“I heard you’re out there lookin’.”
“I heard you are too.”
“You need to be careful, Raine.”
“I got Noah with me. And Purv.”
She thought of Noah and the lights blurred. She turned her head away from Bobby and wiped her tears and he acted like he didn’t see, which she was grateful for. She hadn’t never cried so much and she felt weaker for it.
Noah had sat with her a long time, till she felt better. She said things to him, horrible things about his place in her world.
He’d carried her home, along the Red, her face against his chest, his hand soft on the back of her knees. He didn’t ask nothing and that was something big. He wore cologne, no doubt Purv had stole it for him. He’d made an effort, booked a table at Clyde’s and worked up the courage to ask her out. He’d chosen his clothes, albeit women’s, combed his hair and fought his nerves. For her.
“How’s Noah doin’?” he said.
She shrugged. “I used to reckon he was retarded. Maybe I still think that.”
He smiled. “He has it tough, with the dialysis.”
“What?”
“Dialysis.”
She stared at him.
“Noah is sick, Raine. I’m sorry, I thought you knew.”
She swallowed and her throat hurt. She reached up and rubbed her head and she saw her hand was shaking.
“What does . . . he ain’t sick. He can’t be.”
Bobby smiled sad.
“I mean, he’ll get better, right? They do transplants, that’s what they do when kids get sick like that.”
“He’s had three already, Raine. They won’t do another.”
She nodded, and she felt hot, and the sweat was stinging her eyes as she ran from the roof down the winding stairs.
She burst from the old church and ran so fast and hard her chest was burning by the time she made it to his house. She hammered the door and Noah’s grandmother answered, her eyes were layered with confusion but she knew where her grandson was, ’cause he didn’t ever miss D-day, not since he was a little child.
*
Raine rode the Transit bus alone, from the lights of the square past the bustle on Hallow Road. She closed her eyes as she crossed the border, and she opened them to dying day. She sat above the wheel and the bumps rattled her tired bones.
When she got to Mayland she stood awhile and watched the nurses and the doctors as they moved in groups and smiled and laughed.
She walked into the bright reception and looked at the map of the hospital and saw where she needed to get. But then she walked back out and followed the flowers a long way till she came to the window.
Night fell and stars rose and she stood there for hours, watching Noah sitting in his chair in front of the television, tubes in his arm and a police badge hanging from a string around his neck.
*
The reporters beat Black to the scene, though a couple of engines were in place and the fire chief was doing his best to keep them back.
Trix had taken the call, thought it was another hoax, but radioed Rusty who was nearest. Rusty had been over in Windale, talking to the pastor at the New Hope Baptist Church. The guy was old and sour but said he’d be vigilant and tell parents not to let their girls outta their sight.
“Shit,” Black said, as he climbed out. Rusty stood beside the cruiser, close enough to feel the heat. The house belonged to Radley Coke, though he’d moved to a nursing home several years back.
The flames glowed bright, the smoke rose toward the cloud, and cameras fired off shots of it all.
“They’ll put it out quick,” Rusty said, hooking his thumbs into his waistband and rocking back and forth on his heels like he was enjoying the show.
“Stop that,” Black said.
“Who do you reckon?” Rusty said.
“Crazies. Rollers. Scaring the devil away. Could be the other side though, welcoming him to town.”
“Led by the Circle of Black Knights?”
“Yeah, them, or mescaline.”
Rusty laughed.
They spun when they heard a high whine and saw Pastor Lumen scooting toward them.
“How the fuck did he get here?” Black said.
“Deely White’s truck is over there,” Rusty said.
Pastor Lumen parked in front of the cameras, reached for one of his medals, and held it out in front.
“The lake of fire. Unquenchable,” Pastor Lumen said, as cameras trained on him.
They got money shots of the crippled preacher under the dark sky, the fire framing him in hellish red. Photographs that’d run on all the front pages come morning.
Black turned back to the house.
They heard Pastor Lumen spewing, so took a step nearer the heat. The flames licked and crackled.
“Hell of a summer we’re havin’,” Rusty said.
Black heard the radio and ran over to the cruiser.
“What is it?” Rusty said.
“Another fire. One of the Dennisons’ barns.”
Black started the engine.
“Shit,” Rusty said. “Grace is burnin’.”
35
Summer
That day the rain was so loud I thought maybe somethin’ broke up there. I watched it from the trees and Samson stood dripping beside me. He stands awkward, he’s such a funny shape I ain’t sure there’s anywhere he’d fit.
We talked for a long time ’cause I didn’t have nowhere to go and I reckon Samson didn’t neither. I’d see him at the church, always lookin’ at me like he wanted to talk but couldn’t manage it.
“You ever want to move out on your own, Sam?” I said, ’cause he said sometimes he still felt like a kid, like he hadn’t never left school.
“My daddy said I don’t earn enough for that. He keeps my books, gives me what I need.”
I nodded. “He’s sick though.”
“Mr. White looks after the money now, he . . . I ain’t sure I’d know how to do it.”
I wondered about Samson, about nature and perception and all that’s between.
“It’s nice that your daddy cares like that,” I said.
