risking getting funny looks at breakfast the next morning.
“Do we?” she asked again now. “Do we have a plan?”
“I could go looking for some oil,” Samuel said. “I could oil the springs.”
“I didn’t mean that kind of plan.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“We have to figure someplace to live.”
“I know we do.”
He was quiet for a moment. Just his breathing, the only sound. Strong and deep and steady. Then he said, “Willadee? What about the floor? Would you be really insulted, if we just did it on the floor?”
“Not insulted. But they’d still hear us.”
“We could be quiet.”
“Maybe you could.”
He laughed. Couldn’t help it. She hushed him with a kiss. After a little bit, he said, “I think I’m supposed to be scared or something, Willadee. I mean here I am with a wife and kids, and no job, and no house, and you know what, Willadee?”
“What, Samuel?”
“I’m scared, all right.”
She didn’t like this. Him being afraid. Him hurting. It was the worst part of this thing, that he should be hurt. Samuel, of all people.
She said, “Damn these springs.”
“What was that?”
“I said, ‘Damn these springs,’ Samuel.”
Willadee kicked off the covers and sat up in bed. She drew her knees up underneath her and knelt beside her husband, leaning over him, kissing his neck, his chest, his stomach. Her hands touching, giving. He shifted his weight, pushing up against her hands. The bedsprings creaked rudely.
He let out a low moan that wasn’t quite as low as he’d meant it to be and said, “Love of God, Willadee,” and then, “Willadee, I need you so.”
Her mouth moved against his skin. Taking. Talking.
“Good thing, preacher boy. ’Cause if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to live through all I’m about to do to you.”
Downstairs in the swing, Bernice Moses was having a glass of iced tea with lots of lemon. Her ear was trained to the upstairs bedroom that happened to be right above the spot where she was sitting. She was listening intently. Listening, and not smiling. For the most part, Bernice had gotten everything she’d ever wanted out of life, and none of it had made her happy. There was only one thing she’d really wanted that she hadn’t gotten, and she was positive that if she could get it (no, when she got it), she would be deliriously happy. At last.
What she wanted was Samuel. And what was in her way was Willadee. What had been in her way, until tonight, had been miles. But the miles weren’t going to be a factor anymore, so that left only Willadee. And how much competition could she be, when you thought about it?
Bernice had been one of those Columbia County girls who had taken to their beds for a week after Sam got married. She was the only one who had the distinction of having been engaged to him—and having jilted him—and she was convinced that he had married Willadee on the rebound. Why else would he have married her, she wasn’t even pretty. Not according to Bernice’s definition of prettiness. She had all those freckles that she didn’t even try to bleach out or cover up, and she was plain as a board fence except for her eyes, and everybody had eyes.
Anyway, it wasn’t supposed to have turned out like it did. Bernice had meant only to jilt him for a little while, to teach him a lesson about not being too friendly with other girls. Samuel was friendly with everybody, male and female, young and old, he made no distinctions. It was enough to gnaw a hole in a woman’s insides. So she had simply done what any woman with any technique at all would have done. She had Given Him Something to Think About. You couldn’t blame her for that. Besides, she was planning to give in and marry him, as soon as he came around to her way of thinking.
Only Samuel never came around. While he was thinking about the lesson Bernice was teaching him, he met Willadee, and you never saw a man get so carried away over a woman. You’d have thought he’d struck gold. Of course, Bernice knew, always knew, that Samuel didn’t really love Willadee as much as he made out, but she never could get him to talk about it. Never could get him to talk to her again at all, except in the politest, most conversational sort of way, and that was worse than being totally ignored.
Bernice had gotten herself engaged to Toy, trying to teach Samuel another lesson, which he also refused to learn. He’d just gone ahead and married Willadee, and Bernice had had no choice but to go through with marrying Toy; it had just been awful.
Poor Toy. He was the kindest thing, and he was so crazy about her he couldn’t see straight. But when a person loves you so much that he asks for nothing in return, it’s only to be expected that that’s about what he gets. It’s like a Law of Nature.
So here Bernice was, sitting in the swing, thinking about how things had gotten to the sorry state they were in, when all of a sudden—springs started creaking upstairs. Not actually all of a sudden. It came on kind of gradually, and just increased in tempo.
That first little sound sliced Bernice’s heart almost in half, and the rest of them—coming louder and faster like they did—finished the job. It was absolutely enough to make a woman do Things She Wouldn’t Ordinarily Do.
What Bernice did was, she leapt out of the swing so fast that the contents of her glass flew upward like steam out of a geyser, and she had to cram her fist in her mouth to keep from screaming. There was tea and ice showering down around her, not to mention soggy lemon wedges, some of which lodged in her hair. Bernice groped for the lemon wedges, and flung them at the ceiling, and commenced to stamping her feet like a child having a hissy fit.
What’s important here, though, is that, all in all, Bernice Moses was too caught up in the moment to even notice when Swan crept up the steps and into the house, followed by a wide-eyed eight-year-old boy, who was dressed in just his underwear.
That kid was marching along behind Swan like she was the path to salvation.
Chapter 8
The bed Swan slept in was so high she always used a stool to climb up onto it. The little boy was sitting on the bed, backed up against the headboard. His legs stuck straight out in front of him like sticks. Swan had stretched out on the other end of the bed and was lying there propped up on one elbow, wondering how this deal was going to come out.
She said, “Okay. I’ve got you here, now what am I going to do with you?”
The black eyes gazed steadily back at her.
She said, “Well, what’s your name?”
“Blade.”
“That’s not a name.”
He nodded. It was so.
Swan turned the name over and over on her tongue, getting the feel of it. “Blade Ballenger. Blade Bal-len-ger. Your name is bad
