Momma shakes her head to say she doesn’t know.
“Woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Gammy says. “Now ain’t the time to wallow. We got some work to do, packing up what all we brought.” She looks at Aunt Lillibit and moves over to the sink to wash the dishes that always seem to multiply themselves.
“What’re we gonna do?” Momma’s voice makes its way through her hands.
“He should’ve thought a that when he put his hand in the till,” Gammy says over her shoulder. “He should’ve thought a that when he went to fisticuffs at the yard. Seems to me he don’t think of much ’fore he folds his knuckles up and swings.”
Momma pushes up and out of her chair before I can even turn my head back to her from looking at Gammy’s flowered housecoat.
“If you got something to say, Momma, say it.” Momma’s voice is higher than I’ve ever heard it. “Just say it. To my face. Not to Lillibit. To me, Momma.”
Gammy turns to face her.
“Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady,” Gammy warns. “I’m still your mother and I deserve a little respect.”
“Why can’t you say what you’re thinking?” I cain’t tell for sure, but I don’t think this is the tone Gammy was hoping for. “Just say it.”
“All right, all right. You married yourself into this trouble. You asked for it when that man came into town holding nothing but the same two hands that bring pain everywhere they travel. You scratch your head wondering where it all went wrong…I’ll tell you where it went wrong. You’ve never settled into life. You want life to be better to you but it ain’t like that. Not for folks like us. Life’s hard. That’s the way it is. But you can’t seem to settle into it and work with it like it is. You want it to be better for you? That ain’t gonna happen. Y’hear me? It ain’t never gonna happen….”
Even though I can tell Gammy isn’t finished Momma cuts her off and yells, “Get out of my house!”
“In case you didn’t notice,” Gammy says, moving closer to Momma, “it ain’t your house no more. You were living here courtesy of the mill your own husband cursed and got throwed out of. What’re you expecting? Them to tell you, ‘Oh, stay as long as you please’? You got a problem with this, take it up with your husband. Don’t you go raising your voice to your own momma. I come out here to see what’s what. To help out best I can. All I see when I get here is tempers and tears. I see the bruisin’. I see the blood. I still got my eyesight, thank the Lord. At least I kept my children safe,” she mutters as she turns back to the sink. I guess she’s finished now.
“Get out,” Momma practically spits. “Get out now. I’m going out to find Richard and when I get back I want to see an empty space where you car’s settin’.”
“You’re throwing your own flesh and blood out?” Aunt Lillibit’s eyes are open and wide like plates at suppertime.
“You heard me.”
“That’s fine, Lillibit,” Gammy says. “We ain’t gonna stay where we ain’t welcome, that’s for sure.”
Momma shakes her hair so it all goes behind her back and then she comes out, toward where I’m standing in the front room looking in. It’s like she doesn’t see me, the way she walks on by, her head held up and facing out of number twenty-two.
The screen door slams. Back in the kitchen Gammy dries the plate she’s just cleaned and carefully stacks it on top of the others that had their turns. The stack gets placed back in the cabinet where it almost never is ’cause we use and reuse them, never thinking to put them back.
“I’ll go gather up my things,” Aunt Lillibit says to no one in particular.
Gammy doesn’t know I’m watching her dry her hands on her apron and settle them evenly, on either side of the lip of the sink, looking out the window into the woods that lead to the Diamond River. She stays still for what feels like hours. When she turns and faces me I see she has known I was there all along.
“Well,” she says, “I s’pose we’ve got a lot to get going on.” On her way past me she touches the top of my head and now it’s me who’s catching the tears in her eyes.
In the front room, Aunt Lillibit is folding her clothes and stacking them like Gammy did the plates. Gammy goes over to the sideboard and pulls her case out, settling it on the mattress. It lies there with an open mouth ready to gobble up their lives and spirit them away from here.
