A Place Of Light

by Mary Bucci Bush

The Lorellis were her father’s friends. Everybody was her father’s friend. But nobody knew how to work for him.

  Right before Christmas, Josie’s mother and father had had a fight. Now he had to hand over all his money as soon as he got it so Josie’s mother could pay the bills. “It’s either that, or there’s the door,” she told him. She stood in front of him, pointing her finger as she talked, and her dark hair bounced every time she pointed. She only came up to his chest.

  “You run everything else,” he shouted back at her. “You may as well run this, too.”

  “Thank God somebody in this house knows how to run things,” she said, “or we’d all be out on the street.”

  Now her father shook his head at Josie. “You can’t be a boss and a nice guy, too.” That’s what he always said. He picked up the ledger and waved it in the air. “See what I get? I’m going broke, that’s what.”

  “If it wasn’t for me,” Josie’s mother said, “you’d be worse than broke.” She turned and gave him that look. “If it wasn’t for me, you know where you’d be with that business of yours.”

  Her father dropped the ledger on the table. He threw both hands up in the air and leaned back in his seat. Then he dropped his hands on the table. “Do you know how much that hospital room cost for one day, for Christ’s sake?”

  Josie waited for him to answer, but he didn’t say how much it cost.

  “What the hell.” He pushed the ledger away and reached for part of the Sunday paper.

  Her mother lifted the lid and dumped a handful of salt in. Every once in a while she’d start to hum, a few notes that weren’t even a tune. She’d catch herself and stop. But then she’d start up again, the same few notes that didn’t sound like anything.

  That funny feeling in Josie’s stomach wouldn’t go away. It wasn’t the operation: something else. Like when she watched a parade and the drums went by, booming so hard that they shook her insides, and she had to wrap her arms around herself and hold on.

  “Get the napkins, will you?” her mother said to her, and suddenly she felt a little better.

  When Josie opened the cupboard behind her father he said, “She doesn’t look so good.”

  She turned to see what he meant.

  Her mother shrugged. “What do you expect?” she said. She went to the refrigerator and took out the dish of grated cheese and set it on the table, next to the stack of plates and silverware. She moved the loaf of bread Josie’s father had picked up at the bakery that morning and put it on the table.

  “Clear those things away,” she told Josie’s father. She pushed the newspaper and ledger in front of him.

  Then she raised the back of her hand to Josie’s forehead, so quickly that it made Josie’s head jerk back. Her mother’s dark eyes burned a hole right through her. Josie looked into those eyes, afraid of what her mother was finding out.

  “Tie your bathrobe,” she said. “Before you trip and break your neck.”

  Josie looked down at the belt trailing on the floor.

  And then the lid on the pot started clanging and her mother hurried back up the stool.

  There had been that odd night in the hospital when visiting hours were over but her mother stayed. She stood by the bed, looking at Josie for the longest time, and her face was soft and puffy, like something was happening to it. She leaned over the bed railing toward her, and just before their faces touched, her mother straightened up. She patted the railing so hard that the bed shook. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. She said it again, and left.

  Her mother dumped the macaroni into the boiling water and stirred. “Nick,” she told Josie’s father, “get those boys in here to set the table.”

  “God Almighty,” he said. He stood and swept the papers and ledger together and carried them out of the room.

  “You’re not supposed to be on your feet like that after an operation,” her mother told her. “Sit down and fold the, napkins.”

  Josie put her own hand to her forehead. The skin felt cool. She was sure it was supposed to feel warm. Warm or hot.

  “You set the table,” Al shouted to Robbie in the next room.

  They were always fighting. And Robbie hated her, and she hadn’t done a thing. It was because he had to share a room with Al. “I don’t see why she gets her own room,” he cried to their parents. When no one was looking, he would punch her arm.

  If she cried, her father started yelling: “I should get rid of all three of you. I should rent your rooms out and get something back for all my trouble.”

  And then her mother would answer him, “If anybody moves out I can tell you right now who it’s going to be. I can tell you right now who should be getting something back for all her trouble.”

