A Sky for Us Alone

by Kristin Russell

  “Here,” she said, and handed me the list. “Or if it’s too much trouble,” she said when I kept looking at her wondering what I could possibly have to say, “I’m sure we can manage.”

  “Sorry,” I said, finally taking the list from her hand, and telling myself to pull it together. “Cocoa Puffs, huh?” I said to the kid, and grabbed a basket.

  “Yep!” He nodded his head up and down and followed me as soon as I started walking.

  The girl caught up with us, leaned closer to me, and whispered, “Don’t worry if there aren’t any. The sugar makes him even more excited, if you can believe it.” Her hair brushed across my arm. She smelled like suntan lotion and strawberry lip gloss.

  “Think cereal’s over there.” I pointed to the aisle.

  “Have you worked here long?” she asked.

  “I don’t work here,” I said, and realized it must have been confusing why Mrs. Devin would ask me to help otherwise, even though I saw the answer pretty clearly. “Uh-oh. Nothing chocolate here.” I pointed at the boxes of cereal.

  “Honey-O’s will do just fine,” she said, and grabbed the box. Her little brother stared down at the floor when he heard the sad news, and she petted the top of his head.

  “All right,” I said, holding up the list again. “Milk, bread, fruit—you’ll have to go into town for the fruit,” I said.

  “Sorry,” Mrs. Devin yelled our way, obviously listening to every word we were saying. “Produce don’t sell fast enough. Think there’s some applesauce over there, though. And maybe some jars of peaches too, next to Fanny Reid’s jams.”

  “Thanks, we’ll make do,” the girl said, and grabbed a loaf of bread, then walked over to look at the jams.

  I couldn’t help but stare at the tanned backs of her legs and the way her shorts rode up against them when she reached for the blueberry jelly.

  “You got family here?” I asked.

  She set the jar in the basket I was holding and looked up at me like she was trying to judge if I could be trusted.

  “Sorry,” I said when she was silent. “We don’t see many new people around here. I’m not the best at small talk, either.”

  I turned to the cooler and grabbed a carton of milk.

  “I’m starting to realize that,” she said. “About the small town, not small talk, I mean. No, put that back!” I froze in motion and she laughed. “Sorry, I was talking to Omie.” She hurried over to her brother, who’d found the candy section a few feet away. “He’s like a little hound dog puppy. Always finds the sweets before anyone else does.”

  I opened the cooler again and held up a pack of bologna. “Maybe this would help?”

  “Thanks,” she said. “That might help fill him up, but I’ll tell ya, it would be more than a small miracle.” She started walking toward the counter and I followed her.

  She still hadn’t answered my question about her family, but I was clear on the fact that she didn’t want me nosing around too much.

  “Want to start a tab or pay up now?” Mrs. Devin asked the girl when I set the basket on the counter.

  “I’ll take the tab since it’s an option,” the girl said.

  “As long as you got someone who lives here vouching for you.”

  The girl looked at Mrs. Devin, then over at me. “Our dad is the new foreman at the mine. We just moved here—at least for a while, it seems. Will that work?” She didn’t look too happy about sharing the information.

  “Sure will. Have him come in this week and we’ll get your account set up. We look forward to seeing more of you.” Mrs. Devin glanced at me when she said it, then wrote the prices of all the items in a notebook and handed it to the girl to sign.

  When the girl leaned over, she pushed her hair to the side and a gold locket fell from her neck and swung back and forth like a magnet over metal. Her brother pulled at the frayed edge of her jean shorts. “Let’s go eat,” he said. I watched her hand move across the paper while she wrote.

  “Almost.” She took the bag from Mrs. Devin and set it against her hip, then reached out for her brother’s fingers. She turned to me and said, “Thanks for helping us.”

  “I’m around. If you have any questions about anything here.”

  “Like the county gossip?” She smiled. “I’m sure we’ll run into each other soon. From what I’ve seen so far, it’d be hard for anyone to hide for too long.”