“Don’t just stand there, go on and pull the clothes out off the line, will you?” Aunt Lillibit calls over to me. So I do as I’m told ’cause now’s not the time to give them any more reasons to be upset with the Parker family.
Shirts, pants and underthings hang like sad ghosts. One by one they snap free into my hands, hopeful, I bet, they’ll be worn out in the world, away from the dark woods. I hold them up to my nose and sniff in real hard, like I do with the shag carpet that Daddy left behind, but instead of smelling like Gammy and Aunt Lillibit they smell faintly of lemons and soap.
“Don’t dawdle, child,” Gammy calls through the kitchen door. “We’re waiting on you.”
“Are you really going to go?” I ask her on my way back into the house.
“Yes we are,” she says, lifting the ghosts from my arms and shaking the wrinkles out of them. “Now, come on and take the other end of this blanket so we can get it back up into the closet. I won’t have your momma saying I left a mess in my wake.”
I walk backward from Gammy and the blanket stretches out between us. Like dance partners we walk toward and away from each other until the blanket is in a nice neat square.
“Momma didn’t mean it,” Emma says from the foot of the staircase, where I guess she’d been hiding out watching them fight, just like I’d been doing.
“Hand me my hairbrush from over there, will you?” Aunt Lillibit says to Emma. “Step lightly, we got to get going.”
“She didn’t mean it,” Emma says, handing over the brush. “Can’t you just stay a bit longer?”
“I haven’t got a lot,” Gammy says to her and me both, “but I do have my pride. We’re leaving soon as this case is full. Lillibit, where’s that slip I loaned you? That’s fine, you can put it in your bag, just make sure you don’t leave it behind.”
“What about us?” I ask her.
“You’ll be all right.” Gammy pats me on the head. “You just stay out of his way and you’ll be all right.”
The mouth closes up, full of food. Gammy snaps it locked and turns to survey the front room.
“Okay, Lillibit,” she says. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“I’ll be right there.” Aunt Lillibit goes into our one bathroom. She tries and tries but the door won’t meet the wall. It never has, but that hasn’t kept Aunt Lillibit from trying every single time she goes in there. Like she thinks we’re dying to walk in on her going to the bathroom. From inside I hear her sigh.
“Help me with this, will you?” Gammy hands me one of the handles of her case and we walk side by side with it between us until we get to the front door, where we turn sideways so we can fit through without having to put it down.
She sets it down by the car and turns back into the house for her purse.
“Please, Gammy.” I cain’t catch the tears before they start falling. “Please don’t go….”
But, just like Daddy always said, Gammy isn’t good with tears.
Aunt Lillibit comes out with her bag, which has never fastened shut like Gammy’s, and out of the side that’s squeezing shut I see the arm of the white shirt I’d pulled off the line. I guess the only thing wanting to stay behind with us is the ghost.
They’re in the car, Aunt Lillibit letting it warm up before pulling away.
“You be good,” she says to me through the open window. “Y’hear me? Be good, Caroline.”
“Come over here and give y’Gammy a kiss goodbye,” Gammy says, leaning across Lillibit in
the front seat, motioning me to cross over to her window. “Come on,” she calls out the window to Emma.
When I get there her arm reaches out to my cheek. “Dry those tears, y’hear me? They ain’t gonna do you any good. They never do.”
I feel Emma at my side. She reaches her little arm through the window to Gammy. “Gammy,” she cries. “Please…” She is sobbing so hard it takes her a second to gather enough breath for words, “take us with you….”
“Go on, Lillibit” is all she says.
“Take us with you,” Emma sobs. Which is an oddball thing for her to do, since she only cries when she thinks she can change something. I guess that’s her being littler than me. She doesn’t realize there’s no changing this.
Chapter Eleven
“All right, everybody, settle down, now,” Miss Ueland says, fanning her flattened hands slowly up and down, showing us it’s time to quiet down.
She looks us over, her eyes resting on me a little longer than everybody else in class. I wipe at my nose ’cause she’s looking at me like I have something coming out of it.
