Toby Austin Sawyer Jr. was perfect and pink. He’d kicked the blue blanket off one leg, and I saw Doris had put him in the Bob the Builder pajamas. He was the best

looking boy in the world.

At that moment the need to scoop him out of the crib and hold him firm against my chest nearly overcame me. Even if it woke him up. He was such a heavy little ham hock. Thick. He’d probably be a linebacker. Get a football scholarship to Harvard and be a brain surgeon. My boy.

I didn’t pick him up. I satisfied myself with stroking his forehead. He stirred, and I jerked my hand back, but he didn’t wake. Doris would be turbo pissed off if I woke him up.

I pulled the rocking chair close to the crib and sat awhile looking at him. A little night light shaped like a blue fishbowl cast a soft glow on everything, all the second-hand toys and stuffed animals. Even the crib and rocking chair had come from Doris’s older sister. My folks were dead, but Doris’s mom and dad did a pretty good job bringing toys and clothes. We had enough. It was close, but we were just making it. Of course, that was probably about to change.

Toby Junior. TJ. I got this tight, anxious feeling whenever I looked at him and thought something could go wrong or he’d get sick or any little thing might not be right somehow. Like iron fingers grabbing my chest and squeezing. I folded my arms over the edge of the crib and put my head down, sat there a while.

The boy’s gentle breathing was like some kind of lullaby.

CHAPTER FOUR

Our cramped living room led right into the cramped kitchen, so Doris could stand at the counter making coffee and still see the television. She had a rerun of The Real World on with the sound down almost to nothing. Some dude was yelling at the Real World kids because they were all supposed to be up early for some project thing, but they slept in instead. What the hell was the big deal?

I said, “You’re staying up?”

She shrugged, watching the coffee drip. “I can’t go back to sleep now.”

“I’ll take a cup of that.”

“When it’s finished.”

“Pour me a cup now,” I told her.

“It’s only halfway through. It won’t taste right.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I mind.” She tsked, shook her head. “Damn it, who’s making this fucking coffee?”

“There’s a cut off if you take the pot out before it’s finished. So it doesn’t spill.” I put that obnoxious patient sound in my voice, like I was talking to a little kid. “The coffee maker is designed specifically so you can do that.”

“We’ve had this conversation already.”

And there you pretty much had the whole marriage. We fit together good in bed, worked together nice, folding laundry together or doing the dishes, her washing and me drying and putting them back in the cabinet. My mom had been big on companionable silence. Needless talk only causes trouble, she’d told me once. Maybe she was right because Doris and I sure got into it whenever one of us opened our yaps. Something was always eating one of us.

I decided I’d better say something nice. “You don’t look so fat.”

She frowned. “What?”

“Your ass, I mean.”

“Fuck you, Toby.”

“Shit, that’s not how I meant it, okay?” She stood there in plain white panties and my Green Day t-shirt, and I thought she looked fine. “You were looking in the mirror the other day, remember? And you said you thought it was getting big. I’m just saying I think it’s fine.”

“Whatever. You want this coffee now?”

“Okay.”

She poured two cups and brought them to the couch. She didn’t sit close to me but not so far away either. She handed me a plain white cup of black coffee. Her mug was bigger and with a sunset clouds scene and some scripture on the side. John 3:16, I think.

I sipped. She sipped. We watched The Real World with the sound down.

I tried some more conversation like this: “When do you go into work?”

“You know what time. Seven like always.”

Then I tried this: “How’s your sister?”

“You don’t even like her.”

I sipped coffee and shut up.

Real World ended and Super Sweet Sixteen came on. Little girls having fancy birthday parties. This show made me pissed off and depressed at the same time. That these spoiled kids could have it so good and it still wasn’t enough. This one girl got a brand new BMW for her sixteenth birthday but pissed and moaned it was the wrong color. Jesus. Slap that bitch.

“Oh, cool,” Doris said. “I wish I’d had a big party like that when I was sixteen.”

We watched a few minutes.

Finally she asked, “What was the problem?”

I looked at her. “With what?”

“What do you think? Taking off at midnight with your pistol, that’s what. What did the chief want?”

“Oh.” I sipped coffee. “Somebody killed Luke Jordan.”

I saw the blood drain from her face. Like somebody pulled a plug and it all leaked right out, her eyes round with startled confusion. I wasn’t sure what surprised me more. Her reaction or that fact she was trying to hide it.

“Dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did—” She paused, cleared her throat. “How?”

“Wayne said he was making a play for some Mexican chick in Skeeter’s. Jealous boyfriend maybe. Shot the crap out of him.” I didn’t tell her the rest of it, losing the body and all. I didn’t have the heart for that conversation, maybe never would.

Maybe I could get a job at the fertilizer plant. That was an hour drive each way, but I’d be full time with benefits too. Maybe I could go over there and get the job and then even tell Doris I quit the department on purpose to bring in more money. She’d be glad about that. Hell, it might even work. And if I made enough she could quit the waitress job and take care of the boy full time.

“Maybe it was some kind of mistake,” she said.

I blinked. “What?’

“Maybe he was just talking to that Mexican girl, and it was some kind of misunderstanding.”

I shrugged, didn’t see what difference that made. “Luke Jordan’s just as dead either way.”

She got up and went into the kitchen. I thought about asking her for more coffee but didn’t. The Super Sweet Sixteen girl was pissing and moaning because her daddy got the wrong boy band to play at her party. It should be legal just to punch these people. No jail time. Case dismissed.

Doris came back, stood at the end of the couch.

“Toby?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go to Houston. My sister will put us up until we get work. I can waitress anywhere. We have to try something different.”

That was my chance right then. I could tell her okay, let’s sell the trailer for moving money and go to Houston and remake our lives from the ground up. I was going to get shit-canned anyway. I had no prospects. Even my idea about the fertilizer plant seemed pretty feeble now. Molly would be gone soon. No reason in the world not to give Doris’s idea serious consideration.

But for some reason I said, “I don’t know. Doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“You never liked my sister.”

“This again.”

She balled up one of her little fists and hit me in the arm. It didn’t hurt. Much. She went back into the kitchen.

I could feel her fuming in there. You could almost see the anger radiating around her, like heat waves off hot asphalt.

“Don’t be like that.”

“You’re stupid.” Her voice sounded funny, kind of shaky.

“I don’t need this.”

“Fuck you.” Plenty of venom. Doris never did need much of an excuse to start some shit, but this was sudden even for her.

“What’s eating you?”

“I’m, like, all trying to better our life and stuff, and you’re just not even being cool about it. You never listen to me.”

Bullshit. All I ever did was listen to her run her mouth, complaining about anything and everything. She’d get home from work and start right in and wouldn’t shut it until she fell asleep or I left for work. She was like some kind of Energizer Bunny nonstop bitch machine. Or she’d drop the boy in the playpen with a few toys and sit in front of the TV for hours and hours. Or on the phone with her sister for a million hours at a time. She needed three more husbands, so we could all take shifts listening to her.