Cementville (6 page)

“That'll be the transformer down in town,” Willis said, swinging down from the seat of the tractor. He shoveled dirt over Curly. It started to rain again, and Maureen and her mother ran to the house. The radio Katherine kept on top of the refrigerator had already fallen silent and the house lights were dark. Maureen brought out the kerosene lamp and Katherine let her light it. From the sideboard in the dining room Maureen fetched a deck of cards. Playing cards by the kerosene lamp was what they did when the electricity was out. It was always Maureen's secret hope that the power would stay off so long that people forgot about it and life went back to the way it was in the olden days. Her family would keep a stable full of horses and ride into town on Saturdays for provisions. Lumber, fabric for sewing clothes, cornmeal. Not sugar, because her family would keep bees and tap trees for maple syrup.

Willis came in from the barn and slung his wet jacket over the hall tree. Her mother poured the last of the coffee. “I suppose the shop will have to be rebuilt?”

“That's what insurance is for,” Willis said. No mention of the Hupmobile. He looked at the clock. “You want to try to make it down to town for the parade?”

“It's been postponed. Lila O'Brien called—they decided to move it to Memorial Day. Evidently the storm and some semblance of sanity or sensitivity or
something
has prevailed among the Daughters of the Confederacy or whatever that group is that has put itself in charge of all things
patriotic
. . . .” Katherine bit off her words and threw a dish rag into the sink.

Willis reached out to put a hand on her shoulder but stopped. “How's Ginny doing?” he said.

“She's mad enough to be good for her. Pray to God this time it sticks. She'll stay at her cousin's for a few days until she figures out what to do.” Katherine pressed her temples with her fingertips, pulling herself together. Neither Willis nor Maureen went to touch her, knowing she hated that when she was collecting herself. Ever since Levon and Ginny rented the little house from them at the bottom of her driveway, Katherine seemed to have taken on saving Virginia Ferguson as a personal mission. Sometimes, after Ginny left, Maureen found her mother poring over
The Feminine Mystique
, which Katherine said was about the conventions that had kept so many women under the hard boot of men. When Maureen asked her mother if Willis had
her
under his boot, she had laughed and said, “Hardly!”

Katherine wasn't laughing now. “She's got to get out of here, Will. Otherwise I believe that man's going to kill her one of these days, I really do.”

Maureen and Willis were staring at the linoleum when they heard footsteps on the front porch and a knock on the door.

Maureen ran into the dim hallway. Through the glass and the gauze curtain she could see the shape of a tall man in brown holding a satchel. She opened the door. His hair was buzzed close to the scalp on the sides and combed up flat on top. His eyes made her think of windows in a house with nobody home. Blood whooshed through her ears and she felt herself blink in slow motion.

Maureen flung herself like a torpedo into her brother's arms. He caught her, just. Their parents heard the commotion and came running. Willis had to prop Katherine up when she nearly fell into the potted fern. They pulled Billy into the hallway as if they were rescuing him from the jaws of some invisible monster set to grab him off the front porch. Katherine used the bottom of her skirt to wipe him off and said, “You need to get out of those sopping wet things.” Then Katherine, Willis, and Maureen stood as still as if a ghost had floated into the house, and they watched Billy pick up the satchel and climb the stairs to his old room. He hadn't spoken yet.

Without having a chance to stop herself thinking it, the thought floated into Maureen's head: What if they ripped out his vocal chords?

In the kitchen, she sat with her father at the dinette, waiting and fidgeting. Her mother filled the percolator with water then stood there staring at the useless electrical outlet, the cord dangling from her hand. She wiped the counters and scrubbed the sink and folded the tea towel. She rubbed lotion into her hands and took a pitcher of tea out of the refrigerator and put a tin of oatmeal cookies on the table. Maureen shuffled the cards and thought about dealing out a hand of Go Fish, but then put the deck down and shoved it to the middle of the table.

Her brother came into the kitchen, more himself in a T-shirt and jeans, except for the flattop that stuck up in jagged spikes like the hair on a dog's back after rain. She didn't remember Billy's ears being so big, and she wondered for a second if a mistake had been made. A silent stranger wandering into the wrong house. Before he left, Billy kept his hair long like John Lennon's on the cover of
Revolver
. Maureen poured this new version of her brother a glass of tea and put an oatmeal cookie on a flowered saucer in front of him.

“Thanks, Mo,” he croaked, like someone who still had vocal chords but had not used them in a long time. He nibbled the tiniest fraction of his cookie. Maureen wanted to stop looking at the fever blister all yellow-edged in the corner of his mouth.

“We didn't know you were coming home,” their mother said.
Somebody swallowed. “I wish I could have known—I would've made a celebration meal!” Katherine had that cheerful upturn in her voice to hide the quivering. She held her eyes wide open so nothing would spill out. Watery globs pooled under her eyelashes. Maureen chewed her cookie so fast that she bit the inside of her cheek. It was unnerving, watching her mother act this way.

“It's good to see you, son. Have you home in one piece.” Their father's voice didn't shake but his hands did. Maybe her dad was thinking of the other boys who had also come home not in one piece. Maureen wished her parents would act normal. They were obviously making Billy nervous.

“Well, it wasn't exactly my idea,” he said. “Getting out, I mean.” Billy broke the oatmeal cookie into pieces. “I got into a fight.”

“Curly's dead,” Maureen blurted, but nobody looked at her. She watched Billy's Adam's apple move up and down while he drained the tea from his glass. She sat on her hands and waited for him to speak again.

