He pulled the foil off and forked through the melted, re-refrigerated cheese. Congealed grease floated on top of a white, peppered sauce. He took a bite and looked toward his mother’s room. For a minute he forgot that she wasn’t lying back there ready to scratch his head when his eyes grew heavy.
Her door was shut, as it had been since he’d stolen into the room sobbing to sift through the closet for a good dress, none of which fit her for the funeral, leaving the funeral director to drape two rose-print sheets over her, gathering them around her with safety pins. Mose had felt ashamed that she didn’t have a dress, but she looked beautiful and at rest lying there. Now there was the hole cut six feet wide in her wall. Insulation and wiring hung down like entrails.
Mose swallowed a sob, and cold potatoes stuck in his throat. Choking, he grabbed for a drink of water that only made it worse. He knocked the chair back and doubled over, hands on his knees, until his face turned red and his eyes watered. He ran out the open door onto the porch and leaned over the railing gagging. After he had thrown up everything, he sat down on the steps, wiping the spit from his beard with the back of his arm. The sounds of work floated down from the hill while the sun set around him. After a while, the cat slipped through the door, sat on his lap, and licked white gravy off its paws, purring into Mose’s beard.
The next day Mose showed up at the travel trailer at 6:00 a.m. The tin door gave under his knuckles when he knocked. “I wanted to see if y’all needed some help,” he yelled, running the brim of a stained mesh cap through his hands. “I can come back.”
“Open up,” Marni yelled. She sat in a white robe at the tiny fold-down table cuddling a mug, her mop of curly hair piled high on her head. She waved him inside, offering coffee.
“I can’t believe Coach Gilbert is still at it,” she said. “He was coaching the boys when I was playing. Running four corners half the game, screaming his fool head off. Kicked me off the bus once for kissing Lew Johnson in the back seat on the way home from Krum. Of course Lew didn’t have to find a ride home. He ran four corners!”
As manager of the boys’ basketball team, Mose had sat in the front seat of a Blue Bird bus, his forehead pressed to the rectangular sliding glass window as he watched Orion, the Hunter, stretch above the mesquite and sleeping cattle. He poked his nose into the metroplex as a junior when the team with no better than a 50-50 record had lucked into the regional tournament by way of a putrid district and a halfcourt miracle lobbed at the buzzer.
He was supposed to keep the stat sheet but didn’t have a head for numbers. He had complained to his mother how the figures jumped around on the page and how the players prodded him.
“Don’t let them run you off, Mosey of mine,” she’d said. “Just listen to Coach and do your best.”
In the added pressure of the big game, he kept confusing the assist column with the point column, and it was easier for the lanky, acne-faced boys to focus on Mose’s managerial skills instead of the drubbing they took at the hands of a 1A team whose home gym sat in the middle of a wheat field.
When Coach nodded off on the way home, the boys made a game of tossing tape balls at Mose’s head, a game at which they surprisingly excelled and therefore did not let up on. Instead of charging down the aisle, fists swinging, Mose sat lower in his seat and leaned his forehead against the vibrating glass. He kept his gaze on the Hunter, closing his eyes to his own weakness as the bus carried him back home. In his senior year he was not asked to return.
“Coach Gilbert was real good to me. I had to quit on account of Mama’s health.” Mose immediately felt bad for his lie. “Well,” he said. “She needed somebody here.”
“You sure loved your mama, didn’t you.”
Mose passed his fingers through his beard and looked at the floor.
“I’m so sorry, Mose.”
“Just over a week ago she was talking about us planting a good garden next year,” Mose said, his voice low. “She asked me every day how many more milks I had to go to get all my seeds planted.”
When she’d lost her appetite, he bought baby carrots instead of Ore-Idas, decided to grow some beets. He began to talk about them taking walks. He knew now that he should have gone for help.
“Her breath wasn’t nothing but a whisper,” he said. “I couldn’t bring myself to leave her. I opened all the windows wide and patted her face with a wet washcloth. I sang the main part of her favorite hymn like a broken record because that’s all I could remember. I finally ran for a phone as fast as I could, but she was gone when the fire truck pulled up.”
