Homesick Creek (28 page)

“A friend of mine killed his wife the other day,” he said. “I don’t know why, but it made me think of you.”

“Ah,” she said dryly. “Well, it’s always nice to be remembered.”

“How are you?”

“Older,” Minna said. “I assume the same is true for you?”

“Yeah. Smarter too. Not a lot smarter, but smarter.”

“That generally happens to people who listen well. Do you listen well now?”

“I’m learning. So what about you? Are you married?”

“No. There have been some people, but no.”

“Good people?”

“Most of them.”

“But no one stayed?”

“They stayed. I didn’t. It’s a skill I’ve learned,” she said. “How to leave. I do it all the time now.”

“So, that’s not good.”

“No, not very,” she agreed. “Why did your friend kill his wife?”

“So she wouldn’t find out he had given her AIDS.”

“We have some cases on the reservation already. Drug users mostly.”

“He didn’t use drugs.”

“It’s sad, isn’t it, the things we sometimes leave hanging in our closets?”

“He didn’t want her to find out. He said he wanted her to be as in love with him when she died as she’d been when they got married.”

“So he killed her?”

“He fixed up a house for her, the thing she’d always wanted most, and then he took her there and watched her die.”

“A bit twisted, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Not to him, though. To him it was perfect. For a while it looked like my wife was going to press manslaughter charges, but she let it drop at the last minute.”

“So you have a wife.”

“Yeah—Bunny.”

“Please don’t tell me that’s why you chose her.”

“What’s why?”

“Her name. You have a certain history, shall we say, with animal names.”

“Nah,” Hack said, cracking a smile. He’d forgotten what a strenuous business it was, talking with Minna. “I just call her that. It isn’t even her real name. Her real name’s Bernadette.”

“And does Bernadette know everything there is to know about you?”

“She didn’t,” Hack said. “Now she does. It took me some time to get ready.”

“Katy was the only one of us with a knack for wearing her soul inside out. No lies, no secrets. It’s why people always took to her.”

“They did, didn’t they?” It had been years since he’d talked to anyone who’d known the Katydid. He’d forgotten how good it felt.

“The two of you were so damn fierce about each other,” Minna was saying. “I used to think if one of you fell off a mountain, the other one would jump off right after just so you’d be together when you hit bottom.”

“Yeah. It didn’t work that way, though, did it?”

“No.”

“Do you think about her?”

“Quite often.”

“I dream about her all the time.” Hack gave a hollow laugh. “And she’s usually giving me shit about something.”

“That would be Katy. A girl who knew her worth.”

“Yeah.” From the kitchen Hack could hear Bunny clanking plates, setting the table. “So, listen, Bunny’s got dinner ready. But it was good talking to you.”

“Yes, it was,” Minna said.

It was only after he’d hung up that he realized he hadn’t given Minna his phone number, and she hadn’t asked him for it. It didn’t matter. When he felt like talking to her again, he’d call her. He had found her once; he could find her again. He knew that whenever it was, she would be there waiting.

Bob lay on his back in bed, watching the rain stream down the small window in his room. He slept in Doreen’s old room now. No one else was going to be using it. The kid would barely even talk to him anymore. Nita wouldn’t have put up with that kind of disrespect. Doreen had always been pretty much of a little shit, though. Not that he’d have ever said that to Anita. If he had told her, Anita would have thought it was her fault. Bob wasn’t one to lay blame or take it, but Anita was always doing it, blaming herself for things no one could have prevented—things like Doreen’s thin hair, Crystal’s steel teeth. The only thing she didn’t blame herself for was their succession of piece-of-shit houses. She blamed Bob for those. Not anymore, though. He’d shown her he could provide her with something wonderful, and he bet she was up there remembering that about him right now.

A single Christmas decoration hung from the power pole outside his window, and the rain blinked red to green to red. Anita used to decorate the whole house for Christmas. Construction paper bells, angels with tinsel hair, Advent calendars, homemade wrapping paper Doreen and Patrick made from paper bags, and stamps Anita helped them make from potato halves. She’d bake and cook and blow money they didn’t have on gifts they didn’t need until it was actually Christmas morning, and then it was over just like that. Anita was always so disappointed. The presents were nothing more than themselves: a new pair of hunting socks wrapped in green tissue paper, a new matching hairbrush and comb. You could tell it all came from the sale bins at the Ben Franklin. Some years Anita’s post-Christmas funk would last until Easter, a fresh annual reminder that dreams and reality made damn poor bedfellows.

