The Last Death of Jack Harbin Read online

  And then there’s the question of who’s going to take me to the hospital in Houston and bring me back. Loretta will insist, and I’d as soon ride in a car with Jack Harbin at the wheel as Loretta.

  The cheerful receptionist makes me an appointment for a couple of weeks off. She apologizes for not being able to fit me in sooner, but later is better than sooner as far as I’m concerned.

  Zelda rounds the corner from wherever she’s been napping and fixes me with a resentful eye as she meows her way to her dish. “That’s two of us feeling sorry for ourselves,” I tell her.

  Loretta has scheduled me to stay with Jack on Wednesday. I drop by her house on my way, to pick up a bag of her cinnamon rolls.

  There are two beefy motorcycles parked in Jack’s driveway alongside a giant SUV. At the curb sits an iridescent red pickup with flames painted on the side and plastered with bumper stickers. My favorite says, Back off! I flunked anger management class.

  The Harbin house is nothing much to look at—a one-story rectangle on concrete piers with vinyl siding, a metal roof, and aluminum windows. A wheelchair ramp leads up to the front door.

  I hear voices from around back, and in the backyard I find Jack surrounded by his buddies. Walter Dunn and the other man who showed up at Jack’s on Monday are there along with another couple of men, all sprawled in plastic lawn chairs on the concrete patio.

  Dunn jumps up to shake hands. “Mornin’ Mr. Craddock. You in line to spend some time with Jack today?” There’s a sweet smell of marijuana in the air. Seems early for that sort of thing.

  “Looking forward to it.” I squeeze Jack’s shoulder. “Hope that’s okay with you.”

  “I can take it if you can.” Jack cranes his head in my direction, his nose working. “Do I smell Loretta’s cinnamon rolls?”

  “You sure do. She sent over a couple dozen.” I open the bag and thrust a roll into Jack’s hand. He takes a big bite. I hand the bag to Dunn, who takes one and passes it on.

  “Somebody get Mr. Craddock a cup of coffee,” Jack says.

  Dunn says, “You asking, or ordering?”

  Jack snickers. “Just get the damn coffee.”

  Smirking, Dunn heads for the back door.

  “Take a seat, Mr. Craddock,” Jack says. I pull up a metal lawn chair with frayed plastic webbing that has faded to a pale gray.

  “You boys veterans?” I ask.

  They nod. One of them flicks a cigarette butt into the backyard.

  “My band of brothers,” Jack says, sarcastically.

  “Right on.” The speaker is a squat man with a shaved head and covered with tattoos. His eyes are so red you can’t tell what color they are.

  “That’s Vic,” Jack says. “The rest of you guys introduce yourselves like civilized people.

  Johnny B., the one who showed up with Dunn, has a big, knotted scar running along his jaw line. Mike is a slightly built, handsome man with a dark thatch of hair and a shy smile.

  “We call Mike ‘Pretty Boy,’” Jack says. The way Jack is settled back in his chair tells me he’s able to relax with these men.

  Dunn comes out with my coffee. “I had to brew a new batch.”

  Suddenly another man steps out the back door onto the patio. It takes me a second to recognize him. It’s Jack’s younger brother.

  “Well Curtis, I’ll be damned.”

  “Hello, Chief Craddock.” He comes over and says for me not to get up, but I do anyway. The hand he offers me to shake is soft and well-manicured. He tells me he drove in late last night. Ramrod straight, he’s clean-shaven, his hair cut short and trim, and dressed in slacks and a golf shirt.

  I never much cared for Curtis. He was a furtive kid. As soon as he was old enough, he grew a scruffy beard and started going around dressed in old army fatigues. He spent most of his time in the woods, hunting everything from squirrels to snakes. Marybeth used to worry about him because he’d go out camping for several days at a time. Frankly, I was surprised that it was Jack, not Curtis, who signed up for the army. Loretta told me that Curtis hooked up with some kind of survivalist group that lives out in the woods up in East Texas. You wouldn’t know it from his soft hands.

