by Warren Read
“Honey you can’t be sure,” he said. He didn’t want to argue with her. But this was something different. “He’s been sitting in there with nothing on his mind but this place and the people who he thinks did him in. I don’t want to lay any more on you than you’ve already got, but I suspect I’m not saying anything you haven’t already thought about.”
Bobbie went to the table and gathered her purse into her arms. “You know, it doesn’t matter anyway because by now the whole damn town knows. If he so much as sets foot on the mountain Ray Hardy or any one of his deputies will be on him like flies on shit and it’ll all be over.”
Hank nodded in agreement, and forced his gaze toward his lap. He smiled, and recognized it was time to leave the subject. “Well I’m here if you or the boy needs anything,” he said. And this offer came so naturally, without hesitation that Bobbie told him she would take him at his word that he was being sincere. He said, “I’m serious as a heart attack, honey,” and then she smiled and patted him a good one on the chest.
Hank collected the jars and returned them to their places on the shelf, slid the panel back into place. Then he reached into a canister and pulled out a handful of small chocolate cookies.
“Here. I made these the other day.” He brought the cookies to the table and set them down in front of her. “They’re not the best, but they’re pretty good. I’m messing around with a butter concoction. It seems to be decent. Go ahead and try it and let me know what you think of them. These are from the Ambrosia, so it’s fine to have one in the middle of the day. Should help you on those rainy days. And slip a couple in your school lunch if you want.”
“Yeah,” Bobbie said, tearing a paper towel from a nearby roll and wrapping them up. “That’d go over like a lead balloon.” She put all the baggies into her purse, and touched Hank on the arm, lightly. “I’ll let you know when I know.”
“Well, you know I’m no cook.”
“I wasn’t talking about the cookies. But if these are any good, it might be something to think about,” she said. “Cookies and brownies and stuff. Sometimes I wish I had something that didn’t require a flame.”
“You’re pretty good in the kitchen,” he said. “Maybe I can talk you into doing some baking for me?”
“Hell Hank, I’d consider it but you know half of Ash Falls is downwind from me.”
Lyla Elizabeth (Kelleher) Henry
Lyla stood at the kitchen door, the drapes pulled back from the window as she watched Eugene and Marcelle out in the carport. The front end of Eugene’s car was propped up on metal stands, and his legs spilled out from underneath as if he was being consumed by it. A perfectly good pair of blue jeans was now streaked with black grease, from his knee all the way to his shoe. Not more than two feet away from him, Marcelle sat in the old green lawn chair with her hands tucked between her thighs, her oversized parka bunched around her chin. A white glow of light pooled from where Eugene lay, spreading out to Marcelle’s tennis shoes.
There didn’t seem to be enough holding that car up. A couple of flimsy metal teepees were the only things propped under it and as Lyla watched, Marcelle kept leaning forward, putting the weight of her whole body against the fender to retrieve and swap out tools whenever Eugene slid them from under the car. She’d rest on it, and lean herself down to dig around in his toolbox, then toss whatever she pulled out into that pool of light. Twice she got out of the chair and knelt onto the floor so she could mess around with him, tickle his stomach and squeeze his knee. When she did this he’d kick at her, and she would laugh and put both hands on the car again as she stood up. Three times Lyla thought she saw the car tremble over her son.
When he was a boy Eugene sat in a chair, maybe the same chair Marcelle was taking up now, while Jonas monkeyed with the car, changing the oil or a pump or a filter, or whatever else he was able to fix himself. Eugene was so small his feet would not even touch the floor. They swung back and forth as he fidgeted and looked around at the walls or out into the street when a car or bicyclist passed by. Lyla thought the whole thing was ridiculous. A boy his age should be on his own bicycle or down at the school playground, burning his energy, not cooped up in a garage watching his father tinker with the family car. But Jonas was insistent. It was the kind of thing a father and son ought to do together, he said. The making of a man. But it was always too much to ask of Eugene, and he’d hop down from the chair and begin to wander about, and fish through the toolbox for things he could turn into swords or pistols. He’d hand off a pliers when he’d been asked for a crescent, or a flathead screwdriver instead of a Phillips. Like clockwork, Jonas would start to holler and swear, and Eugene would cry, and Lyla would finally come outside to put an end to it all. To this day divots marked the paint, lingering reminders of the wrong wrenches having been hurled against the walls.
