Homesick Creek

by Diane Hammond

  “Nah, thanks, hon, I’m exaggerating. I can afford bread. Crystal sure loves her cinnamon toast in the morning.”

  “She doing okay without Danny and all?” Danny had been convicted and sentenced to twenty months in prison; they’d sent him down to the correctional institution in Salem a couple of weeks ago.

  “Oh, I guess,” Anita said. “Of course she doesn’t understand it, poor angel. We’re just telling her Daddy’s had to go away for a while to a camp. She thinks he’s at Vacation Bible School.”

  Both of them chuckled. Kids.

  Joelle brought over their food. The tourist family was getting ready to leave, and it looked to Anita like the husband’s mood had continued to darken. He slapped down cash at the register and kept on going, leaving the family to catch up. The wife and kids followed him in a tight bunch. Bob never did that. Whatever else you could say about him, he never showed disrespect toward her or the kids, never humiliated them in public or tried to make himself bigger at their expense. She wished she knew what the hell was going on with him. His unwavering sobriety, much as she’d longed for it, was unnerving. She was proud of him, but it wasn’t normal. Plus sometimes she caught him looking at her funny, like he’d seen a ghost. She didn’t think he had a woman on the side. That wouldn’t be like him. Then again, he didn’t want to have sex with her that often these days, and when they did, he’d stop partway through and say he had to use the bathroom. Who had to use the bathroom in the middle of having sex? He’d go down the hall in the dark, and then he’d come back in the dark, and from what she could see, he seemed okay. She’d say, Better? And he’d say, Yeah , and then it was right back to business. It happened like that every time. She asked him once if he thought he might have a problem with his prostate or whatever, but he just said, Leave it alone, Nita, and she had.

  The other thing she’d noticed lately was that Warren Bigelow had stopped calling. He and Bob always talked two or three times a week, and they had from the time Warren moved out of town years ago, but now, nothing. Anita had asked Bob about it, whether Warren was in jail or out of work or something, but Bob just said they’d been talking at work lately because Warren could use the phone at his job for free. Anita didn’t buy it, though. Warren was always a stickler for the rules and wouldn’t gab on company time; plus, she couldn’t imagine any business allowing its employees to use the long-distance phone line for free. Maybe something was wrong with Warren’s wife, Sheryl; she’d had a scare with a lump in her breast just last year. They’d told her it was benign, but maybe they’d been wrong and it had come back. That happened sometimes. You couldn’t always trust the doctors. You could be dying, probably, and the doctors wouldn’t tell you squat.

  Bunny tucked into her clam strips. “Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked Anita.

  “What? Yeah.”

  “You were just sitting there.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look, just let me make you an appointment at the clinic—”

  Anita shook her head stubbornly.

  Bunny held up her hands in defeat. “When you end up in the hospital with pneumonia or something, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Anita smiled a faint smile. “Doesn’t sound half bad. Someone else does all the cooking and cleaning and laundry, and you get to just lay there. It sounds like a vacation.”

  Bunny shot her a skeptical look. Anita suddenly teared up. “Do you want to know the real reason why I didn’t answer your phone call this morning? I fell asleep, right there in room nine on someone else’s dirty sheets. Bob is never home, Doreen cries all the time, and no one has enough time for Crystal. I’m tired. I’m just so goddamned tired,” Anita said, and then she started to cry.

  Bunny jumped up and circled the table to put her arm around Anita’s heavy shoulders. “Aw, hon, don’t. You need some rest, is all. Do you want me to talk to Bob for you? He could help out more, you know he could.”

  She squatted at Anita’s side, and her knees went off like gunshots.

