“This baby’s my baby boy, Ned.”
“Is he? I have so many days I can’t picture.”
“Uh-huh, he is. You know it’s been quite a while since I seen you, Mom. How are you? How’re you doin’?”
“The same.”
“Still just the same?”
“Different kinds of same.”
“Well, your hair looks nice.”
Ree stood and tapped her boots against the stove, getting the fit right. She said, “Mom. Mom, we’ve got to run down to Reid’s Gap for a little bit. See somebody.”
Mom’s expression settled and she turned her head away from the baby, toward the television. Hounds in a huge pack were gathered on a damp brick street outside an ancient chapel being blessed for the hunt by a wan but wordy reverend while men in red coats sat lordly atop beautiful jostling horses waiting for the amen. She said, “Have fun.”
The night cold made flimsy ice on the steps. Gail carried Ned swinging and Ree held her by the arm going down to the truck. The truck was antique in age, with a long wobbly gearshift to the floor and a bench seat. The sitting spots were worn open to the hairy stuffing and poking wires. Gail laid Ned in the middle and Ree sat beside him. The engine kicked alive with a loud chuff and black puffs from the tailpipe scudded low across the snowy yard.
The moon was a blue dot glowing behind moody clouds.
Gail said, “Does Mom know what’s goin’ on?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t you think you should tell her?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Why not?”
“It’d be too mean to tell her. This is just exactly the sort of shit she went crazy to get away from.”
“I guess she couldn’t help any, anyhow.”
“Nope. It’s on me.”
The truck bounced high along the rut road and tilted this way and that. The snow had been compacted by warmer hours and lay thin, but there were pits in the rock and dirt the truck had to be gentled over to avoid scraping bottom. There were scads of shallower potholes and spring floodwaters had cut creases in the dirt hubcap-deep. Ree held Ned’s carrier steady with her left hand. Gail said, “You-all’s road has got rough to where you about can’t call it a road no more.”
“You’ve been sayin’ that since third grade.”
“Well, it was true in the third grade and it’s done nothin’ but get truer since then.”
“We like it this way—it keeps tourists out.”
“That’s the same ol’ joke your dad told me the first time I ever rode in here.”
“I think he meant it, though.”
“I think he must’ve,” Gail said. She squeaked the truck to a stop at the blacktop. “Which way is this place?”
“Go towards Dorta, then take that road there that heads south past Strawn Bottoms. You know the one, right? Then it’s just a little ways further across the line.”
“Oh. Now I’m thinkin’ maybe I have been there before. Is this the place where they got all the blueberries? The ones you pick yourself?”
“Yup. They got acres and acres of them berries. I never did do any pickin’ when I was down there, though.”
Ned gurgled and goo-gooed, opened his eyes slow as a school day and closed them at the same pace. He wore a little skullcap that tied under his chin and was wrapped fat with a sky blue blanket. The truck smelled of baby powder and drooled milk crusty on the blanket and stale butts in the ashtray. When headlights passed going the other way and Gail squinted against the light, her hand instinctively reached to protect the baby.
Gail said, “My daddy fell by yesterday, brought me some more of my clothes’n stuff, and I asked him if he knew where your dad might be. He wouldn’t really look at me when I asked, so I asked again, and all he said was, ‘Go nurse your boy.’”
“I know, Sweet Pea.”
“It gave me a flat bad feelin’ when he answered like that.”
“He’s probly right.”
Ree sat with one hand on the baby and her eyes on Gail. Passing cars lit her behind the wheel in quick stuttering glimpses, her wry curled lips, freckled bony cheeks, and those hurt brown eyes. She watched Gail’s hand move from steering wheel to gearshift as the road rolled up and down and around the dark country. She watched her hand reach toward Ned and touch his baby nose as they crossed the Twin Forks River on a skeletal iron bridge and could hear the cold water humming south.
Gail said, “This road here, ain’t it?”
“Yup.”
