Bent Road

Chapter 31

Celia stands at her kitchen sink, her back to the conversation going on at the table, and dries the last dish from an early supper. Outside the window, as dusk falls, the light bouncing off the snow is gray. On the back porch, Jonathon is prying the wood from the window that Ray broke so he can lay in the new glass. Elaine is in her room, waiting for him to finish. Celia startles each time his hammer slams down. If only he would stop, for a moment at least, she could catch her breath. A piece of wood falls and clatters across the porch. Celia leans against the sink, and Arthur talks on, over the noise.

He called Floyd Bigler from Mary Robison’s living room, relit her heater, and while they waited for the sheriff, Mary told Arthur that she had visited the house to tidy up for Julianne who lay dead there since summer. Mary had shined the windows with vinegar-water and swept the corners. Before the weather turned, she laid a new white quilt over Julianne because the house carried a terrible chill. It didn’t seem right to bury the girl. That’s what Orville did at first. He wrapped her in feed sacks and buried her on Norbert Brewster’s land. But Julianne was too lovely, too tender, and when she was dead, first dead, still too beautiful to be buried. So Mary dug her up, carried her inside the old house, and tucked her in tight. When the sheriff arrived, she retold the same story.

“Yes,” Mary Robison said. “Orville killed her.” She nodded toward the garage behind the house. “Done the same to himself.”

Arthur and Floyd found Orville Robison on the garage floor, frozen solid, a hole blown out of the back of his head. Mary told Arthur and the sheriff that she thought to clean up after her husband, but then decided it wasn’t her business to tidy up another one of his messes. She didn’t know for sure how he killed Julianne, only that he said it was an accident, same as snagging a fish instead of catching it proper with bait and a hook. Didn’t much matter how it got done-there’s a fish on the end of the line either way.

“Some men don’t know the difference between a daughter and a wife,” she said. “Don’t let Ruth go back to that husband of hers. Don’t let him have that sweet tiny baby like Orville had mine.”

Arthur turns away from Ruth and chokes as he repeats Mary Robison’s words.

“Don’t let Ray have that sweet tiny baby like Orville had mine.” Celia slips behind Arthur’s chair and kneels next to Ruth. “You’re safe here. You and Elisabeth are safe.” Holding Ruth’s narrow shoulders, she raises her eyes to Arthur. “Is she not well? Has the sheriff taken her for help?”

“She didn’t seem altogether aware. That’s the only way I can put it. Not at all aware.”

“That poor family,” Ruth says. “That poor little girl.”

Celia presses her palm to Ruth’s cheek. “You should rest. This can’t be good for you.”

Celia says this because she has to. If she is to be a good person, she has to say it, and if she weren’t so scared, she’d mean it. She reaches to touch Ruth’s hand, but stops when Daniel’s bedroom door opens. She doesn’t want him hearing any of this conversation, doesn’t even want him close to it. It’s not fitting for a child to hear, but when he walks out of his room, he has become a man. Just like that. He is a man.

“You hungry?” Celia asks.

“Na,” Daniel says. His voice, like Arthur’s, is a low croak. When did his voice change? She thought she would hear it coming in cracks and squeaks along the way. His neck is thicker, too, and triangular muscles fix it to his shoulders, which are suddenly wide. Even his hands, they’re larger. Just like that, when she was wasn’t looking, he became a man.

“You should eat,” Celia says, but he shakes his head and walks across the kitchen toward the back porch where Jonathon is still pounding. As she watches him walk away, tears well in the corners of her eyes.

He is gone.

“I won’t have the children hearing any of this.” Celia spits the words at Arthur as if it’s his fault this has happened, his fault that the town will bury Julianne Robison and Ian in the same week and that Daniel grew up when her back was turned. Another funeral before Julianne’s grave is even settled. Another small coffin, too small. Another child grown. What if it were one of her children instead of Julianne or Ian? How does a father kill his own child? How does a mother turn her back and find a man has taken over where once she had a boy?

She says it again. “None of it. Not a word.”

Because Arthur is a good man, he nods and lowers his head, gladly taking the fault. Now the tears spill onto Celia’s cheeks. She lays aside her dish towel and goes to him. He is stiff at first, not letting her feel him, but then his body warms, his muscles soften, and his shoulders fall. He leans into her for this moment.

Before he walks onto the back porch where Jonathon is pulling the last board off the broken window, Daniel stops in front of the gun cabinet. He takes his winter coat from the hook and sees the small gold lock hanging in place, snapped tight. Glancing back to make sure no one can see him from the kitchen and waiting until he hears Jonathon working at the back door, he stretches up and reaches for the key on top of the cabinet. He’s never been tall enough before but Mama says he’s growing like a weed. Dad says like a stinkweed. Lifting onto his toes, he reaches over the ledge. He stumbles, reaches again, his side starting to ache. He feels it.

Checking again and waiting until he hears Jonathon fumbling in his tool chest, he slips the key into the lock, turns it, thinking the click will echo through the house. No one hears. The lock falls open. But then he considers Jonathon working there on the back porch. There is no other way out. He won’t let Daniel walk by with a rifle in hand. He’ll tell him to put the damn fool thing away and then he’ll tell Dad and Dad will hide the key somewhere higher. So Daniel snaps the lock closed and reaches overhead to replace the key. He stumbles again, not very steady in his leather boots because they cramp his toes. Bracing himself against the wall, he tries again and, as he slides the key back over the ledge, he knocks several coats off the crowded hooks. Pausing to make sure no one heard, he bends down to pick them up. Jonathon’s, Dad’s, Elaine’s, another of Dad’s. Then he stands and, as he begins to hang them up again, he sees the empty spot where Dad’s shotgun usually rests.

Evie sits on the edge of her bed where she can see out her bedroom window. It is nearly dark, but through all the trees that have dropped their leaves, she can still see the road. A truck drives over the top of the hill. So many cars since everyone started to die. And phone calls. First Olivia the cow died. Evie doesn’t like her anymore. She brought death to them and now it has settled in for a good long stay. She’s probably not even all the way dead yet because of the cold. It will keep her for a while, that’s what Ian said before he was dead. But not Julianne. She died all alone, all the way dead, in a little bed in a strange house, and now she’s buried, still all alone. How did they dig it up, the frozen ground? Will the same two Negro men dig Ian’s grave? They are small graves. Not so much digging. What if Aunt Ruth’s baby comes too early and it’s blue and it doesn’t wake up in the oven? That will be a very small grave, but Aunt Ruth’s will be regular sized, almost regular.

The truck is still driving down the hill toward their house. Daddy says there’s black ice. It’s the most dangerous. The truck knows it, too. It drives slowly, and at the bottom of the hill, it stops, white smoke spilling out of its tail end. Then the truck, the red truck, drives slowly past.