by Larry Brown
“I put clean sheets on our bed, too,” she said. “Mama wants the kids to spend the night with her.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“I told her I’d bring em over after while.”
“Why don’t we just go out?” he said. “We could go eat some catfish.”
She looked up at him and he smiled at her.
“That sounds good,” she said.
They walked and she kept holding on to his arm. It had been a long time since she’d done that and he was glad she was doing it now.
It was one of those evenings when it clears off just before sundown and you know that the rain is finally gone. The sky is filled with scattered clouds and the last sinking tip of the sun sends light up to brighten the back side of them in hues of orange and pink and the light falls bit by bit until there is only a faint trace of where it has gone before night.
Virgil sat there with David on his lap and they watched it together. The birds had come back out and they lit in the yard and from the porch he pointed out to him mockingbird and sparrow, cardinal and jay. He told him fishing stories and in a little while the boy’s eyes closed and Virgil nestled his head with his arm and saw again how the flesh there had wrinkled and sagged. He wanted another smoke but he would not disturb this child to roll it and was content to look down on his face. The puppy dozed beside the chair and he watched the last light fade out of the sky.
Just before full dark he heard cars coming down the road in the mud. They swung in one by one with their parking lights on, and he turned his head to see them getting out. The doors closed and he held his precious bundle a little tighter when he saw who it was. He rocked, watching them come closer. Bobby was there and Mary and Jewel, and he held David close to him as if to protect him from any harm. He looked at their faces and the old boards creaked softly as he pushed the chair to and fro. When they came near enough to hear him he told them to be quiet, that the boy was asleep.
Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 1996 by Larry Brown.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Reckon magazine, where an excerpt from this novel first appeared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for a previous edition of this work.
E-book ISBN 978-1-61620-206-4
ALSO BY LARRY BROWN
ESSAYS
On Fire
Billy Ray's Farm
STORIES
Facing the Music
Big Bad Love
NOVELS
Dirty Work
Joe
Fay
The Rabbit Factory
A Miracle of Catfish
