Out of Darkness (14 page)

Now that he mentioned it, they did. They sat on the floor, ready to listen.

Henry connected the antenna wire, plugged the radio in, and fiddled with the knobs. Nothing happened. “Well,” Henry hesitated. “Maybe it needs some tuning up.”

The twins' faces fell.

“I'll get it working, you'll see,” Henry said. “How different can it be from fixing a rig? I just need my tools.”

When he passed Naomi on his way to the kitchen, she thought she smelled whiskey and beer. A combination she knew he favored. She closed her eyes against the memories.

 

HENRY
Henry came back into the living room with his tools. The guy he'd bought the radio from said he was selling it cheap on account of him moving to an oil field in Oklahoma and not wanting more stuff to haul. Henry had been too flush with goodwill at the bar to think about needing to test that it worked.

Now he took off the radio's back cover, revealing a tangle of tubes and wires. He prodded them tentatively. He wasn't going to let that sly Okie get the better of him. He worked at the radio, tested it, fiddled some more. He looked up in triumph when he got a staticky hum.

Naomi sat with a schoolbook open on her lap, a twin asleep on either side of her. The boy had a hand on her braid, and in a flash Henry remembered how Naomi had sometimes slept like that against Estella.

“Got it,” he said, grinning.

Naomi held a finger against her lips and nodded at the sleeping twins. “Tomorrow,” she mouthed.

Henry scowled. “I stay up late fixing this for y'all, and all you can say is ‘tomorrow'? Tonight, damn it.” He turned the tuning knob until he found music and then turned up the volume.

He grinned at the twins when they jolted awake. “See?” he said.

For a moment, it was just how he had dreamed it could be: Beto smiling, Cari's eyes full of wonder. Maybe Naomi was still silent and stern, but he imagined she was happy in her own way. She looked brighter and healthier here than she had when he took them from that grimy hole in San Antonio. And Henry was at the center of it all. A provider, a good father, a man that Pastor Tom would be proud of. So what if he'd had a setback earlier. He could hold it together for his family.

“How about that?” he called over the music. “Looks like your pa can fix more than busted pumpjacks and jammed rigs after all.”

Naomi prodded each of them with an elbow.

“Thank you, Daddy,” Beto said.

“Hooray, thanks,” Cari said.

“It's lovely,” Naomi added, and she even smiled a little.

Her words were hardly out—and the song had not yet finished—when there was a loud pop and a sudden silence.

“Come on!” Henry barked. He yanked at the knob. “Darn thing went and broke on me again.” He tugged on his ear and glued his eyes to the radio as if assessing it. He didn't want to see disappointment on the twins' faces.

“I bet you can fix it again,” Beto said.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Henry said.

Cari hopped down from the couch and muttered something in Beto's direction.

“What was that?” Henry asked.

“Hush now,” Naomi said.

Cari ignored her and walked over to Henry. “I said, what we really wanted was a cat.” She gave him a nasty smile. “Daddy.”

Henry's face went dark.

“
Derecho a la cama
,” Naomi hissed at the twins, and they hurried down the hall. The bedsprings squeaked as they climbed into bed.

Henry sat in the cane-back chair with his fists knotted over his knees. He wanted to take the radio back and shove it up that smirking Okie's ass.

“I'm sorry,” Naomi said. “They're only children. You can't expect—”

“I just want it to work, damn it!”

“We did fine without one before.”

“Not the damn radio,” Henry spat. “This—” He swept his hands around the room. “All this.”

And then he was up out of the chair. He started pitching his tools back into the toolbox. Tomorrow, he would fix it right. He turned to say as much to Naomi, and then he saw it. Her pity. He couldn't stand it. The pliers flew out of his hands and cracked against the window frame a few feet from her.

Henry left the rest of his tools and stalked out of the house without another word, pausing only to jam his hat onto his head.

 

NAOMI
Naomi kept the kids home from school the next day. Beto still had a fever, and Cari threw up once. While they slept, Naomi listened for Henry's truck, but he did not return.