  The vets go quiet and their stares are cold. “How long are you in town for?” I ask. I wonder if Curtis plans to stay a while and take care of his brother.

  “I have to get back to work as soon as the funeral is over. Trying to get His Majesty squared away here in the next couple of days.” He nods toward Jack.

  Although the words seem nothing more than a mild jibe between siblings, Jack’s face twists with anger. “Fuck you, Curtis.”

  Curtis’s face gets red. He forces a laugh, but no one joins in.

  “You boys have the funeral arrangements taken care of?” I ask.

  “We would if Curtis wasn’t such a cheapskate,” Jack’s voice is belligerent.

  Curtis shoots a hard look at Jack. “I’m being realistic about money, Jack. The funeral you’ve got set up is going to cost a lot. You think you’re sitting pretty, but when you have to pay somebody to do everything Daddy did for you, you’re going to get a hard dose of the real world.” He speaks slowly, as if Jack is not only wounded, but brain-damaged as well.

  “What do you know about the real world?”

  I break in to ease things. “Curtis, I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. You don’t get down here too much.”

  “No, my job and my family keep me pretty busy.”

  “How many kids you got?”

  “Four. Two boys, two girls.”

  “That would keep you busy all right. What do you do for a living?”

  “I manage an outfit that sells at gun shows.”

  Jack snorts. “Didn’t have the guts to go off to war himself, so he’s arming for his own private little war.”

  Jack’s friends look at each other and rise as one. “We need to get out of here,” Dunn says to me. “Our buddy Eric’s at the shop by himself and he’s going to be some pissed off if we don’t show up pretty soon.”

  Each man shakes Jack’s hand in a kind of solemn ritual. Vic, the one with the heavy tattoos says, “Jack, let’s go on over to Coushatta in a couple of weeks. It’ll do you good to get out.” That’s a gambling place just over the Louisiana border.

  “I’m going to have to get back to you on that. Got some decisions to make.”

  The prospect of his friends leaving has Jack clutching the arms of his chair, his hollow-cheeked face vulnerable.

  Walter Dunn pauses with his hand on Jack’s shoulder before he leaves. “Jackie, I’ll come over here every night as long as you need me.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Curtis says. “I’ll be in town a couple more days. There’s nowhere for you to stay. We just have the two bedrooms.”

  Dunn gives him a hard look. “I’ll bring a tent and set up in the back yard so I won’t be in your way.”

  After they leave, I fumble for a neutral subject to ease the bad atmosphere between the two brothers. “Your wife and kids coming down for the funeral? I wouldn’t mind seeing them.”

  Curtis frowns. “There’s no call for Sarah to come. She needs to stay home and take care of my kids.”

  Jack’s jaw is tight. “What do you mean no call for her to come? Daddy was her father-in-law.”

  “One of the girls is sick. Sarah needs to be there with her.”

  Jack gropes around in his shirt pocket and yanks out a cigarette. “Christ, Curtis! You are such a jerk!”

  Curtis gets up so fast that his lawn chair topples backwards. He grabs it and sets it upright with a clatter. “My family is my concern,” he snarls. He starts toward the back door, then pauses and nods to me. “Good to see you, Mr. Craddock.”

  Jack and I sit quietly for a few minutes, Jack smoking, me sipping my cold coffee. Eventually I say, “You want to talk to me about the funeral arrangements? Maybe I can help you out.”

  Jack takes a deep drag on the cigarette. “Nothing to talk about. I told Earnest Landau I
want the best for Daddy. It’s my money. Curtis can’t do a damn thing about it. And if he doesn’t want to help pay for it, that’s his problem.”

  I nod, but then realize he can’t see me. “I know what you mean. It’s important to send your loved ones off right.”

  His face constricts. “I can’t believe he’s dead. Seems like there’s something the paramedics could have done for him.”

  I tell him about performing CPR. “I tried my best.”

  “You told me everything was going to be okay. I should have learned by now that when somebody says that, no good is going to come of it. That’s what the medic said when he got to me after I’d stepped on the mine that did this to me. He said I’d died and he brought me back, and then he said, ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’ Like hell! Sometimes I wish I had died.”

