The Sound of Gravel

by Ruth Wariner

  I had been proud of my knack for feeding her, but that skill began to evaporate as well. Scared to see what mealtimes might bring, I felt like Mom in the final days before Audrey was institutionalized. It became almost impossible to determine the right amount of food to put in Meri’s mouth. Sometimes her swallowing reflexes didn’t work, and she’d gag and spit food back up in every direction. None of us could do much except make sure she was lying in a comfortable position and try the whole thing again.

  Meri’s mouth and eyes now remained open almost all the time, in a zombielike expression, like a child who sits in front of a TV all day. A sudden noise might make her eyes dart in a certain direction, but her head would never follow suit. Most heartbreaking of all, when she cried, tears poured down her cheeks, but no sound left her mouth.

  “Make sure you make them last,” Mom said, and handed Matt a plain white envelope with a few food stamps, after she took a few for herself. “Lane hasn’t been paid in a while.”

  Matt accepted the envelope from Mom and asked when she would be home.

  “I don’t know,” she said casually, shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders. “I’ll call you from a pay phone when we’re on our way back.” With that, she put her diaper bag over her shoulder, picked Meri up from the couch, and walked out the door to Lane’s idling truck, Matt behind her carrying her suitcase.

  The odd thing was, although the prospect of Mom’s leaving scared me, once she left, I felt liberated. Having the household managed by Matt had its perks. Babylon’s excesses were welcomed with open arms. My siblings and I watched TV nonstop from the moment Mom left and ate crunchy-peanut-butter sandwiches for lunch and popcorn for dinner. We stayed up for hours past our usual bedtimes and—that first night—finally got to watch music programs that Mom considered so scandalous she had forbidden it. “Not with all those half-naked girls dancin’ around all those crazy, shaggy-haired, ugly men,” she’d say. “It’s way too indecent for you kids. You have better things to be doin’ with your time.”

  By then, Mom’s oldies-but-goodies innocence had given way, at least in our minds, to pop and heavy-metal music. We were all fascinated by what Lane called “devil music,” a term that most households in LeBaron took to mean any music from the sixties forward, which meant that rock and roll of any sort was not allowed. Having grown up loving music, Mom proved to be a little more liberal in this regard. She bought us vinyl records and cassettes as gifts, and as long as the music didn’t have any cursing or references to sex, she let us listen to it as much as we liked.

  I tuned in to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 every weekend. Rick Springfield was my favorite. I tore his photos from teen magazines and Scotch-taped them all over my bedroom walls. I danced and lip-synched in front of the mirror, singing “Jessie’s Girl” while pointing to my reflection.

  The morning after Mom left, Matt and I realized that we were out of milk and cereal. Remembering the big bag of flour Mom always had on hand, and having helped her make pancakes several times, I said that I would make breakfast for everyone. Matt looked at me uneasily but joined the others in front of the TV in the living room.

  Still in my pink nightgown, I dragged a chair across the floor until it was next to the stove, then climbed on it so I could reach the baking ingredients in the upper cupboards. I lifted a half-open bag of flour from over my head, and a white cloud puffed into the air as I set it down on the countertop. I took out a pink-and-white sack of sugar and quickly gathered up the cooking oil and eggs. Because we were out of milk, I thought water would be a good substitute. I poured some from the faucet into the mixing bowl while I stared out the kitchen window at the nearby trailers, all of them filled with strangers.

  I stirred everything together to make a thick, white liquid that roughly resembled lumpy pancake batter. Once I had lit the stove and heated the frying pan, I began to cook the little disks of batter. I stood over the burner with my spatula and listened to Luke repeatedly crash into the floor while my siblings watched a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I felt like a surrogate mom with Matt as the dad, both of us yelling at Luke and Aaron all day.

  “Hey, Lukey, settle down or I’m gonna have to turn the TV off, ’kay?” I hollered, after I heard him bellow from the couch. The noise subsided. Meanwhile, my pancakes looked perfect, golden brown with a delicious, toasted smell. I carefully set two on each plate, smeared them with peanut butter and syrup just as Mom did, and delivered them to my TV-watching brothers, who gratefully grabbed their stacks. I settled into the recliner with my own plate and a self-satisfied smile.

