by Silas House
Already Mrs. Lewis is being nosey.
“Is that your child?” she asks as Asher is leaving her room one day.
He says yes but offers no more information. She doesn’t ask any more questions, but nods firmly, as if this had been a very important question and now she has an important answer.
Lunch becomes a time for Asher to check in on Justin while the sheets and towels are in the washing machines.
After they have been in Key West a week, Evona has still not really made herself known, simply nodding when they pass each other in the yard. She takes her meals with Bell in the evenings and then plays records far into the night. But Bell is becoming more and more familiar. Asher goes home for lunch one day to find Justin visiting with her. When the cottage comes into sight Asher sees them on the porch together, sitting across from each other on the wicker furniture. They are talking quietly while each of them leans over to pet on Shady.
Asher quickens his step. Oh God Oh God Oh God, he thinks, please don’t let him have given us away.
“Justin!” Asher hollers while he is still out by the pool, and even he can hear how sharp his own tone is, how his loudness causes both to whip around like something is wrong.
Shady jumps up and barks deeply three times.
“It’s alright, little buddy,” Justin says, rubbing Shady’s head, and the dog settles again, thumps his tail against the porch floorboards. “It’s just Asher.”
Asher smarts at hearing the boy call him by his first name. “Justin, go on into the house.”
“Why?”
“Go on, Justin,” Asher says, firm. “Mind me, now.”
Justin shakes his head, looking up at his father with those big green eyes. He throws a glance to Bell as if they have a secret between them, then leaves.
Bell stands, put her hands together in front of her.
“Is something wrong?” she asks.
“I need to get Justin’s lunch.”
“I was just visiting with him.”
Asher is trembling. “Bell, if I’m going to work here for you, I just need us to keep to ourselves.”
“I wasn’t pumping him for information,” she says, a little laugh in her voice. “I couldn’t care less what you’re up to as long as—”
“I’m not up to anything.”
Bell fixes a knowing look on him. “Well, that’s not how you’re acting,” she says. She steps off the porch without another word.
Justin is lying on his belly on his bed, Shady snuggled close in beside him.
“What was she asking you?”
“Nothing!” Justin shouts into the mattress.
Asher sits on the bed beside him. “Justin, it’s important you tell me.”
“We were just talking about Shady.”
“What about him?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Justin yells.
“Be quiet!” Asher takes hold of his arms (so small), thinks better of it and lets go. “Calm down. Why are you so upset?”
His eyes are red; he looks like he might cry. “You’re the one freaking out.”
“We have to be careful, Justin. We can’t talk to people. We can’t—”
“And I’m supposed to stay locked up in this house all day while you work. It’s summertime. I need to be outside. I can’t stay in the house—”
“I don’t have any other choice.”
“We can’t even eat supper with Bell and Evona. We can’t even be friends with them—”
“We can’t—”
“Because the law is after us. Right?”
For a moment there is nothing but the sound of their breathing.
“We have to be careful. We have to make sure—”
“We wouldn’t be in this mess if you and Mom could get along! If you all wouldn’t act so stupid!”
“Your mother and I can’t stay married—”
“You two can’t even have a conversation! You can’t even be in the same room with each other!”
“Because she took you away from me!”
Justin jumps to his feet, standing by the bed, his hands balled into tight little fists so that his whole body turns red. “Because you went crazy!” These words boom out of him. “And it was all over the internet!”
“You don’t understand,” Asher starts to say, but he has no idea how he might explain to a nine-year-old boy what it’s like to be convinced your whole life that your purpose is to judge others instead of being kind to them. How can he tell his son that one day he awoke, but that this awakening took years? That living like that for so long nearly made him into a hollow thing? That the hollowing out caused him to collapse?
“Now I’m your prisoner,” Justin says, dropping to the bed again, scooting up against the wall like he can’t get far enough away from his father. He is acting like a wild thing. “I can’t even get online!”
“It won’t always be this way,” Asher says, but he isn’t so sure of that.
A decision straightens Justin’s shoulders. “Soon as I can I’ll call the law and tell them.” He is wild-eyed now. “I’ll run away from you.”
Asher grabs hold of Justin’s arm and jerks him off the bed. Justin is kicking at the air but he hits Asher’s shins instead. Two words escape his mouth—Please Daddy—and that causes Asher to freeze with Justin hanging out in front, draped at the waist over Asher’s forearm. He sees his mother holding Luke like this as she struck the backs of his legs, sees himself as a child, crying and begging her to stop.
Asher puts Justin down. But the damage is already done.
He realizes now that Shady is standing on the bed, growling and baring his teeth. The dog is ready to attack for Justin, but once he sees that Asher has calmed down, he does too. Shady licks the tears on Justin’s face but even this doesn’t still his son.
“I hate you,” Justin says, his lips trembling while tears streak down his red face. “I hate you so much.”
8
After a while Asher eases back into Justin’s room holding a paper towel with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on it. He sits a peach Nehi (Justin’s favorite) on the nightstand and tosses a bag of potato chips onto the bed beside Justin.
