The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

by Jenny Wingfield

  She said, “How’d you get away?”

  “Waited till a cat came.”

  It was her turn to squint.

  “My daddy kills cats,” Blade said. He didn’t explain that when his daddy was killing cats he was too engrossed to pay attention to anything else, but Swan got the message. Blade glanced at the window, as if afraid he might see his daddy coming through it any minute.

  “I’m not letting anybody take you away again,” Swan promised. “I don’t know for sure yet how I’m going to keep them from it, but I’m not letting it happen.”

  Toy Moses had just locked the bar and was helping his mama open the store when Ras drove into the yard and jumped out of his truck like his pants were on fire. Calla looked up from sweeping the steps, and Toy looked over from propping the wood door open with a couple of Nehi cases, and both of them looked as exasperated as they felt at the moment. Which was plenty.

  “Lord help my time,” Calla said.

  Ras Ballenger stomped over to within about three feet of them and glared at Toy malevolently.

  “I’ve come for my boy,” he said. Not snapping and yelling, like usual. His voice was kind of deadly calm.

  Since Toy was unaware that Blade was on the place, he was surprised, but he didn’t show it. He shook his head and also didn’t show how glad he was that Ballenger’s boy had gotten away from him again.

  “Looks like you’ve come to a goat’s house after wool, Mr. Ballenger. We ain’t seen your boy in over two weeks.”

  Well, Ballenger didn’t believe that, and he said so. Toy just shook his head again and told him that he sure hoped the boy was all right.

  “You never know what can happen these days,” he went on. “It’s hard to believe, but there are people in this world who are low enough”—he paused for emphasis—“sorry enough”—he paused again—“pure pig shit worthless enough to maliciously harm a child.”

  Toy lit a cigarette and took a couple of deep drags before continuing. Then he said, “Me, I think those people ought to have the same things done to them that they’ve done to the child. An eye for an eye, you might say.”

  There was no way that Ras could miss Toy’s meaning, and he had to wonder how the man knew so much. Like as not, the deputies who had come out to question him had driven straight over here and had sat around in Never Closes, drinking and jawing about things they should have kept to themselves. Which just about made Ras Ballenger foam at the mouth. A man was innocent until proven guilty, after all, and he was getting tired of having to pretend to be innocent of things that were nobody’s damn business.

  He said, “I didn’t come here to hear what you think, I came for my boy. Now, are you gonna bring him out, or am I gonna have to go in and git him?”

  Toy flicked his eyes real quick at Ballenger, giving him the kind of look that says, “You just try.”

  Out loud, he said, “What you’re gonna do, Mr. Ballenger, is get back in your truck and leave. You’ve got five seconds.”

  Ballenger came undone. “I’ll have the law on you, you see if I don’t! You may think you’ve got the sheriff in your pocket, but a man has rights, and I reckon I know mine.”

  Toy said, “Make that three.”

  The first place Toy checked after Ballenger left was the barn, but nobody had been in there lately. The blankets were spread out nice and neat, with Blade’s presents right in the center, the way they’d been since shortly after that Battle of Jericho thing. Nobody knew for sure when the kids had put them there, but they’d made a lot of pilgrimages to the barn, so it could have been any time.

  Toy looked next where he had figured all along that he would find the boy.

  Swan and Blade were sleeping like puppies, both curled up every which way, their bodies touching here and there. Nothing could have been more innocent, but it bothered Toy when he eased in the door and saw them like that. He might not be a father himself, but he had the kind of feeling fathers get about their daughters, which is that kids grow up and things change awfully fast, so sometimes adjustments need to be made ahead of time by the grown-ups who are in charge.

  Not that he thought he was in charge of Swan. But he was about to take charge of this situation.

  He stood at the foot of the bed and cleared his throat. Swan and Blade both jumped just about out of their skins, and all the way out of bed. Since the bed was so high, they made a pretty good commotion when they landed on the floor.

  Blade started to dive for the window, but Toy stepped over and blocked his path.

  “Let’s not go through that again,” he said. “I’m not sending you home this time.”

  Blade swallowed hard and looked at Swan, who was looking at Uncle Toy with sudden worship in her eyes.

  “You’re not?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am, I am not,” Uncle Toy said ceremoniously. And Toy Moses had been known to go for years without saying anything ceremoniously.

  Swan blew out a huge breath and sat smack down on the floor. Blade was still watching her for a sign, and this seemed to be one, so he sat down beside her. Toy stood there looking them both dead in the eye.

  To Blade, he said, “I can’t promise you that the law won’t intervene, because they probably will. But I can promise that, as long as I have anything to say about it, you’re welcome here, and you’ll be safe.”

  He bent down and reached out his hand, and the boy, who had probably never gone through this ritual in his life, took it and gave him a manly handshake.

  Then Toy said to Swan, “Now, we’ve got to figure out where your friend here is going to sleep. Because it’s not going to be with you anymore.”

  So that was it. Blade Ballenger could stay until the law intervened. That sounded fine to Swan, since the only way she’d ever heard of the law intervening around here was by making sure that no liquor went to waste.

