Eventide (6 page)

9

O
N A SATURDAY AFTER BREAKFAST, AFTER HE HAD DONE
up the dishes, he came outside and without specific intention or any direction in mind started up the street in the bright cool morning and passed the vacant lot and the houses where the old widows lived in individual silence and isolation. Dena and Emma were out in front of their mother’s house, and they had a new bicycle that they’d bought with the money their father in Alaska had sent. Dena knew how to ride already but Emma was only learning. Dena was on the bicycle now, riding on the sidewalk, and she stopped in front of DJ and stepped down, straddling the bike. Her little sister ran up beside them. You want to ride? she asked him.

No.

Why not? Don’t you know how?

No.

You could learn, Dena said. Look at me, I’m already riding.

I don’t know anything about it.

Haven’t you ever tried before?

I don’t have a bike, he said.

Why don’t you? Emma said.

I never bought one.

Don’t you have any money?

Be quiet, Emma.

But he said —

Never mind, Dena said. You want to ride this one?

It’s a girl’s bike. I ought to learn on a boy’s bike.

You want to or not? She got off and held the handlebar out to him and he looked at her and took hold of the rubber grip and stepped over the low crossbar. When he tried pushing the bike forward the pedal came around and hit him in the back of the leg.

How do you? he said.

Get this one pedal to come up. Now step down on it.

The bike went forward and wavered and stopped.

Do it again.

He went ahead a little farther.

Get your other foot up at the same time on the other pedal.

He went forward once more and wobbled and put both feet down.

You have to keep pedaling. You don’t stop.

He pedaled down the block on the sidewalk and the two girls trotted beside until he veered off into a bush and tipped over. He got up and pulled the bike upright. How do you stop it?

Dena put her foot up. Like that, she said.

Don’t you have hand brakes?

No. Just the pedals.

He started again and rode down the driveway into the street and rode along pedaling steadily as they ran beside him. The bike stammered and wobbled and he almost hit them once. They screamed in delight, their faces pink as flowers, and he pedaled away. Dena called: Try and stop, try and stop. He stood up on the pedals and braked suddenly, then put his feet down to catch himself. They ran up beside him.

It’s easy, Dena said. Isn’t it?

I know.

He rode up and back in the street and turned and rode toward them and lifted one hand from the handlebar to wave and put his hand back quickly and rode past and came back once more, but he was too fast this time and drove the bike into the two sisters in the middle of the street and hit the older girl hard and they crashed over, sprawling out in the pavement, the bike over them. He had torn the skin from his elbow and knee and the girl was hurt in the hip and chest. She was crying a little, holding her hip. He felt sick to his stomach. Blood trickled down his arm and the knee of his pants was ripped. He got up feeling sick and lifted the bike off her, then took her hand and helped her to her feet. I’m sorry, he said. Are you all right? I’m sorry.

She looked at him and crossed her arms over her chest where she felt bruised. Why didn’t you put the brakes on? Didn’t you remember that?

No.

You can’t forget that.

I better go home, he said. He was inspecting his elbow. I need to wash this off.

Mama will fix it for you. Come in the house.

You’re dripping on your shoes, Emma said.

He looked down. I know, he said. There were bloody spots on the toes and laces.

Let Mama fix it for you, Dena said.

They walked the bicycle out of the street onto the grass and let it flop down. Before they got up to the house Mary Wells came out and stood in the front door. She had seen them from the window coming toward the house and for some reason her eyes were red. She took them into the house.

Inside, he cupped his hand under his elbow so he wouldn’t drip on the carpet and she led him back to the bathroom. The two girls followed and watched while he held his arm over the sink and their mother rinsed his arm, the blood thinning and dripping into the basin while she washed tenderly, touching the cut place with the tips of her fingers, brushing the grit away. When his elbow was clear, the blood seeped out like little red berries. She told him to hold a washcloth to it, then had him put his foot up on the toilet seat and she lifted his pants and his knee was bleeding too. The blood had run into his sock. She cleaned off his knee with another washcloth. The two girls peered over her shoulder, their faces serious and absorbed, wondering. And while their mother was tending him, her eyes suddenly filled with tears and the tears ran down her cheeks onto her chin. DJ and the two girls looked at her in astonishment, and they felt a kind of fear at seeing a grown-up cry.

It’s all right, DJ said. It’s not that bad.

It’s not that, she said. I was thinking of something else.

Mama? Dena said.

