What Comes After

by Steve Watkins

  “Thanks,” I said. “I guess. It was just what we had to do.”

  I stopped at my locker to drop off my books.

  “So what I was wondering,” he said, “was if maybe you might want to hang out after school. Talk about pet crematoriums or something.”

  I shut my locker and turned to look at him. He actually blushed.

  “You want to go out with me?” I asked, just to be sure.

  He grinned a little wider. “Or just hang out or whatever.”

  I was tempted to say yes, partly because he was cute and I was lonely, and partly because I was curious about his head-wound essay. But then he spat a black stream of something into a paper cup. I’d thought he was just holding a drink all that time, but now I realized he was chewing tobacco.

  “I can’t,” I said, trying not to stare at the cup, and trying not to show him how disgusted I was. “But thanks.”

  He drummed his fingers on his notebook. “Well, what about tomorrow? You want to hang out then? I have an extra helmet. We could go for a ride.”

  “You have a motorcycle?”

  He looked down. “Not exactly. It’s more like a motor scooter, I guess. A Vespa.”

  He seemed even cuter to me in that moment, all embarrassed about his scooter. It almost made up for the tobacco and the spit cup. Almost.

  But I couldn’t go, anyway, and it wasn’t just the dip. “I’m sorry, Littleberry. I just can’t,” I said. “I have chores every afternoon. I have to milk our goats.”

  His mouth dropped open — enough for me to see black goo between his lip and gum. “Goats?”

  “Really,” I said, looking away.

  “OK, Iris,” he said. “I guess I better get to class. I’ll see you around.” And he left.

  I thought about Littleberry later that afternoon while I milked the goats. He was pretty cute, but I couldn’t imagine kissing someone who chewed tobacco. Not that I was thinking about kissing Littleberry. I wondered if he’d ask me out again and decided that if he did, and if he got rid of the dip, and if I could get away from Aunt Sue’s, I might just say yes.

  Aunt Sue piled on the chores after the truck incident, but I felt as if I’d gotten off easy. She didn’t hit me again, or try, though I found myself flinching for the first couple of days whenever she walked past, wondering if she might.

  First I had to haul an extension ladder out of the barn and clean the gutters on the house, which took a couple of afternoons and left me covered in mud and roof gunk. It was nice to work out my arms and shoulders, though, which hadn’t gotten much use since I quit summer softball back in Maine, except for throwing with Beatrice in her backyard. Two blue jays dive-bombed my head when I got too close to their nest, which was tucked under an eave at Aunt Sue’s house where the bird-blocking had pulled loose. Another time I had to stop because Tammy got her head caught in the fence again, and Loretta, who must have come over to investigate, got hers stuck, too.

  After the gutters, Aunt Sue ordered me to paint the barn with a half dozen old cans of leftover paint in four different colors.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to paint it all one color?” I asked her tentatively. “It wouldn’t cost that much for barn paint.”

  Aunt Sue sniffed. “I don’t give a good goddamn what colors the barn is,” she said. “That’s usable paint, so you use it.”

  I spent that afternoon painting the front of the barn red. The wood was so old that it soaked up the first coat, the red barely visible, so I would definitely need a second. I still had some red left over when I finished, though, and some green and some blue and some brown, and I decided I’d paint a life-size goat on the side door of the barn before I finished painting the back and sides. I used Patsy as my model — a front view of her, looking straight ahead — and once she saw what I was doing, she even stood still for a while as if she was posing. I could tell she liked it. They all did. I had to sit in front of the painting while it dried, then stack up sawhorses so the goats wouldn’t get too close and rub it off.

  I wished I had someone else to show it to besides the goats — I even thought for a second about asking Littleberry if he’d like to come out to see it. I finally settled on Gnarly, but he just wanted to play, happy to be allowed out in the field.

  Still, things weren’t too bad overall for most of that week. I spent the next two afternoons finishing the barn, and liked having the work to do. I got an A from Mrs. Roosevelt on my crematorium paper. Littleberry waved from across the room when I saw him in class. We didn’t talk, but he smiled said “Hey” when we passed in the hall.