  It was usually Josie’s job to set the table, but her mother had told her to get the napkins. And sit down.

  “I had to go to three different stores to get the pudding you like,” her mother told her. “And I got your whipped cream, too.”

  But Josie didn’t care about pudding and whipped cream. She wanted to know what had happened to her costume.

  Her mother sighed again, louder. “I should have been the one to stay in the hospital.”

  Before the operation, Josie had never stayed away from home for even one night. She was afraid to sleep in a strange place. Even when the pain in her stomach got so bad that she couldn’t stand up, she begged them to let her stay home. But then everything happened so fast, and they gave her the operation, and she didn’t have time to think about it.

  Now she was back home, and she wanted to cry.

  “Nick, boys,” her mother called out. She spooned a piece of macaroni from the pot and blew on it, then popped it into her mouth. Josie could tell by the way her mother’s hair moved that she was chewing hard and fast – like she did everything.

  “What did you do with my – ?” Josie blurted. “The angel wings,” she said.

  Her mother turned and gave her a terrible look. But then she turned back to the stove. “I gave everything to the nuns. Let them worry about it.”

  And that was that.

  The slippers weren’t really part of the costume, even though her mother had said she could wear them in the play. But her mother must have given the slippers away. She couldn’t have, Josie thought, and she looked at her, trying to figure it out.

  A witch, her friend Evelyn had said. But she was wrong. Except that her mother knew everything, if that’s what being one meant.

  When Josie’s grandmother died, everybody at the funeral home said how awful she looked. “What do you expect?” her mother told them. And then she acted like everything was so very normal, and nothing at all was changed, while Josie’s grandmother lay stiff under a pile of smelly flowers. Her mother knelt in front of the casket a long time. Then she patted her grandmother’s dress and got up fast and left. Later, they gave away all her clothes. “Are you folding those napkins?” her mother said.

  “You better fold a few extra ones.”

  “Why?” Josie wanted to know.

  “So we’ll have them,” her mother said.

  Josie watched her mother stir the sauce. The way her arms moved back and forth from one big pot to another reminded her of a policeman directing traffic.

  And then the truth hit her, so hard that she had to catch her breath. Her mother had cooked too much, just like last year when everybody came to their house after the funeral. She had known what had happened to her all along, even when Josie was in the hospital, but wouldn’t tell her.

  Pretty soon they’d have to say it, though. And then Robbie would get her room.

  But when he moved into her room, what would happen to her?

  Josie’s legs felt funny. She sat down at the table. Everything was so bright: the bright plates and silverware, the light reflecting off the shiny tabletop, the white napkins, the white bread wrapper.

  She could smell the bread. The curved end of the loaf stuck out of its wrapper, and she touched it. It was warm. Sometimes she
went to the bakery with her father, and he always bought her something for a treat.

  She edged the loaf out of the wrapper and tried to break off a little piece. But the bread was soft and mashed in her hands. She looked over to see if her mother was watching.

  Josie got the piece off. She popped it into her mouth, and as soon as she started chewing she realized how hungry she was.

  Josie broke off another piece. The bread tasted sweet and made her feel warm, the way she felt when she curled up under the covers on her bed. It was almost like being in a dream.

  She looked out from the dream and saw her mother take up the pot holders, lift the heavy pot, and carry it down the step stool and over to the sink. The steam trailed behind her in slow white curls, like funny long antlers. She glanced at Josie, then dumped the water into the colander. A cloud of steam rose up and covered her face.

  But the bread wasn’t going anywhere; Josie couldn’t feel it in her stomach. She broke off another piece, and this time she hardly chewed before she swallowed. She had to hold the loaf in both hands to pull the pieces off. And while she ate she watched her mother and thought of how everyone was pretending she’d had the operation in time.

  But she didn’t feel any way at all about it.

  The cloud broke apart, and her mother’s face came back, first one part, then another. When the whole face was there, she looked like she wanted to run at Josie and grab her. But her hands were full, so she couldn’t move.

  “Nick,” she called.