“You need to eat,” Asher says, and holds out the sandwich and chips for Justin.
Justin turns his head away. Shady makes a move for the food so Asher sets it on the nightstand out of Shady’s reach.
“I know I messed up, Justin. You’re right. But it’s too late to fix it now. If I take you back now, I’ll never see you again. They’ll put me in prison for a long time, and, I just can’t stand the thought of losing those years with you.”
Asher’s standing there in the middle of the room, feeling like a fool while Justin keeps his back to him.
“I’ve tried to be a good man all of my life, buddy,” Asher says. “I tried following all of the rules and doing everything by the book. But the whole time, it was making me a harder person instead of a better one. That ain’t no way to live, son.”
Asher stops and puts his hands into his pockets, trying to figure out what to say next, his frustration rising; he can actually feel it moving through his body. “Justin, do you hear me?” He tugs at Justin’s shoulder, conscious of how small his bones are. “Justin! First you say the worst thing anyone can say to another person and now you just ignore me? Why are you doing this?”
Justin gets up and kneels on the bed and Shady goes to full alert beside him, ears up. “I’m stuck in this shitty cottage all day!” Justin blurts out. He is empowered by letting this forbidden word fly free, and he goes on, unstoppable. “You brought me down here so we can have a good life together and this is what you planned? You working all day and me sitting here alone? If you don’t have a better plan than this then just take me to the bus station and I’ll go back home.”
“Justin,” he says, and lets a time pass quietly between them. He doesn’t know what else to say. Asher knows that already his son is feeling bad about what he has said.
“But
I don’t want to leave you,” Justin says in a small voice. “I want you both.”
Justin grabs the sandwich and bites into it. Shady edges in close to Justin’s mouth while he eats, taking deep breaths like that peanut butter is the best thing he’s ever smelled in his entire life. Justin holds the sandwich high up in the air between bites.
“If I hadn’t run off that night, you and Mom’d still be together,” Justin says, and then swallows down the mouthful of food.
Asher takes hold of Justin’s arms and looks him in the eye. “No, buddy, no,” aching at the sight of the sadness on his son’s face. “None of this is your fault. Do you hear me, Justin?”
Justin shakes his head, a barely seeable affirmation.
“Not a bit of it. Sometimes people just can’t make it work. Your mom and me, we tried. But we failed. We’re the only ones at fault here. Not you. Never you.”
“But if I hadn’t run off to look for Roscoe—”
“Listen to me.” Asher puts his face very close to Justin’s, locks their eyes together. “I want you to put that out of your mind right now, alright? You’re the best thing that ever happened to me or your mother.”
“She can’t even stand me,” Justin says, and he looks past Asher as if he is seeing the ghost of his mother standing in the doorway, a ghost with a firmly set mouth and crossed arms. “She wishes I was never born.”
“Stop that, now, Justin. That’s not true. Your mom and I don’t agree on a whole lot of stuff but she loves you, little man. We both love you more than anything in this world. Don’t you know that? You have to know that.”
Asher is thinking This is too hard I can’t do it I don’t know how to do this, but he keeps talking as if someone else has taken over.
“There’s never been a doubt in the world about that,” Asher says, then runs his thumb over one of Justin’s eyebrows. Somehow that’s always been a comfort to Justin and somehow Asher knows that.
“How about if we go to the beach today, when I finish working?” Asher asks. “You like that?”
“I guess,” Justin says, but it’s clear by the brightening of his face that the main thing he needs right now is to get out of this cottage, to move.
9
The Everything
They are leaving the beach and the warm air has already dried them completely. Justin’s beach towel is hung around his neck and one end of it flaps in the wind behind them like a flag.
Justin knows they can’t go on like this very long. He is imagining how it will happen when the cops finally catch up with them. He can see it all in his mind, so he closes his eyes, washing the image away, and then opens them again: At the far eastern edges of the yellow sky there is a green feathering of clouds moving in low, hovering just above the water. A storm approaching. Very far away, still, but moving fast.
They ride the scooter by houses with sandy yards. Then to streets lined with shotgun houses painted pink, yellow, green, purple. Past people on their porches, coming out to see the gloaming settle over the island. Music pumps out of one of the houses—a thrumming bass and drums—and two men are dancing on the front porch, caught up in the song, unaware of each other. As the scooter zips by, Justin turns his head and watches the dancers until the turquoise-colored house is out of his sight.
A rooster struts down the sidewalk as if on its way to the grocery. The green streaks of cloud are taking over the sky and the smell of rain spreads itself out over the island and people pause and sniff at the air. The first drops glisten on the orange-brown feathers that run down the back of the rooster’s neck, but he pays this no mind.
Around a corner and then they are at the giant buoy they had first seen when they arrived. Justin begs to stop and since it’s easy enough to park the scooter on the sidewalk, Asher obliges.
“Will you take my picture?” Justin says, rushing around to stand by the buoy, and for a split second Asher goes to pat his pockets for his phone, but it is lying on the bottom of the Cumberland River, back home.
Justin looks so small standing there that Asher pauses. Small, and scared, and confident, all at the same time.
