Kinfolk, page 26
When she was a teenager, all she had wanted was for her breasts to develop. She had been anxious about it. She had been shorter than the other girls, a late bloomer compared to her friends. Then, one day in the tenth grade, everything happened. She developed. Just like her mother said she would.
Emily glanced down at her chest. A part of what made her a woman. She wondered what she would look like when it was over. Then she felt the weight of death being lifted from her. And the answer was easy.
“Okay,” she said. “Cut them off.”
The doctor nodded. “Let’s compare calendars.”
Chapter 36
The only information Sugar Bass knew about his daughter had come to him in the form of letters he received in prison. Celia wrote to him every week. She missed a week now and then when she went on drinking binges, but she always made up for it with extra letters.
What he knew was that Minniford Hazel Bass was born on February 28, 1957. When she first came into this world, she weighed fifteen pounds and two ounces, roughly the same weight as a General Electric mini fridge. The doctor remarked that he had never seen an infant so large, not in all his career. The nurses nicknamed her Minnie, to be cute. The name stuck. Shug had come up with Minniford, which he thought sounded more sophisticated, and he sent this to Celia in the mail. Celia wrote the name on the birth certificate.
Minniford.
Celia and Shug agreed to tell their daughter that her father had been killed in Korea. That he died a hero. Celia souped up the lie until it had become ridiculous. She told the girl that the president had mentioned her father’s name on a national radio broadcast. She said Minnie’s father was a secret army agent. Shug was against this, but there wasn’t much he could do from a cell. He had become invisible.
The letters documenting his daughter’s life were the only real possessions he had in Draper. They covered every major moment. And every small one too.
Minnie was a happy baby and a good kid. He could tell by the letters. Her mother said she was mild-mannered and gentle. But kids teased her a lot because she was different. To be different was to extend an invitation for commentary from fools. Shug knew this intimately.
In Minnie’s fifth-grade music class, her mother once wrote, a young man named B. J. Steadman kept calling Minnie “Jolly Green Giant.” Shug wanted to tear through his cell doors and march down to Park Elementary and confront the kid. Another time a dreadful girl named Charlotte Waters indicated that Minnie’s face resembled human buttocks. Charlotte had drawn an illustration to accompany this remark.
Minnie rolled over and took the abuse. It was a Bass trait. Shug was the same way. Minnie was just like him. A mostly sedate person with a strong tolerance for the stupidity of others. She was optimistic, almost heedlessly so. She loved Batman and The Jetsons and Looney Tunes. Especially the Road Runner. Shug had never heard of most of these TV shows, but he liked knowing her tastes just the same.
She was perpetually cheerful and she was too trusting. Also, Minnie was obsessed with counting things. Minnie’s mother said her counting was an unhealthy obsession, a habit Minnie could not stop. Her mother said that wherever they went, Minnie had to know how many windows were in the house, how many steps on the staircase, how many lamps in the home, how many floorboards. She counted designs on area rugs, on wallpaper. She counted numbers on dials. She counted seams on sidewalks, leaves on trees, bricks on buildings, louvers on doors, spots on the ceiling. If she got hard up, she would count the little hairs on her arms.
Above all, Shug knew that Minnie loved to sing. “She could crack your skull with her loud voice,” her mother once wrote. When Minnie was eleven years old, she auditioned for school choir. She sang “Up the Lazy River,” followed by “This Little Light of Mine.” After her audition, the choir director claimed Minnie’s voice was so loud that it had given her a headache and she had to lie down. Shug read this in his cell and wanted more than anything to hear his daughter’s voice. But he could only imagine it.
Her life was hard, and it was his fault. This fact never escaped him. Not once.
When Minnie turned thirteen, her mother lost her job cleaning because of an injury. Her letters became sparse. She was drinking more often than normal. From the scant letters that came thereafter, he discerned that Celia had checked out emotionally. Minnie was doing what she had to do to survive.
