by Eden Butler
“I am not.” I jerked my hand back and leaned against the sofa with my arms over my chest.
“Really? So pushing away women, not wanting to rely on anyone at all, thinking that your life will be perfect with enough money? That all comes from losing everything you had as a kid. It comes from not trusting the one person who should have never let you down.”
“Yeah?”
“So maybe if you let it, that mess will keep you down. That happens, little brother and the man who killed our mother, also killed the person you were back then. You hold on to that and Nash, that kid stays dead.”
She knew she’d had me. I tried to tell myself I was too tired to argue. I tried to move the reason and logic around in my head so that I made sense, so that my reason was sound. But Nat always saw things differently than me. She always saw the potential, always had hope even in the grayest parts of our lives.
“Man, whatever.” I stood, stretching as she moved in front of me. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.” I nodded toward the hallway. She’s stayed with me a half a dozen times and knew the routine. “You take the bed.” I laid back down on the sofa, fluffing the pillow as I stifled a yawn. “For now, let me sleep.”
New Orleans
After I didn’t come back home, and Mr. Simoneaux’s old Chevy had circled our driveway for the third time, Mama and Uncle Aron came looking where I’d most likely be— the tree house. We’d seen the headlights from our hiding spot; whether it was him looking to see where Dempsey had gotten off to or maybe Andres telling some lie about me, making the man bring him around to see things over, I wasn’t sure. But Mama made her irritation known.
“Why you hiding up there, girl? You do something to that hateful man?”
“No, Mama. Not me. I ain’t done nothing.”
“You always running your mouth, sassing folk…” Then she shut herself up I climbed down and she noticed how I held the too-big shirt Dempsey gave me over my chest. She didn’t fuss about how I’d missed the delivery, then, not when Dempsey climbed down after me, then took my hand and went to move in front of me a little, as if to run interference between me and my kin. Both Mama and Aron looked at me holding Dempsey’s button up over my chest like it was only a flimsy excuse to cover myself, then traded a look that was both worried and a whole lot scared.
“Ms. Lanoix, it was me, honest. I’m the one he’s looking for.” Dempsey had a way of speaking to grownups. It was how calm he could make his voice. It was deep, deeper than it should be at only seventeen, that put people at ease. “I forgot about cleaning after myself again when I got done fishing this afternoon. Left all the bait and tackle on the dock. He’s probably looking to skin my hide.”
A few moments passed with nobody saying anything. Mama was no fool, she knew when someone was trying to pull something over on her, but maybe she thought I wasn’t worth the trouble of finding out what that something might be. The more we stood there, me looking at the ground and Dempsey looking at Mama liked a wupped pup, the more the anger seemed to leach out of her and resignation set in. Finally she signed, and gave Dempsey a soft look that she’d never once given me. For Dempsey, though, it came easy enough. “Fine then.” She told him with one head shake that he needed to keep after himself. “Mind your business, Dempsey Simoneaux and don’t bring your daddy’s belt anywhere near this property.”
“No ma’am. Wouldn’t hear of it.”
It satisfied her enough that she seemed to forget how late the night had gotten or that it was the first time she didn’t settle Dempsey on Bastie’s sofa or at least on the floor in Sylv’s room. Uncle Aron, though, wasn’t so easy to take Dempsey at his word.
Mama had just made it through the front door when Uncle Aron pulled a cigarette from his front pocket, eyes steady, gaze moving between me and Dempsey as we watched him. He let out a long, slow breath and smoke puffed and billowed around his head in lazy, round rings. “The two of you, by God, will do us all in.” Another drag and Uncle Aron nodded for us to follow, leading us toward the fence line and the broken path that led the back way from Bastie’s property and the south end of the river. “Tell me now,” he said, leaning against the fence post, flicking ashes that burned orange red then faded to nothing as it landed on the black ground. “What’s all the fuss about?”
