Summer in the South

by Cathy Holton

  “Mama?” he said, weaving on his feet.

  He fell onto the floor and lay staring up at the ceiling, blood bubbling on his lips. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She wiped his mouth with the hem of her dress. “I know,” she said gently.

  Deep within the house she could hear the muffled chiming of the clock.

  He was too heavy to move, and she sat for a long time waiting for Josephine to come home and help her. She must have dozed, awakening to footsteps coming up the front porch, then down the hallway, and she thought, Those are too heavy for Josephine. And then she thought, Papa?

  “Fanny?” Light flooded the room and Maitland stood in the doorway. “Oh, my God,” he said, bending down to where Fanny sat, blinking, with Charlie’s head in her swollen lap. “What happened?”

  She told him. Everything. When she had finished, he rose without a word and went into Charlie’s bedroom to get his clothes. He dressed Charlie, then wrapped him in a quilt, dragging him out the kitchen door while Fanny pulled the car around.

  The moon had risen high in the sky by the time they got to the river. Maitland switched off the lights of the car and they coasted across the narrow bridge. The water was dark and foamy. Several large boulders gleamed in the moonlight, and there was no sound but the rushing of the water and the wind moaning in the trees.

  Maitland poured whiskey from a flask all over Charlie’s clothes and into his mouth and jammed the empty flask into Charlie’s pocket. Then he pushed him over the edge, the quilt unfurling from the bridge like a flag. He stood for a moment, looking down, then bundled the quilt in his arms and went back to the car.

  Fanny stood at the railing looking down at Charlie, who had landed faceup in the river and was beginning to float, partially submerged, with the current, his face, in the moonlight, pale and waxy as some monstrous exotic flower.

  About the Author

  CATHY HOLTON, the author of Beach Trip, The Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes, and Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes, was born in Lakeland, Florida, and grew up in college towns in the South and the Midwest. She attended Oklahoma State University and Michigan State University where she studied creative writing. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with her husband and their three children.