Marni motioned for Mose to sit on the vinyl bench beside her, but he was still talking at the floor.
“Them EMTs handled her like a sick dog didn’t nobody want to touch.” He shook out his bandana and touched it to his eyes. “They sat her down to catch their breath and let her gown fall open. Said there wasn’t room for me to ride to the hospital with them.”
“It sounds like she was sick for a long time.”
“I could have planted beets last year. I could have spent more time with her instead of down at the tank fishing or pilfering around the stores when I went into town,” Mose said. He bit the skin on the side of his thumb. “I should have got them there sooner.”
Stevie, a tall woman with a dark bob tied in a green scarf, pushed through a curtain that hid the bedroom at the back of the trailer. Mose felt his face warm. He didn’t know these ladies, and here he was blubbering on.
“Mose, this is Stevie.”
“It’s a pleasure.” Stevie said. She dropped onto the bench beside Marni and jerked twice on each lace of her new work boots.
“Mose was just telling me about—” Marni started, but Mose cut her off.
“Y’all aim to sell the old Birdwell place after you fix it up?”
“We’re going to live here, Mose,” Marni said.
Mose studied his thumb. “You said y’all are partners?” Stevie looked up from her boots and shook her head, giving Marni an I-told-you-so look.
“Yes, honey,” Marni began. “We’re partners.” She sighed and began again. “In the sense that we can’t get legally married because the state of Texas is just short of the Dark Ages when it comes to these things? Stevie is my wife. I’m hers. I thought that was clear yesterday.”
“I’m sorry,” Mose said. “I didn’t know ladies could marry like that.”
“Ladies can’t marry like that,” Stevie said, walking to the small half fridge and pulling out orange juice. “Not here.”
“I’m real sorry,” Mose said, stepping toward the door.
“Sorry for what?” Marni said.
“I don’t know,” Mose said. “I didn’t know. I never . . .”
“Met lesbians before?” Stevie asked putting the juice box in the trash.
“I guess not.”
“Well, Mose, meet the lesbians. Lesbians,” Stevie said, sweeping her hand around the trailer, “meet Mose.”
“You still want the work?” Marni asked. Stevie crossed her arms and legs and leaned against the small stove.
Mose didn’t know what to say. He’d never had to consider what he thought of it before. It was nice to think of people up here, and he guessed it couldn’t hurt to help them with the house. His mama’s disabilities wouldn’t be coming anymore, and he couldn’t live off catfish.
“I reckon so,” Mose said, placing his hand on the small latch. It was warm from the sun that was already brutal and peeking over the hill. A fat buzzing fly bounced, trapped in the curtain.
“Can you swing a hammer?” Stevie asked.
Marni snorted into her cup.
Mose cut his eyes at Marni, unsure if he had done something else to make himself look foolish. He hadn’t let go of the latch. “Busted my thumbs enough to aim straight, I guess.”
“It’s not you, Mose. I’ve never in my life heard Stevie say ‘swing a hammer.’”
“I built our garden boxes in Austin and rehung the door that got broken during your ‘solsti
ce party,’” Stevie said.
Marni made a big show of winking at Mose.
“Oh, you’re funny. So funny I almost forgot we were sitting in a roasting oven in the world’s last dead zone, next to a . . . ” Stevie searched for the right word as she disappeared into the back of the trailer again. After a cheap drawer snapped shut, she yelled, “Rattrap . . . on Dump Road!”
“I told you we can petition the county to change the name. You wanted to move here, too, my dear,” Marni yelled.
Mose liked the way Marni’s eyes sparkled and the way she seemed to be letting him in on some kind of good time. He let go of the door latch and looked through the curtain at the broken, gray house. The fly looped lazily free, and Mose caught it between his hands, opened the door, and let it go. “The old Birdwell place used to be a mansion,” he said. The heat pushed at his legs, almost knocked him over.