And so, I told him about Andres and his searching, drunk hands, about him tearing my shirt and me running like loon after I popped that fat white man real good in the eye. It took only a few minutes, with Dempsey adding how he’d come to find me in the tree house looking more vexed than a kitten, claws deep on the bow of a sinking boat.
Aron was smooth, slow, with everything he did. There was a little white at his temples and he wore his mustache neat and trimmed. He kept himself looking sharp with fine pressed suits and a fedora for whatever job each day would bring. Tonight he wore a pair of dark slacks and a shirt opened at the collar. But the fedora was sharp and pristine and the suspenders he wore had gold clips and teeth. It was date night, and by the look of his slow grin and missed-button state of his shirt, date night had been a good one.
“Well now.” Another drag and my uncle threw the cigarette to the ground, stamping out the small flame with his heel. “Seems to me it’d be best if the pair of you keep to yourselves this lovely night.”
“I can sleep in the tree house.” Dempsey shrugged as though there was nothing to be debated. Most nights when we stayed at the farm, he slept in the tree house just to be out of his family’s sight. “There's a blanket up there, I'll be fine.”
“That won’t work,” Aron replied, taking off his hat to smooth back the tips of his hair that had come mused in whatever activity he’d gotten into. “Your daddy is fool enough that he’d come up that ladder and drag you out by your ears.” He thought a second, flopping the hat back on his head. “And Joe Andres might sober up enough to remember who gave him the shiner I bet he’s sporting.” He glanced at me, a hesitant smile stretching across his face.
Dempsey grabbed my hand again, squeezing it tight as though he wanted me to not worry over the “mights” Aron laid out for us.
“Nah, I reckon it’s best you both clear out.” He glanced back toward the cottage, then looked at us again, lowering his voice as though he was sure someone was listening. “Can I trust you two to walk out to the fish shack and stay there?” We both nodded, not bothering to look at each other. “And can you promise me, Dempsey Simoneaux, on your honor you won’t be thinking of things you ought not think about with my niece in the same room?”
Dempsey widened his eyes, blushing a little before he nodded quick. “Good. You keep her safe and don’t get up to anything funny. I’ll be down to check up on you in the morning, but mind what you’re doing cause I won’t be telling you exactly how early I’ll come get you.”
“Of course. We’ll…it’ll be all fine,” Dempsey promised then lifted back the thick brush hiding the small opening to the trail, motioning me to go ahead first. Luckily the moon was out, and though it was slow going, we could see the path to follow.
We walked in silence for a few long minutes until Dempsey didn’t seem to take the quiet and started up whistling “Black Water Blues,” likely because he knew how much I loved Bessie Smith. I just started in on a chorus, singing about having no place to go, when Dempsey stopped me, covering my mouth with his hand as he pressed right behind me. He leaned down and the scent of his breath, like peppermint, came soft against my cheek.
“There,” he whispered, nodding to our right beyond the cover of the trail. By then we had walked past my Mimi’s property line and crossed over back into the Simoneaux land that edged along the river. My heart was pounding like a scared rabbit, and when Dempsey tried backing away, I grabbed his arm, pulling him tighter still just to keep myself from running or my fingers from shaking something awful.
The river was low this time of year when the hurricane season had yet to start. There would be heavy rains, and storms that would come—one was brewing in the gulf, coming in
from Alabama. It had been on the radio and was all my Bastie could talk about and fret over for a week straight. But the boat passing around the riverbank right now had no problems cutting through the dark water.
There were voices and the trickle of water moving as a paddle dipped in and out of the water. I couldn’t make out who they were even as we sidled closer toward the river, staying beneath the heavy limbs of the cypress that skirted toward the end of the trail, but there definitely was more than one voice echoing quietly over the water.
“Poachers, looking for gators from the sound of it,” Dempsey whispered in my ear.
“They not in season?” I only asked to keep Dempsey leaning close to be heard. I did so like the way he smelled and how much heat his body made as he came close to me.
