you have sense enough, Al Venzino?” Bea said. “Sense enough to what? Some men never get any sense. If you had good sense — ”

  “Ho boy,” Al said. “Here we go. What’s eating you now?”

  “You ogle every tramp you pass. All the time. You’re thirty. Have you got sense about women? Your tongue hangs out most of the time.”

  “So I look at the girls at the office. On the street. My God, am I blind or something?”

  “Oh no,” Bea said. “You’re not blind. I’ll swear to that. You’re not blind, all right.”

  Rosa shrugged, giving Alberto an indulgent smile. “Is one thing to look at pretty girls. But is another to be in love with them — to want to touch their pretties when you are twice as old.”

  Big Juan swallowed hard and turned away to the door again. He did not want them to see his eyes. He could not forget Ruby. That young Ruby, so young, and he had not realized he was getting so old and that girls could be so young, and they were lost to him like the free hot days on the Gulf were lost. He couldn’t get out of his mind the way she had undressed for him, her fingers frantic for she wanted him so terribly, and the way he had stared at her, so pretty and so open to him, and the way he had wanted it and knew nobody had touched her as he would touch her, and the way he had felt himself growing hot, crazy hot in the crazy night, gushing hot in one half-second, worse than some kid on his first date. But worse than seeing her like this was the thought of the mortal sin he had committed. He had run away, he had not done it but in his heart he had done it, wildly and frantically and exultantly he had had her in his heart. He had sinned and his mind was a painful, festering sore. He wished that things people said would not remind him of Ruby. He wished he would not think about Ruby.

  The blood stopped throbbing in his temples. It was bad, like the storm brewing far across the Gulf, casting its shadow far ahead over the shallow bay. He realized that Alberto was speaking to him.

  “Who is this guy?” Al said. Juan sighed, relieved that the subject had shifted.

  “Is this Malcolm Hollister,” Big Juan said.

  “Hollister? The contractor?” Al sat down on the edge of a chair. He stared at his parents, thinking they were kidding. “Why, that guy’s got a million dollars. He could buy dolls like Dolores by the dozen — ”

  “Then why don’t he do it?” Rosa said. “Some other girls, some other dozen?”

  “What would he want with a kid like Dolores?” Al still wasn’t convinced.

  “I don’t know,” Big Juan said. “But he has the date with her. Tonight. Every night. She works for him. He drives her home from work. They sit out in his car until past two in the morning. You ask that girl what they talk about? She laughs. She says, who talks? And laughs again. What are we then to think? They are out there in his car, a car plush like a Pullman. A car such as I have never seen up close. They are out there but they are not talking. She admits this. What are we to think?”

  For the first time, Bea relaxed. She sat back in the divan, sighing. “Why, Mal Hollister is a gentleman. You ought to be glad Dolores has a crush on him.”

  “Shu. A crush. This is all right. To have a crush,” Rosa said. She remembered her own passionate desiring after the young parish priest so many years ago. Nothing came of it, not even the young priest ever suspected but he was the only man beside Big Juan she had loved, and it seemed to her no other passion ever held the same terrible bitter-sweet as that thwarted, secret longing. She shook the memory from her mind. “But this is not the same as a crush. Dolores is running after this Señor Hollister. Shameless. She is crazy for him. She thinks nothing else. Talks nothing else. Eh? What good can come of such a thing?”

  “He’s a perfectly wonderful man,” Bea said. “My father knows him.”

  “Shu. You father knows him. Dolores’ father knows him. But Dolores is a baby.”

  “Look, Bea.” Al’s voice shook. “Hollister might be a wonderful man. A gentleman, you called him. But that’s among people of his own kind. I can tell you, when he’s with a crazy kid like Dolores, he’s after just one thing, and he’s not governed by any rules of conduct that he lives by among his own friends.”

  “What do you know about it?” Bea taunted him.

  “I know this. I know what I’m married to. My God, some of the people we know. I know what they think of me.”

  “Al, you’re a fool.”

  “Am I? I get drunk so I can stand some of your friends, so I can live with your mother, good sweet Mother Cunningham. Christ in heaven.” He laughed in an empty, bitter way. “Lord, take just the other night. I came home from a hard day at that damned office. I’d had a few drinks, I was feeling pretty good. I flopped down out in a yard chair. I fell asleep. I woke up, and what do I see? Your mother is sitting straight and rigid in the chair beside me, staring at me with her mouth set and cold. I tell you I almost yelled out loud. I thought I was having some kind of nightmare. And the old woman spends the rest of the evening telling you how can you expect any different when you married somebody like me, and what will the neighbors think, me lolling drunk in the yard chairs. Well, if that’s the way Mother Cunningham feels about me, multiply that by several hundred thousand bucks and you’ll ge
t some inkling what Hollister really thinks about a kid like Dolores — a little nobody with the hots for him. A pants-crazy doll that he can make and then forget.”

  Bea seemed not to have heard this last. She was staring at Al, eyes distended. She’d stopped listening when he ceased talking about her mother. “I never heard of anybody as sensitive as you, Al. Why, Mother Cunningham loves you.”

  “Sure she does. But wasn’t it her idea that I ought to go to court and change my name?”

  Rosa straightened. “Why change you name, Alberto? What have you done?”

  “I haven’t done anything. I don’t have to do anything. My name is Venzino. That’s enough. I don’t have to do anything else. All that matters is what the neighbors think. So Bea and her old lady bang away at me. Change it to Vincent. Albert Vincent. Al Vincent. Good ole Al Vincent, the boy with the suntan. Ho boy. And sometimes I think it would be easier. A lot easier.”

  “Al, you’re getting all worked up,” Bea said.

  “Okay,” Al said. “So get off my back. I know what’s best for my kid sister. I’ll talk to her when she comes home this afternoon. And if that don’t do any good, I’ll talk to that son-of-a-bitch Hollister.”

  5

  HOLLISTER WATCHED DOLORES cross the office toward him.

  He had the uncomfortable feeling that what was happening wasn’t real; he was afraid his eyes were lying even when he knew what he saw had to be true.

  It was a disturbing thing but whenever she was around, he didn’t want to take his eyes off her. This was true no matter who was present, or what transactions were in progress, and when a girl is your secretary this can be embarrassing.

  Somehow he had to escape this mesmerized condition. He reminded himself that he was thirty-six, divorced, what everybody called a level-headed self-made man with a master’s degree in engineering, and this girl upsetting his whole life was nineteen. But he couldn’t believe this either, because nobody could get that lovely in just nineteen years. Heaven had worked overtime on this girl. Or hell had.