Chapter 16
The three of them stomped the mud from their feet on the back porch. Ben popped off his unlaced boots toe-to-heel and barged through the screen door. Harold and Kilby sat on the bench outside, a four-legged log cut in half longways, to remove their own.
“Hungry?” Kilby asked.
“I could eat a horse,” Harold said.
“Don’t think you’ll have to. But you might get a pork chop or two, by the smell of it.”
Now that Kilby mentioned it, Harold was getting the signals now, breaded and fried with a ton of black pepper. Turnip greens. Hot biscuits. It was all there on the wind. He rose and followed Kilby inside in his sock feet.
The kitchen was in its usual state, worn and cluttered but clean as a whistle. Harold was moving like a pro now, although his first week he had come in for supper like an eighty-year-old, creaking at every joint, muscles burning. He bounded up to the table. Last in the door but first at the table.
“Aim to make sure you get seconds tonight?” Ben asked.
“Darn tootin’,” Harold said. “I’m gonna start acting like you two before I starve to death. Manners are just another word for going hungry.”
“Horsefeathers,” Mother said. “Go wash your filthy hands. And not in my kitchen!”
Ben and Kilby chuckled and punched Harold playfully as he rose from the table and went down the hall to the bathroom.
When he returned to the kitchen everyone was seated around the table. Kilby didn’t speak, he just smiled from his place at the head. There were no assigned seats, but a certain pattern had settled in as the norm. Kilby at the head, Mother on the other short end opposite; Harold and Ben on one side, Harold near Kilby, Ben next to Mother; Sister across from Harold; and next to Sister the empty chair. Mother always put a place setting there, napkin and all.
Kilby’s grace was the call to get on your marks, the chorus of ‘Amen’ the starting gun. They all began to serve themselves, passing whatever they picked up to their left after they had scooped out or forked off a portion. There was another unwritten law by which Harold abided. Everyone took one serving of each dish on the table, and did not take seconds until their first plate was cleaned.
He noticed that he was the only one who sipped his drink during the meal, whether it be milk, water, or tea. The rest of them waited until they were totally done eating before they took even a sip.
“Ma’am, these chops are perfect,” Harold said.
“Thank you Harold,” she said.
“Can I ask you guys one question? I’m curious, how come y’all don’t drink while your eating?” Harold asked. “A sip or two every few bites keeps everything flowing the right way.”
“When you sip, sip, sip, your mouth doesn’t make as much spit, and what it does make, it dudn’t mix good with your food. Hurts your digestion and makes you weak. Also takes up space for food,” Mother said.
“Makes sense,” Harold said. “Never thought of it that way.”
He noticed that Sister was smiling, realized that his first plate was almost done and he was just now noticing her.
“What’s for dessert Mama?” she asked.
“Cherry pie. Didn’t you see it?” Mother said.
“No Ma’am.”
“Open up your eyes then little girl,” Mother said.
“Yes Ma’am.”
Sister was speaking to Mother but her eyes were stuck on Harold’s. He tried not to stare back, but it was difficult. No matter where you were in the room she seemed to always be looking at you, and right now she was looking at Harold as if he was baked in a crust and covered in cherries.
“I love pie,” she said. “Harold, do you like pie?”
“Love it. Had the taste for it lately too.”
Kilby stood up suddenly and said in a businesslike manner, “Get your gun Ben, and come on.”
“What’s up?” Ben asked.
“There’s a buck and five does standing in the fallow over there, I can see ‘em from here.”
“I want me some venison!” Ben said.
“I’ll get down to the shed,” Mother said, referring to the place where they butchered meat from time to time. “Be there in a minute.”
“You coming?” Ben asked Harold.
“I’m not much for hunting,” Harold said, “or butchering. I’m more of a cherry pie kind of guy. Another time, when there’s plenty of daylight and no hurry, and you can show me the ropes.”
“Alright then,” Ben said, and he went out with Kilby. As Sister sliced Harold a piece of pie, Mother followed without a word.
“I haven’t even finished my dinner yet,” Harold said, looking down at his dessert.
“It’s okay, you’ll have room. Dessert goes in a different place, like they say.”
She took her seat across from him and they continued the meal. Harold ate deliberately, but as he tasted the food in his mouth his palate was recalling the taste of her neck that night in the truck. As creamy and as salty as the potatoes were, they were as plain and dry as the kindling beside the stove in comparison. She was chewing with the same slowness with which she undertook everything. Softness and relaxation was in her pores, coming off of her in a way that Harold could smell and taste. Without saying a word she was telling him that he could have anything that he wanted, and that it was good, easy, salty and sweet.
She reached out with her fork and broke off a taste of the slice she had cut for him.
“Hold on, that’s mine!” Harold said, and took her jokingly by the wrist. “You haven’t finished your supper yet anyway.”
“Just a taste?” she said.
“Mine,” Harold said. He pulled her hand, fork, pie, and all, up to his mouth and stole the bite.
“Good,” he remarked.
“Thief,” she said.
“Thief? You’re the thief, trying to steal my pie.”
“Fine, I’ll get my own,” she said. Sister pulled away and walked over to the counter. Harold watched her from behind as she sliced another piece in slow motion.
He stood up sharply and his chair tipped over. Startled by the sound she turned, but he was already on top of her. He put his hands on her waist and sat her on the countertop so that his eyes were level with the hollow of her throat where her crystal cross hung from its silver chain. He began to bite and kiss her neck without thinking, finding it even better than he had remembered. She pulled up his face and kissed him on the lips. He could taste the pie she had sampled a minute before, and it was good.
Sister pulled off her t-shirt and dropped it, and Harold sank into himself, washed over by the commands his body gave his mind. His spirit gasped once and then descended. He pulled her off the counter and sat her down, walking her awkwardly out of the kitchen toward the guestroom he had made his own. On his second step he heard a crack and felt something underfoot.
He stopped and looked down. Sister’s crystal cross, which had come off along with her t-shirt, was shattered under his foot. He stared at it, and as he did, he began to come back to the surface. The shattered cross’s pieces formed a portentous design, one he had seen before. Each bar of the cross had snapped from the center, the west, north, and east portions intact, the southern section broken into pieces and loosely arranged in a hook. The same symbol he had seen on the record albums at Lucas’ house, a symbol they called the cross-and-claw.
She was still kissing his face but she could tell he was no longer immersed in the same waters in which she was drifting. Harold untangled himself from her and dropped into a squat to pick up the pieces of the necklace, but as he grew closer to the formation of broken pieces, he could not bring himself to touch them. The arrangement was so uncanny it pierced him. He could only stare. His mind was at the opposite place it had been seconds before; he had gone from the bottom of his emotional oceans to the top of the stratosphere, detached and looking down at himself from ten miles up. He was breathless. There was no o
xygen in either place. He had done it again. Just as he had jumped into the bay that night two weeks before, he had jumped into a situation with Sister. A different kind of death, but suicide just the same.
Standing crookedly Harold almost ran to the bedroom and grabbed his CD player. He brushed by Sister and stumbled out the back door. He got his boots on, laces tucked inside, and almost fell off the porch. Sister was saying something that he couldn’t hear. It was as if he was seeing Sister and himself for the first time, from a height, and he could not see where he was walking or hear what he was leaving behind.