by Leisha Kelly
“They’re putting up their pictures? Oh, I gotta find one of Lester too! Do you think his mama knows about this?”
“If she takes the paper.”
“Oh, Sarah. They wouldn’t have no paper. You know that. They can’t afford decent shoe leather. I better go an’ tell Mrs. Turrey right after supper. She’ll want to include Lester. Do you know she’s really proud?”
I didn’t know much of anything about Mrs. Turrey except for what had been talked around by folks who say they’re giving you something to pray about. But I figured most of what was said was true, so maybe the whole Turrey family needed something to be proud of. “I think it’s a fine idea to make sure they know,” I told Rorey, but she looked at me a little when I stopped.
“Ain’t you gonna say you’re happy for me?”
“Oh, Rorey. You know how I’ve felt all along. I want you to be happy, but I’m just not so sure about Lester. At least he wrote a swell letter. And him saying that this time he means it leads me to think that at least he’s been considering his ways and he probably means well by you.”
“Well. I guess that’s the happiest reaction I can expect outta you,” she said sourly. “I should’ve known that.”
“I’m sorry, Rorey. It’s just hard for me to trust Lester. But I wish you well. I really do.”
“You’re gonna see, Sarah. He’s gonna make me the happiest woman in the whole world!”
I hoped she was right. I hoped everything would work out wonderfully for her and Lester if they went ahead and got married. Maybe he’d use his military training to get a good job and they’d have plenty of money and beautiful kids. Maybe Lester would go to church, think some more on his ways, and end up being a fine brother-in-law to Frank and the rest. Maybe. I couldn’t picture it. But then, none of that was up to me.
I went home with the photographs I came for, thinking plenty of thoughts about Rorey and all her silly ways since she’d become a teenager, fawning after one boy or another. Usually Lester. Her thinking always did come back to Lester, Lord only knows why. I couldn’t imagine myself ever being so boy crazy as Rorey was, but then maybe her pa was partly to blame for that. I remembered her telling me he’d said she could get married as young as she wanted to, it was all right with him. I’d thought that an awfully dangerous thing to tell a girl that was already a little wild in her thinking. My father would never tell me something like that. He’d said he expected me to finish school before I ever went out on a date, not that I ever really cared to go anyway. But maybe Dad’s attitude was part of the reason.
“You’ll have plenty of time to be a grown-up once you’re grown,” he’d said once. “There’s no reason to rush into tomorrow.”
Dad was smart about that kind of thing. I was glad he’d passed along good sense. But then I wondered. School was out. And I wasn’t going back. I guessed I could date now if I wanted to. But there wasn’t anybody I could think of that I was anxious to be with in that kind of way.
Rorey would call me backward. And maybe I was, a little bit. Maybe I was a little like Frank, who never even tried to be with girls. He just concentrated on his work and his family and church, and that was good enough for him. I guessed he and I could just be friends and talk over things that bothered us, and not worry about dates with anyone until we felt good and ready. God didn’t make us like Rorey. I could be thankful for that.
Maybe I should have thought a little more about Mr. Hammond that night. I told my parents all about Lester’s letter, but I didn’t mention a word about Rorey’s pa going anywhere until Mom asked me how he was taking the news.
“Rorey said he was happy and went to tell people. But I don’t know who, since he didn’t come here.”
He didn’t get home in time for supper either, we found out. He wasn’t home by bedtime, and Frank didn’t find him at Fraley’s or anywhere else he knew to look. He looked scared when he came to tell Dad about it. And I was ashamed that I hadn’t known to wonder. Mr. Hammond was unpredictable anymore. Like grease in a hot pan. Liable to stay still or jump out in any direction. Maybe he wasn’t so happy over the news after all.
18
Frank
I didn’t know how to let things rest. I couldn’t sleep with Pa gone off again. I didn’t even want to try. Lizbeth had gone home about a week and a half ago, thinkin’ things were as back to normal as they were going to get. Pa had assured her that he wasn’t thinkin’ nothing crazy, and I guess she’d felt pretty settled about it since he’d been actin’ all right.
