Creatures Here Below, page 28
Mason exhaled. His moment was slipping away to whatever came next.
“Maybe if you told me why … tell me what you plan to do. I think you owe me that much. What’s so important? I know it has to do with your father.”
It startled him she knew even that much.
“You let it slip once,” she answered his question before he asked. “At the diner in Ohio, I think. And I don’t forget anything.”
“You’re going to make me talk now, aren’t you? Shouldn’t we just smoke cigarettes or something?”
She raised up. Her hair tickled his chest. The lamplight reflected in her eyes, and her lips appeared a bit swollen from their kissing. “Please,” she said. “And I know something else. I know it’s not a good thing. If it was, you’d talk about it. And your eyes wouldn’t look so hard most of the time. They’re not pretty when they’re like that. Please.”
“God. Okay,” he said. “Pretty, huh?” She lowered herself back into his embrace. He didn’t speak right away. He wanted to say it right because he wouldn’t be telling only her, he’d be telling himself too. Aloud or silently, it was something he had managed to avoid: putting it all in words. He couldn’t tell her of the confrontation he envisioned with Pony and himself and the gun. “He’s this low, mean, meanspirited man. He thinks everybody else is too, so he treats them that way. And, I guess you should know, some people think I’m just like him. I got all mixed up with him, and stirred up with …” he paused. “Check this,” he said. “I ain’t seen him in years and sometimes I still smell his cologne. That’s fucked, ain’t it?” Mason’s eyes teared suddenly, and he wiped them quickly with the tip of a pillowcase.
“My daddy, they call him Pony. Did I tell you that already? Pony. Don’t know why. He had this gap-toothed girlfriend, one of dozens, believe me, named Lettie. I remember she was my favorite. She was nice, not too pretty … Anyway, one day we come over her place and she’s highly pissed off. Pony had missed her birthday or something. She calls him names, shouting this and that, and says she ain’t gonna put up with his trifling ways any more. And they were trifling. I was scared for her because she was standing up to him. He sent me to wait in the car while he beat the shit out of her. I kinda knew what was going on, but I didn’t. It’s hard to explain, and I’ve never tried to before.”
“How old were you?” Gina asked.
“I don’t know, twelve? Thirteen? Next day, or so, I went to see her. Her face was all swollen. One side bigger, skin all puffed out, one eye closed and the sickest green purple color. And she had to breathe out of her mouth. I asked her why she’d fronted Pony. We both knew what he’d do. So I asked her why she’d asked for the beating.”
Gina asked, “What did she say?”
“She said, ‘I knew he’d get after me good but I had to bring it to an ending. Had to pay the price,’ she said. She said, ‘He been chewing me up, had to get him to spit me out before he swallowed.’”
Lightning brightened the window. Mason wondered what Gina was thinking about. Had she understood? He had tried to make sense. He took her silence as his answer; she at least understood as much as he’d told her. It made him feel closer to her. He squeezed one of her shoulders, and felt her kiss his chest in reply. He did not want to let her go. He wondered if she’d really meant it when she’d said she could go away with him.
“Mason, “Gina began.
More lightning flashed, just outside it seemed. This time an explosive crack came with it. Two things happened at once. Something thumped like a hard-swung sledgehammer into the wall above them; the vibration of the impact went through the bed and him in a wave. And the window burst into shards flying at them like the rain and the wind that whipped into the room behind the glass.
Gina screamed. The shock made Mason holler out, too. Just above the headboard, he saw a gaping hole in the wall. This had not been a lightning strike. The report had been a gunshot. He rolled off the side of the bed farthest from the window taking Gina with him. He felt a glass shard cut him on his ribs.
“What! What!” Gina cried.
He held her to the floor.
ANNIE
Gail said she had a lead on Mason. She looked anxious and animated, but tired too. Weeks ago, Annie had thought Gail-had all but written Mason off, but when she saw Gail’s face, she knew she had been very wrong.
Annie said, “Let me know what you find out. I miss the boy too.” But she doubted Gail heard her as she hustled out the front door.
