The Book of CarolSue

by Lynne Hugo

  His mother put her Grand Finish on The Look then by rolling her eyes at Aunt CarolSue along with a deep sigh and said, “All right. I guess another day or two won’t matter. But that’s it.”

  Gary figured out then, a flash of insight, that his mother was mad that CarolSue wasn’t helping her in the garden and with the canning because she was doing the baby care. Maybe he could get around that and buy more time. He thanked his mother profusely, thanked CarolSue, and quit the subject for a moment while he was ahead. He could ponder God’s various messages and Signs later in private. Now was the time to talk pleasantly about how his mother’s canning was coming along, and if Rosie Two was keeping the grass down enough. Last year he’d paid for that kid Brandon she liked so much to mow it, but now she’d gone and gotten another goat. Like she needed more animals around the place.

  He was still getting short, irritated-sounding answers from his mother, when, as if to underline the point she’d made about her disrupted life, the baby started to fuss from the back bedroom, waking from her nap just as his mother was starting to answer one of Gary’s questions.

  “I’ll get her,” he said, pushing his chair back from the table.

  “You?” It was downright weird how his mother and CarolSue said it at the same time, disbelieving, like a Greek chorus would say No way!

  “Yes me. You can take a break from baby care.” It was genius. “Mom, CarolSue can give you a hand in the garden, and I’ll babysit for a couple hours before I get back to the church.” He figured it would make his mother happy, get her the garden help she wanted. He couldn’t help in the garden himself because he’d do nothing but sneeze. It was that time of year. Ragweed and goldenrod. He didn’t last more than ten minutes outside.

  His mother sighed again. CarolSue got up and headed toward the master bedroom where Gracie and her stuff were, saying, “Um, honey, Gracie needs to be changed and fed. And then she’ll be awake for several hours. She’s crying now . . .”

  “I’m not deaf. I hear her crying,” he said, following right behind her. “I’ll watch you change her so I . . . remember. I did have a baby once.” Gary wasn’t about to admit that he hadn’t changed Cody’s diapers. He’d tried once and gotten a face full of pee, which Nicole thought was totally hilarious, but he hadn’t, and after that he’d left diapers to her and his mother. Or Nicole’s mother. Anyone but him. “Please. You help Mom with the garden. That’ll make her happy. I’ll take a turn with the baby. I’ll give her the bottle.”

  “Bless your heart,” CarolSue said. Gary thought she didn’t sound happy about being able to help her sister, but he was sure he was doing the right thing. He could please both God and his mother, a double win.

  Chapter 16

  CarolSue

  I was doomed. How had this happened? Gracie needed me, I was sure of that, but here I was stuck out in the garden in record-breaking September heat, harvesting sweet potatoes (which I don’t even like) with Louisa barking instructions at me, while Gary—who hardly knew which end of a baby to put on his shoulder—had charged himself with taking care of her. I imagined Gracie’s little face turning red because she was upside down with her bare foot stuck in Gary’s ear.

  “I should go in and check on Gracie,” I said to Louisa, who was thrilling herself with the astonishing beauty of some of her lumpy produce.

  “She’s not crying,” Louisa pointed out. “We’d hear her. You opened every window so you would. Remember?”

  “What if she can’t?”

  “Huh?” Louisa looked at me as if I’d said something crazy. She can do that and it’s very annoying.

  “If she can’t breathe, she can’t cry. Any fool knows that. I’m going to check on her.”

  “Oh good grief,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s probably good I didn’t plant that marijuana I was thinking about before Gus started calling on me. I’d think you’d gotten into it.”

  “What?”

  “The baby is fine. Perfectly fine. Let’s get these potatoes dug while we can.”

  Do you see what I mean about my sister? Much as I love her, sometimes she just doesn’t think things through.