The first time Ree kissed a man it was not a man, but Gail acting as a man, and as the kissing progressed and Gail acting as a man pushed her backwards onto a blanket of pine needles in shade and slipped her tongue deep into Ree’s mouth, Ree found herself sucking on the wiggling tongue of a man in her mind, sucking that plunging tongue of the man in her mind until she tasted morning coffee and cigars and spit leaked from between her lips and down her chin. She opened her eyes then and smiled, and Gail yet acting the man roughed up her breasts with grabs and pinches, kissed her neck, murmuring, and Ree said, “Just like that! I want it to be just like that!” There came three seasons of giggling and practice, puckering readily anytime they were alone, each being the man and the woman, each on top and bottom, pushing for it with grunts or receiving it with sighs. The first time Ree kissed a boy who was not a girl his lips were soft and timid on hers, dry and unmoving, until finally she had to say it and did, “Tongue, honey, tongue,” and the boy she called honey turned away saying, “Yuck!”
There were five streets and two stop signs in Reid’s Gap. Snow was piled high in the parking lot of the elementary school and the Get’n Quik store was the only building with lights on. A field of crashed vehicles butted against the road through town, and these trophies for bad luck from many eras spread crumpled downhill beyond sight. Yard sale signs on sticks were stuck in the ground at corners. Flyers for Slim Ted’s Tuesday Square Dances at Ash Flat were tacked to telephone poles. Churches stood at both ends of town and a windowless senior center at the heart.
Ree said, “Her house is yellow, just off this road, here. It ain’t far, I don’t think. It’s a sort of pretty little place. Wait—turn in here.”
“I thought you said yellow.”
“She must’ve painted.”
April Dunahew had a rail fence across the face of her yard and bordering the driveway. A rose arbor stood over the sidewalk shoveled clean and the house lights were bright. The house was now an ordinary white with green shutters. Gnarled evergreen shrubs grew squatty along the walls. A small car and a long truck that had a business name written on the side were parked in the drive. The door had a bell that made music of four ringing tones.
The porch light came on and the door eased back. April wore a black dress that draped waistless to her ankles and eyeglasses hooked to a glinting chain. She had blond hair curled springy and a ready smile. She said, “Is that… ?”
“Ree. It’s me.”
“You’ve cut your hair!”
“I got tired of it hangin’ to my butt’n bein’ in my way all the time.”
“I loved that wild-ass hair of yours. Just loved it.”
“You never had to rake the leaves out of it every night like me. Plus it’s grown back pretty good since spring, anyhow. April, this girl is my friend Gail Lockrum, and that’s her boy, Ned.”
“You keep forgettin’ it’s Gail Langan now.”
“Oops, slipped my mind again—she got married. To a Langan.”
April said, “Married’s a good thing to be once you’ve got yourself a baby. That’s how I still think. That’s my two cents, anyhow. Why’n’t you-all come on in and we’ll sit.”
“I’m here huntin’ Dad.”
“I was guessin’ that.”
The house was by far the most pleasant Ree had ever been allowed to enter. Everything was where it was supposed to be and clean. The furniture had been costly and there were elegant built-in bookcases flanking the fireplace and a dozen special
little touches. A carved wooden hutch stood against the wall, featuring an arrangement of delicate blown-glass objects of many odd colors and complicated shapes. A staircase that curved led upstairs and the wooden steps shined all the way up. A television was on in the family room and a man’s head was visible above the line of the couch. April pulled slatted double doors closed to mute the television noise.
“Now, you know me’n Jessup quit keepin’ company a good while ago.”
“I figured, but thought maybe you’d still know a thing or two.”
“Well, I’m kind of afraid I might. I’ve been wonderin’.” April reached under the couch and pulled out a metal cookie tray that held a small pile of pot and a pipe. “I’m goin’ to need to kick myself back for this, Ree. Bear with me.”
