Henry’s face went dark.
“Derecho a la cama,” Naomi hissed at the twins, and they hurried down the hall. The bedsprings squeaked as they climbed into bed.
Henry sat in the cane-back chair with his fists knotted over his knees. He wanted to take the radio back and shove it up that smirking Okie’s ass.
“I’m sorry,” Naomi said. “They’re only children. You can’t expect—”
“I just want it to work, damn it!”
“We did fine without one before.”
“Not the damn radio,” Henry spat. “This—” He swept his hands around the room. “All this.”
And then he was up out of the chair. He started pitching his tools back into the toolbox. Tomorrow, he would fix it right. He turned to say as much to Naomi, and then he saw it. Her pity. He couldn’t stand it. The pliers flew out of his hands and cracked against the window frame a few feet from her.
Henry left the rest of his tools and stalked out of the house without another word, pausing only to jam his hat onto his head.
NAOMI Naomi kept the kids home from school the next day. Beto still had a fever, and Cari threw up once. While they slept, Naomi listened for Henry’s truck, but he did not return.
She was out taking down the wash from the line when she saw Wash come ambling up the road. He had two strings of fish in his left hand. She hesitated. She could run for the house and shut the door, but she knew he’d seen her. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She carefully unpinned the clothes and laid them into her laundry basket.
“Missed my fishing buddies today,” he called when he came into the yard.
“They’re sick,” she said without turning to face him. She threw her braid over her shoulder and reached down to resettle a sheet in her basket.
“Puking and such?”
“Yes,” she said. She kept her back to him and went down the line, yanking the last clothespins off one by one.
“I haven’t seen you down by the river in a while,” he said, ducking under some shirts so that he was facing her again. “No time for schoolwork? Too cold?”
“I’ve got my hands full,” she snapped.
“I didn’t mean—” Wash took a small step back.
“Anyway,” she interrupted, “I’m sure you have plenty of other friends to spend your time with. Excuse me.” She shoved past him and pushed the laundry basket onto the porch. “I’ve got the twins to deal with.”
“At least take some fish,” he called. “Caught more than we can eat.”
Her “no” was already forming when she considered the fact that Henry hadn’t left behind any money for groceries. “All right,” she said flatly. She reached out for the smaller of the two strings, being careful not to brush his hand with hers.
“I can clean ’em for you if you lend me a basin,” he said.
“I’ll manage,” she said.
“Tell the twins I said hi.”
“Good night,” she said.
Inside, she dropped the fish into the sink and grabbed a knife. She slotted it into the side of one of the bass, but she went too deep. Thick red blood sluiced out into the sink and over her fingers. For a moment, she thought of her mother’s hand, reaching out to her after the last miscarriage. She rinsed away the blood and tried again. She forced her trembling fingers to hold the slick side of the fish, and she covered its face with her arm. She kept thinking, flesh, flesh, flesh. Still, she worked on, clumsily at first, until she had fileted all four fish. She felt that she’d proven something to Wash.
As she breaded the fish, she seethed at the thought of Henry’s little stunt. Under different circumstances, being rid of him for a while would be a boon, but now she’d been forced to accept Wash’s charity again. She’d already had to ask Mr. Mason for credit just to fix some chicken soup for the twins. In a day or two, they’d be out of staples, and if she borrowed from Muff, she’d have to give an explanation. How long could they live on eggs and the scraps left in the pantry? She couldn’t use the emergency money; they might need it more later.
If Henry didn’t return by Friday, she would do something. She could ask Tommie if they could rent the spare bedroom in their house. She could keep the kids in school and sew full time, make enough to get by without Henry’s help. And if Tommie’s folks said no? She’d write to Abuelito and explain that they needed to come home. She’d check the price of train tickets or see if one of their uncles could drive out to get them. In time, the twins would come to understand. Before long they would forget East Texas had ever happened to the three of them.