Warren had loved Christmas too. Every year the First Church of God had collected Christmas gifts for charity, and he and Bob always got at least one present apiece. Sometimes the gifts were used things, a scuffed-up basketball, maybe, or a pair of roller skates with a wobbly wheel. Sometimes they were given new things—usually clothes in sizes the church had announced to the congregation ahead of time. You could map the economic health of Hubbard by the gifts Bob and Warren were given over the years.

He watched the rain and drank his last two beers, ones he’d stolen from the Quick Stop after even Dooley Burden had refused to lend him any more money. He hoped Patrick would be sending another check soon from over there in Germany. He was a good boy, his son, but he acted like Bob embarrassed him. He’d come home the week after Anita died, but he stayed only a couple of days and went back to Germany early. There hadn’t been much to say. Anita, not Bob, was the one who’d always found things to say.

He lay back and felt his mind get cloudy. That happened sometimes now. Then he must have dozed, and when he woke up, he thought he heard footsteps in the kitchen. Anita must be fixing something to eat. Why was everyone always trying to get him to eat all the time? Anita was probably making stew, his favorite thing. But no, she was dead. She was dead, and Warren was dead. How could he forget something like that? God, but he wished Anita could come back to visit him, or Warren. He was too drunk to be horny, but it would be enough just to see their faces and to hear them say they loved him.

Hack opened the door for Shirl just as Bunny set dinner on the table.

“Hooey,” she cried, shaking water off her plastic rain bonnet. “It’s raining like a son of a bitch out there. Coast guard’s posted storm warnings again. Winds to a hundred miles an hour on the headlands.”

Hack hung her wet jacket on a coat hook behind the door. Crystal hid behind his legs; Shirl still scared her. Nevertheless she held out her Santa Bunny for Shirl’s inspection. Shirl fell heavily to her knees for a better look.

“Well, will you look at that. Now isn’t he a fine one?”

Crystal nodded solemnly.

“You think he’s ready for Christmas yet? It won’t be long now.”

Crystal watched her, transfixed.

“Are you ready for Christmas?”

Crystal nodded emphatically.

“Well, sure you are, honey.” Shirl patted Crystal’s cheek and then held out her hand so Hack could hoist her up off the floor. “One day I’m going to get down there and never get up again,” she puffed. “I swear to God.”

“Come eat,” Bunny called. “Crystal, if you’d like to set a place for Santa Bunny, you can. Get a plate from your tea set, and we’ll put a little dinner out for him.”

Crystal fetched a china plate the size of a half dollar that Bunny had bought for her when she first came to live with them. Most of the toys Anita had gotten at the Goodwill were broken or soiled, and even though Bunny knew Anita had done her best, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to keep them. Now she spooned two peas and a shred of pot roast onto the tiny plate. “Do you think that’s enough?”

“Yes.”

Bunny spooned some pot roast and vegetables onto Crystal’s bigger plate. “Now, you need to set a good example for Santa Bunny by staying right here and eating all your dinner before you get up.” They’d had some trouble getting her to sit at the table until she finished her meals. Bunny figured she’d always been fed in front of the television, off a TV tray, eating and wandering as she pleased. They’d made progress, but it was slow, especially on days when Crystal wasn’t hungry to start with. Bunny and Hack had been talking about getting her evaluated by the children’s services people to make sure she was okay. The staff at Head Start had told them she seemed to be coming along more slowly than they’d expected with her letters and coloring. Bunny thought Crystal knew more than she was letting on, but still, Doreen had drunk a lot more than she should have when she was pregnant. Anita had always worried about that. Now Bunny was worrying about it.

Shirl hitched up her chair to the table. “This looks real good,” she told Bunny. “I always was one for pot roast. Your daddy couldn’t stand it, but I always fixed it on the night he left. You remember that?”

“Yeah.” The nights when her father went back to the boat after being home for a month or two were always celebratory, even though Shirl and the kids would never say as much out loud. They’d have pot roast, hot buttered rolls, and vanilla bean ice cream, just like a party.

