Bloody River Blues

his father. He had a limited, but severe, repertoire of images of the old man and he realized now that some of them matched this fellow on the bike. Lean, mid-thirties, leather jacket, cycle. This thought put him in another bad mood, and, agitated, Stevie leaned forward to turn on the radio. It was a digital model and he couldn’t figureout how to set the station for the boss sound, We Rock St. Louis all the hits all the time. The old radios, you just twisted the dial to where you wanted it, then pulled the button out and shoved it back in. All this electronic stuff. Crap!
    He kicked it hard with his boot heel and cracked the housing. It kept playing something classical. He kicked it again and plastic snapped and the speaker went silent except for a hiss.
    Stevie Flom stopped worrying about music and concentrated on the motorcycle.
    DONNIE BUFFETT DID not see her right away. He opened his eyes and was afraid to move his head. He thought it might make him vomit, the motion. He had been on pills for a flare-up of pain in his shoulder—the gunshot wound—and they made him nauseated.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said.
    “Penny, honey . . .” He lifted his hand out toward her, and—this was the weird thing—she grabbed it in both hands and kissed his fingers, then rubbed them against her cheek.
    He looked at her as though he had not seen her for months, as though he had never before seen her. Dark, thick hair, a narrow face, pretty. Good figure, bad posture, shoulders forward, to conceal large breasts of which she was self-conscious. She wore clothes he knew she owned and had worn before but which weren’t familiar to him: a gray suit, an orange blouse, light-colored nylons.
    Buffett wished they had a child, someone for Penny to be with. Someone whom Penny would have to be strong for. She had strength somewhere in her,he believed, but she needed someone, or something, to bring it out.
    She handed him a shopping bag. She had baked him some cookies (what he had told Pellam was true; she was a hell of a cook) and brought another bag of Ruffles potato chips and a container of Sour King French onion dip. A Reader’s Digest , some crossword puzzle books.
    Donnie Buffett had never done a crossword puzzle in his life.
    She bent down and kissed him, brother-sister, on the cheek. He smelled her perfume. Buffett wondered, If you got shot in the neck do you lose your sense of smell?
    But, of course, he hadn’t been shot in the neck. He had just been shot in the back. Luckily. He could still smell like a sonofabitch.
    He looked at the crossword book. “Thanks, hon.”
    “I’ve marked these for you.” She opened the Reader’s Digest for him. “My Battle with Leukemia.” There was another. “Live Your Life 365 Days a Year.”
    Another article was from Higher Self magazine, entitled “Joy: Go for It.”
    Buffett looked at the food, and Penny said, “I don’t know if you can eat those things.”
    “Sure. It’s not like I had my appendix out or anything.”
    She nodded earnestly.
    Buffett’s hair was a mess. It fell across his forehead. He was always pushing the dark strands off his face. He did this now and his arm went out of control. It crashed into the metal headboard of the bed.
    “Shit,” he whispered.
    Penny’s pretty face was shocked. “The nurse,” she said, alarmed, standing up abruptly, looking for the call button.
    “I’m okay. It’s nothing. The pills I’m taking.”
    “The nurse!”
    “Penny.”
    Neither moved for a moment. “I’m so sorry.”
    “Stop saying that. Why are you saying that?”
    He opened the potato chips and ate a couple, to show her that he liked them. He could not bring himself to eat the dip. Then he ate a cookie. They were good. He ate another one. The sweetness reminded him of his Last Supper, the doughnut and coffee Pellam had brought him. He picked up the bag she had brought, intending to set it on the floor beside the bed. He felt the candle inside the bag. He took it out. “Penny . . .”
    “I know what you think but it can’t hurt. And you’ve got oil, too.”
    “Oil.”
    She stood and took the bag from him. “It’s wish oil.”
    “Wish oil.”
    “What it is, you pour some in the bathtub—”
    “Well, I can’t take a bath.” He was exasperated. “How can I take a bath?”
    She stared at him, tears welling. “I don’t think you have to put it in a bath. I mean, if it works in the bath it’d work just as well dabbing it on you, wouldn’t it?”