HENRY Henry awoke to a face full of brown river water. He gagged and fought to clear his nostrils. He clawed his way up the shallows and wiped the mud from his eyes.
Near his face was a familiar pair of boots.
Pastor Tom scowled down at Henry. “You thinking on your baptism now?”
“Jesus!” Henry spluttered, already scrambling for the river’s edge. The last thing he remembered was closing his eyes in his truck and pulling his hat down over his face.
“Well, you old sinner?”
“Geez, yes, I was just—I only meant to—”
“Save your excuses and answer me straight. You been here asleep on the riverbank all night?”
“Yeah.” Henry looked away from the preacher and pulled off his sopping work boots. He stood with his wet socks glued to the sandy mud.
“You still working?”
“Yeah.”
“You been to the bars?” Pastor Tom asked. When Henry didn’t answer, the preacher snapped his fingers and repeated his question.
“Come on, you know I have.” Henry studied an old loblolly pine that towered behind Pastor Tom.
“And why didn’t you go home?”
Henry shrugged, less out of indifference than shame. “I’ve got this thing about puke, see, can’t stand it. The kids were sick, and...”
“You left ’em? You think Jesus would’ve done you like that? Left you when you was sick? What else? What more’d you do, you stinking sinner?”
“I might’ve threw somethin’,” Henry mumbled. He was shivering now. November fingered its way into his bones.
“You hit them?”
“Naw, I didn’t. Just chucked some pliers at the wall. Not mad at them, more mad at myself, but...”
“And for that you took off like you didn’t have a darn care in the world, just an old bachelor who could blow his pay on spirits over at Big T’s. Am I right?”
“Reckon so.”
“You gonna make it up to your kids, and to Naomi, too?” Tom gave Henry a push up the slope, toward his truck.
“I s’pose I got to.”
“Come on, then. I’ll get the missus to wash your clothes. You can dry out at our house and figure out how you’re going to put this right, the way Jesus would. I didn’t baptize you to see you go down the backslider’s path, Henry Smith.” Pastor Tom held out his hand. “Give me your keys.”
NAOMI Naomi was frying doughnuts when she glanced up and locked eyes with Pastor Tom’s on the other side of the kitchen window. She started. Hot oil sloshed over the side of the skillet and onto the skin of her right arm. She jumped back, trembling. “Ay, madre de Dios,” she gasped. Sweat beaded across her forehead. Tears sprang to her eyes.
Pastor Tom pushed through the screen door. “Oh, sister,” he said, his voice high and strained. “Do you have any butter for that burn?”
“Cold water,” Beto said. He and Cari had come running from the bedroom when they heard the door.
“What?” Pastor Tom asked.
“That’s the safest thing. I read so in Boys’ Life. Just keep running cold water over the burned part.”
Cari nodded solemnly, taking Naomi’s good arm and leading her to the sink. “Beto knows.”
“Butter makes it feel better at first, but it can cause more problems,” Beto explained. “It has to do with something called bacteria.”
The cool water took the edge off, but their words had t
o climb over a wall of pain to reach Naomi.
After a few minutes, she managed to speak. “I’m so sorry, Pastor Tom. I didn’t expect...”
He shook his head and mashed his hat between his hands. “I didn’t mean to startle you like that. I just wanted to make sure someone was up so I wouldn’t be disturbing the household by knocking.” He nodded at the twins. “Heard the kids were under the weather.”
“Oh, we’re better now,” Beto said. “I threw up fifteen times.”
“I threw up seventeen times!” Cari said with a note of triumph.
“No need for that, you two. Go get ready for school and let me and the pastor talk.” Naomi’s voice came out strained and strangled. God, but it hurt.
“They have the stomach flu?”
She nodded and swallowed hard. He might have heard the kids were sick from anybody, but her first thought was that he must have seen Henry. She turned the faucet off and dried her arm as lightly as she could. Her skin screamed. “My,” she said, gritting her teeth, “that was exciting. Have a doughnut?”
