Late One Night

15

So that’s how the girls came to be with Missy and Pat, and that’s where they were the next afternoon, a Saturday, when Ronnie got out of the hospital, his mind fairly made up that he was going to press charges against Wayne.

“The man attacked me,” he said to Brandi. Pat Wade had called last night to tell her what had happened between Wayne and Ronnie, and she’d been at the hospital ever since. “He clubbed me right there in front of my girls. I’ve been thinking on it, and I’m not sure I can let him get away with that.” Ronnie zipped up his jacket. “Where are they anyway? Who’s got them? Wayne and Lois?”

Brandi shook her head. “Wayne’s taken sick. It’s Missy and Pat who’s seeing to the girls.”

“I like Pat okay. He’s always been square with me. Missy, on the other hand — well, I know she wants to hold my feet to the fire—”

His voice trailed off, the word “fire” hanging in the air.

“Sugar,” Brandi said, “what did you mean last night when Pat first told you the trailer had burned? You said it was a good thing that Della and the kids were spending the night with her folks. Why did you think that?”

Ronnie stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. He looked down at his feet. Finally, he raised his head and looked at Brandi. “I was out there yesterday afternoon after I got served those papers, and she said if the furnace acted up, she’d take the kids to her folks for the night.”

“But why did you think she’d had to do that?”

“I called out there last night when I was driving around. I stopped at Casey’s and used the payphone. No one answered, so I thought—”

His voice got shaky then, and he stopped trying to talk. He bit at his lip.

“Oh,” Brandi said. “I didn’t know you’d done that.”

“I just wanted to make sure they were all right.”

“It’s okay. It doesn’t make me mad. There’s been a world of hurt. Maybe it’s time now to just let things be.”

Ronnie turned away from her and stared out the window. From the third floor, he could look out over the parking lot to State Street and the Wabash Savings and Loan where Brandi worked. The time and temperature sign in front of the Savings and Loan said it was fourteen degrees, a fact that he found hard to fathom since from where he stood, the afternoon sun bright and warm on his face, it was easy to imagine the cold gone forever. It was one of those January days that broke clear after a stretch of gray skies, and if not for the puffs of exhaust from the cars and trucks moving along State Street, and the trees with their bare branches, and a woman getting out of her car in the parking lot, her hands held over her ears, he’d be able to pretend it was summer. He’d be able to picture himself in the porch swing at Brandi’s house—their house — his hand on her stomach, waiting for the baby to kick. His baby. That life coming. He’d have that blessing. But the truth was — and he knew this that day in the hospital — every step thereafter would be weighted down with the fact of the fire.

“I don’t know.” He turned back to Brandi. “I want to do what’s right. People probably wouldn’t believe it to hear me say that, but it’s true. People like Missy. People like Lois and Wayne. They’ve got their minds made up about me.”

“Sugar, you’ve got to think about what you want on down the road.” She went to him and slipped her arms around his waist. “Maybe now’s not the time to make waves.”

The two of them hadn’t talked about that, hadn’t said a word about how the life they’d been planning would now jostle up against the hard facts of the fire. All fall and winter, Ronnie had been busy imagining his new life with Brandi and the baby. Not that he thought he’d make a clean break from Della and the kids — not that he even wanted to. Maybe he’d have the kids a few at a time. An afternoon here, a weekend there, maybe even a week during the summer or at the holidays, before they went back to their trailer along the blacktop.

But things were different now. Della was gone, and the girls who’d survived the fire were waiting to see where they’d land.

Ronnie said, “They’re my girls.” He studied Brandi’s face, tried to figure out how what he was about to say would affect her. Then, all of a sudden, he knew, and with the knowing came a great peace. She was looking at him, and he could tell that he could say what was in his heart and she’d accept it without question. “I want them to come live with us.”

Brandi nodded. “All right, then.” She kissed his cheek. “You ready?”

“I’m ready,” he said.

She took his hand. “Let’s go home, and let’s not come back here until it’s time for the baby to be born. Deal?”

“Deal,” he said, and he knew, then, he wouldn’t file charges against Wayne. He’d keep things nice and easy. He’d go get his girls, and Brandi would be right there beside him, no matter what people thought about that. They were a couple, and those girls were his children, and together he and Brandi would give them a good home. That’s the story he told himself as the two of them stepped out of the hospital into the cold, into a sun so bright it hurt his eyes, and he had to squint so he could see where he was going.