“No. I don’t reckon. If they were, those boys would be out during the day hunting.” The small boat floated further up the river and Dempsey took my hand, pulling me away from the trail and toward the small shack some fifty feet back off the water.
He nodded at the broken cinderblocks Aron had fashioned into a walkway and Dempsey helped me navigate it, stopping to offer me his hand and picking me up a little by my waist to make sure I made it from the path without slipping.
The small front door was made from three thick planks of pine with three smaller pieces nailed across, and as Dempsey grabbed the knotted twine of rope looped into a small hole in the wood that serves as handle, the small hinges that had rusted from the weather and moisture in the air made what seemed to be an earth shattering screech, but probably wasn't all that loud. .
“That Aron is clever.”
“Not so clever.” I nodded a thanks to Dempsey as he held open the door, but I didn’t step inside straight away; instead, we both leaned inward, looking over the small bucket in the corner upturned, I reckoned, to act as a seat and the two fishing poles leaned against one corner of the tiny shack. “He comes out here when he’s had too much whiskey and Mimi won’t let him in the house. Drunk fool will throw a line out that window at two in the morning thinking he’ll surprise the catfish when they’re half asleep.”
“Does it work?” There was a little laugh in Dempsey’s voice, like he already knew the answer to his question.
“Comes home with dozens, more than that when he’s good and drunk.”
“Then I won’t fault the man for his drink if it means your Mimi will fry up some catfish for us.”
Dempsey smiled at my shaking head then followed me away from the shack to sit near the bank. “There’s a purple sky tonight.” It was something Bastie liked the best about the spring. The sky on the Manchac was always clearest at night, but in the spring the weather was the brightest, like God settled the seas and calmed the wind so that we could have a clear sight of the most beautiful of his kingdom.
“What did your Bastie say about it? I forget.”
“Purple skies come when God is in court. He comes close to us and the purple we see is the hem of His royal cloak.”
Dempsey shook his head, smiling to himself as we both looked up into the dark sky. It wasn’t only purple, but blue with swirls of gray swimming in the darkness around us. If I looked away from Dempsey, I could only make out his silhouette from the corner of my eye. He looked dark as coal in that purple light.
“If God is visiting, He might not like to see what’s happening here.”
Dempsey was right. The way things were turning, how restless and mean folk had gotten—how our own lives had found the same restlessness, wouldn’t make any God happy looking down on it.
“Maybe He only see the good among us.”
Dempsey went quiet, slipping his hand to mine to move his palm over the top of my fingers. “Then He only sees you, Sook.”
And then Dempsey who swore he loved me, leaned close, pulled my face toward his and showed me for a little while that I wasn’t the only good one in that small corner of our world.
Nash
When I was young, my father wore a Bulls ball cap. It was red and black and had Jordan’s number twenty-three taking up much of the right side. He’d won it from a work raffle. Five bucks for a Bulls swag pack and a chance at airfare and two tickets to the Bulls/Celtics game that season. He’d spent twenty bucks that day; five on the ticket and fifteen on a case of Bud he’d polished off before his lunch break ended.
I only remembered that because he’d been fired for drinking the Bud and my mother threw the cap out the second-floor window when he came home that night. I’d found it the next morning on my way to the bus stop, stepping over my father, who’d passed out on the front porch and stayed there the whole night.
That morning, I’d looked down at him, face pale and hollow, lips chapped and white and realized for the first time in my brief nine years, that my father was a loser. He wasn’t the cut-up he pretended to be when he and Mom drank during the Falcons games, laughing and teasing each other when the dirty birds won. He wasn’t the guy that would stay sober for a couple of weeks, meeting me and Nat at the bus stop, fixing our dinners when Mom worked late or took a night class. He was the guy who’d passed out on the porch with a brand-new Bulls cap twenty feet away from him near the garbage can. He was the asshole who made my mother cry when she thought we were asleep.
More than anything, I was petrified of turning into him.