  I should have known Aunt Sue wasn’t going to let me off that easy, though. She went into my bedroom one afternoon when I was out in the barn and tore it apart until she found my money — two hundred dollars I had saved from working at the L.L. Bean outlet back in Maine, and what was left of the two hundred dollars Mr. Stone had given me on the way to the airport. I hadn’t bought much with it besides those Whoopie Pies for Aunt Sue and Book, and the airport parking, and Fig Newtons, Cheetos, and Snapples at Craven High. The Cheetos were for the goats.

  I stormed out of my room when I found out what had happened, but I only made it halfway down the stairs before I pulled up short. Aunt Sue and Book stood waiting at the bottom, with identical sour expressions on their hard faces. My legs shook so much that I had to hold on to the railing.

  Aunt Sue spoke first. “You can call it a down payment on a new set of tires.”

  Book crossed his oak-branch arms over the front of a grass-stained practice jersey.

  “Well,” Aunt Sue said, “was there something you wanted to say?”

  My legs were trembling bad, but I was furious and couldn’t stop myself. I said, “You can both go to hell.”

  Book started up toward me, but Aunt Sue put a hand on his arm, almost smiling. “Let her be,” she said. “She ain’t nothing but talk.”

  That made me more furious, but I felt helpless, too. They turned and went into the kitchen for their Dagwood sandwiches. I sagged to my bottom in the stairwell and stayed there, deflated, in the gray half-light between upstairs and down.

  That Saturday, Aunt Sue had a double shift at Walmart, so she made me take her place selling goat cheese at the farmers’ market. She came home from her graveyard shift early that morning, just as I finished milking the goats, and ordered me to help her load up the truck with coolers and table and awning and sign.

  She didn’t speak the whole way into town, and I didn’t, either. Even when we got to the farmers’ market, she didn’t say much, except to tell me where to set up, in what I assumed was her usual spot — next to a middle-aged Hispanic couple, the Gonzaleses. Aunt Sue said they were from Mexico. She grunted at them, which didn’t seem very friendly. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t like them or if she was just in a rush to get back to Walmart.

  “I won’t be back to get you until this afternoon,” she said after we put up the awning over the card table and hung her sign. “I know every container of goat cheese in these coolers, and I know exactly how much money you better have when I get back, so don’t go getting any ideas about spending any.”

  I realized I’d come without any food or water, and I asked about that. Aunt Sue thrust a water bottle at me, but nothing to eat. Then she handed me a metal box with fifty dollars in fives and ones. “I know how much is in there, too,” she said. “It’s for your change.”

  Shortly after Aunt Sue left, a little girl climbed out of the Gonzaleses’ truck, which was parked next to their stand. She sat on a crate of green peppers and rubbed her eyes as if she’d just woken up. She was maybe six or seven years old. She had dark hair and dark eyes and was wearing a threadbare cotton dress. Mrs. Gonzales cut up an apple into slices and handed it to her on a paper towel. The little girl watched me while she ate, and I smiled at her and watched her back.

  I tried to make conversation with the Gonzaleses, who seemed friendly, but they spoke very little English, and I only knew a little high-school Spani
sh — though enough to learn that they were from Honduras, not Mexico. They had one of the busier stands at the farmers’ market — three wide wooden tables loaded with peppers, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and apples — and they were in constant motion, weighing and bagging, restocking their tables, dragging produce crates out of their truck, and stuffing money into a shoe box that served as their cash register.

  Every fourth or fifth customer they had also stopped at Aunt Sue’s stand. Some asked for a taste, but since Aunt Sue hadn’t said anything about samples, I was reluctant to open a container to give them any. Plus I didn’t have a knife or plates to serve it with or on. I didn’t have anything except the cheese itself and the money box.

  Some customers seemed outright suspicious when they saw me. “Where’s Sue Allen?” an older woman asked, as if I might have murdered Aunt Sue in order to take over her farmers’ market stand.

  I remembered the manager’s instructions when I worked at the L.L. Bean outlet and smiled politely. “She had to go to work,” I said. “I’m her niece.”