He shook his head and smiled ruefully. “I’ll take a seat, though. Sure am sorry.”
“It was my fault.” She lowered herself into the chair across from him and tried not to think about the heat that seemed to be inside the flesh of her arm. She glanced at the burn, then looked away. The sight of it turned her stomach. Her arm was an erratic welt of angry red with a smattering of white blisters.
Pastor Tom set his hat down in front of him. “You’ve had your hands full. That’s what I came by to talk to you about.”
Her jaw tightened a little. “Pardon me,” she said. She dashed back over to the sink and wet a towel with cool water, wrung it out, and then wrapped her arm in it before sitting back down.
“Please go ahead,” Naomi said from the sink. The pain made her desperate for distraction, and she looked at the preacher in the eyes for the first time. There was a patch of stray hairs between his eyebrows and an uneven mole above his lip.
Pastor Tom made his hands into a steeple and studied his fingernails. “I found Henry this morning. He knows he did wrong, and he’ll be coming home this evening. I thought you might like to know.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll let him know he’s welcome back?”
She hesitated, briefly imagining a life in East Texas without Henry. In the end, she said, “It’s his house.”
The pastor frowned a little. “Can I pray over it for you?” he asked, already stretching his hands out toward her burned arm.
◊ ◊ ◊
On the way to school, Naomi did not tell the twins that Henry was coming home. His word, even through Pastor Tom, did not fill her with confidence.
Naomi had put on a hand-me-down sweater from Muff, hoping the long sleeves would hide her burn. The wool was rough, and she winced every time it scratched against her damaged skin. And even with the sleeve pulled down, she could not conceal the burned and blistered part of her hand.
In homeroom, Miranda made a show of averting her eyes. “Too ugly to look at,” she said loudly.
Betty Lee grinned. “That’s sure to scar,” she said.
School was a blur of agony. After the bell, the twins bounded up to her in the schoolyard. “We learned silhouettes in art with Miss Bell,” Cari said.
Beto grabbed Naomi’s arm for a hug. She cried out in pain.
“Lo siento, Omi,” he said, backing away.
Naomi exhaled slowly. “It’s just a little tender.”
“If we can find Wash, can we go fishing?” Cari asked, already moving toward the superintendent’s house, where a box of tools sat on the porch.
“Sure,” Naomi said. Even with the cold out, all she wanted to do was take the sweater off.
Beto started after Cari, then turned back. “What’s for supper?” he asked.
Naomi groaned. “Nothing hot.”
WASH Late that afternoon, Wash looked up from the river to see Naomi coming toward him and the twins. “Jesus and his fishermen! What happened?” he shouted. Even from where he stood, he could tell that her arm was a map of blistered red. He handed his fishing rod to Beto and climbed the bank.
“We didn’t tell him,” Cari called.
“Tell me what?” Wash asked. “Let me see that.”
“It’s just a little burn,” Naomi said. She tried to hide her arm under the sweater she was holding in the other hand.
Wash reached to pull aside the sweater just as she took a step away from him. He was left with the sweater, and her burn was out in the open. Worry clutched at him. “How did that happen?” he asked.
Color flooded her cheeks. She grabbed the sweater and covered the burn again. “Doughnuts,” she said.
“An oil burn, then?” He shook his head. “You need to be more careful.”
“What difference does it make to you?” she asked.
Her hard words took him by surprise. “I—well, what if the twins had been standing there? They could’ve gotten hurt bad.”
“I know,” she said, but she didn’t look at him. Her fists were balled. “Come on,” she called to the twins. Beto started to take two fish from the basket in the shallows, but Naomi shook her head. “I’m not cooking tonight.”
The twins climbed up the slope and said their good-byes to Wash, but Naomi turned away without saying anything. She was angry at him; that was plain.
“Are you putting something on that?” he called after her. “Let me ask my friend Cal’s ma to mix up some salve—”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks for your concern.” She started up the path with the twins. She did not look back.
