by Rilla Askew
Carl Albert tried to outrace me. He’s bigger than me but I’m the fastest, and I ran to the fence way ahead of him, but when I got close, I stopped. I didn’t want to be like one of those little kids sticking their hand through the holes, plus my grandpa didn’t look right. He looked smaller than he was supposed to be. The orange coveralls were too big and his hair went every which way. My grandpa don’t go anywhere without his hair combed, not even to the breakfast table. Carl Albert came chugging up beside me.
“Hello, boys,” Grandpa said, but he wasn’t looking at us. He had his eyes on Brother Oren still standing back by the car. “Where’s your mom?” He was asking that to Carl Albert because my mom is dead.
“She had to stay home with Mr. Bledsoe,” Carl said. “Are they fixing to throw the book at you?”
“Shut your mouth,” I told him.
“Cody Johnson says they are.”
“Cody Johnson don’t know squat,” I said.
“Where’s Tee?” Grandpa said.
“He got called in to work.”
Brother Jesus came over and stood at the fence with Grandpa. I guess he didn’t have any family to come see him. Maybe they couldn’t drive all the way up from Texas just to stand around for a half hour outside in the cold. “Hello, young fellows,” he said, squinting the way he does so his eyes go nearly shut.
“Hey,” Carl Albert answered.
“Hola,” I said.
“Cómo estás, Dustin?”
“Bien,” I said. “Y usted?”
“Así, así.” Brother Jesus sort of blinked and smiled at me. He’s been teaching me Spanish. He’s definitely one of the ones that’s a Christian not a criminal, because for one thing he’s a preacher, same as Brother Oren, except his church isn’t Baptist, it’s Pentecostal, and he preaches in Spanish because most of the folks that go there don’t speak English anyway. It’s over in Heavener where they raise all the chickens. It used to be a schoolhouse and then it was a hay barn and then Brother Jesus fixed it up and turned it into a church. I’ve went there a bunch of times with Grandpa. Aunt Sweet says we’re grazers when it comes to churchgoing, and what she means is, the way me and Grandpa go to church is not right. We go to the United Methodist in Poteau, the Assembly of God at Dog Creek, Wilburton Presbyterian, Living Word Church in McAlester, just wherever the spirit moves us to drive any given Sunday. Sometimes Grandpa picks and sometimes he lets me. Aunt Sweet says we ought to quit that and go to just one church because I need a church home. She says it’s not good for me to be getting all different doctrines like no piano playing at the Church of Christ and sprinkling instead of baptizing at the Methodists and talking in tongues at the Holiness and all that Spanish preaching in Brother Jesus’s church. Aunt Sweet’s got a lot of opinions about everything but especially about churchgoing. She’s plain Southern Baptist like me and Grandpa used to be.
“Hello, Mr. Brown. Pastor Garcia.” I felt Brother Oren’s hand on my shoulder. “How y’all doing this afternoon?”
“How do you expect we’d be doing?” Grandpa said.
“Well, not so good, I guess.”
“Not so good is right. I appreciate you bringing the boys.”
“Glad to do it. We’ve got the prayer chain going, got both your names in this morning’s bulletin.”
“Well, that’s good. Reckon you could add in the names of some of them people they hauled out of my barn Friday night?”
Brother Oren’s hand got a little tight on my shoulder. In a minute he said, “If you can get me their names, Mr. Brown, I’ll put them in the bulletin next Sunday.”
“They can’t wait for Sunday,” Grandpa said. “Those people need prayers this minute, all they can get of ’em, plus they need a bucket of luck and some good lawyering, too.”
“Yes, sir. Sweet wanted me to talk to you about that. She said for me to tell you she’s got a lawyer coming from Stipe’s McAlester office tomorrow. He’ll get y’all bailed out.”
“Tell Sweet never mind,” Grandpa said. “I don’t need a lawyer.”
“If it’s about money, I believe the church—”
“It ain’t about money.”
“We decided to let the Lord work in this,” Brother Jesus said.
“The Lord can work through Gene Stipe’s law office same as any way else,” Brother Oren said.
“You’re a good man, Oren,” Grandpa said, “and I appreciate you. But you don’t know a thing in the world about this.”
Carl Albert said, “You gotta get a lawyer, Grandpa! They’re going to throw the book at you!”
Grandpa looked down at Carl Albert. “Which book is that, Carl?”
“I don’t know. That’s just what they’re saying.”
“Who’s saying?”
“Cody Johnson, Zane McKissick. My mom.” Carl Albert looked miserable. I was afraid he might start crying. I started saying in my mind, Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare. I stared hard at Grandpa’s work boots under his pant legs. They looked sort of normal. I’ve seen those same tan boots practically every day of my life, only now the leather bootlaces were gone. I heard Carl Albert say, “Zane McKissick says you’re a beaner smuggler.”
I hissed under my breath, “Shut up, Carl.”
“He says you got caught dead to rights and they’re going to put you in the McAlester state pen.”
