Devil on My Heels

by Joyce McDonald

  I get up to pour another glass of punch. I was only two weeks away from my fourth birthday when my mom died. I don’t remember her face at all, only the smell of her clothes. “I don’t think you’re crazy,” I tell Delia.

  I close the fridge door and look over at her. “After Mom died, I used to sneak into her closet, close the door, and bury my face in her dresses, breathing in the scent of her powder and bath soap. I used to sit on the floor for hours with my eyes closed, pretending she was right there in the closet with me. Then Dad gave all her clothes to the Salvation Army, and I didn’t know where to go to be with Mom after that. But as long as her clothes were there, it was like she was still here with me.”

  I come back to the table and sit down.

  Delia nods and I know she understands. “I got this old sweater of Gus’s. I don’t wear it or anything. I keep it folded up nice in my dresser drawer. Except sometimes I take it out and hold it on my lap if I’m having a bad day.

  “I haven’t washed that sweater since the night my Gus died. Can’t seem to bring myself to do it. It smells just like him. A little bit of that Old Spice he’d splash on himself after shaving, a little bit of those cigars he smoked when we could afford ’em, a dab of that pomade he slicked his hair back with—all those smells, and something of his own, too, that didn’t get splashed on or smeared on, something that came right from his skin.

  “He had that sweater with him the night he died, but he wasn’t wearing it. He’d tied the sleeves around his saxophone case and was carrying it with him. If he’d been wearing it, it would of got all tore up, soaked in blood more than likely.”

  I knew Gus had been killed in a hit-and-run. But I never knew how it happened. I’m not sure Delia will tell me, but I ask her anyway.

  “You don’t want to hear that, child.”

  “Yes I do.”

  Delia watches me for a few minutes, not saying anything. Then she gets up to check the corn bread. “Not today, sugar.” She has her back to me.

  “Please.”

  “Someday, maybe. Just not today.” Her voice is soft and smooth as pudding and sounds far away.

  There’s no wheedling anything out of Delia if she isn’t in the mood to talk. I finally give in and head upstairs.

  Our house has two stories. My great-granddaddy Alderman wanted it that way, a big white house with a porch across the front and a smaller back porch. Most of the houses around here are only one story, except the Tully place and a few others.

  My curtains balloon, catching the soft breeze coming through my windows. I close my eyes and breathe. The air is so heavy with the scent of orange blossoms from our groves that it makes me a little light-headed.

  I kick off my sneakers and flop down on the pink flowered bedspread that Delia helped me pick out of the Sears Roe-buck catalog a few months back. We picked out matching curtains too, since my dad doesn’t know the first thing about decorating a girl’s room.

  Thinking back over those years after my mom died, the face I remember best is Delia’s. She has always been here. Spraying Bactine on my scraped knees, baking my birthday cakes every year, buying me my first sanitary napkins and a belt, and then explaining how to use them, washing my hair with foul-smelling medicine when the whole third grade thought they’d caught head lice from the Dobbin twins— which turned out not to be the case, but it upset a lot of folks just the same.

  It was Delia who gave me my name. I was three weeks old, and Mom and Dad still couldn’t agree on whether to name me after my great-grandma Tilly—Mom’s grand-mother—or my dad’s aunt Nora. Up till then, everybody called me Sugar Baby. Then one morning Delia was rocking me back and forth in my carriage on the front porch when this ringed turtledove landed right on my belly. It had soft beige-white feathers and a black ring across the back of its neck, like a tiny kerchief. It sat there on my blanket for the longest while, cocking its head to one side, then the other, like it was contemplating something. At least that’s how Delia tells it.

  She told my mom and dad that she was purely certain that turtledove was a sign from heaven. The Lord figured I’d gone on long enough without a name and decided to give me one himself. I’m just glad Delia didn’t think the Lord was trying to name me Turtle.

  Delia’s hugs have always been mixed up in my mind with the scent of Vicks cough drops, lemon furniture polish, and the musty smell of cigarette smoke that clings to her clothes. This mixture of scents has sealed Delia’s hugs in my mind forever. I cannot smell Vicks cough drops without feeling warm and safe. Sometimes I even buy a box at the drugstore just to smell them.

