“What do you mean, ‘the way it’s s’posed to be’? How do you know if something’s the way it’s s’posed to be?”
“You jes’ know.” He shrugs, and when he does I can see what he must’ve looked like when he was young, before age drew lines ’cross his face. “Like you shooting that gun. That’s the way it’s s’posed to be. Like me playing on that six-string. I ain’t ’shamed to say I ain’t half bad at it. It’s the way it’s s’posed to be.”
We sit there, me with my legs dangling over the side of the porch, him with his knife flicking wood shavings off onto the floor, while I think about what’s s’posed to be and what ain’t.
“You never told me where you go come evening time.”
“If it was yer business I’d tell you I go to play hill music down the road at Zebulon’s, but ’tain’t yer business so I won’t be telling you that.”
“Can I come watch you play?”
He shrugs again. “If you like. Don’t your momma need you do chores ’fore bedtime?”
“What’s Ze-boo-flan, whatever it’s called?” Here’s a trick I learned from Orla Mae: answer a question with a question and everyone wins.
“Zeb-you-lon is a feed-and-grain store at the edge of town we likes to go. The sound’s good, what with them feed bags soaking it all up so it don’t sound tinny, and, anyway, Sonny can’t move that easy so we come to him, not the other way round.”
“Who’s Sonny?”
“You a nosy one, ain’t ya? Sonny Zebulon’s the oldest living man in town. You come on down sometime and meet Sonny. He’ll like you. Yeah, ’sgood idea, come to think of it.”
“Can I’ve a drink of water?”
“You know where the kitchen is.”
When I get up to go inside Brownie cowers and Mr. Wilson looks over at her. “What’s got into you, dog?”
I go get my glass of water.
* * *
Aunt Lillibit waits for people to mess up like she knew all along they were going to.
“Go on up and get me one of those extra blankets I see your momma has in the closet between the bedrooms, will you?” she calls over to me from the bed Momma’s put together for her and Gammy to share in the front room, as far from the hole in the roof as a body can be.
“Take care you don’t let it drag on the floor on your way back here!” Aunt Lillibit hollers up to me.
But there it is, the one corner I didn’t double-check to see was tucked into the crook of my arms before I made my way back down to her, trailing after me like a tail.
“What did I just say to you? Huh? Give it here.” She grabs the bundle from me and inspects the blanket corner for dirt, nodding her head like I just did exactly what she thought I’d do.
“Sorry.” Nothing more for me to do but stare at the floor and wish she’d release me.
“I can see why your momma can’t keep her house, what with you trailing dirt everywhere you set.” She turns back to the bedding and snaps the blanket into the air so it falls across the other two that’re already spread out on top of the mattress we hauled with us from Toast. Momma and Richard are sleeping on the box spring that fits underneath this one, and, oh, Richard was fit to be tied the first night of sleeping on it. He hollered up a storm at Momma about how we aren’t a way station for her meddling family and how come he’s expected to give up the soft mattress for the hard spring one when they’re the ones lucky to have a roof over their heads.
“Why don’t you go on and see to your gammy,” Aunt Lillibit says to me. “Your momma sure isn’t.” She thinks I don’t hear that part.
Gammy’s busy scrubbing the kitchen counter.
“Hi,” I say. “Need any help?” I say it quietly ’cause I don’t want to scrub the kitchen, that’s for sure.
“Go on and fill up this pail with outside water, will you?” she says, motioning to the river bucket setting by her feet.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Watch it! You got to be more careful, Caroline. You just got dirty water all over the floor there, you yanked the bucket up too quick! Now, dry that up before you set out. Well, I don’t know where your momma keeps the dishrags. Go look under the sink. No, to the left. There. Now, come on over an’ get the part right in front of my right foot. That’s right. Take that rag outside with you and squeeze it out. Good. Now, take care with that bucket, you hear me?”
“Where’s Emma?”
“Get going.”
“All right.”