“Listen, boys,” Grandpa said. He squatted down on his heels, grabbed hold of the fence loops to steady himself. There was a white line on the back of one of his fingers where his Masonic ring was supposed to be. “This isn’t going to be easy on you all,” he said. “I know that. People are liable to say no telling what. You’ll just have to be thick hided, you know it? Don’t pay them any mind.” Crouched down like that, he was actually shorter than me and Carl Albert. I could see the freckles in his bald spot, and also a little red-looking gash like he’d whacked his head on something. “Dustin,” he said, “look at me.” So then I had to. Either because of the sun or the orange jumpsuit, his eyes behind his glasses were really blue. “I’m going to need you to take care of things for a little while, okay? Be a good boy. Mind your Aunt Sweet.” He cut a glance at Carl Albert stubbing his sneaker in the worn spot on our side of the fence. “Something bothering you, son?”
“No,” Carl Albert said.
“Well, that’s a fib.”
“How come, is all. Why’d you have to go and do that?”
“What is it you think I did?”
“Smuggled Mexicans.”
I kicked Carl Albert in the leg then, and he turned and jumped me so fast I didn’t have time to run. Then we were wallering in the grass, rolling over and over, till I could feel the asphalt under me, and I could hear all the men yelling and Brother Oren shouting, “Boys! Boys!” I tried to get up, but Carl Albert kept punching me in the side of my face till I grabbed the fat part of his arm and bit the ess-aitch-eye-tee out of him. He screamed like you never heard nobody scream in your life, but I held on. I aimed to be like a dadgum snapping turtle, I wasn’t going to unhook my jaw till the thunder cracked. Somebody bopped me in the back of the head, though, and I accidentally let go. Next thing I knew Brother Oren had me by the belt, dragging me off, and one of the deputies was swatting Carl Albert on the butt with his hand. Carl Albert was still screaming and the prisoner men in the yard were all whooping and laughing. My grandpa wasn’t whooping, he was holding on to the fence loops with his fingers. I could see his face though, and I just felt sick.
Brother Oren hauled us back to the car. He made me get in the backseat on the driver’s side and motioned Carl Albert to the front seat on the other side. He told us to keep our hands to ourselves and he’d better not hear another peep out of us. I’d never seen Brother Oren mad, ever, so I figured we’d better cool it, but Carl Albert had to pop off. “You’re not my dad!”
“I’m standing in for your dad,” Brother Oren said. “I’m his eyes and ears here in this situation, and your mom’s, too. You want me to tell them how you been acting?”
Carl Albert got in the car and the preacher walked back. I was so mad I could spit. “What’d you go and do that for!”
“Me? You started it!”
“You jumped on me.”
“You kicked me!”
“You wouldn’t shut up.”
“You shut up!”
“Keep your voice down. You want the preacher to come back?”
“You bit me! Look at that!” He showed me the mark.
“So what.” I could see Brother Oren by the fence now, doing the same with my grandpa like he did with Aunt Sweet, listening and frowning and staring at the ground. I pushed the button to roll down the window, but it wouldn’t work without the key on.
“That hurt!”
“All right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Like hell you are.”
I didn’t say nothing, I just wanted him to shut up. I needed to hear what my grandpa was saying. I felt like it was probably something to do with the rest of my life.
“You’re going to be sorry, though.” He shoved his arm over the seat again to show me. “Look!” His face was smeared red from crying. I turned back to see what Grandpa was doing. I couldn’t hear anything, and it was too far to tell what anybody’s face said. The deputy that swatted Carl Albert was inside the fence again, tipped back on his high stool with his sunglasses on. I started thinking I could just get out and walk over there, what was that old deputy going to do? Or the preacher, either one. I leaned over the seat for the door handle, and my cousin whipped across and smashed his fist in my nose, pow!, like I’d walked smack into a tree. I didn’t yell, or cry, either. I just sat back with the blood gushing down all over the front of my hoodie and onto Brother Oren’s backseat. I didn’t know what to do. I heard Carl Albert shouting, “I’m sorry! Don’t tell them! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I got out of the car and stood by the back bumper. I was trying to catch the blood in my hands but it just poured through. Somebody in the yard seen me and hollered. I looked up, and here came Brother Oren across the lot at a dead run.
Monday | February 18, 2008 | 4:30 A.M.
Sweet’s house | Cedar
Sweet set her coffee cup on the low table in the dark, took the can of Endust and sprayed the top of the TV cabinet, flicked the feather duster around vaguely, using spillover light from the hall to see by. It was 4:30 A.M. She hadn’t slept a drop. Shoot the gerbil, she said to herself. Shoot the gerbil, shoot the gerbil, shoot the dadgum gerbil. But the gerbil kept scrabbling around on its stupid chattering wheel like it had been doing all night: her daddy in jail, her niece’s husband deported, the boys fighting like heathens, and her own husband gone since this time yesterday with no way to tell if he was alive or dead, gone working half the time, gone too much of the time, while their son turned into a coward and bully—no. Hush. Don’t say that. Shut up. But, oh, she could wring Terry’s neck for not calling. The pipeline break was likely so far down in the mountains there wasn’t a cell tower for miles, she knew that, but he could have sent somebody out to call. Or somebody from Arkoma Gas could let the families know their men were all right. Surely. You’d think.
