the seemingly interminable period before Joe backed the car up to the porch steps and silently began to load their four pieces of luggage into the wagon (into one of them Charity had surreptitiously placed all six of her snapshot albums). This new worry was that Cujo would lurch into the yard before they could drive away and stick Joe Camber with the problem.
But Cujo hadn’t shown up.
Now Joe lowered the tailgate of the Country Squire, handed Brett the two small bags, and took the two large ones for himself.
“Woman, you got so much luggage I wonder if you ain’t leavin on one of those Reno divorce cruises instead of going down to Connecticut.”
Charity and Brett smiled uneasily. It sounded like an attempt at humor, but with Joe Camber you were never really sure.
“That would be a day,” she said.
“I guess I’d just have to chase you down and drag you back with my new chainfall,” he said, unsmiling. His green hat was cocked squarely on the back of his head. “Boy, you gonna take care of your mom?”
Brett nodded.
“Yeah, you better.” He measured the boy. “You’re getting pretty damn big. Probably you ain’t got a kiss to give your old man.”
“I guess I do, Daddy,” Brett said. He hugged his father tight and kissed his stubbly cheek, smelling sour sweat and a phantom of last night’s vodka. He was surprised and overwhelmed by his love for his father, a feeling that sometimes still came, always when it was least expected (but less and less often over the last two or three years, something his mother did not know and would not have believed if told). It was a love that had nothing to do with Joe Camber’s day-today behavior toward him or his mother; it was a brute, biological thing that he would never be free of, a phenomenon with many illusory referents of the sort which haunt for a lifetime: the smell of cigarette smoke, the look of a double-edged razor reflected in a mirror, pants hung over a chair, certain curse words.
His father hugged him back and then turned to Charity. He put a finger under her chin and turned her face up a little. From the loading bays behind the squat brick building they heard a bus warming up. Its engine was a low and guttural diesel rumble. “Have a good time,” he said.
Her eyes filled with tears and she wiped them away quickly. The gesture was nearly one of anger. “Okay,” she said.
Abruptly the tight, closed, noncommittal expression descended over his face. It came down like the clap of a knight’s visor. He was the perfect country man again. “Let’s get these cases in, boy! Feels like there’s lead in this one. . . . Jesus-please-us!”
He stayed with them until all four bags had been checked, looking closely at each tag, oblivious of the baggage handler’s condescending expression of amusement. He watched the handler trundle the bags out on a dolly and load them into the guts of the bus. Then he turned to Brett again.
“Come on out on the sidewalk with me,” he said.
Charity watched them go. She sat down on one of the hard benches, opened her purse, took out a handkerchief, and began fretting at it. It would just be like him to wish her a good time and then try to talk the boy into going back to the home place with him.
On the sidewalk, Joe said: “Lemme give you two pieces of advice, boy. You probably won’t take neither of them, boys seldom do, but I guess that never stopped a father from giving em. First piece of advice is this: That fella you’re going to see, that Jim, he’s nothing but a piece of shit. One of the reasons I’m letting you go on this jaunt is that you’re ten now, and ten’s old enough to tell the difference between a turd and a tearose. You watch him and you’ll see. He don’t do nothing but sit in an office and push papers. People like him is half the trouble with this world, because their brains have got unplugged from their hands.” thin, hectic color had risen in Joe’s cheeks. “He’s a piece of shit. You watch him and see if you don’t agree.”
“All right,” Brett said. His voice was low but composed.
Joe Camber smiled a little. “The second piece of advice is to keep your hand on your pocketbook.”