in the sun so much.”
June’s eyes filled the rearview.
Gene said, “Something like that make you appreciate.” His eyes stayed on us, blinking like somebody was squirting water in his face.
“How can you sit turned around like that?” I said. “Makes me carsick.”
Gene put his hand to Pharoah. She laid her ears down, and he scratched between them. “Does me too,” he said.
I turned and looked out the car window at a cornfield, at a yard full of scrap lumber and rusted car tops, at the hillsides so full of green they looked almost blue. There was a lot to appreciate. I wished I could.
GENE
It was nice in That Woman’s car, but I needed a smoke. I was thinking of that dead man, the screaming woman and her baby.
That Woman said, “Does your sister live in town?”
I said, “She lives in the green house next to Lawyer Dan.”
That Woman nodded. “That’s where you want to go?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I stay in the little house out back.”
The yellow dog licked itself.
I said, “That dog might need to go to the bathroom.”
That Woman said, “She was just out.” She pulled the car to the side of the road.
The little girl said, “Mommy, I want my glass back.”
Dawn said, “Little late for that.”
Little girl said, “Help me find it.”
That Woman hunted something in the floorboard. The dog fidgeted and grunted like this: “Unh unh unh unh unh.”
That Woman said, “I can’t find my phone.”
I said, “You want me to walk your dog a little bit?”
She said, “Gene, yes, I would.” Felt good to hear her call my name. Like somebody scratching between my ears.
The back door hung open where Dawn and her little girl had got out. They rummaged down the side of the road in the gravel. The dog sat there, head pulled forward. I got ahold of its leash. Dog raised its lip. I said, “Come on, Old Yeller, let’s me and you sniff this place out.” The dog come down out of the car. We got off in the grass, and she cut loose with the waterworks. I said to her,
But by then the dog was nosing in the gravel, trying to make her own sense of the world.
DAWN
Aunt June didn’t care much for air conditioning. She liked to keep things natural. All the way to Canard the air whipped through that Honda and our stinks mixed up together—mine, Nicolette’s, Pharoah’s, June’s, and Gene’s.
On the way home, Gene filled June up with stories of every yard he ever mowed, stories more tedious than my husband’s pimple-and-bowel-movement stories, more tedious than him telling me his dreams every morning and the plots of his comic books every night. Gene’s weedeater stories about gas-and-oil ratios and how to keep grass clippings off people’s porches and how he learned to tell the difference between weeds and stuff people had planted on purpose went on without end, and by the time we’d got back to Canard, June had him mowing my mother’s yard.
When we finally got to the foot of the hill in front of Momma’s house, Gene was going on about mowing over a nest of yellowjackets and I said to him,
Mamaw’s Escort parked on the street in front of us, on the other side of Momma’s steps. Mamaw got out, said, “Our Savior, arrived at last.”
June sat both hands on her steering wheel, said, “I can’t believe she’s still driving that thing.”
Mamaw came over and stood to where June couldn’t open the car door without hitting her. Me and Pharoah got out and stood in the street while Nicolette got loose from her car seat. “Do it myself” were Nicolette’s first words and she’d said them ever day since. Mamaw’s eyes fixed on Weedeater, who couldn’t get loose where June had the Honda jammed up against the bank. He’d got his shoulders above the top of the door, but his feet had got tangled up in all that plastic June lay down for him to sit on.
“Mamaw!” Nicolette hollered and ran to who was really my mamaw. Nicolette’s real mamaw—my mother—had not been around enough in the past three years for Nicolette to name her. She just called her Tricia or Trish, which is her name—Tricia Redding Jewell.
Weedeater finally got out and stood on the sidewalk above the bank. He squinted up at Momma’s house, which was at the top of seventy-three concrete steps, seventy-three steps pretty much straight up a hillside in downtown Canard.
Weedeater said, “Some yard.”
Mamaw said, “Who’s this?” standing close to June looking into the side of her head.
Nicolette looked at June like Mamaw was talking about some creature living inside June’s ear. I tapped Nicolette’s shoulder. She tilted her face up at me.
I said, “She’s talking about him,” pointing at Weedeater.
Nicolette looked at Weedeater, looked at June, then shot over to Mamaw and gave her a hug that might’ve knocked over some. Mamaw said, “Aint that something?”
Nicolette said, “I got to pee.”
GENE
Me and that parade of women headed up the steps and by the top I would have eat that baby for a smoke. I was winded, but That Woman’s mother, they called her Cora, wadn’t even drawing hard. She was built like a roll of rabbit wire and didn’t weigh much more.
“God Almighty,” Cora said from the screened-in porch. The rest of us strung down the steps, me and Dawn furthest down, looking out over town. That Woman said, “What, Momma,” and at the top we seen what.
It was as nice a house as I’d seen without a front door. It had big high ceilings and walls smooth with plaster. It was plain inside, no ductwork or drop ceilings. It was also a trashy mess—piles of frozen dinner and pizza boxes in the living room, clothes strewn, mail strewn. They was a line of sticky drips on the floor from the front door to a commode straight ahead against the back of the house. I tramped through the cans, the bottles, the shot-off fireworks, on my way to the bathroom. Once in there and going, I was afraid my pee would knock the commode through the rottenwood floor. That commode was one of
