Some Go Home

by Odie Lindsey

  Derby came in from the carport and wiped his brow with his T-shirt tail. Colleen glanced up from the television, announced, “Hungry.”

  He rolled his eyes, then pivoted toward the kitchen, en route to throw yet another fistful of hot dogs into another saucepot of water. A minute later, he drifted back into the den and walked over to the cribs.

  “I think I’m gonna go back to work tomorrow,” he said, and baby-talked the twins.

  “Not yet, hon, okay?” she replied, her eyes still on the screen. “JP said you could take whatever time you wanted.”

  “Well . . . yeah. But I’m just not sure he meant it.”

  “Ask him. Or maybe just take him at his word. Believe me, he’ll be fine for a little longer. But Derb? I am out of it. The no-sleep, nonstop? The not knowing what’s normal? Christ, I worry so damned much that I’m . . . I’m consumed, babe. I’m out.”

  He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Don’t I know it. I am terrified I’ll fall asleep on that scaffold!”

  “This isn’t about me. I’m worried about them, you know?” she motioned to the cribs. “I can’t sleep. Can’t relax. Can’t afford to make a mistake. So I need you here, to help me figure out how to . . . I’m not sure what. Keep me from myself, maybe. Stay focused on the twins, okay?”

  Derby nodded. “You’re overtired. Spent, of course. I promise you’ll feel okay with a little bit of rest. We both will. You ain’t gonna mess anything up.”

  “I don’t know that. You don’t know that.” Colleen stood and went to pick Sarah up, then held the infant to her chest. “I’m telling you, something’s building. And it’s already too much.”

  Derby reached over and caressed her arm. “I do know,” he whispered. “And I’m not trying to deny that your worry makes sense. But this isn’t, well . . . that.”

  He didn’t need to mention the story about the Iraqi woman, as this was a lens through which he now saw her. The revelation had enabled a cop-out of sorts, something Derby could use to police her trauma, her worry, or the appropriateness of her mood.

  “That’s got nothin’ to do with it,” she said.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “You’re not hearing me.”

  “Was years ago now, babe, it—”

  “You’re not listening!” She clutched Sarah closer.

  Veteran. Strawberry Maiden. PTSD. Mom. Small-town redneck Mississippi girl turned small-town redneck Mississippi woman. Everybody had to slap a label on you, it seemed. And once they’d done so, well, that was just who you were—whether you liked it or not. Whether the claim even fit. You became theirs, sort of. Defined and put away.

  Only, Colleen knew better. She had traversed the planet, after all. Upended a regime, a country, even took aim at a religion . . . all while being globalized and conglomerized, both media fluffed and media saturated. She was one of the one percent of her countrymen, whether billionaire or academic, senator or stay-at-home, who had actually taken part in this process. Consequently, as if she were windswept by a gale of anti-culture and anti-identity, the experience had ripped Colleen from the very idea of herself.

  She’d been born again. Factory-reset, pulled offline. And this removal had revealed to her—to all involved—that there was no morality, no biology, no geographic allegiance, no law. There was no 4 July or 11 September, no courthouse memorial or 4A football anthems. Truth be told, you didn’t have to be, become, or believe in anything at all. You sure as hell didn’t have to settle for anyone else’s prejudgment.

  “I loved the war, Derby. Despite everything, I loved it.”

  Case in point: They weren’t liberators, but beasts. Not heroes, but a gang. Their Cause was never really a cause at all. Christ, even physicality had been shown to be a hoax. One instant your body was a thousandfold bundle of name, relationship, ritual, and association; the next, you were a post-blast of blood vapor and skin. (They had witnessed this ballistic transmogrification of a body, and they had made jokes about it. What else could you do?) At times, they had even turned in on themselves. The males had certainly turned on Colleen a time or more.

  The only true perversion of deployment was learning that in their absence, during the very apex of their so-revered, so-called Service . . . nobody back home had missed a ball game, a rerun, or a beer.

  “I’m worried,” Derby said. “I know it’s just the baby blues, but . . .”