“Today we’re going to talk about our founding fathers,” she says, turning to the blackboard. “Do y’all know who I’m talking about when I say founding fathers?”
Orla Mae’s hand shoots up, “I do! I do!”
“Yes, Orla Mae. Go ahead.”
“They’re the ones who were the first presidents,” she says, sitting up straight against the back of her chair.
The rest of the class is a blur of questions and answers that I don’t have to be a part of, thank the Lord. Soon the bell rings and I get my books together.
“Caroline? May I have a word with you, hon?” Miss Ueland calls out over the bodies hurrying to push out the door of the class.
“Yes, ma’am?” I say to her, trying to keep my arms from shaking from the heaviness of the books. I wish I’d had something in my belly to keep from feeling like I might see stars like I do right now.
“Caroline, I’m worried about you, honey,” she says, resting half her self on the edge of the desk. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m fine, ma’am.”
She looks at me, deep into my eyes, and for a second I want to cry. I hold it back, though.
“Tell me what’s going on, honey—” her voice is practically begging me to cry “—you can talk to me.”
I gulp and say, “Nothing’s going on, ma’am.”
“I’ve half a mind to come on out and talk to your parents—’’
But before she can finish that thought I cut it off at the pass. “No! I mean, no thank you, ma’am. I mean, everything’s fine. I fell on the rocks out back of my house and knocked my head, is all. My momma’ll tan my hide if you talk to her about it. She tells me all the time I got to stop climbing rocks out in the woods. If she knows you’re worried about it I’ll never hear the end of it!”
I hope that’ll do the trick.
She waits, looks down at her hands so prettily folded in front of her. Her wedding ring sparkling against the overhead lighting.
“I’ll give it some thought,” she says after a spell. “But please know you can talk to me whenever you need to, Caroline. All right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You can go on, now.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
And I’m glad she told me I could go ’cause for one quick second, about as quick as a sneeze, I thought I might tell her about Richard.
* * *
“I hear you got yourselves a problem over yonder.” Mr. Wilson looks up at us from his whittling.
Now I know what Momma would say right now. She’d tell him to mind his own business. But it’s Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson doesn’t care a lick about other people’s business. Seems to me he’s only interested in his own usually.
To be on the safe side I don’t say anything back. I’ll wait till I see where he’s going.
“Now, I know they’re some folks in town be happy to see y’all move on outta here,” he says, back to making sure his thumb doesn’t get cut off along with chips of wood. “Antone, in particular. Folks over at the mill. Yep, they all hoping y’all leave and take trouble with ya. But I ain’t one of them.”
“What do you think?” Emma asks him from on top of the tree stump she’s trying her best to balance on top of. But it’s a bitty tree stump so she has to hop back on after she falls. I don’t know how she can think of balancing on a tree stump at a time like this.
“I think folks got to look after one another. I think a man’s got to answer for the things he done.”
He sets his wood and knife aside, puts his hands on his knees and looks at both of us. Square on.
“What we gonna do about you?” he says. “Huh?”
Neither of us answer him. What would we say, anyhow?
“I about had it with a man who cain’t pick on someone his own size,” he says. “Got to go take it out on a child… I about had it wit’ that, I’ll tell you what.”
We follow behind him out to the gun shed. “Where’s he going?” Emma whispers to me.
“Shh,” I hush her. “What happened to the lock?” I ask Mr. Wilson.
“Thing gave out,” he says. “Did its job for two decades. Guess it knew there’s no one it has to keep out. No one comes out this way anymore, anyway.”
We wait outside while he opens the cabinet and pulls a different gun out. This one’s small, has a shiny white handle, and instead of dark gray, it’s silver. He leaves the door half open.
“In my pappy’s day we’d take care of that man,” he’s saying to himself on his way out to the pasture where the cans sat on the fence.
“He always like this?” Emma whispers to me. I shake my head and keep my eyes on Mr. Wilson.
