I reckon I always knowed what would happen if Clio got hemmed in for too long. That’s why I followed her when she turned around and padded out of the kitchen on into the front room. I couldn’t see her feet for that gown being so long and it seemed like she was floating. Seemed like she wasn’t even my girl no more, like there was something in the house with us that ort not to be. The front room was quiet and still, lit up cold and gloomy by the snow still falling outside. Clio stopped and stood in front of the window. Neither one of us moved. I was scared to say anything because it was like she was sleepwalking. I’ve heard tell if you wake up one that’s walking in their sleep they’ll die. I don’t know how long Clio stood there in front of the window that way. Then Macon came in to see what was the matter, with the whittling knife still in his hand.
“What’s wrong, girl?” he asked. His voice was like a firecracker going off.
Clio reached around before I knowed it and snatched up the straight chair Paul used to set in when I fed him his breakfast of the mornings. She took that chair and raised it up over her head and smashed out the window pane. At the same time she let out a scream that liked to froze my blood. It was the awfulest crash you ever heard, too, seemed like that racket rung in my ears for a week after it happened. Macon run to Clio, standing in her nightgown with the cold flooding in, and wrapped her up in his arms. I reckon he was so addled he had forgot to drop his whittling knife and she tried to take it away from him. They scuffled over it for a minute and I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was scared somebody was going to get cut, but finally it was like she gave out all at once. She fell and the knife clattered to the floor. Macon picked her up and carried her like a baby to the bed. She slept that whole day away and part of the next. I couldn’t sleep a wink myself, or eat a bite of nothing. I paced the floor outside her room until Macon made me rest. When the sun came out and the eaves started dripping Clio finally perked up some. I swear, we liked to froze to death before that window got fixed.
The spring after that was when I lost Clio for good, even before she died. Soon as the ice melted and she could get down the mountain, we hardly ever seen her no more. She’d still mumble out one of her excuses, but they got feebler and feebler. Even when she was home to eat supper, her eyes was far away. We’d let Clio get by with just about anything, but Macon used to be hard on her about running off to town. Many times he’d held his ground and made her stay home, even though she’d sulk around and pout and look at him like she hated his neck. But after she busted that window out, he let her go. Me and Macon both was scared she’d go out of her head for good the next time.
One day after it got warm I was going across the yard with a bucket of eggs, headed for the kitchen door, when I heard a loud car come up the hill. I stopped and tried to see who it was, but the sun was in my eyes. That old car pulled up next to the barn and blowed the horn two or three times, had the dog barking and the chickens running all over the place. Sounded about as loud as Clio busting out the front room window, and give me the same awful feeling. Next thing I knowed, Clio came flying out the door with her purse on her arm. She didn’t look left or right, just ran across the yard to that car with her hair blowing back. I had a pretty good idea who was driving it. I’d heard from some of the church people that Clio was down at the pool hall in Millertown with a boy named Kenny Mayes. I was hoping it was just rumors because I knowed of the Mayeses. I reckon nary one of them has ever set foot in a church house, but they sure do spend plenty of time in the jailhouse. About every week you’ll see one of their names in the paper, picked up for drunk driving or writing bad checks or shoplifting. Macon said they was lazy, too. He worked with Kenny’s uncle down to the filling station, said he wouldn’t strike a lick at nothing. I knowed Clio and me both was in for trouble, soon as I heard she was courting a Mayes. That was the first time she took off without asking me if she could go, even if she made up the place she was going to. I watched her moving away from me and felt the tie that bound us since she was born stretching out too thin. She slammed that car door and it finally broke in two. The way I see it, that was the end of me and her. Kenny Mayes stole Clio away from me and there was nothing I could do about it.
She came back in the middle of the night, but it never was the same. Them few weeks she stayed on at the house it was like she was checking in and out of a motel. But to tell the truth, she was happier than I ever seen her. Her eyes was bright and she was taking better care of herself, all of that long hair clean and glossy around her shoulders. Then one Saturday Kenny Mayes came to the door to get Clio instead of blowing the horn for her. I’d done figured out something was up, because Clio had hovered around all morning acting skittish. Besides that, she’d took it on herself to make a cake and she hated to cook. It was about noontime that Kenny knocked and Clio wanted me to open it. “Go on, Mama,” she said. I went to the front of the house with a heavy heart because I knowed what was coming. I opened the door and there he stood, with a big old mealy-mouthed grin. I can’t say he was handsome, but his eyes was blue as the springtime sky.
“Hidee,” he said.
Clio went to him and pulled him in the front room. “Mama, this here’s Kenny Mayes,” she said. It looked like her cheeks was on fire.
“Clio said I ought to bring you something,” Kenny said. He fished around in his britches pocket and dug out a string of dime store beads with the tag still hanging off of them. I never wore such a thing in all my life, and didn’t aim to start. I took them beads and laid them on the table beside of Macon’s chair.
“Take you a seat, Kenny,” Clio said. “I’ll go get us a piece of cake to eat so you and Mama can get acquainted.”
Kenny flopped down on the loveseat with them gangly legs sprawled out and his arm slung across the back like he owned the place. I didn’t make no effort to talk, but he didn’t seem bashful about it. “It’s right pretty up here,” he said, looking out the window we’d just got fixed, at the blooming trees and the mowed green hill rolling down to the creek branch. “But it kindly stinks, don’t it? Must be the hog lot.”
We didn’t keep hogs no more, but I didn’t say it. I kept my mouth shut. Macon was gone since he worked every other Saturday at the filling station trying to earn an extra dollar, so the house was quiet besides Clio clattering around in the kitchen.
“Well,” Kenny said when Clio came in with the cake on one of my tole trays. “I aim to take good care of Clio, Miss Lamb, so you ain’t got a thing to worry about.”
“Dangit, Kenny,” Clio said, handing me a saucer of chocolate cake and a fork to eat it with. “I ain’t told her yet. We was supposed to do it together.”
“Shoot, I forgot,” Kenny said, and grinned at me.
Clio set down beside of Kenny on the loveseat. He shoveled in cake, crumbs falling all over the floor for me to clean up later. “Me and Kenny’s getting married,” she said. Her voice cracked some like she might be nervous, but she still sounded sassy as ever. “I didn’t want to tell it in front of Daddy cause I figured he’d pitch a fit.”
“When?” I asked.
“Well … I figured I’d go ahead and settle in this evening over at Kenny’s mama’s house. Then I reckon we’ll go on down to the courthouse Monday morning.”
“What are you telling me for?” I asked. She looked surprised. I couldn’t help but speak my mind. Them was the first words I’d said since that old weasel came to the door, and I didn’t aim to pussyfoot around. “Why didn’t y’uns just run off and do it?”
Clio couldn’t think of nothing to say for a minute. “I don’t know, Mama. It didn’t seem right, I guess.”