(2005) Wrapped in Rain (34 page)

JASE WALKED OUT OF THE COTTAGE WITH ONE HAND shoved elbow-deep into a box of Vanilla Wafers. Katie was asleep, and I gathered he woke hungry and couldn't find anything else to eat. With a mouthful of wafer, he said, "Unca Tuck, will you play checkers with me?"

I thought for a moment and nodded. "Meet me on the porch in five minutes." Jase disappeared, and I emptied the stall muckings into the bigger soon-to-be-emptied bucket and hollered above me, "Hey, Mutt?"

Mutt, covered in lather, stuck his head over the sides of the water tank. "You mind if I borrow your chessboard?" He thought for a minute, shook his head, and pushed off, disappearing like a dolphin. I unzipped his fanny pack, grabbed the board, and headed to the porch where Jase sat with crumbs spilling off his mouth. He must have been in a growth spurt, because he was eating everything that wasn't nailed down and some things that were.

We sat Indian style on the porch with the board between us. I reached into the box, grabbed a handful of wafers, and started setting up the board, some faceup and some facedown so we could tell whose were whose. At first, Jase jerked the box back, looked inside, and was a bit miffed that I had taken so many cookies. But when he saw what I was doing, a big grin spread across his face.

With a board full of Vanilla Wafers, I said, "Your move."

Jase moved his corner piece forward one square, and I mirrored him from the other side. He moved a second piece and I did likewise. With his third move, he deliberated a moment, then slid it across. I wanted to make it challenging but not too much. Build the tension a bit. I moved again, and he smiled. Without any hesitation, he picked up a wafer, double jumped me, and immediately stuffed both in his mouth. Spewing crumbs across the board, he said, "I wyfe pwaying shekkers wi'chew."

When we finished, he gathered up his winnings and tossed me a cracker the way winning poker players throw tip chips at the dealers. I held out my hand and gave him a silent thumbs-up, and he looked at me with narrow eyes. He wasn't quite sure what I meant. I held it out again, this time pumping my fist, and the lightbulb clicked. He held out his left hand, but it wouldn't do what his mind was telling it, so he used his right hand to pull up his left thumb and wrap the other fingers in a fist. With an awkward thumbs-up, he held it back out to me and smiled a beautiful wafer-stuffed smile. His mouth was spilling with crumbs, almost as full as the night I first met him in Bessie's.

I hadn't seen Mose since Wednesday, but that wasn't unusual. If he knew I was around to take care of Glue, he came and went as he pleased. Katie walked barefoot onto the porch, wrapped in a blanket, the sleep still spread across her eyes. I could see her calves, the tops of her knees, and the bottom hem of her nightgown. Had it not been for her son sitting across from me, I'd have thought we were twenty years younger.

The sunlight was bright and too much this early, but her face said she'd slept hard and long. Sleepy but rested. She spotted Jase playing with me, smiled, shaded her eyes, and disappeared back through the door.

A few minutes later, Katie walked off the porch and sat down next to me. "I don't understand something," she said with her hands tucked into the cuffs of her sleeves. I stuffed a Vanilla Wafer in my mouth and raised my eyebrows. "Your father. Rex. Why don't you just talk with him? Get in the car, drive to Atlanta, sit down, and work it out. Make it right. Stop being so ..."

"So what?"

"So ... stubborn."

I dodged it and looked at Jase. "You guys hungry? How about some dinner? I know this great cafe that makes the best fried chicken this side of Miss Ella's." Jase nodded and Katie looked frustrated, like she was waiting for me to answer. When I didn't, she said, "You're a typical man. You'd rather eat than talk about something important. And your father is important."

I showered and honked the horn. Mutt looked over the edge of the water tank and shook his head like Flipper. I hesitated to leave him, but I figured if he wanted to disappear, there was little I could do to stop him.

I buckled Jase's seat belt, and we drove out of Waverly. When I parked in front of Rolling Hills, grabbed Jase's hand, and said, "Come on, pardner," Katie opened her door and looked at me with suspicion.

"When I said I'd like to go to dinner," she said, "this is not what I had in mind. I thought you said something about a cafe and fried chicken."

I shrugged and lifted Jase onto my back. "Thought I'd make a stop first."

Katie took two steps and stopped. Her face told me that it had begun to sink in. She turned white and reached for Jase's hand. "Tucker, I'm not sure this is such a good idea."

"Come on. He's been defanged, declawed, and neutered. He won't bite you."