  “That’s a lot more true than you know,” I said, and then realized it sounded creepy, but couldn’t say anything else because they were already standing at the door, ready to leave.

  As soon as the door chimed closed behind them, I turned right away to the paper where she’d signed her name and read her neat signature: “Tennessee Moore.”

  “Well now.” Mrs. Devin sounded proud, like she’d roped them into the store for me on purpose.

  “Wonder why Amos brought an outsider in for the foreman job instead of hiring someone from here.”

  “Is that really what you’re worried about right now?” She laughed. “Listen, I saw the smile that girl brought to your face. Nothing can erase sorrow, but don’t spite the good things that come your way, Harlowe. Wish I’d known that sooner.”

  “Thanks, I’ll try to remember that,” I said. “Shit, it’s getting dark.” I finally grabbed the Coke I’d come for and reached into my pocket for some change.

  “It’s on me,” Mrs. Devin said. “Don’t leave just yet, I want to throw some things together for your mama.”

  While she scurried around the shop I stared outside the door and wished I’d seen which direction Tennessee and her brother had gone. I hoped they didn’t have too far to walk, and that Omie could eat a big bowl of cereal soon, if that’s what they were having for dinner.

  Mrs. Devin started putting things in a bag: some lotion (for Mama, I guessed), Little Debbie snacks, Kool-Aid mix, some ramen packs and peanut butter crackers.

  “Give her my love and tell her I wanted to be there today,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And Harlowe? Just one more thing. Looking for any kind of revenge won’t bring Nathaniel back now.”

  “Even if it was wrongdoing that took him?”

  “Personally, I still believe two wrongs don’t make a right.”

  I took the bag from her. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m sure this will all be put to good use.”

  Chapter 6

  WHILE I WALKED HOME, the dark orange sky seeped into an even deeper pink. I didn’t feel like the sun should be setting, even though it cooled the air just a little. The day was ending and so was the way everything had been before Nate died. I didn’t imagine we’d ever find a new normal without him.

  Betsy Lawry was still at Mama’s side when I got home. The two of them sat at the kitchen table, a bottle of whiskey and a pack of smokes between them, and a bunch of leftover food spread all around. It was the same setup as when Mama used to have people over for Bible study when I was little, except for the whiskey maybe. At least not until most everyone had gone home.

  “Where’ve you been? I was worried,” Mama said. Her words bled into each other.

  “I went with Jacob and Red. Didn’t Mama Draughn tell you?”

  “Oh yeah, that’s right. Couldn’t remember if that was today.”

  “It’s been a very long one for you, sugar,” Betsy said. “I’ll start putting things away.” Betsy scooted her chair out from the table and started wrapping whatever was still uncovered before putting it into the fridge.

  I wasn’t hungry, even though I hadn’t eaten anything all day. I knew I should put something in my stomach, and grabbed a brownie off the plate before Betsy carried them away. I remembered the Sip N Sak bag and moved it beside Mama. “From Mrs. Devin,” I said. “She sends her love.”

  Mama took a look inside and said, “You’d think she’d know to send cigarettes at a time like this.”

  “I thought it was nice of her to send anything at all. From the looks of it, she’s hardly breaking ev
en. Where’s Daddy?”

  “No idea. Left hours ago.” She rested her forehead in her palm and swirled the glass in front of her. If there had ever been any ice in it, it had melted by now.

  “Would you like me to go to town with you tomorrow?” Betsy asked her.

  “For what?” I said, looking at the brownie in front of me, thinking if I stared at it long enough I might want to eat it.

  “Nathaniel’s insurance,” Mama said.

  “Through the mine,” Betsy added. “Either parent can sign.”

  “I’ll be fine, sweetie, but thank you,” Mama said. “Harlowe will go with me, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “All right. I’ll check in tomorrow afternoon. Call if either of you need anything at all. Don’t get up.” She put the last covered dish in the fridge and hugged Mama’s shoulder from beside her chair.