  And here, all this time, Delia has had a whole other life apart from Dad and me. She has had Gus and Jeremiah and her other children. A life I’ve never really paid much attention to before. Maybe because I didn’t like sharing her with anybody else. I wanted her there just for me. When Gus died and Jeremiah went off to college, I finally did have her all to myself, except for her taking care of my dad, of course.

  Until now, when Delia left to go home each night, I no more thought about where she was going than I wondered where the stars went each morning. I just expected them to come back. Like Delia did each day. If that ever changed, I expect my whole world would come crashing down.

  8

  For two agonizing hours I have been working on an essay about Emily Dickinson’s poem, number 744, for Miss Poyer’s class, and wondering why all Emily Dickinson’s poems are numbered. Couldn’t she think up titles, for heaven’s sake?

  I love reading poems out loud, the sound of the words, the rhythms. But I don’t much like writing essays about them. So far all I have are three stupid paragraphs that more or less say the same thing three different ways. Miss Poyer doesn’t let us get away with this sort of thing. She calls it writing in circles, and she’s always on the lookout for it.

  The reason I have chosen this poem is because it is about remorse. It begins “Remorse—is Memory—awake—.” I’ve been feeling a little of that remorse myself lately, after what happened to Gator the day before. So I was curious to see what Emily Dickinson had to say on the subject. Only, trying to understand one of her poems is like trying to break some sort of Soviet spy code.

  I slouch in my chair and tap the end of my pencil on my desk. I pick up another pencil and rap them both, playing the top of my desk like a drum. I’m giving serious thought to changing my topic to the excessive use of dashes in the poems of Emily Dickinson.

  My desk sits right in front of my window. The wind has suddenly kicked up its heels and it’s whipping the Spanish moss into a frenzy. It’s dark out, so until now there hasn’t been much to distract me except for the distant rumble of thunder.

  Then, zap! Lightning zigzags toward the ground and for a panicky moment I think it might have hit someplace in the groves. My ears are cocked toward the open window, listening for a loud crack, but when it doesn’t come, I relax.

  It’s still dry as toast out there. We’ve had only one tiny sneeze of a storm since Friday afternoon when Chase gave me a ride home from the cemetery. It lasted barely five minutes. Nothing that would help with this drought.

  I try not to think about Chase. Whenever I do, I think of Gator getting the tar beat out of him. And Chase and I just standing there, doing nothing.

  I go back to reading Emily Dickinson’s poem.

  Remorse is cureless—the Disease Not even God—can heal— For ’tis His institution—and The Adequate of Hell—

  I am staring at that last line, with my eyes practically burning a hole in the page, when a loud roar of thunder rattles the windows in my room. The blast that follows is louder than any shotgun I’ve ever heard. More like an explosion. I nearly jump out of my chair.

  The flash of lightning, streaking down the side of our barn, is so bright it hurts my eyes. The next thing I know, flames are leaping into the air.

  I charge downstairs, two at a time, and out the back door. Flames are licking away at the boards of our barn. My first thought is to grab the h
ose by the house. But before I reach it, I hear the back door slam. My dad is coming right at me, carrying a fire extinguisher like he’s cradling a newborn.

  “Call the fire department!” he yells as he runs past me.

  Somehow I make it back to the house, even though my legs have gone all rubbery. It feels as if my bones are dissolving.

  The phone numbers of the police and fire departments are on the bulletin board beside the phone in the kitchen. I squint at them, but they’re just a blur. I can’t seem to focus my eyes. My hands are shaking so badly I can hardly dial. Desperate, I dial 0 for the local operator, give her our address, and tell her what is happening.

  By the time I get back one whole side of our barn is in flames. A fifty-year-old barn, built by my great-granddaddy Alderman, going up like a tinderbox.

