“I need to head out and get that machine runnin’. Got customers today.”
He moved around in the small space of the kitchen, his shoulders slightly bent so he could walk upright.
Cynthia felt overwhelmed with shame. She couldn’t stand for him to feel sorry for her. She couldn’t tell him how for music you had to go away for an audition. You had to have better teachers than she had. He’d never understand.
He jerked on a heavy canvas coat. “Stay as long as you want,” he said. “Maybe we can get some cards together later.”
“Dill?” she said.
He turned slowly around. “What is it, sweetheart?”
“I need to ask you a favor. On the form for the scholarship, on the papers, they want an address.”
“You’ve got one, haven’t you?”
“I want to put your box number down.”
“I can’t go along with that.”
Cynthia felt trapped. Nobody was going to help her. She had asked. She couldn’t ask again.
“Fine,” she said. She picked up her own coat and stood up. Dill was blocking the doorway. She’d figured it all out, applied to the one place that didn’t want her dad’s income and signature. She’d rent a box at the post office herself.
She pulled on her coat and stood only a foot away from Dill. A network of wrinkles, like creeks branching into rivers, was carved in the red skin of his neck.
Before she knew what had happened, Dill grabbed at her. He twisted, and shoved her out the door. She tripped on the stairs and landed hard, on her feet, but tripping off balance. Dill gave her another shove from behind, his hand in the middle of her back.
“Fine,” he said, imitating her. “Fine.” He pushed her along toward the equipment shed. “Ain’t fine,” he said. “I know it ain’t fine. You know it ain’t fine. What were you thinking to do? Never visit me again ’cause things don’t go your way?”
He shoved her up to the bulldozer, gripping the seat of her pants as if she were a kid, and climbed up after her. He kept yelling, but when he started the engine, it was so loud she couldn’t hear. He backed the huge machine out of the shed. At the edge of the dump, he lowered the heavy blade. He pushed back as far as he could in the seat, took her elbow, and dragged her onto his lap. He shoved her feet down on the brake pedals and throttled up. Cynthia felt the heavy power of the Cat, and heard the crack and tumbling crunch of boards and dirt, rolling and breaking. Slowly she pushed the debris ahead, the vibration shaking in her arms and legs, until it began to shift and tumble over the edge of the pit. Dill shoved on her knees to force her to brake, raised the blade, and threw the lever for reverse.
“Back ’er up,” he yelled.
She craned her neck to see, but Dill’s shoulder was there, his rust-stained jacket.
“Nothin’ comin’ but a Greyhound,” he said. “Just hold her steady, push straight back.”
She let up slowly on the brakes, and she heard the ding, ding, ding, and the huge yellow Cat lurched backward, knocking her forward. Dill took a grip on her shoulder, and yanked her back. He hauled on levers, lowered the blade, and let her steer the huge bulldozer until the front tires hung on the edge of the pit.
When they reversed again, he set the brake, and his arm came around her arms and chest. He pinned her against himself. The throb of machinery rattled her teeth. Up high in the cab, the wind blew the stench of the dump away, and she was able to see over the trees and willows to where the river made a flat, silver ribbon, winding away to the north.
18
On the day of Christmas Eve, Kenny watched the snow begin to fall, wet, heavy flakes dropping straight down. By afternoon, half-moon drifts covered the front room windows. Kenny elbowed his way through the back doorway with an armful of logs so high he had to arch his neck to see where he was going. The dark room seemed to slope underground, like a bunker. He dropped the wood on the hearth, swung open the stove, and wedged in another log. When he closed the heavy door, he could hear the air and wood burst into flame. The sudden rush of heat beat like wings up the stovepipe and set the iron doors shuddering. He turned the damper down.
In the kitchen, his mother was whistling a song. Her whistle was thin, liquid like a bird song, riding up and down the notes. He loved to hear her whistle and tried to talk her into doing it more. But she said that at one of the schools she’d been sent to, the nuns had slapped her hand and told her, “Whistling girls, like cackling hens, all will come to no good ends.” His mother laughed about it now, but she never whistled except when she was by herself.