  “These are gross,” Matt said matter-of-factly, and tossed his plate of half-raw pancakes onto the carpet. I watched for dissenting opinions from the others, but Aaron’s face just twisted into a frown and Luke spit out his first bite. I gathered up the plates and returned to the kitchen. My recipe needed tinkering.

  After adjusting a few ingredients, I came up with a round of pancakes that somehow managed to be both burned and raw. Several batches later, I finally produced something doughy but edible, and my brothers reluctantly chomped their way through a few scorched disks. That was the final straw. We had to go to Safeway for more groceries.

  Luke and Aaron were still in front of cartoons when Matt and I stepped out into the early-afternoon sunlight and a blue, cloudless sky. Walking along a busy, paved road in the middle of a Texas summer was like walking on the edges of red-hot burners on an electric stovetop. By the time we’d walked the quarter mile to the Safeway parking lot, our blond heads were scorched and our clothes were soaked.

  The glass doors parted and ice-cold air rushed at us in a welcoming breeze. I had never been happier to step inside a grocery store. I pulled a cart from the rack and joined the throng of shoppers, my nose at roughly the same height as the cart’s red handle. Rolling up the first aisle as if I knew what I was doing, I quickly found myself overwhelmed by the towering walls of colorfully printed packages. Supermarket variety had always amazed me, but Mom’s swift trips had made shopping look easy. Luckily, Matt was there to fill the basket with chips, Popsicles, peanut butter, milk, sugar-coated wheat puffs, and a spongy loaf of wheat bread.

  We had only made it to the middle of the frozen-foods aisle when Matt stopped short, took the envelope from his pocket, and counted the food stamps. He scanned the basket, concentrated hard, and counted each item under his breath, the back of his neck still fire red from our walk.

  “It looks like we have enough to pay for everything with a little bit left over,” he said with a shy smile, handing the envelope of food stamps to me. “You go pay for these, and I’ll meet you out front.”

  I looked at him, annoyed. “Why do I have to do it?”

  “Because I said so, that’s why. See if the lady will exchange one of the food-stamp dollars for quarters, and then you can buy somethin’ from the quarter machines on the way out, ’kay?”

  I nodded, taking note that the back of Matt’s neck wasn’t the only thing that had turned red; his cheeks were the exact same shade, and his light freckles barely peeked through. I could tell he was embarrassed, but I couldn’t quite understand why. I took the food stamps, waited in line, then handed them over to the cashier. She looked at me kindly enough as she peered down through her reading glasses, but she had a severity to her that made me worry she was about to ask where my mother was. Instead, she licked her index finger and thumb, counted the stamps, and handed me two $1 stamps in change.

  I handed one right back. “Can I get four quarters, please?”

  The cashier twisted her chin down at me until it doubled. “Sweetheart, I cain’t exchange cash for food stamps,” she said in her thick Texas accent. “It’s against the law.”

  Something about the way she’d emphasized those two words, food stamps, made me feel as if every eye in the store were watching me. My face went hot with shame, and I was suddenly angry at Matt. He knew it would be embarrassing to pay with food stamps. I lowered my head, took the brown-paper sacks of groceries, an
d walked out of the store as fast as I could.

  “They can’t give you cash for food stamps,” I said, quietly resentful, to Matt.

  “Hey, I didn’t know that. I promise I didn’t.” He covered his mouth with his hand but couldn’t resist laughing.

  I was incensed. “You have to pay for the food next time,” I said sourly, thrusting the stamps in his face and sulking all the way back to the trailer park.

  The TV was off when we got home, and Luke and Aaron were nowhere in sight. I put the groceries away while Matt looked around for them, opening and closing the doors to every room. Then he ran outside.

  “Luke and Aaron. It’s time to come inside now.”

  No response.