  Several of the chickens were strutting around the yard, in and out of sight as they pecked at the ground for bugs and whatever else they eat. “Where’s Abigail?” I asked. “I haven’t seen her all afternoon. I saw JoJo and Beth and Amy a while ago. But I haven’t seen her at all.” The truth is, I can’t tell one chicken from another. They look pretty much alike to me, except for Amy, who’s a stunning white with a noticeable black streak in her temperament as well as her feathers, which Louisa would not appreciate my mentioning. I thought she might fall for it. Louisa worried all the time about predators; she was as protective of those chickens as dear Charlie was of me.

  She stood up, trowel in hand, and looked around. “You haven’t? Uh-oh.” And off she went behind the coop, which she left standing open during the daytime so the girls could free-range.

  And I was off and running for the back door. Take the “running” sprinkled with salt, of course, but I was moving right along.

  Well, fortunately, for once Louisa was right, Gracie was alive. Gary had her lying on the floor on a receiving blanket and was showing her the rattles. Just as I’d told him to, although I didn’t think he was doing it in a particularly engaging fashion. And the books I’d put out for him to read her, though, looked untouched.

  “Oh, hi, Aunt CarolSue,” he said, looking up from the floor. “She didn’t seem interested in the book, I mean, she wouldn’t look at the pictures or anything.”

  I knew it! “That’s okay. Babies need the sound of your voice, and the more words they hear, the better it stimulates their brains. I read all about it . . . a long time ago.”

  “Oh.” He looked unconvinced.

  From outside the kitchen window I heard Louisa bellow. “Sister! I need help out here.”

  I hurried into the kitchen and called softly so Gracie wouldn’t hear yelling. “I’m coming. Bathroom.”

  I went into the bathroom so Gary wouldn’t know I’d lied, and then went back outside.

  “Don’t ‘bathroom’ me,” Louisa said when I got back to the section where she’d planted enough sweet potatoes to feed all the Pilgrims and the Indians at the first, second, and third Thanksgivings. The sun blistered down, relentless. “I told you Gracia was fine. I know Gary getting mixed up with that cult was idiotic, but he’s not totally stupid about everything. He’d yell for us if anything was wrong with the baby.”

  “People have to grieve in their own way,” I said. I’m sure she thought I meant that about Gary, but I was thinking of myself and missing Charlie, and how right then they wouldn’t let me hold the baby, and I just wanted to go back home to Atlanta where we’d had our life. He was such a sweet, tender man and so good to me. I wished I hadn’t complained about all the time he spent puttering in the garage and how he hadn’t worn his hearing aids, which meant the neighbors could watch the same station as Charlie without turning on the sound. When I had a minute alone, I thought about him, and my eyes would start to water. Louisa seemed to have forgotten all about him—or thought I had. She didn’t bring up his name. I’d thought she’d wrap me in a blanket of understanding.

  “Right,” she said. “Listen, this is good. I know we want to let Gary find Gracie’s mother—but Gus and I, we’re not really spending any quality time together since we’ve had the baby here. If Gary can babysit here, he can babysit anywhere, so I’m thinking we just ask him to take care of her at the church a couple afternoons a week. And you know, you could even go with them if you were worried. Problem solved.” She had a sort of triumphant look on her face and put both her hands palms up, as if to say, See how simple it is? You can help work out my life now that I helpfully insisted you move in here right after your husband died and you couldn’t think straight so I could roast you alive digging up ugly orange potatoes as if it’s what you want to do, like your life is just peachy now and what else could you wan
t?

  I could tell her what else I wanted. I wanted to take care of that baby. And I also wanted to go back home to Atlanta.

  I was doomed.

  Gus

  Something about Gary’s story didn’t smell right to Gus. Not the details of what he’d said, which he supposed were plausible, even though Gary’s church was built on shaky ground. Louisa was right about that much. She sure had a point about his internet ordination and that money-scamming cult that he’d gotten involved with after Cody died. That Brother Zachariah character was a charlatan through and through, and Gus hadn’t ever confided in Louisa that he’d had a big hand in running him on to the next county, doubtless to bilk sad souls there. For sure, it might get him points with Louisa in the short term, but he couldn’t be a hundred percent sure that it wouldn’t get back to Gary, and in Gus’s limited experience with romance, it was a particularly bad idea to alienate a woman’s son.