She opened the kitchen door and leaned out into the cold. “I’m putting on soup,” she called out, her breath clouding the porch like smoke. “Are you hungry?”
Marcelle said, “Yes ma’am,” and stood up from the chair. Eugene said nothing, but slid his feet back and raised his knees into triangles.
Lyla came back inside and took the soup from the refrigerator, the chicken noodle she had made from scratch the night before, and put it on the stovetop to heat. Neither Jonas nor Eugene ever complimented or commented on her cooking, but they usually ate up everything on their plates, and that was enough for her to hold onto as any kind of approval. She wasn’t someone who needed a big show of appreciation.
But Marcelle, now she could be thoughtful in that way. She often told Lyla that her food was much better than her own mother’s had been, and even asked if Lyla would teach her to cook, since she could barely make a sandwich without getting it wrong. “It’s important for a wife to make good food for her husband,” she said. And even though the words echoed Lyla’s own parents’ constant haranguing, it pleased her to hear it anyway. She’d certainly do that sometime, Lyla promised, and she meant it. There would come a day, she guessed, when neither she nor Jonas could pretend that Eugene’s wife wouldn’t always be there.
There was a rattle at the kitchen door when Marcelle came in, taking off her jacket and draping it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. Her face was flushed and her hair was hanging down over her eyes. She went to the stove and lifted the lid off of the pot, and peered into the broth.
“This smells good,” she said.
Lyla took the lid from her and put it back over the soup. “It’s not ready yet,” she told her. She edged her way in and Marcelle stepped aside, moving to the counter by the sink. There was a spot of black grease on her chin, a mark Eugene had probably left on her.
“Is he coming in?” Lyla asked, lifting the lid again and stirring the soup.
Marcelle shrugged. “He said he has to finish before Mr. Henry gets home. He said he’d be in big trouble if the car’s still in there.”
Lyla had moved to the table and was setting the bowls out when Eugene entered the kitchen. He dropped his coat on the floor and walked over to Marcelle, coming up behind her as she washed her hands in the sink, his shoes tracking dirt behind him. He pressed himself against her backside and leaned into her, whispering something in her ear; Lyla couldn’t hear what it was. And then his hands found Marcelle’s waist and slid around to her stomach, and when he pressed in harder Marcelle pushed back at him.
“Oh, you want to fight?” he said, pushing against her again.
Marcelle said, “Quit, Eugene. You’re gonna get grease all over my clothes.”
“You’re already dirty,” he said.
Lyla said, “Knock it off, Eugene. She said stop, so stop.”
He glanced over at Lyla with the only briefest acknowledgement, the way a dog will look at its owner before bolting through the open gate, out into the street. Marcelle had turned to face him now and she held her hands out in front of her, still wet and dripping water onto her clothes. He pushed into her again, but she moved away, and gave him a s
lap along his shoulder. It wasn’t a hard slap by any means, certainly not something that Lyla or Jonas or any reasonable person would make a deal out of. But as Marcelle left the sink, Eugene took hold of her sleeve and gave her a hard spin.
From Lyla’s place by the dinette, she watched the way Marcelle suddenly tangled over her own two feet, her awkward body stumbling in the open space in front of the stove. Her eyes grew wide with panic and fear, and her hands grasped at the air as if something might magically drop from the ceiling to help her. Lyla made a move toward her, but it was too late. The girl’s body knocked into the stove, her arm catching the edge of the pot and dragging it into herself, a cascade of steaming chicken soup dumping down the front of her clothes and all over the floor.