  “Is this still her goat cheese?” the woman asked, even though the sign over the stand said SUE ALLEN FARM GOAT CHEESE in large block letters, and it was the same sign, and the same awning, and the same card table that Aunt Sue had used since I’d been in North Carolina — and that she’d probably used for years.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I said, still smiling. “Same cheese.”

  She bought five containers. Several others who stopped — and who asked about Aunt Sue — also bought multiple containers of cheese. I assumed these were regulars, though only one, a thin woman in a peasant blouse who wore her hair in two long braids, engaged me in anything like a real conversation.

  “I didn’t know Sue had a niece,” she said. “Are you just here visiting, or do you live in town?”

  “I live here now,” I said, though I didn’t like admitting it. “I’m actually from Maine.”

  “Oh, I love Maine,” the woman said. “My husband and I used to go there in the summers. We always camped at the state park in Camden. Have you been there?”

  I nodded and started talking enthusiastically: “Camden’s just an hour away from my hometown. I must have hiked all the trails there a hundred times. My softball coach drove our team up there last year before the season started and made us do training runs up that two-mile road from the park entrance to the top of Mount Battie.”

  The woman smiled. “And what brought you down here?” she asked.

  “My dad died,” I said matter-of-factly. And then I stopped short, dismayed by how casually I’d just said it.

  The woman must have seen the look of regret, or sadness, or confusion on my face, because she reached across the card table just then and put her hand on mine. “I’m so sorry, dear.”

  After she left, the Gonzaleses’ little girl came over and offered me a slice of apple. I knew she spoke English better than her parents — she would sometimes translate for the customers or for her mom and dad — and I wondered if she’d heard the exchange and felt sorry for me. I hoped not.

  “Thanks,” I said, and I smiled at Mrs. Gonzales, who was watching.

  “Isabel, ven acá.” Mrs. Gonzales gestured the girl back over to their stand and handed her a whole apple, a Gala, to bring to me as well. I said “Gracias” this time and ate that, too — especially grateful for it, since I hadn’t had breakfast.

  Isabel hung out with me for a while after that. We talked about her school — she was in first grade; her teacher’s name was Mrs. Hanak; her best friend was a girl named Ainsley; her favorite subject was lunch. And then for the next hour, between sales, we played rock, paper, scissors. When she won she punched me lightly on the arm. When I won I tickled her until she couldn’t stop giggling and yelling, “¡Basta ya! ¡Basta ya! Stop! Stop!”

  Business tapered off around noon, and by one o’clock nearly all the stalls were closed and almost everyone was gone. The Gonzaleses were some of the last people to leave, and I wondered if they might have been waiting until Aunt Sue came back for me. But eventually they couldn’t wait any longer. Isabel hugged me, and I thanked Mr. and Mrs. Gonzales for the apples, while they thanked me for entertaining Isabel. As they pulled away in their truck, Mrs. Gonzales leaned out the window and said, “Vaya con Dios.”

  Aunt Sue didn’t show up until after three, but I didn’t mind, except for being away from Gnarly and the goats for so long. I’d brought my school copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God and re-read it while I waited alone in the Sue Allen Farm Goat Cheese stall. A few people wandered through the park next to the farmers’ market, which was near downtown. There weren’t any more customers, though, and even if there had been, I didn’t have anything left to sell. I had made two hundred and fifty dollars — and was sure I could have done even better if I’d had more cheese, and if Aunt Sue was ever willing to put out samples to attract new customers.

  I was surprised by how much I’d enjoyed being at the farmers’ market. I liked the Gonzaleses and I liked the customers — even the cranky ones, but especially the woman who’d been to Camden. I liked having something useful to do, even if it was for Aunt Sue.

  Aunt Sue came up to my bedroom the evening Reba went into labor. It was a Friday. Book had an away game all the way up in Elizabeth City, too far for Aunt Sue to drive to watch the game, even though she had the night off from work.

  She hesitated at my door and looked around, mostly at the floor, where I had my piles of books.

  “Go into town and buy a tub of K-Y Jelly,” she told me. Then she said, “You do have a driver’s license, don’t you?” She’d never seen me drive, never asked me if I wanted to drive — which, once she bought the Tundra, I wouldn’t have wanted to, anyway.

  I nodded. “From Maine.”

