by Lisa Wingate
“One day, while I am still young, the soldiers come to our house as everyone is sleeping. The noise awakens me, and I hear loud voices, and I run to hide. My mother finds me then, and she takes my hand and she whispers that I must not make a sound. We sneak away in the darkness, and she gives me to my grandfather, and we run in the shadow of the wall, where the soldiers cannot see. Behind, I hear terrible sounds, and I smell burning, and fire lights the sky, but Grandfather says I must not look, and so I do not.
I never see my mother, or my father, or my brothers and sisters again. My grandfather loves me very much, and we live in a small house then, but always, I watch the road, and I hope that one day my father and my mother and all the others will come walking home. I love Grandfather, and he teaches me to make carvings, but I do not stop looking for the others. My grandfather works very hard in the little house. He paints wooden beads, and the man comes to bring money to him, but the money is not enough. Some days there is no food, and then there is no house, and my grandfather walks with me across the burned country, all the way to the shore. He puts my hand into my auntie’s, and she goes on a boat with me. I never see him again.”
Terence’s head tilts to one side, and he blinks slowly, his eyes large and dark and warm, like my grandfather’s. “That’s quite a story.”
“It is my story,” I say. Never have I told this story, but now it seems important that I tell it to him. “Perhaps your daughter has been watching the road for a very long time, as well.”
He blinks again, surprised that my story has circled to touch his. “Maybe.” He scratches paint from his fingers and watches the pieces fall to the floor. I polish the wood again. “Where were the soldiers?” he asks finally. “Soldiers don’t come and take people away in Miami.”
“A long distance from here,” I say, and he laughs softly.
“Okay, I get it. You don’t want to tell. It’s all right. I wasn’t trying to pry.” He cleans his hands, and I take my pack, but I leave the birds, because the birds are for him.
“You know, you’re welcome to sleep here, if you don’t have a place,” he tells me. “There’s a bed and a bathroom in the office over there. I used to sleep here, before I got my loft.”
A snake curls inside me, squeezing, and I move toward the door, shaking my head. You sleep in a bed, you owe for it, the man whispers in my mind. “If you sleep in a bed, you owe for it,” I say.
The chief jerks away and eyes me. “Who told you that? The bed is free, just like the ones at the mission, all right? No strings.”
I turn this in my mind. Outside the window, I see lightning in the distance. It is not a good night to be outside.
I stop, and set down my pack. Terence smiles as if he is pleased, and I think, Perhaps not all men are the same.
Perhaps some men are different.
Chapter 24
Shasta Reid-Williams
I woke up on Saturday with my mind made up that I’d tell Cody about the baby. Tam was right: I couldn’t keep it secret forever. I was already getting queasy in the mornings, and pretty soon I’d be gaining weight. He’d figure it out soon enough, and besides that, I’d need to find a doctor and get going on prenatal visits.
I hadn’t checked out the details of Cody’s employee health insurance plan yet, but when Cody had insurance with the county sheriff’s department back home, we’d figured out that the copay on a pregnancy wasn’t cheap. Luckily, I could go to the Choctaw health clinic for free, but the Choctaw clinic was hours away now. When I made up my mind to get pregnant, I hadn’t even thought about the fact that we’d probably have an insurance deductible to take care of and stuff. Where would we get the chunk of change for that?
My nerves were jumping like grasshoppers before I was even out of the shower. When I walked into the living room, all showered and dressed and ready to spill the baby beans to Cody, he was balancing our bank statement online, grumbling to himself, and shuffling papers around while watching ESPN. I stood in the doorway, feeling like someone was holding a blowtorch under my feet. “I need to talk to you a minute.” If I didn’t do it now, another day would go by, and probably two. Cody’d taken another temp job parking cars at a sports convention for the weekend, so he’d be gone before noon the whole weekend long, which meant that tomorrow I’d be getting the boys up and taking them down to the little white church for our first Sunday visit, all on my own. The boys were excited about going to kids’ church, and it was time we stopped doing house chores on Sunday mornings and started showing up at service. I just hadn’t figured on having to do it alone.
