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.”
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.”