by Billie Letts
Kim started to work the next day, part-time, the same day Caney acquired a chef.
Bui had been trying for months to help out in the kitchen, but Caney had never let him do much beyond mangle some eggs and burn several loaves of bread.
But now Bui had the advantage of sympathy on his side. Who, after all, could refuse the simple request of a man with a broken body and damaged spirit?
When Caney finally caved in, Bui traded the pathetic expression he’d affected for a triumphant smile as he marched into the kitchen.
MollyO, refusing to allow him to lift anything heavier than a spoon, slid cast-iron skillets onto the burners, hauled pots filled with water to the stove, and rounded up bags and boxes from the pantry, meat and vegetables from the fridge.
When he was finally able to shoo her away, he went to work. He had to substitute certain spices for those he didn’t have, and couldn’t cook all the dishes he wanted for lack of ingredients not available in the kitchen of the Honk.
Nevertheless, two hours later he presented what he had prepared, a Vietnamese feast of ginger beef, caysin pork, chicken sesame and shrimp fried rice.
Caney, knowing his was a steak and potato trade, figured most of the food would go to waste, but for Bui’s sake, he hauled out an old chalkboard and wrote at the top, “Saturday Night Special. Asian Delight.”
When the dinner crowd began to arrive, they were reluctant to try it, preferring instead their chicken-fried steak and gravy, pork chops and fries, but out of deference to Bui, they said they’d give it a try.
When the food was set before them, bowls served family style, they pretended it was exactly what they’d expected, though they’d never seen the likes of it before.
Soldier was the first to put a forkful into his mouth while the others watched and waited for his reaction. They were silent while he chewed, then swallowed. But when he smiled with pleasure, they eyed each other and hesitantly reached for the nearest bowl.
Most took only small portions on their plates, then, at Bui’s urging, spooned on the sauces he’d prepared.
They didn’t say much as they fought to keep the thin, slippery noodles on their forks, stabbed at small chunks of spicy chicken, speared slivers of carrots and cucumbers, thrust at fluffy grains of rice and paper-thin slices of green onions, pierced juicy pink shrimps and beef seasoned with ginger.
Minutes later, their plates empty, they dug into second helpings as they licked at lips tingling with sharp, sweet tastes they’d never experienced before.
A half hour later, Caney erased the “Special” from the board. The chef had run out of food.
Vena sat at an empty table in the corner of the room where she watched… watched the way Soldier hooked his thumb over the rim of his coffee cup when he raised it to his mouth and how Hooks squinted when he chewed on a toothpick… watched the way Bilbo tilted his head to blow his smoke away from Peg’s bluish face and how Wanda Sue pulled at her ear when she passed on her latest gossip… watched the way Bui bowed shyly to compliments and how Life looked at MollyO like a puppy waiting to be petted. Watched the way Caney’s eyes, the color of spring willows, picked up the light as he studied her from across the room.
She watched, wanting to remember each face, each gesture, each smile, as she saw them for the last time.
And though she made no effort to rise, to push back from the table and pack her things, she knew she had already slipped away.
Chapter Thirty-Five
CANEY KNEW she was gone. Even in half-sleep he could feel the emptiness beside him, could feel that the bed had already lost her heat, that her pillow held only the hollow shaped by her head.
But until he opened his eyes, it would not be real.
She was still sleeping beside him, her bottom lip quivering with the exhale of her breath, her eyelids fluttering as she dreamed. He moved his hand very slowly to run his fingers across the silky strands of her hair on the pillow without her knowing.
Then she stretched in sleep, her toes curling, pointing like a diver going into water, and the sheet across her chest slid below her breasts.
At rest again, her breathing slowed, and from deep inside her came a sound like the purring of a cat.
Minutes later, she rolled toward him, her hand lightly grazing his skin before she twisted her shoulders back and touched one finger to the hollow of her throat.
Finally, she yawned, flicked her tongue across her lips, brushed a lock of hair from her cheek as, slipping from sleep, she opened her eyes, saw him watching her and smiled.
Then, without words, they reached for each other, their bodies coming together as the first copper ray of sun began to slide across the bed.
This morning, though, there was no shaft of sunlight, no purring breath, no shape to reach for.
She’d caught her first ride of the day at the Texaco station just after dawn with a gospel quartet from Little Rock. They took her as far as Waco, their destination, and let her off at a truck stop.
She hadn’t thought much about where she was headed, but almost any city would do. Abortion clinics didn’t fare well in smaller places, and she wasn’t about to face a line of angry protesters carrying pictures of mutilated fetuses or slink in the back door of some dingy doctor’s office like she’d done when she was a scared scrawny kid.
By the time the waitress brought her first cup of coffee, she’d decided on San Antonio, only a couple of hours down the road. She knew her way around there, might even be a couple of her old drinking buddies still hanging around, but she had no interest in finding out.
She didn’t have to wait long before a driver hauling cattle said he was going her way, but just the thought of smelling cow manure for two hundred miles brought on a sudden wave of nausea, so she passed up the offer.
After a trip to the bathroom, she switched from coffee to tea, ate a few crackers and, feeling better, started asking around again for a ride.