  Josie turned to see, but her father wasn’t in the room.

  Her mother called again, louder, “Nick, come here.” She held the pot in her hands while she watched the doorway.

  “Nick!” her mother called, and at last her father hurried into the room.

  “What the hell?” he said. “What happened?”

  Her mother motioned at Josie with her chin. “Look at her,” she said. “Make her stop.”

  So it was happening. She was starting to go, even though she didn’t want to.

  “Nick,” her mother said. “For God’s sake, I’ve only got two hands.”

  Her father straightened up and gave her the queerest look. He walked over and touched her shoulder, but she couldn’t feel a thing.

  “Honey,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  Everything was all mixed up. He never called her “Honey.”

  Let him, she thought. If they really wanted her they could have thrown their arms around her and held on. They could have made her stay. It didn’t matter, though, because she wasn’t going to leave, even if she was dead. She tore at the bread.

  “Honey, why are you doing that?” he asked. He reached his hand out toward her.

  But she pulled back and held on. She kept eating.

  She wasn’t going to let him take the bread from her. She wasn’t going to let them take anything.

  MUSKRAT

  They were going to trap for muskrat because Carr’s Hardware was paying seventy-five cents a pelt. But they only had two traps and all the stores were sold out. The one place left to get traps was from Charlie Coe.

  They walked to Charlie Coe’s, but they did not stop at the little house where his mother lived. Instead, they followed the two-by-eights that led over the mud to Charlie Coe’s shack behind his mother’s house. The younger boy thought they should turn back. The older boy laughed and called him “Scaredy.” There was chicken wire over the windows of the shack, and dirty plastic over the wire, so they could not see in. They stood there looking at the door, not knowing if they should knock or call out. They could hear pigeons. Then Charlie Coe opened the door. They looked at his bald head and his smooth white skin.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked them.

  “Muskrat traps,” they said.

  “There’s no muskrat traps here,” he told them.

  “Old Man Carr said you had some,” the older boy said.

  The boys kept looking at his bald head and his pale skin. His eyes seemed almost pink.

  Charlie Coe pulled the door open and told the boys to come in. They heard pigeon sounds and rustling. Then he closed the door. A light bulb hung from the ceiling. They could see wooden boxes nailed to the walls and inside the boxes, pigeons. They saw the unlit iron stove with a soup can on top of it. They saw the army cot near the window, and on it, an open magazine.

  “Maybe I got one or two left,” Charlie Coe told them. He knelt alongside the cot and began looking through a box of junk. Then without looking up he reached onto the cot for the magazine. His hand touched the woman on the page as he closed it and turned it over.

  They stared at him as he looked through the box of junk. They stared at his bald head because Charlie Coe was not an old man or any kind of man. He had just quit high school.

  “There’s nothing in here,” he told them.

  He stood up and felt along the top of a row of pigeon nests. He put his hand into one of the boxes and smoothed the feathers on the bird. “She’s been laying,” he told them.

  The younger boy looked at his older friend. Russell jammed his fists into his pockets and nodded, squinting his eyes, as if he understood, as if he and Charlie Coe were talking men’s talk.

  Charlie Coe went over to the other wall and felt along the top of the boxes. He pulled down a rusty trap. “I knew that bastard was in here somewhere,” he said. He held it by the chain in front of the two boys. “How much you got?” he asked them.

  “It’s too rusty,” the older boy said. “It won’t work.”

  Charlie Coe handed it to him. “Try it.”

  Russell bent over and pushed his foot down on the trap, but it would not open. Then the younger boy, Tim, tried. “Ain’t you ever worked a trap before?” Charlie Coe asked them. “Ain’t you ever trapped?” He laughed. “A couple of greenhorns?”

  “The trap’s no good,” Russell told him. He didn’t want Charlie Coe thinking he was a greenhorn.

  Charlie Coe took it from them. He held it in one hand and opened it. They looked at his big pink hand and wrist. He put the trap on the floor. He broke a piece of wood from one of the boxes and touched the wood to the center of the trap. It sprang, making a thwacking sound, and bounced against the floor. They looked at the closed trap with the piece of wood caught in it.