The visitation would be on Tuesday evening. In the days since the fire, folks from Goldengate had driven out the blacktop to get a look at the trailer. Car after car. Rubberneckers, Shooter Rowe called them, when a reporter from the television station up in Terre Haute came on Saturday and started asking questions. “Goddamn rubberneckers,” Shooter said. “Busybodies who can’t keep their eyes on their own business.” The charred mess was nothing anyone would recognize as ever having been a home. Just a pile of smoldering debris, soggy from the pumper’s dousing, only the hunks of the furnace and the hot water heater still standing to make any sign at all that a woman and her seven kids had lain down on their beds there the night before and gone to sleep. “Put that in your story,” Shooter told the reporter. “People no better than turkey buzzards feeding off the dead. They’ve got no business out here.”

They kept coming, people who’d known Della and her kids and people who hadn’t. They came to lay flowers, teddy bears, and cards at what was left of the front step of the trailer. Someone tied four helium-filled balloons — red, yellow, blue, and green — to a low branch of the cedar tree at the corner of the goat shed. The heat from the fire had scorched the needles from the cedar and the branches were bare, the bark blistered and peeling in places. People came to bring the flowers and teddy bears and cards and balloons because they wanted to do something. A fire truck was still there, a hose run through the field to the pond where they’d had to chop through the ice to get water once the tanker ran dry. The Red Cross workers who’d been there most of the night had gone, leaving behind a litter of crushed coffee cups on the frozen ground.

Shooter knew that some people came because they’d been acquainted with Della and her kids from church, or school activities, or 4-H. He knew they came because they didn’t know what else to do. He tried to make allowances for the ones like Laverne Ott. He saw her car pulled off the side of the blacktop in front of what was left of the trailer, and he let her sit there a good long while, left her to her grief until finally he started to worry. He came outside and crossed the blacktop. He tapped on her window and she pushed the button to power it down. Her glasses were crooked on her face.

“Oh, Carl,” she said, using his given name. “My god.”

“I know, Laverne,” he said. “It just tears my heart.”

“What it must have been like here last night.”

He could have told her about the blaze and the sounds — the roar of the flames, the breaking of glass, the crackling of the vinyl and plastic, the popping of aerosol cans exploding. He could have told her about the cries he heard from the children and how there came a time when they stopped, and how that was the worst sound of all: the absence of anything human. He wouldn’t tell her how the volunteer firefighters found Della holding the baby, with Gracie and Emily huddled up close to her. He wouldn’t say that there’d been so little of them left that the coroner’s deputies brought them all out in the same body bag. He’d spare Laverne Ott all that.

“It’s nothing I want to talk about,” he said. “Not ever.”

He wouldn’t tell her that around nine o’clock the night of the fire, Captain got all worked up over Della’s goats, worried that the patch job Shooter had done on the pen wouldn’t hold.

“It’s not our job to see to those goats,” Shooter told him, but Captain wouldn’t leave it alone. If they didn’t look out for Della, who would?

“We’ve got ourselves to look out for,” Shooter had said, and he meant it. There he was alone with Captain to see to, and wasn’t that enough without having to see to another man’s wife and kids? Was it any wonder that Shooter got his back up each time those goats got out? A man should keep himself to his duty — if he’s any kind of man at all.

“It’s Ronnie’s job,” Shooter told Captain. “It’s his place, but he’s not man enough to know it. Don’t you ever be like him, Wesley. I swear. He’s not worth a damn.”

That was the worst thing he could have said — and Shooter knew that as soon as the words were out of the mouth.

“Don’t you talk about Ronnie like that.” Captain balled his hands up into fists. “I mean it. Don’t.”

Shooter latched onto his arm. “Someday you’ll know what I’m saying is true. It’s just too much for you to understand now.”

Captain broke free. “I’m not stupid.”

“I’m not saying you are.”

“You think I’m a retard.” Captain turned and stomped into his room. He slammed the door, and Shooter heard the lock click, and then Captain’s voice, more distant from the other side of the locked door. “You think I don’t listen.”

Shooter tried to tell him that wasn’t true. He told him, as he always did, that he was a special gift from God. A boy with a good heart. “But damn it, Wesley. Sometimes you’ve got to know that goodness only carries you so far in the world. There are people — and Ronnie is one of them — who don’t mind stomping on someone just to get what he wants. You need to know there are people like him.”

Captain wouldn’t say a word, and finally Shooter gave up. He brooded awhile in his reclining chair. Then he turned on the television and tried to get interested in an old John Wayne movie. After a time he dozed off and when he woke up it was ten o’clock and the movie was over.

He got to stewing then, recalling how Della had spoken so sharply to him that afternoon. Who did she think she was? The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. He’d been trying to do nothing but a good turn for her ever since Ronnie left, and then for her to snap at him like that. By god, he didn’t regret for a second what he’d told Missy. He would like Della and her mob much better if only they lived somewhere else.

