I understand why he is telling me this. These are the confessions of a dying man. He is telling me what no one knows.
I ask, “So, you had a thing for Willie Esther?”
“When we was young we used to talk.” Cough. “Was almost friends.”
“You asked her out?”
“More times than I can ‘member.” He nods. “Then our chirren went and had chirren.”
“You didn’t want to see Gravedigger with Delphinie.”
“Didn’t seem right, not at the time. No sir, sure didn’t. I coulda helped Willie Esther if she wasn’t so doggone evil to me. I’ll make sure she’ll have a nice funeral. That’s all I can do.”
I motion at his cigarette, say, “You’re going to be right behind her.”
He inhales, blows smoke away. “That don’t bother me none. We all gonna be right behind her. We all gonna die one day. I just hope when it’s my turn I do it well.”
“So you and Willie Esther were almost friends.”
I shake my head and cough, feel my insides deteriorating.
“Yessir. She’ll be nicer to me on the other side of the fence. When I get over there, I’ll have both arms, my legs. She’ll look at me then. She might even wanna dance, if I ask her.”
I wonder what it was like for him, to live across the way from a woman he loved, a woman who rejected him on a daily basis, to watch their kids have what he never could.
Then to have his son kill his daughter-in-law, the child of the woman he loved.
To sit on this porch and see the police come take his son away.
Then have to face the family of the woman his son murdered every day.
To have to look out that window at Delphinie’s grave every day.
To know that death was the demise of any hope he had between him and Willie Esther.
I think of Kenya. My wife’s daughter.
Like dried dirt, again, my insides crumble.
Grandpa Fred clicks on another light, this one illuminating his space, his shrine.
My mind has been too preoccupied to take in this space.
Then I look up over Grandpa Fred’s head, over his handlebar moustache and bloated body. My mouth creaks open as my eyes widen and take in that huge red, white, and blue flag.
It covers the wall facing east. The sight sends a shock through my body.
I think I understand why his grandchildren did not walk next door to visit him.
I know why Kenya’s father took her away from here.
The thirteen stars on that flag speak their own truth.
Part of him still fights a war that was lost a long time ago.
Maybe Grandpa Fred reminded Willie Esther of all the things she wanted to forget.
I don’t know. Only guessing. I only know how I feel at this moment.
Like running to the Interstate.
A coarse voice says, “Grandpa Fred.” I jump, as does he. He calls out, “Who that?” “Genevieve.”
Genevieve is outside the door. He tells her to come inside from the rain.
She says, “You know I’m not coming in there.”
My eyes go to that polyester flag as I rise.
I push his wheelchair though the nicotine haze and go back outside.
The air seems so much fresher now.
Genevieve’s face is red, skin the complexion of sorrow and hate. Flushed. Her eyes are swollen. She’s been crying. Her voice is almost gone. She’s been screaming.
She looks at me. Sees that I have been, once again, stunned.
She asks Grandpa Fred, “Did you get what I asked you to get?”
“Look on the side of the house.”
“Thanks, Grandpa.”
“You not coming back tomorrow?”
“No. We’re done, me and Willie Esther.”
“They made her up real pretty, didn’t they?”
Genevieve pauses. “She’s so small. I thought she was huge. But she was so tiny.”
We walk away, shoes crunching grass and gravel.
That cough follows us.
Then he calls out, “Will I ever see you again, Jenny Vee?”
She pauses. “I doubt it, Grandpa. I guess this is our good-bye.”
“Come back when they put me over yonder. Could you?”
She nods. Her lie is one of the kindest things I’ve ever seen her do.
He says, “Help me say your name ‘fore you go. Wanna make sure all of ’em say your name right from now on.”
She almost smiles. “John.”
He repeats, “John.”
“Vee.”
He coughs. “Vee.”
“Ev.”
He nods. “Eve.”
“Not Eve. Ev.”
“Ev.John.Vee.Ev.”
She smiles.
He laughs, that handlebar moustache moving up and down as those four teeth dance.
“Take care of yourself the best you can, Grandpa.”
“Research Man, you take care of John. Vee. Ev. She the best thing I done ever done. She might not be mine directly, but she part of me. The only thang I done done right.”
She smiles, then she goes back and gives him a hug.
On the side of the house are three two-gallon cans. All three filled with gasoline.
Without asking any questions I pick up two cans as Genevieve picks up the last one.
I follow my wife to the trailer, get ready to step into the abyss of her remembrance.
The door is unlocked. She hesitates.
I say, “Genevieve. Are you having an attack?”
“Lot on my mind.” Genevieve looks back at the church. “They say when a soul dies a baby is born. Do you think that is true?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Two words and nothing else matters. Nothing matters but the life that is in her stomach. Whatever problems we have, they no longer matter to me. Boy or girl, I want my child.
“How long have you known?”
“That evening Grandpa Fred called and you answered. I was coming in from the doctor.”
“You were happy.”
“I was. Very. The same day Willie Esther dies, I find out I’m pregnant.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. This wasn’t the… this wasn’t…”
“The plan.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“Genevieve. All the smoking herbs. The wine.”
“Before I could tell you, you told me Willie Esther was dead. And all of this… all of this came back. We might be done with the past, but the past is never done with us.”