But news of Lester Turrey proposing must have set him off again, though I wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t had any objection to Lester since things got back to normal and Lester helped do a little rebuilding after the fire. I would have thought Pa’d be happy about this.
Mr. Wortham was good enough to talk with me about some of the places Pa might’ve gone. Maybe even all the way to Dearing, to tell Sam and Thelma or Lizbeth and Ben the news. Mr. Wortham offered to drive in and see. I was grateful about that, and hopin’ he’d find him, since he’d be using the gas of his truck for somethin’ like this.
I was hoping to feel silly by morning over worryin’ ’bout it. After all, Pa was a grown man who just got news that was far from sad. Maybe he was celebratin’ with some friends I didn’t even know he’d felt close towards. Maybe he had some kind of surprise in mind for Rorey, though I couldn’t imagine what it might be.
Oh, Lord, direct my path.
I didn’t feel like going into town with Mr. Wortham. I went twice by Mama’s grave and once out to the machine shed where Pa spent some time alone sometimes. But he wasn’t on our place, and I wasn’t sure where to look. Bert’s dog Boomer followed me and Tulip out toward the Curtis Creek bridge and beyond that to the one-room schoolhouse. There wasn’t no reason in the world for Pa to come this way. But as we were going past, Boomer went running to the schoolhouse door. It was shut just like it was supposed to be, but Boomer was pawin’ and scratchin’ over something, so I got off our old horse and went walking up to the steps.
“Pa?”
Not a sound answered except Boomer’s antics, but I knew he didn’t act like that over nothin’.
“Is somebody here?” I yelled, but nobody answered me. I might have gone on, thinking Boomer was smellin’ nothing but mice, except I saw that the window on the west was standin’ open. School was let out for the year. There weren’t no way the schoolteacher would leave the window open like that. Squirrels or coons’d tear up things mighty quick. But somebody’d opened it, sure as the morning sun.
“Pa?” I called again, even though I knew it wouldn’t make a lick of sense for him to come here. The door was secured tight, so I went over to the window, wishing I had more of a way of seein’ in the dark. The moonlight was plenty good enough tonight for seein’ where I was going, but it was almost no help at all lookin’ into the dark schoolhouse.
I wondered if the new schoolteacher still kept matches and candles in the same place that Mrs. Post had kept them years back when I was coming here. I wondered if they might have left any behind when they cleaned up things at the end of the school year. Thinkin’ about sneakin’ in to check was so strange to me that I started backing away, wondering what was wrong with my head. But then I heard a noise. Just a funny shufflin’ noise coming from inside.
“Who’s in there? Speak up right now or I’m comin’ in to see.”
I don’t know why I didn’t just figure the open window was an accident and some animal had gotten in. I don’t know why I entertained the first notion that it could be my pa. But that was what I thought as I went up to the window again. Either that he didn’t hear me callin’ or he was too sloppy drunk to care.
“Pa? Why don’t you come home? Rorey gettin’ engaged ain’t nothin’ to worry over.”
I heard the same shuffling noise and quick as anything I boosted myself up and started head-first through the window. For a second I wondered what folks’d say if they seen me. Mrs. Post and the teachers since th
en’d all be fiery upset over me or anybody else sneakin’ into the schoolhouse this way. But there weren’t anybody out here to know about it right now except for whoever else was already in there.
“Tarnation, boy! Can’t you see clear to leave me alone a while?”
It was Pa, sure enough. Talking out of the dark. I shimmied one knee up to the windowsill and was halfway inside. “I can’t see you at all,” I called to him. “But what are you doin’ here? This is ’bout the craziest thing you ever—”
“Ah, shut up. If I was wantin’ to hear it, I’d a’ come home.”
I held my peace, wondering at him. He was talkin’ plain enough, but I knew he was drunk. Not so bad as sometimes, but I could smell the liquor now, and I knew. Quick as I could, I eased the rest of the way through the window and landed on the floor. There wasn’t much to this schoolhouse. Just the one classroom and a coatroom inside the door. I still couldn’t see Pa, but I could hear him a little bit, over by the woodstove in the middle of the room. I felt my way real careful to the teacher’s desk and fumbled to find a drawer handle.
