week, two.”
The lamp in her right hand, Claire hit him as hard as she could with her left. His passive face took the slap, and his own hand swung around in response and clapped her across the cheek. She saw a flash and fell against the wall. The lamp went out. In the dark, she could feel him reaching for her, down on his knees now.
“Claire, Claire,” he was saying in a regretful voice.
She pushed away the hands. He caught at her skirts, pulling her back. She kicked once, twice, and then she was free, running down the hall. Someone had left a chair pushed out at the table and she went right over it, knocking her breath out of her when she fell. She could hear him coming down the hall now, and she forced herself up.
The boy was on the front porch waiting for her.
“Get in the car!” she said, pushing him off the porch. Behind her in the house, she could hear Travis calling.
When she got to the car, her daughter was crying again. Claire took up the starter crank with both hands and pulled it through the cycle as hard as she could. The engine came alive, and she got behind the steering wheel. As she turned the car around, the headlights swept the house, showing Travis, his unkempt hair, his grubby underwear, framed in the front doorway. She gained the road with a bump and pressed the gas, even as a piece of her realized that Travis had never come farther than the porch.
She steered the car along the dark track. From the seat beside her, she could feel the boy’s eyes, large, searching her profile for some explanation. When she glanced over at him, the spell was broken, and he spoke: “Where are we going, Ma?”
She was asking the same question to herself, marveling at her own temerity, untested before now. Having leaped, where would she land? She was half surprised when she knew the answer, though it did anything but buoy her.
“Gran’s,” she said, the word like a rock in her mouth.
She followed the car’s headlights along the track until it joined the road, then followed the road until she came to the lane where she’d grown up. She sat after she’d shut off the car, watching the dark house. Grown up, married off, and now here she was, back at this house, full circle. She cursed under her breath.
Claire knocked until her mother came and unlocked the door, the blue cloth of her nightgown muted in the lamplight. She ran her watery, lidded eyes from Claire, to the children, to the bag of clothes that Tom gripped.
“I told you he was a no-good,” she said, and turned back into the house, leaving the door open.
“Mama,” Claire said, following. “We need a place to stay.”
Her mother reached the far side of the room and sat in a chair. “Boy,” she said, looking at Tom. “Leave that bag. There’s firewood that needs chopping. I’ve got a man that comes around to do it regular, but I suspect it’s nothing you couldn’t do instead. Save me some money. The axe is in the woodshed.”
Tom looked to his mother.
“Mama, it’s the middle of the night,” Claire said. “He can’t chop wood in the dark.”
“I won’t have no freeloaders here,” her mother said.
“Tom,” Claire said, “get blankets for you and Nan from the closet.”
“My front flowerbed is full of choke weed, and there’s laundry needs doing.”
“Mama.”
“I’m an old woman. Don’t need a house full of people.”
“Mama, I’m sick. He’s given me something. I’m going to need a doctor.”
Her mother’s eyes rose to her, clearing. A sneeze seized her, and she searched her housecoat pockets, rooting around until she came up with a stained, crumpled handkerchief. She honked into it, then put it away. “He did that to you, did he?”
Claire nodded.
“Well, Doc Peters can help with that.” She turned and started on her way back to bed. “You all can make pallets out here for sleeping. I’ll send the boy for Doc in the morning after he’s done with that chopping.”
THE BOARDING HOUSE LADY HAD BEEN VEXED WHEN Nathan had shown up on her porch that night, but after a few muttered complaints, she’d led him upstairs to a cramped room under the eaves. The room had a small table that he saw at once he could employ as a desk, but the lone lamp that lit the space was small and dim. He made a mental note to ask about getting another, but didn’t press his position having only just gotten her to agree to letting him in. He pushed his suitcase into a corner and stretched himself out on the thin mattress. In a moment he was asleep.
At dawn he was up and shaved in the sink of the shared hall bathroom. He had only the two suits, and the one he’d worn the day before showed every step he’d taken on the road from Memphis. He traded his rumpled suit for the one in his case, splashed on cologne, and buffed his shoes with his old socks. The boarding house woman, Irma, met him at the bottom of the stairs.
“You’re an early one,” she said, her tone revealing nothing about whether she approved or disapproved of this trait.
“I’ve seen the map, and it’s a long walk to the dam site,” he said. He was wearing his hat. When he caught her frowning at it, he slipped it off.
“Sit down,” she said. “You’re too early for most of it—the biscuits just went in—but I’ll scramble you an egg. I hear tell there’s a truck that runs out to the site from the drugstore on mornings, regular.”
“Thanks, then I’ll just go over there and wait. I can’t afford to—”
“Sit down,” Irma said. “You men don’t have enough sense to know you have to eat.” She took his hat from him and hung it on a peg near the door. He eased into the chair she’d pointed at and she disappeared into the next room.
In a moment she was back, setting a plate before him. She had a pot of coffee that she poured without asking. He sat back to make conversation, but she left again. When he was nearly finished, she returned with a leather-bound volume that she opened on the table. She took a short pencil from her apron pocket and readied it at the top of the page.
“Full name?” she said.
“Nathan, uh,” he said, then swallowed. “Nathan McReaken.”
She cut her eyes at him, and he coughed, took a sip from his coffee.
“How long a stay?” she said.
“I’m not sure. I suppose that depends—”
“Week-to-week, then. Rent’s due every Monday.” She closed the book and carried it into the next room.
He ate the last of his eggs and took his plate and cup into the kitchen.
“I’ll be,” she said, and chuckled at his manners. She took the plate from him and placed it in the sink. When she turned to face
