Kind of Kin

by Rilla Askew

  “Tienes hambre?” the man said. I shook my head. I’d felt hungry before I found Tipper, but I wasn’t hungry no more. “Hace frío,” the man said, and I nodded because he was sure right about it being cold. He motioned me to come with him, and we went inside the barn. I followed him to the feed bin in the back, and he reached inside and got an old smelly coat and handed it to me. Then he shut the bin lid and we sat on it while outside got even darker, even colder. How am I going to get to the cemetery now? I thought. Uncle Tee took the bridle. I was watching from the woods when he found it and carried it back to his truck, so then I set out walking. That’s how I found Tipper. It was the smell first that stopped me, and then I seen the white tip of her tail on the ground under the cedar thicket on the far side of Mr. Herrington’s land.

  “El hombre,” the man said. “Es tu padre?”

  “Hombre?” I thought he meant Grandpa. He motioned outside where Uncle Terry parked his Silverado. “Oh. Mi tío,” I said. The man said a bunch of words then but I couldn’t understand them except tu tío. He touched under his own eye, nodded at my face. It was pretty dark in there but I could see his hand and his head move, and I knew he was asking if it was my uncle who gave me the shiners. “No,” I said. “Mi . . . mi . . .” But I didn’t know the word for cousin. “Un muchacho,” I said finally. The man said nothing. We just sat. I started thinking about my mother.

  Everybody believes I don’t remember her, but I do. I can’t tell sometimes if what I remember is from pictures or from really seeing her, but I know I remember how good she smelled and what it felt like going to sleep with her hand rubbing my back really soft. I know I remember that. We lived in Tulsa then. Me and Misty Dawn and my mom. I was a real little kid. Of course, I didn’t know it was Tulsa, I only know that now because Grandpa told me. He’s the only one that ever talks to me about her, and he don’t really like to, except sometimes when he’s in a mood, so there’s a lot I still got to find out. But here’s what I know already: her name was Gaylene Carlotta Brown and she had long straight black hair almost down to her butt. I think she was part Indian. Well, I’m not sure if I heard that or if I made that up, but if you ever saw a picture of her, you’d think she was Indian. She was beautiful, too. She died in California but I don’t know what town. My sister, Misty Dawn, might know. I was already living with Grandpa then. That was the first time everything went from bad to worse. Some people might not think it was worse but they would only be people whose mother didn’t die when they were little.

  Grandpa rode a train to California to get my mom after she died. That’s one of the things he told me. He had to drive to Fort Worth to take the train, and when they got back, he hired some people in a truck to haul the coffin up here from Texas so she could be buried at Brown’s Prairie with the rest of our kin. Aunt Sweet’s mom is buried there, too. She was Grandpa’s first wife. She died when Aunt Sweet was just little. I guess that’s something me and her have in common. I don’t know where my mom’s mother is buried, or if she’s even dead. Grandpa don’t talk about her at all. He’s the one takes me out to the cemetery to visit. If I sit next to my mom’s grave, she talks to me. My grandpa don’t know that. Anyway, it’s not like she talks in words or anything, just feelings, but I really needed to listen, I needed to hear her, because I felt like things were going from bad to worse again.

  But it was dark out already. I’d stayed too long in the woods beside Tipper. I couldn’t get the trap off her leg and it took forever to dig the stake loose from the ground, but I wasn’t about to leave her rotting under the cedar trees like that. Ten miles is a ways to walk, I told myself, but I’m going to have to do it. Not tonight, though, I thought. It’s too late and too cold. I didn’t even want to walk back to town.

  So I was glad, sort of, when I heard Aunt Sweet’s car coming. You can’t miss that old turquoise Taurus since the transmission got rebuilt. Me and the Mexican man both heard it the same minute, and we sat looking hard at each other in the dark. I couldn’t see his face, only feel what he was saying: Por favor.

  “Quick!” I said and jumped up to open the bin. He got to his feet as fast as he could, which wasn’t all that fast, but still we had time for him to climb in and lay down and me to close the lid and go stand outside the barn door before Aunt Sweet’s headlights cut the yard. She got out of the car and came at me in such a rush I put my head down and braced myself. She grabbed me in both arms and hugged me till she practically squeezed the breath out of me. I tried to wriggle out but she just kept squeezing. “What the hell did you think you were doing?” she said, her chin knobby on the top of my head. “I got half a mind to beat the living daylights out of you!” So I knew then she wasn’t going to whip me. I got in the car and didn’t say nothing all the way back to town, till just right before we turned onto the highway toward Sweet’s house. Then I remembered I still had on the old guy’s coat. So I guess that’s basically when I started lying.

  Telling lies is one sin my grandpa will get really worked up about, so I can’t even act like I didn’t know it was wrong. But I started talking about Tipper, and the two parts that were lies were, one, I wasn’t really crying, I was just making the sound. I was done crying by then but I pretended because I figured if I could get Aunt Sweet to feeling sorry about Tipper before we got inside the house where the light is, most likely she wouldn’t pay much attention to that coat. And, two, I didn’t say we buried her, I said I buried her. Well, I am one of the ones that buried her, I told myself. But you can’t get nothing past Carl Albert. The minute me and Aunt Sweet came in the kitchen he looked up from licking his sandwich and said, “Where’d you get that ugly coat?”

