The Night the Lights Went Out

by Karen White

  That’s when I saw somebody behind him, and I hoped it wasn’t Bobby. He was thirteen and his favorite thing to do in the world was read. He’d disappear for hours and sometimes Mama would ask him to read to her.

  But it wasn’t Bobby. It was some boy I’d never seen before, but I knew who it was. A new sharecropper family had moved into the abandoned cabin on the other side of the woods, and I’d seen the mama and her two little girls at church, both looking as thin and pale as corn husks left out in the sun. The mama had nodded at us and smiled a little, showing she had more teeth missing than not, and said her husband and son had stayed behind to help with a sick mule. Not that we would question her, because Mama didn’t go to church anymore, neither, because of her being so tired all the time.

  The boy was as tall as Harry and skinny like a beanpole, and as I got closer I could see thick dark hair that looked like he cut it himself in the dark. He was smiling, except it wasn’t really a smile. It was like when Harry or Will said they had a surprise for me and it usually turned up to be a bullfrog they wanted to stick down the back of my dress.

  “Don’t fall,” he said, pushing Will forward.

  I screamed right as the boy pulled him back and started laughing, like it was funny to have nearly pushed somebody out of a haymow.

  Will raised the jug to his mouth like nothing had happened and took a big swallow, swaying like a strong wind was about to blow him over. I held my breath, watching as the boy behind him held on to the back of his shirt, that smile still on his face.

  “You there,” Rufus shouted up to them. “You quit that right now ’fore somebody gets hurt. Come on down the ladder and I won’ tell Mr. Prescott.”

  Grace had stopped, saliva foaming all over her mouth, and Harry was half hanging out of the saddle. I heard a sound and saw he was throwing up all over his bare leg. It was a sorry sight and I said a little prayer that Daddy was way off in some field so Harry could clean this mess up before he got home.

  “You cain’t tell me what to do, boy.” He pushed Will again, pulling him back just in time but hard enough that Will dropped the jug, crockery exploding every which way as it hit a rock. Grace snorted and skirted back a step or two as the pitchfork shimmied down the side of the barn like it didn’t want to see any more and lay in the dirt on its back, staring up at the sky. I didn’t scream this time because I was too scared, but Jimmy took a step forward. “Cut it out, Curtis. It ain’t funny.”

  I didn’t think to ask him how he knew the boy’s name. Jimmy always seemed to know everything.

  And then everything seemed to move fast and slow all at the same time. The first thing I remembered was hearing the sound of something ripping as Curtis pushed Will again. Except this time when he tried to pull him back, Will kept falling.

  A wad of Will’s red and blue plaid shirt was crumpled in Curtis’s hand, his arm still stretched out like he still thought my brother should be attached to the shirt. And then Rufus was moving forward and we were all running and Harry was passed out on top of Grace and Will was falling for what seemed forever.

  Rufus got there first and I was glad, because if anybody could catch Will and not get killed trying, it was Rufus. Except it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to. Rufus caught my dumb brother, but his foot stepped on the bottom of the jug just as he put his arms out. There was a big whoof of air from Will or Rufus, or maybe it was from me because I was so relieved my brother hadn’t broken his worthless neck. But then Rufus lost his balance because of that crockery and he fell backward with Will in his arms, landing right on top of that pitchfork.

  “Pa!” Lamar was the only one of us who could move. The rest could only watch the slow stain of red as it poured out Rufus’s side into the dark clay of the ground.

  Lamar was punching Will on his arm, trying to push him off of Rufus, but Will’s eyes were closed, a soft snore coming from his mouth. I ran over and kicked him much harder than I probably needed to, but I was scared and angry and I wanted to hurt him as bad as Rufus was hurt.

  Throw-up bubbled into the back of my throat, the stink of blood making me think of the hog butchering we did every October. I’d stay up in my room with my head under the pillow so I couldn’t hear the squealing of the pigs, but I could still taste the blood that seemed to paint the air red.

