Bent Road (33 page)

“Yes,” Mary Robison said. “Orville killed her.” She nodded toward the garage behind the house. “Done the same to himself.”

Arthur and Floyd found Orville Robison on the garage floor, frozen solid, a hole blown out of the back of his head. Mary told Arthur and the sheriff that she thought to clean up after her husband, but then decided it wasn’t her business to tidy up another one of his messes. She didn’t know for sure how he killed Julianne, only that he said it was an accident, same as snagging a fish instead of catching it proper with bait and a hook. Didn’t much matter how it got done—there’s a fish on the end of the line either way.

“Some men don’t know the difference between a daughter and a wife,” she said. “Don’t let Ruth go back to that husband of hers. Don’t let him have that sweet tiny baby like Orville had mine.”

Arthur turns away from Ruth and chokes as he repeats Mary Robison’s words.

“Don’t let Ray have that sweet tiny baby like Orville had mine.” Celia slips behind Arthur’s chair and kneels next to Ruth. “You’re safe here. You and Elisabeth are safe.” Holding Ruth’s narrow shoulders, she raises her eyes to Arthur. “Is she not well? Has the sheriff taken her for help?”

“She didn’t seem altogether aware. That’s the only way I can put it. Not at all aware.”

“That poor family,” Ruth says. “That poor little girl.”

Celia presses her palm to Ruth’s cheek. “You should rest. This can’t be good for you.”

Celia says this because she has to. If she is to be a good person, she has to say it, and if she weren’t so scared, she’d mean it. She reaches to touch Ruth’s hand, but stops when Daniel’s bedroom door opens. She doesn’t want him hearing any of this conversation, doesn’t even want him close to it. It’s not fitting for a child to hear, but when he walks out of his room, he has become a man. Just like that. He is a man.

“You hungry?” Celia asks.

“Na,” Daniel says. His voice, like Arthur’s, is a low croak. When did his voice change? She thought she would hear it coming in cracks and squeaks along the way. His neck is thicker, too, and triangular muscles fix it to his shoulders, which are suddenly wide. Even his hands, they’re larger. Just like that, when she was wasn’t looking, he became a man.

“You should eat,” Celia says, but he shakes his head and walks across the kitchen toward the back porch where Jonathon is still pounding. As she watches him walk away, tears well in the corners of her eyes.

He is gone.

“I won’t have the children hearing any of this.” Celia spits the words at Arthur as if it’s his fault this has happened, his fault that the town will bury Julianne Robison and Ian in the same week and that Daniel grew up when her back was turned. Another funeral before Julianne’s grave is even settled. Another small coffin, too small. Another child grown. What if it were one of her children instead of Julianne or Ian? How does a father kill his own child? How does a mother turn her back and find a man has taken over where once she had a boy?

She says it again. “None of it. Not a word.”

Because Arthur is a good man, he nods and lowers his head, gladly taking the fault. Now the tears spill onto Celia’s cheeks. She lays aside her dish towel and goes to him. He is stiff at first, not letting her feel him, but then his body warms, his muscles soften, and his shoulders fall. He leans into her for this moment.

 

B
efore he walks onto the back porch where Jonathon is pulling the last board off the broken window, Daniel stops in front of the gun cabinet. He takes his winter coat from the hook and sees the small gold lock hanging in place, snapped tight. Glancing back to make sure no one can see him from the kitchen and waiting until he hears Jonathon working at the back door, he stretches up and reaches for the key on top of the cabinet. He’s never been tall enough before but Mama says he’s growing like a weed. Dad says like a stinkweed. Lifting onto his toes, he reaches over the ledge. He stumbles, reaches again, his side starting to ache. He feels it.

Checking again and waiting until he hears Jonathon fumbling in his tool chest, he slips the key into the lock, turns it, thinking the click will echo through the house. No one hears. The lock falls open. But then he considers Jonathon working there on the back porch. There is no other way out. He won’t let Daniel walk by with a rifle in hand. He’ll tell him to put the damn fool thing away and then he’ll tell Dad and Dad will hide the key somewhere higher. So Daniel snaps the lock closed and reaches overhead to replace the key. He stumbles again, not very steady in his leather boots because they cramp his toes. Bracing himself against the wall, he tries again and, as he slides the key back over the ledge, he knocks several coats off the crowded hooks. Pausing to make sure no one heard, he bends down to pick them up. Jonathon’s, Dad’s, Elaine’s, another of Dad’s. Then he stands and, as he begins to hang them up again, he sees the empty spot where Dad’s shotgun usually rests.

