Page 151 - Rainbow County and Other Stories

Rainbow County 139

livid details of thirteen apparently connected murders and six
other persons missing.
“Even if I couldn’t see,” Lloyd said, “it wouldn’t make me any
better a pianist.” He lifted the wired board off his lap. “This here’s
like I always rebuild.” He carried it across the shop and drew back
the curtain on an adjacent room. “You remember player pianos? I
get them from all across the country. Bought one in Nebraska for
twenty-five bucks. Sold it in Sausalito to Sally Stanford for you
wouldn’t guess how much.” He pulled the curtain closed. “Nossir.
Seeing or not seeing would be all the same to me pumping at one
of my players with both feet.”
Robert looked out the window. Down in the street the ticket
left by the triumphant meter maid flapped in the ocean breeze
sweeping down 18th Street to Castro where men, he never would
have thought it, walked arm in arm. They were strangers, maybe
dangerous strangers, but he recognized them all the same. “I
should’ve locked my car.” He thought of the .22 caliber handgun
stashed under the seat and he laughed because it’s impossible for
someone on probation to get a permit for a handgun, but it’s no
way impossible for that same person to get a handgun, especially
when that person’s daddy dies and leaves it loaded in a bedroom
drawer. “Damn,” he said.
Lloyd moved to the window, wiping his hands. “That your
Chevy?”
He admired the Chevrolet gleaming all red and white with
hardly a speck of any road grime Robert had wiped off every time
he stopped to gas up. He had bought it, brand new and cherry,
the day he turned sixteen, paying for it with insurance money his
mom had given him as his share of his dad’s policy. Those had
been the days! In 1957 the draft had been lenient to neglectful.
By 1973, the draft was carnivorous for redblooded all-American
boys. He told Louise Yavonovich, the gray-haired lady who ran
the Green County Selective Service Board, that she couldn’t draft
him because he was leaving for California.
“For school?” she asked.
“Yes, a school” he said, “for becoming a minister, a Quaker
minister,” but his yes revealed itself for the lie it had always been
before he had driven the first five hundred miles west. He knew

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