  “Well, good enough. Here’s the keys. Reba’s gonna deliver tonight, and I need that K-Y. She’s got multiples. They get tangled sometimes, and you got to go in and untangle them, turn them around, things like that.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Aunt Sue said, “You know where the Walmart is out on County Circle Road? The one where I work. They have it there. Get the kind with the pump. That’s the size I need. Now, get going.”

  I thought about saying no, and telling her I wouldn’t be caught dead in her damn P of the P, but instead I got up, took the keys, and pulled on my hoodie. “The only reason I’m going is for Reba,” I said, but Aunt Sue had already turned away. She beat me downstairs, and by the time I reached the truck, I saw her, or the shadow of her, disappear into the barn. She had already shooed the other goats out into the pen from the stalls. Reba started bawling inside the barn, and the rest of them jerked up their heads and crowded by the fence, trying to hide behind Patsy. Gnarly started barking, even though Aunt Sue had walked right past him, so he knew she was home.

  The truck seemed too big for the road, and I shoved everything I could find underneath me so I could sit high enough to see: Aunt Sue’s Walmart jacket, some of Book’s recruiting pamphlets from college coaches. Even then I felt as if I was straining to peer over the steering wheel and could barely follow the lines on the road.

  A tall, geeky clerk with long sideburns was the first one I saw at the Walmart. He leered at me when I told him what I wanted. I said, “It’s for a goat.” He smiled a pervert smile and raced off — he said to find the pump tub of K-Y Jelly back in the storeroom, but probably to laugh about me to his buddies. Five minutes later, he thumped it on the counter and said, “You think this’ll be enough?”

  “It’s for a goat,” I said again, my face burning. “She’s pregnant.” I should have just not said anything, because that cracked him up, too.

  Aunt Sue had Reba lying on her side in a stall when I got back. She was sitting with Reba, bent over so their foreheads nearly rubbed together. I thought Aunt Sue might have been saying something, maybe even singing, but whatever she was doing, she stopped as soon as I walked in. I’d never seen her be tender to the goats, and it surprised me
. The one naked bulb hung from its electrical cord from a rafter overhead and cast long shadows. Reba was mostly hidden in one of them.

  I set the K-Y tub down on the milking stand and went into the stall.

  “What now?” I asked.

  Aunt Sue shrugged. “Wait.”

  “How long?”

  “Long as it takes. Why? You got to be somewhere?”

  I didn’t say anything else. I wasn’t crazy about spending so much time with Aunt Sue, but I refused to leave Reba. She’d been her usual self the past couple of days — following me around, rubbing against me, lifting her head so I would scratch under her chin, eating all the Cheetos I brought from school. Now she was shaking all over, her breathing getting heavier and heavier, and her eyes were open wide, giving her a worried look.

  Aunt Sue stood up. “I’m going outside for a smoke.”

  I took the opportunity to sit closer to Reba, who laid her head in my lap.

  “It’s her second time,” Aunt Sue said, sounding gruff, but not entirely convincing. “She knows what she’s doing.” Then she left the barn to have her cigarette.

  The next couple of hours passed like that — me continuing to hold Reba, rub her, talk to her, while Aunt Sue alternated between smoking outside and standing watching in silence inside. Finally, around midnight, something happened with Reba. She shifted in a certain way; her breathing quickened; her nostrils flared. She made low, guttural sounds.

  Aunt Sue said, “Here we go.” She pumped K-Y Jelly into her hands and smeared it up her arms, then she knelt behind Reba, spread Reba’s legs wide apart, and slid her hands inside. Reba started bawling hard, and pushing. “Hold her,” Aunt Sue said, and I held her, my arm locked around her neck.

  “I can see the first one,” Aunt Sue announced. She pumped more jelly on her hands and went in again. “They’re tangled up, like I thought.”

  Reba struggled against me as Aunt Sue worked her arms up inside and wrestled the first kid around. The struggle went on for half an hour. Sweat poured down my face. I wished I’d taken off my hoodie because I was roasting in it, holding on to Reba. Both of us panted, pretty much together. I said things, dumb things, but the stuff you always say in those situations: Hold on. It’ll be OK. Almost there.