was the first time I seen June. God, she was good-looking. I fell in love on the spot. I got to where I couldn’t bear to say her name. I just call her That Woman.
That Woman stood there with a big tall girl, her niece, name of Dawn. When I didn’t answer June about the man dying, Dawn said, “Say,” so hateful all I could do was stand there and look at her big wild head of hair.
DAWN
“Say,” I said, and Gene just stood there, his arms brown as bread, covered in gray mud, every other finger mashed up. He smelled like he’d bathed in lighter fluid and looked like he’d been drug through the landfill. He turned to us, eyes all misty. I thought he was fixing to cry.
I said, “You fixing to cry?”
Aunt June told me to hush. I was sorry for that man being dead, and I shouldn’t have been hateful to Gene, but I was in a terrible mood. It was too hot to be married. But I was. To Willett Bilson, a man I’d courted on the Internet. I had my little girl Nicolette strapped in the car and Aunt June’s yellow dog Pharoah pulling at the leash. Willett hadn’t turned out like I hoped and I had moved to Tennessee for him and now this Gene was gawking at Aunt June, and they was dead people scattered all over, and it was too much. I’ll just be honest.
Gene walked with us back to June’s car. “If I’d rode with him,” Gene said, “this might not’ve happened.”
I said, “Or you’d be dead too.”
“I’m Gene,” Gene said to Aunt June.
“Hello, Gene,” Aunt June said.
Pharoah barked.
“She’ll bite you,” Nicolette said to Gene. Nicolette was four.
Gene put his hand down to Pharoah’s mouth. Pharoah raised her lip.
Gene said, “That’s a good dog.”
June looked off at the Ford. The orange-headed woman standing beside it was screaming, “Save my baby. You got to save her.” A woman in hospital scrubs had her arm around the orange-headed woman. A truck had winched the Ford back down onto the road.
“How’d you get here?” Nicolette said to Gene. “Where’s your car?”
Gene said, “Aint got nary.”
June said, “You need a ride?” June loved a project. She loved saving stuff.
I loved it when it rained and everybody stayed home. Gene moved to get in the car. Then he stopped and spoke.
GENE
“I don’t know you want me in your vehicle,” I said. “I aint what you call fresh.”
That Woman said, “We aint that fresh ourselves.”
Niece Dawn said, “What’s that all over your pants?”
I said, “That’s from helping Brother clean tanks.”
Dawn said, “What tanks?”
The little girl said, “Army tanks.”
I said, “Tanks held coal float.”
Dawn made a face like she’d opened something spoiled, looked at That Woman.
That Woman spoke to her niece a minute and then That Woman took the dog and the little girl and Dawn opened the trunk and pulled out painter dropcloth plastic, started spreading it in the front seat. A Dabble County sheriff’s cruiser pulled up and a deputy got out, asked questions of the people gathered, must have been fifty by then. Out the side of my eye, I seen the woman in the hospital scrubs pointing at me. The deputy come over and asked had I seen it, and I said I had. He asked what I seen and I told him and he stopped writing in his little book, folded it up, said, “Now what was it you were doing out here?” and looked me up and down like there might be something to find out about me, but there wasn’t. I was just walking off a bad job like anybody with the least regard for theirselves would, and I don’t know what I said to that deputy exactly, but he leaned his head forward like somehow I had some part in that bloody mess.
About then, That Woman said, “You holler when you’re ready to go, Gene.” When that deputy looked at That Woman, she leaned over, picked up that little girl and moved that dog leash to her other hand, said, “We’ll be waiting for you.”
The deputy flipped back through his notebook, said, “I can get ahold of you at this number,” and turned the notebook towards me, showed me the number at Sister’s house. I said he could. He nodded and I said, “It’s OK for me to go?”
He looked at me, waved his hand had the little book in it, said I could go.
DAWN
You had to be hemmed up in the same vehicle with Gene to appreciate how bad he smelled.
I said to Nicolette, “Stop rubbing your nose.” We were sitting in the backseat with the dog. Gene and June were up front.
Nicolette said, “I caint.”
I said, “Yeah, you can,” and set her hand down in her lap.
Gene said, “What’s this?” He turned, reached across the seat, and held a piece of glass up between me and Nicolette.
Nicolette said, “Where’d you get that?”
Gene said, “Off the road.”
The glass was blue-green clear, like old pop bottles, rubbed smooth like water’d been running over it, like it had been somewhere it could tumble. Glass going back to sand.
Gene said to me, “Can she have it?”
I said, “I reckon.”
Gene reached the glass to Nicolette. She closed her hand around it, and then dropped it out the window. June didn’t see it. Gene didn’t say nothing. Nicolette grinned like a half-shucked ear of corn.
Aunt June said, “Where you going, Gene?”
“I’m staying at Sister’s,” he said. “My sister’s.”
Pharoah growled. Gene looked back at her.
“Be careful with her,” June said. “She’s liable to bite.”
Gene stared at Pharoah. He had a face like desert rocks in a cowboy movie.
“That’s a good dog right there,” he said. “She’s looking after you. That’s what makes her growl.”
Pharoah was a sweet yellow dog, but crazy as a bestbug.
“What’s that on your face?” Nicolette said.
