Flies on the Butter

by Denise Hildreth Jones

  “I could indeed borrow your restroom, if you don’t mind.”

  “Well, ma’am, we don’t need you to borrow it. Just use it for as long as you need to. It’s back there past the toilet paper.”

  “That’s an obvious place.” she mumbled to herself, trying not to break into a run.

  The small bathroom smelled of Lysol and was stocked with every automotive magazine published in the last decade. Obviously Clint got most of his reading accomplished back here. Rose washed her hands, left the bathroom, and headed straight for the door.

  “You ever tried one of these, miss?” The little boy held up a 100 Grand Bar, effectively stopping her.

  She knelt down beside him. “Oh yeah,” she said, touching the candy bar with her index finger. “That is actually my favorite candy bar.”

  “No way. You’re joshing me.”

  She laughed at his animated features. “I promise. That is my very favorite. It has caramel and crispy rice, and chocolate. It’s delicious.” She scanned the shelves for other delicacies. “Ooh, I loved these too,” she said, picking up a Fun Dip pack.

  “Ooh, yeah. Those are my favorites,” he said, plucking the candy from her hand and tucking it with all his other candy into the curve of his sling.

  She grabbed a pack of Gobstoppers. “Ever had these?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah.” He snatched those too. “I got these after I saw that movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I think Johnny Depp is really cool.”

  She smiled at him and wondered if he had ever seen the real one. Gene Wilder had been a master in the classic. She tapped his cast. “How’d you break that arm?”

  “Oh, I just fell out of a tree,” he said, raising the right side of his lip and nodding his head.

  “A big tree?”

  “Huge,” he replied, clearly enjoying his audience.

  “My brother broke his arm once.”

  “Really? Did he fall out of a tree too?”

  “No, he fell off a ladder.”

  “Ooh, cool,” he said, chomping a piece of gum she hoped he had come in with but wasn’t about to ask. “How’d he fall off the ladder?”

  For a moment Rose couldn’t remember why Christopher was even on the ladder. But then it all came back. The hole in the screen door. The switch. The punishment. The ladder.

  “Bobby Dean, you’ve got to scoot over. You’re not in the strike zone,” Christopher said, standing on his makeshift pitcher’s mound as Bobby Dean squatted several yards in front of him.

  Bobby Dean slammed his fist into his catcher’s mitt. “Quit your yapping and just throw the ball.”

  Rosey was on third base, wanting to come home.

  Christopher wound up the next pitch. It came high and outside. So high it made its way to Mamaw’s front porch. And so wide it made its way right through her screen door. All three players gasped and flung their hands over their mouths, just waiting. They didn’t have long to wait.

  In no time flat that screen door flew open and Mamaw burst out of it, spatula in her hand and orange and black apron wrapped around her lime green dress. It was a brilliant display of fireworks. “How many times have I told you boys to play ball farther over in the parking lot?”

  “But, Mamaw, then they might break one of God’s windows,” Rosey offered.

  “Well, Rosey, God’s got a little more money than Mamaw. Now, boys, because you disobeyed me, go out there and pull a switch and bring it on in here to me.” And the screen door closed. It seemed to close with an exceptionally loud bang; either that, or all of their senses had become increasingly sharpened.

  Rosey hated it when Christopher got a spanking. It hurt her worse than it hurt him. But the look of fear on his and Bobby Dean’s faces proved they weren’t the strong ten-year-old men she had thought they were. Bobby Dean and Christopher shuffled to the almost-barren tree in the backyard. Rosey tried to brush off the bottom of her denim shorts, still caked with dust from her slide into second, then ran to her mamaw.

  “Oh, Mamaw, please don’t whip those boys,” she said, dashing into the kitchen, her bare feet slapping the pine floors, then the kitchen linoleum. “They didn’t mean it. They were just out there playing and laughing and thinking about how good God’s been to them.”

  “Rosey Lawson, don’t you bring God into this. He didn’t have anything to do with those boys disobeying their mamaw.” She turned her back on Rosey as she flipped the corn bread fritters that were frying in her cast-iron skillet.