  I sigh. “I don’t blame you for being mad at me for saying everything was going to be okay, but the fact is with your daddy lying there like that and you on the ground tipped out of your chair, all I could do was stall for time. If I did the wrong thing, I did it with good intentions.”

  His mouth trembles as if he’s struggling not to break down. “I know that. I’m just trapped, that’s all.” He fumbles around on the table next to his wheelchair, finds the ashtray and grinds out his cigarette. “I wish to God I’d been nicer to Daddy.” His voice cracks.

  “It’s no good thinking that way. Everybody has regrets when someone they care about dies.”

  I hear someone calling out, and Elva Penning, one of Jack’s neighbors, comes around back carrying a tuna casserole. When Jeanne died I found out that tuna casserole was the dish of choice to comfort the bereaved. I haven’t had much of a taste for it ever since.

  To give them a few minutes to visit, I walk back to Bob’s workshop. The house is built on a sizeable piece of land shaded with pecan and post-oak trees, and the workshop is in a shed tucked against the back fence.

  The sliding door to the shed is open, and I glance inside. When Bob decided to take care of Jack, he quit his job with a construction company in Bobtail and started doing small appliance repairs. Everybody brought their things to him to repair, and there are lots of things lined up on shelves with tags on them. An ancient radio in a handsome wood cabinet has been pulled apart on the workbench. It would probably be cheaper to buy a new one, but you’d never find one with that art deco style. I slide the door shut to keep out the weather and the varmints, but I crack it open a few inches. People might want to slip in and get their goods without bothering Jack and Curtis.

  When Elva is gone, I say to Jack, “What would you think about going over to the café to get some lunch?”

  “That would be really good. You think you can push me in my wheelchair?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  In the kitchen, Curtis is on the phone. He shoots us a furtive look as we roll past. It occurs to me that Jack and I ought to have a chat with Earnest Landau, the funeral director, while we’re in town, in case Curtis is trying to pull something.

  Although it’s barely eleven o’clock, Jack and I both order the Mexican special, a plate of enchiladas and tamales made by Johnny Ochoa’s wife, Maria. When the food arrives, Lurleen has stripped the cornhusk off the tamales so Jack doesn’t have to grope around and do it himself.

  Once we’re eating, I ask Jack how he’s going to get himself taken care of. “Looks like your brother isn’t going to be much help.”

  “That self-righteous son of a bitch. He wants me to sell Daddy’s place and go into a veteran’s home. That’s so he can get half the money from the house.”

  “He lives somewhere in East Texas, doesn’t he?”

  “Used to, but now he’s in Waco with a bunch of other wackos. Gun nuts. They call themselves survivalists. I’d like to see them survive in a real fight.”

  Lurleen checks on us. “Jack, you haven’t eaten very much. Want me to bring you something else?” Her voice is soft. She touches his arm. She has recently had her hair cut short in little spikes all over her head like a little porcupine. It looks cute on her.

  Jack smiles for the first time, tilting his head toward the direction of her voice. Damn, the boy would do well to use that smile a little more freely. “Lurleen, you’re always trying to fatten me up. But you know, I don’t have much appetite today.”

  “Shame to waste Maria’s Mexican food.” Lurleen is one of the good ones. She has continuing trouble with a belligerent ex-husband, but she always has a sweet way about her.

  “Okay, here goes. Big bite. See?” Jack stuffs an over-sized chunk of tamale into his mouth.

  “Oh, you’re awful!” Lurleen giggles. “You’re going to choke, and it will serve you right.”

  Jack’s mouth is too full to reply, but his lips crook into a smile while he chews.

  When the meal is cleared away, I circle back to the subject of Jack’s prospects.

  “Daddy always banked my disability check and we lived on what Daddy made from his business.”

  “So you’ve got money put away.”

  “Yeah, it’s a good bit. But Curtis thinks that full time help would run through the money in no time. That’s why he’s talking about a veteran’s home.”

  Seems to me like it’s none of Curtis’s business how Jack spends his money. When it’s gone, there will be plenty of time to go to a veteran’s home. Still, if he went now, at least he’d have company at a vet facility.