It had seemed like a mumbled sunny song to stay here nursing April back when. April had notions in her head that were loosed in her days. April kept puking and voiding wet gushes in the mornings until one day she rose tottering to treat the sick spirits of this house with burning sage, make the house well to make herself well. She carried a blue smudge pot full of sand and a sheaf of smoking sage and aimed the smoke into corners and doorways, her eyes closed and her lips silently saying stuff that added churchy oomph to the powers of the smoke. She smoked away haints so the house could feel cleansed of lingering angers and pains and bad ideas that clung to old shadows soaked into the walls. She waved smoke to make the house well so she could get well, and while the house freshly stank of sage the wellness spread from the walls to her tummy, and the next morning she did not puke or void wet gushes. By noon she was sipping vodka from a coffee cup.
“You still bad on the bottle?”
“No. No. I give that up. It’s just beer nowadays, and some of this.”
The pipe crossed the room a few times while the man watching television snored and Ned slept. Smoke curled toward the ceiling and spread into a calm flat layer below the light. April said, “Right around when he was arrested this last time, me’n Jessup had a little rekindle happen. I’d started seein’ Hubert in there months before. He’s a good man’n we’re meant for each other and all, I guess, but your dad always did tickle me extra, don’t you know. Jessup’n me run across each other by total accident out at the trout place by Rockbridge, and he got me to laughin’ so happy things rekindled for a day or two, then he was gone again. Saw hide nor hair for a spell, but about, maybe, three or four weeks back, I had stopped at Cruikshank’s Tap on the state line, and he was in there drinkin’. He was with three fellas who looked a little rougher even than Jessup usually looked. They didn’t look to be havin’ no fun, either, nor wantin’ to.”
“Was one of them three a crusty little bastard?”
“They all were pretty crusty-lookin’.”
“Dad say anything?”
“That’s what has made me feel so hinky’n blue since—he looked square at me but acted like he didn’t know me, never seen me before. They were leavin’ in a knot and I stood in the way at the door, but he went brushin’ past me without even a nod. Somethin’ ugly was up with them fellas. Somethin’ real wrong was goin’ on, and since then I’ve gone over it and over it in my head and think I finally get why he didn’t even nod my way. He was protectin’ me, see, by ignorin’ me. That’s when I understood your dad had loved me. I understood it from how he’d looked away.”
Chapter 17
ROCKS HELD long by the hillside slipped loose in the melt and scattered downhill to flatten one corner of a hog-pen fence, and fifty hogs roused in the night and shoved through the sudden gap onto the road. The hogs were big and curious and rooted over to the bridge and stood there, blocking traffic. The Twin Forks River rushed along cold and black but streaked yellow, danced upon brightly by headlights. Three or four vehicles had been forced to stop on either side of the bridge. A farmer and his wife with flashlights and sticks and one dog were trying to turn the hogs around and herd them back through the gap in the fence.
Gail said, “Remember when we were little? When Catfish Milton kept hogs, and they told us to go feed ’em corn once, but we didn’t understand how hogs with no hands could ever manage to eat corn straight from the cob, so you’n me hunkered our dumb asses down’n rubbed the kernels off of all them cobs? Remember that?”
“Yup.”
“We thought we were showin’ good sense. My fingers hurt a month, it seemed like.”
“They laughed at us a long time for that day.”
The truck was first in line on the south side of the bridge. The hogs were big grunting humps milling about the bridge and road shoulder. A couple of drivers had gotten out to help the farmer and his wife, but the hogs smelled something fresh in the night and were not easily turned around. Ned began to cry and Gail said, “Him needs some suck, don’t him? Him’s hungry for milk and Momma’s late givin’ him his nipple.”
“You goin’ to nurse him right here?”
“Why not? I don’t seem to make milk like I should oughta, but what milk I make him gets, and him’s hungry now.”