  The kicker was that Colleen had finally accepted all of this, the hypocritical, unmovable, stratification of home. Granted, it had taken her four, maybe five years now, with her pregnancy a sort of symbolic last stand. Yet at the end of the day she’d even accepted it with Derby, a relegation to nothing special. To a label or two, at best.

  The problem was her children. She had never loved anything so much. She hadn’t even been able to conceive of a love so torrential. And so this, then, was the rub. Colleen knew that not even this love could save them from becoming what they were predestined to become: small-town redneck Mississippi kids, who’d turn small-town redneck Mississippi done. At best, she believed, they’d work themselves up to the ranks of not quites. Not quite pretty enough, or not quite rich. Not quite smart or sophisticated, or settled in with themselves. If they left home, she knew, they’d be not quite un-southern. If they stayed here, even prospered, they’d be not quite proper South.

  To stop her chin from quaking, she grinned. “This ain’t the ‘baby blues,’ Derb. This is the rage of having zero control. My own children are the reminders that I’ll fail to protect them. And that failure, my inevitable failure to liberate ’em—not some dime-store war story—is why I don’t want you to leave us alone.”

  Derby leaned against the wall by the doorframe, then slid onto the floor. The silence was ticked by the pinging pot on the burner.

  2

  Susan George sat on the manicured grass, her legs cocked beneath the spread of her long skirt. Her fingers piddled absently with the petals of a lily that had loosened from the wreath. The pallor of sunlight was now and again blotted by islands of white cumulus, and continental winds cut the baked morning air.

  “I wish you wouldn’t make me question myself,” she said to nobody.

  Her eyes traced the cuts of black lettering in the gray-white headstone; she took in the peppery specks of the composite and the rough-hewn edges of the base. Though distinct in its relative newness, the stone’s aesthetic dovetailed with the existing graves and monuments, tucking in among austere marker, neoclassical laurel, and weathered CSA imagery.

  She thought about Dru’s letter, its admission and implication. She had never discussed with anyone her own consuming guilt, nor the anger born of her belief that Dru had caused Lucy’s death.

  As is, everyone involved or of age had settled on the agreed-upon narrative: the girl fell, and died. Her girl, her daughter. Lucinda. Lucy George. It was an accident, everyone knew.

  It wasn’t enough. There had to be more. A resolution, or, as it happened, an implication. An accusation. For Susan George, there were no facts involved in an accident or mishap. You needed lies to make memory. Lies that helped you hold on.

  Without that drama, here was life: Susan George would visit this little plot twice a year, every year. She would place lilies in a cement vase adjacent the stone, then sit and snap waxy grass blades between her fingers. There would forever be a pile of small detritus, leaves and loose bullshit gathered beside her daughter’s grave. Susan George would clench this up when she left, then throw it in one of the green metal trash bins hidden within clumps of boxwood along the main drive. She would then go home and spend the rest of the day and night on her back porch, drinking. If she stayed awake long enough, she’d take a short walk over to the old Wallis Farm house, to stare up at the branches of Bel Arbre. Year after year after year. Never enough.

  “I’ll try one more option,” she said. “One more approach on that house, in hopes of saving a relationship to that child. By the way, did you know that Dru’s child was named after y
ou?” She smiled. “How wonderful.”

  She reflected on this for a moment, then continued. “Failing that, I’ll send Dru’s letter to our attorneys. I just have to. Our tree, our town, won’t be put under threat. There’s still so much more work to do. To update without loss. To renew without replacement. We can . . .”

  She paused to contain herself. “I won’t let this town go,” she repeated. “No one will take you from me.”

  3

  Colleen went to Dallas once, to compete in the Southeastern Regional beauty pageant. Nearly all of Pitchlynn, from church groups to the beauty shop, Tudor’s Hardware to Cothron’s Filling Station, had donated to fund the Strawberry Maiden’s attempt.

  From the instant she had looked around the capacious hotel lobby, she knew that she wouldn’t win. The contestants in Texas were women, so incredibly . . . women. They were checking in beside her along with their costume assistants, and hair and makeup pros, pageant coaches clad in undergarment endorsement logos, and, above all, astonishing outfits. They were clad in the stuff of couture legend. Hell, even the hotel receptionist was more sophisticated than Colleen.

