“The, um, the boy. Chet’s age. I think…” I looked away after seeing her face: the parted lips and watery eyes. I realized that I’d returned her slap.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” she said, giving each word equal weight. She crossed the street and marched toward the cafe. I hurried to catch up, wondering if she was talking about Tommy as well as Papa.
CHAPTER 15
Mama flung the cafe door open so hard that the handle cracked a huge spider web in the glass storefront. Everyone in the packed diner turned to look as Roy Acuff sang about “The Great Speckled Bird” on the jukebox.
Papa faced us at a table near the back, with Tommy across from him. The redheaded, green-eyed waitress dropped a glass of cola, splashing her shoes and stockings and sending ice cubes skittering across the linoleum.
I didn’t have to point her out to Mama, who took a few steps inside, brushed a golden wave of hair off her forehead, and announced, “Mance, I always knew you had a thing for blondes.” She pointed a long, straight finger at the waitress. “Even Irish blondes.”
A few men laughed but their wives shushed them as Papa pushed out of his chair, tipping it over. Tommy looked at me and then at Papa. He said, “Why’s he here again, Daddy? Who’s that lady?” Papa murmured something, and his son shuffled into the backroom. Before Tommy closed the door, he frowned at me like it was all my fault.
Papa said, “Mary, go in there with him.”
She took a step, but the manager, in his paper hat and freshly stained apron, said, “Hey, Mance, I got a business to run here.”
“My Florida freebies keep your business running, so shut up. Mary, git.”
“‘Mary, git,’” Mama pantomimed. “Is that how he gave you that kid, honey? ‘Mary, spread ’em.’” She got a few more laughs, and Mary Rush sobbed and ran to the backroom.
As the door slammed shut, Papa said, “Reva, that’s enough. The only wailing these folks wanna hear is from the jukebox.” He looked around, maybe anticipating some laughs, but no one even smiled at him. Most turned to watch Mama again, and my birthmark got a few curious stares. I wished I’d stayed in the truck.
Hands on hips, she said, “You told me the food here stinks. Guess that’s why you gotta keep your snout in that wild Irish rose.” This earned her louder guffaws; even the less-reserved women joined in.
Papa stormed toward us, shouting, “Enough. Let’s go.”
I took another step behind Mama as she called, “Why the rush? First Mary Rush and now me. You give ‘I’m in a rush’ a whole new meaning.”
Papa silenced the customers’ laughter with a slap across Mama’s face. She nearly fell backward on top of me. Instead of responding with a slap of her own, she grabbed for the gun at his waist. Both of her hands clamped down on the grip of the revolver while he tried to pull it away. They rocked in a slow circle and cussed each other as shouting customers ducked under tables.
I froze, not wanting either of them to win. I wanted them to stay locked that way forever so nothing would change for the worse. As soon as somebody won, everybody would lose.
Papa let go with his right hand and punched her throat. It was the same short, quick jab that had bloodied my mouth. She staggered and coughed, her hands empty, her coloring as dark as my birthmark.
He drew his Colt and thrust it in her face, almost touching her gasping mouth. Thumbing back the hammer, he said, “Bye-bye, baby.”
I sprang forward and wrenched his arm down as he fired. Mama screamed. She grabbed her bloody side and fell over. A table collapsed beneath her and chairs scattered. As I held Papa’s forearm, his swelling muscles spread my fingers apart. He grabbed my hair, and several men jumped him from behind. We went down in a pile, all of them on top of me.
Papa fired again before someone yanked the gun away. As fast as they buried me, the men rolled off and regrouped. Papa tried to crawl away, but the customers grabbed his arms and legs. A burly man ran up and kicked Papa’s ribs while Mama continued to cry out. A second kick dropped Papa onto his stomach. The man jammed his knee between my father’s shoulder blades, helping to keep him down. Two customers ran out, shouting that they’d bring help.
I slid a few yards to where Mama lay. Her head rested in a woman’s lap; her cheeks had turned the same dingy white as the linoleum and were wet with tears and sweat. Howling, Mama pressed the wound above her right hipbone with bloody hands.
Her eyes rolled wildly, looking past me, as if searching for somebody else. Anyone else. I wanted her to say my name, but all that came out was a long, terrible cry.
