at all, it was only as he walked through a room without speaking or sat at the supper table, picking at his food. Their mother said he hadn’t always been this way, that he had really been something beautiful when she was growing up, but he had let life get the best of him. From the looks of him now, she was right about that last part.
Swan tugged on Noble’s sleeve, intending to tell him she wanted to leave, but he drew one finger across his gullet, indicating that he would slit her throat for sure if she said a word.
Just then, Papa John gave up on talking to God and set in singing.
“Coming home,” he quavered. He had to be tone-deaf. “Cominnng—hommmme—”
Swan shot a look at Bienville, and he shot one back. This was getting harder to swallow by the minute.
“Never more to roammmm—” Papa John caterwauled, but he couldn’t remember any more of the words, so he switched over to a Hank Williams song, which he also couldn’t remember.
He hummed the first few bars tunelessly, while he dug a shell out of his pocket and loaded his shotgun.
“I’m so lonesome, I could—” he sang, suddenly loud and clear. Then his voice broke and quavered. “I’m so lonesome, I could—”
Swan thought he sounded like a stuck record.
“I could—” he sang again, but he couldn’t make himself say that last word. He shook his head and blew out a long, discouraged breath. Then he stuck the shotgun barrel in his mouth.
Swan screamed. Noble and Bienville sprang up in the air like flushed quail.
Papa John hadn’t had time to get his finger situated on the trigger, so instead of blowing his brains out in full view of his grandchildren, he jerked to attention and banged the back of his head on the tree. The shotgun barrel slipped out of his mouth, bringing his upper plate with it. The false teeth went sailing and disappeared in the blackberry vines, directly in front of where the three kids were now standing, shaking like maple leaves. Papa John jumped to his feet, shocked and humiliated. His mouth was working, open and shut. Slack-looking without that upper plate.
The kids hung their heads and stared at the ground for the longest time. When they looked up again, Papa John was cutting through the woods, going back toward the house. Shade and sun rays fell across him, dappling and camouflaging, making him indistinguishable from his surroundings. He never really disappeared from view. He just blended in with the trees and the underbrush, like he was part of the woods and they were part of him.
Papa John didn’t show up for supper, just went into Never Closes and opened for business. Calla and Willadee and the kids could hear the hubbub through the wall that separated the kitchen from the bar. John had bought himself a used jukebox during the past year, and his customers were giving it a workout. Swan and Noble and Bienville kept sneaking anxious glances at each other while they ate.
Finally, Calla couldn’t take it anymore. “All right,” she said. “I want to know what’s up, and I want to know now.”
Bienville gulped. Noble pushed his glasses up his nose. Swan reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out Papa John’s false teeth.
“Papa John lost these this afternoon, and we found them.”
“That’s all you’re looking guilty about?” Calla asked sharply.
Which made Swan mad. Grown-ups had a way of interpreting every single, solitary expression that ever lit on a kid’s face as guilt. “We’re not guilty,” she said, a little louder than was necessary. “We’re worried. Papa John came within an inch of killing himself this afternoon, and if it hadn’t been for us, he would’ve made it.”
Willadee sucked in a sharp breath.
Calla just shook her head. “He wouldn’t have made it. He never does.”
Willadee looked at her mother accusingly.
Calla poured some tomato gravy onto her biscuit. “Sorry, Willadee. I can’t panic anymore. I’ve been through it too many times. You kids eat your okra.”
Willadee didn’t say anything, but you could tell she was thinking. As soon as supper was over, she offered to clean the kitchen and asked her mother to put the hellions to bed. Grandma Calla said, “Oh, sure, give me the dirty work,” and both women laughed. The kids all turned up their noses while they allowed themselves to be herded upstairs. They knew better than to complain, but they had their own ways of getting back at people who insulted them. Next time they played War Spies, they would probably take a couple of female prisoners and get information out of them the hard way.
Willadee washed all the dishes, left them to dry in the drain rack, and went out the back door into Never Closes. This was the only bar she’d ever been inside in her life, and the first time during business hours. At least once every summer, she’d insisted on cleaning and airing out the place for her daddy, marveling every time that his customers could stand the bitter, stale burned-tobacco odor that no amount of scrubbing could drive away. She was surprised tonight to find that the smell was entirely different when the place was full of life. The smoke was overpowering but fresh, and it was mingled with men’s aftershave and the heady perfume worn by the few women customers. A lone couple danced in one corner, the woman toying with the man’s hair while his hands traveled all up and down her back. There was a card game going on, and a couple of games of dominoes, and you couldn’t even see the pool table for all the rear ends and elbows. The way people were laughing and joking with each other, they must’ve checked their troubles at the door. John Moses was standing behind the bar, uncapping a couple of beers. He passed them over to a middle-aged bleached blonde and smiled, lips closed, self-conscious about the missing upper plate. He pretended not to see Willadee until she came over and leaned against the bar.
Willadee passed his teeth across to him. Discreetly. John’s eyes narrowed, but he took the teeth, turned away for a second, and put them inside his mouth. Then he turned back to face his daughter.
“What are you doing in here?”
“Just thought I’d see how the other half lives,” Willadee said. “How’re you doing, Daddy? I never get to see you much anymore when I come home.”
John Moses coughed disdainfully. “You didn’t live so far away, you’d see me plenty.”
Willadee gave her daddy the gentlest look imaginable, and she said, “Daddy, are you all right?”
“What do you care?”
“I care.”
“My eye.”
“You’re just set on being miserable. Come on. Give me a grin.”
But it looked as if he didn’t have a grin left in him.
She said, “It’s not healthy to manufacture trouble and wallow around in it.”
“Willadee,” he grumbled, “you don’t know trouble.”
“Yes, I do, you old fart. I know you.”
That sounded a lot more like the kind of thing a Moses would say than the kind of thing a preacher’s wife would say. So, as it turned out, John did have a grin or two left in him, and he gave her one,
