Volt: Stories (14 page)

But how could she abide? No, she seethed. That Miriam is gone. I can’t go back. Now she’d demand gratitude. Demand notice that she, too, would soon leave them. Any day, any moment. She wanted them to mourn her now, wanted to be missed before her blood stained some parking lot’s asphalt.

A fever wrenched through her, tightening her spine, the cords of her throat. She felt like screaming and would’ve had she not wanted to chance waking Evelyn. Clouds covered the moon. Blindly she bumped along, her hand trailing along the wall of crop. Then the ground sloped downward. She paused to find her footing.

Miriam heard something. A breaking in the swale.

She crouched, one hand clutching a stalk, her entire mind lit as she peered down into the darkness. Something was there. Her breathing quickened. A vein in her neck throbbed. Maybe it’s one of the dogs, Miriam told herself, trying to steady her nerves.

She softly whistled, patted her thigh.

The land lay still.

Miriam inched down the slope, squinting to see. It was there. She could see it. An obscure hump. Again she whistled, reached out.

The thing exploded in a flurry. She was struck. Miriam fell onto her back, was hit again, and she threw out her hands, the thing thrashing over her. She caught a thin arm. Ripped something cold and hard from its grip, and lashed out, the impact, like an ax breaking pond ice, reverberating through her arm.

Miriam scrambled back up the rise. She heard nothing but her own burning breaths. Nothing came after her, nothing moving down in the darkness. She recognized she held a section of pipe, and let it fall from her fist.

She flexed the elbow that’d been struck, staggered along the corridor. When she found the center, wispy clouds veiled the night, the rotunda hazed in sepia moonlight. Evelyn slept on her back, her mouth slightly open, both dogs curled beside her. Miriam found herself suddenly exhausted. Gingerly, she lay down beside her daughter and closed her eyes.

3

Dawn fanned its pale light over the field. Miriam stirred slowly, the mutt snuggled heavily against her. She turned her eyes to Evelyn, asleep beside her, and wondered what Evelyn would do once she was dead, what residue of her life she’d leave behind.

Miriam began to hum an old hymn. Today was Sunday. She’d not been to church since her mother’s funeral, but she missed it, she realized, the nice clothes, the bells and the singing, and the lull after the organ’s song when all bowed their heads and took silent accounting of themselves.

She stroked Evelyn’s cheek. The girl’s eyes batted open, squinting in the sunlight.

“Wake up, hon,” Miriam whispered, shading her daughter’s eyes. “I need to sing today. Need those lovely old songs.”

They followed the twine back through the maze. Miriam caught Evelyn glancing at her arm. Miriam said nothing, tried to let her arm swing naturally.

“Why you walking like that?” her daughter finally asked. Evelyn stopped her, raised her sleeve. “Oh, Mama,” she said, passing a finger over, but not touching, the deep bruise across the back of her arm. “That from when you fell?”

Miriam didn’t answer.

“You need a doctor?”

Miriam eased down her sleeve. “You’ll take good enough care of me, won’t you, hon?” she asked Evelyn.

Her daughter’s brow furrowed, her eyes intently studying Miriam’s face. “You’re my mama,” she said. “What else would I do?”

They took the little car Miriam bought Evelyn for school. The sun already blazed, the heat wavering over the road. Miriam tried to breathe easy as they passed the end of their corn. Half a mile from there sat the McGahee place, a squat little house, its siding pissed with rust, its yard just weedy dirt and an old truck with high slatted sides. Miriam averted her gaze, feigning nonchalance and humming a tune until they slowed coming into town.

Evelyn rolled down her window. Miriam left hers up. Carts of melons and peaches were on display in front of Freely’s, the rest of the strip closed, and they eased up the hill and pulled into the church’s lot.

Krafton Baptist was a barn-style chapel with a high white steeple. Much of the town belonged as members, and this morning the pews were full. Faces turned as Miriam and Evelyn walked the side aisle, some smiling, others standing, reaching to shake Miriam’s hand. A murmur flitted through the sanctuary, Miriam nodding at folks, her hurt arm braced against her.

They sat in the third pew from the front, in what had been their usual spot beside Doctor Peterson, a bent old man in large black-rimmed glasses. He was retired now, but had been her mother’s doctor, her grandmother’s, as well.

“Well, I’ll be,” he said, soft and hoarse.

Miriam forced a smile.

“Good to see you,” he said. “Been too long, sister.”

Evelyn sat on the other side of Miriam. Sunshine through the stained-glass cast blue jeweled light over her. Miriam wished she was as gracious as her daughter, who’d run interference all this time, keeping the world at bay, taking the phone calls, greeting the well-wishers, as Miriam lay in bed with the shades drawn.

The organ burst into song. The congregation rose, and Pastor Hamby, a huge man in a red satin robe, ambled from the back of the sanctuary and up onto the dais.

“Peace be with you,” he said, holding high his Bible.

“Peace,”
Miriam repeated, with the congregation.

