Fine Just the Way It Is (22 page)

Bonita brought out a big dinner, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, string beans with cream sauce, fresh rolls and for dessert a pecan pie that she said Mrs. Hicks had sent over. She said something about Mrs. Hicks that Dakotah did not catch. It was a terrible dinner. None of them could eat. They pushed the food around and in hoarse teary voices said how good everything looked. Verl, perhaps trying to set an example, took a forkful of mashed potato and retched. At last they got up. Bonita wrapped the food with plastic film and put it in the refrigerator.

“We’ll eat it tomorrow,” she said.

They sat in awful silence in the living room, the television set dark.

“Your old room is made up,” said Bonita. In the quiet the kitchen refrigerator hummed like wind in the wires. “You know, them Hickses couldn’t afford to go to Warshinton and see Sash. They need to know about him. They can’t find out a thing. They telephoned a hunderd times. Every time they call that hospital they get cut off or transferred to somebody don’t know. They need for you to tell them. It’s bad, them not knowing.”

She could not tell them how much worse it was to know.

The next morning was somewhat easier; they could all drink hot coffee. Mourning, grief and loss were somehow eased by hot, black coffee. But still no one could eat. At noon Dakotah left Verl and Bonita and went for a walk up the pine slope. A new power line ran through the slashed trees.

At supper the welcome-home meal reappeared, heated in Bonita’s microwave that she had bought with some of Dakotah’s money. They finally ate, very slowly. In a low voice Dakotah said that the chicken was good. It had no taste. Bonita made more coffee—none of them would sleep anyway—and cut Mrs. Hicks’s pecan pie. Verl gazed at the golden triangle on his saucer, seemed unable to lift his fork.

There was the creak of the kitchen door and Otto and Virginia Hicks came in, tentatively. Bonita urged them to sit down, got coffee for them. Mrs. Hicks’s red eyes went to Dakotah. The older woman’s hand shook and the coffee cup stuttered against the saucer. She suddenly gave up on the coffee and pushed it away.

“What about Sash?” she blurted. “You seen him. We got that official letter that says he is coming home. They don’t say how bad he was hurt. We can’t find out nothing. He don’t call us. Maybe he can’t call us. What about Sash?”

Bonita looked at Dakotah, opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again.

The silence spread out like a rain-swollen river, lapping against the walls of the room, mounting over their heads. Dakotah thought of Ezell’s taxi rolling slowly past the bereft ranches. She felt the Hickses’ fear begin to solidify into knowledge. Already grief was settling around the tense couple like a rope loop, the same rope that encircled all of them. She had to draw the Hickses’ rope tight and snub them up to the pain until they went numb, show that it didn’t pay to love.

“Sash,” she said at last so softly they could barely hear. “Sash is tits-up in a ditch.”

They sat frozen like people in the aftermath of an explosion, each silently calculating their survival chances in lives that must grind on. The air vibrated. At last Mrs. Hicks turned her red eyes on Dakotah.

“You’re his wife,” she said.

There was no answer to that and Dakotah felt her own hooves slip and the beginning descent into the dark, watery mud.