“Don’t you talk to your grandmother like that,” she hollers after me.
Holding the bucket up in front of me like it’s a bouquet of flowers, I walk straight and slow toward the river, my flowing white dress almost as beautiful as my veil. On either side of the path people are crammed into the pews, craning their necks to get a look at me, the bride. Oh, hey, Betsy! And there’s Perry Gibson. He’s always had a crush on me but I never gave him the time of day. Poor Perry. And there’s Mary Sellers. She sure looks jealous of my dress, it’s written all over her face.
“Carrie! Jeez, I been hollering at you for about a year!” Emma trots out from behind me. “Wait up.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“Lookin’ for you.”
“Not lookin’ too hard, since I’ve been Gammy’s slave inside. I notice you didn’t show hide or hair there. Move, I got to fill this bucket or she’ll be so beside herself she’ll hold her own hand.”
Emma jumps across to the rock in the middle of the stream and squats to pick at the moss, like this movie we saw in science class where a wild monkey picks bugs out of her babies’ fur.
“Why’s Gammy always in such a bad mood?” she asks.
“How should I know?”
Emma shrugs and picks some more. “You think she likes us any?”
Now I shrug ’cause I have no earthly idea.
The bucket’s full so we go back up to the house. Just before we get to the back door, the one that opens into the kitchen, I look down and see my shoes untied. I set the bucket down to tie them so I don’t have to hear all about how messy I am from Aunt Lillibit and that’s when I hear them.
“Wait!” I hiss over at Emma, who’s reaching for the door. She backs up toward me and turns her head so the sounds’ll go straight into her ear without having to turn sideways at her face.
“I told her about that one and I told her about this one,” Gammy’s voice carries to us. “But she’s hardheaded. I’ve said it from the day they had to pull her out of me—stubborn child wouldn’t even leave her momma’s belly when she was told to!”
“With Henry she was up against other women,” Aunt Lillibit says. “And with Richard she’s knocking against a brick wall, day after day. This one makes the other one look trifling.”
“I know it,” says Gammy.
“Folks in town here all sayin’ he dipped his hand in the till of that store, Annie’s or Auntie’s or whatever it is,” Aunt Lillibet says.
Antone’s? I mouth over to Emma, who’s stretchin’ her neck even farther out to get closer to the voices but right this second I cain’t even make out what they’re saying. Wait! Now they’re talking normal again.
“How’m I supposed to know?” Aunt Lillibet is saying. “He like to have made off with a good-size sack, though, ’cause folks is spittin’ mad. Lost his job over it, didn’t he?”
Me and Emma, we just stare at each other like in a cartoon when they get hit on the head with something and they get big eyes before they tip over.
“By the way, I ran into Nellie Lamott the other day back in Toast when I went through there to gather up what was left and she said Selma Blake was asking all about Libby. A little too much, according to Nellie. She said the rumor’s still sticking to Selma about being a home wrecker and all. That Selma never did know when to leave well enoug
h alone without going and stirring up her own pot of trouble for her own self. Asking all over town about Libby. Takes nerve. Nobody’ll give that good-for-nothing husband of hers a job after that high drama. She needs to look after him a little more, talk about Lib a little less.”
“I know it.”
“You ask me, Libby traded up,” Aunt Lillibit says.
“With this one? You’re crazy.”
“That Henry was no more faithful to Libby than the one that turned all them others ’gainst Jesus at that supper. Everybody knew it. Even Libby. Prowling round like he did. This one, well, so he’s got a temper,” Aunt Lillibit says. “You find me a man without a temper and I’ll show you a miracle from God. Look at Daddy. He had a temper but he held a job and all. Didn’t drink himself half to death every night.”
“And that’s a fact. Your daddy kept a roof over our heads through the worst of it. Times we didn’t have a scrap of paper to suck on but your daddy kept that square of land, that’s for sure. You girls might’f gotten a belt now and then, but your sister was harder than a horse in need of breaking. You, well…”
Their voices drop to where we cain’t hear them no more.