  Rosey ran around the dinner table in the middle of the kitchen and tugged at her mamaw’s apron. Big tears fell from her eyes. “But surely, Mamaw, there’s another way. Surely you can make them do something that doesn’t mean they have to get a whippin’. Daddy takes a doll away from me. Take their gloves. Take their ball. But please, please, Mamaw”—she tugged harder—“please don’t give them a whippin’ today.”

  Mamaw and Rosey turned around at the sound of the screen door to behold the two dejected souls entering. There they stood, each with a glove hanging from one hand and a switch from the other.

  Rosey cried out one more time. “PLEASE, MAMAW. PLEEEEEEEEEASE.”

  “Rosey, Rosey . . .” Mamaw said, leaning down to capture Rosey’s attention. “Okay, baby girl . . . It’s okay. Mamaw will show these boys mercy today, because of how you have pleaded for them.”

  Mamaw studied the two boys. Rosey noticed that the blood seemed to be flowing back into their faces at this revelation of deliverance. “You two don’t ever need to forget this,” Mamaw said. She wiped her hands on her apron. “No switches for you today, because of Rosey.”

  Mamaw put her arm around Rosey’s shoulder and drew her close. She ran Rosey’s ponytail through her hand. “But you two will have a punishment. You are to go get Grand-daddy’s ladder and clean those leaves out of the gutter. That will save him from having to do it.”

  The two boys ran to the trash can, threw away their rods of punishment, and darted back outside. Christopher looked back and gave Rosey a smile. Mamaw knelt down and wiped the tears from Rosey’s face. “You okay, baby girl?”

  Rosey flung her arms around her mamaw’s neck. “Yes, Mamaw, yes. Thank you, thank you,” she said into her ear.

  “You’re welcome, baby girl. You’re welcome.”

  Rosey wriggled away and ran out onto the porch to see what help she could offer the two redeemed derelicts.

  The leaves were protruding from the gutters all the way around the house. Rosey heard the clanging of the ladder and the grunts of the two boys before she saw them. When they came into view, they were tugging the metal monstrosity across the front yard. Their muscles were showing, the ones they liked to flex in the mirror for Rosey as if they were the next Mr. Olympia. They would even cut off the sleeves of their T-shirts at the shoulders in the obvious hope that the world would enjoy the view of their newfound manhood. But their bulges weren’t proving much of a match for the ladder.

  “What are you boys doing?” Rosey’s daddy asked as he came out of the front door of the church.

  “They’re getting out of a whipping,” Rosey said, running across the wooden planks and down the three small steps at the side and into her daddy’s waiting arms.

  He kissed her cheek, and they both turned to watch Christopher and Bobby Dean. “Have they been naughty boys, baby girl?”

  “Well, not real naughty,” Rosey explained. “Mamaw said they weren’t obeying her, but actually Bobby Dean just wouldn’t scoot over far enough to catch the ball. But I didn’t want to see them get a whipping, Daddy, so I begged Mamaw to have mercy on them. She says cleaning those gutters is her mercy.” She patted her daddy on the back.

  He set her down on the pavement of the parking lot. “Let me help you fellas,” he offered, walking over and lifting the ladder. Rosey was relieved when her daddy leaned it against the house and the clanging stopped.

  “We got it, Dad,” Christopher assured him.

  “Okay, okay. You boys have at it,” he said, rubb
ing the top of Christopher’s head. He turned his attention back to Rosey. “What are we going to do with you, little firecracker?” he asked, touching the new tear on the side of her red bandanna-style halter top. “You keep chasing after these boys, and look what happens!” Rosey could tell by his tone that he wasn’t really angry. “Your mama and I are going to run up to the store to get some groceries,” he added. “Want to come?”

  “Nah, they might need my help around here,” she said, surveying her workers, who were beginning their ascent up the ladder.

  “Rosey, we got this covered,” Bobby Dean assured her.

  She wasn’t convinced. So she didn’t move.

  “Well, come home for dinner. Your mama’s cooking meat loaf tonight.”

  Rosey wrinkled her nose. She hated meat loaf. Especially her mama’s. It always came out with the smell of fire. “Daddy, I want to eat with Mamaw. She’s already got dinner almost ready.”