We heard a snap and saw a flycatcher, it was gray and lookin’ down from the treetop.
“People reckon he’s hard,” Samson said.
I couldn’t imagine no one harder but I just smiled.
“Momma said it’s ’cause he cares, about all of us and where we’re headed. I didn’t want to let him down, I just . . . you ever feel there’s somethin’ dark inside you, Summer?”
“Yeah.”
“Momma said it’s temptation, to do somethin’ you know ain’t right. How come it feels right, though?”
I shrugged. “You seen that apple, in paintings, gotta be the sweetest-lookin’ thing I ever saw. Wouldn’t be no test otherwise.”
“I thought I was strong.”
“Everybody does. The truth comes hard at you, Sam. I bet even your momma did shit she knew weren’t right.”
I worried I’d stepped far but Samson grinned.
“She used to pick flowers, and she used to get me to pick ’em, flowers you ain’t supposed to pick,” Samson said. “But then that don’t seem much, not really.”
“Right and wrong and shades of gray.”
He reached into his pocket and took out a pink flower. “I brought one for you, thought I’d see you at church maybe. I was thinkin’ about how you like the colored glass.”
I took it from him careful.
“That dark,” he said. “You reckon God will give me a chance to make it light again?”
“Sure, Sam.” I stepped out and felt the rain but it weren’t the cleansing kind. “I didn’t reckon it’d be so hard.”
“What?” he said.
“Everything.”
I turned and walked and he called me back, and he told me to hold that flower up to the light when I got home.
*
Sometimes the dark turns on me till I switch on my
lamp and reach for a book. I move into their world, no matter if it’s ’20s West Egg or ’30s Maycomb, it’s all so much warmer and brighter. It’s like headin’ home again.
The Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns. That’s my favorite piece of music I ever heard and ever played. There’s notes in there that can stop my heart.
One day I played it for Savannah and watched her eyes close like usual but I could tell somethin’ was different ’cause she scrunched them pained tight.
She got up and took Michael’s photograph in her hand. She walked to the window and she bent double. She cried till there weren’t nothin’ left of her but a perfect shell with a perfect crack down the center. I watched her insides trickle out and I kept playin’ ’cause I reckoned maybe she needed what I gave her.
And then Bobby was in the room and he was holdin’ her so I closed my eyes and I went to the place where the real swans were. Their grace and Raine’s eyes as she took them in. I saw them with their necks entwined and I knew what bliss was and how far I existed from it.
I could take my life.
It’s all right to say that if it’s true but if it’s just a cry for help then you’re really fucked ’cause a part of you clings to all of this. When my mood digs me down in the dirt, till I’m so deep the sky ain’t nothin’ but the earth, that’s when I’m the girl who could slip from this lifetime. And if I did what would happen is nothin’ much at all ’cause hearts would still break and the world would circle like I’d never been a part of it.
He held her so close they became one, but his eyes fixed hard at the sky and I knew he’d moved far from her and from me and from Grace.
If I didn’t have Bobby, or even Savannah, ’cause I needed her too, then I had the kinda nothin’ that made me the sum of my parents’ parts, a chemical reaction that went wrong somewhere vital.
We can’t all be well.
I was so sad.
So sad.
So sad.
*
“It’s freezin’,” I said to Raine. My teeth were chatterin’ like a wind-up set.
Raine’s hand shook as she held the cigarette out in front of her. We were eleven and snow fell light around us.
I lit a match and brought it up to the end of the cigarette and Raine sucked hard on it.
She coughed and spluttered.
“How is it?” I said.
She looked up at me and her eyes watered but she nodded as she spit in the snow.
“You try,” she said.
I brought the filter to my lips and sucked.
“Now breathe it down,” Raine said. She was excited ’cause she wanted me to cough too.
She stood and stared at me, her head cocked to the side.
“Blow it out,” she said.
I tried.
Raine looked at me with her perfect eyes wide, a smile formin’. “Where’s the smoke?”
I shrugged.
“Could still be inside,” she said, pattin’ my back hard.
Nothin’ came.
“You’ve eaten it,” she said, startin’ to laugh.
I blew and blew, wheezin’ all I could.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said. “What’s gonna happen to me?”
Raine laughed so hard. “It’ll come out at some point. Just try not to breathe round Daddy.”
I pushed her. She fell back and sat in the grass. She laughed even harder as she pulled me down too. Cold seeped through our pants.
“You reckon we’ll see another special star?” Raine said, lookin’ toward the sky.
“Yeah, if we keep lookin’.”
She pulled a bottle of Seagram’s from her coat.
“Momma will be pissed if she smells gin on your breath.”
“Momma’s always pissed.” She drank and smacked her lips and then grimaced. “Tasty.”
She offered me the bottle and I took it and drank. “Christ,” I said.
“I know, good, right.”
“Hmm.”
“You reckon we’ll ever get married?”
I nodded. She took my hand and held it.
“Imagine us married, livin’ on the same street. Our kids could play together. We might get twins of our own.”
“Shit,” I said.
She laughed.
There’s a sweetness to Raine that’d ruin you.