She was anxious to get back on the road because when she’d been moving, she had outdistanced thoughts of Caney. But sitting still, he caught up with her.
Listen, the day I watched you climb out of that truck, I knew my life was gonna change.
She got up quickly, grabbed a newspaper from the counter, then went back to her booth to read.
Hell, Vena. I don’t care what you’ve done. I didn’t know the person you were… I only know who you are now.
After tossing some change on the table, she picked up her duffel bag and started outside. But before she reached the door, she hooked up with a trucker on his way to San Antonio by way of La Grange to pick up four hundred cases of beer at a brewery, so she found herself taking an unexpected detour, going south on 77 instead of the interstate.
They hadn’t gone far before she began to see familiar territory. Not that she was interested. She hadn’t been back since the day she and Helen left twenty years ago, and she couldn’t think of a good reason to go back now.
Ten minutes later, when she asked the driver to stop, she was more surprised than he was as she climbed down out of the cab at Hawkins Corner and started walking down a rutted dirt road.
Odel Hawkins’ store, where she and Helen had sold pop bottles to buy candy, was boarded up now, the sign out front advertising Dr Pepper riddled with buckshot.
A quarter mile beyond the store, she came to the one-lane wooden bridge over Push Creek where Helen had threatened to jump one day when she was in the fifth grade.
I’d rather be dead, Vena, than be in that dumb play. Miss Lyons could’ve picked any girl in class to be Pocahontas, but she picked me ’cause I’m the only Indian. And she said I had to put my arm around that stupid Buddy Pitt ’cause he’s going to be John Smith. Well, I guess she’ll be sorry when she hears I’m drowned.
Almost halfway to the section line, she passed the old Lanford place, but the three-room house where they’d lived was gone now, and in its place sat a double-wide house trailer, bashed in and rusted on one end.
When the road curved
downhill at the Heisenberg farm where she used to steal watermelons, Vena stopped to shake a rock out of her boot.
You know what? I don’t think stealing watermelons is a sin, Vena. I mean, it’s not like taking someone’s money or maybe some rich woman’s fur coat. ’Cause watermelon, well, it comes out of the earth. And the earth belongs to everybody.
Ezra Settlemyers’ house was still standing and still leaning to one side, but now it had a six-foot chain-link fence around it. When Vena stepped into a ditch where she saw a thicket of blackberries, two pit bulls raced from out of nowhere and, running full speed, hurled themselves against the fence as someone inside the house pulled aside a curtain to watch her back away and move on.
After she turned east at the section line, she passed the farm pond where she and Helen used to fish for perch until the day Helen hooked one in the eye when she was nine.
I’m never ever going to eat another creature that has a face, ’cause if they have faces, then they have eyes and they can look at you when you kill them.
The road grew crooked just past the cattle guard, then straightened for a hundred yards before it snaked into the S-curve where Mary Cobb, at twelve, had wrecked her brother’s pickup.
But the twisting road was still as familiar to Vena as the jagged scar on her leg, the result of a dare by Jimmy Men-doza to play matador in his daddy’s corral. She’d escaped the charging bull called Zore by diving through a barbed-wire fence which sliced open her calf and required twenty-two stitches to close.
She passed the old cemetery where she’d gone with Davey Baysinger, the first boy she ever kissed; hurried by the abandoned cabin rumored to be haunted by the ghost of Cassie Washington who poisoned herself; rested under the lightning-struck oak where Helen had pried from a knothole the blackened Prince Albert can they hid in their secret place.
She walked for almost an hour, a road where every house and hill and hollow held for her some voice, some face, some history… collecting moments of her past like a child stuffing fireflies into a jar.
But when she rounded the last bend and saw the place she’d once called home, she came to a dead stop.
The junked cars and pickups were gone, the lawn recently mowed, and the house, remarkably like the one she’d seen in her dreams, was white now with green shutters and windowboxes filled with flowers.
Her heart began to pound, and she felt light-headed as she started toward it.
“Can I help you?” A white-haired man leaning on a cane stood behind a closed screen door, watching her. “You got car trouble?”
“No, I—”
“Don’t get many visitors here since the wife died, not unless it’s some fool run out of gas or one of those kids driving hell-bent for leather hits that gully this side of the bridge.”
“I used to live here,” Vena said. “I grew up in this house.”
The man opened the door, studying her as he stepped onto the porch.
“Now ain’t that something. There was a woman here ’bout a year ago said the same thing. And by the looks of you, I’d say you might be her sister.”
“What?” Vena almost went to her knees. “Helen was here?”
“Well, she didn’t say her name.”
“But you talked to her?”
“Tried, but she wasn’t doing much talking, ’least not that made sense. To tell you the truth, I thought there was something wrong with her.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like maybe she wasn’t quite right in the head. No offense, but she acted real strange, eyes all wild, and she had on a hat and a heavy coat buttoned up to her neck and it musta been ninety degrees that day.”
Vena dizzied with the memory of her dream-vision.
“Me and my daughter’d just finished supper and she was fixing to go out and mess with her flowers when she looked through the window and seen this woman standing in the backyard.