Gail unbuttoned her blouse and pulled the front wide. She undid her bra and let it dangle to her belly. She raised Ned from the basket and his little pink mouth clamped onto a nipple. Ree leaned forward to look closely at the baby’s lips sucking and the heavy bare breasts, and said, “Man, them peaches got big!”
“They ain’t goin’ to stay that way.”
“I feel like a fuckin’ carpenter’s dream, lookin’ at them things!”
“They’ll poof down again before too long.”
“You should get you a picture while they last.”
“I guess I probly should. They can flatten out pretty bad once they poof back down.”
Ree watched Gail hold Ned as closely as anyone could ever be held, feed him supper from a part of her own body, and saw in them a living picture illustrating one kind of future. The looming expected kind of future and not one she wanted. Ned’s baby mouth sucked and sucked on that nipple like he was fixing to drain Gail to the dregs. She said, “I reckon I’ll go’n help kick them hogs off the road. We’ll be settin’ here all night, the way it’s goin’.”
“Don’t let ’em eat you.”
“I doubt I taste all that sweet.”
The hogs were boiling about the bridge, grunting to the far end, then being chased back with sticks. They shrieked when whacked and raced briefly in any direction, slamming one another, slamming the rails, knocking various people to ground. Ree edged across the bridge and began to shoo the hogs, sooey, sooey! toward the gap in the fence. So many headlights shining from both sides of the bridge made it difficult to see clearly. Squealing hump shadows rushed about between the beams. Ree stood near the black rail and when she felt humps bumping her legs or passing near she gave them the boot and more loud shooing. Once the bridge had been cleared a couple of leader hogs finally waddled down from the road and through the gap and others followed.
The farmer watched the hogs going back into the pen, swabbed sweat from his face with a sleeve, sighed, then said, “For cripes sake! There’s two run out on the bridge again.”
Ree said, “I’ll get up there behind ’em and aim ’em this way for you.”
“It’d sure be a help if you could, missy.”
The fleeing hogs were halted by the small circle of folks standing at the north end of the bridge. Their hooves skidded on the road surface. They came to a complete stop and stood there looking into the many blinding headlight beams. The people were smoking and laughing, joking about the great bounty of free hams and sides of bacon that had been running around available in the night without anybody grabbing so much as a hock to haul home. The hogs moved slowly to the bridge rail and walked toward a spot where no people stood. Ree saw their plan and loped ahead of them, turned about and kicked limply at their snouts. “Sooey! Sooey thataway!”
It was the sound of the motor that caused her to look over her shoulder. She’d spent so many long days and longer nights of her life listening for that
motor, had so many bursts of relief upon finally hearing that certain memorized rattle and squeak of Dad’s Capri coming down the rut road to the house, that her body and spirit responded automatically to the sound. Wings beat in her tummy and her eyes squinted searching into the various lights. There were now seven or eight vehicles on the north side and she wended through the thicket of beams, hands held to shade her eyes, toward the imprinted rattle and squeak of the family car. She waved her arms overhead, gesturing into the maze of headlights. The hogs followed her off the bridge and she paid them no mind, but began to move quickly along the line of vehicles, waving her hands all the while. She positioned herself to be easily recognized, stood tall facing north, and saw the Capri at the rear of the line as it backed up, turned about in a hurry, and sped away uphill along the road toward Bawbee.
Ree stared briefly after the twin red taillights as they climbed the hill, the red easily visible against the night and general white of the landscape. She breathed hesitant shallow breaths watching the red dots climb, then raced back across the bridge, combat boots drumming hard on the old iron, and yanked the truck door. Gail was bent over the bench seat fussing with a diaper from the blue bag while she tried to change Ned. She had yet to button her blouse or clean his behind and he lay in yellow poop while her breasts swayed above his face. She looked up when the door flew open so violently, and said, “What?”
“Dad! Dad’s Capri was over across the bridge! He took off toward Bawbee—see them taillights?”
“You sure it was him?”
“It’s our car.”
“Ree, we’re still sort of a little bit stoned—you sure you saw him?”