Papa still sprawled under the pile of men. His head was turned away from me. Then his back rose, swelling like an ocean wave, lifting the men who tried to pin him. Before they could force him back down, he faced me. With only the slightest strain in his voice, he said, “Happy now?”
I looked away from his flint-gray stare as Mama wailed. A lizard-thin doctor hurried into the cafe and asked some people to pull my mother’s hands away from the bullet hole so he could look. The pitch of her screams rose like a saw blade biting into hardwood. I stared at Papa so I wouldn’t see the gore; he was the lesser of two evils. I said, “Why, Papa?”
“’Cause she woulda done it to me.” The burly man kneeling on Papa’s back told him to shut up. Papa cussed him and got a rap in the mouth.
I blurted out, “What about Tommy?”
Through bloody lips, he told me, “Leave him alone. He’s none of your business.”
The manager unplugged the jukebox, silencing Roy Acuff. The police came in, two young men in blue short-sleeved shirts, with sweat stains as dark as their navy ties and trousers. Flat-topped blue hats perched on the backs of their heads with short visors pointing like beaks. One officer pulled Papa’s arms behind him and snapped handcuffs over both wrists. The metal rings closed so tight that Papa’s hands soon turned red.
A customer turned over Papa’s Colt to the police. “The lady was hacking this fella about his love nest—got a kid and everything stashed here—when he up and shoots her.”
“Horseshit,” Papa shouted. “You’re a Goddamn liar.”
Both officers told him to shut up. No one else contradicted the customer. No one mentioned that Mama had grabbed for the gun first.
Everybody the police questioned pointed me out as the one who’d saved her life; they noted the splatter of Mama’s blood on my overalls from the gunshot. I slumped in a chair beside the window she had cracked with the door handle. I didn’t want to look at Papa’s swelling hands, now turning purple, or the customers’ pointing fingers or the blood that had spread behind Mama as the doctor worked to close one hole in front and another in back. Instead, I stared at the spider web of cracked glass and traced my fingertips over the raised, needle-sharp lines, leaving my own blood in the same place my parents had spilled theirs. I was the only one who bled on purpose. After all, the whole thing was my fault.
The officer who’d left his cuffs biting into Papa’s wrists inspected two bullet holes in the linoleum, including one from the slug that had gone through Mama’s side. He leaned over the doctor’s shoulder and asked if she would live. “She won’t live long,” the doctor said, tossing aside another bloody pad, “if she keeps sassing-off at gunmen.”
The policeman grunted and pulled a chair over to me. He spun it around so that he straddled the seat and leaned thick forearms across the back. His hands played with the braided leather handle of a sap, swinging it like the arm of a grandfather clock. The lead-weighted end was stained as dark as the palm of Papa’s old baseball mitt. He said, “It’s heavy, if you wanna play with it.” I shrugged, and he said, “Most everybody thinks you swing it like a club, but really you just give it a wrist-flick.” He demonstrated, snapping the bulbous tip toward me. With a smile, he said, “Puts a nigger on his ass in nuthin flat.”
“Just them?”
“White folks too, I reckon. Even your daddy. Looks like you didn’t need one though, to save your mama’s life.”
My fingers
stayed on the razor-like spider web that kept me bleeding. I said, “No, sir.”
“Your daddy tried to kill her, shoot her in the face, and you grabbed him. That right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t sound too pleased with yourself.” While he talked, he unraveled and re-braided the sap handle, as swift as Mama fixing Darlene’s hair.
“I promised not to tell about Papa’s other family. But I did. I messed up everything.”
“It’s hard on a boy, knowing his daddy’s two-timing, and has another kid and all. The way I see it, you kept everything from being a whole lot worse.” He centered the hat brim on his forehead and parted the crowd of onlookers, heading for the backroom. Mary Rush let him inside.
The burly man who’d punched Papa and kept him down now helped the other officer pull him to his feet. “Sorry about having to sock you, Mance.”
Blood had dried on Papa’s mouth and chin. Somehow, his grime-smeared shirt shocked me more; I’d never seen him look dirty before. He said, “Save me a stool, Jerry. I won’t be gone long.” The officer shoved him out the door and a dozen customers followed; the other policeman soon joined the procession marching across the courthouse square.