  “Ow,” Anita said, laughing and crying at the same time. She and Bunny, it always seemed to come down to the two of them. How many crises had they weathered, one of them being the strong one, the other breaking down, and then switching so they could each have a good cry? Bunny’s knees always cracked, and Anita always winced, and then one or the other of them found a Kleenex or a length of toilet paper to mop up with, and life went on. And inevitably, when they looked back on it all from a distance of weeks or years, it hadn’t really been so bad, not really. Bob’s drinking, Hack’s infidelities, Bunny’s female problems, the kids. Life went on even when it had looked like there was no clear path through it; somehow they always found a way to the other side. This too would pass, and she would look back from the safety of five or ten years and forget what exactly it was that had been so bad: the fatigue, the worry, the way they all needed her to take care of them even when she was too tired to take care of herself.

  What she needed was a nap.

  Bunny stayed beside her and rubbed her back, holding on like she was the only thing keeping Anita from rising and thinning like smoke. “What time do you need to pick up Crystal?” she asked.

  “Two-thirty.”

  “Okay, then look. You go home and sleep. I’ll call you at two and make sure you’re up in plenty of time to get over to Sawyer. If you still feel like crap, I’ll go pick Crystal up for you.”

  Anita nodded gratefully, too tired to bother even with her usual token protest against Bunny’s picking up the tab for lunch.

  Anita could remember Bob all the way back to the first time she saw him in kindergarten, a tiny kid with pants four times too big held up only by a wish and a piece of clothesline. He’d had the most aggressive cowlicks anyone had ever seen, big, thick, spiky ones that went everywhere but where they should: in a spiral at the back of his head, a pair of double buds on his head like horns. In most ways he was a sorry thing, but he had beautiful eyes, as though to make up for his lack of physical promise, God had given his soul an extrafine pair of windows to shine through. They were green, but they had brown flecks all through them and a black ring around the outside of the cornea, like the leading in stained glass. She had liked looking at him even that far back; she still did, even after all they’d been through, all the wear and disappointment and failure. She never doubted that he was a good man. Inept, yes, and a permanent stranger to success, but good in his heart. Maybe the rest came from being so poor. In elementary school when kids brought in candy or cupcakes for the class, Bob lit up like Christmas. Anita couldn’t remember anymore how they’d gotten started, but her mother and Shirl had taken turns baking cupcakes for the girls to bring in on his birthday, since his aunt Bets maintained that she didn’t have the time or money for that kind of nonsense.

  When Warren Bigelow had come to Hubbard, Anita was easier in her heart about Bob and his having so little standing between him and abandonment. Bob had found a home at last in Warren’s heart. Two boys, no matter how thin and pale, could take on the world if they believed in themselves, and Anita could see that together they did. Warren had been a girlish boy, delicate and pretty, but no one had teased him; that always surprised Anita. He was tough in his own way, tougher than Bob. When anyone said something unkind, he just sank down behind his eyes so far he couldn’t hear a thing, and he stayed there until the trouble passed, even if it took days. She’d never seen anything like it, not before and not since.

  Bob and Hack were good friends and had been since the day Hack slouched into town so many years ago, but it was Warren Bob loved. Anita knew that, although Bob thought she didn’t. She knew, and she didn’t mind. Everybody needed family, no matter how he came by it. Bob kept Warren grounded, was earth to his lightning. She remembered the two of them when they were still little boys, slipping through town in the rain, hair streaming, soaked to the skin, and there had been something feral about them, two wild, wiry souls fitting into the cracks of Hubbard life, accepting food and clothing when it was
offered, expecting too little ever to be disappointed. She’d still been wary of them then, knowing that untamed animals bit when held or cornered.

  But one day, when they were in high school, Anita was walking home from Bunny’s and saw Bob and Warren up ahead, in the little park at the back of the harbor. They were crouched over Warren’s bare foot, inspecting something, a barbed fish hook, as it turned out, that he’d stepped on and that was now embedded. It was a strangely intimate moment, and Anita felt she shouldn’t be witnessing it somehow. Warren was crying—keening, really, in an eerie, high voice, the voice of a child, though they were fifteen years old. At first Bob spoke in a voice too low for Anita to make out the words, only that he was using soothing, soft, infinitely patient tones. But as she got closer, walking quietly, almost stealthily, she heard Bob say, We’re gonna do this now.

  But it’ll hurt.

