Cross Justice Read Online Free PDF Page B

him. “I’ll make sure.”
    My uncle chewed on that a bit before saying, “All aboard now, Hattie.”
    “All aboard now, Cliff,” she said, setting the guitar aside. “Lunch serving in the dining car. You hungry, Cliff?”
    “My shift over?” he asked, surprised.
    My aunt glanced at me, said, “You have a break coming to you, dear. I’ll get you a plate, bring it to you in the dining car. Connie? Can you take him?”
    “Where’s Pinkie?” Cliff said as Connie Lou bustled over to him.
    “You know he’s down in Florida,” she said. “C’mon, now. And use your walker. Train’s an awful place to fall.”
    “Humph,” Cliff said, getting to his feet. “I worked this train twenty-five years and I ain’t fallen yet.”
    “Just the same,” Aunt Connie said and followed him as he shuffled back down the hallway.
    “I’m sorry about that,” Aunt Hattie said to everyone.
    “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Nana Mama said.
    Aunt Hattie wrung her hands and nodded emotionally, and then turned and went off to the kitchen. I stood there feeling guilty that I’d not come back and seen my uncle in better times.
    “Alex, you go get some food so Ali and I can have seconds,” Bree said.
    “Leave some for me,” Jannie said.
    I followed Aunt Hattie into her kitchen. She was standing at the sink with her hand over her mouth, looking like she was fighting not to break down.
    But then she saw me and put on a brave smile. “Help yourself, Alex.”
    I picked up a plate on the kitchen table and began to load it with fried rabbit, potato salad, a green-bean-and-mushroom dish, and thick slices of homemade bread, the source of one of those delicious odors I’d smelled.
    “How long since you knew?” I asked.
    “That Cliff was suffering from dementia?” Hattie asked. “Five years since the diagnosis, but more like nine since he started forgetting things.”
    “You his sole caregiver?”
    “Connie Lou helps,” she said. “And Stefan, this last year or so he’s been home.”
    “How’re you getting by?”
    “Cliff’s railway pension and the Social Security.”
    “Enough?”
    “We make do.”
    “Hard on you, though.”
    “Very,” she said, and pushed back at her hair. “And now all this with Stefan …” Hattie stopped, threw up her hands, and choked out, “He’s my miracle baby. How could my miracle baby …”
    I remembered Nana Mama telling me that the doctors said Hattie and Cliff would never have children, and then, in her thirties, she’d suddenly gotten pregnant with Stefan.
    I put my plate down and was about to go over to console her when Ali ran in, said, “Dad! I swear to God, there’s like a gazillion lightning bugs outside!”

CHAPTER 8
     
    WHEN I STEPPED out onto the front porch, it was long past dark, and through the screen I could see fireflies everywhere, thousands of them, like I hadn’t seen since I was a boy. I flashed on images of Uncle Clifford teaching me and my brothers how to catch them with glass jars, remembered how amazed I’d been to see just how much light two or three of them could generate.
    As if reading my mind, Aunt Hattie said, “You want me to get him a jar, Alex?”
    “That would be fine.”
    “Got a big Skippy jar in the recycling,” she said, and she turned to fetch it.
    We all went outside into Aunt Hattie’s yard and watched the fireflies dance and blink like so many distant stars. I felt warm seeing Ali learn how to catch them, grounded by something I’d thought I’d lost all those years ago.
    Bree hooked her arm through mine, said, “What are you smiling about?”
    “Good memories,” I said, and I gestured at the fireflies. “They were always here in the summer. It’s … I don’t know.”
    “Comforting?” Nana Mama asked.
    “More like eternal,” I said.
    Before my wife could respond, the shouting began down the street.
    “You fuck with us, that’s what you’ll get!”
    I turned to a searing image that locked me up tight.
    Well down