“Finest farmhouse on the south side of town when my mama was a girl,” Marni said. “Old man Birdwell raised Holsteins. This was when people still had a milk cow if they could afford one, but Birdwell saw the time coming when people would have to work away from the farm. He started shipping his milk around to stores and doorsteps before anybody else thought to.”
“Mama said the same thing.”
“It’s true. And shut that door. You’re letting all hell loose in here,” Marni said. “Don’t worry about Stevie. She doesn’t like having to drive into town to get cell service. Some meth heads gave her mess outside the DQ yesterday. Called us names when we wouldn’t give them money for ‘gas.’” Marni made air quotes.
“Skinny fellas?” Mose asked. “I seen them the last time I walked to town for groceries. They was still asking for gas?”
“I don’t think it’s gas they are after, Mose,” Marni said. She shrugged. “It’s changing all over, I guess. Anyway, Stevie’s fine. If we get Dish installed before training camp, she’ll be right at home. She wanted to move to the country too. Live out some weird redneck fantasies.” She pointed to a shotgun leaning in the corner next to a golf club. “She’s getting ready for dove season,” she said.
Mose and Stevie sweated through gutting the old horsehair plaster without much talk, except when Marni was with them. Things went smoother then. Mose worked through the hottest part of the day, like a mule, pausing only to talk quietly to the black cat that followed him up the hill every morning. Stevie seemed uncomfortable with the chaos of their days, unsure of Mose. She was prone to fits of cursing when she wasn’t walking around muttering “measure twice, cut once.” She developed a habit of flicking her tape measure and hitting golf balls into the pasture when the work became too tedious. With Marni there, the engine hummed along, her providing humor and patience to Mose’s dogged earnestness and Stevie’s precision. The three had started a competition to see who could pry the biggest piece of plaster off intact, but it continued to crumble in tiny pieces, exposing the skeleton of the house one lath rib at a time.
After Mose put in twelve hours’ work on the first day without a bite, Marni had begun making him lunch and pushing water on him. Now she and Stevie sat side by side trading bites of an apple, tinfoil from their hummus sandwiches wadded up beside them. An ant crawled over Mose’s pecked-at turkey sandwich. The cat materialized, as it had every day at lunchtime, to sit politely on its haunches waiting.
“Sure you can’t eat just a little, Mose?” Marni asked.
“He doesn’t need you mothering him,” Stevie said. “He’ll eat when he’s ready.”
Marni’s sharp glance at Stevie made Mose think they might have talked about this before. He wasn’t sure whether to feel grateful to or hurt by Stevie.
“How about those beets?” Marni said. “They taking ahold?”
“Ain’t got them in the ground yet,” Mose said. He draped a wet bandana across his neck. He’d become so caught up in their old house that he’d forgotten about his garden. He flicked the ant off the sandwich and wrapped it back up. “They probably died.”
“Tell you what let’s do,” Marni said. She stretched and rested her head on Stevie’s shoulder. “We’ve got to drop my Jeep off in town because the tailpipe rattled loose on this damn road. We’ll come back and finish the kitchen, then let’s go plant your beets.”
“They’ll be dead for sure if we’re waiting on the kitchen,” Stevie said. She swatted a wasp out of the air, and Marni yelped.
“Have you been keeping track of your hours, like we discussed?” Stevie asked.
“Anything is fine,” Mose said. He leaned heavily on his shovel to stand.
“We’re at fifty-two hours, so five hundred and twenty dollars.” Stevie looked at her watch. “Plus the rest of today.”
Mose shrugged his shoulders. Again, he didn’t know whether to feel grateful or hurt. He wasn’t sure he’d ever held that much money at once. But helping these ladies didn’t feel too much like work right now. Even when it was just him and Stevie.
“We’ll run by the bank and get you cash,” Stevie said. “Fair’s fair.”
“You look a little peaked, Mose,” Marni said. “Why don’t you go home, drink you some water, and sit in the cool?”
Mose raised his hand over his shoulder as he walked into the doorway of the old house.
“Don’t forget your dust mask, then!” Marni shouted. “Who knows what we’re unearthing in there.”