  Matt’s calls grew distant as he searched the area farther and farther away from the trailer. I was worried. While Luke had wandered off before, Aaron never had. I folded the paper sacks, laid them on the table, and heard a quiet sound I didn’t recognize. I glanced over my shoulder toward the hallway. Nothing was there. I stood frozen in place and listened to the sleepy afternoon air. There it was again—a soft thud, the sound of scampering maybe. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Not until I left the kitchen for the living room did I hear a giggling under the floor. I darted outside.

  “Where are they?” asked Matt frantically. “Did you see them?”

  “There.” I pointed under the trailer.

  Matt and I crept toward a narrow opening in the white skirt of siding under our home and looked at each other wide-eyed. The smell of sulfur was unmistakable.

  “Luke and Aaron!” Matt shouted. “We know you’re in there. You kids get out from under this trailer. Right now!” He crawled farther, and there they were amid the spiderwebs and patches of weeds and stickers and pieces of trash. Luke wore a silly grin as if he didn’t know what was going on. Matt yelled again and again until the two boys slowly began to creep toward us. Luke kept his hand behind his back.

  “Luke, let me see what you have in your hand.” Matt demanded, his face beet red with irritation. “Were you two playin’ with matches under there?”

  “No,” they both said in unison, each looking at the other as if the other was lying.

  “Show me your hand, Luke!” Matt yelled, grabbing Luke’s elbow. The box of matches hidden inside his palm rattled while Matt clawed for them. “Luke, give ’em to me. Hurry!” Luke refused and my brothers began to wrestle, falling to the dry lawn and rolling around, blades of yellow grass clinging to their jeans and T-shirts and hair. “You better give ’em to me, Lukey!” A cloud of dust flew up, Luke started to sneeze, and that gave Matt an opening. He snatched the little red box from his brother’s hand.

  “Are you kids stupid or somethin’?” Matt scolded, wiping the dirt and grass from his jeans. “What the heck is wrong with you?”

  Neither replied. Luke wiped his runny nose on his dusty shirtsleeve.

  Matt smacked the top of Luke’s head, then smacked Aaron. “Don’t you know that you could burn this trailer down? Again? Just wait till I tell Mom on you guys. You’re gonna be in big trouble when she gets home.”

  Aaron rubbed his eyes with his fists, started to bawl, and walked slowly up the steps and through the open door.

  Luke just stood there. “When’s Mom comin’ back?”

  Matt stuffed the matches into his front pocket. “I don’t know. Now, get back inside the house. I can’t believe you guys.”

  I followed my brothers up the steps, went into the kitchen, and poured everyone a glass of milk; my hands were shaking. Luke was almost eleven now and still playing with matches, as if he didn’t know how dangerous that was. Not long ago he had tried to light a lamp pole on fire in the trailer park. He also had begun wandering farther and farther away from home. Sometimes he found his way back, sometimes we had to get in the Microbus and go look for him. I worried that Matt and I didn’t know what we were doing. I wanted Mom to come home.

  The phone rang that night and Matt got to it first. I heard Mom’s voice on the other end saying they were in Oklahoma and didn’t know when they’d be home. Just as I asked Matt to give me the receiver, the line went dead. “Mom didn’t have any more change,” he explained, his voice so nonchalant I almost burst into tears. I couldn’t cry in front of the others, though. It didn’t seem right. I just stared at the TV until the feeling passed.

  21

  A few days later, on a muggy afternoon, we heard a knock at the door. By then, my brothers and I had spent hours and hours in front of the TV, having only taken brief breaks to sleep, or to retreat to our bedrooms or outside when Luke became so overwrought by a program that his jumping shook the entire trailer to its core. Matt and I were slouched on the orange couch, Aaron in the brown reclining chair, and Luke was lying in his usual spot on the floor. We were all watching General Hospital, one of our favorite shows, which, even though Mom would probably have preferred we not absorb the sinful deeds of Luke and Laura, Mom never banned because she loved it as much as we did.