  The sticking point about Gary was that you couldn’t spend a half hour with him and not know he’d been broken by guilt as much as by the two deaths. Gus had his own guilt about Harold—that much he had confessed to Louisa. When Harold had set out for revenge against the drunk driver who’d killed Cody, his every intention had been soaked in the rage of inside-out grief, and half crazed. He cared so little about what happened to him that a rookie sheriff could have shadowed Harold as easily as Gus had, to thwart his schemes, stopping him before he could do real damage and put himself at risk. Which had been the point, to protect Harold—who clearly wasn’t thinking straight—from himself. Not that Gus admitted to Louisa how easy it had been to stop Harold; he wanted to look smart and skilled, after all, but then Harold’s inability to get revenge made him kill himself. In a way, did that make Gus responsible? That was the part he felt terrible about.

  For a long time, Louisa had blamed him, too. She’d figured that if he hadn’t intervened, let Harold get caught, even if he’d been in jail for a few months, revenge would satisfy him and he’d have stayed alive. Gus couldn’t argue that point, since there was no way to know if she was right.

  Somehow, though, Louisa had come around on her own to understanding Gus’s intention, and that there’s not always a straight, white thread from the intentions of someone’s heart to how something turns out. She’d said that sometimes that thread gets tangled and the way you mean something ends up having nothing to do with how it turns out, and then you feel terrible and say how sorry you are. Sometimes you have a chance to try to make it right. And sometimes you don’t, you can’t. The other person won’t let you, or life won’t let you.

  Gus was lucky. Louisa was giving him a chance, and he wasn’t about to blow that chance by confronting Gary. Dicey as things sometimes were between Louisa and Gary, with him always trying to save her soul and her telling him Bless your heart, honey, but I plan to be reincarnated as either a Buddhist or a deer just to torment him, it would still be plain stupid. So Gus needed to ferret out what was really going on with Gary—if it wasn’t what he said—but not alienate him, while keeping Louisa out of it. Tricky business, this.

  It wasn’t that Gary’s story made no sense. It wasn’t that. Could some poor young woman have asked him for help? Sure. Even the “sanctuary” part, Gus supposed he could buy that. What made no sense was Gary’s discomfort, the way he didn’t quite meet Gus’s eyes when he kept talking about confidentiality, as if he wanted to draw the blinds and keep daylight out. As if he was uncomfortable. Why would he be? It didn’t sit right. Call it instinct, Gus said to himself when he thought about it. He tried to figure out what exactly might make Gary so uneasy, why he might be looking for a woman he thought might be in trouble.

  There was, of course, another wrinkle. Isn’t there always, Gus muttered to himself on Tuesday morning when he sorted through his official email. The one concrete piece of information that Gary had provided—beyond a first name and two possible last names—was the decent possibility that this Rosalina might be undocumented. Well, that was a problem, and one that put him in an ugly place based on the notice that he’d just opened from immigration control informing him that the cooperation of his office was expected in the coming month, as four places of employment would be checked, without notice, for undocumented employees. Gus hit “print,” and watched the paper feed into the machine. The noise always sounded like a skeleton’s chattering teeth to him. Probably because he was never printing good news. He wasn’t a superstitious man.

  “Jimmy!” he yelled to his deputy. Of course Jimmy pretended he couldn’t hear him, so Gus got up from his desk and knocked on the glass. Jimmy jumped in his chair dramatically. He’d been drinking coffee, reading the newspaper. Ought to have headed out on patrol by now anyway. Gus motioned for him to come into his office.

  “Lookit this,” Gus said, extending the printout.

  This deputy was new, young, and raw-faced, like he’d only recently learned how to use a razor. He’d not been exactly an academic star in high school, according to his record. Gus imagined he’d been overly busy with football and girls. There hadn’t been a lot of applicants for the job was the issue. His two part-timers had other jobs and weren’t looking to go full-time.

  “Cool,” Jimmy said. “Can the department get a dog now?”

  Jimmy was not going to be a great deal of help.