“I was drunk.” His fever blister broke open. If Maureen were Billy she would stop talking so the sore didn't split wider and have all that yellow liquid run out. Their father's breathing seemed to be the loudest sound in the world. Maureen pictured the hairs in his nose vibrating and wheezing like a gang of teeny old men.

“I, for one, think we should
all
go to
all
the funerals,” Maureen said. Her mother and father looked at her but neither of them spoke.

“I let some coon have it pretty bad.”

“Willis Theodore Juell!” Katherine hissed. Their father glared at him. Maureen sucked in a breath. She was pretty sure that in the house where she and her brother had grown up, that word got you a whipping you would not soon forget. The Juells had all watched news of Selma and the fire-bombings. The little dead girls in their church outfits. They had followed the March on Washington together, their whole family, Billy included.

“Stupid fight.” Billy's knee bounced under the table. “I don't even remember what it was about.”

Katherine blinked fast and patted the corner of her eye with a Kleenex. Everybody stared at the cookie crumbs spread in front of Billy.

Billy said, “Fucker almost didn't make it.” He seemed to be trying for a laugh but it came out choked, a
khar-khar
sound.

Their mother let loose that kind of inside-out sob that sucks up all the air in the room. Maureen felt on the verge of fainting or bursting out laughing, she couldn't predict which. She wished Billy would keep his mouth shut for a second and let her catch up with what was going on. Had she heard right? Had he really almost killed somebody?

Katherine and Willis appeared to have been struck dumb.

“Jink Riley killed Paco,” Maureen said, only because she was going to split wide open if someone didn't say something. “Halloween night.”

“Idiot had a heart condition even he didn't know about,” Billy said. “Shouldn't even have been in the goddamn army. Don't worry, I still get my GI.” He glanced at his father and shoved half the cookie into his mouth at once. “It's a discharge, but it ain't a dishonorable one. Discharge don't mean shit these days anyhow.” A pink line of blood marked the corner of his mouth now.

“Discharge
doesn't
mean—” Maureen started to correct, but she couldn't make herself say S-H-I-T, not with their parents sitting there. And—ain't?
Ain't?
Their mother had to be dying a thousand deaths.

Willis stood up. “I might've left the windows down on the truck.” He went out straight into the storm. Maureen watched through the kitchen window as he disappeared into the barn. Their father was in Korea back when.

Katherine and Billy and Maureen sat there in the kitchen like graveyard statues for an eternity. It was quiet as a tomb and very nearly as dark. Maureen moved her eyes toward the clock on the wall and saw that it had stopped.

They all three jumped when the electricity suddenly cut back on and the lights flashed and the refrigerator clicked and began a low-screaming hum and the radio on top of the fridge blared to life
with the deejay shrieking,
It's wacky! This is W-A-K-Y Radio serving Greater Kentuckiana with the latest news and up-to-the-minute weather information!
Their mother yanked the radio's plug out of the wall. Maureen thought for a second that the radio might go flying across the room.

But Katherine Juell was not a woman who threw things. She turned the lights off and they sat in the dark a while longer. Maureen bit into a cookie. The crunching made her wish she hadn't. She shuffled the cards to hide the chewing.

Nobody said,
Go on and deal us a hand, Mo
. Thunder rumbled softly in the distance.

“The storm's moving off,” Maureen said, trying for the same authority her father's voice had held. But she doubted the truth of it. The kerosene lamp hissed peacefully from the dead center of the table. Maureen was not fooled. People were not going to forget. There would be no stable full of horses, no bees or honey or maple syrup straight from the trees. The olden days were not coming back.

Billy pushed his chair out. “I'm bushed. Goddamn bus—must've got a crick in my neck—”

Katherine Juell shot from her chair and stood over him, an enlarged version of herself. “Filth will not be tolerated in this house!” Her nostrils flared out scary. “You are my son, and you will not be turned out, but you will use the English language as you were taught!”

Then her body telescoped down to its normal size. She flicked the lights on and pulled a roast out of the refrigerator and set the oven to 325° and began peeling potatoes. She did not turn back to her children when she said, “Supper at six.”

Maureen sat very still and waited for Billy to whisper something sarcastic under his breath so they could share a secret laugh, or raise his eyebrows in that exaggerated way with his eyes bugging out in fake fear at their mother's snit. She waited for him to do any one of the things her brother used to do. Anything that would let her make sure it was him.

THREE

S
he is in a dead coma Friday night when her mother calls at 11:58 to say, “Your cousin Donnie is gone.” MaLou starts to say something flip:
Didn't that happen a long time ago?
But something in her mother's tone says this isn't just another of Donnie's usual sloppy binges, after which Aunt Martha and Uncle Rafe will track him down in some floozy's mobile home off Highway 68. Maria Louise Goins rubs her eyes awake enough to realize that
Donnie is gone
means Donnie is finally and irretrievably dead.

“What—how?” she wants to know, and in her half-sleep Donnie rises up over the handlebars of his banana bike, a bully with yellow spikes of hair who beat the crap out of her every summer for grins.

This couldn't come at a worse time. “Mother, I can't. My boss isn't going to let me drop everything and go down to Cementville right now. I've got a big story due tomorrow at noon.” A fire at a local elementary school, suspected arson. She has been promoted from cub reporter to features—her mother knows this. That story is to carry her byline, damn it. Donnie has been courting death since he was nine, she doesn't say out loud to her mother, bouncing that trick
bike over boulders in the rock quarry and climbing the water tower to paint his name in letters two feet tall. “The Toyota isn't running,” MaLou goes on. “It hasn't moved from its spot on Tallahassee Street in nearly six weeks. There's probably crabgrass growing through the radiator by now.” She doesn't dream for a minute her mother has already reserved a ticket on the Greyhound for her.