“Well, I went out and asked her what she wanted, and she said she was looking for the graveyard. I told her the graveyard was a mile north, but she said no, it was right under her feet. Said that’s where someone named Peabody was buried.”
“Peabo. Her cat.”
“She was real upset, said it’d all changed, asked where was the barn and the chicken house. I told her they got blowed away in a cyclone a few years back, but she walked around out there looking for them like she didn’t believe me.
“Then she told me she had to leave something for her sister who’d be showing up here sometime. And I suppose that’s you.”
“What did she leave?” Vena asked, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
“Well, she didn’t leave nothing. I told her I’d be glad to keep it here, whatever it was, in case her sister showed up, but she wasn’t having any of that.
“She looked bad. Terrible, to tell you the truth, so I said I’d go get her something cold to drink and I went on in the house, but when I come back out, she was already halfway down to the creek.”
At the place where Vena went into the creek, the water was only ankle deep, but by the time she reached midstream, her boots were filled. She pulled them off, emptied them, then, cradling one in each arm, fought for balance on the sharp stones beneath her stockinged feet.
Much of the far bank had washed away, but she could see that the outcrop of rock which shielded the secret place was still intact.
From the day they’d discovered the narrow crevice beneath the rock ledge, just wide enough for the Prince Albert can, she and Helen had hidden small surprises for each other there—arrowheads, fossils, eagle feathers, stones shaped like stars and apples and whales. Sometimes they’d leave buckeyes or a favorite poem, and once, Helen had been delighted to find that Vena had left her a tiny porcelain rabbit with ruby chips for eyes.
They’d even gone there together on the morning they left for good to hide their mother’s cheap gold locket which the woman their daddy married had claimed for her own.
When they left, they knew they’d never return to that secret place again, but now, as Vena waded from the water, she felt certain it had been visited one more time.
She tossed her soggy boots on the bank and climbed to the overhang, then reached into the crevice, but her hands were larger now. She forced her fingers between the rough stone, scraping skin from her knuckles and breaking off fingernails until she was finally able to pull the can free.
She scooted down, dropped onto the muddy bank, pried open the rusted lid and pulled out a folded piece of brown paper torn from a grocery sack.
Her hands were trembling as she unfolded it, but when she saw the writing, she could hardly believe it was Helen’s.
The words were jumbled, crooked letters written on top of others, like the scribblings of a child.
My Dearest Vena, I leave this letter because I know you will come for it. I have a baby named Tioga, so tiny he fits into the palm of my hand, a sweet baby who never cries but he is cold. I wrapped him in a piece of sheep wool and put him in the blue jewelry box you gave me but he is still cold. I burn fires to keep him warm but the wind blows out the flames and the sun is too far away. He talks to me sometimes and tells me to let him go but I know when you find us you will make him well. You could always make them well. I was so happy when I had him inside me but then I saw two crows in the same tree and you know what mama always says about that. You were always the strong one but I was too scared by the questions. I found a book with the answers but the pages were burned. Did you know I always wanted to be like you because you are good and have strength. I have always loved you.
Helen
Vena read the letter only once before she pressed the paper tightly between the palms of her hands as if she could force the words into her flesh and warm them.
Then she heard the voices of children playing upstream where she saw two thin brown-skinned girls, herself at six, standing chest deep in the water, keeping Helen afloat, one hand beneath her neck, the other at the small of her back.
Just relax,
Helen.
I can’t. I’m scared.
Move your hands like I showed you.
But I’ll go under.
No, you won’t. I’ll be right beside you.
Promise?
Cross my heart and hope to die.
Vena watched as the girls began moving downstream, saw herself sidestepping in the water, still supporting Helen as they moved with the current.
Stay with me, Vena, till I’m ready.
I will.
As they slid past her, Vena heard Helen calling, her voice filled with wonder.
I’m doing it, Vena! I’m doing it! You can let me go now….
I’m not scared anymore.
Then Vena slipped soundlessly into the creek, and as the water washed over her, she released the torn brown paper and watched it float away.
Chapter Thirty-Six
BEFORE THE OFFICIAL beginning of summer, Sequoyah was already baking in the heat. Most days the temperature climbed into the mid-nineties with thunderheads rolling in by late afternoon.
A tornado raked the southern edge of town on the sixteenth of June, knocking out electricity for a few hours, uprooting some trees, blowing down what was left of the old drive-in screen and destroying Henry Brister’s trailer.
But the trailer had been unoccupied since Henry, by then fitted with prostheses, had settled out of court with the plastic factory for two million dollars, an event which attracted the attention of a number of women anxious to help him recover from the loss of his thumbs and his wife. And on the day of his marriage to a pretty, divorced mother of three, Henry had moved his new family into the finest house on the lake, an area untouched by the storm.
Wanda Sue was still rattling with tales about the woman Henry had married when Big Fib Fry disappeared, news that nearly felled her with gossip overload.
Certain that Big Fib had run away with his paramour, Frances Dunn, who dropped out of sight the same day, Wanda Sue pointed out that she, and she alone, had known from the beginning what was going on.