  I said, “You ain’t never seen Grandpa wear this coat?” I glanced up at Aunt Sweet, but I could tell she wasn’t really listening. She was staring at me the same way Grandpa stared the day the dogs killed the rooster, like she was seeing me and not seeing me, like she was there in the room and also someplace else.

  “Pee-yew!” Carl Albert said, holding his nose. “You stink like cow pies!”

  “Can I make a sandwich?” I said, never moving my eyes off Aunt Sweet’s face.

  “Go wash up. Here, give me that.” And she took the coat off me and held it away from her while she carried it out to the carport. I looked dead-on at Carl Albert when I started for the bathroom because I knew if I didn’t, he’d know. He might not know what, but he’d know something. I cut a wide path across the room by the pantry so he couldn’t reach out and pop me, but I never flinched my eyes from him once.

  So it wasn’t till real late in the night, when I was laying on the air mattress listening to Carl snore with his adenoids, that I understood why my grandpa says there’s no such thing as a white lie or a little sin. He says one sin leads to the next on the road to perdition, and I could see for the first time how it’s really true. Because I’d started out with cussing and went from there to lying, plus stealing, and I thought, No telling where it’s fixing to lead me next. Because when Carl Albert pinched my arm while we were brushing our teeth in the bathroom and whispered, “What’d you do with my knife, Dusthole?” I didn’t say, Hey that knife’s not yours, it’s Brother Oren’s and I’m going to give it back to him, the way I’d meant to. I spat toothpaste in the sink and looked my cousin straight in the face and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He jumped me then, got me down on the floor really bad, till Aunt Sweet came in and pulled him off me, but I still didn’t tell.

  I thought about that a long time while I waited for the house to get completely dark, completely silent, till I felt sure nobody was going to wake up, so nobody would see me take the Swiss Army knife out of my sneaker where I’d hid it and carry it out to the carport to put it with the Mexican man’s coat. Aunt Sweet had laid the coat on top of the old washer she uses for Uncle Tee’s greasy work clothes. I stuffed that smelly coat down behind the washing machine where nobody would find it. I told myself I could always get Brother O
ren a new one later, if I could ever get a job for some money, and if I could find out where they sell knives like that, which I didn’t know where, someplace in Fort Smith maybe. My grandpa would know.

  Tuesday | February 19, 2008 | 6:45 A.M.

  Main Street | Cedar

  Sweet had the boys up, dressed, combed, cerealed, and in the car before daylight. When she went back to check on Mr. Bledsoe, she found him deeply asleep, curled on his side like an ancient, bald little fetus, the extra pain pills doing their work, and yes it was terrible, probably even sinful to dope the old man, but she didn’t know what else to do. She needed to get to Tulsa today. The boys were quiet in the backseat as they drove along the dark Main Street, where a couple of mud-crusted SUVs stood parked in front of the old mercantile that housed Heartland Home Health. Sweet glanced inside the lighted window at the two women in loose smocks drinking coffee at the desk. She knew good and well Mr. Bledsoe would qualify for home health if they’d just put in for it, but Terry wouldn’t let her. His family wasn’t taking any government handouts, he said. Oh, but if she just had an aide coming in once a week to help, maybe she could manage to get a few things done. Drive to Tulsa to get Misty, for instance, without having to dope the old man. Or medicate him rather. Medicate was a better word.

  At the end of the street she turned right, drove around behind the rock elementary building, and parked beside the prefab cafeteria in the back. Three yellow buses idled nearby, puffing white exhaust into the cold morning air. “Y’all sit here a minute,” she said.

  “Where are you going?” Carl Albert whined.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Hale were stirring up powdered eggs and biscuits in the steaming kitchen. Mrs. Johnson frowned under her hairnet, but Mrs. Hale smiled. “Why sure, bring them on in here. We’ll feed them with the country kids.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Sweet said. “They’ve already had breakfast.”

  “Did Mr. Travers say it’s all right?” Mrs. Johnson wanted to know.

  “I’ll go check to make sure.” Actually, the notion hadn’t occurred to her to talk to the principal, but she realized that maybe she ought to do that. She could explain about the boys missing school yesterday, give an excuse for Dustin’s bruises. She stepped outside and motioned them to come on. Her heart caught when she saw her nephew climbing out of the car. His nose was still so swollen. The skin below his eyes looked like mashed blackberry pulp. Why hadn’t she thought to smear a little makeup on him? Cover some of that color, at least. Carl Albert raced up the steps and ducked beneath her arm holding the heavy metal door open. Dustin came slowly behind him, head tucked, hands in his pockets. “Hurry up, Dusty,” she said. “I can’t stand here all morning letting cold air in.”