  The night sky flames orange as if every star is being burned out of the heavens. Even the Spanish moss waving in the trees seems to glow. The smoke stings my eyes and burns my throat. Chunks of burning ash disappear into the dark sky. I am terrified they will set the moss on fire on their journey skyward, turning our oak trees into flaming torches.

  With all this thunder and lightning crashing around, you’d think there would be some rain. But so far, not a single drop. If ever we needed a downpour, it’s right this very minute, before the fire swallows up everything in sight.

  Through the smoke I see Dad soaking down the side of the barn with the garden hose. I pick up the fire extinguisher lying on the ground nearby, but it’s already empty.

  That’s when I realize someone else is here, standing a few feet away, beating at the flames with something.

  I drop the empty fire extinguisher, take a step back, and stare right into Chase Tully’s sooty face. He stops pounding the flames and stands frozen, holding his singed leather jacket like a dead animal. He looks as if he can’t believe this is happening.

  I don’t have time to think about what Chase is doing here. My dad is shouting, “It’s too late. I got to get those tractors out!” He runs inside the barn. Chase follows, but Dad won’t let him go in.

  An engine roars and here comes Dad on one of the tractors. He parks it in the field across the way. Most of my dad’s equipment—his new tractor, the smudge pots, kerosene, fertilizer, and all—are stored in the new barn Dad had built two years ago. It’s metal. Good thing too. No telling what would have happened if the kerosene and fertilizer were in the old barn. We’d probably all be blown to smithereens.

  My dad heads back to the barn to get the other tractor.

  “Dad! Don’t!” I shout. “The gasoline in the tractor—it could catch fire and explode!” I am scared out of my wits he will try to save that tractor anyway. But he stops a few feet from the door. His mouth hangs open as he watches the flames swallow up what is left inside.

  I stand next to him, tears streaming down my face. It isn’t only a barn we’re losing, it’s a piece of Alderman history. That’s what has to be going through his mind too. “It was lightning,” I tell him. “Did you see it hit?”

  “Can’t say as I did.” He shakes his head. “I been meaning to put that lightning rod up. It’s been sitting in the barn now for two years.” He wipes the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his T-shirt. “Damn it to hell.” He all but spits the words out.

  I can tell by the look on his face that he’s going to blame himself for this fire till the day he dies. And there isn’t a whole lot I can say to change his mind. If he had put up that lightning rod, maybe we wouldn’t be standing here, watching our barn collapse into a heap of ashes. I feel bad for him.

  The scream of sirens whistles through the night. Two fire trucks from Benevolence tear up the dirt road by our house and park a safe distance from what is left of the barn. A second squad of fire trucks arrives from nearby Brighton, followed by Moss Henley and Jimmy Wheeler in their police cruisers.

  Moss comes lumbering across the yard. Those bulldog shoulders of his shift one way then the other. His thumbs are hooked in his belt, the one that holds his holster and gun. Jimmy follows behind him. Jimmy isn’t wearing his police hat. His crew cut puts me in mind of a fresh-mowed lawn.

  “Spudder’s on his way,” Moss tells my dad. Spudder Rhodes is the chief of police. Spudder, Moss, and Jimmy make up the entire Benevolence police force.

  By now the gas in the tractor has caught fire. The explosion roars into the night. A ball of flame shoots through the place where the barn roof used to be.

  Men pull hoses from the fire trucks and charge headlong toward the flames. But it’s too late. Anybody can see that just by looking at the pile of glowing cinders in our yard. Still, they keep the water coming till there isn’t a single burning ember left. Nothing but the stink of wet, charred wood. They don’t want to take any chances that the fire might smolder. If the dry grass starts burning again, the fire could spread to the house. The firefighters even soak down the nearby oaks and Spanish moss.

  We stand there, Dad, Chase, and I, watching the men do their job and feeling about as useful as three lawn mowers in a snowstorm. Dad circles my shoulders with his arm and pulls me close.

  The firemen are packing up their equipment and getting ready to head out when Spudder Rhodes finally shows up. He isn’t wearing his police uniform. Just khakis and a striped polo shirt. He moseys on up to my dad, belly tumbling over his belt, like he’s just out for an evening stroll and happened by. My dad tells Chase and me to head on back to the house. He needs to talk to Spudder.

