Joe Burke's Last Stand Part 39

"I may be old," Wendell said, "but I can put you on your a.s.s, Joe Burke."

"So could Willow," Joe said, grinning.

"It's a female thing," Willow said to Wendell who might or might not be accepting this.

"Female thing," he said looking at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. This was comfortable territory. "Ha, ha. There's male things, and there's female things."

Joe held up his gla.s.s. "Right on, Wendell."

Willow finished her beer and left. They were a pretty decent bunch, she thought as she pedaled home. They treated her like one of the guys, almost. She was getting used to conversations full of f.u.c.k this and f.u.c.k that. It was a relief after the cautious academic world of her parents. When she arrived home, she was flushed from the ride. Amber was still out. She made a sandwich and went to bed with Henry Miller who was dependably self-involved, hip, s.e.xy, and good humored.

3

The next morning, in the News Shop, Parker Ives introduced Patrick to Wilson. "w.i.l.l.y, you and Patrick get started on the Van Slyke house." He rubbed his forehead. "She's intense about her roses; better cover them.

The lilacs, too. I'll be around later with more primer."

"Ya, Boss. Let's go, Patrick." Wilson was short and muscular, balding, with a thick black mustache and a gla.s.s eye. He drove at top speed up the mountain, stopping several miles from town in the driveway of a white Colonial. Purple lilacs leaned out from each side of the front door; rose bushes extended to the ends of the house. They covered the roses with drop cloths and tied a tarpaulin around each lilac. A woman wearing linen slacks and a cafe-au-lait blouse appeared at the corner of the house. Her hair was blonde, short, and well cut.

"Good morning. Is Parker here?"

"He will be, later," Wilson said. She nodded and drove away in a station wagon, tires crunching on gravel.

They worked on ladders, sc.r.a.ping a section and then priming it.

"w.i.l.l.y--is every woman in Woodstock good looking?" Patrick asked.

"Depends how long you look," Wilson said. Parker drove in, and Wilson jumped from the fourth rung of his ladder. "Break time." They walked over to Parker's aging blue Mercedes.

"How you doing, Patrick?"

"He's having a little trouble with the pace," w.i.l.l.y said sitting down, placing his coffee on the gra.s.s.

"Up yours," said Patrick.

"But for what you're paying . . . "

"Jesus," Parker said. "What's got into you today?"

Wilson bounced like a monkey, scratching under both armpits. "Or, or.

Grick. Grick."

"This is what happens when he gets to bed early," Parker said to Patrick. Mrs. Van Slyke returned.

"Parker?" He rose to his feet balancing his coffee, a.s.sumed a good humored expression, and approached Mrs. Van Slyke.

"Her husband's a bad dude," Wilson said. "Nothing you couldn't handle."

His live eye gleamed. "He did a good painting of a boxer, once. They got married."

"He married the boxer?"

"Smart a.s.s." Wilson shook his head. "Then he slowed down--know what I mean?" They considered Mrs. Van Slyke who had Parker more or less pinned against the lilacs. "My woman gets in the way . . . " He snorted. "I don't even have a studio, paint right in the living room."

"You a painter?"

"All the time, man. What do you do?"

"Read a lot--science. Trying to find out what's true about things."

"I'll tell you one truth," Wilson said. "It don't count until it's on the wall." He leaped back on his ladder and attacked peeling paint, banging his sc.r.a.per on the siding to keep time. Sweat dripped into a bandanna rolled and tied around his forehead. Patrick got to work.

At four-thirty, Wilson gave him a ride home. Patrick washed and walked into town where he had a few beers and talked about the war with a guy named Wendell, a guy named Joe , and Willow, the friend of Amber's. He left early and slept well.

The week pa.s.sed quickly. On Friday afternoon he cashed his first check at the Bank of Orange and Ulster County and walked over to the Depresso.

"Hey Patrick."

"Sam. Hot one." Sam worked for Parker on another job; he was part of the morning gathering at the News Shop.

"How you getting along with w.i.l.l.y?"

"Good."

"Crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Sam said. "He was in Korea; his father or grandfather was a general or something."

"My father's in the Army."

"No s.h.i.+t. Yeah, well, w.i.l.l.y--his job was to go out and bring back North Koreans for the intelligence guys. Told me they went out at night. Said the North Koreans were supposed to be alive, but it was easier if they were dead."

"No wonder he's crazy. Hey, Claude."

"What's happening, Patrick?"

"I got paid."

"Don't tell him that," Sam said.

"Mon ami . . . "

"Hi, Claude." A young woman stepped next to Claude and took his arm.

"Who's your friend?" she asked, looking at Patrick.

"This is Patrick."

He remembered her gray eyes; she was the one who had smiled at him on his first night in town. Up close, he noticed tiny freckles and a gap between her front teeth.