It was the main reason I’d kept to myself, had stayed clear of any drama that might contribute in any way in making me more like my father.
“You gonna sleep all day?” Nat called, pulling me from my thoughts and what remained of my sleep and damn Sookie and her drama that locked me down each night. There had been the boy again, Dempsey, and the asshole who’d tried attacking her. It felt like metal had lodged itself in my chest when I thought of that little girl—something about her made me rage with anger, something made me sick with guilt. I couldn’t place her, couldn’t do more than blink away her face, the fear she’d felt and the sweetness, how that boy had made her feel when he… I was losing it. I was losing my damn mind.
The scent of bacon and pancakes hung in the air, making my mouth water and I got up from the sofa, a little disoriented by the thick blanket on the floor and the pillow on the other end of the room.
“Bad dream last night?” Nat asked, pouring a mug of coffee for me as I flopped onto the stool in front of the island. I shrugged and my sister shook her head. “You were fussing all night. Woke me up twice.”
She’d had brought dark roast with her, and the smell, the taste, reminded me of milk coffee my mom let me make when I was ten and wanted to drink with her before she left for work. It made me feel grown to watch her move around the kitchen, getting ready, packing her lunch and complaining about all the things she’d never finish up before she had to leave for her office. Now that coffee was an elixir I needed it to be more human and damn sure more awake.
“You wanna talk about the dream?” Nat leaned on the island, pushed a plate in front of me and I dove in, shaking my head as I shoveled a forkful of pancake in my mouth so I couldn’t talk. “You’re such an ass sometimes, Nash.” I looked up at her, eyes squinting to glare at her, but she only smiled back, laughing at me because she knew I was aware I could never get her to back off with some punk ass frown. “Boy please. Put away the grump face and tell me about the dream.”
I swallowed, grabbing a paper towel from the roll to clean the syrup from my face. “Nothing to tell really. It’s stress. I’m under a deadline and distracted. That’s all it is.”
“Didn’t sound like…”
“Jesus, Nat, I’m fine.” I didn’t mean to snap at her, or make her my voice go all loud and bitchy. By the rigid lines along her mouth I got the feeling Natalie didn’t appreciate my tone no matter if I meant it or not. “I’m sorry…it’s just, that girl?”
“The one you wanted to make jealous?” She smiled when I shook my head. “What about her?”
“She’s…the distraction and it’s messing with me bad. It’s a damn fog I can’t clear away.”<
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Nat polished off her coffee staring out the stretch of windows to my right, her long red nails tapping against the handle. It took her a minute to gather her thoughts, form an opinion about how much of a mess I was at the moment, but then she rinsed her cup and leaned against the sink, watching me eat, staring hard as though she needed to consider her words carefully before dishing them out.
“Maybe that’s what you need, Nash.”
“A distraction?”
Natalie shook her head, resting on her palms in front of me. “This girl. From the way your eyes go all bright and round when you talk about her, and how you looked at her last night, how hurt she seemed when she saw me, I don’t think she’s the fog.”
“What the hell else could she be?”
Nat’s smile came back just then, and it loosened the tension that had set up inside my shoulders and chest since I saw Willow with that guy the night before. It was kind of uncanny how she could do that for me, but I loved her for it. “Girl like that, she isn’t anyone’s fog, Nash. She’s the light that clears all the bad away. You might want to admit that before she realizes what a mess you are.”
Twice in two days I’d gotten the advice to pull my head out of my ass. Roan spoke it because he was old and thought he knew best. Nat did it because she thought I’d never realize what was in front of me without a little push. I didn’t even want to stop to think if they were right or not.
It was both their voices I tried to block out as I got dressed that morning, as Nat went on and on about me coming to visit her out in Cali, though I knew she only asked because she wanted to “accidentally” run into our father while I was in town. I wasn’t an idiot.
“Maybe next year, when things are a little more settled with my company,” I’d told her, holding open the door for her as we left the lobby.