The Day of Small Things

by Vicki Lane

  I should have known he’d not forget.

  He comes out of the little house, a good-looking man, silver-haired now and appearing some older but not enough. He steps up to the window of the car and I see that he is dressed like one of the rich folks. Oh, he may be wearing faded blue jeans but they’ve been to the laundry and have sharp creases just like suit trousers and he has on one of them knit shirts with a collar and some little animal embroideried on it. He leans down and looks in the car.

  “Looking for your nephew, are you? I can understand your concern if he’s riding with that crew.”

  He takes a look at the big watch on his wrist. “Ladies, I’m Jake Aaron and I’d be pleased to act as your guide through this gilt-edged wasp nest they call Wildcat Reach. I don’t have a thing to do these days but hang around the gatehouse, talking about the old times till Kenny’s sick of me. I don’t believe he’ll object to you taking a little tour if I go with you. That way he’ll get rid of me and can have a little peace and quiet.”

  I can’t make out why he calls this place a wasp nest but Kenny is grinning and saying, “Now, Jake, you know I like visiting with you.” Dorothy is thanking him and telling him to get on in and he slides into the back seat. Kenny hands Dorothy a card to stick inside the windshield and off we go into Wildcat Reach.

  “Bear right at this fork up here,” Mr. Aaron tells Dorothy. “Keep following that road all the way up. As we pass the various properties maybe you’ll see that van. Plenty of folks have the cleaners in on a regular basis. Of course, many of the houses are set back on their lots and you can’t see them at all.”

  I study Mr. Aaron, remembering the last time I saw him. Still dark-complected, like he spends a lot of time in the sun, and eyes that are most black, he looks kindly foreign though he don’t talk like one. He smells most like a woman, whether from his shampoo or some fancy men’s toilet water, and his hands is better tended than any woman’s I have seen.

  Mr. Aaron catches me looking him over and puts out his hand. “Name’s Jake,” he says. “Are you ladies from around here?”

  “Me and Dor’thy lives over near Marshall—’cross the river from Gudger’s Stand,” I tell him. The more I look at him, the more it all comes back to me and the nearer in time it seems.

  He makes a little smile and stares hard into my eyes. “Gudger’s Stand?” he says. And I nod my head and stare back.

  There is a moment when he is about to say something more, then Dorothy speaks up. “You don’t sound like a Florida person, Mr. Aaron. Have you been at Wildcat Reach long?”

  He laughs. “Wildcat Reach hasn’t been there long enough for a Florida person to pick up mountain talk. No, I’ve lived in these parts a long time—good bit of it in Asheville before I moved here—I was in retail—men’s clothing, for the most part. But I know Marshall County pretty well. I’ve traveled its roads many a time …”

  I look away, for the glitter of his dark eyes as he looks at me is making me swimmie-headed again, as if it was another Seeing, and I remember what Granny told me so long ago about how there is some few what lives outside of time—people who change but don’t grow old like the common run. I remember how when first I learned of this I felt jealous-like, wishing that I could be one of these folks. But now that I’ve come this far along my own road to where I can almost catch sight of the end, I know the truth of it—those folks who must go on and on is cursed, not blessed.

  In the window glass, Mr. Aaron is watching me. His dark eyes are sad now, and I think how I must look to him—how changed since the day he took me from that place. I want to make some sign, to tell him that I done good, that my life weren’t for naught, but he has turned away now and I look through his shape to what’s beyond.

  Out the window is woods and then fields and woods again. Everything is tended just so—not the first beer can or plastic bag on the roadside—and I think about my own Ridley Branch. There are some trashy folks travels along it and every day when I go to walk, I pick up empty cans and bottles folks has tossed out. It makes me wonder if that might be the reason for the guard at the gate, to keep the trashy folks out.

  All of a sudden, right in the midst of my pondering, Dorothy shouts out, “Lord have mercy!” and she swings the car hard to the right. I look round just in time to see a big white van speeding past us, going back the way we came. It is so close that I hunch up, waiting to hear the scrape of metal against metal, but then it is past and we are heading for the side of the road. There is two big bumps as the right wheels go into the ditch and the car stops, nosed into the soft dirt of the bank above the road.