  He leaned down and looked into her eyes. She knew he was serious when he did that. “You be home by five. Your mama is cooking, and we’re going to eat it.”

  “One day she’s going to kill us,” Rosey said, completely convinced of her evaluation.

  Her daddy turned away quickly to hide a smile, then started walking toward home.

  “Y’all better move that ladder!” Rosey warned, watching Christopher as he reached as far as he could. Bobby Dean had one foot propped on the edge of the ladder, which made it easier to chew his fingernails. He was about as worthless as a snow cone in winter.

  He spit a nail out and hollered back, “He’s got it, Rosey. Just leave him alone.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Bobby Dean,” she retorted.

  The teetering of the ladder caught them all off guard. By the time the top of the ladder started heading sideways, Bobby Dean jerked it for all he was worth, but Christopher’s weight was entirely too much for him to retrieve. Rosey watched it all in slow motion. The struggle. Christopher trying to grab the gutter, getting nothing but a handful of leaves, the leaning and slow topple of the ladder as the metal slid along the house, clanging all the way down.

  Christopher’s holler, Bobby Dean’s grunt, and Rosey’s scream—all got Mamaw and Granddaddy running out of the house and her daddy running back up the street as fast as they could. But it was too late to remedy the inevitable. Christopher fell sideways into the porch railing, which then catapulted him into the shrubbery. By the time Rosey got to him, the bottom part of his arm was angled not so prettily on the top part of his arm.

  Mamaw reached him next, saying, “Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, help my boy, Lord. Don’t let him be dead, sweet Jesus.”

  By the sound of his screams, Christopher had to be hoping for dead.

  “He ain’t dead, Mamaw!” Rosey confirmed. “He ain’t dead!” No one corrected her English.

  Their daddy lifted Christopher gently out of the bushes and carried him straight to Granddaddy’s pickup truck. “Mace, you drive, and drive as fast as you can,” he instructed.

  Mamaw hurried the rest of them into the car, and they sped to the hospital in fast pursuit of Granddaddy’s pickup truck. By the time they made it to the hospital, Christopher and Daddy were in the back with the doctor. A nurse took Mama immediately to be with them. And there Rosey sat, with Mamaw and Granddaddy and Bobby Dean, knowing this was all her fault.

  When her parents made their way back to the waiting room, they informed the weary waiters that Christopher was going to have to be in the hospital for three weeks with his arm in traction over his head. The doctor said his arm might never grow at the same rate as the other, so it could affect his ability to play ball in the future. And on top of it all, no kids under ten years old were allowed in his room.

  Rosey started dying a slow death. She and Christopher had never been apart longer than a night for a sleepover. For three solid days she couldn’t eat. She couldn’t drink. Well, except Mamaw’s half-frozen Cokes. On the third afternoon, after Rosey exited the school bus, she just meandered around the front yard, kicking at the ground with the toe of her sandals. She had been forced to wear shoes to school. She had protested. She hadn’t won.

  Her daddy appeared suddenly and guided her to the car.

  “Where are we going, Daddy?” she asked, not caring very much.

  “We’re going someplace special, baby girl.”

  Even when he pulled into the hospital parking lot, Rosey didn’t feel better. He sneaked her up a back set of stairs and right into Christopher’s room. Christopher was lying flat, his head tilted up by a pillow, his arm in the air above him, with a stack of comic books beside him that their mama had brought him. The schoolbooks on the chair next to his bed looked neglected.

  “Rosey!” he said when he saw her, his face lighting up.

  Rosey ran to the side of the bed and grabbed his good hand. Tears started streaming down her face.

  “Don’t cry, Rosey. I’m going to be okay.”

  “But it’s all my fault!” she wailed.

  “Rosey, it’s not your fault. It’s my fault.” He patted her hand, trying to console her. “Remember, you hollered at me not to lean over so far, and I didn’t even listen to you.”

  “No, but if I had just let Mamaw give you a whipping, you wouldn’t have ever been on the ladder in the first place.”

  Her daddy scooted another chair close to the bed, sat down, and pulled Rosey into his lap.

