Playing With Matches (24 page)

He puts an arm around me and gives me a squeeze. “I’m glad you came back. So I could say thank you. Now you need to go see Finn.”

“Finn! He’s still here?” And my gaze automatically shifts to the river, to the great oak trees.

He points across the field. “Past the poplars, where the creek runs through. He’s got a place in a clearing.”

“He became a recluse—”

“I take groceries sometimes, or a new pair of boots.”

“Whatever happened to his daddy? Is he still here at the Farm?”

“Ask Finn.”

“I will. In fact, I’m going now.”

“I didn’t mean this minute—”

“I’ll follow the creek, Wheezer. I’ll be fine.”

“Shit,” he says, and thrusts the umbrella at me. “Take the right fork into the woods! You couldn’t miss it in good daylight, but—”

“I’ll be fine. Tell the kids I’ll be home directly.”

I’m amazed to be walking away from the prison. Apparently, it isn’t my time yet.

And I need a few minutes of solitude. I intended to come to Call while I walked, but the woods are dripping and messy, the road muddy, and night is coming on.

I wonder what it would have been like if Finn and I had stayed friends. If we’d ended up together, say.

35

I
’d always thought love was a waste of time, but there it was. It hurts to remember. I was, literally and figuratively, right off the boat.

I did not fall on my knees in the presence of Professor Thomas Ryder, but his shyness and his intelligence thrilled me—the way he looked at me over his glasses, as if, finally, he’d found something worth looking at. He taught biology at a private university in Dandridge. I was in my twenties, he in his late thirties. I think that’s why I liked him—he’d lived long enough to know who he was. With a funny little grin, he told me his students razzed him because he and I walked the campus hand in hand. Said he felt like a kid.

And he looked like one—that gray hair tumbled and falling over his forehead, his shirt untucked in back. More often than not, he wore mismatched socks. He was long and lean, and even after showering and splashing on aftershave, Thomas still smelled of formaldehyde and other science-lab things.

Sometimes he wore bedroom slippers to class, and at home he could never find his books or his papers or his pen. He misplaced the mail, his coffee cup, his bookmark, and, sometimes in
the park, his old dog Ruff. When Ruff died, we took a shovel and buried him on a quiet piece of shoreline. Thomas was more bereft than any man I’d ever known. Just like me, he had unlit corners. How could I possibly not care for him?

Thomas had these funny eyebrows too—not long or particularly thick, but they seemed to run every which way and were so tangled that when he combed his hair, he combed them too.

The only family that was left to care about him was a pair of elderly aunts in nursing homes in Florida. Most nights, he came to the door of the efficiency apartment where I lived, and together we went out and walked along the beach. When it rained, we stayed in. Conversation usually ended up in the bedroom.

Thomas’s hands were large and square, his fingers blunt. They found corners of me I didn’t know existed, and whether he was on top of or under me, he lifted and thrilled me. Then we lay on our backs, exhausted and caught up in the damp sheets. Thomas slept while I lay, wondering how in the world we had found each other.

Saturday nights, we sat in the broken-down chairs of coffee shops while we drank Arabica roast and discussed the world’s problems and how we would solve them. We dissected books and movies and the six-o’clock news. We rearranged the country’s politics. Thomas was a good man with a quick mind.

He made love beautifully, with strong, slow hands and his hair falling over his forehead.

“I was wondering, Clea,” he said one night when we were drinking coffee, “if you would just
consider
marrying me.”

I watched customers pick up their coffees in cardboard containers and juggle apricot cake in waxed-paper squares. “Thomas—”

“You’re the one woman I want to spend my life with,” he said. “Think about it, will you? At least—don’t say no.”

But being with Thomas was like some grand rehearsal—I kept waiting for the show to start.

“I have to,” I said.

There was a hopeful hitch to his untidy brows, and he leaned forward and laced his fingers on the table. “Have to what—”

“Say no,” I said.

But then I learned something about myself.

Sister Margaret Redemptor had sent me to teach in a backwater community where the district needed someone to work with remedial reading students. The kids sat on the floor in what I had learned to call Indian-style. Now they called it crisscross applesauce.