Mama now lay on her left side, arm bent under her head for a pillow, facing me but with her eyes shut. She had quieted down, only whimpering as the doctor taped another bandage in place that stretched around to where the bullet had exited. He’d cut away some of her bloody dress and girdle, exposing flushed skin still wet from the alcohol he’d repeatedly splashed over the wounds.
Her eyes stayed closed as he asked how she was feeling: cold or hot, prickly or numb. “All that,” she rasped, “And wide awake and sleepy. Everything and nothing. Son-of-a-bitch.”
The doctor draped her exposed flesh with a pilled wool sweater donated by the woman who’d cradled Mama’s head. He snapped his bag closed and said with a slight grin, “I hope that’s not my mother you’re disparaging.”
“Everybody and nobody.”
“You got someone to take you home?”
“I got nobody. There’s just me.”
The doctor glanced my way and winked. He said to Mama, “Your son is watching over you. He’s a hero—saved your life.”
“Just so I can cook his breakfast in the morning. Him and the others, eating me alive. A bullet woulda been faster. A kindness.”
“I’ll come out to your place tomorrow to check on you, Mrs. MacLeod.”
Her eyes snapped open and stared into mine. She said, “Look for me in the kitchen.”
I turned away, back to my web and the crimson streaks my fingers left on the window. The blood outlined every crack, seeping in, becoming a part of the place. Maybe the manager would leave the glass un-repaired and keep the slugs sunk deep in his floor: we’d always be a part of my secret brother’s home. It only seemed fair, since he’d forever haunt us without even setting foot in our house.
The doctor came up behind me, translucent in the plate glass like a rail-thin haint. He tapped my shoulder and said, “Let’s see those fingers.” Tsk-tsking as I showed him the mess I’d made of them, he opened his bag again. Pads and white tape soon covered eight of my fingertips but didn’t take away the hurt. He regarded me a moment. “I think you’ll survive, young man. Might even heal faster than your mother.” With a tap on my hand, he said, “Keep those clean for a few days, and give her some help in the kitchen, will you?”
After he departed, a few women leaned over Mama and asked how she was doing. “You should try it sometime,” she said. Similar attempts to comfort her were met with other smart remarks. Finally, even the lady who’d cradled Mama’s head in her lap left her alone on the floor, lying near darkened puddles of blood across which someone had laid napkins. She let Mama keep the sweater.
A few customers stuck around to gab with the manager and the soda jerk. Mary Rush stayed in the backroom with Tommy. The burly man who Papa had called Jerry now straddled the chair beside me just as the policeman had. A thicket of black curls atop his head and long eyelashes like a deer’s softened his broad, ruddy face. One hairy forearm sported a blue-green tattoo of an anchor just like Popeye’s. Introducing himself as Jerry Flynn, he said, “Sorry I had to peg yer old man. I don’t take that guff offa nobody.”
I shrugged. Not being able to touch the glass web anymore, I rubbed my bandaged fingertips together, aggravating the cuts so I could feel something.
“Well, I hope you don’t hold it against me. What’s yer name, son?”
I told him and asked if he was a sailor-man.
He smiled. “Not anymore. I been outta the Navy for a few years. Drive a bread truck now, delivering to stores.” He said to Mama, “How ’bout I deliver y’all home?”
She muttered, “We got Mance’s truck.”
“You’ll like riding in the van a whole lot better than a pickup, ma’am. Woman in yer condition oughtn’t ride sitting up.”
Mama took a few shallow breaths and said, “You fixing to carry me out like one of your bread loaves?”
“I figured we’d make a stretcher outta some cloth.”
“This ain’t a tablecloth kind of place.” She tried a smile and said, “I usually get shot in the nicer joints.”
I picked my way among the scattered chairs and tables to the backroom. My neck tingled from the stares of the manager and the others at the counter. I knocked twice. Mary Rush said, “I already told you fellas every—” She pulled open the door and stopped talking. Looking down at me, she moved to block my view of the tiny bedroom of faded yellow. What had once probably looked sunny now had the tinge of a flower long past its prime, in need of deadheading. Battered suitcases lay open on the bed with clothes piled inside and around them. Her son Tommy knelt beside one heap and pressed down, hands deep in rumpled shirts and dresses like he was trying to pack himself too. She said, “What do you want?”