The steamy, warm smell of turkey in the oven made juices spurt in the back of his mouth, under his tongue, but he didn’t feel like it was Christmas. Someone in his mother’s office had given them an old couch, a chair, and a small three-legged table that had to have a matchbook wedged under one leg. His mother had bought a used TV and sewed curtains. But the room still seemed empty to him, as if they were moving in or out. He switched on the lamp and closed the curtains to shut out the snow.
He drifted into the kitchen and stood close behind his mother, leaning over to watch her chopping apples for salad. He smelled the clean shampooed smell of her hair and reached around her to steal a pale cube of green apple. He hadn’t eaten anything all day.
“Quit it,” she said.
“I’m starving.”
“Good.”
He reached for another piece, and she swatted at his hand.
“Why don’t you do something useful?” she said. She turned around, and Kenny stepped back. “Bring in some wood.”
“I already did.”
“Go shovel snow.”
“Did that, too.”
His mother turned back to the sink, swept up the apples, and dumped them in a bowl. She wiped her hands on her apron and stretched up to reach into the cupboard. She brought down three china plates, and held them out to Kenny. “Set the table.”
Kenny looked at the plates. “We only need two,” he started to say, then took the plates, glancing at his mother. He swallowed and pushed down the stab of alarm in his stomach. “Mom?” he said. “You gave me three plates.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“I invited a guest.”
Kenny was so relieved at first, he didn’t know what to say. He had thought his mother was setting a place for his dad. Since the trip to Bonneville Falls, his mother had been doing funny things. She’d been staying late at the courthouse, and more and more when he came down to the kitchen in the morning, she was already there, sitting by herself with the oven on, drinking coffee. Neither one of them had mentioned rodeo lately.
Kenny spaced the dishes around the table and laid silverware at each place. He folded three nubby paper napkins and weighted them down with the forks.
When he was finished, his mother stared for a long time at the table. She straightened a knife and stood back. “Maybe we should use the other napkins.”
“What other napkins?”
His mother disappeared into her room. He heard a drawer slide open and closed. She returned with three white napkins draped over her hand. Moving around the table, she slipped the paper napkins out, laying the cloth ones softly at each place.
“We can use these tomorrow,” she said, and put the paper napkins away.
“Who’s coming?” Kenny asked. It all seemed so strange to him. It still seemed like his mother expected his dad. She didn’t know anybody in town. Unless it was a person from work.
“Somebody you know.”
“Who?”
“Roddy Moyers.”
“What?”
He stared at his mother, but she wouldn’t meet his look. Instead, she pulled out her chair and sat down. “I thought you’d be pleased.”
“Mom, I don’t know Roddy Moyers.” Somehow, his mom had gotten the wrong idea. “I just talked to him once. Why is he coming here?”
His mother hesitated. “Well, he didn’t have anyplace else to go. So I asked him if he wanted to come h
ere.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?”
“I thought you’d like it. You can talk rodeo.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?”
“Sit down,” his mother said. Kenny pulled out a chair and sat at his place. He wanted to put his elbows on the table, but the plate was there, and he felt awkward with his hands in his lap. His mother was looking at him as if she were the one who’d asked a question. She was waiting for an answer. But Kenny had asked the question.
“I’m sorry,” his mother said. “I should have told you. I met Roddy Moyers.” She picked up the plate in front of her and set it aside. She pinched at a crease in the tablecloth, lifted the fabric into a small tent, and tried to smooth it flat. “While you were gone, in Florida.”
“I saw you.”
“What?”
“I saw you get in his truck.”
His mother turned pale. The color faded out of her face almost in a line. “How?” she said. “You were watching me?”
“No,” Kenny said. “No. I was just there.”
“Where?”
“Across from the courthouse.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why didn’t you?”
He glared at his mother. Her eyes were wide and blue. She blinked. She was the one who looked away, but her voice when she spoke was cold.