  “There’s one in Temple. Not that far away. Your vet buddies could visit.”

  Jack kneads his hands, his thin shoulders hunched. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”

  “What do your friends say?”

  He snorts. “Those boys are as hare-brained as I am. They all say they’ll take care of me, not to worry. But all of them have families, except for Vic.”

  That takes me by surprise. I had pictured them as loose cannons, as unattached as Jack. “You mean wives and kids?”

  “Oh yeah. None of the wives are all that fond of me.” He grimaces. “Seems like I can’t be trusted to behave like a gentleman around the kids.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  That drags a grin out of him.

  It’s noon and people are drifting into the café. Gabe LoPresto, a football team booster, swaggers over to our table with a couple of his cronies. They pull up chairs and crowd around, LoPresto straddling his chair backwards. He wears black snakeskin boots, a string tie, and a suede hat, but he still looks like a businessman who works in an office, which he is. LoPresto is an arrogant man, and can be annoying, but he provides fresh uniforms for the team every couple of years, which buys him a fair amount of good will.

  There’s nothing new that can be said about last Friday’s football game, but people won’t be done rehashing the subject until next Friday’s game replaces it. LoPresto kicks off the discussion, declaring in an aggrieved tone that Coach Eldridge was stupid to bench the quarterback for a minor infraction of his rules. “The man’s got no sense. There are other ways he could have punished that boy. Instead, he punished the whole damn town.”

  “That wasn’t the only mistake he made. It was one after another the whole game,” Harley Lundsford says. He shakes his head in disgust. “I swear! Letting the clock run down too long to get in another play . . .”

  LoPresto says, “Jack, I heard you got into it with Eldridge after the game.”

  That’s the first I’ve heard of it, but LoPresto makes it his business to know pretty much everything people are up to in the football community.

  Jack shrugs. “We had a few words.”

  “I’m glad you spoke out to him. He couldn’t have done worse if he threw the game deliberately. Did he ever tell you what his thinking was?”

  Jack frowns. “Coach isn’t much for explaining himself, but he said he wished he had it to do over, that he made a mistake.”

  LoPresto perks up. “When was this?”

  “He came over Sunday night to smooth things out between us.
He brought a nice peace offering—a bottle of Cuervo. We did the bottle some damage.”

  All the men laugh.

  “Well, that says something, I guess,” LoPresto says.

  “Doesn’t change my opinion that he should have handled it different,” Jack says.

  “Jack, you know your opinion counts for a lot. You’re still the finest high school quarterback I ever saw play the game.”

  We spend some time arguing over the relative merits of the teams from the years since Jack played. LoPresto finally unwinds himself from his chair, brushing off his hat before settling it back on his head. “I’d better be getting back to work. But Jack, I want you to be thinking on this business with Eldridge. Maybe we’d be better off with a different coach.”

  On the walk back to Jack’s place, we stop off at the funeral home. Earnest Landau is busy, but his assistant, Belle, says everything is going the way Jack wants it.

  “Did Curtis call over here?” Jack says.

  “I think he did.” Belle cuts her eyes at me. Belle is about five feet tall and fierce as a banty rooster. I can’t see anybody getting the best of her in an argument.

  “What did he want?”

  “He complained a little bit.”

  “Belle, don’t bullshit me. What did Curtis want?”

  Belle picks up a stack of papers and smacks them smartly on the desk to straighten them. “He accused Earnest of pushing you to choose our more expensive line. Don’t worry, Earnest set him straight.”

  “God damn Curtis,” Jack says.

  “Honey, don’t let him rile you up. I see family fights over all kinds of things, and it’s not worth getting yourself upset.”

  “Are they done fixing Daddy up?” Jack says. “I’d like to have some time with him when I can.”

  “Sugar, I don’t think Letitia is finished with the touch-up, but you come on by an hour before visitation tonight and you can sit there with him as long as you like.” It’s ludicrous to think that Bob needs to look any particular way for Jack, since Jack can’t see him anyway. But Belle’s word is law.