He wouldn’t tell Laverne Ott any of that because now, in the light of day, that trailer collapsed and charred, it seemed like too shameful a thing to say.

“They need us now, Carl,” Laverne said to him from her car. “Those girls and, yes, Ronnie too. All of us. It’s going to take all of us.”

He wanted to tell her he’d patched that goat pen. He’d done what he could. He wanted to tell her Captain’s heart was full of love for Della and those girls. He wanted everyone to know that, to know there might not be any explaining when it came to why Captain did the things he did, but always he was a boy full of love. He didn’t want anyone to forget that. He wanted to say all this, but it was too late. Laverne was gone, and there were other cars coming down the blacktop, slowing to a stop — gawkers — and he went back into his house where they couldn’t see him or have the chance to ask him any questions.

Very few people — not even Shooter — knew everything that was happening in the days between the fire and the visitation for Della and Gracie and Emily and Junior. Sure, word had gotten around that Wayne Best had used that tire iron on Ronnie and put him in the hospital, and people knew that the girls were staying with Pat and Missy, at least until that mess between Ronnie and Wayne could be sorted out. Readers of The Goldengate Weekly Press learned that Angel, Hannah, Sarah, and Emma needed clothes and school supplies and toiletry items. Folks wrote down the correct sizes of shirts and pants and shoes and went shopping at the Walmart in Phillipsport. They picked up packs of pencils and pens. They bought crayons and notebooks, tubes of toothpaste and toothbrushes, deodorants and shampoos. Some folks tossed in little extras like bubblegum or candy. They picked out baby dolls for Sarah and Emma, music CDs for Angel and Hannah, the sorts of things that normal kids their age would like because it was important for them to remember what it was to be a kid, particularly now that the fire threatened to rush them away from their childhoods.

The Bethlehem Christian Church accepted the donations, and in town the Goldengate First National Bank did the same. Missy started a fund at the bank to help with the girls’ care, and people donated what cash they could manage. They didn’t know that Missy had opened the fund on the condition that she be the account holder and the only one to make decisions about it. She didn’t want to take the chance that Ronnie might get his hands on the money. She couldn’t bear the thought of him and Brandi taking it and doing only God would know what.

Decisions like that got made behind doors closed to most of the folks of Goldengate and Phillips County. There was so much they didn’t know and wouldn’t find out until the visitation and the funeral and the days that would come.

They didn’t know that Ronnie, once he was out of the hospital, drove out to Pat and Missy’s, and Missy met him in the driveway holding her cardigan sweater closed by wrapping her arms across her chest.

“I won’t have you upsetting them,” she said.

“Missy, those are my girls, and I’ve come to take them.”

Brandi was sitting behind the wheel of her Mustang, staring straight ahead, as if she weren’t there at all.

“I guess she’s agreed to that.” Missy nodded her head toward Brandi. “Your girlfriend? She ready to be a mama four times over just like that?”

“She’s got a good heart, Missy. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s the truth.”

Missy stepped up close to him and kept her voice low. “Ronnie, there’s no need to stir anything up right now. I’ve got your girls settled in here. The visitation’s on Tuesday, and there’s still this matter of what you’re going to do about Wayne. Let things settle down, Ronnie. For those girls’ sake, let them have some stability now.”

“Their place is with me. I can take care of them.”

“Can you, Ronnie?” Missy let a silence settle between them. The engine in Brandi’s Mustang ticked as it cooled. A crow cawed as it circled overhead. Up the road at Shooter Rowe’s, the engine of an ATV revved. “I mean,” Missy finally said, “it’s not like they’ve been used to having you around. They were making do without you for a good long while.”

She knew as she said it that it was a mean thing to say. She could see the pain of it in Ronnie’s pinched face, his downcast eyes, but she wasn’t sorry. She’d told the truth, and where was the harm in that? She felt that already the fire had changed her, was giving her the chance to know her own heart in ways she’d never known it.

“I’d like to see them, Missy.” Ronnie wouldn’t look at her, and she knew what it was costing him to keep his temper reined in, to have to ask her for the favor of seeing his own daughters. “Is it all right if I just say hello?”

At that moment, Brandi put down the passenger-side window on her car and said, “Ronnie, what’s the holdup? I’m getting cold.”

“Guess you’ll have to make it a quick hello.” Missy nodded her head toward the house to let Ronnie know he should follow her. “Wouldn’t want your girlfriend to get frostbite.”

Ronnie hesitated, waiting for Missy to say it would be all right for Brandi to come inside with him. When it became clear that no such invitation was coming, he looked back at Brandi and gave her a shrug of his shoulders. Then he turned and went up the driveway with Missy.