 

E
vie sits on the edge of her bed where she can see out her bedroom window. It is nearly dark, but through all the trees that have dropped their leaves, she can still see the road. A truck drives over the top of the hill. So many cars since everyone started to die. And phone calls. First Olivia the cow died. Evie doesn’t like her anymore. She brought death to them and now it has settled in for a good long stay. She’s probably not even all the way dead yet because of the cold. It will keep her for a while, that’s what Ian said before he was dead. But not Julianne. She died all alone, all the way dead, in a little bed in a strange house, and now she’s buried, still all alone. How did they dig it up, the frozen ground? Will the same two Negro men dig Ian’s grave? They are small graves. Not so much digging. What if Aunt Ruth’s baby comes too early and it’s blue and it doesn’t wake up in the oven? That will be a very small grave, but Aunt Ruth’s will be regular sized, almost regular.

The truck is still driving down the hill toward their house. Daddy says there’s black ice. It’s the most dangerous. The truck knows it, too. It drives slowly, and at the bottom of the hill, it stops, white smoke spilling out of its tail end. Then the truck, the red truck, drives slowly past.

Standing on the back porch, Daniel watches Jonathon, who is squatting near the door, a pane of glass balanced on his two palms. At first, Jonathon doesn’t notice Daniel standing there. Daniel could push him down with one kick in the butt and he’d topple over and the glass would shatter all over him. It might even kill him, and he’d never find cabinets for his new house. Then there would be room for Daniel to be a man. Jonathon is a pocket clogger. That’s what Dad called the men who worked in the car factories and made sure not to work too fast or too slow. Lots of the men complained about the Negroes taking jobs. Dad only complained about the men who did just enough to keep on working. Dad said they took a job from another man, a better man, who would take pride in his work. They were the pocket cloggers. Jonathon is a pocket clogger—clogging up the spot that Daniel should have.

“Hey,” Jonathon says. Balancing the glass on his two flat palms, he begins to stand. “You going out?”

Daniel nods but doesn’t answer.

“Getting dark,” Jonathon says, glancing outside. “Want some company?”

Across the porch and beyond the screened door, the gravel drive isn’t white anymore. All the cars coming and going have ground it down to dirt again. One thing is for damn sure. This roof won’t collapse because he cleaned off every speck of snow himself.

“Na,” Daniel says to Jonathon because he most definitely does not want his company.

“Cold out there.” Jonathon slides the glass into place. “Would you look there in that toolbox?” he says, motioning toward a silver box on the floor. “You see a small can in there?”

Daniel flips open the lid with his foot. He shakes his head.

“Well, damn it all. Forgot the glaze.” Jonathon lifts the glass out again and lays it back on the cardboard box it came in. “A lot of banging around for nothing. You want to help me put this wood back up?”

Daniel shakes his head as he buttons his coat. Then he takes a hat from one of the pockets and pulls it down low on his forehead. Inside, a kitchen chair scoots across the wooden floor and someone walks through the house.

“I’m real sorry about Ian,” Jonathon says, closing the cardboard flaps over the glass and looking at the ground instead of Daniel. It seems everyone is afraid to look at him. “Real sorry that had to sneak up on you.”

“Didn’t sneak up on anybody. I knew he’d die soon enough.”

Jonathon lifts his eyes, one hand still on the pane of glass. “Well, so it wasn’t such a surprise. Still sorry, though.”

When Jonathon looks away again, Daniel wants to kick him hard, so hard that he flies through the door and lands in the kitchen at Elaine’s feet. Instead, he says, “See ya,” and starts to walk outside.

“Hey, Dan,” Jonathon says. “Listen, I’ll be taking off when I get this wood back up. But you ever need anything, just call. You know where to find me.”

Daniel nods and walks across the porch.