Minnie dropped out of school. She helped her mother pay rent. Her first job was working for a local farmer in Ephesus. She picked cotton all summer until her hands were bloody. The last letter he received stated that Minnie had gotten a job at Waffle House. It seemed wrong that his artistic and mathematically talented daughter should be slinging hash for truckers.
But then the letters stopped. One day one of the guards brought the news. Shug collapsed on his bed. He did not grieve for Celia. He did not grieve for himself. He grieved for Minnie.
Shug loved his daughter more than his own life. To love someone you had never met was its own form of torture. It was the agony of being unseen. It was the pain of never having a single smile offered to him personally. It was never hearing “Dad” or “I love you.”
Shug was thinking about his girl as he strung a trip line around the perimeter of the Taylor house. It was sunset. The sky was pink lemonade. The trip line was only an alarm device; if anyone came close to this property beneath the cover of darkness, he wanted to know about it. If the line were tripped, a small wind-up alarm clock would begin to clatter and ring and someone would have a very bad day, courtesy of Sugar Bass.
He used a hammer to beat nails into nearby trees and various structures, then tied the line around each nail until the wire was banjo-string tight. It had been a while since he’d laid a trip wire.
Once the entire device was strung up, he disengaged it. He would engage the alarm system when Minnie and the others were safely inside the home. And if anyone came within rock-throwing distance of the Taylor house, Shug would be all over them like butter on a sweet potato.
He heard an automobile approaching, rolling up the driveway. He finished his work quickly and disconnected the trip line. He dropped to the ground, then commando-crawled on the dirt until he was beneath the front porch of the Taylor home. He shimmied toward the edge of the home so he could get a better look at the passengers exiting the vehicle.
It was his daughter.
Minnie was carrying the baby in her arms and she was drenched. Nub Taylor was consoling her because she was crying. The baby had a pink bow in her hair. The baby’s head was topped with a shock of red hair. Everything within him wanted to burst forward into the glorious light of day and hold his two girls. Everything within him. But he remained still. He remained silent. Stoic and unmoving. Invisible.
Chapter 37
The rock crashed through the bedroom at three in the morning.
Nub had been ready for it this time. He had been waiting for it, ever since the boys threw their drinks at Minnie onstage. He had been on full alert after that. In fact, he rarely slept. It was just like when he stood watch in the navy. You ate, slept, and breathed the possibility of attacks. You spent so long within this state of readiness that when the attack finally came, you were almost grateful for it. You were looking forward to getting it over with.
So when the rock hit the floor of his bedroom and glass sprayed all over him, he was not surprised. He was not shocked. He lifted the rifle from the bed and moved with precision. He was sober. For once. With a plan.
He thumb-cocked his Remington, then lumbered onto his steady feet. Reaction timing was of paramount importance here. Speed of response was the key, not accuracy. He wanted his presence to be known to his offenders. That was what mattered. He wanted whoever was out there to listen up and know that he was not going to be calling the police. Not this time.
He aimed his rifle out the busted window and shot above the tree line. The report of the Remington was loud. He pumped the lever and shot again. Each rifle kick was so hard it knocked him back a few feet.
Next he slid on his boots and tramped down the hallway, bounding through the front door. He stepped onto the porch wearing only boots and boxer briefs. Rifle held before himself. Nub fired over the trees again to show the man he wasn’t afraid. He saw a shape in his yard. It was a man. A single silhouette standing in the grass.
“You’re about to get shot!” he shouted to him.
But the man didn’t move. He simply faced Nub squarely. Like a sentinel. It was a stare down.
“You hear me?” shouted Nub. “I said get off my land, or I’ll remove you myself!”
The man was carrying a gasoline canister. Nub felt his insides become watery when he noticed the flickering glow coming from the back of his home. Within moments, the glow became stronger, until it had crept across the lawn and up the siding of his house. The man with the canister tossed the gasoline container onto the porch. The container clanged like a bell. And the man walked away.