  I followed Betsy to the door and then watched her walk to her car. Nate’s headstone shone in the floodlights. It’d be the first night that the two of us didn’t share a room, and I felt bad for leaving him outside with the other dead people.

  “Give me a hand?” Mama asked once I’d turned the lock, her fingers still wrapped around the glass. She leaned on me more than she should have as we walked to her room.

  When I helped her to the edge of the bed, I spotted the orange bottle on her nightstand. “What’s that?” I asked, even though I knew, and the sickness in my stomach I’d felt earlier returned.

  “Could hardly walk today after everything. I won’t take them for more than a few days, don’t worry.”

  “That’s a real bad idea,” I said. “You had to go through so much last time, I know it wasn’t easy. They say it can be even harder the next time you try to stop, or worse.”

  She didn’t answer me but lay down on the bed in her funeral dress and closed her eyes. Prissy, the cat, ran in and jumped up beside her. Whether Mama was already asleep or just ignoring me, I couldn’t tell. Either way, she wasn’t going to talk with me about anything else that night.

  I stood in the hallway outside her room for a minute, trying to decide if I should sleep on the couch or in my bed or if I should just get some air for a while. I really didn’t feel like being in our trailer at all. But I knew I’d have to get used to my room again sooner or later, so I went and slid into Nate’s bunk, feeling a little closer to him for it.

  He’d taped pictures to the boards above the bed. I couldn’t stop looking at the one of us taken the only time either of us had ever been out of state. Daddy took us to visit our aunt and uncle and our cousin Beau in the Florida gulf. In the photo, I’m ten and Nate’s seventeen. We’re standing on either side of a sixty-pound wahoo fish that we caught together, with some help from cousin Beau. The fish was as big as I was then. We’d talked about going back to visit and see the bait-and-tackle shop Beau ran now, maybe go out on one of his fishing tours. I hated that we never made it back there together.

  I rolled onto my side and the edge of something poked through the sheet. It was a small notebook, the kind you were supposed to write in for class. I opened it and didn’t see anything at first, but kept flipping the pages. Soon, I found Nate’s handwriting and pages of dates and places.

  – 2/21 Huntsville

  – 3/14 Columbus

  – 3/27 Smithville

  – 4/09 Hazard

  That’s all there was, rows and rows of it, with no explanation of what it meant. For a second, I wondered if I should give the notebook to the sheriff, but knew that would do about as much good as shouting into a storm to try to make it stop. I sat up and bumped my head on the bunk, remembering that I’d left Nate’s things on the desk. I looked inside his wallet first. There was a twenty-dollar bill, three ones, Nate’s miner’s card, and his driver’s license. When I picked up his phone, it still had a little battery charge left, and also a passcode, I was frustrated to find. Four digits. I typed in Nate’s birthday, 10/27—still locked. I tried my birthday, and then Mama’s. After my third failed try, a message popped up that said “phone disabled.” I found the charger cord underneath the desk and plugged in Nate’s phone, setting it back on top of the desk beside my own.

  I flipped through the notebook one more time, looking for anything that I might have missed. I kept thinking that somewhere between the lines, he might have scribbled something small to give me a clue what the places meant to him. He hadn’t been to all of them, I was sure of that. I would have noticed him being gone overnight so much. We’d shared a room our whole lives except for the few times one of us stayed at a friend’s house or Nate slept over at a girl’s, but he always let me know. And those times weren’t near as frequent as the dates in the book. He couldn’t have been away from the mines that much anyway.

  I realized that I was tired beyond exhaustion and might just be making something out of nothing to find some sense in the last twenty-four hours. I looked at the picture of us with the wahoo one more time before closing my eyes. To stop my brain from skipping across the lines of numbers and places, I remembered the way Tennessee looked at the Sip N Sak. For the ten minutes I was with her, the shadow of Nate’s death didn’t feel quite so big. Or at least I felt I could see out from under the edge of it. I wondered if maybe she’d been at least a little glad to meet me. Either way, I needed to find her again and make sure that my second impression was better than the first.