“Git up here, girl,” he calls out to Emma. I let her learn on this gun since the shotgun’s mine and this one’s better suited for a little one.
“You got to learn how to defend yourself since no one else’s doing it for you. Now. Take hold a’this handle. Feel how smooth it is? Don’t let it fool you. This gun’s a might powerful. A man could tell himself it ain’t gonna do the job but I’m here to tell you, this gun shot down one of the meanest sons of bitches ever lived. Hollis Collins. Point it where you want the bullet to fly. That’s right. Hollis Collins felt the licks of flames from hell nearly every day he walked on this earth. No reason for him to go making trouble for everybody, so my pappy shot him down. Y’ain’t gonna be able to match up your target with crosshairs, like a rifle, so what you do instead is move your chin over so it’s nearly over the part of your arm between your shoulder and elbow. That’s right. Good. Tilt it a little more so your cheek almost touches—that’s right. If your arm’s good ’n straight you’ll hit your target, sure as manure.”
“Hey!” Emma says, looking from him to me. “Our daddy used to say that!”
“Your daddy’d thank me right now for teaching y’all how to shoot,” he says back. “Now, concentrate on what you’re gonna hit. This can’s setting in one place but most times your target’s moving. So you got to be able to move your body but keep your arm straight while you do it so as soon as he stops a’moving, you can fire off a round.”
“Should I shoot now?”
“Wait a second,” he says. “Feel that trigger? It’s gonna give pretty easy, so be ready to push back at the power once it does. Try a shot and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
Pow!
Emma yelps like I did the first time Mr. Wilson fired one off. Nothing prepares you for that sound.
“That’s a start,” he says, once the smoke clears from the end of the gun where the bullet came out. “But see what I mean by the trigger?”
&nb
sp; “Yeah!” she says. I can’t keep from smiling ’cause I know how excited she feels.
“Now, you missed your target.” He’s stern like a teacher always seems to be. “You got to leave behind the notion that it’s easy and concentrate on gettin’ the job done. Give it over and I’ll show you what I’m talkin’ about. See how my arm’s steady? You got to be steady ’cause the trigger’ll mess with your mind, it’s so loose. It’ll make y’arm think it can be, too. But you got to hold steady.”
Pow!
Emma runs over to the fence and holds up the can that knocked onto the ground, like it’s a trophy. “You did it!”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” he says. “My arm never moved. Let the target tire itself out moving, don’t let your arm tire out doing the same. Now, try again.”
Emma runs back over, takes the gun and stretches her arm out.
“Like this?”
“You got it,” he says. “That’s right, lock y’elbow. Now y’ready for that trigger.”
Pow!
Emma runs over and sure enough, she bends down and holds the can up the same way she did before.
“That’s a mighty good shot, girl,” Mr. Wilson says, spitting off to the side. “A fine shot.”
On the way back home Emma’s skipping, she’s so happy about shooting.
“You know what happens next, right?” she says, hopping up on a rock and jumping off of it like it’s a ride at the carnival.
“What’re you talking about?” I ask.
“We’re gonna shoot Richard,” she says, leaping over a tree stump. “He’s gonna get shot.”
I’ve stopped walking after her. “What?”
“Yep,” she calls over to me from a mushroom she’s inspecting. “We’re gonna kill Richard. That’s what Mr. Wilson was showing us how to do.”
I’m walking again. “You’re crazy. He wasn’t doing any such thing.”
“He was, too,” she says, skipping back over to me. “We got to kill him, Carrie.”
“We just walk in one day and shoot him? Just like that?”
“Yeah, kinda,” she says, falling into step alongside me, when the branches clear a bit so we can walk two by two. “And then we wouldn’t get throwed out of the house ’cause the sheriff’d feel sorry for us and he’d let us stay. But even if we did have to go, with Richard dead there’d be no one for Gammy and Auntie Lillibit to hate so we could go live with them.”