Seeing Things (16 page)
Authors: Patti Hill
Fletcher crushed his soda can. Did he sigh? “The Rockies suck. Besides, Dad's too busy.”
“They need a rooting section. If your dad can't go, we'll go. Invite a friend.” Mi Sun?
“I'm not driving.”
“We'll take a taxi.”
“I appreciate your asking, but their pitching stinks. It's hardly worth watching a game.”
The conversational diversion proved more turbulent than expected. Oh well, I was the grandma. Old women were expected to stir the waters. Onward. “Do you see Mi Sun outside of class?”
“Her locker's near mine.”
“How about lunch?”
“She sits with her friends outside the library.”
“Who do you sit with?”
“I read in the library.”
“You don't eat?”
“The cafeteria is brutal. The food sucks, and . . . there's no place to sit. It's better to grab something when I get home.”
That explained his mad dash for the refrigerator every afternoon. “If I fixed you breakfast, would you eat it?”
He shrugged.
Later, at the house, Fletcher taught me how to order groceries on the Internet, not so different than calling in my order to the It's-All-Here Market in Ouray, except they didn't carry grits at the newfangled grocery store. Once Fletcher showed me how to log in to the Wainwright account and enlarge the font to megasize, I excused him to do his studies.
His tennis shoes squeaked to a stop on the hardwood floors. “Are you up for a few chapters of
Huck
tonight? It'll be pretty late.”
Huck
tonight? It'll be pretty late.”
“I wouldn't miss it.”
Chapter 16
I poured out a dose of Mylanta and waited for Huck to appear. It had been several days since his last visit, and I was counting on a mild case of heartburn to invite him back. The clock announced midnight had come and gone.
“Phooey on you, Huck Finn. An old woman has no business staying up half the night to yammer at a boy.” I downed the Mylanta, aiming for the back of my throat to avoid the nauseating sweetness of the concoction. Emory would just be getting home from a night of dancing at the Moose Lodge. I called him.
“Who'd you dance with?” I asked.
“Every woman in the room. You've spoiled me rotten, Birdie. Leading some of those gals was like dancing with a sheet of plywood in the wind.” He groaned. “What are you doing up so late?”
I hadn't thought this through. If I told him I had heartburn again, he may have hopped in his car to deliver an antacid to Denver personally. On the other hand, telling him I was waiting for Huckleberry Finn to show upâwell, I couldn't do that, either.
“Thinking of you,” I said. “I know you're tired, and you have work early tomorrow, so good night. I'll talk to you soon.” And I hung up. I lay in bed, my hand over my pounding heart. Once the rhythm eased to an easy fox-trot, I adjusted the bed for sleep and said my prayers, remembering to lower everyone in my familyâincluding Emoryâthrough the roof and into Jesus' presence.
MY SNORES WOKE ME and there was Huck, pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed. Bee whimpered in her sleep and set to galloping like she was herding rabbits. I stroked her shoulder, and gradually her spasms slowed. Huck paused his pacing to watch her. I withdrew my hand, remembering his interest in Bee.
“She's all right,” I said. “She's dreaming. If I wake her, she'll know she didn't catch whatever she was chasing. I'd hate to disappoint her.”
Huck rubbed his face with the palms of his hands.
“You seem agitated, boy.”
He frowned. Something he'd eaten had dried on his chin.
“You knowâtangle headed?”
He sighed. The sound of his breath sent a shiver through my body.
“Did you bring your pipe?”
He patted his pockets but came up empty.
“I guess you like a good cigar too.”
He sat down, head in hands.
“I only know that because you enjoyed the cigars you found on the sinking steamer.” I slapped my forehead. “What am I saying? You shouldn't smoke cigars. Honey, they're real bad for you.” And not wanting him to think I was a complete ninny, I said, “I wish I'd gotten after Chuck about his smoking. All those years of sucking on cigarettes hardened his arteries. The pressure of his own blood got to be too much, and one of those arteries burst. He bled to death right in our bed. It took me a long time before I slept in that bed again.”
Huck shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “I've been peacefuler, that's for sure, and I guess you know what I'm talking about, seeing how you seen your dead husband and all. But that dratted night, if I'd a knowed . . . my heart's swimmin' with my lungs and liver and things. I hain't never been so sick at the sight of nothing.”
“What night was that, Huck?”
“Generly, I like to let things play out as they will. That's one thing worth remembering I learned from Pap: Keep your mouth shut and your head low. It warn't right that I gived that note to Miss Sophia. I should've told the old man. He'd put an end to such frivolishness, locked her up or sent her to visit an aunt. Then that awful peck of trouble never would have happened. Buck would still be alive, or at least I think he would. We was exactly the same age, only he was a spite bigger than me.” Huck slumped into the recliner. “That gives a boy something to think about.”
My heart pounded out a reverie. Fletcher and I had listened about the bloody feud between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons that night. Huck watched from a tree as the Sheperdsons killed his friend Buck.