  Chapter 7

  “HERE YOU GO.” I set Mama’s coffee mug beside the cigarettes on her nightstand. “Post office will open soon. I thought you’d want to get going.”

  She rubbed her eyes and pulled herself up to a sitting position in the bed. “Thanks. Did you sleep?”

  “Think I got a few hours in. You?”

  “Slept hard. Needed it.” Her sentences were one long word, the “S” barely making it out of her mouth. She looked away from me and down into her coffee, knowing that I recognized the medicated fog in her eyes.

  “I’ll leave you to dress,” I said, wanting to say much more. “It’s already getting hot in here,” was all I could add, for the moment.

  I stepped over the rug on the porch that covered Nate’s bloodstain. To the side were piles of old broken toys and boxes of clothes us boys had outgrown years ago. Earlier that spring, Mama made plans to clear things out and repaint the porch. It might be something we could do together soon, once she was able.

  When she came outside, I was glad to see that Mama had finally changed out of the dress she wore to the funeral. Her curls were wet and clean, and her T-shirt was tucked neat into her jeans. She took a pair of sunglasses from her purse and said, “You always fear you’ll get that call from the mine. I never guessed it would be something else that took him.” She tripped over the first stair on her way down and tumbled forward, but I managed to catch her at the bottom.

  “Give me the keys,” I said, once we’d made sure she hadn’t broken or sprained anything.

  “I’m fine to drive,” she said. “There must have been something on the step.”

  “No, Mama. You’re still loopy from the pills. I’m driving.”

  After I started the engine, I rolled down the window. The air conditioner was out in the car too. It seemed these things always broke when you needed them most.

  “I tried to talk with your daddy about putting a fire under the sheriff with Tommy,” Mama said. “But he won’t talk with me about it. Maybe you could try.”

  “I’ll do my best. Guess he’s scared of losing his job, or worse.” Red dust flew up around us and into the car while I drove.

  “It’s not okay,” Mama said, “ignoring the right thing to do. People used to care more about each other around here, I know that much.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “You always knew others were looking out for you, in a good way. Nowadays you don’t know who you should trust. Everyone’s out for themselves. Scared—you’re right about that. Everyone’s scared.”

  We drove past the trailers off Kinley Road and th
en Mohosh Pond, out from the shadows of the mountains above us. Kinley dropped toward town, and after we turned off of it, we saw solid brick houses with clean yards. They weren’t big houses, like Amos Prater’s sprawled out on top of the mountain, but they were solid, and everything had a rightful place in a garage or carport or basement, instead of spread over porches and yards like ours and most of our neighbors’.

  While we were stopped at a light, I noticed the fuel tank was near empty. “I’ll drop you at the post office and fill up,” I said. “Unless you want me to go inside with you.”

  “Pretty sure I only need to sign my name. I think I can handle that,” she said, but still I wondered when I saw she was fighting to keep her eyes open. “Get a carton of smokes while you’re there?”

  “I need cash,” I said.

  She looked into her purse, then handed me a crumpled twenty.

  “That won’t cover gas and a carton. I’ll get you a pack instead.”

  “Wait.” She dug deeper into the corners of her bag and found a five. “Get the carton.”

  I wanted to say that more cigarettes meant less gas for the car, but I knew better than to fuss with her about it anymore.

  When I pulled up to the door of the post office, Mama patted her hair and tried to fix whatever had blown loose along the drive. I waited until she was inside and I couldn’t see her anymore, then I drove to the only gas station on the strip. One of the two pumps was free, and I pulled up alongside of it. I had barely put the car in park when a thud shook the car so hard that my seat belt pulled tight against my chest and a horn blared loud behind me. I caught my breath then leaned out the window. A truck had run right up against my bumper, and a man with a pissed-off look leaned out the window, motioning for me to come toward him.