A Land More Kind Than Home (32 page)

It's raining, it's pouring
,

An old man is snoring
.

He went to bed and bumped his head
,

And couldn't get up in the morning
.

Before I knew it, I was headed up the driveway toward our house and the water rolled down through the gravel in little streams, and I knew if I came out in the morning I'd be able to find me some good quartz rocks that had gotten themselves washed up in this heavy rain. I heard the thunder crack somewhere behind me, but I was almost home and it didn't scare me one bit.

When I came around, I saw somebody out in the yard on the side of the house, but it had gotten too dark to tell who it was, but my daddy's truck was parked in front of the porch and I figured it was him. Once I got into the yard, I saw that he was messing with the gutter where the water poured down on the rain barrel. The rain came down so hard that I felt like I was looking at him through an old window screen, and I walked up into the yard and stood by the house and watched him, and I wondered if I should say something. The rain was loud, but I could hear him talking to himself and trying to put that gutter back together where it had broken. His feet slipped in the grass, and he had to get a good hold on the rim of the rain barrel so he didn't fall. I was too scared to say anything because I didn't want him asking me what happened. He looked up from the rain barrel and saw me standing there.

“Where you been?” he asked, but it was raining so loud that I couldn't hardly hear him good enough to know what he'd said. I looked at him, and then I looked at the gutter where it was bent. He quit messing with it and took a step toward me and then lost his balance and almost fell. He grabbed on to the rain barrel and stood up and started coming toward me again. When he got close, I saw his clothes were soaked all the way through just like mine were. “Where you been?” he asked me again.

“I went to Joe Bill's after school,” I said.

He stared at me, and I saw that his eyes looked like he hadn't been asleep in a long time. It seemed like he couldn't even look at me for being so tired. He pointed behind him at the rain barrel.

“What happened to this?” he said. He waited for me to say something, but I just stood there without saying anything.

He bent down, and I could smell his breath and it smelled like Grandpa's did when he laughed out there on that hillside by the fire. Daddy bent down eye level with me and put his hands on his knees, but one of them slipped off because his pants were so wet. “What happened to the rain barrel?” he asked me real slow and loud like he didn't think I could hear him. “How'd it get broken?”

I looked away from him down toward the creek where it ran through the woods, and I thought about how fast it was probably moving with all this rain. My chest felt like I had somebody standing on it. Daddy reached out and grabbed my shirt. “What happened to it?” he screamed.

I looked back at him, and I saw his face right up against mine and his eyes looked wild and terrifying. The smell of his breath was the only thing I could think about, and I started crying. “Stump fell,” I finally said.

“What's that mean, ‘Stump fell'?” he asked. He jerked my shirt and pulled me toward him. I put my hands on his shoulders to keep from slipping. I couldn't even look at him because I was so afraid of telling him.

“He fell,” I said. “He was standing on top of it, and he fell.”

Daddy let go of my shirt and stepped back, and then he turned and looked at the rain barrel. I could tell that he was staring at the gutter where it was bent up and broken.

“Why was he standing up there?”

“Because we heard you,” I said. He turned and looked at me.

“What?”

“We thought we heard you and Mama inside,” I said. “But I know we weren't supposed to be spying, especially because Mama'd sent us down to the creek and told us not to come back up to the house until we'd caught five salamanders.”

“You should've listened to her,” he said.

“But it wasn't you,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn't you inside there with her.”

I
WAS CRYING BY THE TIME
I
FOLLOWED
D
ADDY INTO THE HOUSE
because he hadn't said a word after I told him what I'd seen. I couldn't stop shaking because my clothes were sopping wet with rain. I saw an empty liquor bottle on the counter in the kitchen. Daddy opened a crinkly, wet grocery bag and pulled out another one and unscrewed the lid and took a long drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took another. Then he picked up the empty bottle and threw it against the refrigerator. It broke, and little pieces of glass covered the floor. I hollered out for him, but he didn't even look at me. He took another drink, and then he screwed the lid back on and walked down the hall toward his and Mama's bedroom. I heard him open and close the drawers on the dresser like he was looking for something. He walked back down the hall, and I heard the glass crunching like gravel under his boots when he walked through the kitchen on the way to the front room. He picked up his truck keys off the table.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Go to bed,” he said. He opened the door and walked out onto the porch. I followed after him and caught the screen door before it shut in my face. He was already down the steps and heading across the driveway to his truck. He climbed in and slammed the door and started the engine.

“Don't leave!” I hollered. “Please!” I ran down the steps and out into the rain and pulled on the truck's door, but I reckon he'd already locked it because I couldn't get it open. I beat my fists against the window.

“I'm sorry!” I hollered. “Don't leave me here!”

It was so dark that I could just barely see him inside his truck. He looked at me through the window. I watched him pull the gearshift down, and I heard his tires on the gravel when he rolled back. I watched him turn around in the driveway, and then I watched his taillights fly down the hill toward the road. Soon I couldn't even see them through the trees, and all I could hear was the rain.

