something for taking him in. And after his afternoons with Loucine, he was not up to other ladies. He took to spending more and more of the nights just with Charlie, getting drunk and just talking.
They talked about everything, excepting women. There was something about Charlie that seemed to insist on seeing all women as ladies. He was prepared and willing to make excuses for all of them. Most of his Southern confreres, Landers had found—indeed, most Americans—divided women into two distinctive categories: ladies and whores. With no shadings of gray in between. But not Charlie. He had only the one category.
Twice while Landers was with him in the sheriff’s car he drove over across town in the late afternoon to see his wife. Charlie, it turned out, brought her every afternoon the groceries she wanted for that evening and the next day.
Landers was curious to see her, knowing what Annie had told him about her down in Luxor. She was a good-looking woman for her age, about forty-five, and she had not lost what they called bloom. She still had a figure. But for a roundish face such as she had there was a peculiarly elusive ferretlike toughness to some part of it. She had a soft, gentle, delightful Southern smile, which went all the way up to and deep into her eyes, with a kind of ropy, sexy charm of innocence. She almost never relaxed this smile in her eyes, even when her face wasn’t smiling. The few times she did, the very few times Landers caught her at it, Landers thought he saw behind it the eyes of a shrewd, hard-hitting poker player. The kind he would not want to play against, in any serious game.
She took one look at Landers, and decided immediately Landers was sleeping with her second-oldest daughter. Both she and Landers knew what this conclusion she had made was. Both knew there would be no revoking it. While Charlie was unloading the car of its groceries, Landers sat with her in the parlor and talked politely.
Her first name was Blanche. She was, it came out quickly in her talk, a pillar among the local Baptists, and wanted to know if perhaps Landers would come down to the church to some of their meetings. Landers said he would be delighted to. She smiled her thanks. But she carefully did not press him for a specific time.
Apparently Annie in Luxor was the only one who knew she was the mistress of the local Nashville politician, Landers thought. But then he revised that. Charlie knew. Then he revised again: Everybody knew.
The two little girls of nine and eight were abominable. They were both spoiled totally rotten. Worse, even at eight and nine they were both already well aware of being females, knew that this carried special privileges, utilized these shamelessly, and just did not have the finesse yet to hide it. They flirted outrageously, just as if they were already women, and thrust out their little buds of breasts as though the breasts had already grown into what they would someday become.
Outside in the car, when Charlie had delivered all the groceries, Charlie stared off through the windshield again. As if he were about to say something. But he thought better of it, and threw the car violently into gear. Before he released the clutch, he took a deep breath and let out one huge sigh.
Sitting there, watching and saying nothing, not even involved, Landers had the impression he was with a man who in the course of his life had had to learn the hard way to cope with a great many disarrayed and enigmatic things, and had done it; but in the course of doing it, had found a great many other darknesses he would never be able to cope with ever. Not ever. Never.
Landers never had found out when Charlie slept, and never did. It wasn’t in the morning. And it certainly wasn’t in the afternoon, because he was never there. Landers finally decided he must exist by catnapping. Like a combat soldier. Sleeping a half hour at a time, in his big swivel chair at his desk, in the back room of his office at the courthouse.
When they had taken Loucine out to eat and brought her back home, Charlie brightened up. As the two of them set off on his evening rounds. And that night it was Charlie who went off somewhere with one of the lonely juke joint ladies. Leaving