“Pa? I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m gonna try to find a match so’s I can take a look at you. Where’d you tie up Star? I didn’t see nor hear no sign of him outside.”
“Why’d you come here?” he questioned right back. “How’d you know?”
“I don’t know, Pa. It ain’t nothin’ I can explain.”
“You always been different. You always been odd.”
“I know.” Just then my hand lit on to what I was sure was a wax candle, maybe six inches long, and right next to it was a little box of matches. I pulled a match out and reached in the dark to find the chalkboard that’d be behind me. And then I lit that match against the underside of the chalk tray, just like Mrs. Post used to do. I set the candle in an empty inkwell in the front row and lit it.
Pa was over by the cold woodstove where I’d heard him. Just leanin’ against it, starin’ off at nothing.
“Let’s go home, Pa.”
He turned and stared at me then, looking eerie in the candle’s light, like a specter with eyes as deep and black as our old well.
“We’s that much closer, boy.”
“To what?” I couldn’t help it. My skin got kind of prickly. He was giving me the heebie-jeebies.
“Rorey’s got herself engaged. I ain’t got but Harry and Bert and Emmie to look after now. And you.”
He didn’t sound drunk now. But I wasn’t too sure. “Pa, you don’t have to look after me, but Bert and ’specially Emmie’s gonna need you for a long time to come. I ain’t sure what you’re gettin’ at. Kids gets older. It’s just natural. But we’re always gonna need you.”
“You never did need me.”
“Yes, we did, Pa. We always have. We couldn’t a’—”
“Ah, shut up. Go home.”
I stepped a little closer. “I wanna go home. We oughta. We sure don’t b’long in here. But I ain’t gonna leave without you.”
“What do you keep after me for?”
I swallowed hard, not sure I could speak the first words that came to mind when he asked me that. “Because I love you.”
He turned around, took a couple of steps. Then he leaned hard against a middle grader’s desk and slumped over kind of peculiar.
“Are you all right, Pa?”
“What do you think, boy? That I’m some kinda lost thing you gotta hunt up and save?”
“No. I just get bothered when you ain’t home. And . . . and when you drink.”
“You always had that kinda holier’n anybody attitude about you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said real quick. “I didn’t mean it to seem like that. I just worry for you.”
“Why ain’t you ever took the time to worry over your own self?” he snapped back at me. But I stepped a little closer.
“Maybe you’re right that I ain’t got the sense for that,” I said. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
“You wanna know why I came here?”
“We oughta get goin’, but if you wanna tell me first, then yeah, I wanna know.”
“I knowed you’d figure I been drinkin’. I knowed you 160 wouldn’t like it, Franklin Drew, so I didn’t wanna get home just yet.”
Him usin’ my formal name like that took me by surprise. I didn’t think I’d ever heard it from him when he wasn’t yellin’. “But why’d you come here?” I asked him, wishing he’d say what he wanted to say quick so we could get. Bein’ snuck in the schoolhouse like this was uncommon strange.
“I didn’t figure you’d look here, dadblame it,” he answered impatiently. “I didn’t figure you’d ever think to come out this-a-way to the schoolhouse. You don’t even belong here. You never did.”
I heaved a heavy breath. Even now, he seemed to pick his words to push me down. “I know. But there ain’t neither one of us belongs here tonight. You’re not makin’ no sense to me. Why would you run off an’ drink after Rorey was so excited about gettin’ engaged? Now she thinks you’re mad about it. We don’t know what to do no more, Pa. We don’t know what you want.”
He answered with his voice real low, “Most of what I want, boy, is you to leave me alone. You more’n anybody. Why do you think I wanted you to stay over to the Worthams’ before? I don’t want you in m’ hair. You always been weaselin’ around, stickin’ your nose in where it don’t belong, an’ I want shuck of it. Do you hear me? I want shuck a’ you. That’s why I come here. So’s you’d leave me alone.”