Cody kept one eye on ESPN and one on the computer, which didn’t leave one for me. “Yeah, hey, later, all right? What are all these dadgum checks to Walmart for?” He pointed to the online bank statement with a sour look.
“Groceries and stuff for the house.”
Sighing, he rubbed his forehead. “No more house stuff for a while, all right? Yesterday night, I was looking at things online, checking what else is gonna come due soon, and the payment Householders shows on our online statement doesn’t match up with what they quoted us when we were in the office. It’s the quote, plus a bunch of fees, but the statement doesn’t say what the fees are for. I called the Householders office today, and they said the payment and fees are listed in our contract and we needed to read it. But I just dug out our copy of the contract, and there were whole pages missing. There’s no fee schedule in there. I just e-mailed to tell them we needed a new copy. When my check goes into the account, and then the truck and credit card bills come due, if Householders drafts the payment for this amount, it won’t go through. No more trips to Walmart until I get this Householders thing straightened out, all right? Keep watching the mail for the copy of the contract.”
“’Kay,” I muttered, walking over to his chair. So far, the breaking of the baby news wasn’t going well. “Can you put that away for a minute?” I reached for the laptop, but Cody hung on.
“Cut it out, Shasta. I need to finish this before I go.” Pulling the computer back into his lap, he leaned around me to check ESPN again and watch a replay of one of the Texas Rangers missing a fly ball. “Oh, dog! You idiot!”
My blood boiled up like bean soup in a pressure cooker on high, and all of a sudden I was mad all over. It was just a good thing the boys were in their bedroom, out of earshot. “You know what, Cody? You could leave off that stuff for a minute. I mean, it’s like we never see you. You’re always working or sleeping, and when you’re not, you’re watching ESPN, or sticking your nose in a book, or walking around the house mad. The boys never see you.” All morning, Benji and Ty’d been asking Cody to take them over to the creek to try to catch the little perch, but he wouldn’t get off his butt and go. What I really wanted to do was yank the computer out of his lap, turn off ESPN, and say, Hey! I’m over here! I wanted to get him talking about the reading class, the white church, the Summer Kitchen, and the bookstore. Then sometime in the conversation, I’d slip in, Oh, by the way, I haven’t started my period yet. Just so you know. There’s an ittybitty, teeny-weeny possibility Benji and Ty might be getting a little sister. Don’t be mad, all right? I didn’t mean for this to happen.
But, of course, the truth was that I did, and there was more than a teeny possibility. When Cody thought about the timing, he’d know the pregnancy happened right after the vasectomy argument.
He jotted something on the outside of a file folder, and then slid a paper over it. “You know what, Shasta? If we don’t get this house payment thing straightened out, we won’t have any creek to fish in.”
“We’ll get it straightened out. They can’t just . . . charge you more than they’re supposed to. It’s a mistake—a computer glitch or something. Mistakes happen, you know.” Once the baby was here, he’d love it, just like he loved Benji and Ty. Wouldn’t he? “We’ll get it fixed.” A tidal wave of tension traveled up my back, tying me in knots. Having Cody act so serious, so obsessed, felt wrong. Cody’d always been more likely to take
off fishing than look at the checkbook. In fact, he could take off fishing when he was pretty sure the checkbook was overdrawn, and he’d never miss a beat. He knew Leonard at the bank would call Cody’s mama, and she’d cover the check without ever telling Cody’s dad, and everything would be okay. We’d get a lecture from her, and that’d be it.
Here in Dallas, there wasn’t any safety net at the bank. Cody’s folks were hanging back, waiting for us to fail, and maybe that was what had him so freaked out. If we messed this up, it’d prove everybody right.
Sighing, I sat on the arm of his chair and swirled a finger in the fuzz of his hair, short and thick, dark. “Come on, Cody, let’s not borrow trouble. We’ll make it work. We always get by. We’ll get the extra fees taken off, and then we’ll be fine. They can’t just tack charges onto somebody’s loan.”