  Will fell on his face in the dirt and stayed there. Lamar was crying and trying to wipe his daddy’s face with his shirt, but Rufus didn’t move, just lay there with blood bubbling between his lips, then dripping down his cheek. I glanced over at Harry, who’d fallen out of the saddle and was trying to stand. I wasn’t getting any help there.

  “Jimmy! Go run and get Mama and tell her Rufus is hurt bad and needs help.”

  He stared at me like I’d lost my mind, but that was because he probably wasn’t thinking of before, when Mama was still herself and had once set Harry’s broken arm and stitched a cut in Jimmy’s cheek when he’d fallen from a tree trying to study a hawk’s nest. She’d known doctoring stuff.

  “I’m getting Daddy,” he said, not waiting to see if I wanted to argue. He ran toward the fields, red clay dust puffing out under his feet like time was chasing him as he kept his hand over the tadpoles, the binoculars clinking against the Mason jar’s side.

  “Hey, you, up there. Curtis!” I shouted as I looked up.

  Curtis stuck his head over the edge of the haymow, looking like he was hoping I’d forgotten he was there. Or what he’d done. “Go get your mama and tell her a man’s hurt bad and she needs to come quick.” The words got stuck in my throat for a second, and I hoped he didn’t notice that I wanted to cry because I was scared. Scared that Rufus was hurt so bad he couldn’t be fixed. And Lamar was making that awful choking sound as he kept wiping his daddy’s face as if that would do any good at all.

  Curtis slowly turned around and disappeared for a few moments as he climbed down the ladder. It took him so long that I wanted to rush into the barn and grab at the back of his overalls and yank him down so I could punch him in the face a hundred times like I’d once seen Harry do to Will.

  “Run!” I shouted at him. “Run fast and get your mama or your daddy or anybody else who can come help!”

  He smiled at me, and it was like a winter wind had just blown through me, front to back. “Do it yourself,” he said, then turned his back on me and poor Rufus and Lamar and walked just as slow as he could toward the woods that sat at the far end of the cotton field.

  My head hurt I was thinking so hard, and I was just about to leave Lamar so I could go find someone when I heard Jimmy shouting. He was coming from the direction of the house, Daddy close behind, and I near fainted with relief. Daddy must have been home for supper, which was how he got there so soon. Right behind him were two more field hands, and I had to bite my lip hard not to start bawling.

  Daddy told Jimmy to run for the doctor as they brought Rufus to the kitchen table and laid him on top, while I ran to the pretty front bedroom to go get Mama. She sat in bed, leaning against the lacy white pillows that she was so proud of because they’d come with her trousseau from Savannah, and Bobby sat in the rocking chair next to her, reading.

  I was running to and fro, telling her what had happened and that she needed to come quick to help, but she just sat there with a frown as if she didn’t know who I was or what I was saying. Finally, she reached for my hand and gave it a soft squeeze, and I saw the opened medicine bottle on her night table, the little dribble of dried brown liquid in the corner of her mouth like she wasn’t using a glass to drink it anymore.

  “You’ll be fine, Alice,” she said with a voice full of sleep. She was the only one who ever called me by my real name. “You need to learn how to tend to people on the farm, and I’d say now is as good a time as any.” Her finger pointed to her large armoire as if moving her whole hand was too hard. “My medicine box is on the bottom, with old linens you can use for bandages.” She lay b
ack against the pretty white pillows and closed her eyes.

  Bobby helped me pull out the box and carry it down to the kitchen, which I hardly recognized. There was blood everywhere—on the table, on the men, on poor Lamar, who was still making those awful sounds. A red smear shaped like a hand was on the middle of the icebox door, a single bloody footprint right in front but facing the wrong way.

  “Mama’s not coming,” I said as I began to unroll an old bedsheet. My voice warbled like a baby bird’s, which I figured was better than crying. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this, but Mama said to bring—”

  Daddy put a large hand on my shoulder. “Rufus doesn’t need it now, Sugar.”