Marcelle let out a wail and fell to her knees, and the pot rattled back in place on the stovetop, steam spitting from the spiral burner beneath it. Lyla rushed to her and took her arms to look at them. They were red, but they would be all right with some cold water. Half of the soup was on the floor.
Lyla shoved Eugene aside and grabbed a hand towel from the oven handle, giving it to Marcelle. She was furious; a rush of heat swelled, as if the soup had poured over her instead. “Damn it, Eugene!” she snapped. “Why does it always have to be like this?”
“Like what?” he shouted back at her. “She hit me first.”
“I barely touched you,” Marcelle said, holding the towel in her hand like it was a dead animal.
“I barely touched you,” Eugene mocked, his voice high and scratchy. “It’s not my fault you’re such a stupid klutz.”
“Just grow up already,” Lyla said. “Both of you need to grow up and act like adults for a change.”
She told Eugene to get the mop and clean up the mess, but he said, “The hell I will. I didn’t want any fucking soup, anyway.” Then he stomped out the back door, slamming it behind him.
After what seemed like an eternity, Marcelle finally stopped crying and picked herself up from the floor, then went to the basement to clean up, leaving Lyla to fill the basin with soapy water and retrieve the mop herself. She attacked the spill with intention, pushing the sponge in tight rows, soaking it up, rinsing, mopping, continuing the pattern from where the soup had landed. And then she moved farther out, stepping back slowly, all the while studying the clutter of papers that covered the refrigerator.
That door had once been a mosaic of crayon drawings and scrawled notes and shopping lists, and Lyla would sit at the table drinking tea and staring at it all, praying that there would someday be more than what was already on it. Other people had glowing report cards to display, accolades from their child’s teacher, a gushing comment in the corner of an essay. When the crayons went away for good, Lyla was left with citations and juvenile court dates to post, and appointment times for counseling and doctor visits, things that sucked money from their bank account but never really resulted in anything worthwhile. The refrigerator door became nothing but a collection of mementos proving Lyla and Jonas’ great failings as parents.
There was a hollow grind outside and then Eugene’s car suddenly roared to life, the rhythmic pumping of the accelerator washing through the walls in great waves. By the time Lyla got to the window, he was at the end of the driveway, the brake lights burning red. She opened the door and he stomped on the gas, tearing out into the street, leaving twin stripes of tire tread on the pavement as he disappeared. In the carport, his toolbox sat with its lid wide open, wrenches and sockets scattered all around.
In the beginning of it all, when Eugene was still small enough to take by the hand, she had come to Hank for help, hoping he could offer something more than what she already knew. “You need to beat his ass for him,” he said, and her heart sank. He reminded her, “That’s what Dad did for us.”
“Yes he did, didn’t he?” Lyla said. “But we’re not like that, Hank. Jonas and I don’t want to be like that.”
“Your boy’s out of control,” he said. “You’ve got to do something before there there’s nothing left that you can do.”
Hank stood there staring at her, in his tidy living room with all of its contents neatly in place, the unwrinkled pillows tucked against the arms of his couch, and the books stacked perfectly on the side table, books that he had all the time in the world to read. He lived in his quiet house with his quiet dog that lay curled up and motionless on the rug, and he had the audacity to tell her what, in all honesty, she already knew.
“We just can’t hit him,” she said, going to the sofa and sinking down into it, the pillow pressing against the small of her back. It was firm, as if it had not been leaned on once since its creation. Hank looked down at her. His eyes were ringed with red, and glazed in wonder and confusion and frustration.
“You just don’t understand,” she said.
“Help me, then.”
She leaned forward, her elbows pressing onto her knees. “You can’t tell Jonas I told you this,” she said. “Promise.”
“All right, I promise.”
“It’d humiliate him,” she said. “He wouldn’t ever be able to be around you again.”
“What is it, Lyla?”
She slid to the edge of the sofa. “I love him, you know. Eugene. I do love him.”
“I know that.”