I didn’t know what to say. I watched him slowly sink down and sit on the floor. And suddenly I didn’t feel like I had much strength left to stand either. “Pa—”
“Ah, shut up. You ain’t got nothin’ to say worth hearin’.”
I leaned my hand on a desk, feelin’ almost like I’d been hit. There wasn’t nothin’ I could do with him. He wouldn’t leave with me. I might as well just slip back out the window and go home to bed. But I couldn’t. His words was workin’ on my insides too bad, and I felt like I had to know some things. Like maybe now in this strange place with him in this strange kind of mood, he’d tell me stuff he wouldn’t never say otherwise.
“Pa?” I dared. “Why do you talk to me like that? Why do you think I’m some kinda worthless fool? Ain’t I ever proved myself nothin’ to you?”
He was quiet a minute. I thought maybe he’d yell, or maybe ignore me completely. But his voice came out steady and solemn, and calmer than I expected. “Is that what you think? That I reckon you’re worthless?”
I swallowed hard. “Pretty much, Pa. An’ I always did try—”
“Ah, shut up.”
I did. What was the use doing anythin’ else? Tears filled my eyes, and I got mad at myself over having them. This was ignorant. This whole thing, being here like this, and askin’ him any questions. It was just ignorant.
“You pretty well figure I hate you, don’t you, boy?”
“I—I don’t know what to think sometimes, Pa.”
“I reckon maybe I have hated the way you always been.”
The tears tried to take over on me again, an’ I had to fight ’em. “I’m sorry. I try—at pretty much everythin’. I don’t know what else to say, ’cept I love you, Pa. No matter what you think a’ me.”
“You said that.”
“I mean it.”
He was quiet a long time. I sat down too. Despite my feelings, I knew I hadn’t ought to leave without him.
He just sat. I just sat. I wanted to beg him to give up whatever this was he was doin’ and just come home, but I didn’t say a word. Finally he coughed a little. “Franklin Drew,” he said finally, so low I almost couldn’t hear, “I been afraid a’ you since you was knee high. That’s why I talk like I do.”
“What do you mean, afraid a’ me?”
“Ah, don’t you understand? I ain’t never understood the way you think, boy. You’d look up at the sky and ask me things ’bout God none of the rest ever thunk to ask me—stuff I couldn’t answer. You
always did remind me how ignorant I am. ’Cause maybe you take after me. I can’t read a lick neither. But then you’d throw questions in my face an’ crazy words ’bout things I don’t know nothin’ about, an’ make me feel all the stupider. You always used to ask the kinda stuff you hadn’t ought to think to wonder. I couldn’t figure how your head worked, nor where it was half the time. I wondered for a while if you was even mine. You hadn’t oughta have two kinda ways about you. It ain’t natural.”
“What do you mean?”
“You talk the Scriptures like the living Savior when you can’t even read ’em. You act all high and holy and knowin’ all kinds a’ things when you’s the same stupid cuss as ever, knockin’ over stuff and failin’ so bad at school they asked you not to come back. I never could figure you out, Franky. I got so I had to quit tryin’. It’s plain easier to have you outta my hair most the time. I don’t know if you can help it or not, but it ain’t easy bein’ around you.”
“I—I’m sorry, Pa.”
“Ah, shut up. I ain’t tryin’ to get no sorry outta you. I’m just tellin’ you what it seemed like you wanted to know. I guess it’s due you. I ain’t liked it, the way you talk, like you know God’s thinkin’ or somethin’. The drinkin’ ain’t right. I ain’t right. An’ you’s so holy you even know how to find me in the schoolhouse in the middle of the night.”
“But I didn’t know, Pa. Maybe the Lord just wanted me to—”
“You see? That’s what I mean.”
I kept quiet. I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say.
“Go on home, will you?”
“But I wanna help, Pa. I just come to take you home. Just in case you need a hand—”
“Ah, boy, I know it. Your old pa’s done got hisself in a mess again.” He fumbled with a shirt pocket, and I realized for the first time that he had a little bottle with him.
“Don’t drink no more. Please, Pa. Let’s go home. Where’d you put Star?”
“Don’t rightly remember. Ain’t that jus’ like me?”