  “But he’s hurt. It was the pitchfork. He—”

  “I know. But it’s too late. He’s already gone.”

  I blinked up at him and then at the table. Lamar had stopped crying and was holding his daddy’s hand like he wanted to go wherever Rufus had gone. Blood puddles slowly tiptoed to the edge of the table before falling over the edge in tiny drips. It was so quiet in the kitchen that each drop on the floor sounded like a shout.

  “It was an accident.” Harry stood in the doorway, his face whiter than a cotton boll. There was vomit on his shirt and I could smell the moonshine, but nothing was stronger than the smell of copper that covered my mouth and tongue.

  “It was an accident,” Harry said again, as if saying it again would make it true. His eyes met mine and I knew he was sending me a warning.

  I looked over at Lamar, because he’d been there, too, and seen what I’d seen. His eyes were red and his face wet with tears, but all he did was give a little shake of his head, then turn away, studying hard at his daddy’s hand like he was praying for it to move again.

  Daddy looked at Harry, then back at me, his cheeks heavy, and he seemed a lot older than when I’d seen him that morning at the breakfast table. “It was a sad and tragic accident,” he said to the back of Lamar’s head.

  I looked at the faces around me, trying to understand something I couldn’t. I didn’t know much, but there were two things I knew for sure right then and there: that truth was as sticky as molasses, and I was never going to be a little girl again. That part of my life had ended the minute Rufus had decided to go to the barn to see if he could help.

  I ran from the kitchen, my elbow knocking the tadpole jar from the edge of the counter as I left, the sound of shattering glass following me out the door.

  Six

  MERILEE

  The digital clock on the coffeemaker blinked as Merilee helped herself to another cup. A storm had blown in again the night before, shutting off the power for several hours. She frowned at the flashing numbers. It was one of those stupid things she didn’t know how to fix because Michael had always had the job to go around resetting clocks after an outage. It wasn’t that she was incapable of doing it, or too stupid or too lazy to learn how. It was that it was one more thing on the list of what made her miss the partnership of marriage. The unspoken I’ll make the coffee if you’ll fix the clock. Neither task was insurmountable on its own, but a day full of tasks that all fell on her now was simply exhausting.

  The rumbling thunder had chased both children into her bed—thunder had never scared them into her bed before the divorce—and after a couple of hours of trying to sleep with various small elbows and knees poking her in the ribs and back, she’d come downstairs and sat on the front porch to watch the rain and think about the story Sugar had told her.

  The old woman had left shortly afterward, looking up at the heavy clouds as a reason to leave right away. Merilee had offered to drive her, but Sugar had shaken her head and walked out the front door, her eyes the color of the ocean after a storm, as if the memories were stirred-up sediment.

  Merilee’s first thought had been to bleach the table, as if she could still see the dying man and the blood that had soaked into the ancient wood. But then she remembered that no matter how vivid the pictures in her mind, it had been eighty-two years ago. A long time, just not long enough to forget.

  “Mom?”

  Merilee turned to see Lily holding her laptop, wearing the Frozen nightgown she’d received from Merilee’s parents the previous Christmas. It had been too small then and now hit her midcalf. It wasn’t even a movie that Lily particularly liked. But she wore it because it made her feel as if the grandparents she rarely saw were part of her life.

  Merilee kissed the top of her head, loving the way she smelled, wondering when that would change. “What are you doing up so early?”

  Lily placed the laptop on the table. “Bailey sent me the link to that blog I was telling you about. I think you need to read it.”

  “When did this happen? Didn’t I tell you I wanted to read it first?”

  Lily nodded, keeping her eyes down. “I know, but when I called Bailey to ask her about our math test on Monday, she said I needed to look at the blog right now. So I did. And it’s really bad and you need to read it. There’s something in it about you. And the latest post is about Dad.”

  “Wait,” Merilee said, wishing the caffeine would hurry up and reach her brain. “When was this?”

  “Around midnight. I was worrying about the test and Bailey said she never turns off her phone, so I called her.”