“But that boy has a way of pressing my buttons like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life. And you know I’ve got buttons. There are moments when I get so mad at him, I’m afraid that if I take a switch to him like I want to, with his little body, I could hurt him real bad.”
“Oh Honey, you wouldn’t ever,” he said. “You have better control than that.”
She took the pillow from behind her and laid it on her lap, and leaned her body over it. It had a sweet smell to it, like cedar. Like fresh cedar boughs. “You think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not.” She looked up at him. “I’ve done it, Hank. When Eugene was really little, so little I could pick him up from the floor and drop him again, just like that.”
“Okay, Lyla,” he said.
“I can’t hit him.”
“I know.”
“I can’t hit him and Jonas can’t hit him. Neither of us can.”
“All right, Lyla,” he said. “All right.”
Marcelle Foster
Eugene’s mother Lyla had talked to Melvin White already and told him that Marcelle would be there by 8:15 this time, no later.
“I put my neck on the line to get you that job,” she told Marcelle, while she scrubbed her son’s breakfast from the griddle. When she spoke her eyelids fluttered and she stole looks at Marcelle in sideways glances. “So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mess it up. I’d really appreciate it.”
Marcelle tore a sheet of plastic from the roll and bunched it around the peanut butter sandwich that she had made on wheat bread. On the counter was a big red apple, waiting for her. It wasn’t even 7:30 yet, and Mrs. Henry was already agitated with her.
Lyla took a paper sack from the cupboard above the sink and handed it to Marcelle. “I don’t mean to pounce on you like that,” she said, her wet hands soaking water into the brown paper edge. “You’re a young woman now, Marcelle. You’re expected to work. Contribute to your husband’s income.”
Mrs. Henry didn’t work. She stayed home during the day, when Mr. Henry and Eugene and now Marcelle were gone to their jobs. The house was always clean anyway, so there wasn’t a lot for her to be doing all day except cook dinner, which didn’t seem to be a big deal to Marcelle. Turn on the stove, put the meat in. Boil some vegetables. Maybe Mrs. Henry had worked once, and Eugene being born changed everything. Having a baby, Marcelle decided, was what it took to be able to stay home from work.
She left the house at 8:00, right after Eugene pulled out of the driveway for the garage. It was seven blocks to where the Sleep Inn Motel sat on the corner just down a bit from the Red Apple, on the way out of downtown. It was raining some but that was to be expected in September, or any month between September and July, really, and wh
ile Eugene could have dropped her off on his way to the garage he told her he decided it was a good thing for Marcelle to walk, seeing as how none of her clothes seemed to be fitting her anymore.
She put on her raincoat and her tennis shoes, and her glasses, and did the walk down Shale Street all the way to Main, then she turned right toward town. Cars passed by with their headlights still on, splashing spray up over the weedy planting strip onto her tennis shoes. She hugged the edged lawns of the Main Street bungalows until she got to Maple Street. Here she made an unanticipated turn, then walked a short distance to where the Luntz home stood.
She stopped to squat down and tighten her shoelaces. She took her time, tugging at the laces so that her feet felt completely embraced. And though it was a school day and she had every reason to know that there was nobody at home, she still found herself looking up, staring for a few minutes at the white paned windows, with their blue curtains drawn tight. If there was a movement there, she thought, a little pull at the edge and the face of a boy appeared, she decided she would give a smile this time, and a little wave. And maybe—just maybe—he might do the same for her.
She stood and fixed the drawstring on her hood and left the house behind her, quickening her pace until she got to the parking lot of the Red Apple. She cut through the black sheen and wove through the trucks with wheelbarrows and cut wood and tarped loads, and then down the graveled alley behind the post office where the potholes were already full and getting fuller. Here the small houses that had once been millworker cabins still stood, tarpaper poking through shingles and backing up to the alley so tightly that sheet-draped bedroom windows looked out over dented and overturned garbage cans. At the end of the block there was a row of stubby, dried out juniper shrubs sticking up from a bed of rust-colored beauty bark. This was the rear entrance to the Sleep Inn.