  This realization had bruised her, but not too deep. In the end, she felt more overjoyed than overwhelmed. The design of the massive atrium of the Hyatt Regency proved reward enough, as had the step-staggered buildings of the hotel-office complex. While on the pageant itinerary tour, she took in the Dallas Reunion Tower, a glass-walled sphere striking skyward amid the skyline, a visual victory of sorts.

  She was astounded by space and architecture. Even the obstructed view of downtown from her hotel room felt like a lesson, a new lens. Though bodies came and went, and could be molded to represent any manner of things—beauty, honor, horror, loss, heroism, hedonism, whatever—these structures were transcendent. Beyond decay or interpretation, they were, she thought, her future. At least they were some unfamiliar, ascertainable version of possibility.

  This wasn’t some country-mouse-goes-city moment. It was a newfound attraction to perpendicularity, to the possibility of horizontal and vertical vision.

  The concierge had told Colleen she could see Las Colinas from the observation roof, that she could even see Fort Worth. Yet moments later, standing on the upper deck of the hotel, Colleen had been most drawn to the stream of cars that cruised I-35 below. To the mute parade across the mirrored windows of the buildings beside the interstate. She watched a spectrum of vehicles lurch onto a cloverleaf like cells through veins. Watched the stratus clouds feather both in sky and on window.

  In reality and in reflection, everyone was going everywhere: above, below, amid the architectural indifference. Colleen was ecstatic to exist among all of it. Was enlightened by the newfound manipulation of space. She wanted so much more of this education, anyplace she could find it, as often as she could.

  “DALLAS,” COLLEEN muttered to herself years later, sitting on the edge of her roof. Her legs dangled over, her feet kicked at the air. She took a large gulp of beer while scanning the north Mississippi treescape. She didn’t hear the vehicle come up the long dirt drive, let alone hear the mewling of her twins inside the house.

  “Hey, girl?” Susan George called up from the yard.

  “And . . . my god, there is so much to consider, to . . .”

  “Hey!” Susan George yelled. “Your babies are cryin’!”

  Colleen snapped out of her trance, and stared down at her well-dressed counterpart. It was the first time she’d seen Susan George since the baby shower. “How’s that?”

  “Get down here, now, and tend to your children,” Susan George ordered. “C’mon, I’ll help.” Her heels spiked the earth as she held the aluminum ladder. Colleen climbed down without a word, then led Susan George through the carport and kitchen door.

  Inside, Colleen reached into the fridge. “Beer?” she asked.

  “Thank you, no. Just a minute of your attention.”

  They went into the living room. Colleen set her beer on a side table, then lifted the twins up one at a time and rocked them until they quieted. Their skin was splotchy. Their dark hair, slicked. Despite the ceiling fan at full blast and the box fan in the window, the room was ablaze.

  “Make yourself comfy,” Colleen said, motioning to the upholstered rocker.

  Susan George sat, then watched Colleen lay each baby on the couch, before strapping on her nursing pillow. A moment later, her blouse unbuttoned and the babies fixed on nipples, Colleen exhaled and looked to her guest. “So what’s up?”

  “Again, I’ll just take a moment,” Susan George said. She fanned herself with her hand. “My lord, it’s hot in here. I don’t see how you stand it. No air?”

  “It isn’t that Derby can’t fix HVAC. He knows how. It’s just that both the compressor and exchange went out on the one we’ve got now. So it’s a catch-22, you know? The old AC’s not worth fixin’, but we can’t quite afford a new system. Yet.”

  “My word.” Susan George shook her head.

  “Well,” Colleen said. “Tough titty.”

  “I see. So, let me be blunt. I’m here because I’d like you to get your man back on script.”

  Colleen winced as Junior tugged at her. “How’s that?”

  “Derby and JP are a couple of mules.” Susan George smirked. “Am I right? They are stubborn and kicking. And they simply won’t give up this fool’s errand of a task—no matter what the outcome is to the town, to themselves, to any of it.”