She went on cleaning his knee, squeezing antiseptic ointment from a tube and taping a bandage over it, and then did the same to his elbow. All the time she kept wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

Mama. What’s wrong?

Don’t bother me, she said.

But will you look at me too?

Why? Are you hurt?

Yes.

Where?

Here. And here.

Her mother turned to DJ and Emma. You two go on out. Now, she said to Dena, let me see.

DJ and the younger sister went out to the front room and stood beside the piano where the light came in from the front window. The little girl looked up at his face as if she expected him to do something.

What’s wrong with her? he said. What’s making her cry like that?

Daddy.

What do you mean?

He called last night and she’s been crying. He said he’s not coming home.

Why not?

I don’t know why not.

Didn’t he say?

I don’t know.

Mary Wells came out with Dena from the bathroom. You kids go outside now, she said.

I don’t want to, the little girl said.

Why don’t you?

I want to stay with you.

All right. But you two go out. I’m not feeling very well, she said. She had begun to cry again. They watched her out of the corners of their eyes. Go on, she said. Please.

I want to stay too, Dena said.

No. One’s enough in here. Go on now. You and DJ do something outside.

O
UTSIDE, THEY PUSHED THE BIKE AROUND THE CORNER
of the house to the backyard and stood by the garden looking at the alley. Let’s go someplace else, Dena said.

I don’t want to go downtown. I don’t feel like seeing anybody right now.

We don’t have to see anybody, she said.

They walked out into the alley in the tire tracks running on either side of the weeds that grew down the center of the gravel like a low hedge and passed the backyards of the old widow women and the vacant lot next door and then his grandfather’s house and the vacant lot beyond. At the street they crossed over and entered the alley in the next block. On the left was an old blue wooden house, its backyard overgrown with lilac bushes and mulberry trees. Nobody had lived in the house for years. The porch screen was hanging loose and there were scraps of metal scattered under the bushes. An old black Desoto had been shoved under a mulberry and its pale-green windows had been starred and shot through by boys with pellet guns. All the tires were flat. At the alley was a small unpainted shed.

They peered in through the little window, the panes old and wavy, coated with dirt and brown cobwebs. They could only make out a push mower and a garden tiller. The door creaked open when they lifted the metal latch and they went in through long strings of cobwebs. The shed was dark and shadowy inside, with a dirt floor black with oil. There was a shelf along the back wall. Beneath it a whitewall tire. There were woven baskets with wire handles stacked one inside the other, and a rusted hand saw, and a carpenter’s hammer, both its claws broken off. Below the window was a dead house sparrow, dry as dust on the dirt floor, weighing nothing. They looked at everything, lifting the tools and setting them back in their outlines of dust.

We could make something of this, Dena said.

He looked at her.

This place here.

It’s just dirty in here. It’s dark.

We could clean it out, she said.

He looked at her and she seemed dim and shadowy in the thin light coming through the window. He couldn’t see her eyes. She had lowered her face. She was holding something in her hands, but he couldn’t see for sure what it was. We could bring things here, she said.

Like what?

I don’t know, she said. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.

She was looking down at whatever it was she had in her hands.

Maybe I do, he said.

It was an old red coffee can. He could see that now and she was poking around to see what was inside. In the dim light he studied her soft unknowable face, a girl’s face. Didn’t you hear me? he said.

What.

I said maybe I do.

I heard you, she said.

Part Two

10

S
HE HAD THE AUNT WHO LIVED OUT IN THE COUNTRY
east of Holt and she had the uncle who lived in town, who was Hoyt Raines, on her mother’s side.

On a windy afternoon at the beginning of October he was waiting on the front porch of their trailer when they came home from Duckwall’s. He was wearing a black baseball cap with purple trimming and his face was hidden beneath the bill.