I stood in the doorway and looked into the dark room. The judge was sleeping and the nurses had parked Rex in his usual bird watching position. I turned on the light, and the judge woke up. "Oh, Tucker! For the love of Betsy! I been salivating ever since you left." I led Jase into the room, and Katie followed closely. The judge raised an eyebrow and laughed at himself. "Well, if I'd have known you were bringing visitors, I'd have cleaned up a bit."

`Judge, I'd like for you to meet some friends of mine. Katie Withers and her son, Jase"

Jase hid behind my leg and looked around the room. He pulled on my pant leg and pointed at the judge's squash-colored bladder bag, which was full. "Unca Tuck, what's that?"

Katie walked around Rex in a circle, as if she was honoring the safe striking distance of a snake. When she got around in front of him, she raised her hand to her mouth and looked away. Jase let go of my leg and walked over to his mom. He pointed in Rex's face. "Momma, who's that?" Katie knelt down and looked at me. The Judge kept quiet and stopped licking his lips.

She picked him up, placed him on her hip, and moved around the side so he could no longer see Rex's disfigured, quivering, and drooling face. Jase pointed again. "Mama, who's that and what's that smell?"

She walked toward the door and said, "Son, it's just an old, sick man. Somebody you don't know." Jase wiggled loose, ran back to Rex's chair, and peered around the side. "But, Mom . . . " Jase pointed at Rex's hand. Rex's skin was thin, almost translucent, and would cut with the slightest scratch. Somewhere in the course of the day, the top of his right hand had been cut and a single trickle of blood had flowed down the side. Due to years of blood thinners, the blood remained wet, gooey, and dripping.

Jase pointed at the cut again and said, "Unca Tuck, look!" I circled Rex and reached for Jase's hand, but he was focused on that cut. Jase reached in his pocket, pulled out one of his two spare Band-Aids, and bit the paper off. He stood next to Rex, looked at me expectantly, and held out the Band-Aid.

I knelt an arm's length from the chair, and Jase laid it in my hand. Katie stood in the doorway, bit a fingernail, and looked from me to the judge and back to us. The Judge didn't say a word but blew into his diaphragm, sucked twice, and blew once more, turning on a recessed light above my head. I peeled the Band-Aid and held it over the cut, considering.

I looked at his hand, studying the veins, wrinkles, age spots, and fading scars. I thought of how many times that hand had hit Miss Ella, of how many times it had hit me and Mutt, and of how much anger had flowed through those gnarled and twisted fingers. The instrument of my pain. I pressed the Band-Aid quickly on Rex's hand, wiped my hands on my pants, and watched Jase's little fingers smooth the edges of the Band-Aid, making sure it stuck. Jase pulled the second spare Band-Aid out of his pocket, placed it inside Rex's left hand, and patted Rex on the leg. "For later, in case that one comes off." I stood up and Jase placed his hand inside of mine. "Unca Tuck, why're you crying?"

"Because, little buddy, sometimes grown-ups cry too."

Jase looked confused and tugged again. "Unca Tuck?"

I knelt down. "Yes, partner."

"Do you need a Band-Aid?"

My eyes met Katie's. "Yes ... I need a Band-Aid."

THE BANQUET CAFE WAS A CLOPTON LANDMARK AND offered the best nightly buffet in Alabama. Part grocery, part restaurant, and mostly gossip. If you wanted to let the town know you were selling something, getting divorced, had committed adultery, or had just had a baby, you mentioned it at the checkout of the Banquet Cafe and they'd get the word out faster than CNN. The sign out front had long since rusted off and disappeared, but nobody bothered to replace it. They didn't need to hang their sign out. Everybody knew what it was and where it was.

Family-owned, a husband and wife team cooked in the back while a couple of down-on-their-luck women and one old man worked the front, fluctuating between wait staff, hostess, and stock boy. They didn't offer menus and nobody ever took an order, because they only offered one option. The buffet. The usual offering included several vegetables such as collards, yams, stewed tomatoes, fried okra, mashed potatoes, and spinach. The meat options were roast beef, pulled barbeque in a vinegar-based sauce, meat loaf, fried chicken, and my favorite, chicken-fried steak smothered in biscuit gravy. The desserts were banana pudding, peach cobbler-with or without vanilla ice cream-and chocolate cake that was heavy on the icing. Everything was homemade, fresh, cooked with Crisco, and could put the weight on you in a hurry.