“I don’t have to tell you everything I do. Every place I go,” she said.
“Then I don’t either.”
Kenny scraped back his chair, shoved it into the table so hard the dishes jumped in place, and walked away.
“Yes, you do.” His mother was yelling. He heard her get up, heard her footsteps behind him. He started up the stairs.
“Kenny—come back down here. Come back.”
Kenny closed the door of his room and sat down on the bed, his shoulders tensed for the sound of steps coming up. But his mother didn’t follow him. He heard the bedsprings pinch underneath him, then the faint sound of his mother running water in the sink. He sat still for a long time finishing the argument. Why didn’t she tell him? Why was it his fault now? He hadn’t done anything.
But he knew why she hadn’t told him. Not in words. But he knew. He sensed something wrong, something his mother had done wrong. Suddenly his mother was someone he didn’t quite know. He stood up and walked under the low roof to the window. It had stopped snowing, and the world seemed laid out flat in the snow. Houses and barns he couldn’t see in the summer sat square and neat like Monopoly pieces. But he wouldn’t have been able to walk to them. The snow was so deep he couldn’t walk anywhere now but down the middle of the street. He stood up too fast and struck his forehead on the slanting eave. “Shit,” he said, and sat down. He didn’t wince or reach up to rub the swelling lump. He let the pain break in his skull and burn hot. When it subsided, he reached over to the bureau and lifted the package he’d bought for his mother. He’d planned to wake up early and hide it under the tree. His mother always wrapped a dozen presents for him so the tree wouldn’t look so bare, but only one was his real present, a sweater or a new jacket. Last year she’d given him a new clock radio to help him get up in the morning, but they kept it downstairs. The other packages were socks and cans of salted peanuts, presents from the grocery store.
When the girl at the counter wrapped the box, Kenny hadn’t even looked at the red-and-green wrapping, Christmas trees and red banners that said “Merry Christmas” over and over. He lifted the folded ends of the paper, felt the tape peel away, and slid the box out. Inside, a short string of blue beads, the chalky blue of jawbreakers, had rolled into the corner. The center bead was the largest, and the rest grew smaller up to the clasp.
Kenny had walked around the store until his feet began to hurt. The girl at the counter asked him twice if he needed any help, but he didn’t know what he wanted. When he finally decided, the girl started to wrap the beads in a small white box, but Kenny asked her for a big box. He wanted to surprise his mother.
He laid the beads back in the box, but they looked wrong, cheap, like something from the drugstore. He crumpled up the tissue paper in a nest, but when he put the lid on, he could feel the beads roll heavy to the corner, and the box tipped in his hand. He pried off the lid and arranged the beads again, but he saw he’d have to try to find more tissue paper. He set the open box on the floor and stretched out on the bed. It was cold, but he didn’t get under the covers. He stared at the wallpaper on the ceiling, at the picture postcards, the long tear of paper falling from the slope. The smell of roasting turkey drifted up the stairs and felt more like smoke in his nostrils. It kept him awake for some time, as if it were a noise or music playing on the radio. His mother began to whistle.
He woke with a start when he heard her climbing the stairs. She knocked and shoved the door open. Kenny sat up. His mother had taken off her apron and changed her clothes. She wore her pink dress, even though it was winter.
“Roddy should be here,” she said, “any minute.” Her voice was light. Offhand. “Why don’t you change clothes and come down?”
Kenny wanted to forgive her, to go along with her and pretend nothing was wrong, but something stopped him. He wanted everything to be all right, but he couldn’t help himself.
“I bought some eggnog,” his mother said. “Why don’t you come down?”
“Okay,” he said. But she didn’t leave. She stood in the doorway, waiting for him to make some move. “In a minute.”
“Try and look nice,” she said.
“Okay.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and listened to his mother’s steps on the stairs. When he finally stood up, he saw the box of tissue and the beads exposed, where he’d pushed them into the middle of the room.