Hannah met him at the door. She threw her arms around his neck, and the feel of her slight body was enough to bring him close to tears. She was so slender — all arms and legs — barely any weight to her at all.

“Daddy,” she said in a whisper.

“Baby,” he said.

Missy let them have that moment, and Ronnie was grateful. He held onto Hannah, as she clung to him with such a fierce grip his neck began to hurt, but he wouldn’t for the life of him tell her to let go.

Few people would ever hear about this moment when he was so thankful for Hannah, and for Angel, even though he knew she still hated him, and for Sarah and Emma, who both watched shyly from the archway that led to the kitchen, keeping their distance as if they somehow knew that this moment between Hannah and their father was something special and held themselves back so it could last a little longer.

Finally, he eased Hannah away from him, and he saw Sarah and Emma. Sarah had a sucker in her mouth. Emma was holding onto a blond-haired doll wearing a bright blue and red plaid dress.

“Girls,” he said to them, “is Missy taking good care of you?”

At first there was only silence, as if the girls were trying to figure out the right answer. Finally, Sarah said, “Yeppers,” which was the silly way she had of saying yes, and for just an instant Emma giggled.

Ronnie didn’t know what to do with that sound of joy rising up from so much sadness. He could tell Missy didn’t know what to do with it either. He heard her intake of breath. Her eyes opened wide. He felt just as startled. He let the moment rest there, afraid to say anything, afraid to make a move, knowing that soon the moment would vanish — light as smoke — and they would come back to the facts of the matter. He would tell Hannah and Sarah and Emma that he’d see them in a few days. He’d say to tell Angel that he loved her.

“I love you all,” he said. Then he nodded to Missy to let her know that he’d back off for now. He wouldn’t rush things. He’d let her have her way, at least for the time. Then he went back outside and told Brandi he’d see her back in town.

He glanced at his Firebird, which he supposed Pat had had to move so he could get his truck out that morning.

“I’ll get my car,” Ronnie said. “Maybe I’ll make a stop at Lois and Wayne’s.”

“You letting Missy keep the girls?”

“For now,” he said. “Just for now.”

Wayne wouldn’t let Ronnie come inside. He stepped onto the porch of the box house set back a lane off County Road 550, and he said to Ronnie, “I guess I didn’t kill you.”

“I hear you’ve been sickly.”

“Got the head spins from time to time.”

Ronnie nodded. “I’m not going to press charges. That’s what I came to say.”

Wayne nodded. Then he said, “Lois and I have to be somewhere in a few minutes, so I don’t have time to talk. At some point, though, we’re going to have to come to a decision about the girls.”

“What’s there to talk about? They’re mine to see to.”

“Can you make a home for them, Ronnie? Can you make sure they get enough to eat, clothes to wear?”

“I get work here and there, just about like you, I expect.” Ronnie narrowed his eyes. “And there’s Brandi. She makes decent money at the Savings and Loan. I’ll ask Pat for steady work once things pick up in the spring.”

“I don’t want to hear that woman’s name. I mean it, Ronnie. Not ever. And I don’t want to see her at the visitation or the funeral. You understand?”

“Is it the funeral home?” Ronnie said. It came to him with a force that made him feel weak in his legs that Wayne and Lois and maybe even Missy would make decisions about the funeral without asking his help. “Is that where you’re going in town?”

“I don’t have to report to you, Ronnie. It’s not your concern.”

So not even Ronnie knew until the night of the visitation that there would be only one casket. That was the first thing that everyone noticed when they walked into the Phillipsport High School gymnasium, that single casket, closed, at the far end near the free throw line. Missy and Lois and Wayne had decided the gym would be the best place to accommodate all the people who were sure to come, and now the rows of folding chairs on the floor were filling up, and people were scooting closer together to make room on the bleachers rising on both sides. All these people coming out on a cold night to pay their respects. People from all over Phillips County. Many of them hadn’t known Della or Ronnie or any of their families, but they felt that they should be in attendance because there were those poor girls — the four of them standing near the casket with Wayne and Lois Best — and it was going to take a passel of folks to shepherd them now.

Some people, though they wouldn’t admit it, were there because they’d heard the stories about Ronnie and Brandi, and they couldn’t squelch their curiosity. Would she be there? Would they arrive together? The story of Wayne taking that tire iron to Ronnie had made the rounds, and as people chatted in low tones that night in the gymnasium, more than one person admitted that they had an inclination to do the same. A man like Ronnie Black. Of course, he’d be there for the sake of his children, but, mercy, it’s a wonder he can even show his face.