Marni said she wouldn’t hear of leaving Mose to put the plants in the ground alone, no matter how much he protested. Surprisingly, Stevie, too, insisted, saying something about the carbon cycle and what goes around comes around. It didn’t take long with their new tiller to put a patch alongside the house big enough for the beet plants and the fall plants that Marni insisted on.
When they finished, the three stood looking down on the milk cartons and their sad contents. The heat hadn’t let up, and the beet leaves hung down the side of the cartons, limp and pale. Mose wobbled and then knelt to the ground.
“Are you okay?” Marni asked. “You don’t look good.”
“I killed them,” Mose said, the thought sending a shudder through his heart.
“Just get them in the ground and see what the good Lord has in store,” Marni said.
“I can’t even keep plants alive,” Mose said, holding the leaves of a tiny cluster in his fingers.
“I don’t want to hear it, Mose. The weather’s not your fault. Now get up, dust yourself off, and help me make them a place in the ground.”
Marni stood above Mose, blocking the evening sun where it was beginning to set in a giant fiery ball on the hill. She glowed at the edges, and as Mose squinted and fixed his eyes around her, she lit up in a halo of color.
Stevie appeared beside her, and both of them were enveloped in the light. Mose fell back, dazed. For a minute there was nothing. Summer faded away, and all was cool darkness. Then a glow beyond his eyelids carried him along with it, or after it, like a leaf pulled into the channel of a creek. Mose awoke to Stevie slapping her hands.
“Hello? Would you like to plant your beets now?”
“You okay?” Marni asked.
“I went woozy there for a minute,” Mose said.
Marni cupped his cheek in her palm. “You have to eat something, Mose.”
“Ain’t had an appetite.”
“Doesn’t matter. In times like these, you’ve got to eat when you’re not hungry. Sleep when you can’t. I know the world’s upside down.”
From the back of the truck came the sound of bagged ice being broken up. Stevie came around with an orange cooler and filled it with water from the hose. Marni went inside for glasses, leaving Stevie and Mose alone.
“Sorry for being trouble,” Mose said. “I thought I saw something in the sun, and it shook me is all. Must have got too hot out here.”
“Saw something?” Stevie said, settling onto the ground next to him.
“I don’t know.” Mose pointed toward the sunset. “I saw you and Marni in the sun, and colors kind of ran together. It was dark for
a minute; then my eyes lit up like God was waving a sparkler for me to chase after.”
Marni came out with three jelly tumblers and she filled one for each of them. Stevie poured hers down Mose’s neck, and he leaned forward and hung his head, catching his breath. It felt like heaven to him.
“You know,” said Stevie, “when I lost Mom last year, I couldn’t eat either. The only thing I could do with myself is shoot free throws. Hundreds of them at a time. For hours one after another, nobody to rebound. Just me. Sometimes I couldn’t see the bucket for the tears, but I kept shooting. I shot so many free throws I went blind. I didn’t need to see. I heard what I needed, heard where I pushed it too far with my thumb, gave it too much leg. Heard it when I was dead on and the net cried with me. I shot until I was hungry. I shot myself to sleep. I shot until I could talk to Marni again.” Stevie rubbed condensation from her glass. “You need to find you your free throws.”
Mose blew sweat and water off his lip and rubbed stinging salt from his eyes.
“You want to go inside and lie down, finish this up tomorrow?”
“I want them in the ground,” Mose said and motioned toward the sun. “Sure is pretty.”
They sat there on the ground listening to the pumping units move oil and watching the sun until it was nothing but a line of fire on the far horizon. Then the three pulled the milk cartons close and put their hands in the dirt, making room for the little plants, and for no good reason, they planted them in a circle, with the biggest, best-looking clump in the center of it. They let the hose run free over each plant, listening to night sounds emerge. The women would leave only when they were sure that Mose had plenty of water and he had promised that he really would eat as soon as he could.
Mose watched them pull up the hill to their home, and he knew they would talk about his spell, but he didn’t care. He lay down in the dirt and felt the cool of the soil against his cheek, and he did not close his eyes until the stars became his blanket and even the bullbats and cicadas began to quiet.
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