Kind of Kin

by Rilla Askew

  “Is it out yet? The news?”

  “Chief’s set to call a press conference later today. Noon maybe. Cunningham said he’s got every Tom, Dick, and Myrtle out canvassing the Hispanic section, trying to come up with something solid before the news breaks. Doesn’t look so good for them they let this slip by a whole goddamn week.”

  She drove straight to the capitol, had Charlie drop her off at the east entrance, but then she got stuck behind a battalion of high school seniors with their six thousand cell phones and backpacks; she was late for her committee meeting but nobody cared. The majority whip chaired the committee. The caucus chair served as vote counter. When she walked into the room, she could feel the silent applause. They’d seen the clips; they approved of her performance. The story was playing just fine with Leadership—and they didn’t even know the half of it yet.

  Wednesday | February 27, 2008 | 7:30 A.M.

  First Baptist Church | Cedar

  Sweet watched her grandniece sleeping peacefully in the church nursery crib. The top of the child’s head brushed the yellow baby ducks decaled on the headboard. Her little blanketed feet were curled up against the footboard. Still, the crib had to be more comfortable than the pews out in the sanctuary where Misty Dawn and Juanito slept. Sweet had fixed them up with quilts and pillows the preacher had provided—Misty Dawn on one of the front pews, Juanito in the next one behind—but she’d insisted on letting the baby sleep in the nursery. That little girl needed some semblance of normalcy, Sweet told them—something like furniture, for example, she’d said, pointing to the low child-sized table and toddler chairs, the two baby beds and the rocker. Toys in the toy box. Kids’ books on the shelves. And Misty Dawn had agreed, or else she’d been too tired to argue; in any case, after they ate the canned spaghetti Brother Oren brought over, she’d settled Lucha in the crib, left the safety rail down, rubbed her back until she fell asleep. Sweet had dragged the rocking chair over then, whispering “Y’all go get some sleep. I’ll stay.”

  She’d rocked all night under the buzzing fluorescent glare. She hadn’t wanted the baby to wake up in the dark and be afraid. Had Sweet herself slept? She thought so. She’d dozed anyway. Much of the night, however, she’d spent rocking and charting what she needed to do today as soon as the roads cleared. Were they clear? She would have to go out to Fellowship Hall to see. There weren’t any windows in the nursery. She ought to check the time on her phone. All right, she would do that. Here in a minute. When she felt up to looking at all the missed calls. She continued to rock slowly, staring glassily around the walls at the posters of Jesus Suffering the Little Children, Joseph and his Coat of Many Colors, Noah and his family peering down from the side of the Ark at all the zoo animals marching two-by-two up the ramp, lions and giraffes and elephants. No skunks or opossums, no coyotes or box terrapins, no rattlers or copperheads or armadillos or raccoons. None of Oklahoma’s natural wildlife. You never saw those kinds of animals on Noah’s Ark. Shoot the gerbil, she thought. Shoot the gerbil. Please.

  But Sweet’s mind continued to turn in its endless fruitless circle: first she’d have to call a tow truck to come from Wilburton to get her Taurus out so they could move Juanito’s truck, and of course she didn’t have a credit card to pay for it but maybe they would just bill her or she could give the driver a check, but she still had to get out to the farm to meet the guy and she’d have to stop by the house first to pick up her checkbook, so she wouldn’t call for the tow until she was sure what time she could get out there. Brother Oren would be heading to Stigler this morning to pick up Vicki and the kids—he said he’d be leaving as soon as the roads cleared—so probably the first thing she needed to do was see if he’d left yet or if he was back already so she could find out what time he could take her out to the farm.

  No, actually, first thing she had to do was get out of this ratty blue plaid bathrobe the preacher had handed her last night and put back on her muddy clothes. Hopefully they were dry now. She’d laid them out on the floor heating grates in the Fellowship Hall kitchen. It embarrassed her to remember coming out of the ladies’ room in the preacher’s bathrobe holding that muddy mess of wet clothes in her hands, and him standing there in the cramped hall in front of the nursery. So, yeah, she’d go check to see if her clothes were dry straight off.