  Chase and I are leaning over the kitchen sink, scrubbing the soot off our hands and faces, when my dad comes through the door. He looks like a whipped pup.

  I hand Chase a towel. His hands aren’t burned, at least not much. The hair is singed in a few places, and there is one nasty blister in the spot between his thumb and forefinger. But that’s about it.

  He’s watching me with this little smirk on his face, which is when it dawns on me that I’m standing here in my grodiest dungarees and one of my dad’s old T-shirts, with my hair in rollers. Any other time I would have made a beeline for my bedroom and not come out again till I resembled a human being. But our barn has just burned to the ground, and I don’t much care how I look.

  “You see the lightning hit?” Dad asks Chase.

  Chase shakes his head. He circles his face with the towel a few times. “No. I was driving past your house when I saw the fire. When I got here, I heard you telling Dove to call the fire department. Then I just started beating the flames.”

  Dad puts his hand on Chase’s shoulder and eases him into a chair. Then he looks straight at me. “How about you make us some coffee, Dove. And see about getting some salve and bandages for Chase’s hand.”

  Chase’s hand isn’t that bad, so I take longer than I need to, making the coffee. I have to go upstairs to the medicine cabinet for the bandages, and I don’t want to miss anything.

  “It caught the edge of the barn roof and skidded right down the side,” I tell them. Dad hasn’t even bothered to ask me about it. “The lightning, Dad. You were asking Chase if he saw it hit.”

  Dad stands there, his eyes aimed on me while I make coffee. He doesn’t say anything. I don’t fault him for not paying any attention to what I’m telling him, even though it bothers me a little. I can tell his mind is someplace else. Finally he wanders over to the refrigerator and gets himself a bottle of beer. He digs around in one of the kitchen drawers for a bottle opener.

  After a few swallows, he comes up behind Chase and pats him on the shoulder. “I’m glad you were here, son.”

  He looks over at me. “Dove, you planning to get those bandages anytime before Christmas?”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to remind him that I was there too and wasn’t he glad about that? But I don’t say anything. I head upstairs, grab what I need, and hurry back to the kitchen.

  Dad tells me to take care of Chase’s hand, then goes off to finish talking to Spudder, who is still outside looking around. I don’t know what Spudder thinks he
’ll find. Lightning’s lightning. It doesn’t hang around for questioning.

  The whole time I’m bandaging Chase’s hand, he’s staring at me with that little smile twitching on his lips, like he finds it funny, my being his nurse. And wouldn’t you know, right when I’m thinking this, he says, “You’d make a fine nurse, Dove.”

  Suddenly my mind skitters back to when I was six years old and the two of us were hidden up in the loft of our barn— the one that just burned down—playing what seemed at the time to be a particularly interesting game of nurse and doctor. Chase is probably the only person outside of my family, with the exception of Doc Martindale, to have seen parts of my body that no one has any business seeing.

  I focus my attention on fixing his hand. I can’t bring myself to look at him.

  “You got a real soft touch,” he says, resting his free hand on top of mine.

  Goose bumps are doing the jitterbug all up and down my arm. There’s no way to hide something like that.

  Chase looks down at my arm and smiles.

  “How come you didn’t help Gator yesterday?” I ask, slipping my hand out of his.

  “Whoa! Where’d that come from?”

  “Willy and Earl were beating the tar out of him. You could have stopped it.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Chase stares down at his bandaged hand. “You weren’t exactly charging across the street yelling for time-outs either, you know.”

  He’s right about that. I honestly don’t have any business asking him about what he did or didn’t do. Not when I stood there, doing nothing but watching, like everybody else.

  “I know,” I say. “And I get angry at myself every time I think about it.”

  Chase nods like he understands. “It’s just the way it is, Dove.”

  “Why? Why does it have to be that way?”

  He shakes his head. Chase doesn’t know the answer to this one any more than I do.