Kinfolk, page 14
Funny. She had always thought she had more time. And that was what she grieved for most. Time. That was the lie she had grown up believing. She thought she had plenty of time. When the sour truth was, she didn’t even possess the minutes she had right now. No one did.
One of the sophomores approached her. “We’re all done, Mrs. Ives,” said the eager female student.
Emily accepted the girl’s paper and gave it a once-over. “Thank you, Crystal.”
“What do I do now?” the student asked.
Emily studied the paper again, then shrugged. “You’re finished.”
The girl remained before her. “Can I do something for extra credit?”
Emily laughed. “No. You’re through. Go look around the park; there are some really great trees here. Have some fun with your friends. We still have a few hours.”
The studious girl’s face fell. Crystal reminded Emily of the student she had been. The girl could not comprehend the esoteric concept of fun. She only understood goals. She understood hard work, achievements, and success.
“Get out of here, Crystal. Go talk to your friends. Go have some fun.”
The girl hesitatingly said, “Okay, Mrs. Ives.” Then the young woman walked away, her youthful ponytail swishing behind her. She soon joined her friends. Eventually, Emily could see them laughing and horsing around.
“Have as much fun as you possibly can,” whispered Emily.
While you can.
* * *
The man was sitting in the easy chair inside the dingy mobile home. The home—if you could call it that—was perched on 1,239 darkened acres of corn and cotton and alfalfa. The moon was high outside. The man was large. Not fat, but big. The Organization only hired big men to do the sorts of jobs he did.
He was watching The Waltons on a small black-and-white television. John-Boy was entering a writing contest, working on an essay with the help of his attractive teacher, Miss Hunter. John-Boy had the hots for Miss Hunter. Poor kid. It was a recipe for heartbreak. The episode was a late-night rerun. The man had seen this episode once before when it originally aired. He rarely missed an episode of The Waltons.
There was a rap on the trailer door before it swung open.
It was his partner returning with supper. KFC again.
He was sick of fried chicken.
“Oh boy,” said the big man. “Kentucky Fried Rooster. Again.”
“Listen,” replied his Jersey-accented partner. “You wanna be in charge of dinner? Be my guest.”
The big man showed full surrender. “I’s only saying.”
The men pulled up their chairs to the dinette. The trailer was so small the two large men could hardly fit around the table without busting out windows with their shoulders.
“And it’s not dinner,” said the big man, reaching into the bucket. “How many times do I have to tell you, we say supper in this part of the world. Dinner means lunch.”
His northern partner helped himself to a wad of coleslaw. KFC had crappy coleslaw. “I don’t care what you people call it. It’s the same thing.”
The big man shook his head. “It ain’t you people. It’s y’all.”
His coworker rose from the table and started fumbling through the kitchenette drawers for utensils. “I almost forgot,” said New Jersey. “I got news from Bobby today.”
“What news?”
“Shug’s daughter’s coming back this week.”
The big man spoke with a mouthful. “Coming back? I thought she was in that state home.”
“She was. But the state is sending her back here to live with somebody.”
“You find out who with?”
His coworker removed a pitcher of iced tea from the tiny refrigerator and filled an acrylic glass. “Yeah, some old guy who owns a big farm outside of town. Not far from here. We’ll go check it out after dinner.”
“Supper.”
“Whatever.”
The big man nodded, then took another bite of his chicken. He watched his partner take a slug from his iced tea glass and wince in disgust.
“Sweet Jesus,” said the Jerseyan, “this tea has sugar in it.”
The big man shook his head. “Yankees.”
* * *
Phillip Deener and his friend Craig were stealing beer from the coolers at the bowling alley. They were breaking into the kitchen, which wasn’t very hard. All you had to do was pick the padlock secured to the back door. They had done it a bunch of times.
It wasn’t that Phillip and his friend didn’t have the money or the fake IDs to buy beer; it was that stealing the beer was more fun. Stolen stuff just tasted better than paid-for stuff. Plus, it was something to do.