  “You put a little machine oil on it,” Charlie Coe said. “Rust ain’t nothing. How much you got?”

  “We’ll give you a quarter,” Russell said.

  Charlie Coe made a noise that sounded like he was trying to laugh. “I’ll take seventy-five cents.”

  “They hardly cost more than that new,” Tim said.

  “Get one new,” Charlie Coe told him.

  They took money from their pockets and stood together whispering. They gave the money to Charlie Coe and he gave them the trap.

  “You want to buy a pigeon?” Charlie Coe asked them. He went to one of the boxes and lifted out a bird. He put it on the cot. The bird arched its neck and stuck its tail feathers into the air.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Tim asked.

  “Didn’t you ever see a fantail?” Charlie Coe said. He picked up the pigeon and held it. He made a noise to it with his tongue and the bird pecked his finger. He put the bird near his face and called it “Baby.”

  He put the pigeon back, took out another, and held it close to his jacket. “I can show you something,” Charlie Coe told them. “This is an eight-dollar bird.” He took them outside and closed the door.

  They looked at him in the bright outside light. They saw the fine white fuzz on the top of his head when he bent his head over the pigeon.

  “I know you never seen this,” Charlie Coe said. He tossed the bird above his head. It fluttered, then flew away.

  “Why you letting him go?” Tim asked.

  “It’s a homing pigeon, dummy,” Russell told him. He looked at Charlie Coe and nodded, proud of their shared knowledge.

  “Any bird’s a homing bird if you feed it,” Charlie Coe said. “Watch i
t.” He pointed.

  They looked at the bird as it climbed.

  “How high does he go?” Tim asked. He swung the trap and the rust came off on his hand.

  “See?” Charlie Coe said. “You watching?”

  They looked up again. The bird was falling. “What happened to it?” Tim asked. “Did somebody shoot it?” They stared at the bird as it tumbled down.

  “He’s going to crash,” Russell said, and he became as excited as Tim. “Look at him. Look at him. Is he dead?”

  Then the bird was flying again. Russell’s face turned red and he looked away. Tim looked at Charlie Coe.

  “I knew you never seen anything like that,” Charlie Coe told them. The bird flew back and landed on the ground near them. “I just got three of them hatched,” Charlie Coe said. “I got any kind of pigeon you want.”

  “I don’t want any pigeons,” Russell told him.

  “I don’t think we got a place to keep them,” Tim said.

  They started walking back over the wood planks to the road.

  “I can sell you a regular pigeon for a dollar,” Charlie Coe called after them.

  They were on the road walking home. The younger boy, Tim, was swinging the trap. Then he began dragging it.

  “Don’t drag it,” Russell told him.

  “We got gypped,” Tim said.

  “We got to get one muskrat to pay for that trap,” Russell said. “Then we’ll start making money.”

  “How come he doesn’t have any hair?” Tim asked.

  “I think he was born that way,” Russell said. “I don’t know.”

  They walked along the road. Tim started dragging the trap again. “Did you see it when it fell?” he asked.

  They went to Russell’s barn and worked on the trap, cleaning it, oiling it, working it. They took the other two traps with them and set off for the ditch.

  It was a deep trough the farmers had dug, to drain their fields. The boys stumbled down the overgrown bank. They found a couple of runs in the shallow water, where the ditch broadened and became almost creek-like, with a silty bottom. They set the traps, and pushed a sturdy piece of wood through each end ring, deep into the ground. They noticed the burrows in the sides of the bank and talked about the good spot they had found, knowing what they knew from reading or listening to others talk of trapping. Then, as they followed the ditch, walking through the water in their boots, looking for a place to set the last trap, Tim pointed to the ground and they bent over to look. They saw bird tracks, but among them were the distinct prints of an animal. “Muskrat,” Russell said, although there was no way for either of them to know a muskrat print from a weasel or opossum or raccoon. Except, they knew, it was not rabbit or cat or dog.