“Carrie!” I hear Emma calling out to me. “Where you going? Carrie! Wait up!”
But I’m gone. Over the fallen tree. Across the stream. Up a steep scattering of rocks. Gone. To where I cain’t hear them talking no more.
* * *
“I’m ready to go to Zebulon’s.” I’m panting wors’n Brownie.
“What’s that?” Mr. Wilson looks up from the electricity cord he’s fooling with.
“I’m ready to go to Zebulon’s,” I say, clearer for having caught up with my breath. “Can we go today?”
Mr. Wilson’s clicking his tongue to the roof of his mouth and shaking his head back and forth, and even though I cain’t see his face straight on ’cause he’s bending over the cord I know it doesn’t look good.
“First off, it ain’t nighttime, last I checked,” he says, more to the plastic covering he’s peeling off them colored wires, “and second, since when am I lettin’ a five-year-old kid tell me what I’m doing.”
“I’m eight!”
“Just the same. No eight-year-old’s gonna come on over here and tell me what all I’m to be doing, ’stead of asking real nice. Like bossy-the-cow, you are.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, smiling ’cause now I know I might sway him on taking me there. “Mr. Wilson, could you please-oh-please accomp’ny me to Mr. Zebulon’s so’s I could hear y’all play? Please?”
He’s shaking his head again, but this time I’m pretty sure I can make out the crinkles on either side of his eyes.
“Please?”
“Best be patient and I’ll think on it while I finish up with this here cord,” he says.
So I slide my fingernail under a bubble of chipping white paint on the boards next to his front door. When it comes off nice and clean I do it again. And again. Until he coils up the cord and puts his screwdriver back in the tackle box he uses for nails, tools and what all else I do not know. I do think he’s got a ruler in there. And a couple of dulled pencils he sharpens with a knife.
“All right, girl,” he says, standing up. “You wore me down with yer waitin’ so I guess we best git on our way. Lemme go in and get my six-string.”
He settles the guitar in the middle of the long front seat of his broken-down old truck. It’s facing out, the neck reaching up taller than I am.
I like that he doesn’t talk much. I mean, it’s not like I’m wanting to think about home or Gammy or Aunt Lillibit, ’cause I don’t.
“Mr. Wilson?”
He’s got one hand on the wheel, one elbow resting on the open window. “Yeah?”
“What’s a home wrecker?” I look out my side of the truck while we drive along so he cain’t see I’m about to cry thinking on the words. I feel him looking at me, though.
“I reckon a home wrecker does jes’ that—wrecks yer home.”
I look over at him now. “You mean busts everything up? Like furniture?”
“I mean souls,” he says, straightening out the arm that’s been in the window, signaling to the driver behind us he’s turning left, I s’pose.
“Busts up souls? What’s that mean?”
“A home wrecker breaks yer spirit. Breaks the family up. Why you asking all them questions?”
I don’t answer him. He doesn’t seem to need me to, anyhow.
A few minutes later we pull up sideways alongside a big barnlike building with a rusted sign that reads “Ze lon’s” on account of the b and u being all worn out. Mr. Wilson turns to the outside and swings his bad leg so it’s in the same direction as the good one and then he hops out of the truck, taking his guitar with him.
“I cain’t open my door,” I call out through my window. “Wait! I cain’t open my door.” But he’s going in through the open barn doors and cain’t hear me so I slide across the seat and go out through his side.
“I got locked in the truck,” I say when I catch up to him.
“Your side don’t work.”
“How come you left me?”
“You can’t figure out how to git out of a truck,” he says, hobbling past the sacks of flour and meal, “there’s no hope for you a’tall.”
“Wilson.” A man about the same age’s Mr. Wilson holds his hand out to be shaked.
“Walles,” Mr. Wilson says back.
“How come we got to see your ugly old face in the daylight?”