  Only for a minute, I swear. Come on, we’ve gotta do this, Warren. You know we do.

  But I don’t want you to, Warren had wailed, but he left his foot in Bob’s hand. A quick twist, a snip with a pocketknife’s scissors, and Bob had pushed the fishhook through the skin and debarbed it. One more twitch, and he had the hook out and resting in the palm of his hand. Warren wept quietly, his forehead and Bob’s just touching as they investigated the damage.

  It’s okay, Bob said. You’re gonna be fine. See how clean it came out?

  That was so awful, Bobby. Couldn’t you just feel it too?

  Yeah. I could, Bob said, rocking back on his heels. It’s okay, though. It’s over. You’re okay.

  Do you think I’ll get tetanus? Jesus, people die from that, Bobby—lock-jaw,that’s what tetanus is. I read about it once—

  Nah, Bob said soothingly. You’re not going to get anything.

  Promise?

  Promise.

  That was the day Anita first wondered what Bob would be like if she mothered him, held him close and kept him warm and dry. Would he run away? But no, he’d loved to nuzzle her bosom, settle in with both arms around her, holding her as close as he could and still breathe. He’d been surprisingly strong, wiry, and tensile. He had scraped together enough money to buy a huge old Buick from Buster Ludlow, and Bob liked to drive her way back into Weyerhaeuser land along the logging roads. They’d necked, of course, but they’d talked too; he’d talked anyway, and Anita had listened with her heart wide open. He’d talked about his plans for the future, the auto repair shop he’d have right there on the edge of town, next to the gas station Warren intended to buy. The two of them had ambition, boy, don’t think they didn’t. They were going to make money, buy themselves houses and fancy suits so they’d look sharp whenever the moment called for it.

  Bob had never been a rebel, something that had always puzzled Anita. He was unfailingly polite to teachers and grown-ups, compliant when anything was asked of him. She guessed that to rebel, you had to be confident you’d have something to come back to when you were done. Bob hadn’t had that, and neither had Warren—or Crystal. Maybe that was why Bob loved them so especially. Last week she’d overheard him telling the little girl, “Honey, you listen up now. No matter where you go, or how far away you get, if you need me, I’ll always find you.”

  And at that moment, especially, Anita had loved him, loved him, and held him close to her heart.

  Bunny called, as she’d promised, and roused Anita from her nap at two. Groggy but better, Anita declined Bunny’s offer to go over to Sawyer for her, or at least to ride along, and headed to Sawyer alone and still in a light sleep. She’d come around when she had to; she always did.

  The Head Start was in a dumpy old building on the far side of town, wedged in between a marine supply store and a fish market. They’d tried to spruce it up with bright paint and kids’ art projects, but you could tell the cinder-block building had been no good to begin with, and even the best intentions could go only so far. Anita found Crystal in the little lunchroom, eating her snack: apple slices, graham crackers with peanut butter, a juice box. They tried to make even snacks filling here, knowing that for some of the kids this would be the only real meal of the day. All over the building kids were coughing and barking from various stages of flu and bronchitis, and you knew the place was crawling with germs despite the spray bottles of diluted bleach the teachers kept in every room and used obsessively on everything from toys to telephones.

  “Hi, Grammy!” Crystal said, throwing her arms around Anita’s legs.

  “Hi, sweetie. How are you?”

  “We did finger paints.”

  “I can see that.” Crystal’s fingernails were bright red, and there were telltale traces on her T-shirt, where she’d defeated her painting smock.

  “I did a picture for Granddad.” She pulled Anita over to a wall full of art and pointed to a chaos of red and orange. “That’s mine. Right there.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Anita said.

  “It’s apples.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Anita.

  Crystal stood with her hands on her hips, assessing her work with the discerning eye of a master craftsman.

  “Are you about ready to go home, honey?”

  “Yes,” Crystal said, slipping a sticky hand into Anita’s.

  “Go get your things then.”

  The child retrieved an enormous backpack from her cubby at the back of the building. She laid her coat upside down on the floor in front of her and, after inserting her arms, flipped it over her head. Another new skill acquired.