As soon as Gail left, a thumping and bumping knocked on the walls and floor. Tyler couldn’t have been causing that noise. Unless he was making music, he was normally a quiet boy. Besides he’d gone out in the morning, hours ago. Dan Neighbors had been here. Annie had spotted his car in the driveway, but he’d left before breakfast. Only Jackie remained, and her baby, Cole. Annie and Jackie had last talked days ago when the baby’s father had showed up at the front door. Annie wondered how Jackie and her boyfriend were getting along: not well, she suspected. She knocked at Jackie’s closed bedroom door. Dresser drawers scooted with dry squeaks and their handles rattled.
“Who is it?”
“Annie.”
The door opened. “As long as Gail’s not with you,” Jackie said. She wore only a T-shirt and panties as far as Annie could tell. She moved from the doorway and back to her open bureau, where she pulled clothes out by the armload and hurled them onto the bed. Cole watched from a playpen in the corner. The room had been turned inside out. Boxes had been pulled from closet shelves, clothes were heaped everywhere, and drawers had been pulled completely from the chest and sat one tilting over another as haphazard as a car wreck.
“Well, Miss Annie, this is it. I’m pulling a Mason on this damn house. Hasta luego.” Jackie switched clothes from one pile to another. She worked swiftly, but Annie couldn’t discern any progress.
“What are you doing, child? Are you moving?”
“That’s what I said. I’m tired of Gail jumping in my face, ‘where’s my money’,” she mimicked, “‘The rent’s due. How could you leave Cole? You ain’t gonna ruin my credit!’ That’s all she gives a shit about.”
Annie walked into the room, around a pile of shoes. Jackie bumped her while turning to the closet.
“Excuse me, Miss Annie,” she said. She was breathless. She hugged a section of clothes from the closet, lifted them in mass from the pole, and staggered to the bed with them. “God, I’ve got a lot of stuff.”
Annie supported herself on the edge of the bed and picked up a lacy purple slip from the floor. Such indulgences, she thought; she’d never worn such frivolous things. “Where—”
Jackie almost bumped into Annie again. They were both small women. Annie was actually a bit taller than Jackie. Jackie put her hands on Annie’s shoulders. “I wasn’t going to skip saying goodbye, Miss Annie. But I’ve got to haul my butt. Kei and some girlfriends are coming by any minute to help me. I’m moving in with a couple of the girls. And I got to get all these things stuffed in boxes.” She wrestled more clothes from the closet, leaving a trail of hangers.
“These girls know what they getting into with that one?” Annie watched Cole pull on the netting of the playpen walls.
Jackie had stooped to gather up the hangers. She stopped for a second and glanced at Cole. Then her eyes met Annie’s and she looked away. “They won’t complain,” she said.
Jackie’s friends arrived a minute later, and Annie was politely herded from the room and out of their way. She climbed the long staircase to her bedroom to sit in the room’s only chair, a straight-backed armchair that had been in Joseph’s and her home. Absently, she massaged her left knee. It had begun to petrify. It hurt. Sarrie trotted into the room, leading the others, who bunched around and nipped at one another in order to get closer to Annie. “Stop this nonsense,” Annie told them. “General, stop.” She wished Gail would return, or Tyler. Jackie ran past Annie’s room a couple of times, bringing empty cardboard boxes down from the attic. Annie heard the front door opening and closing as the girls made trip after trip. They laughed. They squealed over something, sounding like kids roughhousing in the yard. Something was very wrong. “Sarrie, where’s Gail got off to?”
A car’s engine cut in front of the house. Annie went to the window, hoping to spot Gail. The white boy with the funny hair stepped from a small white car, Cole’s father.
“Jackie!” she called. “Oh, Jackie!” Annie stood in her doorway.
The baby started crying.
Her arthritic leg became excruciating. With a small gasp, she returned to her chair. “Jackie,” she called. Sarrie rested her long snout with its ancient whiskers in Annie’s lap. “What’s that girl up to?” she asked.
“Here we come, Miss Annie,” She heard from the stairs. Jackie walked into the bedroom carrying Cole on her hip. “He wants to say goodbye, too. Don’t you, boy? I asked his daddy to hold him for a minute and he started bawling. What a kid,” Jackie said.
Annie reached out, and Jackie placed Cole in her lap. Annie hugged the baby.
Jackie looked around. “I’m going to miss your dogs too, Miss Annie. They’s so well-behaved. Never kept me up howling or nothing. All housebroken and everything.” Jackie grinned.
