Calling Home

by Janna McMahan

“Where did that come from?” she asked.

  The door made a cranky squeal when she opened it. She slid onto the bench seat and touched the keys.

  “The sheriff must have brought it,” Kerry said. He leaned in the open window.

  Shannon picked a dirty, crumpled brown sack from the floorboard, opened the glove compartment and started scooping the contents in—a baggie of pot, a pipe, two lighters, boxes of condoms, a bandana, a bottle opener, an empty cigarette pack, photos of Will and Liz.

  “He wasn’t too big on hiding things. He sort of dared Momma to look,” Shannon said. “I can’t believe the police didn’t get this weed.”

  “Maybe they didn’t search since it was an accident. They must have to have a warrant or something.”

  “Or maybe they overlook stuff, you know, to keep from hurting people. It would tear Momma and Granny up to find out Will was drunk or high when he got killed.”

  Shannon checked underneath the seat and in the tool chest in the back, but didn’t find anything else she needed to hide. She finally sat behind the wheel and stared out through the bug-spattered windshield at her house. People spilled out of the front door, lingered in the porch swing, crouched on the steps with plates balanced on their laps. Little kids ran through the yard and a couple found her tire swing out back. An older couple hobbled down to their cars by the road. She could see Liz still sitting in her bedroom window upstairs, smoking and looking off into the distance.

  “I guess this is my truck now,” Shannon said.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Kerry said.

  “It’s not worth anything.”

  “That’s probably true.” Kerry lit a cigarette and leaned back against the cab. “You still want me to help you get your license?”

  Shannon held Will’s things in her lap. “I don’t know.” She rested her head on the steering wheel.

  Kerry reached in and rubbed his hand over her back and said, “Strictly friends. It wouldn’t mean nothing.”

  She opened her eyes then and peered through the steering wheel down at her scuffed Sunday shoes, bright against the dirty floorboard of the truck. “Kerry, why’re you so good to me?”

  He flicked his smoke into the grass. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess you’ve always seemed like you needed somebody to be good to you.”

  17

  It had rained for days and the world was every imaginable shade of green as Roger drove the road named for his people. The sun had come out full blast this morning and now plants bent with the burden of rain were straining toward light again. Fields were tightly packed with corn. Tobacco was feathery against the rolling hills. As Roger’s old house came into view, he could see the yard was out of control. Spindly weeds pressed against the house and around trees. It would be Bush Hog time if the yard went much longer. That was the thing with bluegrass, you had to keep on it.

  He pulled into the drive and ran his hand over a patch of grass. Dry. He waited at the back door, but nobody answered his knock. He was half surprised when his key made a familiar click in the shed’s padlock. The push mower was dragged out like somebody had tried to start it but had given up. The air intake was choked with clippings. That would be enough to keep it from starting. He bent down and unscrewed the gas cap. Empty. They probably didn’t even know how to put gas in. Roger dragged the machine out of the shed, found the gas can, filled it and jerked the starter a couple of times before it ripped into action.

  His arms and shoulders soon ached with the effort of pushing the vibrating mower through the overgrown grass. He cut the side yard down to the road where the mower chewed up ditch weeds while he yanked it around to start back up the bank. He mowed around trees and then started back and forth on the front yard. A couple of hours later he had a giant pile of clippings in the spot where they burned garbage. He’d kept looking over his shoulder all day, a tingle at the back of his neck making him feel as if Virginia’s car was coming, but nobody came.