Three muscular, hyper, and protective Jack Russell terriers, named Flapjack, Pancake, and Biscuit, scurried about the floor begging, licking up scraps, and violating every health code ordinance on the books. Our waitress, decorated with multiple body piercings-including one through her nose that attached via a silver chain to her ear-seated us, threw a wad of napkins and a handful of silverware on the table, and said, "Food's hot. Plates're over there. Serve yourself."

Katie was quiet and looked like she'd lost her appetite, so I held Jase's plate while he pointed at everything he could see, starting with the dessert. We sat down, and Jase stuffed his face while Katie played with her food and didn't look at me.

Our waitress single-handedly saw to all fifteen tables. Every table was full; everybody needed refills now, another fork yesterday; and four huge men at a corner table kept tapping their feet and asking about the next tray of chicken. Behind all the jewelry sticking through her face and black ink that had tattooed her body, I saw a girl. She couldn't have been more than eighteen. Almost too skinny, baggy clothes, dark eye makeup, and black fingernails, she had doormat written all over her face and walked with a perpetual broken wing.

In the absence of conversation, we finished dinner in short order and I paid the bill.

You forgot to leave a tip.

But she didn't do anything.

I don't care. You leave that girl a tip.

Katie pointed at the grocery half of the building and said, "I need a few things. It'll just take a minute." She and Jase walked down the toothpaste aisle while I returned to the table and placed a dollar beneath my uncleared plate.

That's not the bill I was thinking of.

I knew what she was talking about, but I wasn't about to leave that on the table. The chain-faced girl walked behind me, carrying an entire tray of empty dishes, and disappeared into the kitchen, where I heard a bloodcurdling scream, a crash, and several people hollering in anger.

About seven years ago, I had begun hiding a single onehundred-dollar bill in the recesses of my wallet-for emergencies. Experience had taught me the need for it, and on more than one occasion I had needed it. This didn't strike me as one of those times.

I reached behind my license, slipped the hundred out, and left it beneath the plate. Katie paid for her items, and the three of us walked across the parking lot, where I held the door and loaded them into the truck. While I waited for the glow plugs to warm up, our waitress came running and screaming out the front door. She ran across the lot and flagged me down, waving that single bill in front of her face. I rolled down my window, and the girl leapt through, wrapping her arms around my neck and snotting my shirt.

"Mister," she managed, "thank you!" She hugged me again, this time wetting my other shoulder, and said, "Thank you!" Katie pulled a tissue from her purse and handed it to me while suspicion spread across her face. I gave it to the girl, and she wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and handed it back. "Mister, I was about five minutes from walking out of here and slitting my own wrists." She waved the money in my face again. "Then I found this." She shook her head and pressed the money hard against her chest. "I got a little girl at home, and ... I need money to buy the pink stuff, and ... he left me ... and. . ." She hung on the car door and cried, hiding her face in her arms. "Well ... at least I know I'm not invisible." She wiped her eyes, smearing black mascara across her cheeks, said, "Thank you," and disappeared through the front door.

I rolled up the window and pulled out of the parking lot. Katie never took her eyes off me. She put her hand on my arm and whispered, "Tucker Rain, you are a good man."

Jase hopped onto the center console and held out a small grocery bag with both hands. "Uncle Tuck, Mama let me buy this for you. I got it with my 'lowance." I turned on the overhead light and opened the bag. It was a box of Buzz Lightyear Band-Aids.

KATIE WALKED IN THE BACK SCREEN DOOR OF WAVERLY Hall and found me quite comfortable in front of a roaring fire in the kitchen. Jase was in bed, tucked in snugly. Katie had something on her mind.

"I'd like a tour," she announced.

"A tour?"

She pointed up. "We've been here almost two weeks and all I've seen is the kitchen. I want to see what you've done with the house." She looked around. "It's been a while."

"Oh, well ... there's really not much ..."

She waved me off. "I am a woman, and this house was once in Southern Living. Now, are you going to turn tour guide, or will this be a self-guided tour?"

I stood up and clasped my hands in front of me. "Welcome to Waverly Hall."

We started at the front door, where she immediately took off her shoes and began prancing around the house barefooted, carrying her tennis shoes. She was far more interested in floors, wallpapers, trim, and crown moldings than I had ever been in my life. She had always liked the kitchen; the dining room she loved, especially the chandelier made from elk horns; and she shook her head when she remembered finding me asleep in the den fireplace. She thought the library looked contrived. Like somebody wanted to create the idea that they actually read all those old books.