The padlock clicked open. Phillip opened the rear door to the kitchen.
The boys crept into the galley and found the cooler in the back of the room, next to the three-compartment sink and the popcorn machine. Craig started horsing around and threw a handful of pretzel salt at Phillip. The salt hit Phillip in the face and stung his eyes. He swore loudly and socked his friend in the stomach. And he threatened to do worse.
Craig doubled over and gasped for air. “I was only kidding, Phil.”
“You idiot. They’ll find our mess tomorrow morning.”
“So what? Nobody will know it’s us.”
Phillip’s friend was a complete mouth breather. Phillip smacked him. “Use your head, dork. If there’s a mess here tomorrow morning, what’s going to happen next?”
Craig just stared at him. Phillip could swear he saw drool coming from the corner of his mouth.
“I’ll tell you what will happen,” said Phillip. “They’ll start locking these doors with better locks, then they’ll start watching the place to see if anyone breaks in. And then we can’t get in here and take any beer.”
“Okay. Jeez. I didn’t think of it like that.”
“Clean this mess up,” said Phillip, who had always liked the way his voice sounded whenever he barked orders. He had big aspirations of someday maybe going into middle management.
Craig set to cleaning up the salt from the floor when he broke the news. “Did you hear Minnie Bass is coming back to town?”
Phillip stopped rummaging around in the cooler.
Craig went on. “My mom works at the courthouse on Wednesdays. She said she heard them talking about the Jolly Green Giant. She’s coming back.”
“Shut up. You’re lying.”
Craig shrugged.
Phillip thought about Minnie Bass. He should have known better than to mess around with a girl like her. Minnie was a deadly combination. She was a virgin and she was ugly. You give ugly girls like that a morsel of attention and you’ll never get rid of them. They get clingy. They start talking about marriage and stuff. But then, Minnie had been so easy to conquer. And it had always been tough for Phillip to resist low-hanging fruit.
“But she doesn’t have any family here,” said Phillip. “Where’s she going to live?”
Craig shook his head. “She’s staying with that guy.”
“What guy?”
“The old guy your dad beat up.”
Phillip’s friend wore a smirk. Craig was enjoying this a little too much.
“And that ain’t even the best part,” his friend said, staring right at him. “The best part is, Minnie’s carrying your baby.”
Chapter 21
Minnie Bass sat sandwiched between Nub and Benny, a small suitcase on her crowded lap. She hadn’t said a word since they had picked her up in Birmingham. The crud-covered F-100 rumbled past the little town at dusk. Past the IGA, the dry cleaners, the bakery, Killigan’s Insurance office, Jerald’s used car lot, the Chicken Shed, and the Best Little Hairhouse in Alabama beauty parlor. They sat at the train crossing, waiting quietly as steel-bodied boxcars clacked across the tracks, moving at turtle speed. The barricade arms held traffic at bay, inconveniencing the throng of impatient Dodges, Fords, and Chevys. Nub felt as awkward as he’d ever felt in his entire life. He had no idea what to say to this child.
He looked at Minnie. “You doing okay?”
He’d already asked this five times before, each time hoping for a more loquacious answer from the girl.
She nodded. “I’m good.”
Silence in the Ford.
“Well,” Benny said, “so am I. I’m good too.”
The girl looked out the window again.
The train barricades lifted, and Nub kept driving.
The fields moved past the truck windows like a dead person’s EKG. The road to the Taylor farm was a long, twisting, boring one. All dirt. Benny tried a few more conversational starters that all died quick deaths. The kid didn’t want to talk. So Nub and Benny quit trying. When they reached Miller’s Hill, Nub flicked his cigarette butt out the window and began to wonder if this was all a big mistake. Was it presumptuous of him to think this child wanted to live with him? Yes. The answer was yes. It was presumptuous. Incredibly presumptuous. They didn’t know each other. They might not even like each other. He was an old man. She was a young girl. This was stupid, that’s what it was.