Now I understand her reaction at that moment, that pain that washed over her.
She asks, “What if this is her inside of me?”
“It’s not, Genevieve.”
“What if it is?”
I snap, “It’s not.”
Her breathing changes.
I ask, “Are you having an attack?”
“I had one at the church. A small one. I’m okay now. It’s nothing.”
She sets the can of gasoline on the floor, on that spot where her father killed her mother. She goes to the wall, removes the picture of Jesus, then she hands it to me, asks me to set that picture outside. Leaves Martha Stewart and Ronald Reagan on the wall.
I stand there holding a picture of Jesus. He stares at my guilty eyes.
She says, “I have not been a good wife.”
“You have, Genevieve, you have. I have to tell you about Kenya.”
“Kenya is expressive. I envy her. She’s passionate. She lets herself go.”
She looks at me as only Genevieve can.
She says, “Jesus.”
“What?”
“The picture of Jesus that you’re holding.”
I take that picture to Grandpa Fred. He smiles without coughing.
He tells me that he will take good care of that indelible image.
He says, “Soon as that gets going, y’all hie
on down to the highway.”
By the time I get back inside, Genevieve has gone through the cabinets. All the hard liquor that Willie Esther has accumulated over the years, all the hard liquor that people have brought as a sympathy gift, she has taken every bottle out and lined them up like soldiers. Even now she is meticulous. She has two bottles in her hand, pouring the alcohol over the carpet, soaking that carpet then taking more bottles and pouring alcohol all over the sofa. She takes to the bedroom. I take Willie Esther’s things out of the closet. I pour scotch and rum over as much as I can. Genevieve adds gasoline to those clothes, douses what Willie Esther has left behind.
I walk through the trailer, breaking windows with a flashlight.
Genevieve looks at me, confused.
I say, “Fire needs air to breathe. No air, it might go out before it gets started.”
She nods.
Then she pours gas in the bedrooms. In the bathroom. Down the hallway.
She saturates the spot where her mother died.
She says, “Fire is the devil’s only friend.”
We stare at each other. She knows.
I ask, “Do you want me to stay in here and burn for what I’ve done?”
Her voice cracks. “Would you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will stay too.”
“Why?”
She raises her hand, shows me her wedding ring.
She is my wife.
She has told me that countless times before. I understand her now.
She loves not like I, but the way Paul speaks of love in Corinthians.
Again she cries. We take shallow breaths. We stand in the middle of fumes.
She says, “I came downstairs this morning. For breakfast. You and Kenya were walking down the hallway. Saw you vanish into a conference room. Saw the door close. I stood outside that door, wondering what to do. Felt as if I were eavesdropping. I went back to my room. Waited. Then I was going to go back downstairs. I stood in front of Kenya’s room. I heard.”
“Forgive me.”
“Forgive me for what I did not tell you.”
She says that as if Kenya is both of our sins. Our last secret revealed.
Genevieve takes out a book of matches.
She repeats, “Fire is the devil’s only friend.”
Grandpa Fred is still on his porch as we walk our road to purgatory, that picture of Jesus and Willie Esther’s obituary in his lap, a fresh cigarette in his hand, his nub waving good-bye.
He calls out, “Hie on outta here, Research Man. Take John. Vee. Ev. And hie.”
The sky rumbles and rain falls as we hurry down Wellington Road, flames climbing high into the night. Like a sacrifice. There is no sound of Satan laughing. We look back and there is no image of Willie Esther rising out of the fire. Just a lot of smoke and the crackling of flames.
Rain starts to fall in steady streams.
When we make it down to the Exxon, both of us are wet. An F-150 is there waiting.
Bubba Smith stands next to the truck. Wearing worn jeans, old boots decorated with paint, and a plaid shirt rolled up to his elbows. His baseball cap has a picture of Dale Earnhardt.
He says, “Was out here listening to the radio, this talk show I likes.”
I ask, “Anything good?”
“People saw Flight 93 in flames while it was in the air and two military aircraft circling it.”
My broad smile greets his. I ask, “Flight 93?”
“The one that went down over Pennsylvania. Nine-Eleven. We shot down our own plane. I’ll ride a donkey before I get on a plane.”
He opens the passenger door for us.
His rugged hands smell like ours, of gasoline and conspiracy.
Inside the truck my wife leans over and kisses me.
Bubba Smith says, “I got some ice water and some beer if y’all want some.”
The sound of a fire engine punctuates the night air. Its flashing lights brighten my world as I put my hand on her stomach, rub her belly, stir up our son or daughter.
There is hope.
Bubba Smith and my wife talk about family, about Pell City and Sharkey County.
I close my eyes and think.
When we pass the exit for the airport, Genevieve leans to me, whispers in my ear, “Let’s not go home tomorrow.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Let me take you to Houston.”
“To Houston.”
“Let me take you to see the buffalo soldiers. Let me do that for your mother.”
My face turns warm, throat tightens, and tears fall.
She wipes my eyes.
Genevieve.
ZHAWN-vee-EHV.
Over and over I say her name in its original language.
Allow it to drip from my tongue like warm butter.
The light of my life.
The fire in my loins.
Genevieve Page 29