  “Good for you, hon, you’re getting to be so big.”

  “I’m ready now, Gram.”

  Anita signed her out.

  “Bye, sweetie,” one of the teachers called to her. “You were a real good girl today.”

  “Yes,” Crystal said.

  Anita buckled them both into the Caprice, and they drove all the way to Cape Mano in companionable silence. Then Anita said, “Once upon a time there was a little girl named Jewel.”

  Crystal clapped her hands. Anita didn’t tell her stories very often. “Did she look like me?”

  “Some,” said Anita. “Maybe a little darker, though, and with green eyes. Oh, and she had real long banana curls that reached all the way to her waist.”

  “I don’t have those.”

  “No, unfortunately you got your mama’s hair. So anyway, because Jewel’s family was very poor, everyone in the household had to work so they’d have enough to eat. Her mother’s job was to raise vegetables and fruits so the family wouldn’t go hungry, but her garden was a long way from the house.”

  “Why?”

  “Zoning issues,” said Anita. “Anyway, that meant that some days Jewel didn’t see her mother until bedtime, and when she did, her mother was often cranky. She wasn’t mad at Jewel, not at all; she was just tired from being bent over in the garden all day trying to make things grow.”

  “Did they?”

  “Did they what?”

  “Grow.”

  “Ah. Sometimes they did, but not always, and then she’d have to come home to Jewel empty-handed, which you can imagine made her feel sad even though she tried not to show it.”

  “Did she ever say, ‘Damn it’?”

  “Never.”

  “Sometimes Mommy says, ‘Goddamn it, Crystal.’ ”

  “That’s just tiredness talking, honey.”

  Crystal nodded.

  “Anyway, it was Jewel’s grandmother’s job to help Jewel learn to tie her shoes, and stay inside the lines when she colored, and keep the family’s clothes clean, and cook, and read her stories at night.”

  “You read me stories.”

  “It’s one of my favorite things, honey.”

  “What about the daddy?”

  “Now, that’s an interesting question. Unfortunately, the father and the grandfather both had to be away most of the time.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the grandfather fixed rich people’s carriages, but to do that, he had to work far away. Sometimes he would have to stay away
from home all day and all night for days.”

  “Didn’t he get lonely?”

  “Very lonely, honey. He missed his family all the time, especially Jewel, who he loved so much there aren’t even words to describe it.”

  “Granddad loves me.”

  “He sure does, baby,” said Anita. “As for Jewel’s father, he had to be away from home even more. He made pots and pans that he sold in a land so distant that he’d be away from home for years.”

  “Like on the Home Shopping Channel.”

  Anita smiled. “Well, I guess a little like that. Anyway, people loved his pots and pans, and Jewel was very proud of him, even though she missed him.”

  “Did they have a pet?”

  Anita frowned. “I think they had a cow. And oh, they had two goats and a donkey too. A little donkey so small that only Jewel could ride him.”

  “I’d like a donkey.”

  “Oh, I know, honey, wouldn’t you just? So anyway, over the years Jewel and her mother and grandmother learned to be very self-sufficient; that means they learned to take good care of themselves without needing help from the father and the grandfather. That was the way they showed how much they loved them, by taking such good care of themselves that the men didn’t need to worry about them.”

  “They still missed them, though.”

  “Like crazy, honey; that never stopped. But do you know what?”

  “What?”

  “It turns out that in one way, at least, that family wasn’t poor at all; it was rich. Do you know why?”

  “No.”

  “They had love. They had so much love between them that sometimes after her mother or her grandmother had tucked Jewel in at night, she lay there just overflowing with love like a fountain.”

  “I like fountains.”

  “Well, and do you know what else? Even though Jewel’s daddy wasn’t in the room with her, he sent his love to her long distance every night. She couldn’t see it or taste it or smell it, but she knew it was there just the same, all around her like a hug.”

  “Yes.”

  They had reached the outlying reaches of Hubbard. “I think Jewel and her family were a lot like us. Don’t you?”