  Then, after she got her car out, she would drive to Wilburton to cash in that retirement CD she’d been intending to use for Daddy’s lawyer so she could give the kids enough money for the motel and also food to last a while; hopefully the bank would let her do that without Terry being there—she could always forge his name—plus she’d also have to remember to put enough money in the checking account to cover the hot check she was fixing to write to the tow truck driver because she had totally forgotten to ask Brother Oren to ask the church treasurer not to deposit her tithe check, then she’d come back to town and wait till it got late enough for her to pick up the kids here at the church under cover of darkness and drive them to Arkansas. After that, well, she didn’t know. Just take care of the next thing. The next thing in front of her. That’s all she could think.

  So. Just a few more hours. A little while longer. Half a day. Then she could let Carl Albert come home. Then she could go see Mr. Bledsoe in the hospital in McAlester like a decent Christian woman. Then she could proceed with her normal life, except that her daddy was still in jail and Dustin was still missing, and there was this other strange new condition, something unfathomable, something she’d never considered before . . . she would be single. A divorced woman. A single mom.

  No, really, she said to herself, rubbing her face. How did it come to this? She tried to recount events, tracing them from that first Friday night, when the sheriff pounded on her front door and handed off a scowling, tousle-headed Dustin, all the way through to this past Monday at the farm, when she’d realized, finally, that her marriage was over. She couldn’t see a through-line, though—the memories were too jumbled, all mixed and mauled together. Whose fault? her mind said. Not mine, her mind answered. Not mine, surely.

  Then why did she feel so guilty and heartsick?

  Her phone buzzed inside her purse again. Sweet leaned forward and pulled the blanket up to Lucha’s chin, touched her cheek. The child stirred, curled over onto her side with her two fingers in her mouth. Quietly Sweet pulled up the safety rail and locked it in place; she grabbed her buzzing purse off the little table, tiptoed out.

  Terry again. Of course it was Terry. She stood a moment in the dark hallway between Fellowship Hall and the old part of the church. The phone’s face said in bright blue letters, Terry Cell. All right, she thought. No point in putting this off any longer. She punched the button to take the call as she headed to the kitchen to make coffee.

  “It’s about goddamn time!”

  Sweet said nothing. Through the double glass doors beyond the rows of tables she could see bright sunshine. Well, that was good news.

  Tee was making some kind of strange noise. It almost sounded like he was choking.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. More choking. A guttural half-hitched breath that Sweet recognized as a sob. “Terry! What is it!”

  “Dad’s dead.”

  The reactions swept through her in milliseconds—a wrenching pain, a rush of blood, a silent scream, followed by sudden relief—he hadn’t said your daddy, but Dad. Mr. Bledsoe. Then the sickening guilt. “Oh, my God, honey,” she whispered.

  If Terry had kept crying, if he’d kept on choking speechlessly, if he’d done almost anything except what he did do, everything might have been different. They might have worked things out. Or this is what Sweet would later tell herself. But what her husband did next was start yelling, blaming, yelling: “This is your fault! I’m on my way to Wilburton, I’ll be dropping Carl off in a little bit and don’t give me any of your damn lip! I been calling all frigging morning, why the hell did you leave the phone off the hook?”

  “
Is Carl with you?”

  “Hell yes, he’s with me! What did I just say? He’s been with me the whole damn week. One whole week I couldn’t go to work because I got to take care of my kid because my wife has gone off her frigging nut! Why the hell didn’t you pick up?”

  “The reporters . . .” she started vaguely.

  “I don’t give a shit about reporters! My grandpa is dead! And Carl’s having a meltdown, and you can just damn well deal with your son!”

  It was then Sweet heard through the roaring road noise the sound of her son sobbing. A warm, pulling sensation went through her, almost like her milk letting down back when she’d nursed him years ago. She wanted to cry, too. Instead she said mildly, “Watch your language, Tee. He don’t need to hear you talking like that.”

  She expected an explosion back from him, but all she heard was a low growl. “We’re coming through Fanshawe now. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Then the phone went dead.