  Roger was covered in a fine layer of dirt and grass and he couldn’t get in his car like that, so he let himself into the basement intending to grab a towel out of the laundry, but the dryer top was bare. In the upstairs linen closet Roger was careful to choose an old towel from the bottom of the stack so Virginia wouldn’t miss it. In the bathroom mirror dirt seemed ground into his pores. He had a line of grass sprinkled across his bare shoulders and grime gathered in rings around his neck. He should shower off. Will’s clothes might still be in the drawers. Roger pushed open the door to Will’s room. The bed was perfectly made, something Virginia had insisted the children learn. On one end was Will’s baseball uniform, like Virginia had laid it out—the number 14 seemed so happy on the jersey pocket, the knees of the pants gray. Virginia was always scrubbing to keep those uniforms clean. The bass still leapt over the bed, baseballs rested in the mouths of trophy cups, Charlie’s Angels hung above a couple of sunfish in a moldy tank. It would be a miracle if anybody remembered to feed those fish. Roger picked up a photo of Will and Liz—that cute little girl. Her heart must be breaking.

  Roger placed everything he touched exactly where he got it and then went to the walk-in shower off their bedroom. He unhooked his wallet chain and stepped into the shower stall before he rolled down his jeans so he wouldn’t drop grass clippings on the floor. The water was cool and soothing. He reached for Virginia’s practical bar of soap and her Prell bottle balanced in a corner. Bootsie had containers and sponges and a scrub brush on a stick for her back and everything smelled like pineapple or coconuts. Sometimes it was enough to make a person sick. Roger opened the shampoo and squirted some in his hand. The smell reminded him of lying awake with his face burrowed in Virginia’s hair while he watched her eyes dance under their milky lids. It was no wonder Virginia always fell into bed as if she were exhausted, she never seemed to rest, even in sleep. She had fitful dreams. The few times Virginia woke from a nightmare, he held her while she cried, childlike and desperate, and then she went right back to sleep. Those nights Roger got up and had a glass of milk at the kitchen table while he wondered what she had dreamed because she never told him.

  He slipped on a pair of Will’s athletic shorts with an elastic waist and a T-shirt that said CARDINAL BASEBALL on the front. Roger cleaned up behind himself and was out in less than ten minutes. Virginia would be relieved to see the place looking good again even if she was mad at him for being there. Roger’s mind wandered as he drove the winding road that threaded through shaded lanes and by open fields where swirls of honeyed hay filled the air with warmth. He felt like he did every morning, when for a fraction of a second after he wakes, he doesn’t know where he is—a panicky feeling, like something heavy was sitting on his chest.

  When Roger pulled up, Bootsie was considering the cleanliness of the rusted barbecue grill. The thing made a high-pitched screech when he dragged it out of the carport. He arranged charcoal in a pyramid, doused it with lighter fluid. When he flicked in the match edges of the charcoal immediately grew gray. Lighter fluid fumes burned his nose.

  “How long before the charcoal’s ready?” she asked.

  “Not long. You can go get the food.”

  “Want a beer?

  “No thanks.”

  She swigged from a bottle. “I don’t suppose those are your clothes. You mow her yard today?”

  “She won’t let me do nothing for her, so I thought I might as well.”

  They listened as the pulsing rhythm of insects grew louder in the woods behind the house. Bootsie went inside and came out with a platter with three fat hamburger patties. She thrust the platter at him and said, “You intend to go up there and help her anymore?”

  “I didn’t intend to today.”

  “You haven’t answered my question, now have you?”

  Roger slid the burgers off the plate onto the grill. “No.”

  “I don’t care, you know. You do what ever the fuck you want.”

  “Look, I lost my son. If I want to mow his mother’s yard, then that’s my business
.”

  “You’re right,” she said, twisting her mouth as she weighed Roger’s answer. “I don’t mean to be a bitch. I shouldn’t get upset. We both know this is a temporary setup.”

  “I’d say that’s about the truth.”

  “You want to break up?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay, me neither.”

  Roger moved the burgers off the heat onto buns. He ripped open a bag of potato chips and started crunching them absentmindedly. He sighed and said, “I’m tired.”

  “Those his clothes?”

  “Yeah. Went in his room and it seemed like he should turn over in bed and look at me with his hair all twisted like it always was when he woke up. Like I should tell him to get up or he’d miss the school bus.”

  “Nobody should ever have to lose their kid. That’s just wrong.”

  “I was a shitty father.”

  “It won’t do any good to beat yourself up over it.”