He rested his head against my arm, his shoulders deflating like a hot air balloon sinking back to earth. “Yeah, I hope not, but the way they acted when I called the office was . . . well, it’s like the whole thing’s part of a routine. Like they know exactly what to say and what kind of runaround to give you. Like they do this all the time.” The ominous sound in his voice sent a chill through me, but the rounded shoulders bothered me more. He seemed so tired, like he couldn’t figure out what to do next.
I looked at the computer screen. He had our bank account in one window and something about house payments in the other. There was no way Cody understood all those numbers. “Why would they sell houses so people can’t make the payments? What good would that be? It’s not like they’re getting big down payments. I mean, there was that chunk of first-time home buyer grant money, but think of all the money Householders would have to spend kicking people out, repo-ing houses, and reselling them. It doesn’t make a single bit of sense.” One thing I’d learned from my Nana Jo was that dealing in houses was a serious hassle. Nana Jo’d had rental properties in downtown Hugo for years, and whenever people couldn’t pay the rent, it cost her a fortune to get them out, then get the places cleaned up and ready to rent again. “If you’re really worried about it, I could call Nana Jo and see what she thinks, maybe send her a copy of the contract when it gets here.”
Cody jerked away, then caught the computer about to topple off his knees. “No. Don’t call anybody.”
“All right, all right.” Sliding my hands over his shoulders, I started a massage. The muscles were tight under his skin, hard like curls of dried rawhide.
“I mean it, Shasta. I’ll work twenty-four hours a day before we’re asking for help from anybody back home. Especially not your mama or Nana Jo.” He swiveled in the chair, so his eyes reflected the windows and the yard outside. Our yard. “Or my parents.”
“Okay, okay.” Cody was right. We had to take care of this ourselves. “I’ll try to talk to Elsie when I see her, okay? The day Tam’s family moved in across the street, Elsie acted like she knew something about Householders.” Cody stiffened again, and I slid my hands over his chest, felt the round, solid curve of muscle there. The baby conversation could wait. This totally wasn’t the time for it. “You know, you’re really hot when you’re all fired up about my mother.”
He tilted his head back, his lips spreading slowly into a smile. “I’m not thinking about your mother.”
“Hmmm . . . and I thought you were all fired up.” One way or another, I was gonna get his mind off the house.
“I am.” He shot a quick glance at the hallway. “What’re the boys doing?”
“Watching 101 Dalmatians.”
“How long ago did they start?”
“Not too long ago.”
Cody pulled me into his lap, and his body loosened and curved over mine. His mind definitely wasn’t on the house. . . .
By the time Cody got ready to leave for his afternoon of parking cars, I almost forgave him for taking a job on the weekend. Sometimes my guy could be so sweet, he could get away with anything. Other times, I wanted to throw frying pans at him. Until he had one foot out the door, he didn’t bother to mention that after he finished the job tonight, he was gonna ride out to Lake Ray Hubbard to try some night fishing with his new pals from his class. That’s not what a woman wants to hear after sneaking off to make love in the morning.
“You have got to be kidding.” I stood in the doorway, holding the door while he slid through like a snake. I had the urge to yank the burglar bars closed and knock him out. No one would blame me once they heard what he did.
He had the nerve to lean over and kiss me on the head, like I was his pet cow dog. “Just for a couple hours. I want to see if there’s anything in that lake.”
“Yeah, right.” What did he think I was, an idiot? Night fishing was man code for, Let’s drive around on a boat and drink beer while the little woman takes care of the kids. “You know, the kids are dying for you to take them fishing down in the creek . . . or anywhere, really. You could skip the night fishing, and when you get done at the convention, we could take a little picnic supper and go to the lake—watch the stars come out.”
He turned and walked backward across the porch, gave me a big, stupid smile I immediately wanted to pinch off his face. “I won’t be done till after their bedtime tonight. I can take them down to the creek tomorrow morning. We’ll rig up a little perch pole.”
Right then, Benji and Ty ran up the hallway, and I stepped out of the way to let them onto the porch, where Cody could see their pitiful little faces.
“Where Daddy goin’?” Ty asked, standing a few feet out the door, his blankie-dog crooked in his elbow and his belly sticking out the bottom of his shirt.