She was out taking down the wash from the line when she saw Wash come ambling up the road. He had two strings of fish in his left hand. She hesitated. She could run for the house and shut the door, but she knew he'd seen her. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. She carefully unpinned the clothes and laid them into her laundry basket.

“Missed my fishing buddies today,” he called when he came into the yard.

“They're sick,” she said without turning to face him. She threw her braid over her shoulder and reached down to resettle a sheet in her basket.

“Puking and such?”

“Yes,” she said. She kept her back to him and went down the line, yanking the last clothespins off one by one.

“I haven't seen you down by the river in a while,” he said, ducking under some shirts so that he was facing her again. “No time for schoolwork? Too cold?”

“I've got my hands full,” she snapped.

“I didn't mean—” Wash took a small step back.

“Anyway,” she interrupted, “I'm sure you have plenty of other friends to spend your time with. Excuse me.” She shoved past him and pushed the laundry basket onto the porch. “I've got the twins to deal with.”

“At least take some fish,” he called. “Caught more than we can eat.”

Her “no” was already forming when she considered the fact that Henry hadn't left behind any money for groceries. “All right,” she said flatly. She reached out for the smaller of the two strings, being careful not to brush his hand with hers.

“I can clean 'em for you if you lend me a basin,” he said.

“I'll manage,” she said.

“Tell the twins I said hi.”

“Good night,” she said.

Inside, she dropped the fish into the sink and grabbed a knife. She slotted it into the side of one of the bass, but she went too deep. Thick red blood sluiced out into the sink and over her fingers. For a moment, she thought of her mother's hand, reaching out to her after the last miscarriage. She rinsed away the blood and tried again. She forced her trembling fingers to hold the slick side of the fish, and she covered its face with her arm. She kept thinking, flesh, flesh, flesh. Still, she worked on, clumsily at first, until she had fileted all four fish. She felt that she'd proven something to Wash.

As she breaded the fish, she seethed at the thought of Henry's little stunt. Under different circumstances, being rid of him for a while would be a boon, but now she'd been forced to accept Wash's charity again. She'd already had to ask Mr. Mason for credit just to fix some chicken soup for the twins. In a day or two, they'd be out of staples, and if she borrowed from Muff, she'd have to give an explanation. How long could they live on eggs and the scraps left in the pantry? She couldn't use the emergency money; they might need it more later.

If Henry didn't return by Friday, she would do something. She could ask Tommie if they could rent the spare bedroom in their house. She could keep the kids in school and sew full time, make enough to get by without Henry's help. And if Tommie's folks said no? She'd write to Abuelito and explain that they needed to come home. She'd check the price of train tickets or see if one of their uncles could drive out to get them. In time, the twins would come to understand. Before long they would forget East Texas had ever happened to the three of them.

 

HENRY
Henry awoke to a face full of brown river water. He gagged and fought to clear his nostrils. He clawed his way up the shallows and wiped the mud from his eyes.

Near his face was a familiar pair of boots.

Pastor Tom scowled down at Henry. “You thinking on your baptism now?”

“Jesus!” Henry spluttered, already scrambling for the river's edge. The last thing he remembered was closing his eyes in his truck and pulling his hat down over his face.

“Well, you old sinner?”

“Geez, yes, I was just—I only meant to—”

“Save your excuses and answer me straight. You been here asleep on the riverbank all night?”

“Yeah.” Henry looked away from the preacher and pulled off his sopping work boots. He stood with his wet socks glued to the sandy mud.

“You still working?”

“Yeah.”

“You been to the bars?” Pastor Tom asked. When Henry didn't answer, the preacher snapped his fingers and repeated his question.

“Come on, you know I have.” Henry studied an old loblolly pine that towered behind Pastor Tom.

“And why didn't you go home?”

Henry shrugged, less out of indifference than shame. “I've got this thing about puke, see, can't stand it. The kids were sick, and...”

“You left 'em? You think Jesus would've done you like that? Left you when you was sick? What else? What more'd you do, you stinking sinner?”

“I might've threw somethin',” Henry mumbled. He was shivering now. November fingered its way into his bones.