Samuel Franklin stood in the front pew with the other deacons. Evelyn nudged Miriam and whispered for her to look at his neck. Charcoal smudges showed behind each ear. Evelyn giggled and Miriam whispered for her to hush.

Pastor Hamby preached from Second Thessalonians, a warning against idleness and being a burden onto others. “If a man will not work,” he boomed, “he shall not eat. To be concerned with the birth of a universe,” he said, dabbing his brow with a handkerchief, “is to divert from the birth of God, a seed taking root in the soil, a crop growing from pebbles then cutting it to a weasel’s shadow to feed the masses.”

His sermon ended with one of his poetic diatribes, charging that we not hide from God, but seek his face in the stars.

“Scientists say our universe is expanding,” he said. “And I’m fine with that. After all, would God’s universe be shrinking? So let’s think of pancake batter poured into a skillet, spreading to its edges. If our universe is spreading like batter, then what’s the skillet? I’m not a brilliant man. But I am a curious man. And I’m not afraid of questions, for all answers lead back to Him.” He pointed a finger skyward. “My faith’s in knowing the edges of our universe are the upturned palms of a benevolent God.”

Miriam imagined a palm filled with pancake batter. As the pastor said amen and the choir broke into “The Old Rugged Cross,” she could not find her voice to sing.

The deacons circulated the offering plates. When Samuel waited at the end of their row, Miriam watched his eyes. He glanced at her and scratched his neck. Before stepping to the next pew, he leaned forward, and whispered, “You two ought to grow up.”

The congregation released into the churchyard, folding tables set out for fellowship, kids playing kickball down in the willows. Everybody swarmed Miriam, saying how good it was to see her. Minny Tollefson said there was a hole in every song without her voice in the choir. Kelsy Upton invited them to a barbeque next Friday, to swim in their lake, play some bridge. Miriam drifted through them all, a bit bleary, like a curtain had been opened and she was suddenly onstage.

Walt Freely, mayor of Krafton and owner of the diner and grocery store, waved Miriam over. He sat, gray haired and frail, beside Doctor Peterson in the shade of an elm tree. His hand, shaking and spotted, took hold of Miriam’s fingers.

“Heard you cut a maze in your corn,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“How’s that?”

“Yes, sir,” Miriam said, louder.

He smiled. “I’ll bring the little ’uns out to see it.”

“No,” she said, more firmly than she intended.

He sat back a little.

She softened her tone. “It’s not for the public, Mr. Freely.”

He turned an ear to her. “How’s that?”

“It’s just for us,” she said, louder, trying to smile.

“I see.” He patted her hand. “Well, if there’s anything you need from the store, just call and we’ll bring it on out. The peaches are a wonder. Marilyn just made some pies. I want you to have one.”

She looked into his old eyes and wondered what he really thought, what he’d say once she was out of earshot. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll stop and get one.”

A heavy arm dropped around her shoulders and there stood Pastor Hamby, in the brown western suit he often wore. “Lost chickadee’s come to roost,” he said. “How’s my Birdie?”

The smiling man, sweating and his cheeks red from the sun, looked as if he’d worked a day in the fields.

“Pastor,” Miriam said, “I need to speak with you.”

They stood within the shade of a willow tree, kids shrieking, playing ball just beyond the curtain of branches. Pastor Hamby stood before Miriam, bits of sunlight dappling his shoulders as he hunched beneath the limbs. “Been worried about you,” he said. “We all have.”

Miriam couldn’t look at him square.

“Stopped by a few times. I’m sure Evelyn told you.”

The sun flashing through the ropy boughs, Miriam felt a tremor of nausea. “What you said about questions,” she blurted. She balled her fists, inhaled.

A red ball bounded beneath the branches and against Miriam’s leg. A boy, his white shirt untucked from his suit pants, burst in. The child jumped, startled, regarding them. Then he grabbed up the ball and dashed back out. Miriam eyed the spot where the boy had passed, watched the shadows of limbs sway in the dirt.

The pastor touched her elbow. “Why don’t you come tomorrow? We’ll go to the diner, have the whole morning to talk.”

Miriam’s mind whirled.

“What do you say, Birdie?”

She cradled her arm, struggling to gather her mind.

Pastor Hamby began to say something more. He tried a smirk. “We’d best get from under this tree before folks think we’re necking.” The pastor’s face fell grave. He glanced off through the branches toward the noise of the children.

Miriam nodded, releasing a long-held breath.

Miriam remained under the willow, fortifying herself. She pinched color back into her cheeks and rushed out, smiling at the kids playing ball, smiling as she passed through the tables, complimenting Janice Walters on her dress, telling Dona Jankovich her voice sounded lovely during the hymns. All along she scanned about for Evelyn, and found her talking to Samuel in the chapel’s vestibule.

Miriam smiled at Evelyn, at Samuel and Ed Macon, another deacon. She pulled a tissue from her handbag. “Your mama not teach you to wash behind your ears?” she said, and dabbed the smudges on Samuel’s neck.

Ed Macon laughed. “Take the farmer from the field, but can’t take the field from the farmer.”