  As for where Blade would sleep, that was decided democratically in a family meeting, which took place in Willadee and Samuel’s bedroom. Toy led Swan and Blade from Swan’s room to her parents’ room, and Noble and Bienville must have been roused from sleep by the excitement in the air, because they both slid in the door before Toy got through explaining that Blade was back and needed accommodations. Pronto.

  “You’ll bunk in with Bienville,” Samuel told Blade. “If you can find a spot among all his books.”

  That was democratic enough to suit all concerned.

  Since Toy figured that Ras might come back, and there could be trouble, he didn’t go home to sleep. He just went into his old bedroom and sacked out beside Bernice. Which was one way of getting her out of bed early.

  Bernice popped into the kitchen before Willadee could even get the biscuits in the oven and said she understood the little Ballenger boy was back. Willadee said he sure was, and wasn’t it wonderful. If there was anything at all wonderful about it, Bernice couldn’t see it.

  As soon as breakfast was over, Bernice was in the car and gone. Toy wasn’t going to wake up for hours unless Ras Ballenger showed up again, and in either case, she’d rather be somewhere else. It was a Saturday, so Samuel would be around, but he was taking even less notice of her than usual, what with that little mongrel boy hanging around again, and she plain couldn’t stand being around the rest of them, they’d all gone crazy.

  She was the only one who wasn’t happy about Blade being there. The rest of the family was elated.

  Underneath all the euphoria, there was the feeling that there was no telling what might happen next, so Samuel and Willadee told the kids to stay where the grown-ups could see them.

  “You don’t have to worry about us getting out of pocket,” Swan vowed fervently. “This is one time that you can believe us when we promise to be good and act right.”

  And they were good. All of them. Blade let Calla change his bandage and give him the scrubbing of his life, and he kept trying on the clothes of Bienville’s that Willadee kept altering to fit him, and the other kids didn’t get into the least bit of mischief whil
e they waited.

  Later on, when Samuel headed out to the pasture to bring Lady up, so they could ride her around the yard, Swan and Blade sat in the glider, Blade with his legs drawn up and a pad of paper propped on his knees. Calla had given him the paper and some pencil nubs when she noticed him drawing in the dirt. It turned out the kid didn’t draw like a kid. He drew things so that you could tell what they were. The house, the fields, Calla’s endless sea of flowers. Swan took turns watching his flashing hands and watching Noble and Bienville arm wrestling over at the picnic table. Noble was winning, because he was stronger, but Bienville kept messing up his concentration by asking him what he was thinking about.

  “There’s something preying on your mind,” he would whisper mysteriously, like somebody at a séance. “I can sense it.”

  And every time, Noble would falter for just a fraction of a second. Just long enough for Bienville to strengthen his grip or brace his elbow a little better. There was no way he was going to win, but he was pretty good at making Noble work harder.

  Bienville’s teasing would ordinarily irritate Noble no end, but today he just laughed about it. Blade stopped drawing and laughed, too. All these people being so easygoing was enough to make a person downright giddy. At least a person who’d been living with Ras Ballenger all his life.

  “I’m gonna stay here forever,” he whispered to Swan. Not whispered mysteriously, as Bienville had done. He whispered the way you do when you want something so much you don’t dare say it out loud.

  “Well, you’ll have to leave someday,” Swan said. “We all will. This isn’t really where we live. It’s just where we are right now.”

  Blade couldn’t make heads nor tails of that, so she gave him a little background.

  “See, when your daddy’s a preacher, you move around a lot, only we didn’t have anyplace to move to this year, and Grandma Calla was lonesome because our grandpa”—how should she put this?—“died unexpectedly, so we moved in with her. But before long, we’ll get another church, and then we’ll be moving, and if everything works out, you can go with us.”

  Blade was floored by that one. “We’re gonna live in a church?”

  “No, we won’t live in it. We’ll live in a parsonage. Generally, those are right beside the church, or right across the street, so the church members can see what you’re doing all the time.”

  Blade said, “Ohhh,” like now he understood.

  “Church members are funny,” Swan went on. This was a subject she knew well. “You can’t hardly please ’em, and there’s always a faction—that’s a bunch of people that get together and drink coffee at somebody’s house after church, when the message was too strong and they got their toes stepped on—anyway there’s always a faction that’s trying to get rid of the preacher for one reason or another. That’s why you move so much. Because sooner or later the faction wins out. But mostly, church members are pretty nice. Even the faction people are nice, to your face.”

  “Swan, what are you telling that boy?” That was Samuel talking. He’d just gotten back with Lady.

  Swan looked up and smiled proudly. “I’m just telling him what to expect when we get a church and a parsonage.”

  Samuel handed Lady’s reins to Noble and came over to sit in the glider.

  “Well, now, we don’t know for sure how this will all turn out,” he told them. “We don’t want to start making promises we may not be able to keep.”

  Blade had been looking up at Samuel, but now he started drawing again, moving his hand slowly and mechanically. Like that was one thing he could control. He might not know what Swan was talking about half the time, but he for sure knew what her daddy was saying. Samuel saw the hurt in his face—saw the way he was already so good at hiding hurt—and he hated like everything not to be able to say exactly what that little boy wanted to hear. But he couldn’t.