They drove onward.
Six miles outside the city limits, within the hinterlands of central Alabama, sat Nub’s two-story farmhouse. The home was positioned on a low hill amid a world of tallgrass and jimson weed. The chipped and faded home was built in 1879. The white siding had gone grayish brown. The formerly green tin roof looked black and rusty with corrosion. The shutters were crooked. The deceased porch swing was hanging by only one chain. His mother’s old flower gardens had gone to seed. The old barn leaned sideways and had holes in it. A few outbuildings that were once used for tobacco curing back in the twenties were now home to North America’s largest collection of wasp colonies.
The truck moved up the winding gravel driveway slowly. He looked at Minnie through the corner of his eye, gauging her reaction to his homeplace. Minnie’s posture changed slightly when the house came into view.
“This is your house?” she said.
Nub stared at his family home and felt slightly embarrassed. “Is this a trick question?”
Nub’s granddaddy bought this land after the war; his family built the home with their own hands. Nub’s great-uncle bought the house from the Sears and Roebuck catalog for three hundred bucks. The builders used only hammers and nails. No handsaws were needed; all the boards were precut. All the workers had to do was put the puzzle together. The home had come delivered in a septillion pieces to the Birmingham Terminal Station. There was no rural mail service to Ash County in those days, so his father and uncles had to carry the shipment here from Birmingham one load at a time using a buckboard and mule. An arduous process that took about as long as earning a PhD.
“Just y’all two living here?” Minnie said.
“Y’all two?” said Nub.
She looked at Benny. “You and Mr. Nub?”
Nub laughed. “You think we live together?”
“Shoot,” said Benny. “If I had to share a toilet with Nub, I’d move to Canada.”
Nub parked the truck. He unloaded her luggage and gave her the grand tour of the ugliest house known to civilized man. There wasn’t much to it. A parlor, a kitchen, three bedrooms, transom windows over each door to keep the air moving. No A/C, no central heat. He had a fireplace that housed many happy families of squirrels. He had ancient plumbing. Chipped plaster walls. Warped pine floors. And, of course, he had Wyatt the cat, who was currently serving a third term as president of this household. It wasn’t much to offer the girl. But it was something.
“You’ll be upstairs,” said Nub. “Complete privacy. Never even have to see me if you don’t want. You’ll have your own space up there. Your own bathroom and everything.”
“For reals?”
“For reals,” said Benny.
“My own bathroom?”
Nub shrugged. “Eat supper in the shower if you want.”
They went inside and he took her upstairs and introduced her to said bathroom. He flicked on the light. The white-tile room had seen better days, although he had just cleaned it. On the bathroom counter was a host of girly products, all the toiletries and makeup that a girl might need. Leigh Ann had purchased things from the hair-and-beauty section of the Kmart. There were smell-good soaps and fragrant lotions and brushes galore. Leigh Ann had told Nub to give her a hundred bucks and to ask no questions. And a few hours later, Leigh Ann showed up to his house with enough feminine beauty products to stage a beauty pageant.
“What’s all this?” Minnie asked, touching a bottle of moisturizer, or lotion, or whatever the heck it was.
“That’s, uh, skin stuff. Or it might be for your shoes. I don’t really know.”
“It’s moisturizer,” said Benny. “To treat dry and damaged skin.”
“Is it for me?”
Benny laughed. “Well, it ain’t for Nub.”
Nub removed his cap to reveal a bald spot dotted with liver spots.
“It’s all yours,” said Benny.
She whispered, “For reals?”
Then Minnie placed a hand on the shower knob. “You got hot water here?”
Nub and Benny exchanged a look. “ʼCourse we got hot water.”
She turned the knob. Water came rushing out of the shower head, strong enough to take the skin off a chicken. She placed her hand in the spray and smiled. Nub was thinking maybe he had scored a point by paying his most recent water bill.
“Use all the hot water you want. It’s on the house.”