He was a tall thin man with the same dark lank hair that Betty had and he had her own pale blue eyes. He worked in town and out in the country on construction outfits and for tree-trimming operations, and in the summer months he joined harvesting crews that began cutting wheat in Texas and finished in Canada. He almost never worked at any one job longer than a single season. He’d work a while and get laid off for one reason or another, or he’d get disgusted and quit on his own. When he was out of work he’d lounge about in his rented rooms on the south side of Holt, living on his last paycheck until the money ran out. The past five or six months he’d been milking cows for a dairy north of Holt, and for him this was almost heroic, the way he kept on. Even so—and this was more like him—every three weeks or so he’d come into the milking parlor at six or seven in the morning, arriving in his own good time, arriving late and still drunk and still wooden-eyed, smelling of the cheap bar whiskey he’d drunk the night before, and in this stupefied state he’d begin milking the expensive Holstein cows, cleaning the milk-dripping udders with a wet rag and attaching the milker-cups in clumsy haste, and the last time this had happened, it was two weeks ago, he had milked one of the sick cows into the fresh tank and the manager had had to empty the entire tank or risk being discovered and fined. Fourteen hundred gallons of fresh milk had had to be run out into the floor drain. The manager fired him on the spot—told Hoyt to go home, said he was never to come back, he didn’t want ever to see his miserable face again. Well goddamn it, Hoyt said, what about my paycheck? You still owe me for this week’s pay.

It’ll be in the mail, you sorry son of a bitch, the manager said. Now get the hell out of here.

That day he went back to town still smelling faintly of whiskey, with also the reek of the milking parlor, that peculiar intense distinct odor which hung on in his clothes and hair and which even soap and water couldn’t remove, and made his first stop at the Holt Tavern on Main Street though it was still only the middle of morning. There he began to drink and to explain to anyone who would listen—three old men and a couple of sad-eyed old women were already there—what had happened.

Now he was sitting on the porch step in the sun, smoking a cigarette, when his niece and Luther walked up across the weedy yard.

Looky who’s here, Luther said.

I wondered when you two would decide to come home, Hoyt said.

We been downtown buying a new phone.

What do you want a phone for? Who’s going to call?

We got to have a phone. I’m starting a business.

What kind of business?

A mail-order one. Home-based.

Hoyt looked at him. Well, he said, if you want to believe that. He stood up and turned to Betty. Aren’t you going to give your uncle a hug?

She stepped toward him and he hugged her hard, then let her go and slapped her sharply on the rear.

Don’t, she said. My husband don’t like people messing with me.

You think Luther cares?

You better mind your manners.

That’s right, Luther said. You ought to mind your manners around here.

What’s crawled up your ass? I come over to see you two. I got something I want to propose. And here you’re already giving me a raft of shit.

Well, Luther said. You shouldn’t say that.

What you want to propose? Betty said.

Let’s get out of this wind, Hoyt said. I can’t talk out here.

T
HEY MOVED INSIDE THE TRAILER AND SAT AT THE
kitchen table after Betty cleared a place for her uncle. He took off his cap and set it on the table and ran his fingers through his hair as he looked around. You need to clean this place up, he said. Good Christ, look at it. I don’t see how a person can live like this.

Well, I ain’t feeling very good, Betty said. My stomach keeps hurting me. I can’t hardly sleep at night.

She been taking pills for it, Luther said. But it don’t seem like it makes no difference. Does it, honey.

It ain’t yet.

That don’t mean you have to live like this, Hoyt said. You could do some of it yourself, Luther.

Luther didn’t respond. He and Betty stared across the room as if there were something hanging on the wall they had failed to notice.

Hoyt was still smoking his cigarette. Betty, he said, get your uncle a ashtray. I wouldn’t want to dirty your nice floor.

We don’t have any. Nobody ever smokes in here.

They don’t? He stared at her, then stood up and ran water from the faucet onto his cigarette and dropped it in the sink among the dirty dishes. He sat down again and sighed, rubbing his eyes elaborately. Well, I guess you heard, he said.

About what? Luther said. We didn’t hear anything.

You didn’t hear I lost my job? That son of a bitch out to the dairy laid me off two weeks ago. And that cow wasn’t even marked good. There’s suppose to be orange crayon smeared on her bag. How was I expected to remember she was sick? So I milked her into the tank like you’re suppose to, and the son of a bitch fired me. Then this morning that other son of a bitch over to the apartment house kicked me out.

What happened with him? Luther said.

Nothing. Maybe I was a day or two behind on the rent, but I was about sick of his shit anyway. And he knows what he can do with that goddamn apartment of his. Hoyt looked at them. They were turned toward him, watching him like oversized children. So what do you think about all that? he said.

I think it’s too bad, Betty said. They shouldn’t of treated you that way.

No sir, Luther said. That ain’t right for people to treat you like that.

Hoyt waved his hand. I know all that, he said. I’m not talking about that. I’ll take care of his fat ass one of these days. And he knows it. That much is understood. What I’m talking about is this here. I want to make you a proposition. I’ll come over here and move in with you two, and I’ll pay you some rent while I get on my feet. It’ll be good for all of us. That’s what I’m talking about.