He’d been there all along. He’d come before Wayne and Lois, before Missy and his girls, before Laverne Ott and Shooter Rowe and Captain, and all the people who’d followed, filling the gym with their footsteps, the scents of their perfumes and aftershaves, the smell of the cold outside that they carried in on their clothes. He’d come alone, and the only person there was Dean Henry, the funeral director.

“I guess Wayne and Lois made all the arrangements,” Ronnie said.

Dean was a short man who was all-over bald. He’d just finished arranging the casket spray of yellow lilies, white carnations, and red roses. He stepped back a moment and took in the casket and the standing floral sprays on their tripods and the baskets and vases sitting on the floor. The air was sweet with rose attar, the perfume of lilies, the spicy scent of snapdragons, and the aroma of gladioli.

“That’s right.” Dean took off his metal-rimmed glasses, and Ronnie noticed the creases the stems had pressed into skin above his ears. “And Missy Wade. She made sure the casket was taken care of.”

“Out of her pocket?”

“I really can’t say.”

Ronnie knew there was a fund at the First National to help with the girls. He’d read about it in the Weekly Press, but no one had said anything to him about it. No one had told him how to access the money because, so he assumed, no one thought he was capable of managing it. No one trusted him to make the right decisions. He’d lost three of his babies, and up to this point no one had given him a chance to do anything a father would have done.

“One casket,” he said to Dean.

Dean put his glasses back on. “No need for others,” he said in his gentle funeral director’s voice. He patted Ronnie on the shoulder as he turned to give him a moment alone at the casket. “You take your time.”

Ronnie stood there trying to recall what it was like when Della meant the world to him. He couldn’t say that he’d stopped loving her, only that he’d reached a point where it was easier to be away from her than it was to be with her, disappointing her too much of the time. Then there’d been Brandi, and one thing had led to another until he was in too deep and there was no getting back to the man he’d been and the life he’d had. A life that was achingly real to him now and yet beyond his reach.

He recalled the smallest things. The way he taught Emily to swallow air and make herself burp; the months when Gracie had an imaginary dog she called Pitty-Pat Popsicle Pooch; the way they’d all sing “Walking on Sunshine”—even Della — and Junior would bob his head and pound his sippy cup on his highchair tray like a drummer caught in the rapture.

Just things like that. Just the stuff of being a family.

Finally, he slipped out through a rear door that opened onto the alley. It was dark, and snow had started to fall. A few feet up the alley two men leaned against the wall of the school, one of them smoking a cigarette, the cherry bright when he puffed. Ronnie noted something familiar in the set of his narrow shoulders and the way he stood with his chin thrust out in front of him. He knew it was Milt Timlin, the fire chief from Goldengate.

“Something odd about that fire,” Milt said. “I was out there all night and most of the next morning. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but something doesn’t set right with me.”

And the other one said, “It went up in a hurry. I can tell you that. Missy said, ‘Della’s trailer’s on fire,’ and by the time I got there—”

Ronnie knew then that the other man was Pat Wade.

“And Shooter Rowe was already there?”

“Him and his boy.”

“No one else?”

“Just them.”

For a while neither man said anything, and Ronnie could hear the sound of traffic on the street that ran along the school. He could hear car doors slamming shut and the hushed tones of people talking as they made their way inside.

Then Pat said, “You don’t think someone set it?”

“I guess the State Fire Marshal will determine that,” Milt said, “but I can tell you that blaze sure burned hot in a certain place.”

That’s when Ronnie coughed so the men would spy him there and stop their talking. “Pat, is that you?” he called down the alley.

“It’s me,” Pat said. “Sure is snowing, isn’t it?”

Ronnie took a few steps and then stopped when he realized the snow was coming up over his loafers and the cuffs of his dress pants.

“You think I set that fire?” he asked.

Milt said something to Pat in a low voice, and then Ronnie thought he heard Pat say his name.

Then Pat’s voice came louder. “Ah, Ronnie, we were just talking. We didn’t say anything like that. Why in the world would anyone think you’d—”

Ronnie stopped him before he could say more. “I used to think you were head and shoulders above the rest of us, Pat.” His voice was louder and it echoed down the alley in the snowy night. He said, “I really did. I used to think you were a good man.”

He turned to go back into the gymnasium. He could barely catch his breath. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to know he’d been at the trailer that night. That was his secret, and his alone, and would be as long as he could keep it.

At the end of the alley he turned back to Pat. “I won’t let you keep my girls.” He was shouting now, and he didn’t care who heard him. “You can count on that. Understand? You better tell Missy. You tell her exactly what I said.”