“A bed sheet. For my mother.”
“I’m sorry about all this,” she said. Her face flushed; she had rosy blotches around her eyes and nose from crying. “He shoulda come clean. Wait there.” She closed the door and spoke softly to Tommy. After some bumping and more hushed talk, Mary edged open the door and handed me a rolled-up white sheet. I thanked her, and she said, “People warned me about a wife and family. Y’all get warned too?”
“No, ma’am. It took us by surprise.”
“Life does that. We’re going away from here—you’ll get no more surprises from us.”
“Can I say bye to Tommy?”
“No. Go on now.” She shut the door.
I wrapped my arms around the sheet, hugging it to me as I returned to Mama and Jerry. She said, “Where’d you get that?”
“From Mary Rush.”
“Good thinking, Bud. Now I get to lay on the same sheet Mance soiled with that hussy.” The hard edge stayed in her voice, but her eyes had turned watery.
Jerry helped me spread the bed sheet on the floor. We offered to help Mama slide onto it, but she said, “Don’t anybody touch me!” She wriggled like a sidewinder, panting and cussing under her breath, until she stopped in the middle of it. Her tears slid onto the white linen as she gasped, “Oh God, it smells like him.”
Jerry recruited a strong-looking man to help. They each gathered two corners and lifted Mama a couple of feet off the floor. “Aye God,” she moaned. “Hurry.” I ran ahead of them, shoving open the cafe door. It swung wide and smashed through the cracked web, scattering blood-stained glass inside.
“Jumping Jesus,” the cafe manager yelled. “What next?”
The large delivery van was parked across the street, taking up two spaces. Its side panel showed a be-ribboned girl chomping into a buttered slice of bread. Jerry told me to open the back. It hurt my fingers, but I shoved the heavy door above my head. The humid smell of baked bread washed over me.
Mama gritted her teeth. “Goddamn you, hurry!”
Jerry slid in and scooted backward, keeping the curve of her rump just above the
floor until she was well inside. The other man didn’t stick around for any thanks. Just as well, because Mama wasn’t in a grateful mood.
CHAPTER 16
Mama didn’t even try to leave her bed for a week. She said it was the doctor’s orders. Lonnie cooked for us and made sure we had dinners for school. Nat and his big-boned wife Leona took the evening shift, fixing our suppers and sitting up with us until bedtime. Whoever was in charge always made sure Mama was comfortable, but she mostly slept and sulked.
Jerry Flynn stopped by a few times to check on us in the late afternoons. He explained that he and Papa had often sat beside one another at the Cottontail and at a diner in Colquitt called Dora’s. “Mind, we never talked much,” he told me and my brothers on the porch one afternoon. “Yer daddy ain’t one for spilling his guts.”
“Just other folks’ guts,” Chet said.
Jerry nodded and opened his hands, as if what he wanted to tell us had escaped his grasp. He stood and said, “Who wants another ride in the bread truck?”
Chet and I would slouch in the back with the sliding door pushed up. Jerry always had a loaf of “damaged” light-bread for us to snack on along the way and take home afterward. Jay sat up front and Jerry explained his delivery routes. On deserted stretches of road, he even let Jay stand beside him and steer the van.
Outside a country store, a clerk filled Jerry’s gas tank from the gravity pump. Our new friend had set us up to RC Colas and “goober peas.” We stood around Jerry, shaking salty, roasted peanuts into the narrow lip of our cold drinks. The hard part was trying to slurp all the foam that fizzed up. We had to drink the rest of the cola fast, before it went flat, which led to a lot of explosive burping.
“Y’all sound like a bunch of bullfrogs.” Jerry got a laugh from the clerk and paid for the gas. “How are y’all planning to live, other than mooching offa the likes of me?”
I said, “Folks are still cooking for us.”
Jay blew three notes across the lip of his empty RC bottle. “The fall crop’s coming up,” he said.
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