“Yeah,” said Benny. “Nub never uses it. He only showers on leap years.”
At the end of the tour, they stood in what was now Minnie’s bedroom, which overlooked the front pasture. Nub watched the girl take in the surroundings as though it were the first time she’d ever seen a bedroom. The room had originally been the master bedroom. It was spacious, with a pitched ceiling. The centerpiece of the room was a stained glass picture window overlooking the Taylor farm. Minnie was drawn to the multicolored window. Everyone always was.
Minnie stood before the tinted panes and ran her finger along the welded lines between them. She stared at the acreage below them through a prism work of colors.
“My mama,” Nub explained, “she loved stained glass. She made my father buy it for her. She said this window made her feel like she was in church.”
Minnie didn’t respond.
“Anyway, this place kind of grows on you.”
“Sort of like athlete’s foot,” Benny said.
Minnie gazed out at the lonesome prairie. After a few minutes of quiet, Benny broke the stillness. He tapped on the windowpane.
“Looks like you got a visitor,” he said.
All three of them looked out the window. A cloud of dust was preceded by a gray car speeding up the driveway. It was Emily’s Buick Skylark. Her headlights were slicing through the air like flaming balls of fire. Her engine whined in the far off, rushing toward the home.
“Here comes Custer,” Benny said.
“Who?”
“Your new sister,” Nub said.
* * *
Emily was inside Nub’s kitchen before he could get downstairs. She had bags of groceries with her too. Lots of bags. The brown IGA sacks rested on every flat surface, brimming with celery stalks, lettuce heads, banana bundles, and canned goods. She was already unloading the bags and placing items into their respective cubbies, slamming cupboard doors as though she lived here, when Nub entered the kitchen. She had also brought a casserole. A big one, in a blue cornflower casserole dish. She tossed open the oven door and slid the foil-covered supper inside.
“Make yourself at home,” said Nub.
“I brought food,” said Emily, closing the oven door with her butt. “Everyone get washed up. The casserole takes about thirty minutes to cook.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with my daughter?”
Emily adjusted the oven dial. “Well, I didn’t want her first meal in this house to be pork and beans with ketchup.”
“That’s not fair. We were going to have Hamburger Helper.”
Emily smiled. “You don’t have any hamburger.”
“Usually Benny and I just eat the Helper.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” he asked.
“I’m not. I’m being nice to her. Big difference.”
Nub rifled through a grocery bag. “Okay then. Why are you being so nice to her?”
“Because it’s what I do, taking care of kids.”
He decided not to mention anything about Minnie’s pregnancy. He was already under enough scrutiny from Emily Ives as it was. She would learn of the girl’s condition soon enough.
“I thought you said this was all a stupid idea.”
“It is.”
He opened a jar of newly purchased mustard and sniffed it. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because I can see how important this is to you, Dad.”
Nub swallowed the lump of clay in his throat. He did not deserve this young woman as his daughter. He never had.
“What would I ever do without you, sweetie?”
“I don’t know, Dad, but you’re going to have to figure it out.”
* * *
Minnie was stuffed. Dinner was a lemon chicken casserole, finished with chocolate chess pie. Minnie had never even heard of chess pie before, but it was delicious. The whole meal was exquisite. Miss Emily had outfitted the table with pressed napkins. Yes, she ironed the napkins before you wiped your mouth on them. Minnie had never heard of such a thing. Minnie ate three slices of pie. She could have eaten six or seven, but she was trying to be ladylike. They even used special forks, which Emily called cake forks; they only had three prongs and looked like they were for Barbie dolls.
Afterward, everyone sat around and talked. Minnie took in the house one piece at a time as the conversation ebbed and flowed around her. There were 2,319 separate floorboards, not counting the closets. Twelve windows—three in front, two upstairs, one in each bathroom, five in the back. Nineteen interior steps and eight exterior steps, making for a total of twenty-seven, the perfect number. Maybe it was a sign.