  Immediately Sweet rushed around grabbing her crusty jeans and sweater and jacket from the heat grates. She got herself dressed in about thirty seconds, and the clothes were dry enough, thank God, except for her socks, but everything was stiff as burlap, almost certainly ruined, especially her good cream-colored sweater—how did it get so much mud on it? hadn’t she had her jacket snapped closed?—and she threw the wadded bathrobe on the kitchen counter, ran with her mud-caked boots in her hands to the sanctuary, asking herself why she was in such a panic. She didn’t have to answer to her soon-to-be-ex-husband Terrence Kirkendall, she reminded herself. Except if she wasn’t home, what would Terry think? What would he do?

  “Misty Dawn!” She shook her niece’s shoulder. Juanito shot up in the next pew, alert, ready to jump, but it took a second for Misty Dawn to come around. “What?’ she said sleepily. Juanito was already on his feet. “La migra?” he said. Sweet shook her head. “My husband. Misty Dawn, get up now! Y’all go hide in the nursery. Stay there till I get back.” She was already hurrying away from them up the aisle. “Tee’s on his way to the house, I got to get there before he does. Shut the nursery door. Don’t even peep your heads out, hear me?” She balanced herself against the very back pew as she tugged on her stiff boots, wishing she hadn’t said that last—saying don’t to Misty Dawn was such a bad idea. “Brother Oren will be here after a while. Y’all just sit tight, okay?” She pushed through the door to the foyer, suddenly remembered today was Wednesday. She stuck her head back inside the sanctuary: “Take the quilts, Misty! Keep the baby quiet! I think there’s a WMU meeting this morning!”

  Sweet hurried through town, practically running, grateful that the sun was shining and the ice melting, and simultaneously feeling very, very sorry that it was already this late—because there was Gladys Chester, one of the Senior Citizens cooks, getting out of her car in the center’s parking lot. She stared at Sweet, lifted her hand in a halfhearted, confused wave as Sweet crossed hurriedly to the other side of the street. And oh, wouldn’t you know, there sat the two smocked, smoking women frowning out at her through the plateglass window of Heartland Home Health as she race-walked past. Nobody walked anywhere in this town. Well, nobody except mentally handicapped adults and the poorest of the poor. Certainly no normal person ran along the old high sidewalks in muddy clothes and caked cowboy boots with their hair sticking up like a fright wig, as in her own reflection in the blacked-out window of the old pool hall. Phones would ring. Tongues would wag.

  She was panting hard as she crossed the highway, watching east to see if Terry’s truck was coming. It was not. She stumbled across the railroad tracks, cut through the right of way in the dry crackling weeds. Her chest burned, and there was that stabbing pain in her side like she used to get when she played basketball in high school. By the time she reached the carport door, she felt like her heart was about to burst. She was gasping at the kitchen sink, running herself a glass of water, when she heard Tee’s diesel engine out front. Sweet set the glass down, sprinted to the bedroom to get out of her filthy clothes. And she almost made it, would have made it, if her son hadn’t pounded into the house so fast, straight to her bedroom, where he flung himself at her, clamped his arms around her waist, sobbing hysterically, just right when she was trying to pull her mud-crusted sweater up over her head.

  “What are you—?” Terry stood in the doorway gaping at the muddy remains flung across the bedroom floor. “What is this, Sweet?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know.” Sweet held her son very tight. “What happened?”

  “What do you think happened! Dad died! At four o’clock this morning!”

  “Why didn’t somebody call? They should’ve called.”

  “They did call! They said they tried! Both numbers! Where have you been!”

  “Here! I was here, I just left the phone off, I’m sorry. What did he . . . how did it . . . ? I mean, oh, let’s— Shhh, honey, it’s all right.” She hugged her son, stroked his prickly head. He was sobbing so hard she couldn’t bear it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, hon, it’s okay, it’s okay.” She offered her husband a you’re-right-but-please-let’s-talk-about-this-later look. Tee wasn’t having any.

  “They said it was a blood clot or something, but basically you killed him.”

  “Terry!”

  Carl Albert let out a wail.

  “That’s what happened, isn’t it? He died as direct result of you leaving him alone to fall and break a hip! What the hell were you doing? Where were you?” Tee’s eyes narrowed. “It’s another man, isn’t it?”

