Bent Road

Chapter 32

Standing on the back porch, Daniel watches Jonathon, who is squatting near the door, a pane of glass balanced on his two palms. At first, Jonathon doesn’t notice Daniel standing there. Daniel could push him down with one kick in the butt and he’d topple over and the glass would shatter all over him. It might even kill him, and he’d never find cabinets for his new house. Then there would be room for Daniel to be a man. Jonathon is a pocket clogger. That’s what Dad called the men who worked in the car factories and made sure not to work too fast or too slow. Lots of the men complained about the Negroes taking jobs. Dad only complained about the men who did just enough to keep on working. Dad said they took a job from another man, a better man, who would take pride in his work. They were the pocket cloggers. Jonathon is a pocket clogger-clogging up the spot that Daniel should have.

“Hey,” Jonathon says. Balancing the glass on his two flat palms, he begins to stand. “You going out?”

Daniel nods but doesn’t answer.

“Getting dark,” Jonathon says, glancing outside. “Want some company?”

Across the porch and beyond the screened door, the gravel drive isn’t white anymore. All the cars coming and going have ground it down to dirt again. One thing is for damn sure. This roof won’t collapse because he cleaned off every speck of snow himself.

“Na,” Daniel says to Jonathon because he most definitely does not want his company.

“Cold out there.” Jonathon slides the glass into place. “Would you look there in that toolbox?” he says, motioning toward a silver box on the floor. “You see a small can in there?”

Daniel flips open the lid with his foot. He shakes his head.

“Well, damn it all. Forgot the glaze.” Jonathon lifts the glass out again and lays it back on the cardboard box it came in. “A lot of banging around for nothing. You want to help me put this wood back up?”

Daniel shakes his head as he buttons his coat. Then he takes a hat from one of the pockets and pulls it down low on his forehead. Inside, a kitchen chair scoots across the wooden floor and someone walks through the house.

“I’m real sorry about Ian,” Jonathon says, closing the cardboard flaps over the glass and looking at the ground instead of Daniel. It seems everyone is afraid to look at him. “Real sorry that had to sneak up on you.”

“Didn’t sneak up on anybody. I knew he’d die soon enough.”

Jonathon lifts his eyes, one hand still on the pane of glass. “Well, so it wasn’t such a surprise. Still sorry, though.”

When Jonathon looks away again, Daniel wants to kick him hard, so hard that he flies through the door and lands in the kitchen at Elaine’s feet. Instead, he says, “See ya,” and starts to walk outside.

“Hey, Dan,” Jonathon says. “Listen, I’ll be taking off when I get this wood back up. But you ever need anything, just call. You know where to find me.”

Daniel nods and walks across the porch.

By the time he reaches the last stair but before he steps onto the gravel drive, a thought starts to gnaw at him. He stops on the bottom stair and lets it gnaw all the way through. When it does, he looks toward the garage and smiles because now he knows where he’ll find Dad’s shotgun.

Celia offers Ruth a third cup of coffee when she excuses herself to go lie down, but she shakes her head and pats her stomach to signal a tired baby and Mama. At this, Celia smiles, but Arthur still can’t look at Ruth. Celia nudges him for being impolite even though she knows it’s not bad manners; it’s fear. Mary Robison showed them all the truth about the very worst that a man can do to his own daughter. She made them all think, believe even, that Ray might do the same to little Elisabeth. She made them believe it so strongly that it still seems Ray is the one who hurt Julianne. It still feels like he is the one who wrapped that poor child in feed bags and dropped her in a hole.

“Rest well, Ruth,” Celia says. “Things will be better tomorrow.”

Daniel waits in the garage until Jonathon and Elaine leave, and then, thinking someone will put out the porch lights, he waits even longer. No one ever does, so taking a deep breath, he slips behind the oil drum, pushes aside an old woolen blanket and lifts the shotgun. He cracks it open and sees the brass end of two shells. Loaded. It’s heavier than he remembered, and the barrel is cold, even through his leather gloves. He slaps his palm against the wooden stock, getting a good feel, a good God damned feel, and then props it on his shoulder, barrel pointing up like Dad taught him. After looking through two loose slats in the door and seeing no one on the porch, he slips outside and runs across the hard gravel drive, through the gate that used to hold Olivia before Jonathon shot her dead. High stepping it through the snow, he runs toward the spot where the prairie dogs once lived.

Evie crawls into her closet but scurries out when someone walks across the living room floor, footsteps rattling the floorboards all the way in Evie’s room. Through her terry-cloth robe, the floor is hard and cold on her legs. She sits back, pulling her knees to her chest, and listens. The footsteps pass by and Elaine’s door opens. Aunt Ruth has moved into Elaine’s room where she and the baby will live after the baby is born, so long as the baby isn’t blue and dies in the oven. She switched rooms because Evie doesn’t like her anymore. Aunt Ruth said it was because Elaine needed so much help with the wedding. Evie told her it didn’t matter one bit and to go ahead and change rooms. After Aunt Ruth closes her door, Evie falls onto her hands and knees, pushes through the hems of Mama’s skirts and dresses, the ones she only wears in the spring, and drags out a wadded-up blanket.

Waiting and listening and hearing nothing more, Evie slowly untangles the blanket and pulls out the Virgin Mary. She holds her up, looking first into her ivory face and her tiny blue eyes and then at the seams where her wrists meet her hands. She thinks she’d like to talk to the Virgin Mary, but someone might hear. So instead, cradling the statue like a baby, she hops back onto her bed, scoots until she can see out the window, and together they watch the red truck, driving down the road from the other direction, drift over toward the ditch and stop.

Soon it will be all the way dark. Setting the statue on the bed next to her, Evie stands and presses her nose to the cold glass. Out on the road, beyond the bare trees where the red truck is parked, the driver’s side door opens and a man steps out. He stands still, his hands on his hips, and looks up at the house for a good long minute. He wavers, like the tall wheat stalks on a windy day. He must be cold, even with his jacket. The brim of his hat rides high on his forehead. Tugging it down, Uncle Ray reaches inside the truck and pulls out a long, thin gun.