  Bootsie wiggled onto the top of the picnic table beside a pot with a straggling geranium. “Come here,” she said. Roger stepped over to her. She wrapped her legs around him, put her arms around his neck and met his eyes. “Let’s go inside, crank up the air conditioner and see how much I can make you sweat.”

  He was solemn, his face lifted to watch bats making frantic, silent dives in the dusky air. His son was dead. His wife hated his guts. His daughter wasn’t speaking to him. Roger assessed Bootsie—her fading lipstick, her tangerine hair, her eager, warm, candy-smelling body.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  18

  The air was steamy and sweet with cooking corn. Everyone moved efficiently in Ruby’s small kitchen. Patsy and Margie sliced down ears of corn in fluid movements and threw the cobs in washtubs. Ruby loaded and unloaded pressure cookers and dunked the blanched corn in an ice bath. Virginia’s job was to scoop into freezer bags, press out air, and put on a twist tie. The conversation was nonstop as usual, but Virginia had been tuning out their chatter today, staring out the window into the arms of a shade tree.

  “You’re getting behind,” Patsy said. “You want me to help you fill bags?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Virginia said

  “What you looking at?”

  “That poor little momma bird’s going to work herself to death feeding those babies,” Virginia said. “How’d she get babies so late in the year?”

  “Lord, there’s been a nest in that tree for as long as I can remember,” Ruby said.

  “That was my favorite nest when I was a kid,” Patsy said. “It always was just spilling over with babies.”

  “Except for the year the hornets were up there,” Margie said. “Remember how we got stung, Virginia?”

  Virginia nodded and went back to scooping. She remembered. They hadn’t known the hornets were there when they climbed the tree. Virginia was high up and once the swarm attacked she fell, knocking Margie and Lovey out of the tree below her. They scraped over limbs on the way down, and when she slammed to the ground, Virginia’s breath was crushed from her lungs and she lay stunned until she was stung a second time. The swarm followed them to the screened-in porch and the girls’ screams brought their father running from his tobacco field across the road. Ruby rubbed salve on their stings while their father shot the hornet’s nest out of the tree, gassed it, and set it on fire. Virginia touched her shoulder, remembering the dull ache of the stings. She stood up, and corn kernels tumbled to the floor. “I need some air,” she said. From the front porch she looked upon a field of robust tobacco. It wasn’t her daddy’s anymore, but leased out to one of the cousins up the road.

  The women in the kitchen were whispering about her and she couldn’t make out every word, but they could have been more discreet. They were so nosy, had to know everything that was going on. Back when they were still on the party line, her mother used to spend every afternoon talking to the women up and down the road. It wasn’t that Virginia minded her own family knowing things, but they all went to church, where people would ask about her and her family felt obligated to share, and before she knew it every little thing she told her mother or her sisters would be out. That was one of the reasons Virginia didn’t go to church. She was too private for church.

  Virginia heard Patsy say, “Stays in bed a lot.” Virginia leaned down next to the open window.

  “Does she cry much?” Lovey asked.

  “She’s smoking.”

  Great. Her mother would mention that for sure. Virginia walked out to where Clyde sat on the tailgate shucking. The truck bed behind him was filled up past the cab window with sweet corn. A pile of husks and silks littered the ground beneath his feet. Chickens scrambled for the lopped-off ends of the cobs. Virginia lifted a dish cloth that covered one bushel basket and peered inside.

  “How you doing?” Clyde asked.

  “Rotten.”

  “I expected as much.”

  “I want to wake up and this to all be a dream.”

  “Maybe you need to go to church.”

  “Why? So I can convince myself that everything’s okay because it’s in God’s hands?”

  “Nothing wrong with a little peace.”

  “I’ll never have peace again.”

  “Maybe not, but church helped me lay my burdens down.”

  “If I didn’t have Shannon to do for I’d kill myself right now.”

  “What are you going to do when she leaves for college?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying not to think about it.”

  “You’re not really thinking about killing yourself are you?”