“You hit them?”

“Naw, I didn't. Just chucked some pliers at the wall. Not mad at them, more mad at myself, but...”

“And for that you took off like you didn't have a darn care in the world, just an old bachelor who could blow his pay on spirits over at Big T's. Am I right?”

“Reckon so.”

“You gonna make it up to your kids, and to Naomi, too?” Tom gave Henry a push up the slope, toward his truck.

“I s'pose I got to.”

“Come on, then. I'll get the missus to wash your clothes. You can dry out at our house and figure out how you're going to put this right, the way Jesus would. I didn't baptize you to see you go down the backslider's path, Henry Smith.” Pastor Tom held out his hand. “Give me your keys.”

 

NAOMI
Naomi was frying doughnuts when she glanced up and locked eyes with Pastor Tom's on the other side of the kitchen window. She started. Hot oil sloshed over the side of the skillet and onto the skin of her right arm. She jumped back, trembling. “
Ay, madre de Dios
,” she gasped. Sweat beaded across her forehead. Tears sprang to her eyes.

Pastor Tom pushed through the screen door. “Oh, sister,” he said, his voice high and strained. “Do you have any butter for that burn?”

“Cold water,” Beto said. He and Cari had come running from the bedroom when they heard the door.

“What?” Pastor Tom asked.

“That's the safest thing. I read so in
Boys' Life
. Just keep running cold water over the burned part.”

Cari nodded solemnly, taking Naomi's good arm and leading her to the sink. “Beto knows.”

“Butter makes it feel better at first, but it can cause more problems,” Beto explained. “It has to do with something called bacteria.”

The cool water took the edge off, but their words had to climb over a wall of pain to reach Naomi.

After a few minutes, she managed to speak. “I'm so sorry, Pastor Tom. I didn't expect...”

He shook his head and mashed his hat between his hands. “I didn't mean to startle you like that. I just wanted to make sure someone was up so I wouldn't be disturbing the household by knocking.” He nodded at the twins. “Heard the kids were under the weather.”

“Oh, we're better now,” Beto said. “I threw up fifteen times.”

“I threw up seventeen times!” Cari said with a note of triumph.

“No need for that, you two. Go get ready for school and let me and the pastor talk.” Naomi's voice came out strained and strangled. God, but it hurt.

“They have the stomach flu?”

She nodded and swallowed hard. He might have heard the kids were sick from anybody, but her first thought was that he must have seen Henry. She turned the faucet off and dried her arm as lightly as she could. Her skin screamed. “My,” she said, gritting her teeth, “that was exciting. Have a doughnut?”

He shook his head and smiled ruefully. “I'll take a seat, though. Sure am sorry.”

“It was my fault.” She lowered herself into the chair across from him and tried not to think about the heat that seemed to be inside the flesh of her arm. She glanced at the burn, then looked away. The sight of it turned her stomach. Her arm was an erratic welt of angry red with a smattering of white blisters.

Pastor Tom set his hat down in front of him. “You've had your hands full. That's what I came by to talk to you about.”

Her jaw tightened a little. “Pardon me,” she said. She dashed back over to the sink and wet a towel with cool water, wrung it out, and then wrapped her arm in it before sitting back down.

“Please go ahead,” Naomi said from the sink. The pain made her desperate for distraction, and she looked at the preacher in the eyes for the first time. There was a patch of stray hairs between his eyebrows and an uneven mole above his lip.

Pastor Tom made his hands into a steeple and studied his fingernails. “I found Henry this morning. He knows he did wrong, and he'll be coming home this evening. I thought you might like to know.”

“Thank you.”

“I'll let him know he's welcome back?”

She hesitated, briefly imagining a life in East Texas without Henry. In the end, she said, “It's his house.”

The pastor frowned a little. “Can I pray over it for you?” he asked, already stretching his hands out toward her burned arm.

◊ ◊ ◊

On the way to school, Naomi did not tell the twins that Henry was coming home. His word, even through Pastor Tom, did not fill her with confidence.