Bent Road

Chapter 3

Evie sits next to Daddy in the cab of his truck, her stomach stuffed full from her first Kansas meal. Daniel slouches in the seat next to her, a dish of Grandma’s leftover fried chicken resting on his knees. After everyone finished eating lunch, Grandma asked them to take the food to the Buchers because Mrs. Bucher just had a new baby. Uncle Ray said the Buchers are one lucky family because their baby was born a blue baby and nearly died. Evie asked Daddy what a blue baby was, and he said the Bucher baby was pink as any other.

Cradling a loaf of sweet bread, Evie leans against Daddy so he’ll shield her from the hot dry wind blowing through the truck. “Tell me about Aunt Eve,” she says.

Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, Daddy wipes the other over his eyes and down his face. “She always wore her hair in braids when she was a girl. Same as you.” Daddy looks down at Evie. “Looked a good damn bit like you.”

Over lunch, Grandma Reesa said that in her house Evie is to be called Eve. Mama frowned and asked Daddy what he thought about that. Instead of giving Mama an answer, Daddy patted his stomach and said Grandma’s fried chicken was the best in the Midwest. Mama frowned about that, too. But Evie won’t mind being called Eve. It makes her believe that in Kansas she’ll grow like a weed and one day soon, she’ll be big enough to wear Aunt Eve’s dresses.

Evie giggles to hear Daddy curse. “She doesn’t live here anymore?”

Daddy shakes his head, stops and shakes it again. His white teeth shine against his dark skin. “No, Evie, not anymore.”

Driving through the dust kicked up by Jonathon’s truck, they near the tumbleweed-lined fence. Jonathon is towing their cow to the new house. Mama had thought Elaine should get to name the cow because she is the oldest, but Uncle Ray said he figured it was a job for the youngest in the family, so Evie picked Mama’s middle name-Olivia. This made Uncle Ray smile. He tugged on one of Evie’s braids and then winked his milky eye at Mama, patted the new cow on the rump and said that Olivia was a damn fine name. Mama frowned about that, too, but it was too late because Olivia was already Olivia.

Daddy slows at the top of the hill and the truck drifts toward the side of the road until it feels that the wheels might slip off into the ditch. Evie looks for the monster they saw the night before. Daniel leans forward, too, but he’s probably looking for the man he thinks Mama hit. In the daylight, Evie doesn’t see a monster, only a fence that Daddy says will cave in if someone doesn’t pull off those weeds soon. She doesn’t see a strange man, either. Once over the highest point, a truck driving the other direction appears. The other truck swerves toward the tumbleweed fence, slows and stops. Daddy stops, too.

A dark hand hangs out of the driver’s side window of the other truck. “Damn good to see you, Arthur.” A man wearing a round straw hat leans out his open window.

“Afternoon, Orville.” Daddy nods and lifts one finger. “Good to be back.”

The man glances in his rearview mirror. “Been a long damn time.”

Daddy nods. “These here are two of my kids,” he says, tipping his head in Evie and Daniel’s direction.

Evie leans forward and waves at the man. Daniel lifts a hand.

“Pleasure,” the man says. Mama would have said he had a strong nose. Thick creases fan out from the corners of his eyes and his skin is as dark as any Negro except he isn’t a Negro.

Daddy and the man talk for a few minutes about the long drive from Detroit, the price of wheat and when the next good rain will fall. Then with another tip of his round straw hat, the man says, “Glad you remembered this stretch of road. Can be a good bit tricky. You all take care.” And slapping the side of his truck, the man pulls away.

As Daddy eases onto road, Evie looks back toward the tumbleweed monster. In the other truck, a young girl stares out the rear window, one hand and her nose pressed to the glass. She must have been scrunched down in the seat because Evie didn’t see her before. She is about Evie’s age and has long blond hair that hangs over her shoulders. The girl lifts her hand from the glass and waves. Evie waves back and watches until the truck disappears down Bent Road, and the girl is gone.

Daniel climbs out of the truck, glances at the Buchers’ house and then at the group of boys near the barn-the Bucher brothers-and wishes he had a hat to pull on like Dad’s. So far, not one person in Kansas has blond hair except Evie and Mama.

“Go on over and say hello,” Dad says, taking the dish of chicken from Daniel. “You’ve been so worried about friends. Well, there’s a whole mess of them.”

Tugging at the tan pants Mama made him wear because he was meeting new people, Daniel walks toward five boys who are huddled together, digging a hole in the ground with their bare hands. The youngest is probably seven; the oldest, fifteen or sixteen. All are barefooted and dirty up to their ankles. One boy close to Daniel’s age sits off by himself, leaning against the barn.

“Hey,” the tallest brother says. “You one of the Scotts?”

Daniel nods. “Yeah. Daniel.”

The boys drift together and stand with their arms crossed over their chests. They all have straight dark hair that hangs over their ears and wear jeans cut off at the knee instead of tan pants with a crease ironed into each leg.

“Moving into the old Murray place?” one of them says.

A smaller boy steps forward, tossing back his head to get the hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, it’s the Murray place,” he says before Daniel can answer. “Saw them hauling off Mrs. Murray’s stuff.”

“She died in that house, you know,” another of the younger boys says. With his elbow, he nudges the brother next to him. “About six years ago. They found her dead, slumped over the radiator. Cooked up real good.”

The oldest-looking boy shoves his brother. “Shut up. She was just old.”