However far behind they had fallen, these kids’ ears were screwed on, waiting for words that would come out of my mouth. I’d brought along a copy of Dr. Seuss’s
Horton Hears a Who
. I settled in to tell the story and was amazed at the rise and ring of my own voice.

Then I got down on the floor and showed them page one, and the printing of words and how, together, they made a sentence. They went to their tables and fisted their pencils. I distributed paper, and on the sad green chalkboard I drew a capital
A
.

“Look!” I said. “Both sides of this letter seem to be falling in!”

Their mouths came open.

I asked, “What do you think is holding them up?”

And so it went, unorthodox and lovely.

Thomas said those same things about me. I doubted the lovely part, but I allowed the rest. I liked his company, his funny habits, and the adoring look in his eyes.

On Tuesdays, he sometimes drove me to Fong’s, where the sisters met, and ate kung pao chicken and read a magazine until it was time to go home. Then we’d curl up on the sofa and fool around, end up in his bed.

Thomas had a small patch of gray hair on his chest, and while I twined my fingers in it, I laid my ear to his ribs. I loved to hear his strong heart beat.

He had fallen in love with me, and I couldn’t get over that.

He asked me again to marry him, and I said yes.

36

I
wonder what made Finn move so far back in the woods. But, then, he’d lived in a tree. Maybe he never grew fit for society. I realize, now, I haven’t eaten all day. And, Lord, I wish I had a flashlight. A million years ago this creek was just a dent in the land, but now it’s racketing and foamy. On the back side of the Farm’s big house, tree branches and debris crash into the False River, then churn south into the Pearl and on to the blue-water Gulf of Mexico. Payback for what nasty weather it’s shoving our way.

I am soaked to the skin from the wet scrub, and before long I see what must be Finn’s place. If it is, he grows a few straggly vegetables, keeps a goat tied in the yard, and owns a snapping hellhound of a dog. A few pieces of old farm equipment lay in the yard like fossils, shiny with rain.

It’s the woods that disturb me, the trees and vines leaving only the smallest clearing. I wonder if Finn uses a hatchet—and how often—to cut the kudzu back, trim the brush. The place looks bleak, like someday the undergrowth might just take it over, take it back, and Finn along with it.

The ribby white dog plants its feet and bares its teeth, growls rising from its belly, coming up through its throat.

“Good dog,” I murmur, and stand stiller than still. But I’ve folded the umbrella and hold its point at the ready. “Good boy, good dog.”

The hair stands up on the back of its neck. The goat watches me from the end of its rope.

“Finn?” I call out, risking a bite, rabies shots, bleeding to death in this back of beyond. “Finn, are you here?”

The dog steps off to the side, but the barking is incessant and loud enough to be heard in False River, and he
snap snaps
with his teeth.

Who was it, Auntie or Shookie—someone told me Finn lived in a shack. Whoever said it was right. The house is faced with beige stucco that’s chipping away in chunks—sills, sashes, and door frame rotting, and the whole thing no bigger than one small room. By the door a barrel is half full of rainwater, and there’s another in the side yard for burning trash. I step up to the door and knock, then knock again, then try turning the knob. Hammer with my fist and call out, “It’s Clea Ryder. Clea
Shine. Finn?
”

There’s a small window in front and one in the back, and both are covered inside with yellowed newspaper, tears mended with tape, some of which doesn’t stick anymore. I cup my hands to the glass but must stay watchful of the dog, and anyway, it’s impossible to see inside.

The dog flinches and turns on its tail, snapping at fleas. I wonder if I made a mistake in direction, trying to clear the mind-clutter while I walked. Maybe I didn’t follow the creek far enough, or I have come the wrong way after all. One thing’s sure—this little house is locked up tight, and if it weren’t for the animals—
which someone must surely be feeding—I’d have thought no one lived here.

I take the same trail back.

The prison yard lights are on now, illuminating the asphalt road. From here I can make out the shape of Auntie’s tall house, where a car has just pulled into the drive. I see a man getting out, a shape in the dark—not a neighbor or the sheriff but one I know well.

He steps onto Auntie’s front porch, which no one ever uses. The door opens, a slant of yellow lighting up the red salvia that’s planted there, in tins. He disappears inside. Thomas Ryder.