Kenny thought he heard voices downstairs, then he was sure a deeper voice was talking to his mother. He pictured Roddy Moyers sitting at the kitchen table, his mother moving around. The radio came on in the front room, playing Christmas music. He wished he’d been downstairs when Roddy Moyers got there. Now he would have to walk in, say something. He moved as quietly as he could down to the hall and slipped through the bathroom door, glancing quickly into the kitchen. Moyers wasn’t at the table. He was standing up, his back against the counter.
Kenny splashed cold water on his face until he almost couldn’t breathe, then flung his head back. He used a towel to dry his hair and combed it. He hadn’t changed his clothes; his jeans were so dirty they’d stretched another size and hung low on his hips, and there was a stiff spot of dried egg on his sweater. He rubbed at it with the corner of the towel. But he wasn’t going to dress up like a kid going to his grandmother’s for Christmas, not for Roddy Moyers.
He flushed the toilet, walked out, and stood in the doorway.
“Hey,” Moyers said.
“Kenny,” his mother said, glancing at his clothes, then at Moyers. She introduced him as her son.
“Hi,” Kenny said.
He dreaded the moment when Moyers would talk about their meeting at the rodeo grounds and connect him with his mother. He flushed with embarrassment, but Moyers didn’t say anything. His mother reached into the refrigerator and brought out a green-and-red carton of eggnog. She poured three glasses and handed them around.
His mother thought he liked eggnog, because she wanted him to drink it. She thought it would help him put on weight. But it was so thick and sweet he felt like he was drinking condensed milk from the can. His mother lifted her glass.
“Merry Christmas,” she said.
“Merry Christmas,” they repeated. Kenny watched Moyers take a sip from his glass and set it down on the counter.
“You don’t like eggnog?” his mother said. She wiped her hands on her dress as if she still had an apron on.
But Moyers only grinned. “You got something to put in it?”
Kenny knew they didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” his mother said. “I should have thought.”
&nbs
p; “Hang on,” Moyers said. He went out the back door without his jacket and came back with a whiskey bottle in a Christmas box. He pulled the bottle out and unscrewed the cap.
“You shouldn’t have to drink your own whiskey.” His mother was upset.
“It’s okay. I get a lot of these,” Moyers said. “Christmas cheer.”
He held the bottle over his mother’s glass. “Say when,” he said, but she stopped him after just a drop. He took a spoon from the table and handed it to her, then turned to Kenny.
Kenny waited for his mother to say no, but she didn’t say anything while Roddy poured the whiskey into his eggnog. She handed him the spoon. “It’s Christmas,” she said, laughing in a funny way. Kenny had never seen his mother like this. She was nervous, he could tell, but excited.
She told them to go in the front room; there must be a ball game on the television.
“Rather keep you company,” Roddy said. He glanced at Kenny, who shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him.
“Then you can help. We’re almost ready.”
Moyers helped her lift the turkey out of the oven and onto a platter, and she gave Kenny the potatoes to mash while she made gravy in the bottom of the roaster. Last year she’d made him learn to carve, because his dad was gone and it was a job for the man of the house. For a minute, he was afraid she would ask Moyers to do it. But she spooned out the dressing and carved the turkey herself. Finally they sat down around the table.
They ate in silence. Kenny could never believe how good turkey was. And he was always disappointed to be full so soon. How could the dinner take so long to make and be over so fast? He and Roddy both took second helpings and thirds. Then his mother stood up and brought over the pies.
“I can’t eat any more,” Kenny said.
“You want to take a break?”
“Yes.” Kenny and Roddy spoke at the same time, and his mother laughed.
“Okay.”
His mother started to pick up the dirty dishes, three steps back and forth between the table and the sink. Kenny reached for the dishes around him, handing them up to her. He knew he should get up and start washing. Washing the dishes was his job. But he waited for his mother to ask, to give him a look. When she finally turned back to the table she only asked him to go turn on the Christmas tree lights.
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