  “No. Don’t tell anybody what I said.”

  “I won’t. Don’t say that around your momma.”

  She grabbed an ear of corn and ripped the husk off one side and then the other. Why did everyone always end up worrying about how things would affect her mother? Virginia was the one who had lost her family, but is was Ruby that Clyde worried about. Typical, Virginia thought.

  “I think they’re going to need some more ice soon,” she said.

  “All right.”

  Virginia watched him walk down the narrow sidewalk and through the gate into the wellhouse. In her mind she could place him inside, bent over into the deep freeze. Clyde came out with two milk jugs solid with ice.

  “Wait,” Virginia said. She walked over to him and took the jugs from his hands. One she placed on the ground and the other she hoisted over her head. She brought the jug down on the sidewalk, shattering it on one side. She grunted with the effort as she smashed the jug, again and again, until its insides were pulverized. Virginia picked up the second jug and winged it at the side of the cinder block well house where it hit with a satisfying crack.

  Clyde moved his fingers around the buckeye in his pocket and waited. Virginia leaned over and put her hands on her knees, shaking.

  “Feel better?” Clyde said.

  “No.”

  “Well, thanks for your help.”

  Clyde grabbed the jugs and headed into the house. Virginia walked back to the truck, chickens dancing away from her steps. She piled a basket full with husks and silks and walked out to the barn lot. She dumped the basket over the fence and the three cows made heavy snorts while they rooted around and finally started their lazy chewing. One milk cow was Virginia’s favorite, and she rubbed her hand down the Jersey’s head and over her soft ears. The animal lolled her sad brown eyes at Virginia, then went back to eating.

  Her daddy was right. She would have to find a way to put all her anger and hurt behind her, but the one person she needed, the only person who could truly understand her feelings was also the one person who had betrayed her the most. She wanted more than anything to call Roger, but she would never do it. Never. He could be burning in hell and she wouldn’t give him a drink of water. He had come by the house last week and mowed and trimmed the yard. He hadn’t laid claim to the act, but Virginia knew. Nobody else had a key to the shed. Maybe he needed to talk to her, too. He’d tried the day of the funera
l, but she had been whacked out on nerve pills and raw with grief. Those nerve pills had helped her a lot, but she knew at some point that she would have to stop taking them. She would have to wake up and stop moving through every day like she was in a bubble.

  At least Shannon seemed to be doing okay. She would go into Will’s room and stay for a long time, probably sitting on his bed, petting Moonpie and crying. But she would come out and that would be that. The poor dog missed Will as much as any of them and he had taken to following Shannon around the house, nudging her hand whenever she sat down. Shannon was keeping busy, working a lot at the marina and getting ready for that pageant. Having something to look forward to and focus on was helping her. The Rucker boy had been coming around more, too. He was sweet to her, but Shannon hadn’t put his ring back on yet.

  The material for Shannon’s pageant dress was still spread out on the dining room table with the tissue pattern pinned on. Every day Virginia reminded herself to work on it, but she couldn’t bring herself to even cut it out. The slinky material reminded her of water and water made her think of Will which made her go up to her room and take a pill and lie down. That was what she wanted to do right now—crawl into bed, pull the covers over her head, and stay in that drug-addled hazy place for a long, long time.

  19

  “Don’t bother picking me up after work. I’m going over to Pam’s. I’ll be home around nine,” Shannon said.

  “Are you sure?” Patsy said. “I don’t mind coming to pick you up.”

  “No, thanks. Tell Momma I hope she feels better.”

  The Chevy’s taillights faded to pink and then disappeared up the hill. There was a slight chill to the air and moisture quickly wrapped Shannon’s bare arms. But she had grown to like this time of day at the dock when nobody was awake, right before sun began to sting the sky. Shannon stopped on the ramp. The water below was clear and dark, like a pool she had seen in Mammoth Cave. When she saw that cavern water she’d had the same feeling she had now, that if she fell in she could tumble down endlessly, cold water filling her body until she was dead weight.