out of my sight before I fire you,” Tucker said, and turned to me. “I’m still swearing out a warrant on Gerald.”
“Fine, but I’ll not serve it.”
Tucker wasn’t a man used to people bucking him. He looked about to say something more, then abruptly turned and walked back up to the porch where C.J. now stood. Tucker passed him without any acknowledgment. I was about to speak to C.J. but he turned and went inside as well.
Seven
The smell of a room soaked in long silences, dusty quilts and mothballs, linger of linseed oil and mildew. My grandparents’ bedroom had been much the same, even the mattress sagged by weight and time. Those nights I came frightened but silent to their bed, a wordless shifting to make room. Worn springs soothingly sighed as feathers nestled around me. At breakfast come morning, no TV or radio or much said, allowing night’s stillness to linger, never asking more of me than a head shake or nod. My grandfather’s words when my parents brought me: This girl will talk when she’s ready.
The ladder-back chair’s legs scrape as I get up. Across the room, bedsprings stir but Gerald does not wake. I leave the house and walk to the barn. Grasshoppers launch, then land, the high stalks swaying. On a loud orange trumpet vine flower, a swallowtail’s blue wings open and close in slow applause. Caught on an angelica tree, a black snake’s cast-off stocking. Closer, ribs of milk traces, manure scabs the color of oatmeal.
The so-much of memory as I step into the dark and wait: always back then believing my grandparents’ barn was asleep until I’d entered, light’s slow emergence like one eyelid drowsily lifted. Even now something of that feeling as I step farther inside. In the corner the duster and pesticides I’ve talked Gerald out of using. Beside them a pitchfork and a kerosene can. A barn swallow flutters in the loft, then the parabolic swoop toward thicker light. On a stall door a leopard slug. Slug: its body a slimy slow lugging, and yet, the twice-pronged crown, the long robe’s silver wake. The slow going forth magisterial, as I’d seen as a child, now see again.
Good memories that even now can heal. Those mornings when I laddered to the loft, made my straw manger beside the square bale door. There on the straw-strewn floor, a sundial of slanted light. I’d reach my child’s palm into it, hold sunspill like rain. Eyes adjusting, much more revealed: junctions knit with spiderwebs, near cross beams dirt dauber nests, the orange tunnels rising like cathedral pipes. Sometimes a shadow suddenly fleshed, long black tail draining into the straw. The few sounds soothing, swallow wings rustling, insect hum. Then my grandmother’s voice. Come, child, it’s time to eat.
I step out into noon’s startling whiteness. Gerald still sleeps so I sit on the porch and take out my notebook, read the entries I wrote last week.
the hummingbird nest at the meadow edge—a strawy thimble
the hummingbird’s wings—stained glass alive in sudden sunlight shimmer
wildflowers sway in their florabundance
the grasshopper’s rasping papyrus wings
I take out my pen, remembering what I felt when Les came and placed his hand firm on my shoulder.
even the hermit thrush calls out to the world
Eight
I was plenty put out with Gerald, but I’d told Becky I’d do it, so at five o’clock I left the office and drove to Darby Ramsey’s house. The place was in no better shape than other times I’d been there, Darby’s idea of home improvement hanging a satellite dish on a sagging gutter. He hadn’t cut his grass in months and I didn’t see Gerald’s lawn mower. A woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties stood on the porch, a blue cell phone pressed to her ear. She wore jeans and an oversize orange-and-white football jersey that made her look even skinnier than she was. But the number 13 seemed right for any woman hanging around Darby. When I got closer, I saw more than time had aged her. Eyes sunk deep in their sockets, teeth nubbed and colored like Indian corn, scabby chin. A fine addition to a Girls on Meth pinup calendar.
Inside, a toilet flushed. I knew what that was about, but at least I’d cost the asshole some drugs. The front door opened and Darby came out wearing only jeans, tousling his hair like he’d just gotten up. He lit a cigarette and smiled. His teeth weren’t wrecked like his lady friend’s, but the loose jeans argued graduation to meth-head status since I’d last seen him. I couldn’t help but think of William, Darby’s first cousin, who was dead at nineteen while Darby was still alive. Justice. You’d think a lawman would have some faith in that word, but in thirty years I’d seen too little of it.
The woman said, “Got to go,” and put the cell phone in her pocket.
“Come to ask me to be your replacement, Sheriff?” Darby asked.
Even halfway whittled to bone Darby still had a strut about him. I looked into eyes the color of dirty motor oil.
“No,” I answered, “convicted felons can’t be sheriff.”
“Just the unconvicted ones, I guess,” Darby said, and turned to the woman. “The sheriff here takes good care of the pot dealers around these parts, and they take care of him. Gives the sheriff more time to bother folks like me who ain’t in on the deal.”
I stepped past Darby and went into the front room. With no light and the blinds pulled down, it was hard to see much, but there was no cat-piss smell, so they weren’t cooking.
“Where’s your uncle’s lawn mower?” I asked. “He needs it back.”
“Uncle Gerald ain’t said that to me,” Darby said. “That hippy park ranger sent you out here, didn’t she? I know what she’s up to. That land’s been death-bed promised to me and Gerald ain’t changing that will because some bi—woman acts all concerned and caring about him.”
“Becky does care about him, unlike you.”
For a moment, I thought about telling Darby what had happened at the resort but decided not to. He’d find some way to turn it to his advantage.
“You don’t know what I care about,” Darby sneered.
“All I’ve got to do is look at you to know what you care about,” I answered. “Another month and you’ll need no more than a shoestring to keep those jeans up over your scraggly ass. What about that lawn mower?”
“If you see it, take it,” Darby said, and motioned the woman inside the house. “You got any other business with me?”
“Not today,” I said, and Darby followed the woman inside.
Twice I’d put Darby in jail for six months. The meth, however, could soon put him away for good, six feet deep. Even with a bad heart, Gerald might outlast him. A man entering his coffin. That was what came to mind when Darby followed the woman through the oblong door and into the dark. Darby shut the door, and I had a pleasing image of a wooden lid slowly closing over him. Smoke it, mainline it, whatever will do the