“Tell Sugar we said hello!” the dark figure shouted.
Nub fired, and the rifle let out a crack.
But the man kept walking.
“Stop right there!”
Crack! Crack!
But the man was already gone. Nub sprinted inside to wake up Minnie. The flames were already quickly licking up the sides of the home. Tongues of fire crawled upward a few feet every second. The man must have been saturating his house with fuel for the last few hours.
He could hear Bun crying. He jogged upstairs, clearing two stairs at a time. He rushed through the house, boots pounding loudly on floorboards, but he couldn’t find Minnie.
This confused him. She wasn’t in her room. But there was no way she could have left the house so quickly. She wasn’t downstairs. And he could no longer hear Bun crying. He called her name, but there was no answer.
“Minnie! Where are you? We have to get out of here! Now!”
He could already see the flames outside the bedroom window, lapping onto the eaves like breakers on the shore.
“Minnie, sweetie! Answer me!”
Nothing.
He could hear the popping of the fire. It was gaining intensity, and fast. He kept going through the rooms, looking for her under beds and in closets, but he couldn’t find her. Wyatt was sitting on the windowsill in his room, anxiously whipping his tail. Nub lifted the cat into his arms. Wyatt clawed his skin, then shot free and tore down the stairs, out of the house.
“Minnie! Sweetie! Where are you? Answer me!”
He opened the linen closet in the upstairs bathroom and found Minnie huddled in the bottom of the closet, beneath the towels, crying.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” he shouted. “The house is on fire!”
Minnie was rocking back and forth. She was catatonic. He tried to remove the baby from her arms, but she beat him away.
“Minnie,” he said, tugging at her clothing. “Please. We have to go. Right now. Get up!”
She kept rocking. “Gunshots. I heard gunshots.”
“Yes, I know sweetie. It was me.”
He could feel the floor beneath him warming up, and smoke was filling the upstairs like a heavy fog. He began coughing. He peeked out the bathroom door to the top of the stairs. He could see his kitchen was already in flames. He returned to the bathroom closet.
“Minnie, please. Sweetie. Please snap out of it!”
He squatted to her level. He touched her head. He stroked her hair. “Darling, listen, we have to get out of here. Do you hear me? Please. We’re going to be in trouble if we stay any longer. You don’t want Bun to get hurt, do you?”
He coughed.
But it was already too late. The smoke was getting too thick. He could feel his throat burning something awful. And he was getting dizzy. He was losing his grip with consciousness. Soon the air was pure white. He knew he’d never get her out of this house. Not in the state she was in. So he staggered to the window and tore it open to ventilate the room. He heard glass breaking downstairs from the heat. He heard wood snapping. He heard things falling. He heard the house bellowing and creaking from the strain. The house was coming apart.
“Minnie, we’ve got to go,” he said weakly, choking on the thick air. “Please.”
Then he fell face forward and passed out.
Chapter 38
Anna Lee Broussard loved revivals. Evangelists used to come through Park every summer for revivals and the whole town would show up. People went crazy for revivals.
“You don’t have to advertise a fire!” the preacher would shout to the reprobates and heartless sinners as they filled his tent. And he was right. If you are on fire for the Lord, you don’t have to tell people about it. The fire will practically burn your clothes off and be seen by all heathens who have given their lives to drinking and fornication and playing bingo. At least that’s what Anna Lee Broussard was remembering at this particular moment when she saw the fire truck clanging past her house.
Anna Lee stepped to her window and scanned the night horizon with her eighty-seven-year-old eyes. She could see a cumulus of smoke rising in the distance. She got out her binoculars.
“Oh dear,” she said aloud.
The first thing she did was call Cynthia Lindsey. Cynthia lived north of town, and she would definitely know what was going on. Cynthia was hooked up to the pulse of Park like a heart monitor. The woman knew everything about everyone.
Cynthia answered her phone quickly.
“Cynthia, it’s Anna Lee.”