“It’s comin’ down now,” she said.
I looked up at the snowflakes swirlin’ round and down and dizzying.
That was one of those moments too pure and perfect, the memory I’ll forget, the still at my funeral.
36
Those Smitten Church Girls
They sat in a half-empty diner off Colombus Highway. It was small and the windows were steamed and they sold whole hams to take home.
Savannah smiled at the waitress as she brought over two cups of coffee.
They sat in silence awhile and watched the traffic beginning to stack ’cause there were men working the road.
“I heard it’s gettin’ real bad in Grace,” Peach said.
“Yes. I know Summer Ryan, I teach her cello.”
“And the cloud.”
“And the cloud. Though it hardly seems worth the fuss.”
“They’re sayin’ it’s bad, that somethin’ bad is comin’.”
The waitress hovered and asked if they wanted pie and they said no so she left them.
“Della’s birthday today,” Peach said.
Savannah reached across and squeezed her hand. She’d met Peach at the center in Pinegrove.
“I walked the route she took to church this mornin’. I do it most days, before the heat gets up. There’s a cypress grove, by the backwater. The trees by the line, the roots ain’t covered no more so they just sweep the ground and they look like snakes, or arms or somethin’. The wildflowers are pretty though.”
Savannah watched her speak, the way her mouth moved, and she wondered who Peach had been with in her life. The men that would visit. She wondered if there was pleasure, if there was ever pleasure.
“I hope he didn’t hurt her,” Peach said, and she stirred her coffee and didn’t cry. “Sometimes I want it over, but I ain’t ready to pay that price. I can’t stay here much longer, this place where I’m at between wonderin’ and closing off. Would it be easier if I got to bury her and say good-bye? . . . I ain’t sure of nothin’.”
“You do well, Peach.”
“They thought she was trash,” Peach said. “At first, those cops that stopped by and knew what I did to get money, they saw Della as nothin’ but my daughter ’stead of the girl she was. Didn’t matter she was smart, or she went to church or that she was a sweetheart.”
“That must have been so difficult for you.”
“I stopped by the station weekly. Ernie was kind but the other cops, they fixed me with stares that lay someplace between pity and disgust, the Bible Belt looped over my head and ready to hang me. They had it figured, those shiny cops all sharp judgment.”
“But it changed.”
Peach nodded. “After the other girls, girls from the better families. Maybe they looked at Della and started to see her. That piece they wrote in the Herald, they spoke to Della’s teacher and she said nice things. I ain’t got much pride, Savannah, but I’m proud of my daughter and I needed them to see her too.”
“Who?”
“Everyone. I wouldn’t let them look at her and see my mistakes, I’d die before I let that happen. We’re all more than the bad things we do.”
Savannah felt the words.
“I ain’t been sleepin’,” Peach said. “Funny, now I ain’t got the worry of who’s showin’ at my door.”
“Do you know why?”
“Sometimes I see him outside, sittin’ in his car.”
“The man you’re seeing?”
“Yeah. But he don’t come in, he just sits there watchin’ the window. So I kneel down and I pray.” She laughed soft as she spoke.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I want him to see
somethin’ else, maybe it’ll throw him ’cause it ain’t what he’s expectin’. You reckon maybe I’m a bit mad, Savannah?”
“I think everyone is a bit mad, Peach.”
They watched a big man pass and he shot a glance over both of them then settled at the counter and reached for a newspaper. He had a scar by his eye and he turned his head embarrassed when Savannah glanced at him. She wondered about scars, visible and not. She wondered how little people saw when they looked at her.
“I want him to come knock at the door and take me someplace.”
“But he doesn’t.”
“I reckon maybe he’s shamed, ’cause people know me after what happened, know all about me and what I do. He’s good though. He hurts, for the things he’s done, he tortures himself so bad. Maybe that’s why I love him, ’cause he feels for others like that.” Peach sipped her coffee and rubbed her eyes. Her nails were painted and broke.
“You could just ask him. Just ask where you stand.”
“I couldn’t lose him. I’d take this, whatever it is, I’d take it over nothin’. Does that make me weak?”
“You’re not weak, Peach. Far from it.”
“I don’t expect the fairy tale, what you and Bobby got.”
“That’s not –”
Peach caught herself, eyes sad, and this time she reached across. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that . . . Michael.”
Savannah smiled.
“I just meant you and Bobby . . . he’s a good man. I saw that. He came in once, to the West End Mission.”
“Did he?” Savannah said.
“One Sunday. He sat at the back during the service. Pastor Roberts made a show of him, got him to stand up, and Bobby was shy. Then after, Bobby was talkin’ about the Christian Youth drive. He’s got a way about him.”
“He works hard. He visits churches all over the state.”
“Della was smitten, had those big puppy dog eyes for him, like all the church girls.”
*
Noah and Raine left the Buick parked on Hallow Road but far from the crowd.
People stood thick at the border at all hours now.
They passed a couple ice cream trucks, and a guy selling coffee from the back of his pickup. He had an old urn and a couple bottles of milk in a cooler, and a wife with a hard face and a stack of bills in her hand.
All the Wicked Girls Page 23