Samuel pointed at Miriam. “I’m gonna get you.”

Miriam playfully swatted his finger.

“I invited Samuel for a picnic,” Evelyn said. “A peace offering.”

Miriam’s heart lurched. “Oh, no. Not today, hon.”

“Mama.” Evelyn gave her a look to say she was being rude.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Samuel. “I’m just tired is all.”

“Well, I invited him, so do what you want, but he’s coming. Isn’t that right, Samuel?”

Samuel grinned. “Can’t argue with the nurse.”

They stopped at Freely’s General. Miriam hadn’t been there in months, tried to relax while picking out a peach pie. The girl at the check-stand, in her black nails and lipstick, who’d worked there for years and whom Miriam felt she knew though she’d never spoken to her beyond the transaction at hand, stared at Miriam. Miriam suspected what she wanted. Photos of her mother had gotten out on the Internet, the truck door splattered, her mother facedown on the asphalt. Girls like her were curious about such things.

“I like your nails,” Miriam told her.

The girl didn’t blink. “You want your lottery ticket?”

“No,” Miriam told her. “Thank you, sweetie, but I don’t play that anymore.”

Samuel stood waiting on the porch. He carried the peach pie while Evelyn hauled the picnic basket, and Miriam a pitcher of tea. They followed the twine through the maze. As long as they followed the twine, Miriam figured everything would be okay. But then they turned a corner and there, far down the hall, strolled the older McGahee boy. He wore a yellow T-shirt, the longbow in his fist, the dogs at his heels.

“Boy!”
Miriam shouted.

The dogs turned, bounded happily back toward Miriam. The boy surveyed them all, then darted away.

“Come back here!”
she shrieked.

The boy didn’t halt.

Samuel called, “McGahee, you stop where you’re at.”

The boy leered back, slowed to a trot. Samuel handed Evelyn the pie. He said he’d make sure the boy left the field, took off at a jog. Miriam watched the boy near the hall’s end, staring hard into the rows, slapping his bow against the stalks he passed.

Twenty minutes later, Samuel returned to the rotunda, said he’d trailed the boy out of the corn and watched him run up Old Saints Highway, said he’d later go talk with the boy’s father. They all sat around the table. Miriam’s energy had dwindled, her mood somber.

“I used to play the lottery,” she said. “Same numbers every week. Dreamed of having so much money I could tell certain folks to go to hell.” She locked eyes with Evelyn. “Some dream, huh? I’ll bet you’ll all be glad when I’m dead and no longer a burden.”

Evelyn looked away.

Samuel’s suit jacket hung on the seat behind him, and he reached into its breast pocket and retrieved a silver flask. “Hey, nursey,” he said to Evelyn. “I give your patient some medicine?”

Evelyn answered without pause. “Give her a double.”

Miriam sipped whiskey in her tea and watched the clouds smother the sun. She stroked Wooly, her bones feeling brittle, as if her fingers would break if pressed. A horde of grackles exploded from the field, up into the gray. She watched the birds rise and drift, then dart en masse, as if yanked by invisible wires, down again into the crop.

Samuel squinted at Miriam.

“What?” she asked him.

“Nothing.”

“Say what you have to.”

He sucked his teeth. “Can still get some feed from this crop. Before the birds get it all.”

Miriam shook her head. “It’s my land.”

“It don’t put you in good standing.”

“I don’t care what the others think.”

“No,” he said. “Don’t put you right with God.”

“God?” Miriam chuckled once. “Oh lord, Samuel. I think God’s rightly proven me out of his graces.”

“Bad things happen to good people.”

“And me? You think I’m a good person?”

Samuel eyed his flask on the table. “You’ve always been kind to me.”

“But I’m going to Hell?”

“I didn’t say nothing about that.”

“But that’s what you think?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, maybe there’s not a Heaven and Hell,” she said. “Maybe this is all we’ve got.”

The wind hissed through the corn, smelling of rain.

“Shame to waste a crop,” Samuel said, shrugging on his suit jacket. “That’s all I meant.”

A drizzle became a downpour became a storm. Frantically, they gathered what they could and scampered through the maze. The tea pitcher slipped from Miriam’s grip, and Evelyn yelled to leave it. They huddled beneath Samuel’s jacket, were soaked through by the time they clambered up the hill and under the porch’s eaves.

Evelyn ran inside and returned with towels. She gave a towel to Samuel, wrapped one around her mother’s neck. “Come get a hot bath,” Evelyn said, ruffling the towel over Miriam’s hair. “Then we’ll get you into bed.”

Miriam yanked the towel from Evelyn’s hands. “I’m not a child,” she snapped. “Get Samuel some dry clothes, and bring me some, too. Samuel’s going to stay awhile,” she said, loud enough for Samuel to hear at the end of the porch. “We’ll play cards and just wait it out together.”

Samuel turned from the railing. “McGahee’s out there.”

Beyond Samuel, the rain overwhelming the gutters fell in a quavering fan, and through the blear Miriam saw the box of rust that was Seamus McGahee’s truck at the end of her drive.