  “Good God, no. Are you kidding? That’s the last thing!”

  “I want to know what you’re up to, Georgia. Look at this!” He waved a furious paw at the muddy jeans on the floor, the caked sweater she was still wearing. His voice lifted in a high sarcastic twang: “ ‘No, Tee, you can’t come home, you take Carl Albert with you, you turned in my daddy!’ Well, I might’ve turned in your weird old fanatical daddy, but you killed my grandpa! Now. You tell me which is worse.”

  Sweet stared. The anger in her husband’s swollen face was fully matched by the pain. Terry loved Mr. Bledsoe. Of course he did. The wash of guilt pouring through her was so powerful she couldn’t speak. She backed to the bed, sank down, drawing her son with her. Carl Albert collapsed sideways against her, still bawling uncontrollably, and hiccupping, too, now. Sweet reached for the crocheted afghan on the foot of the bed, dragged it over and draped it across the boy’s shuddering form and her own naked legs. Terry was making the choked barks in his throat like she’d heard on the phone. She kept her eyes on the rug.

  After a minute Terry got quiet. When he spoke, his voice was thick. “The folks from the funeral home already picked him up from the hospital. I got to get to Wilburton and make the arrangements.” Sweet nodded without looking up. She ought to go with him. He’d never made funeral arrangements by himself. Sweet had been the one to help his father pick out the casket and flowers and dress for Tee’s mom, and then she’d done it all for Mr. Kirkendall himself when he passed. Terry had been too distraught; he’d gone to the funeral home with her, but on every decision he’d just said, “I don’t know, hon, whatever you think.”

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” Terry said. “Then, I’m telling you something, Sweet. We are going to set a few things straight.”

  She nodded again. In a bit she heard him leave. She went on rubbing her son’s back, humming “The Old Rugged Cross” like she used to do when he was a tiny boy. He had finished bawling, was in the shuddery, raggedy-breaths stage. She knew it would take Terry longer than an hour to drive to Wilburton and look at all the coffin samples and make up his mind and go by the florist’s and the Latimer County News to give them the information for the obituary, if he even remembered to do that, which he might not, but at the very least it was going to take closer to two hours—definitely longer than he expected, she knew that. But still, it wouldn’t be near time enough.

&nbs
p; Wednesday | February 27, 2008 | 8:00 A.M.

  Latimer County Jail | Wilburton

  After breakfast, while the two men sat on their bunks waiting for the trustee to come collect the trays, Arvin Holloway suddenly appeared on the other side of the bars. Bob Brown’s heart lurched. He looked over at Garcia. The pastor gave an uncertain shrug. Shakily Brown got to his feet, crossed the small space to talk. Fear and grief pulsed through him. How had Holloway managed to get through the clanging outer door into the echoey concrete hall without them hearing? The sheriff unclipped the jumble of keys from his belt and opened the cell door; he motioned Brown to come out, waving Garcia back when he started to stand, too. Without a word Holloway relocked the cell, nodded Brown ahead of him toward the solid steel door at the end of the hall. Brown stood swaying on his feet as he waited for the sheriff to find the next key and turn it in the fat lock. He was afraid he might faint; he’d had too little to eat for too many days. Every one of those days he had asked to speak to Holloway. The trustees kept saying, “Sheriff ain’t here, he ain’t here.” Now, this early in the morning, and in terrible silence, Arvin Holloway was here. It could only mean something very bad.

  The sheriff ushered him along past the unmanned front desk and empty break room into his own office. There he shut the door, motioned Brown to sit, hoisted himself down into his roller chair. “All right now,” he said. “Talk.”

  The pause that followed was not, as Holloway thought, because of Bob Brown’s stubbornness but his surprise. He’d been expecting the sheriff to tell him something, maybe something unbearable, maybe the worst possible news there is. That the sheriff wanted Brown himself to do the talking simply threw him. He shook his head—more to try to clear it than to say I don’t know what you want, but Holloway took the gesture for refusal. “Goddamnit. Talk!” The sheriff was furious. He’d gotten the first call a little after seven this morning, the last one not ten minutes ago. “You sorry old coot, you’d better start explaining. I mean now!”