Late One Night

3

Earlier that evening she’d scooped the hot ashes from the Franklin stove into a cardboard box. She was burning wood in the stove because the wall furnace had been cutting out. She couldn’t have that, not with the baby, Junior, sick with the croup.

Her parents dropped by around suppertime, carrying in hot dogs and buns and bags of potato chips, and after they ate, her father, Wayne, gave the furnace a check. Slowed by age, he still did a few home repairs and small jobs here and there, but nothing to count for anything. Wayne Best used to be able to go longer than the day itself, folks said, but now he had tremors in his fingers and sometimes dizzy spells that knocked him flat. He was a lean man who kept his white hair cut in a flattop. He had a white moustache that his wife, Lois, kept neatly trimmed.

“Your pilot light’s out,” he told Della.

He relit it, the match flame wavering in his unsteady hand, and after a while he said everything seemed to be working fine.

“Maybe you should gather up the kids and come spend the night at our place,” Lois said. “Just to be on the safe side. Weather on the radio said we might get down to ten below.”

“Daddy’s got the furnace running.” Della was too tired to think about all it would take to get the kids bundled up, and pajamas and things gathered, and then over to her parents’ house. “I’ll keep the Franklin stove burning just in case.”

Wayne helped Lois on with her coat. She was a heavy woman with a knee that needed to be replaced. A round-faced woman with deep lines around her eyes and on her forehead from her tendency to worry things to death. She took Wayne’s arm and they started for the door.

“Better pull your car into the garage.” Wayne opened the door and the cold air came rushing in around Della’s legs. “Save your battery.”

The garage sat at the end of the short lane that ran alongside the trailer. Since Ronnie had left her back in the fall, she’d never had a thought of putting her car in the garage, which had always been for the Firebird he’d restored. It was easier now for her to leave her Ford in the lane.

“I will, Daddy,” she said. “Be careful on those steps. They’re icy.”

The wind was up now, out of the north, sweeping across the flat land. Lois and Wayne leaned into that wind. Wayne opened the passenger-side door and helped Lois up. He tucked the hem of her long coat into the truck and then closed the door. He turned back to the trailer and gave Della a wave. She waved back. Then she stood there in the cold as Wayne got behind the wheel, backed out onto the blacktop, and set out for home.

After they were gone, Della asked Angel to carry the box of hot ashes out to the compost pile when she went to feed the goats the girls kept for their 4-H project. Five Nubian goats — two nannies with long floppy ears, two kids stubbing around on their short legs, and the billy with his horns curved back over his head.

“It’s Hannah’s turn to feed,” Angel said. She was fourteen and strongheaded, a girl with light blue eyes that went icy when she cut them at someone who’d rubbed her the wrong way. Her blond hair fell across her forehead, and she swept it back with a jerk of her arm.

“I just went out for more wood,” said Hannah. How rare it was for her to put up a fuss. She was twelve, the dependable one, the obedient one — a Sunday’s child, bonnie and blithe and good and gay. Her hair was in a neatly wrapped braid.

“Mom?” said Angel. Della just stared at her until finally Angel said, “Whatever.”

But then American Idol came on TV, and the girls settled in. Even Della watched. She liked the reality shows like Idol and Dancing with the Stars. Everyone always looked so glamorous, and for at least a while, she could ignore the mess of her own life.

The twins, Emma and Emily, were six, just old enough to be excited when their older sisters were. Sarah, the forgetful one, was nine, and Gracie, a pistol and a scold, was three. Junior was just barely a year. Della’s family. Hunkered down in their trailer on a cold winter night.

After the show was over, the phone rang, and it was Lois calling to see whether Della had put her car in the garage. “Your daddy wants to know.”

“Tell him I’ve taken care of it,” Della said, and then, after she was off the phone, she put on a coat and went out to make good on her word.

What little was left of the evening whirled by in a tangle of voices, the music of her children rising and then gradually falling as they got ready for bed, slipped between the covers, and drifted off to sleep.

Della was so tired. She was flat worn out. So tired that when she took one last trip through the living room, switching off lights, and saw the cardboard box of ashes still by the Franklin stove, she couldn’t bring herself to wake up Angel and tell her to finish her chore. Nor did Della feel like getting her coat back on to haul the ashes out to the compost. She opened up the back door and set the box outside on the wooden stoop. The wind was still up, and she shivered as she closed the door.

Just then, the phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID, so she let it ring and ring. She was too worn out to talk to someone anyway. What a day it had been — all the houses she’d cleaned, and a run-in with Ronnie to boot.

She put another log in the Franklin stove.

“Who was on the phone?” Angel called to her as she passed by in the hallway.

“Wrong number.”

She went into her bedroom, where she checked on the baby and then lay down and quickly fell asleep, not giving that call a second thought.

In town, Ronnie hung up the payphone at the Casey’s convenience store and got in his Firebird. He had a five-gallon can of gasoline on the seat beside him, and he knew the way out the blacktop, knew it by heart.