NAOMI That night, Henry walked into the kitchen like nothing had happened. Pastor Tom’s wife must have washed his clothes before they sent him home because everything was clean and pressed like he was going to church instead of coming home after half a week away. At the least, she could count on a few days of good behavior from him. Back on Redemption Road.
“Pastor said you got a burn,” Henry said.
“That’s right,” she said without looking up from her sewing.
Henry went over to the bread box. He pulled out an old biscuit and looked into the sink. “I could finish those dishes,” he said with his mouth full. “Leave them if you want.”
Naomi still didn’t speak.
“Good biscuit,” he said. He brushed the crumbs from his hands into the sink. “I guess the twins are up front?”
He walked toward the living room without waiting for her to answer. She noticed a slight bulge under his jacket, but she wasn’t about to ask what it was.
She went back to patching Beto’s pants. She didn’t mind the sewing. But after that, there were the dishes, which Henry would not remember to do. She needed to prepare tomorrow’s lunches. And she was behind on the cleaning and the laundry. She especially hated handling Henry’s underthings, marked as they were with his sweat and smells. The thought of hot water made her arm burn. Even if the work had been harder back in San Antonio, she hadn’t felt so alone doing it. And there was no Henry.
Happy cries came from the living room. She looked up and saw a calico streak fly past, tail straight back like an arrow. It skittered around the kitchen and then careened back toward the bedroom with the twins running after it.
“A cat?” Naomi said to Henry when he came back into the kitchen.
“Why not?” he said. His large hands patted at his pockets, as if a gift for her might appear there. She didn’t want anything from him, but she expected an apology at least.
It did not come.
“Everything okay?” He tossed the words out casually, which only added fuel to the fire still smoldering in her. Her anger seemed to radiate from the burn itself. It hurt like hell.
Naomi stood a few feet away from him at the sink, dish towel in hand. She took up a plate, dried it, and placed it on the counter. “We ran out of food money,” she said evenly. “I didn’t know what to do.”
A look of sh
ame flashed over Henry’s face, but he buried it under a grin. He picked his hat up from the counter and tossed it onto a chair. “Blew it, didn’t I?” he mumbled finally.
He tugged at the skin of his neck and then fished out a damp roll of bills and peeled off several. “So you can get stocked back up on food.” He paused, as if remembering something. “You should have told me about Turner’s place. I would have talked to him, worked something out. Who’s been getting groceries for you?”
She hesitated. “Depends. Sometimes Muff gets me things and I pay her back.” That was true, if rare.
For a moment, she thought he was going to let the topic die. Then he frowned and squinted at her. “And other times?” he asked.
She exhaled slowly and considered her position. Short of lying, there was no way around it. And anyway, there would not be a better time to tell him; he could hardly get angry with her now, not after what he’d just done.
“Mason’s,” she mumbled.
“Where?” His voice was sharp.
“Mason’s!” She said it clearly this time.
“That the store over in Egypt Town?” His jaw tightened. Disgust veined his words. “You’ve been feeding us nigger food? Feeding it to me? Feeding it to my kids?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the food, and you know it.” She wasn’t going to be bullied about this, especially not after he skipped out on them with the kids still sick.
Henry cocked an eyebrow at her and tapped his chin with a finger. “That so? The way I see it, you’re under my roof.” He flattened a palm against the table. “This is East Texas, and there’s lines. Lines you cross, lines you don’t cross. That clear? Turners won’t give you no more trouble, I promise you. In fact, I’ll buy the groceries from now on,” he said, snatching back the money. “You just make out a list. Don’t you go back to that nigger store, hear me?”
“I have to pay the bill from this week,” Naomi said stubbornly.
“Fine, but that’s the end of it. Tell that colored boy the twins are always trailing behind to pay it for you.” He tossed a handful of bills back down. “Come on, let’s see about that cat.” He stalked down the hall, no doubt expecting her to follow.
Out of Darkness (Fiction - Young Adult) Page 11