Shirl smacked Hack’s forearm. “So what’s the latest? You see him today?”

“Yeah.”

“He still bad?”

Hack looked pointedly in Crystal’s direction: not in front of the child.

“I was just asking,” Shirl said huffily.

“Yeah, he’s still bad.”

“So you think he’ll get that AIDS soon too?”

“Jesus, Shirl,” Hack said.

Bunny gave Shirl a look across the table and turned to Crystal pointedly. “Honey, if you eat nine more peas, you can be excused from the table. Can you count them?”

Together they counted. Those Head Start people could say what they wanted about her letters, but Crystal knew her numbers all right.

“How about one more for good luck?” Bunny proposed. Crystal ate one more pea. “Is Santa Bunny done with his food? All right, then you can both go watch TV. You did a good job.”

Crystal hopped down and left the room with her doll tucked firmly beneath her arm, giving Hack a baleful look as she slipped past.

“You’re doing a fine job with that little girl,” Shirl said to Bunny. “I want you to know that.”

“It hasn’t been easy,” Bunny said. “I could just take her m-o-t-h-e-r and shake her sometimes.”

“Well, she’s young,” Shirl allowed. “And with that Danny and all.”

“Shhh,” said Bunny.

“She couldn’t hear that.”

“Even so,” said Bunny.

The table fell silent. After a while Shirl said, “You know, I’ve thought about it over and over, but I still would never take him for a fairy.”

“He says he got it from giving blood,” Hack said.

“And you believed that?” said Shirl.

“Well, if he is, he never told me or anyone else,” said Hack. “I’m just saying.”

“I read the papers,” said Shirl. “All those little fairies in San Francisco are getting sick just like Anita did, dropping like flies.”

“Mom—” Bunny said.

“You think you can get it from the public john?” Shirl ruminated. “I’ve worried about that. I can tell you I always lay toilet paper down first now.”

“You can’t get it from a toilet seat,” Hack said.

“How do you know?”

“I asked the nurse. She said it didn’t work that way.”

“Well, I’m not about to take any chances. Those people don’t know everything, for your information.”

“Hell, Shirl, it takes up to ten years before you even get symptoms,” Hack said.

“You saying I’m too old to worry about catching AIDS? Well, my life’s still worth something to me, mister, even if it isn’t to you,” Shirl said hotly. “Anyway, it’s easy for you men to say don’t worry. You know why? Because you don’t have to sit down, that’s why.”

Bunny shot a look at Hack, barely suppressing a smile.

“Will you listen to that wind,” he said.

Lately Bunny had begun to understand that when she’d missed Hack over the years—when he’d gone so far away from her that he only brought his sex drive home—she hadn’t missed him so much as she had hoarded the scraps of him he’d left behind in hopes he’d come back for them someday. With Anita, she’d never wanted anything more than exactly what Anita had had to give her, even including Anita’s caustic temper. Grief, in Bunny’s experience, was like quitting smoking. You reached for a cigarette you could no longer have before you were even aware that you were longing for one, and every time the dawning understanding came as another small death, another awful parting.

It had taken Bunny nearly a month to decide not to press charges against Bob for neglecting to provide Anita with adequate medical care. Hack had been the one to convince her. If you loved someone once, no matter how long ago or under what circumstances, that had to be worth something. If you couldn’t do them good, you could at least decline from doing them harm. He said he hadn’t always known that, but he knew it now.

Tonight he went to bed before Bunny. That had been happening more and more often lately, when before it had always been the other way around, and not just when she had to work the opening shift down at the Anchor either. She’d become a regular night owl, and at her age. Now she sat in her sewing room, listening to the rising wind rattling the birdhouses in the trees, thinking that if any birds actually took shelter inside them, they’d be knocked silly by morning. The birdhouses were one of Bunny’s projects with Crystal. The True-Value had had a special on unpainted pine ones, two for nine bucks. She and Crystal had painted six of them in a rainbow of colors and decorated them with hand-drawn birds (Bunny) and stick figures (Crystal). Crystal painted two kinds of people, tiny ones and huge ones. The huge figures were grown-ups, bulbous and looming. The tiny figures were Crystal, stem-thin and brittle. It didn’t take a lot to figure out who was the victim here.