By the time he reaches the last stair but before he steps onto the gravel drive, a thought starts to gnaw at him. He stops on the bottom stair and lets it gnaw all the way through. When it does, he looks toward the garage and smiles because now he knows where he’ll find Dad’s shotgun.

 

C
elia offers Ruth a third cup of coffee when she excuses herself to go lie down, but she shakes her head and pats her stomach to signal a tired baby and Mama. At this, Celia smiles, but Arthur still can’t look at Ruth. Celia nudges him for being impolite even though she knows it’s not bad manners; it’s fear. Mary Robison showed them all the truth about the very worst that a man can do to his own daughter. She made them all think, believe even, that Ray might do the same to little Elisabeth. She made them believe it so strongly that it still seems Ray is the one who hurt Julianne. It still feels like he is the one who wrapped that poor child in feed bags and dropped her in a hole.

“Rest well, Ruth,” Celia says. “Things will be better tomorrow.”

 

D
aniel waits in the garage until Jonathon and Elaine leave, and then, thinking someone will put out the porch lights, he waits even longer. No one ever does, so taking a deep breath, he slips behind the oil drum, pushes aside an old woolen blanket and lifts the shotgun. He cracks it open and sees the brass end of two shells. Loaded. It’s heavier than he remembered, and the barrel is cold, even through his leather gloves. He slaps his palm against the wooden stock, getting a good feel, a good God damned feel, and then props it on his shoulder, barrel pointing up like Dad taught him. After looking through two loose slats in the door and seeing no one on the porch, he slips outside and runs across the hard gravel drive, through the gate that used to hold Olivia before Jonathon shot her dead. High stepping it through the snow, he runs toward the spot where the prairie dogs once lived.

 

E
vie crawls into her closet but scurries out when someone walks across the living room floor, footsteps rattling the floorboards all the way in Evie’s room. Through her terry-cloth robe, the floor is hard and cold on her legs. She sits back, pulling her knees to her chest, and listens. The footsteps pass by and Elaine’s door opens. Aunt Ruth has moved into Elaine’s room where she and the baby will live after the baby is born, so long as the baby isn’t blue and dies in the oven. She switched rooms because Evie doesn’t like her anymore. Aunt Ruth said it was because Elaine needed so much help with the wedding. Evie told her it didn’t matter one bit and to go ahead and change rooms. After Aunt Ruth closes her door, Evie falls onto her hands and knees, pushes through the hems of Mama’s skirts and dresses, the ones she only wears in the spring, and drags out a wadded-up blanket.

Waiting and listening and hearing nothing more, Evie slowly untangles the blanket and pulls out the Virgin Mary. She holds her up, looking first into her ivory face and her tiny blue eyes and then at the seams where her wrists meet her hands. She thinks she’d like to talk to the Virgin Mary, but someone might hear. So instead, cradling the statue like a baby, she hops back onto her bed, scoots until she can see out the window, and together they watch the red truck, driving down the road from the other direction, drift over toward the ditch and stop.

Soon it will be all the way dark. Setting the statue on the bed next to her, Evie stands and presses her nose to the cold glass. Out on the road, beyond the bare trees where the red truck is parked, the driver’s side door opens and a man steps out. He stands still, his hands on his hips, and looks up at the house for a good long minute. He wavers, like the tall wheat stalks on a windy day. He must be cold, even with his jacket. The brim of his hat rides high on his forehead. Tugging it down, Uncle Ray reaches inside the truck and pulls out a long, thin gun.

Celia shuts off the hot water when the bubbles reach the top of the sink. Gathering her cardigan sweater closed and wrapping her arms around her waist, she stares out the dark window. The tree is there, holding out its bare branches, reminding her of the cold, harsh winter. In the dim light, its icy coating doesn’t sparkle. The tree looks nearly dead, standing in the dark, making Celia doubt it will come to life again in spring, making her wonder if spring will ever come.

“It’s been such a long few days,” she says to Arthur, who is sitting at the table. “You should have something more to eat.”

Arthur holds his head in his hands and nods, though to what, Celia isn’t sure.

“I could make you a sandwich for now. Then you could sleep.”

“I found her in the shed, you know,” Arthur says, his head lowered as if talking to the table. “I did. I found her.”

Celia slides into a chair without pulling it back or making any noise.