“Your friends sound as young as you, child,” Annie told Jackie. “They won’t put up with Cole after a week. You’ll see. Stay here and work things out with Gail. Talk to her. It will be okay.”
“Don’t worry about Cole. He’s going to have it better than all of us. His daddy’s parents are going to be taking care of him.”
Annie felt panic. “What do you mean, child?”
From downstairs a male voice called, “Jackie, everyone’s waiting. Let’s get a move on.”
“I’m taking him to live with his grandparents in a ritzy neighborhood. No drugs, no punks and winos …” And Jackie answered the call, “Coming!”
“Jackie?” Annie could not believe her ears. The dogs were gone again. Annie, who’d never had a child of her own, felt suddenly numb. “No, girl. You ain’t giving your child away?”
Jackie reached for the baby. “They are his family too. They have money. They got their lawyers out on a Saturday just so I can sign the papers.”
Annie tightened her grip on Cole, who began to squirm.
“Miss Annie, I can’t handle him, okay? He cries all the time. He needs me all the time. See, I know I ain’t no fit mother. You want him tossed into a wall one day?” Tears welled in Jackie’s eyes. “I almost did that already.”
Cole reached for Jackie.
Annie could not remember feeling so weak. She wished she could lock this girl in the house until she came to her senses. “Don’t do this, Jaclyn. It will weigh you down your whole life. It’ll weigh him down too.”
For a moment they were actually tugging at the baby between them.
The father called out again. There was the whine of a boy in his voice.
Annie felt Cole’s chubby legs slide from her fingers. “You being a fool, girl,” she whispered.
Jackie wiped at her eyes with her free hand. “Thanks for everything, Miss Annie,” she said. “Bye.”
Annie watched her run out the door. Her feet pounded rapidly on the stairs. “Jackie!” Annie called. By the time Annie had pushed herself from the chair and struggled to the head of the stairs, the front door had opened with a slight creak. She called out to Jackie and started down the stairs. She heard the door shut. She tried to take the next steps in a hurry and her leg gave out on her. Each step rushed up to batter her brittle body. She tumbled down the entire first case of stairs to the landing. She hit heavily and something snapped; bones somewhere in her chest had given way. With one arm trapped beneath her, Annie lay on her stomach. For a while she couldn’t get oriented, didn’t know if she faced up the stairs or down, didn’t know where her limbs were exactly. For a terrifying moment, she had no control of her body, no sensation. Then the pain sprang to sharp, biting life. Her face pressed into the worn fibers of carpet. A spot of blood formed an almost perfect circle at her mouth. Pain seared her lungs with each breath. Something under her breasts, her own bones, stabbed her. She shut her eyes tightly against the pain. Her cheeks twitched and her lips trembled. Where is everybody, she thought in her fear, they done all left me.
She lay on the landing for what seemed like a very long time. She found that if she breathed shallowly the pain lessened. Her mind calmed. The woman who’d for months suffered her arthritis in silence began to cope with this greater pain, too. She managed to free the arm trapped beneath her. The moment she propped herself up on her elbows, she felt better. “Lord, what you do,” she whispered. Annie dragged herself to the next set of steps. There was no going back up. Slowly bringing her legs around in front of her, she was able to sit up and place her feet on the second step below. The exertion left her dazed. She leaned against the wall. One hand gripped the handrail just above her head.
On the floor below, her loyal dogs waited. Massed in a pack of red, black, and white canine fur, they paced and shuffled at the foot of the stairs. A few let out impatient, restless whines. I’m coming, she told them without speaking, do y’all need to be let out?
Her father had kept dogs, as many as nine at one time. They were strays who’d learned that the family in the split-log cabin with the split-log outhouse would feed any dog that didn’t try to take a bite at them. Her daddy would try to hunt with the dogs, with little success. They were wet-tongued playmates to Annie that pounced on her clean skirts with dirty paws. Mostly they were loyal guardians, arranged about the cabin at night, barking at strangers and gophers, howling at the evil spirits borne on the wind. These sentries, long forgotten through most of Annie’s adulthood, and recalled only during these last years, used to keep vigil over her, ensuring a little girl’s sleep went inviolate.