  “I wouldn’t fret too much,” Colleen said. “When Derby gets into something, he gets into it. Sooner or later, though, no warning, he’ll drop-kick a project just as quick as he picked it up. The process’ll make you crazy if you know him long enough.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have any more time to give him.” Susan George straightened up in the chair. “Your husband assured me that he would handle things. Yet he hasn’t so much as called. He’s fallen straight off the map.”

  Colleen stared at her, said nothing.

  “My goodness.” Susan George smirked. “He never told you? Never mentioned that he was going to work with us? Well, Colleen, if it helps, he was acting on your behalf far more than ours. Besides, it wasn’t a big affair. No conspiracy, but rather a . . .”

  Colleen looked to the ceiling fan while the woman prattled on. She snickered to herself. “Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight. Same as always, huh?”

  “This isn’t about class,” Susan George said. “It’s about community, and history. And moving forward without selling out. So please, spare me your platitudes.”

  “You’re in my house, now. Remember that.”

  “I am,” Susan George replied. “I’m in your house because I believe that like me, you get the big picture. See the future, so to speak. So consider this. You get Derby back on script, and we will be forever in your service. As I told your husband, I don’t care what it takes. He can take sick. Mis-order materials, or misdirect the whole shebang. Violate a code or three. Whatever grinds the project down. The point here is that JP doesn’t have the moral right to do what he’s doin’, whether he’s got the legal right or not. Besides, that man doesn’t even care about the place. He came from Chicago out of sorrow, and indulgence. Petulance.”

  “Agreed.”

  “But for us? That house represents the future of our town. Our ability to grow, to move forward. It’s our—”

  “Hold up,” Colleen said. “What’s this ‘our’ biz? It isn’t my space. Never was.”

  “Which gets us to the point. It can be. In fact, please imagine it that way, Colleen. Imagine raising your babies on that property while living in that back bungalow. You, your children, right there in town, on that land. I beg you to think of Derby as caretaker, paid well enough, benefits and all. Picture strolling the sidewalk to Pitchlynn city schools, a child in each hand, instead of them busing out to county. Think of these little ones playin’ ball, or of her taking ballet, or having their friends come over—having friends walk over, that is—from their own homes down the st
reet. Down the line, think of Ole Miss or Millsaps, or wherever else they might want to go to college. Of college—just think. Of study abroad? Of the jobs they’ll find after? You’ll be endowing your babies a whole new past. As I told your husband, Colleen, we’ll help y’all get there, too. Babysitting to summer camp. School recs, or what have you. Swimming lessons at the PCC. Your children certainly won’t have to join the service to get by, or . . .”

  Colleen rubbed one thumb in the opposite palm, as if working out a cramp. A few seconds later, she switched to the other hand, kneading even deeper. “I am so tired of being mustered for other people’s bullshit.”

  “Pardon?”

  Colleen stared out the windows. “I mean, what really changes for me if you get that house back?”

  “What do you want to hear, girl?” Susan George asked. “You want to be an astronaut? Too late. A debutante? The President? Ditto, too late. You want a birthright? Not gonna happen. And yes, you’re correct, whether you help us or not, you may still feel . . . in service. But this isn’t about you. This is about your twins. They’ll sprout from either space, whether in town or out. Just like I did, or just like you. That’s the only truth I know to tell.” She shook her head. “But you already get this. You’re just pickin’ a fight for sport. So why don’t you come out with it? What do you want? Who do you really want to be?”

  Colleen jabbed her thumb into her palm, scraping at last into a tender, familiar pain. One that reminded her she was alive.

  When yanking the sow into the tree, the carcass hadn’t so much as jiggled, despite the violence of her every hoist. The rip of the rope had left her hands so raw. Not marked, or scabbed, but raw and vital at the marrow.

  She’d been focused that night on operation alone, from the pick-up at the meat processor, to dragging the hog over JP’s lawn on a litter made of plastic tarp and ratchet strap. Even Colleen’s pregnancy had been no more than a tac nav, a bullshit variable to overcome.