  We are all three of us kindly stunned—for a minute, don’t no one say a word. Then Mr. Aaron asks are we all right and Dorothy begins to jabber about how that was the van we was looking for.

  “We got to go after them!” she is hollering and tries to move the car but the right tires just spin in the mud of the ditch.

  Mr. Aaron is pulling out his cellphone and mashing those little buttons, his thumbs just a-flying. He listens a minute and then shakes his head. “Line’s busy—I was hoping to warn Kenny they were heading his way.”

  Dorothy puts the car into reverse and guns it but it ain’t no use. We climb out of the vehicle and stand there looking at how deep the wheels is buried—most up to the hubs.

  “I’ll try again,” Mr. Aaron says. “Maintenance has a tractor—I’ll get them to pull you out … if Kenny’ll just pick up …”

  His thumbs skip around again, and when he holds the phone to his ear, all at once his face brightens up. “Kenny, it’s Jake. Those maniacs in the white van ran us into a ditch up on Skyway Circle. Can you get maintenance to come pull us—”

  And then he hushes up. His face gets real solemn and he pooches out his lips like he’s thinking real hard and then nods.

  “Okay, Kenny. We’ll wait.”

  He sticks the phone back in the little holster he has on his belt. “Ladies,” he says, “forgive the expression but all hell has broken loose.”

  Chapter 48

  A Bag of Oranges

  Sunday, May 6

  (Calven)

  The high-pitched scream brought Calven out of the bed and to his feet even before he was fully awake. It broke off just as he realized that he was standing in utter blackness with no clear idea of how he’d gotten there. Holding his breath, he listened and tried to get his bearings. An undertone of muffled thuds and stifled grunts and cries, accompanied by a steady stream of brutal words, seeped through the thin walls of the little house.

  Pook didn’t sound angry or excited—and that made it all the worse, Calven thought. The voice saying all those hateful things was calm and relaxed—as if Pook were enjoying himself by playing some mildly amusing game.

  Calven groped his way toward the unseen door. When his hand touched the cheap paneling of the wall, he felt his way along it till he found the doorknob. Without much hope, he turned it and gave an experimental tug, but as he’d expected, the door stayed closed—still bolted on the outside.

  Putting his ear to the door, Calven listened, flinching at each new thud. It was an old familiar scene being played out in the bedroom next door, but he couldn’t ignore it, not when he knew that this time it was his fault.

  Wasn’t like it was something new; Mama’s boyfriends had beat her up before. It seemed like it was just the way of things, though Calven had never understood what made her want to take up with that kind of man. And why did she make such lame excuses for them? It was my fault, she’d say, I shouldn’t have made him mad. He didn’t mean nothing by it—he swears he’ll never hit me again.

  Those boyfriends though, they’d most always been drunk or high on something when they started hitting her. Pook didn’t seem to care about liquor or drugs though. He gets high on hurting people, Calven realized, suddenly feeling too old for his years.

  After the burglar alarm in the big fancy house had gone off, right when he was opening the back door for Pook and the others, there hadn’t been
time for anything but hightailing it out of there. Calven had been on the floor the whole time, tossed around as the van sped down the twisting mountain road. No one had said anything. There had been one quick stop when he figured they must be changing the license plate again, but he had laid low, fearing what Pook might do.

  Pook had done nothing. Not then. It had been almost dark when they arrived back at the little house and Calven was finally allowed up off the floor of the van. As he climbed out and tried to shake the stiffness out of his cramped legs, he saw Pook watching him.

  “You fucked up big-time, Good Boy.”

  That was all. Pook had disappeared into the house, followed by Darrell, who gave an uneasy glance back, then hurried to catch up.

  “Help me carry this stuff in, baby.” His mama had pulled several bulging white plastic grocery bags from the back of the van and handed them to him. She couldn’t seem to look him in the eye, just loaded him up with things to carry.