I
WALKED UP THE PORCH STEPS AND BACK INSIDE THE HOUSE.
I closed the front door behind me. It was quiet in there, and I listened to the rain falling on the roof and the sound of it running into the gutters and down the spout. I knew the rain would've run right into the rain barrel if it wasn't broken. The lights were on in the kitchen, and those little pieces of glass from where my daddy had broken that bottle twinkled on the floor. It looked like somebody had come through and tossed a handful of ice into the kitchen. I walked around them as carefully as I could. I stepped on a couple of pieces, and they popped under my shoes. I turned off the kitchen light and went into me and Stump's bedroom and shut the door.

I hadn't ever been at home all by myself before, especially not at night, and I kicked off my shoes and climbed up on the bed and pulled down the covers and got under them. I realized how cold I was in my wet clothes, and I couldn't hardly quit shivering. I pulled the covers over my head and thought about where Daddy could've gone, and I wondered if he would ever come back. And then I thought about how just a week before it had been me and Stump and Mama and Daddy all here together, but now everybody had gone and it was just me. I laid there under the covers and thought about how I'd bring them all back if I could, but after what I'd told Daddy I figured that even if we were all here together things wouldn't ever be the same. I thought about Stump's quiet box where it sat under our bed, and I wished Mama'd made me one too.

I
OPENED MY EYES WHEN
I
HEARD A SOUND LIKE
D
ADDY
'
S TRUCK
coming up the driveway. I turned over on my back and stared up at the ceiling and listened hard until I knew for sure that it was him. My clothes still hadn't dried all the way, but I wasn't cold anymore, and I kicked the covers off me and took off my shirt and my pants and my socks and threw them on the floor. Then I pulled the covers up over me again and turned on my side and looked out the window. It had quit raining, but there still wasn't no moon coming through the clouds and the night outside was pitch black.

My daddy parked his truck in front of the house and I heard him turn his engine off, and then I heard him open and close the truck's door and I heard his boots coming up the porch steps. It sounded like he tried to open the front door as quiet as he could, but I knew it would squeak anyway. His boots walked through the kitchen, and I heard them crunching on the glass where he'd broken that bottle. He went down the hallway to the bathroom, and I heard him open the lid on the toilet. A second later I heard him peeing. I closed my eyes and thought about how I wasn't scared anymore to be at home all by myself, and I started to get mad at Daddy for leaving me alone because I knew Mama wouldn't ever do that. I laid there and thought about where he might've gone when he left, and then I heard him coming back up the hallway. He stopped outside my door like he was trying to listen to see if I was still awake.

The knob turned real slow, and the door almost didn't make a sound when he opened it, but I saw that little bit of light from the hallway come into the bedroom and shine on the window, and I laid there on my side as still as I could with my back to the door. I could hear Daddy breathing from where he stood out in the hall.

“Jess,” he whispered.

I didn't say nothing, and I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep.

“Jess,” he whispered again. “You asleep?”

I still didn't say nothing, but I could hear him breathing and I knew he was still standing there looking at me. Then I heard him close the door just as quiet as he'd opened it. There wasn't any more light coming from the hallway, and my bedroom was just as dark as it was before.

My daddy walked back down the hall to the kitchen, and I heard him pick up the bottle off the counter and unscrew the lid, and then I heard him sit it back down. He opened and closed the cabinet, and then he ran water in the tap and turned it off. I heard him pick up the bottle again. I turned over on my other side, and I could see a little bit of light from the kitchen coming in under my door. I imagined Daddy in there leaning up against the counter and drinking out of that bottle and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. I lay in my bed and listened to him in there, and then I heard something real soft and I couldn't figure out what it was. I held my breath and listened hard, and when I did I realized that what I could hear was the sound of Daddy using the broom and the dustpan to sweep up those little pieces of glass off the floor.

I
DROVE BACK FROM THAT MEETING WITH
C
HAMBLISS AS SCARED
as I'd ever been in my entire life. Even though my windows were down and the air poured into my car, I couldn't hear nothing except for the rattle inside my head, the sound of it coming from deep inside that dark box where Chambliss had held my arm and echoing off the walls of the empty church. Its musty smell clung to my clothes like tobacco smoke, and the soft skin on the underside of my arm still crawled with the fear of being struck by its fangs. I prayed to God that I'd find Julie at home.

But I know what an empty house looks like, and I know you can almost feel it when you see it. I knew from the road that I wasn't going to find her inside when I got in there, but that didn't stop me from going from room to room and hollering her name. I went back out through the front door into the yard and around to the back of the house and called her and called her, and that's when I saw just how dark that sky had gotten. I stood out there in the backyard and felt that wind picking up, and I heard the thunder take to rumbling way off over the mountain. The air just changed all of a sudden, and I felt strange out there all alone with it getting so dark like that and the wind picking up and bending those tree limbs and tearing off those leaves. It felt ominous to me, like something was about to happen that I wasn't quite prepared for.

I went back inside the house hoping that she'd come in while I was outside, but I knew she hadn't. I walked into the kitchen and stood there at the counter and crossed my arms and looked out across the yard and up to the road like I thought I might see her coming down it, but she wouldn't come no matter how long I looked. I'd had me a red rotary phone put in there by the door, and I stood right there and stared at it and thought about what I should do. I thought about calling the sheriff, but I couldn't think of just what I'd tell him, and I knew better than to call over to Ben's and stir up trouble if Julie was over there.