  When we heard the rapping sound at the front door, we all jumped. Our eyes darted from the TV to the door, and then to each other. We weren’t expecting anyone, and visitors to the trailer were rare even when Mom was home. The knock came a second time, and Matt slowly rose from the couch and opened the door. The living room flooded with light and heat. A man and a woman, both middle-aged, both dark haired, and both well dressed stood on the threshold—he in a shirt and tie, she in a gray suit with stockings and high heels. Each carried brown leather briefcases, and for a moment I thought they might be Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Church frequently sent missionaries into our trailer park on Sundays in search of converts. But it wasn’t Sunday.

  This will not end well, I thought to myself as I turned off the TV, my eyes fixed on the man and the woman. I watched as the two of them scanned the room. Their eyes stopped at the sink piled high with dirty dishes and the old cereal bowls sitting on top of the kitchen table, its surface sticky with spilled milk.

  The woman looked at the man with a stunned expression. Then she quickly recovered, forced a smile onto her face, and turned to Matt. “Is your mom at home?” she asked through lips covered in a lavender lipstick and teeth straight and white.

  “Um, no, my mom’s not here right now, but she’s comin’ back anytime.”

  I was impressed by Matt’s smooth delivery of the lie. The man asked, as sweetly as the woman, if they might come in. Matt hesitated a moment, then stepped aside and opened the door wide for the pair, who now introduced themselves as representatives of the Department of Social Services.

  “One of your neighbors telephoned our agency and said you kids have been alone for a few days,” said the woman. “We’re just checking in to make sure that isn’t true.”

  None of us said a word, and the couple walked farther into the living room, suddenly fragrant with the clean smell of the woman’s perfume. I liked the way she combed her hair: short, feathered back, and held meticulously in place with hair spray.

  “Where is your mother?” the woman asked.

  “Oklahoma City,” Matt replied.

  “How long has she been gone?” the man asked.

  “A few days.”

  “Have you had a babysitter?”

  Matt shook his head.

  “Have any grown-ups checked up on you while your mother has been gone?”

  Matt looked at the two of them a moment. “No.”

  The man eyed the woman, then asked, “Do you mind if we look around?”

  “Sure,” Matt replied, and soon the pair were in the kitchen, swinging open every one of the cupboard doors and poking their noses in the fridge. Noticing the big, green bowl full of runny batter—my latest failed attempt at pancake making—they asked what we’d been eating. Matt answered truthfully: cereal, popcorn, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

  The man tried to make his way to the hallway and bedrooms, but Luke was in the way. “You need to get up, buddy,” Matt said, whispering into his brother’s ear
. “Sit on the couch and get out of the way, ’kay?” Luke reacted as if he’d had water poured on his head during a dream. He scrambled to his feet, his greasy hair matted where he’d been lying on it.

  I heard the man’s footsteps as he walked down the hall but didn’t follow him. I imagined the expression on his face as he discovered my bedroom floor littered with dirty clothes, and I felt a deep sense of shame. Matt was now biting his fingernails and staring at the floor. The same question seemed to run through both our minds—what do we say or not say? We knew enough not to mention anything about polygamy or Mom’s being married to Lane, but that was the extent of our coaching in this regard.

  “This place is a mess,” the man said, startling us as he stepped in from the hallway, his expression almost as fearful as ours, his hands stuffed into his pockets as if he needed to avoid contamination. He reached up to scratch the top of his head and then quickly pocketed his hand again. “There’s an open flame under the hot-water heater in the back bedroom. There are plastic bags and clothes sitting all around it. It’s a miracle it hasn’t started a fire.” He took in a deep breath and shook his head at the woman. “We have to get ahold of the mother. And there’s no way we can leave them alone.”

  The woman told us all to sit down. “We need to decide what to do,” she said with a serious glance in our direction. Matt and I sat down next to Luke on the couch, our shoulders hunched forward and our elbows on our knees. The woman shooed Aaron off a chair and motioned for him to join us. The man pulled in a chair from the kitchen, wiped crumbs from the seat, shook his head, and sat down.

  The woman popped the gold latches on her briefcase and took out a pen and pad. “Do you kids have a phone number where we can reach your mother?” Her voice sounded kindly, like that of the Wicked Witch just before luring Dorothy into a trap.