  “Rosey,” Christopher laughed. “It’s okay, really. I would much rather be sitting here in this bed, not having to go to school, than having to get one of Mamaw’s whippings.”

  She sniffled her snot. “Really?”

  “Really. And look,” he said, pointing toward the television hanging from the wall in front of the bed. “I can just lay here and watch TV all day!”

  “That is so cool,” she said, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.

  “And watch this.” He pressed a button.

  Almost instantly a woman in a nurse’s uniform appeared, sticking her head through the door. “Do you need something, Christopher?”

  Rosey’s eyes grew huge, and she peeked around her father at the nurse. Her daddy moved slightly to try to shield her from view.

  “I was just wonderin’—,” started Christopher.

  “Wondering,” their daddy corrected.

  “—wondering if I could have some more of that red Jell-O when you bring me my lunch,” he said, snickering quietly at Rosey.

  She covered her mouth and snickered too.

  “I’ll see what I can do about that for you,” the woman’s soft voice responded. And her head was gone.

  “See, Rosey? This place is the greatest. Though it’s not Mamaw’s food or nothin’.”

  “Anything,” their daddy corrected again.

  “Or anything, but it is pretty cool.”

  Rosey looked at his arm, fascinated by the contraption holding it up in the air, and her face registered her concern. “Does your arm hurt?”

  “A little sometimes. But they’ve got medicine for that.” He shrugged his shoulders as if this place had the answer for everything.

  Rosey leaned over and laid her head on his shoulder. “Well, I’m glad you’re having fun and all, but I sure do miss you,” she said.

  Christopher tilted his head to kiss her temple. “I sure do miss you too, Rosey. But I’ll be home soon, and you know what? I’m going to listen to you better when I get home too.”

  She popped her head up. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. I might even let you join the baseball team.”

  Rosey knew her face showed her approval.

  When a nurse brought in lunch, she saw Rosey and gave her daddy a severe look. But before the nurse could say a word, Rosey and Daddy responded with their best pleading expressions. They worked. She relented and soon reappeared with one more container of cherry Jell-O.

  Something tugged at Rose’s sleeve. “Miss, miss! I said, did your brother’s arm grow back okay?” asked the l
ittle boy in the drugstore aisle.

  She smiled at his little face. “It grew perfectly,” she confirmed. And it had. Even to the amazement of the doctors.

  “Come on, little fella,” the child’s mother said as she headed toward them. “We’ve got to get home. They say we could get some freezing rain here shortly.”

  “Nice talking to you, lady.” His small hand shot her a good-bye wave.

  Rose was still kneeling down in front of the counter. She had blown most every rule she possessed today. And squatting there, staring at all of her favorite candy from her childhood, she decided she may as well just cross on over into the land of the absurd. She grabbed a 100 Grand Bar, some Gobstoppers, and a pack of Fun Dip. She had no idea how she’d eat that and drive, but maybe she could eat it in bed tonight while Charlotte caught her up on everything that she needed to be caught up on. She grabbed one more Fun Dip. Charlotte had loved them too.

  Clint was behind the counter, picking a small piece of lint from his Tarheel sweatshirt. “Got everything you need, ma’am?”

  She looked down at the pile and smiled. “I’m not sure need is the appropriate word.”

  He rang up the items. “Oh, everybody needs a little candy every once in awhile. That will be two dollars and forty-nine cents.”

  Rose reached into her wallet. There was no cash. She shifted her receipts around and checked between them. Not a piece of green to be found anywhere. She studied her credit cards. Surely there was one in there that didn’t have the name Fletcher on it. She pulled them out and fanned them, checking each name.

  “Do you need me to spot you, ma’am?”

  She laughed that embarrassed, “Don’t be silly” laugh. “No, I just thought I had some cash. Well, I hate to use a credit card for this little amount. I’ll just put it back,” she said, reaching for the candy.

  He placed his hand on top of the pile. “It’s okay. People will come in here and spend a dollar and put it on their credit card. You look like you might need some candy today. Just give me whatever you’ve got.”

  Rose laid her Visa on the counter, hoping he wouldn’t look too closely.