“What is it, Anna Lee?”
Cynthia was obviously awake already. Her voice was fresh and dry.
Cynthia told Anna Lee she had already talked to Boyd Lovelace, who said he had talked to Vance Woods, who had gotten word from Mae Beth at Ash County dispatch, who had just called to tell her that it was Nub Taylor’s house on fire.
“Nub Taylor,” said Anna Lee. “Have mercy.”
“It’s always something with Nub Taylor.”
“Bless him.”
“I feel sorry for his family.”
“Poor Loretta. Can you imagine being married to someone who pees in a kiddie pool at your family reunion?”
“I caught Harold peeing in our sink once, but thank heavens he’d taken out the dishes first.”
And so it went.
When the conversation ended, Anna Lee quickly threw on her pink robe and shuffled across Belleville on her old feet, using her aluminum cane for support. She moved as fast as she could without compromising her newly installed steel hip. She beat on the door of the largest house in Park. She could have called, but news like this deserved an in-person delivery. When the door opened, Anna Lee said, “I’m sorry to wake you up, Emily. But your father’s house is on fire.”
* * *
Shug smelled the fire before he saw it. He sat bolt upright, roused from a deep sleep by the scent of burning wood. He looked at his campfire pit. The fire had been extinguished for many hours. The fire wasn’t his.
He sniffed the air. This was fresh smoke. Acrid and new. Biting and pungent. He wiped the sleep from his eyes, crawled from beneath his quilt, stood, and stretched. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He didn’t even remember falling asleep. But the days of constant vigilance and surveillance were catching up with him. He looked at the tiny alarm clock perched beside his foot. The bell that was attached to the elaborate series of trip wires he had activated after the lights had gone off inside Nub’s house. The alarm was inert and unmoving. He looked again into the night sky and saw the plumes rising above the trees.
His device had failed.
Shug raced through the thicket toward the farmhouse. When he saw the home in the middle distance, he could already hear the crackling of wood. And then he heard someone scream.
* * *
Minnie watched Nub pass out before her on the floor. He lay totally still. It took a second to sink into her traumatized brain what had just happened. The image of him there on the floor. Unmoving. She was in shock. And getting very dizzy. She knew she wasn’t thinking clearly. When the gravity of the moment finally hit her, she fought off the drowsiness from the smoke and called his name. But Nub made no movement. He was totally out.
“Mr. Nub?”
Nothing.
Bun began to cough. Minnie’s throat was already raw, like it was bleeding. She couldn’t stop hacking. She wet a rag and held it over Bun’s face, but she was afraid she would suffocate her daughter. She had to get out of here or Bun’s little lungs would never recover. They would all die.
The bedroom was filled with white fog. Finally the motherhood instinct kicked in. Her childish panic was driven away by a sense of protectiveness all mothers have. Minnie stood and felt her fear fade into a cool realization of what she must do. She walked to the open window and considered jumping out. But she could easily drop Bun. And what about Mr. Nub? She stuck her head out the window. The roof was on fire. She wondered whether the stairs were on fire too. But it didn’t matter if they were. There weren’t any other routes out of this place.
She went to Nub, who was still inert on the floor.
“Get up, Mr. Nub!”
The old man coughed but did not open his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Nub. I don’t know what was wrong with me. We have to go.”
He hacked so hard that his body curled into the fetal position.
“We have to get out of here, Mr. Nub. Please.”
His eyes opened for a brief moment. “Get that baby out of here.”
Chapter 39
The roofline was an inferno, sunken sideways. The porch was already destroyed. The framework beneath the porch had been burned so that the platform sagged, which would soon bring down the porch’s support structure. Overhangs and soffits were about to start detaching and falling. The whole house of cards was tumbling. Rafters fell inside. Beams collided with the floor.
Shug arrived in time to see splinters of charred wood crash onto the porch. The windows were gone. The interior beams were exposed, bright white with flames. The house was intact, but not for long.