  “No, we are not getting a dog. The point here is that we—and by we, I mean me and Billy—will be expected to cooperate with the Feds, which means that you and Floyd will be covering some more patrols.” Floyd was a retired Elmont cop, like Billy, who worked part-time, when Gus needed extra help with a bad accident or dispatch or the like. Both were older and had some sense. Gus figured he’d pay Floyd overtime out of the budget to babysit Jimmy, keep his jets cool, and prevent damage. He’d have to pay Billy overtime, too, but he could charge the Feds for that. Billy wasn’t a genius, but he was still strong and fast and not dangerous. If Gus had to be involved in any kind of an immigration roundup, he’d rather have Billy than Jimmy any day.

  “How come Billy?”

  “Didn’t your mother tell you not to whine? Billy’s done this before and I need an experienced man.” That was a lie. Billy hadn’t worked with immigration before, and he’d have to either tell Billy not to blow that cover or just hope it didn’t come up. Gus’s life experience had suggested that attention to detail was a better bet than leaving something to hope or chance.

  “How’m I gonna get experience then?” Jimmy was nothing if not persistent.

  “Prove yourself first. Like don’t be sitting there drinking coffee and reading the paper when you oughta be out being seen.” Gus could come off hard-ass when he needed to. Clearly, it was time.

  Jimmy had the sense not to argue. It was only another two minutes before the patrol car pulled away from the station. Gus checked on Connie, the dispatcher on duty, and then poured himself a mug of coffee, spooned in the creamer, dropped in two lumps of sugar, helped himself to the paper off the deputy desk, and settled himself in his office to check out the news. He wondered what thorn was in the Feds’ side. Guessed he’d find out soon enough. Gus tended to the no harm, no foul side occasionally. When he saw a taillight out and stopped a vehicle for it, there’d been times when there’d be children in the car, a brown-skinned driver wearing an employee identification badge from an Elmont factory. That, and a wedding ring. He’d be respectful, the driver would, but Gus would see fear behind his eyes. Gus would ask the children a couple questions. They’d answer politely, respectfully, about where they went to school, and tell him yes they liked it. Nice kids. Unaccented English. They’d been born here, Gus was pretty sure, although not their father, judging from his accent. But his English was clear and good. Had Gus written the ticket, it would have meant asking for his driver’s license. Why destroy a tax-paying intact family, have a man end up deported, because his taillight was out? It was just common sense. He’d told the driver his light was out, and “Get that fixed right away, have a good day,” and got back in the
cruiser and pulled away, the driver maybe thanking God, Mother Mary and Jesus, or the silver St. Christopher dangling from the chain around his neck, or maybe thinking there was some human kindness or blind luck in the world. Gus didn’t know, never would, and didn’t need to.

  Sheriff right to the bone, Gus was, and not for lack of anything else he could have done. He enforced the law; he believed in the law. The law was right, moral, and just, and not intended to do harm or wreck good lives for no purpose. So once in a blue moon maybe he accidentally forgot to ask for a driver’s license. The state didn’t lose a taxpayer. A local company didn’t lose a long-time employee whose ID badge indicated he was a shift supervisor. Children didn’t lose a parent. A wife didn’t lose her husband. Just made sense, like a good law. Like a good sheriff who did his best.

  Chapter 17

  Rosalina

  The big garden supply place where she’d been working, along with others from her country, had let them go. The season would be over soon, they said, but if you’re still here, come back in March. We’ll need help again. What were they supposed to do through the winter? She heard about the meat packing place that didn’t look at papers real closely. It kept their costs down not to worry about papers, and they didn’t have enough workers with papers anyway. Farms were the best, because they always needed help, but after the harvest it would be the same problem. And she had to guess, they all had to guess, where would they be safe?

  She took her chances with the place she thought she’d be most invisible, the chicken packing plant where they’d advertised for help, even though it bothered her, all that death, and she had to dress like its ghost in white coveralls, a white net cap over all of her hair, white plastic gloves, and white shoe covers. But nobody had questioned the I-9 paper she’d given the employment office, the one Maria at the apartment had helped her get, and that was one good thing.