37

I
’d like to think this is a bad dream, Thomas being here. I knew he would find us—asshole—but I wasn’t ready. I might never have been. I could have stayed here and played house with my children until I was hauled away, and never seen him again. In my mind I am angry, but I ache over what has happened behind us and what must come next.

On the prison road, I stand in the mist as long as I can. There are puddles on the asphalt and puddles in my heart. Wind sings through my head but clears nothing away.

I am the woman who shared private thoughts with inmates today. Then:

Sometime Clarice here—

—Trustee slip her in
.

I am the woman whose two children are right now preparing to eat supper in the house on Potato Shed Road. And with them is Thomas. God, I hope he’s hugging them, holding them to his heart so they know their father loves them. Yet—he doesn’t deserve them. He’s a liar and a cheat, and no one invited him.

What if he’s come to make trouble, wants to fight me, take them back to the coast? But he won’t. For a long time, Thomas
has been off somewhere in his head, hasn’t known any of us existed.

I climb the back porch steps, ease the screen door open. For the first time the house feels cold inside.

Luz is forking up long strands of saucy spaghetti and has her hair tied in one of Bitsy’s do-rags. She looks up from her plate. “Mom. Dad’s here! I made the sauce—and the meatballs and—”

“Terrific,” I say. I’ve never been able to get Luz near the kitchen.

It’s Uncle Cunny who’s taking Thomas’s wet coat, pulling up a chair for him. Right now Thomas looks cold and wet, and so hunched over, he reminds me of Horse.

I stand in the kitchen and have no substance.

Auntie looks at me. “Sit yourself down, child, unless you want dry clothes first. We’re eating early tonight, in case the edge of the storm pushes in. Oftentimes, the electrics go out.”

I sit. Auntie’s eyes shift from me to Thomas and back again.

Shookie sighs loudly.

Confusion crashes, but Auntie irons it away. She asks for Thomas’s plate, and it’s passed around. So there’ve been introductions. No one else is acting like this is unusual. They cannot see the weight crushing me. But Thomas feels it; I see it in his eyes.

“We’ll talk after supper,” I say smoothly. “Luzie, this looks really good.”

“You have to put Parmesan cheese on it,” she says, handing me the shaker.

Shookie’s forking in some pasta, but she’s in a bad mood, says her knees are killing her, thinks she needs to see a pediatric over Slidell way.

Until this moment, I’ve been mostly numb, but now I am angry. Uncle forks salad onto my plate and catches my eyes with
his dark ones. Even he cannot save me. “How’d class go today, Clea?” he asks.

“It was
gloria
, thank you for asking, Uncle Cunny.”
In excels is Deo
, in fact—if it weren’t for Thomas.

“Well, watch out, ’em boys’ll shine you on,” Shookie says, addressing me with the tines of her fork. “They gonna tell you what you want to hear. You think they gonna write you fine stories, that it? Won’t tell you shit that’s real—where they come from, not about they mamas nor they papas, or how they raised them up.”

It’s a long speech. Uncle says, “Shookie?”

But she’s wagging that burgundy head and rubbing her knees under the table. “Only the good Lord seen what they done to get theirselfs locked up. White girl, you never gonna hear the whole of it,” she says.

White girl
. There it is, poured out of her mouth.

I think,
After all these years
.

No one eats.

“You got ev’thing,” she says. “They got nothin’—come there afraid, and getting the livin’ hell beat out of ’em. Teeth knocked out, fingers busted. Get back from sick bay, they stuff’s all tossed, they lawyer’s gone, and now they don’t know ear from asshole.”

Luz’s mouth is almost as round as her glasses.

Bitsy says, “Mama—”

Wheezer sets down his water glass and lays a hand on Shookie’s back. But she’s not done by a mile.

“They got to choose up sides, doncha know, old guys figuring who takes the new one, gonna charge him to breathe, bend him over a barrel, tha’s what.”

I shiver and glance at Luz and Harry. I’d thought that same thing.

“Tell you right now,” Shookie says. “What pain they brought
with ’em ain’t nothin’, compared to what they goin’ through. No matter what big or little thing they done, they got to sound hard, with their talk about killin’ and rapin’. Time passes, they turn mean, that’s what.”