Huck bent over, hugging his middle. “When I found Buck, his face was as white as a fish belly in the moonlight.”
“You had nothing to do with his death, Huck. The Grangerfords and Shepherdsons had been feuding forâwhat, thirty years? Buck couldn't even remember who'd taken the first shot. You can't blame yourself.”
“I hain't never experienced nothing like it.”
“Hate can make a good man crazy.” And as soon as I said it, Chuck's face came to mind. I shook the vision off.
Huck rubbed his hands together. “No one treated me better than Colonel Grangerford. I had my own
valley,
only he didn't have much to do 'cause I'd ruther do for myself. Buck was mighty good to me tooâthe closest thing, except for Tom, I reckon, I've ever had to a brother. Only Buck never made me attack a Sunday school picnic like Tom done.
valley,
only he didn't have much to do 'cause I'd ruther do for myself. Buck was mighty good to me tooâthe closest thing, except for Tom, I reckon, I've ever had to a brother. Only Buck never made me attack a Sunday school picnic like Tom done.
“I wish I ain't never come ashore that night the steamboat split the raft into flinders. I thought Jim was dead, and I'd gone and landed myself in a jug of honey, but it warn't like that, no how.” Huck squinted down. “It all came from touching them rattlesnake skins. I'm shore of it. I dream about Buck and his cousin, though I won't say nothing more. It would make a body sick.”
“I'm very sorry for your loss, Huck.”
“I put my mind to this long and hard. Them Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons, they went to church together that very day, got all combed up with their roundabouts snug, and carried their rifles fully loaded, they did. Held them betwixt their legs or leaned them against the wall so as to grab them if needed. All the while the preacher is sermonizing on brotherly love like he could holler the deviltry right out of them. I can't think of a good reason why a man would shackle himself to a woman, but nobody should have died because Sophia and Harney got married. I wonder if Miss Sophia knowed that her pap and brothers died on her wedding day?”
Huck ran his fingers through his hair, leaving deep furrows to reveal a dirty scalp. When Bee got that dirty, I took a hose to her. If I scrubbed all that dirt away and gave him a fresh haircut, Huck would still stand apart from the boys of my time. Even in his anguish, he moved looser and with more confidence. Scrambling on his own had given him that. But still, he was just a boy, and a hurting boy at that. Every century suffered under the foolishness of offense.
I tried to console him. “Huck, Miss Sophia knew marrying Haney would cause trouble. That's why they met on the sly. If you hadn't delivered the note, someone else would have. You believed Sophia was sweet and gentle as a dove. You had no cause to believe she meant mischief.”
Huck's voice went wistful. “It was the prettiest house I'd ever seen.”
“A pretty house doesn't make a family.”
He stretched. “I reckon I better skedaddle.”
“Will you come back?”
“You won't make me wear no shoes, will you?”
“I hate shoes.” I slid my foot out from under the blankets and wiggled my toes for him.
“I reckon you wouldn't.” He stood, looked down on Bee. “I ain't never had a dog before. Yourn looks like a good one.”
“She's always here. You can visit anytime.”
He sat in the recliner, let his head fall back. “If you don't mind, I think I'll rest here a minute before I move on. I'm powerful tired.”
“I'll turn off the light.”
In the dark Bee and Huck snored. I felt bad for the boy. He believed he'd landed himself in an upright family at last, one that allowed him a measure of freedom and a pleasant place to gather by the fire, a place to belong. He learned in the most painful way possible that the Grangerfords lived as if hate and breathing meant the same thing.
The pastor's question popped into my head:
To whom will you show the full extent of his love?
To whom will you show the full extent of his love?
I looked to Huck, but he was gone.
To whom will you show the full extent of his love?
“First thing tomorrow morning, Lord.”
Chapter 17
“What's going on in here?” Suzanne said, lifting the skillet from the burner and pouring the bacon and grease into the trash. I sidled to stand in front of the oven light, evidence that more bacon kept warm inside.
“Well, I was cooking breakfast,” I said, struggling to control my anger. Cooking on a broken ankle had seemed like a grand notion. Who would deny such a noble gesture?
Suzanne squirted cleaner on the cooktop. “It smells like a truck stop in here.”
The full extent of his love.
“How would you like your eggs, Suzanne?”
“How would you like your eggs, Suzanne?”
“You're kidding, right? I don't eat breakfast.” She huffed and set the cleaner on the counter. “I don't have time for this. I have rounds.” Before the door to the garage slammed, she yelled, “Get that putrid smell out of the house before I get home.”
The door opened again. “And Birdie, get that dog off the wood floors,
now.
”
now.
”
Oops. I enticed Bee through the bedroom to the back door with the bacon Suzanne had thrown in the trash. On the way back to the kitchen, I punched a silky pillow and seriously considered sliding under the coverlet.
He demonstrated the full extent of his love . . .
I met Andy at the coffeemaker. “Scrambled or fried?” I asked, waving a spatula.
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