“You gonna take it?” the boy asks, expectant, hopeful.
“I don’t have a camera. I threw my phone away.”
A huge wave crashes against the barrier behind them and sends a wall of spray up into the air. The tourists scatter with peals of delight.
Then the sky opens up, allowing the rain to pound down like coins, and the tourists squeal and run for shelter. But Justin and Asher do not move. They stand very close near the low concrete wall and look out toward Cuba while the rain pounds against them. The water is rocking and white-capping but the rain is warm and the wind coming off the ocean is somehow comforting. An occasional wave laps itself up over the little wall and splashes them, overwhelming the air with saltiness.
Then the rain moves on past the island, out over the Gulf of Mexico.
“Luke is here,” Asher says.
“Uncle Luke?” Justin watches the darkening water. “How do you know?”
“He sent me some postcards from here. It’s why I chose this place to come,” Asher says. “When we came, I wasn’t absolutely sure. But now, I know. He’s here. We’re going to find him.”
“If y’all are so close why’d he leave?”
“We fell out.”
“Why?” Justin’s eyes are on him now.
“It’s complicated—”
“Why didn’t he come back when I was born? Didn’t he want to meet me?”
“He didn’t know you existed.”
“He should’ve been checking in on you, then,” Justin says.
“Well, it’s more complicated than that, buddy.”
“Why?”
Asher doesn’t reply. He watches the darkness gathering out over the ocean. “We better head on back and check on Shady. It’s late.”
When they are settled back on the scooter, Justin holds on to his father as they speed away. He is watching the sky again, his head leaned back. That’s the way people should pray, he thinks. Instead of bowing their heads, tucking their chins into their chests. They should lean back and expose their faces to the sky. Justin can see the clouds as they meander away, roiling and turning from green to a deep gray, the yellow behind deepening into the dark rose of the beginnings of night.
10
The breeze from the Atlantic laces through the palm fronds. The plants breathe in the darkness, moving closer to the cottages in the nighttime, easing their vines and tendrils and green points toward the walls of the houses. The pool water is still in its concrete rectangle.
Asher and Justin sit on the porch, playing rummy. Shady has spread himself on the wicker love seat next to Justin, who keeps his hand on Shady’s head when he isn’t making a play. He has inherited his card-shark abilities from his grandmother, as Zelda is an expert rummy player and taught Asher how to play. Cards had not been allowed in Asher’s house as a child.
Earlier, Asher heard the ice in Evona’s glass tinkling on the other side of the lattice, but Asher has made no attempt to invite her to join them. The fewer connections they make the better and he’s been lucky to be here this long without talking to the woman. He knows he has already revealed too much to Bell. Now Asher realizes that she is standing next to the lattice, studying them.
“My mother and I used to play rummy in the evenings,” Evona says when Asher turns to meet her eyes. She is a slender woman but somehow makes for a big presence. There is a sadness in her movements. Even in the shadows her eyes stand out, green as the Cumberland River.
“Is that right?” Asher says, not knowing what else to say.
“That’s right,” Evona says, and nods with emphasis.
Asher watches Justin’s face as he glances up over his fan of cards to look Evona in the eye. Asher can’t tell what Justin thinks of her just yet, but he sees his son considering her carefully, to make sure he has her figured before he decides whether to like her or not.
“I
was lucky to have a real good mother,” Evona says, at last, as if knowing that every day Asher strives to understand his own. She is a very pretty woman, tall and long-limbed. Heart-shaped face with eyes that cause Asher to look directly at her longer than is proper. The thing that makes her the most attractive, though, is that she is so at ease in her own body. She leans against the porch post with one bare foot atop the other. And then, to Justin: “Looks like you’ve got you a good daddy, too, buddy.”
Justin gives a half smile, puts his green eyes back on the cards.
“Y’all should join us for supper tomorrow night. You can’t keep turning Bell down or you’ll hurt her feelings.”
Asher nods.
“She sure can cook.”
The polite thing would be to ask now if she wants to join them but Asher doesn’t want to. “Have a good night, then,” he says, finally, hearing how rude this sounds as soon as the words escape his mouth. He might as well have said, Get lost, lady.
“Alright then,” she says with a little, good-natured laugh, taking the hint instantly, and raises her short glass in a little, half-hearted toast—tipping it toward Asher just a bit so that the golden whiskey unlevels, ice cubes clinking—as she slips into the shadows and settles back on her side of the porch. Asher hears the creak of the rocker as she sits, another whine of wood as she shifts to pick up something off the table near her.
“Why’d you do that?” Justin whispers, his forehead wrinkled in aggravation. He is a terrible whisperer and Asher is sure Evona can hear him. He puts his finger to his lips to shush his son, but Justin rolls his eyes.
Later, Asher gets up to use the toilet. He hurries, always rushing whenever Justin is not in his sight. Living like that is exhausting, but also necessary for his peace of mind.
When Asher comes back out, he finds Justin standing by the lattice divider, his eye to one of the holes, spying on Evona. Shady stands at his side, nose pointed up, tail wagging fast.
