A red truck pulls around the side of the house and parks in front of the sagging garage.
“They’re dresses,” Evie says. “Look how many.”
Across the room, Evie holds a blue dress up by its hanger, rotating it so she sees both sides. The dress flutters as the fan sweeps across the room, the tips of its hem dragging on the wooden floor. Frowning, Evie pulls at the frayed ends of a piece of blue trim left unstitched at the collar.
“Stop that,” Daniel says. “You’re getting it dirty. Those are Grandma Reesa’s.”
Evie frowns at the bleeding Virgin Mary. “No they aren’t. Grandma Reesa is too big for these dresses.”
“Well, they belong to somebody.”
“Whoever wore these was small like me,” Evie says, holding up a second dress. “Not big like Grandma Reesa.”
“Just put them back and close that door,” Daniel says as a second truck that is towing a trailer pulls into the drive. “I think Uncle Ray and Aunt Ruth are here. We’d better get downstairs.”
Letting the hug fade, Celia slowly pulls away, feeling that Ruth’s slender arms might never let go. While Arthur is tall and broad enough to fill any doorway, his older sister is petite, almost breakable, and her skin is cool, as if she doesn’t have the strength to warm herself on a hot August afternoon. On the other side of the car, Ruth’s husband, Ray, shakes Arthur’s hand. Reesa stands behind them, watching, nodding.
“Damn good to see you,” Ray says, taking off his hat and slapping it against his thigh. Underneath, his dark hair is matted and sweat sparkles on his forehead. Even from several feet away, he smells of bourbon.
After shaking Arthur’s hand, Ray replaces his hat and bends down to look through the truck’s cab. His cloudy gray eye, the left one, which Celia only remembers when she sees him up close again, wanders off to the side while the eye that is clear and brown stares at Celia. He winks the bad eye.
“Well, if you damn sure aren’t still the prettiest thing I ever seen,” he says, scratching his two-day-old beard. “The good Lord’s done well by you, Arthur.”
Ray’s good eye inches down Celia’s body and settles at her waist. He had looked at her the same way on her wedding day, like her taking one man meant she would take any man.
Celia wrinkles her nose at his sour smell. “So good to see you, Ruth,” she says, reaching for the pie that Ruth holds out to her.
“It’s strawberry.” Ruth straightens the pleats on her tan calico dress. “We had a late season this year. Thought they’d never ripen.”
Celia cups the chilled pie plate. “You always did bake up the nicest desserts.”
Celia says this even though her own wedding was the last and only time she saw Ruth. Almost twenty years ago. They were barely more than kids; Ruth a new bride herself. The years have worn heavy on her, stooped her shoulders, yellowed her skin, and peppered her brown hair with gray, though she still wears it in the same tightly knit bun that she did all those years ago.
“Arthur said you had an accident on your way in,” Ruth says, still pressing her pleats. “You and the children are all right?”
Celia rubs her neck with one hand and rolls her head from side to side. “Shook us up a little. Frightened the children, but we’re fine.”
Once they finally settled into bed the night before, Arthur had said they probably saw a deer. Or maybe not. Never could tell. “But that spot at the top of Bent Road is a tricky one,” he had said. “Better take it slow next time.” Celia had rolled over, putting her back to him, and said that perhaps next time he would be inclined to slow himself down. When she woke this morning, she had a sore neck, an ache in her lower back and made Arthur promise to check the front of her car for damage. He found nothing but still couldn’t say for sure what they had seen out there.
“Good God damn,” Ray shouts to the driver of a second truck towing a trailer into the drive. “I don’t pay you to drive like a fool, boy.”
A young man steps out of the other truck. His light brown hair hangs below his collar and covers the tips of his ears. He wears a sleeveless chambray shirt, the frayed shirttail left untucked. Ruth tells Celia that his name is Jonathon Howard. He’s a local boy who has come to help Ray, though he’s not so much a boy anymore.
