Blackbird. Tom Wright

      FIVE

      I finally got around to Jonas an hour or so after I got back to what used to be home, the three-bedroom on Lanshire where I slept at night and where the emptiness was like an icicle through the heart. On the way, thinking maybe I needed a sugar and caffeine hit, I had stopped for a cappuccino at Starbucks, but ended up grinding my teeth and throwing it savagely at the ArkLaTex Realty sign in the front yard as I crossed the drive toward the door. Just the thing to show the neighbours what a stable guy I was. Then for my self-imposed act of contrition I walked humbly over and retrieved the cup, thinking, for no reason I recognised at the moment, of Father Joe – José Carbajal, senior pastor at Sacred Heart downtown – gone now but bright in memory.

      Father Joe walking into the fellowship hall, finished with confessions for now and carrying another six-gallon bucket of pancake flour to the kitchen, setting it on the end of the counter and lighting a small cigar. It was a freezing Saturday morning toward the end of my first year in Traverton, and I was standing elbow to elbow with Jonas McCashion, flipping all-you-can-eat pancakes for the Kids’ Roundup Ranch in Bowie County.

      ‘I thought this place was smoke-free,’ said Jonas.

      ‘Que es peor que la que,’ the priest said, rolling up his sleeves, the cigar cocked at an obstinate angle in his teeth. ‘Es de la reserva privada de Fidel.’ He grabbed a spatula. ‘Let’s feed these paganos hambre.’

      Jonas and I went back to our conversation about women, snow geese and incoherent Texas governors, already on our way to becoming good friends. I was what he called dis-mated, a circumstance he was unwilling to let stand. He introduced me to a former neighbour of his, a ceramic artist named Jana Stiles, and his instincts turned out to be dead-on.

      Because without Jana I’d have had no story that could be whole. I still saw and smelled and felt the exact moment when it began for me: the CCR concert in Baton Rouge – our third date – midnight, cigarette lighters held high all around us in the dark, Fogerty and his latest line-up doing a long, sweet reprise of ‘Who’ll Stop the Rain?’ and Jana, deep inside the music, swaying against me, leaning over and taking the lobe of my ear lightly in her teeth, growling softly.

      When I lost her it was for reasons I should have understood then but didn’t even now, a fact that joined forces with many others to make me wonder how the hell there could be enough room in the known universe to accommodate all the things I didn’t understand.

      One thing I did get was that most of the women I’d loved had been John Fogerty fans, and I remembered him from about as far back as he went. When it came to dancing Rachel had been more country-western than anything else, but couldn’t get enough of Fogerty’s early stuff, like the Blue Velvets version of ‘Have You Ever Been Lonely?’.

      In fact, that was what had been playing on the kitchen radio the first night I’d been the designated cook on one of Kat’s visits. That had given me full control of the operation, which meant steaks all around. It was the first time I’d been trusted with that many rib-eyes, but I brought it off without a hitch if you judged by all the compliments and the almost complete absence of leftovers.

      When the table was clear, Dusty had said, ‘’Fraid y’all are going to have to hold the fort without Ray and me tonight. We’re goin’ boot-scootin’ at the Palomino with Liz and Doc.’

      ‘How nice,’ Gran Esther said. ‘You two have a good time – you’ve earned it.’

      With Dusty and Rachel on their way, Kat and I were doing the dishes. ‘Where’s the Palomino?’ she asked, her hip warm against mine.

      ‘Greenville,’ I said, lowering my voice a little to keep Gran Esther from hearing. ‘It’s a couple of hours each way. They usually stay the night in town.’

      Kat smiled, passed me another handful of knives, forks and spoons.

      ‘Here, let me help with that,’ said Gran, carrying a couple of stray saucers she’d found in the living room over to the sink.

      ‘No, ma’am,’ I said. ‘We’ll have this done in no time. How about some hot chocolate or something?’

      ‘Come to think of it, hot chocolate would be very nice, dear.’

      Kat quickly dried her hands, saying, ‘Let me make that for you, Mrs Rhodes. Biscuit can show me where everything is.’

      Gran said she was tired and decided to take the chocolate to her room. ‘Goodnight to both of you,’ she said, ‘and God bless.’

      What Gran called her room was actually a good-sized apartment at the far end of the house, and once she was in for the evening she never came back out. Kat watched as Gran closed the door behind her.

      ‘You’ve got a great family, Biscuit,’ Kat said.

      ‘Yeah, I know,’ I said. ‘Want a beer?’

      ‘You can do that?’

      ‘One or two on weekends as long as it’s just around here. Dusty thinks beer is good for your constitution.’

      ‘How does Rachel feel about it?’

      ‘She doesn’t drink. And she doesn’t say anything about anybody else’s drinking either. Calls that taking other people’s inventory.’

      ‘My Uncle Marty says things like that. He’s in AA.’

      I just nodded.

      ‘Well, she seems like a pretty terrific lady to me.’

      ‘She is now.’

      I opened two Lone Stars from the fridge and handed Kat one of them as we wandered over to the stereo.

      Flipping through the tapes, Kat picked one up and said, ‘Judy Collins, great.’ She took a drink of Lone Star and looked around the room’s wide hardwood floors scattered with area rugs. ‘This room was made for dancing, Biscuit. Think Gran would mind?’

      ‘She takes out her hearing aid when she goes in at night,’ I said. ‘She’ll never know.’ I pushed the tape into the player, and we rolled back a couple of the rugs and lowered the lights. Kat slipped her penny loafers off, took my Lone Star and set both bottles on the counter, then came back and held her hand out to me as the music filled the room. I buried my face in her hair, smelling her skin and her summery perfume, her soft breasts lightly pressing my chest and her hips moving smoothly against mine.

      After a few more numbers she lifted her mouth to mine, kissing me deeply as we danced, her hands on my waist.

      When we finally broke the kiss she said what I’d been trying to think of a way to bring up: ‘Show me your room?’

      When I opened the door to my room and switched on the light Kat glanced around. ‘Hey, you’re not too messy for a guy, Biscuit – and your own bathroom! Wow!’ She walked over for a closer look at the framed picture on my dresser next to the cracked red coffee mug bristling with pencil stubs and dried-up ballpoint pens. ‘This must be Lee Ann in the middle,’ she said. ‘Who are the other two?’

      ‘My grandmother and Dr Kepler.’

      ‘Dr Kepler?’

      ‘She was a professor, a friend of ours,’ I said. ‘She didn’t have any family or anything, and she kind of adopted us.’

      ‘What happened to her family?’

      ‘Her parents and sisters died in a concentration camp in Poland,’ I said. ‘Now she’s dead too.’ I stood gazing at her image, feeling its familiar dark energy, like a permanent, warm, almost undetectable push against my skin, and wondering why I couldn’t stop saying things that made me sound even stupider than I actually was.

      For a while Kat just stared at the picture in silence, something changing in her eyes. She swallowed hard, touched her fingers to the glass. ‘Aleha ha-shalom,’ she said softly. ‘Baruch dayan emet.’

      I