  They made three trips before all the supplies they had bought that morning were on the kitchen counters—crackers, cans of sardines and Vienna sausages, plastic bottles of soft drinks, beef jerky, boxes of cookies, and an unexpected bag of oranges.

  When he asked for one, his mouth watering at the thought of something that wasn’t fast food, Prin shook her head. “Those are Pook’s. Leave them alone, you hear?”

  She had laid out two flat boxes with cold pizza in them for supper. Though Calven didn’t feel much like eating, he had choked down a couple of sausage-covered slices, then made for his room, hoping that his bungling the job might be forgotten by morning. Forgotten would be his only hope; there was no chance of forgiveness from Pook.

  Pook hadn’t forgotten, Calven realized, as he stood in the darkness listening to his mother’s stifled cries. He’s doing like he said: Mama gets the whupping because I done screwed up. But I couldn’t help it. They didn’t tell me they was two alarm systems—

  The sounds were changing now. Prin was still whimpering but Calven could hear a door opening and footsteps coming near. Panicked, he stumbled blindly back toward his cot, fell onto it, and pulled the sleeping bag over his head.

  The bolt slid back; the door opened; and there was a thumping of feet and a final bump as something hit against his bed. From beneath the edge of the sleeping bag, Calven could see the beam of a powerful flashlight sweep the room.

  “Okay, Princess, you can spend the night in here with your sorry brat—let him lay awake listening to you blubber.”

  The light disappeared as the door slammed shut. The bolt was clicked home and a quavering voice whispered, “Calven? Baby? It’s Mama.”

  He scooted over to make room on the narrow lumpy mattress and unzipped the sleeping bag to make a blanket that would cover them both. Prin eased herself onto the narrow bed, saying nothing but gasping slightly with the effort of each movement.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she whispered as she curled up on her side with her back to him.

  Calven reached out his hand and felt her back, bony through the thin T-shirt. There was a sharp intake of breath. “Don’t—”

  “Are you okay, Mama?” Calven flattened out his hand and laid it as gently as he could manage on her shoulder. Her fingers came up to brush against his.

  “I’ll be fine, baby. There’ll be bruises but ain’t nothing broke. That’s why he uses the oranges—something he seen in a movie one time. You put oranges in a pillowcase and when you whup on someone with them, it hurts like shit. But except for the bruises, it don’t do no real damage.”

  Prin made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I wouldn’t be no good to him with broken ribs or a ruptured spleen, now would I? A few bruises don’t matter on me. But you’re different. Send a kid out covered in bruises and folks’ll take notice.”

  Calven froze, black guilt flooding his mind.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispered. “If I hadn’t of screwed up—”

  Her fingers closed on his. “Hush now, baby boy. Let’s talk about something else … something nice … Tell me what all you been doing while I was away.”

  Away was one way of saying it, he thought as she squeezed his hand. Prin had been in the hospital, trying to pull off some kind of insurance scam. At least that was what he’d overheard Dorothy and Miss Birdie clucking over. Then she had disappeared—run off without settling the big hospital bill—run off without a backward glance at her only child.

  He wanted to accuse her, to tell her how he had felt when he learned that she was gone. He wanted to yell and say he hated her, that he was glad Pook had hurt her, that he wished the damage had been as deep as the wounds on his own heart. He wanted to hit her himself. He wanted her to hug him.

  “C’mon, baby. We haven’t had hardly any chance to talk. Tell me something nice about what you been doing since I had to go off.”

  Calven hesitated. What do you care? he thought, the words beginning to take shape in his mouth.

  Mama ran a cold finger up and down the hills and valleys of his right hand. “Your Mamaw Mag said you was doing right good in school.”

  “School’s okay,” he heard himself saying, and then there was so much more to tell her—the A in math he was sure of this grading period and the special report he and Kevin had done on Hot Springs and how his science project had gotten a blue ribbon and how he was learning to play baseball and how the coach had said he had the makings of a good shortstop.