“You don’t pay me at all, Ray,” Jonathon says. “Quit all that fuss you’re making.” He nods at Celia and Arthur, tugs on the raw edge of his Silver Belly hat and walks toward his trailer.
At the back porch, the screened door squeals open and slams shut. Elaine walks across the drive, blotting her cheeks with a tissue. Though she is small like Celia-narrow shoulders, a slender waist, hips that flare ever so slightly beneath her skirt-she has Arthur’s brown hair and eyes.
“Elaine,” Celia says. “Come say hello to Aunt Ruth.”
Tucking the tissue into her apron and smoothing back her hair that hangs in dark waves down her back, Elaine steps around the truck’s open door and leans inside to hug Ruth. “So nice to meet you, Aunt Ruth,” she says, and standing straight, she looks down the drive toward the young man with the frayed chambray shirt. As if trying to get a better view of him, she leans away from the truck and stumbles over Celia. “Sorry,” she says.
“Quite all right.” Celia smiles and glances between Elaine and the young man.
“Celia,” Ray shouts through the truck’s open cab. Seeing Elaine, he studies her for a moment, tips his hat and stands. “Get those kids out here. Good God damn, I brought this thing for them.”
“Ray brought the children a cow,” Ruth says. “You go on and see it. I’ll check on lunch and send the children out.”
Celia steps aside to let Ruth pass. Across the drive, Reesa and Arthur follow Ray toward the trailer. Celia watches Ray, fearing that he’ll take another look at Elaine, but he doesn’t. As the three pass a small shed, which sets across the drive, Arthur stops and studies it, perhaps considering how to best fix the sagging roof or straighten the crooked walls. Reesa stops alongside him, stepping into his shadow. A thick patch of cordgrass grows around the small building and nearly swallows it up. The two of them stand silently for a moment, and then Reesa pats him on the back and, with both hands, gently pulls him away and they continue toward the trailer.
Celia knew there would be secrets between Arthur and his mother, a history that they share and that Celia has had no part in. Surely, Reesa knows what kept Arthur away all these years, and as they pass by, neither of them looking at Celia, it is clear that the past is already flaring up.
When everyone is clustered around the new cow and Ray gives a loud shout of laughter, Ruth walks toward the back door. She smells them before she sees them-a patch of devil’s claw growing between the garage and the back porch. The pink flowers, thriving in dry sandy soil, give off a nasty smell that is strong this year, stronger every year since Father died. He was dead and buried before Mother called to tell Arthur. “No need to trouble him so far away,” she had said. “It’s his own father,” Ruth said. “Let him make peace with his own father.”
Mother had turned away, the black cotton dress she wore to the church service only lightly creased. “A funeral is no place for making peace,” she had said. “That time is dead and buried for both of them.”
The flowers, whose feathery centers are sprinkled with red and purple freckles, have grown thicker this year and richer in color. The plant’s broad, heart-shaped leaves give off the bitter smell and pods hang like okra from the hairy stems. Eventually, the woody husks will split open and curl like claws that will grab onto passing animals who will spread the seeds.
As a new bride, Ruth had picked the plump green pods, sliced them and sautéed them in buttery onions and garlic. They’ll bring a strong woman twins, her mother’s mother once said. Ruth cooked up these pods because, had Eve lived, she would have done the same. In the weeks and months following Eve’s death, everything Ruth did was because Eve would have done the same. Ruth began to visit Ray every week since Eve no longer could. When his laundry piled up in the hamper, she washed it and hung it to dry on the line. She swept his floors, scrubbed his bathroom tile and left casseroles in his icebox. Because Ray was a young man who needed a wife and because it was the thing Eve would have done, Ruth married him and began to wish for a baby. But soon enough her marriage aged a few years, and Ray realized that Ruth would never be the woman he had intended to marry. She would never be Eve. So she stopped cooking the pods and never looked back when she passed a patch of devil’s claw.