One step at a time, Annie scooted down the stairs to them. With her feet on the floor, leaning a shoulder and her head against the balustrade, she rested.
The front door opened with a crack and startled her. She brought a hand to her mouth and came away with a bright smear of blood and dry flecks. She wiped the blood on her skirt, then tucked the stain from view by folding it under. She sat up as straight as she could. The broken bones raked her inside.
“Hey, who’s home?” Gail called. “Ty? Annie? I’ve got news!”
“Here, Gail,” Annie said. She dared not lean around the banister to glance Gail’s way. “Did you bring Mason home?” That question slipped out like a whisper.
Gail came to the staircase. She smiled broadly, looking down at Annie. “Annie, I know where Mason is! He’s in Maryland. I have his number! I’m just about to call him now. I can’t believe it. I’ve got his number right here. I had a long talk with this woman named Maxine.” As Gail spoke she rummaged through her purse. She pulled out a yellow slip of paper and held it up in front of her as if it were a trophy. “I told myself all the way home, be cool, Gail. I almost ran the whole way. People looking at me like I was a crazy woman. Told myself not to bitch at him. I don’t want to fuss. He ain’t done a thing wrong. I … I just want to tell him to come home. Gotta get to a phone.” Gail started to walk away.
“Gail,” Annie said. “Wait, Gail.” Every word took an effort Annie fought not to show.
Gail said something about needing to make her phone call first.
“No,” Annie said. “Jackie’s done left.”
“What?” Gail marched away and returned in a moment with a sheet of paper in her hands. “It says, don’t worry you’ll get the rent money. No prior notice, nothing. Maybe this is for the better.”
“The girl’s gone to give her baby away,” Annie said. “She said she couldn’t raise him. Said she was going to give him to the daddy’s parents, and she was moving in with some girlfriends.”
Gail covered the lower half of her face with a hand. “She told you this? When did all this happen?”
There was a knock at the front door.
“Just now,” Annie replied. She didn’t think she could hold on much longer. Something inside seared.
“The fool,” Gail said and went to answer the second knock.
Annie heard another voice.
“What can she be thinking?” she heard Gail say. “Do you know where the Sullivans live?”
Gail came back to the steps. “Annie, Kei’s here. He’s a friend of Jackie’s and knows where Perry lives. We’re going.” Gail frowned. “Are you all right? Why are you sitting here?”
Annie waved a hand. “Girl, I been running up and down these stairs, trying to talk sense to that girl. Wore me out. I’ll just sit here a bit.”
“Well, if you’re sure you’re okay?”
Annie smiled and nodded.
Gail and Kei left. The door shut behind them. The car started and Annie heard it driven away. She leaned against the banister. On this short autumn day, the late afternoon shadows began to fill the corners of the room and the spaces behind the furniture. Annie sat very still. She was trying to remember if the Bucklers had said they would come by today or tomorrow. She didn’t know. The dogs climbed the stairs and surrounded her protectively. Sarrie rested her head in Annie’s lap. The others settled on the steps above her and at her feet. The snouts of some rested on the backs of others. They all eyed her, their big, dark eyes full of concern and sympathy for their beloved friend, watching her, guarding her. They waited with her.
The pain eased at last, she stands on the Bucklers’ porch at twilight, a cool, late spring evening. Joseph Gant has a bouquet of flowers, yellows and reds and pink-tinged whites with dark eyes that he has picked himself. She recognizes some as coming from the gardens of the Bucklers’ neighbors. Joseph is a caution. He is wearing his dark suit with the thin white stripes, and the same heavysoled boots he works in, his only pair, but they’ve been polished enough so that light from the kitchen window gleams on the toes. Annie wears a flowery print dress she and the Frau made. It almost perfectly matches the flowers Joseph carries. He tells her she is beautiful tonight. Annie spreads the skirt of the dress for Joseph to see and knows she grins far too widely. She is also aware this fledgling courtship has witnesses. From the same window that casts light on Joseph’s polished boots peek the Buckler boys. She pretends not to notice them, hoping Joseph doesn’t, but their faces are crowded together in one corner beneath the raised curtain. Annie knows the boys resent Joseph because he may take her from them, but she knows, too, they love her enough to be happy for her.