  And all the time Mama’s fingers kept stroking his hand and she kept saying, “That’s nice, baby,” or “My, but I’m proud of you!”

  At last he ran down and his eyelids began to drift shut. “That’s about it, I reckon. And ol’ Dor’thy’s been real good to me. She’s some cook …”

  Prin’s hand squeezed his, harder than he would have thought she could, and she whispered real low. “Listen, son, it’s good that you’re happy with Dorothy. You remember that I said that … if anything was to happen … if I was to have to take off again, I want you to go back to Dorothy, you hear?”

  Before he could protest, could say that he wanted her and him to get away from Pook, that he wanted to live with her again, not with Dorothy, the fingers had begun the hypnotic stroking once more and his mama had asked, “Your Mamaw Mag says you have a girlfriend. Tell me about her.”

  His eyes were closed and he was too sleepy to pretend not to know who she meant. He hadn’t thought of Heather as a girlfriend—not yet. But it was tempting to stretch the truth just a little.

  “Yeah, me and Heather does stuff together. I’m teaching her how to use a .22 and she helps me with my English homework. She’s pretty hot looking too. And she’s real nice even though her family is rich Yankees.” Heather’s dark hair and the enticing swell of her tank top came to mind and he felt Mr. Johnson stir next to the hidden cellphone.

  The telephone … he wondered if he should tell Mama … but now she was asking more about Heather and her folks and the fingers was sliding over his hand just as soft … and he was answering all her questions …

  “Yeah, her folks are all the time going off on business trips. They’re out in California right now.… They got a babysitter—some old lady from Asheville comes out and stays with Heather when they’re gone. But Heather can sneak out any time she wants—the old lady’s a sound sleeper … her and me one time …”

  On he rambled, mixing what had happened with what he hoped might happen, till the answers to his mama’s questions merged seamlessly into a hazy, glorious dream where he and Heather were alone on a sunlit mountainside …

  When Calven opened his eyes, the room was filled with morning light. Mama was gone and the door was open. Somewhere in the house he could hear people talking.

  After stepping outside to whiz, he shambled toward the kitchen, where Mama and Pook and Darrell were sitting around the table, eating the rest of the stale pizza. Mama’s face was pale but she looked up and gave him a kind of sickly smile. She had on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and he couldn’t see any sig
n of the bruises.

  Darrell nodded at Calven, then returned to the job at hand. Taking another slice of pizza the big man folded it longways, and began to feed it into his mouth with steady concentration. As he swallowed, his free hand reached for another slice.

  “Morning, Sunshine.” Pook turned to look at Calven, training the blank black stare of the sunglasses on him. “Like I told you, Good Boy, you fucked up big yesterday. But your mama’s done paid your debt and we’re gonna move on. And this time, there best be no mistakes, you hear what I’m saying?”

  In the harsh morning light Pook’s skin was paper white—lifeless and cold-looking. The sunlight bounced off the dark glasses and picked out the map of tiny wrinkles on his face. It took all of Calven’s willpower to force himself to move toward the empty chair Pook had pulled out from the table. The pale man took a last bite of pizza and spoke as he chewed, revealing a stomach-turning confusion of brown teeth, white crust, and red sauce.

  “Thanks to you, Good Boy, we can’t go back to Wildcat Reach. And picking pockets may be fun but it ain’t no living. What I got in mind is a one-time thing—give us enough cash to get us out of the country and set us up for a good long while. There’s places a man can live like a king on five million dollars.”

  “I reckon you could live like a king around here with just a million dollars,” Calven hazarded, happy to be back in Pook’s good graces—the threat of danger a little farther away.

  Pook leaned down to pick up something beside his chair. “Might be that one time you could. But in today’s economy, a million ain’t what it used to be. Now, in Mexico or maybe Costa Rica … and besides, after we pull off this job, it won’t be healthy to stay in the country. Once the FBI get their noses in—”

  “You gone rob a bank?” Calven reached for a piece of the cheese and ham and bacon pizza. Not a bad breakfast, though he was ready to eat something hot for a change.