“Daddy’s going to work.”
“Man!” Benji complained, stopping halfway across the porch, letting his shoulders drop and his arms dangle forward, like someone’d just let the air out of his new ball. “Da-a-a-ddd!”
I hoped Cody felt guilty to the bone. Jerk.
“Sorry, buddy.” Cody waved with that big, dumb smile still on his face. “Gotta work parking cars for a sports convention. I’ll see if I can get you an autograph.”
“Cool!” Benji cheered, lifting invisible pom-poms into the air.
“My mob-o-graph, too.” Ty’s voice was muffled by the blanket.
“You, too, buddy.” Cody spun around and jumped down all three steps at once, and the boys giggled. Just like that, he was the coolest guy in the world, and I was stuck home with two kids who were gonna be bored today, because the Summer Kitchen was closed on Saturday.
All of a sudden, the day ahead stretched out in front of me like twenty miles of panhandle road—boring, lonely, and way too much of the same thing. In the distance, clouds blotted out the sun, making everything feel dingy and quiet. I felt the shadows closing in, and not just on the horizon. They were closing in on me, too. On a busy day, when the sun was out and there was plenty to do, I could walk right by a pile of worries and never give it a second thought. But on a day like today, if I didn’t do something quick, I’d end up turning our problems over and over in my mind.
“Stay right here for a second, guys.” I stepped inside and grabbed the cell phone and my purse, then stood on the porch and dialed while the boys trotted down the steps and crawled under the oleander bush that was still right where it’d always been.
Tam didn’t answer her phone, which was strange, considering that it was after eleven. Surely they weren’t still asleep over there. Their car was in the driveway.
I tried again, but the phone rolled over to voice mail.
The boys knocked on the porch floor from underneath. I stomped, my sandals making a hollow rat-a-tat-tat that gave the kids a giggle. “Who’s under my bridge?” Bending close to the deck, I snorted and sniffed. “This is big Mr. Troll from ‘Billy Goats Gruff.’ I smell a human under my bridge. Two humans! Ohhhh, I like humans. I like to eat them all up. Yum!”
The boys shushed each other and giggled some more. Ty squealed.
I dug out my keys, closed up the house, and locked it. “If I find humans und
er my bridge, I’ll tie them up and take them down the road to my secret place.” The porch floor rattled as I crossed it, and underneath, little hands and feet scrambled toward the opening under the oleander. The boys bolted out, and I caught them at the corner, then toppled over with one in each arm.
“I think I’ll take these boys down the street with me.” I snuggled kisses under Benji’s chin, then Ty’s, and they pulled their necks in like turtles, their giggles traveling across the yard and bouncing off Elsie’s house. I glanced over to see if Elsie was watching out her window, but the blinds were down and the place looked dark. Her car was in the driveway, like maybe she’d been somewhere already this morning. With my luck, she was probably tired out and taking a nap, and we were bothering her. Maybe later, if I could tell she was in the living room, I’d knock on her door and ask her what she knew about Householders. Elsie really wasn’t so bad, once you got to know her. She still wasn’t friendly. Mostly it seemed like she didn’t want us bothering her, but she wasn’t the worst neighbor you could have.
I wrestled with the boys, even though their rowdiness was starting to get out of control. It felt so good to hear them laughing and squealing, to hug their bodies close to mine. A warmth gushed over me like bathwater, filling me, driving away the bad feelings. This was my family. Mine. No one could take it away.
There was power in that, a completeness. No matter what, we were together—Cody, the boys, and me. This was all I’d ever wanted. Everything.
The boys wore down before we poked anyone’s eye out, and I lay there with them piled on top of me. A squirrel ran across the branch overhead. “Look, look, look!”
They rolled onto their backs as I pointed.
“Is a sk-rul!”
“A squir-rel,” Benji corrected, in his I-know-it-all, older-brother voice.
“Where him go?”
“Back to his house, with nuts.” Benji’s answer was matter-of-fact. Suddenly he was the nature expert. “Like in the book.”