Mr. Wilson smiles, picks up a tool that’s lying there on the table, hoping someone’ll take it home, and says, “Oh, you know…someone’s got to scare away the vermin running through here.”
“Who’s this riding shotgun?” He looks me over like he’s thinking I might steal something.
“Don’t need to pay her no mind,” he says, like I’m deaf, “she’s along for the playin’. She’s a Culver. She got banjo in her blood, God help her.”
The man Walles nods and falls alongside Mr. Wilson, heading to the back of the store where the shelves clear out and upside-down wood milk crates become stools. A couple even have old flour sacks on top—the five-pound sacks—for your backside. Mr. Wilson takes one, Walles the other, and then I see a raisin of a man hunched over his guitar a stone’s throw away. I reckon he’s Zebulon, since he’s in a real chair with arms and a back, ’cause if you’re the oldest living soul in town you shouldn’t have to sit on a milk crate.
“Zeb,” Mr. Wilson says softly. He’s so quiet I’m not sure Zebulon hears him until I see him nodding his head, picking out notes up and down the neck of the guitar.
“What we doing today?” Walles asks, shimmying his backside into the flour sack.
“How ’bout some Mississippi John Hurt?”
“Naw. Blind Willie McTell.”
“I could use some ‘Mama ’Tain’t Long ’Fore Day.’ Or what ’bout that left-handed woman who plays the right-handed strings? What’s her name?”
Before they can settle that, Zebulon starts playing something on his guitar and the other two join in and sure enough they make the most beautiful sounds in the world. I close my eyes and imagine my granddaddy pulled up alongside them. I bet he wasn’t a home wrecker.
* * *
I come back up the trail that leads to number twenty-two and there it is, the sheriff’s truck in front of our old house. If I wasn’t sure whose truck it was all I’d have to do would be to look at the writing on the door that opens to the steering wheel. In big block letters Sheriff is written, so there’ll be no mistake.
“Emma?” I holler out in case she’s not inside and can come tell me what all’s happening. But she doesn’t answer.
They’ve come to take Richard away. I can feel it.
There’s a b
ig rock that’s made for sitting so that’s what I do. Sit. And wait. I wonder if they’ll use handcuffs.
I don’t have to wait too long until the door opens and out of the darkened house comes the sheriff, not holding Richard, but holding a piece of paper that, when the door closes behind him, he tacks up, front and center. I don’t know what the paper says, but I do know the sheriff doesn’t look like I thought he would; he’s wearing blue jeans and an old shirt that looks like it’s made for winter, not summer. When he comes down the front steps to his pickup truck I can see he’s got a star pinned to the front of it, so I guess that’s the only uniform he’s got to wear out here in the country.
Wait! Here’s Momma.
“What’re we s’posed to do now?” she calls out from the porch to the sheriff, whose one leg is already climbing into the truck.
“Maybe you got family you can go to,” he says.
“Please don’t do this,” she says. And she’s close to tears ’cause I can hear her voice catch them and hold them back. “Please.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he says. “The law’s the law.”
With that he climbs on into the pickup, starts it up and drives away back down the dirt trail, through the scrub brushes, over the rocks and out onto the blacktop.
“What is it, Momma?” I ask her on my way up to the house. But it’s already swallowed her up.
When the door shuts behind her I read the paper the sheriff left behind.
“Notice of eviction,” it shouts. “The occupants are to leave these premises in no more than thirty days. This notice serves as a warning that any more time than thirty days will be viewed as a violation to which legal action will be taken.”
The occupants are to leave the premises?
“Momma?” I call out once my eyes adjust to the dark front room. “Where is everybody? Emma?”
In the kitchen Gammy and Aunt Lillibit are standing behind Momma, who’s crumpled into a chair, holding her head in her hands.
“He should’ve been here for that, the son of a bitch,” Aunt Lillibit says, putting her hand on Momma’s shoulder. “Where is he, anyway?”