  Merilee took a big swallow of coffee, not caring that she was scalding her tongue and the roof of her mouth. There were so many questions and things she knew she should be discussing with her daughter, but if some anonymous person was writing bad things about her and Michael, she needed to see it.

  She sat down and opened the laptop. “Please pull it up, Lily. We’ll talk about rules and consequences as soon as I’m done reading.”

  Lily did as she was told while Merilee downed the rest of her coffee.

  “Read the last two first, and then read this one. It was posted yesterday.”

  In ten minutes she’d read the first two blog posts, wincing at the mention of the divorcée, who was undoubtedly her, gratefully accepting the second mug of coffee from Lily without looking up from the screen.

  “This is horrifying,” Merilee said when she got to the end of the second one. “I feel as if I’m on a reality show with strangers watching me.”

  “It’s not really talking badly about you, Mom. ‘Unaffected’ just means that you’re not fake or insincere. I think it might actually be a compliment.”

  Merilee wanted to argue but knew Lily was right. She wanted to point out that it also said that the school year is long and a lot could happen, but she didn’t want to add any more worry to Lily’s full plate of things to needle over.

  “You might need something stronger than coffee before you read the last one,” Lily said quietly.

  Merilee looked at her daughter over the rim of her mug. “It’s only seven thirty in the morning. And how would you know about that anyway?”

  “I watched part of The Godfather, remember?” She didn’t smile.

  Merilee’s heart sank a little further. “Yeah. I remember.” With a quick shake of her head, she returned to the computer and began to read.

  THE PLAYING FIELDS BLOG

  Observations of Suburban Life from Sweet Apple, Georgia

  Written by: Your Neighbor

  Installment #3: Roundabouts: They’re Not Rocket Science

  I hope you all take the time to read our weekly local paper, the Sweet Apple Herald, which is conveniently delivered to our driveways (or sometimes they miss and it lands in the middle of the road or beneath a bush, where it’s hidden until the next windy day, when all the pages are displayed on your front lawn, but I digress).

  I read the paper from cover to cover, even the ads. And especially the obituaries. They’re not meant to be amusing, but some of them are, unintentionally of course. Like the ones that try their hand at poetry and attempt to rhyme words like “Buick” and “quick,” or “again�
�� and “attain,” and my favorite: “tricked” and “wicked.” Neighbors, unless your last name is Wordsworth or Frost, you just shouldn’t. And if your loved one was a party clown, don’t put that picture next to his obit. It loses its sincerity, somehow. But if you do, rest assured I will clip it out and send it to my friend who collects amusing obituaries. Don’t judge. Hobbies are good for you—like eating your vegetables and exercising. Only more fun.

  In this week’s edition of the paper, I was surprised to see that the entire front page—usually reserved for a groundbreaking story about the locations of new weather sirens or the increasing traffic woes on the Alpharetta Autobahn (Georgia State Route 400 for you newcomers, the nickname on account of the high proportion of German cars and the speed they manage to reach despite heavy traffic)—was completely given over to the three new roundabouts that are currently being constructed within our city limits.

  I wasn’t sure whether I should have been amused or horrified at the detailed drawing of one of the proposed roundabouts, complete with a diagram of cars entering and leaving the roundabout (with directional arrows just in case people were unclear about what side of the road to drive on), and an entire three columns of directions.

  Neighbors, not to point out the obvious, but if you can’t understand how a roundabout works from the overabundance of directional signs at said roundabouts, then perhaps you shouldn’t be operating a motor vehicle at all. I would suggest a bike, but that’s a whole different problem on our narrow and winding country roads and will undoubtedly be a subject for a future blog.

  Speaking of news, I would be remiss if I neglected to mention more personal topics than what our fine local paper prints. This would include an observation of the high school’s football team starters, who don’t seem to fall under the socioeconomic spectrum of the rest of the school’s—or Sweet Apple’s—population. I’d be interested in learning where these young men actually live, and who’s paying the rent.