  After she got the boys settled—Dustin hunkering in on himself at one of the long cafeteria tables, Carl Albert hanging over the serving window watching the women work—Sweet went back to her car and sat a minute, glaring at the closed cafeteria door. She’d seen the look the two cooks exchanged when they saw Dustin’s face. She felt like marching right back in there and saying, What are you people staring at? Or she wanted to give some reason: he’d walked into a door yesterday, he fell down playing basketball. What she did not want to say was, Yes, my son did that to his little cousin who is half his size and weight. Sweet’s chest hurt, a deep searing burn radiating from her breastbone up into her throat. A sound escaped her then, a clutched, choking noise, not quite sob, not quite groan; it seemed to come from the same place where her heart burned. Sweet turned the key in the ignition, drove around to the front of the school.

  She sat in her car staring at the administration building, a two-story octagon of jigsaw-puzzle-fitted native stone flanked on either side by the grade school and the high school, all built by the WPA back during the Depression. Little had changed since Sweet was a student here twenty years ago, except the classes were even smaller now because the town was shriveling to nothing, and the teachers she’d gone to school to were all retired now, or dead. But the beautiful old buildings looked the same. They would last till the Rapture if somebody didn’t get a state contract to come bulldoze them down. Behind the buildings the sky was getting lighter, striated orange and pink. Sweet tried to make herself go in and talk to the principal, but she couldn’t think of any calm sensible words to explain why she wanted to drop the boys off at school an hour early, or for them being absent yesterday, or for the bruises on Dustin’s face. The cooks’ judgmental glances returned to her. She put the Taurus in gear and drove out of the lot.

  It wasn’t until she was well north along Highway 82, navigating the twisting curves over the Sans Bois ridges, that Sweet remembered she’d left her cell phone plugged into the charger on the kitchen counter. She thought about turning around to get it, but a quick glance at the time dissuaded her—she was already getting a late enough start.

  The whole drive to Tulsa Sweet alternated between praying and practicing what she was going to say to her niece. She had tried calling Misty Dawn last night but got a recording saying the number was unavailable. That meant a two-hour drive to Tulsa this morning because she didn’t know any other way to contact Misty except that TracFone number. Actually, Sweet had felt a little relieved when she heard the recording. At least she wouldn’t have to explain why she’d waited four days to let the girl know her grandpa was in jail.

  Traffic on the expressway heading into Tulsa slowed to a crawl. A wreck or construction up ahead, or something. Sweet watched the time tick away. See, Lord? she told Him. Why can’t there ever be an easier way to do things! Though in fact Sweet knew she would have driven up here today anyway, even if she’d been able to reach Misty Dawn on the phone, because the only way to talk the girl into coming back with her was to do it in person. What she’d been practicing for two hours on the slow drive from Cedar was how to make it seem like Misty Dawn’s idea.

  It took another forty minutes before Sweet turned onto a run-down side street in North Tulsa, drove half a block, and stopped in front of Misty Dawn’s house—a tiny yellow rent house with a low roof and blue trim set well back from the road in the middle of a huge half-acre lot. Sweet hadn’t been here since last August, for the baby’s third birthday, when the yard had been filled with overlarge, overdecorated pickups and charcoal smoke and tinny fast music blaring from speakers. Now the yard was winter dead and empty except for two resin lawn chairs stacked together, a pink-and-lavender tricycle tipped on its side, and Juanito’s big white Dodge Ram parked close to the house. Sweet was relieved to see the truck. The cops had impounded it when they arrested him in November, but apparently Misty Dawn had managed to come up with the money to pay the towing and storage fees. Sweet cringed, remembering; that had been the topic of their last phone conversation, actually. Her niece had called just before Thanksgiving wanting to borrow five hundred dollars to get the truck back. Sweet didn’t have it to give her. Misty had said she understood, but had she really? A flicker of curtain in the front window caught Sweet’s eye. That was the trigger, finally, that made her get out and go to the door.

  She rapped on the frame—no answer, so she opened the screen and pounded on the wood. “Misty Dawn, it’s me, hon! Aunt Sweet!” The house only had four rooms, the small kitchen and bathroom here on the left side, a cramped living room and bedroom on the right. There was no way Misty Dawn didn’t hear. “I saw the curtain move!” Sweet called. “I know you’re up.” Still it was several minutes before her niece opened the door. A big girl, solidly built, with a beautiful face and long sand-colored hair, Misty Dawn stood in the doorway in jeans and a black T-shirt. “Hi,” she said, her voice faint, almost bored sounding.

  “Hi,” Sweet said. There was an awkward pause. Misty Dawn held the door partway closed, the way you’d try to ward off Jehovah’s Witnesses. The blank look on the girl’s face confirmed what Sweet had expected—she didn’t know anything about her grandpa’s arrest. “I tried to c
all last night,” Sweet said, “but it didn’t go through.”

  “I ran out of minutes. I got to wait till payday to get another card.”

  “Oh. I was worried you’d had to get a different phone.” Her niece stared at her. Not a good start. Last night, when she’d heard that recording, it had occurred to Sweet that the cops might have confiscated the TracFone, too, same as the pickup, when they arrested Juanito. The point being: How many times had Sweet tried to call Misty Dawn since her husband got deported three months ago? Up until last night, actually, not once. “Can I come in?”

  Misty slid her gaze past Sweet’s shoulder to the Taurus parked in the yard. “I was just getting ready to go to the store.”