  “I think what we have to do,” Samuel said, “is just enjoy this time together, and trust God for the outcome. He has ways of doing things that are better than anything we could even imagine on our own.”

  Blade looked to Swan for translation. As always.

  “Who’s God?” he asked. He was whispering again.

  “God’s kinda hard to explain,” Swan told him. “But don’t worry. You stay around my daddy long enough, you’ll find out everything there is to know about Him.”

  Chapter 26

  Toy woke up around four o’clock that afternoon, not because he’d gotten enough sleep but because Swan wasn’t stealthy enough when she stole his shoes from beside the bed. He opened his eyes to see her creeping out of the room on tiptoe. He would have asked her what she was up to, but he figured he’d be more likely to find out the truth if he waited to see what developed.

  What Swan was up to was shining Uncle Toy’s shoes. She’d never shined a man’s shoes before, she’d never even shined her own. Her daddy was the shoeshine expert in the Lake family, so that’s who she went to for help. Samuel got out his shoeshine kit, explained the fine art, and then let Swan take over. A gift’s not a gift if someone besides the giver does all the work.

  “These shoes,” Swan said to Blade, who was helping her by handing her whatever she needed, “are going to shine like new money. Hand me that brush.”

  He handed her the brush. She brushed industriously, loosening up dirt, then puffed out her cheeks and blew the dirt off the leather.

  “Uncle Toy is going to be so glad he stood in the way of you going out that window,” she told him. “What we’ve got to do is find plenty of ways to make him know that was the best move he ever made.”

  Blade listened and nodded.

  “For instance, flowers,” Swan mused aloud. “I think we should pick him some. You pick a flower for a person, it makes ’em feel special as the day is long.”

  Blade nodded again, looking thoughtful.

  Swan said, “And we can do him favors. You know. Get stuff for him, so he doesn’t have to get up. Things like that. Hand me that rag.”

  She held out the brush, expecting Blade to take it out of her hand and slap the shoeshine rag in its place, but her assistant was no longer where he’d been the last time she looked.

  Calla’s garden didn’t stand a chance. Blade had cut quite a swath through the dahlias and daylilies, and was halfway through the hydrangeas when a large and somewhat lumpy shadow fell across him. He looked up into the face of Calla Moses and then looked around for an avenue of escape. There didn’t seem to be one, not unless he wanted to go through the rugosa roses, which even he couldn’t do. He’d never heard the term impenetrable hedge, but he knew one when he saw it.

  Calla was holding a bucket, and he halfway expected her to swing it at his head, but instead, she handed it to him. He took it automatically. It was heavier than he expected, because it was half full of water.

  “If you’re looking for something to put those flowers in,” she said, “you can use this.” She gestured at the armful of flowers he was holding, and the other flowers that were strewn about on the ground. “I’ve been thinking about picking some to put on the side table in the living room. You must have read my mind.”

  Actually, that was about as far away from the truth as a person could get and still be a Moses. The reason she was out here was because she’d seen what he was doing from the door of the store, and she’d almost had a heart attack. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, though. She had calmed down considerably while she was deciding not to dismember him, and by now, she looked pleasant as you please. Even the veins in her neck had stopped standing out.

  Blade couldn’t say a word. Just two seconds ago, he’d thought it was doomsday, but here she was telling him he’d done something right. The world was getting stranger all the time.

  “I was picking them for that man,” he said softly, nodding toward the house. “That uncle.”

  Calla tipped back her head and sucked air in through her nose, the way a person does when a feeling gets to be too much to handle. When was the la
st time anyone did anything special for Toy? That’s the thought that took her breath away. When was the last time anyone did something desperate and beautiful to please him? She had no idea that Swan was also doing something special for Toy, or that Toy’s life was changing in ways he could never have anticipated. All she knew was that this little boy was doing a kindness for her own little boy—the man who had been her little boy—and her gratitude knew no bounds. She smiled at Blade Ballenger, and her mouth quivered a little when she did it.

  After a second, she said, “Did you know flowers bloom better if you pick them?”

  He shook his head solemnly.

  “Well, they do. It’s like you gave them a compliment, and all of a sudden they start doing everything they can to get another one.”

  “Do you know everything about flowers?” he asked. Which was precisely the right question to ask that particular woman at that particular moment.

  “No, sir, I do not,” she told him briskly. “But I’ll lay odds you’re going to grow up knowing everything about how to get on a woman’s good side.”

  When Toy came out of his bedroom, dressed for work, his shoes were outside the door, and (as Swan had predicted) they shone like new money. Lined up along the wall, there were awesome bouquets in a variety of containers—everything from Calla’s best vase to quart mason jars and several small jelly glasses. All dripping flowers. Toy cocked his head, and blinked his eyes, and wondered whether the person responsible was still alive, and whether his mama had hidden the body or called the sheriff and given herself up.

  Bernice hadn’t made it back yet, so she wasn’t on hand for supper. Throughout the meal, Swan kept Toy’s iced tea glass full, and Blade passed him the butter every time Toy helped himself to another piece of corn bread. Everybody in the family kept looking at Toy and grinning, like they all knew a secret and were about to pop from trying to keep it.