Daniel jams his hands in his pockets and steps into the shade so his hair won’t sparkle. Behind him, the boy leaning against the barn pulls the fuzzy seeds off a giant foxtail, holds them between two fingers and blows them away.

“Sure she was old, but that ain’t what killed her,” the same younger boy says. “It was one of them crazy guys from Clark City. You know about Clark City, right?”

“Never heard of it,” Daniel says as he digs a hole in the ground with the toe of his left shoe, wearing off the shine Mama made him buff on before they left the house.

“That’s where they lock up crazy folks,” the tallest boy says. He leans against a tree and gestures with his head off to the left. “It’s a town about twenty miles southwest of here. Happens a few times a year. One of them gets out and heads this way. Should probably lock up your house. But mostly they’re just looking for food. Mostly.”

Behind Daniel, the screened door opens and slams shut with a bang. Evie steps onto the porch.

“One just escaped,” one of the smaller boys says, nudging the same brother again. “Seen it in yesterday’s paper. Say his name is Jack Mayer. Has a taste for boys. Don’t know the difference between his wife and kid’s hind end.”

The tallest brother kicks a cloud of dust at the smaller boy. “No paper said nothing about hind ends.”

“No,” the boy says. “But it did say Jack Mayer couldn’t be found because his skin is black as night. Said he’s as good as invisible when the sun sets.”

Walking up behind Daniel and standing next to him, Evie flips her braids over her shoulders, crosses her arms and stares up at the new boys. Back near the barn, the boy sitting by himself uses both hands to push off the ground and walks toward them.

“Anyone see that fellow around here?” Daniel asks. “Any of you see him?”

“Got one,” shouts a different boy as he walks out of a shed a few yards beyond the barn. This one, who is five, maybe six years old, has a kitten cupped in his hands. He walks over to the hole that the boys were digging when Daniel first walked up.

“You got to watch this,” one of the brothers says, ignoring Daniel’s question.

The boy who was sitting near the barn has almost reached them. Up close, his head seems too large for his body, as if his neck can’t quite hold it up, and both legs bow to the right. He has the same dark hair but his is cut high off his forehead.

“Come on,” the crippled boy says. “These guys are stupid.”

The youngest boy is still fussing with the hole and the kitten, patting down the dirt like he is planting a tomato. An older brother walks toward the hole with a weed whip.

Following the boy across the drive, Daniel tucks Evie under one arm and presses her face into his side, holding tight so she can’t squirm away. The boy walks with an awkward rhythm-step, step, pause, step, step, pause-as if he has to think about each set of steps before he takes them. Reaching Dad’s truck, the crippled boy throws open the passenger side door and Daniel shoves Evie inside.

Up on the porch, Dad walks out of the house, followed by a large man who must be Mr. Bucher, although he seems too big to have a son as small and broken as this boy. The two men shake hands and Dad walks down the steps, his hat tucked under his arm.

“Thanks,” Daniel says to the boy and climbs in after Evie. “See you around?”

The boy nods and limps toward the house. “Lock your windows,” he says. “Doors, too. Just in case.”

From over near the barn, someone calls out, “Fore.”

Ray must feel it, too, Ruth thinks as they pull away from Arthur’s new house. Jonathon has taken Mother home and Arthur and his family are settled in their new house. They have full stomachs, freshly made beds, and fans are perched in every bedroom window. She worried that when Arthur came home, he would look at her like all of the others in town. She worried that he, like everyone else, had always wondered if Ruth married the man who killed her own sister. Ruth swallows, blinks away the feeling that she’s betraying Eve, thinking ill of the dead. But Arthur didn’t look at her like the rest of them. He looked at her like they were young again, before anything bad happened. Before Eve died. He looked at her like he still loved her.

Rolling down her window, Ruth inhales the smell of cut feed and freshly plowed sod. Nearing the top of the hill that separates her and Ray’s house from Arthur’s new home, the landscape even seems prettier. The gently rolling hills, the dark fields, the brome-lined ditches. Ray must see it, too. He seemed happier today. He stopped with one glass of whiskey at Mother’s. His eyes never drooped. His speech never slurred. At Arthur’s new house, just half a mile from Ruth and Ray’s home, Ray had worked hard, unpacking and piecing together the bed frames, hauling boxes in from the truck, unwrapping dishes and silverware. And as they began the short ride home, he drove with his hat pushed high on his head and one arm draped around Ruth’s shoulders. He had seemed content with Ruth, as happy as he had been in their earliest days together. Never as happy as he had been with Eve. But almost happy.

Once they are over the top of the hill, Ruth sees their house down below. As new and different as the landscape looks and the air smells, their house is the same. By the time they reach the bottom of the hill, the happiness is gone. It’s a subtle change, like a shifting shadow. Arthur is home again and he still loves Ruth, but no one else is coming with him. He is a reminder of happier times but also of all that has been lost. And Evie, too. Ruth had wondered if Ray would notice the resemblance. When Evie first walked out of Mother’s house, skipping across the gravel drive, cheeks flushed with heat, braids swinging behind, bangs brushing her forehead, Ray had blinked and cleared his throat into a closed fist as he looked down on her. Then the memory was gone, or Ruth thought it was. Now, as she and Ray sit in front of their house, the truck idling beneath them, she realizes they have not come home to the same place they have lived for twenty years. They have come home to a worse place, a lonelier place, and Ruth is more afraid of Ray than ever.