Luther and Betty glanced at each other over their lunchtime dishes. Outside, the wind was shaking the trailer each time it gusted up.

Go ahead, Hoyt said. Feel free to say something. It’s not that difficult.

I don’t know, Betty said. We only got three bedrooms. Joy Rae and Richie sleeps in their own rooms.

They got to have their own rooms, Luther said. And we got ours. We ain’t got no other space.

Just a minute now, Hoyt said. Think about what you’re saying. Why can’t one of them move in with the other one? What’s wrong with that idea? They’re just little kids.

I don’t know, Betty said. She looked about the room as though she’d misplaced something.

What would your mom say? Hoyt said. You not wanting to take in her own brother, not inviting him to come in out of the cold when he needed some help. What do you think she’d say to that?

It ain’t very cold out right now, Betty said.

Are you trying to be smart? That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you letting me move in here.

Well, we want to help you, she said. It’s just— She gestured vaguely with her hands.

I’ll tell you what, Hoyt said. At least let me take a look. Let’s see what we’re talking about here. There’s no harm in looking, is there?

Abruptly he stood up. They traded glances and followed him down the hallway past the bathroom. Hoyt looked into the bedrooms as he passed, first Luther and Betty’s bedroom, then Richie’s, before coming to a closed door at the end of the hall; he pushed the door open with his foot and walked into Joy Rae’s room. In all the house it alone was neat and clean. The single narrow bed against the wall. A wooden dresser draped with a thin pink scarf. A meager box of jewelry and a brush and comb displayed over the scarf. The faded oval rug on the floor next to the bed.

This here’ll do, he said. At least it’s cleaned up. She can move in with her brother and I’ll stay in here.

Oh, I don’t know about that, Betty said, standing behind him in the doorway.

It’s just for a little while. Till I get going again. Where’s your charity? Don’t you have no heart?

I got my kids to think about too.

How is me moving in here going to hurt your kids?

Joy Rae fixed it up all by herself.

All right, he said. I’m your uncle, but if you don’t want me moving in all you got to do is say get out. I’m not stupid.

I don’t know what to say, she said. Luther, you say something.

Luther looked up the hallway. Well honey, Uncle Hoyt says it’s just for a little while. He lost his own apartment. He ain’t got no other place to go. Seems like we could help him out a little bit.

There, Hoyt said. That’s somebody that cares.

I know one thing, Betty said. Joy Rae isn’t going to like it.

T
HEY TOLD HER OF THESE NEW ARRANGEMENTS WHEN SHE
got home from school that day, and she went immediately to her room and shut the door and lay on the bed and cried bitterly. But that night, as ordered, she moved her things into Richie’s room and hung up her few dresses in the little closet and set out the box of cheap jewelry on the half of the dresser she’d claimed for herself, then picked up his shoes and toys and clothes and put them away.

When she got into bed that night it was too narrow for two of them, even as small and as thin as they were, and in the night after they’d gone to sleep Richie began to dream violently, thrashing in bed, and she was forced to wake him.

Quit your kicking. Quit it, Richie. It’s just a dream, so be quiet.

Then she looked up from the bed and saw her mother’s uncle standing in the doorway staring at them, only his face visible in the shadow. He was leaning against the door frame. She pretended to be asleep and watched him through the darkness, and she could smell him. He’d been out drinking. She had been sitting at the table after supper when he’d asked her father for five dollars. He couldn’t be expected to stay home at night, he’d said, he was still a young man and nobody was about to tie him down. Her father had looked suddenly afraid, and he’d glanced ceilingward for help but none had come, so he’d handed over five dollar bills out of his wallet. Now she kept watching him across the dark, and after a while he left the doorway and went down the hall to her room.

But even after he’d gone Joy Rae couldn’t fall asleep for an hour or more. Then she woke in the morning to discover she was sleeping in a wet bed. Her brother had wet himself in the night and her gown was soaked with it, her legs cold and damp. It made her want to cry. She got up and wiped at her hips and legs with a dirty tee-shirt and began dressing for school. She woke her brother. He whimpered and complained, standing beside the bed.

Hush up, she said.

She helped him skin off his wet underpants. He was shivering and there were goose bumps running down his legs.

We got to get ready for school. The bus is coming. Hush up that crying, you little baby. I’m the one ought to be crying.