She stumbled against the coffee table, sloshed coffee from the cup onto the doily beneath the Bible. Despite her recent rededication and determination to do better, Sweet cussed. She snatched up the book and hurried to the kitchen for the dishrag. There in the lit hallway stood Dustin, his hair tousled, his nostrils blood crusted, both eyes bruised and swollen, way worse than when she’d sent him and Carl Albert to bed yesterday evening. “What are you doing up?” she said. “Get back in the bed, it’s not even five o’clock.” She swept past him.
“I thought I heard Grandpa.”
Sweet stopped in her rush to the sink. For an instant she half believed that her father was calling out for help in that Wilburton jail cell where he was locked up with thieves and dope dealers and one useless Mexican pastor. “You heard Mr. Bledsoe moaning, is all,” she said. “Go back to bed.”
But the boy stood blinking at the huge family Bible in her arms. “Here.” She thrust the book at him, grabbed the dishrag off the sink faucet, and hurried to the front room, flipped on the overhead light. She dabbed at the doily, heard the boy’s sticking barefoot step on the hall tiles. “Put it on the mantle,” she said, bobbing her head at the false mantle above the gas stove. Dustin carried the Bible over and set it sideways on the ledge. “Are you hungry?”
He shook his head.
“Go back to bed then. It won’t be daylight for hours.”
“Did Uncle Terry get back?”
“He’ll be here in a little bit.”
“Is he going to the arraignment?’
She was startled. “Where’d you learn that word?”
“What word?”
“Arraignment.”
“I don’t know. Brother Oren maybe.” The boy went to the window and twisted the shade wand to look out.
“Nothing to see this early.” Sweet studied his thin frame, slim shoulders, his too-long brown hair curling down over his collar. Those pajamas had fit Carl Albert when he was eight. Dusty was ten going on eleven, and the pajamas swallowed him. “I’ll scramble you an egg.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Come over here and talk to me a minute.” She sat on the divan and patted the seat cushion. Dustin came obediently and sat next to her with his head down, his hands folded quietly, unboylike, in his lap. “You want to tell me what happened?” she said. Dustin shrugged. He kept his gaze on the stained doily on the table in front of him. There’d always been something troubling about the kid, Sweet thought. Not trouble, like his mother and sister, but troubling. Wrenching somehow. “You know the rules about fighting.” The boy nodded.
She and Terry had set the rules when Dusty stayed with them last Christmas and the two cousins had argued and jabbed and poked at each other day and night. First offense, no video games for one week. Second offense, no video games and no TV for two weeks. For the third infraction it would be no video games, no television, no movies, no McDonald’s or Sonic for one entire year. This was Tee’s version of Three Strikes and You’re Out, which wouldn’t have much effect on Dustin since he lived with his grandpa, but it would devastate Carl Albert. Sweet had never expected to have to deliver the ultimate punishment, but yesterday afternoon was the third fistfight the boys had had since the sheriff dropped Dustin off on his way to Wilburton after the raid Friday night. There was no way she could simply let it slide, act like she didn’t know—not with Dustin’s bruised face and the bloody bite mark on Carl Albert’s arm. Lord, what were their teachers at school going to think? “Who started it?” she said. The boy’s only response was to shift his gaze from the doily to the coffee mug. “Well, it don’t matter who started it,” Sweet said. “The consequences are the same.”
“I know.”
“Plus, I’m going to add one other little note to it. When Carl gets up, I want to see you two hug each other’s necks and say you’re sorry.”
Dustin cut her a sidelong glance but said nothing.
“Well?”
Again the boy shrugged. His swollen nose made him look different, older, ethnic, not quite so fragile. Like his father, probably. Had Gayle
ne known how the boy’s looks would turn out when she named him? The same dusty brown color all over, skin, eyes, eyebrows, hair. This whole mess could be traced back to Gaylene, Sweet thought. One more bunch of trouble to lay at her dead sister’s feet. “If you’re not going back to bed,” she said, “come help me get Mr. Bledsoe up.”
“Aw.”
“Your choice. Back to bed or make yourself useful.”
The boy stood and followed her down the hall. Sweet clicked on the bedside lamp. The old man was snoring, his toothless mouth open, the top sheet all knotted and twisted. Dustin hung back by the door. She knew how Mr. Bledsoe’s old-manness bothered him, the sickly sour smell, gaping mouth, whitish gums, the purple marks all over his neck and arms because his skin was so fragile. Well, it bothered her, too, but there was nothing she could do about it. “Get me a diaper out of that sack in the closet.”
