Stories of Breece D'J Pancake Read Online Free PDF Page B

ain’t that at all,” she says, and I watch her brow come down a little. “It’s like when Jim called us askin’ if we wanted some beans an’ I had to tell him to leave ’em in the truck at church. I swan how folks talk when men come ’round a widow.”
    I know Jim talks like a dumb old fart, but it isn’t like he’d rape her or anything. I don’t want to argue with her. “Well,” I say, “who owns this place?”
    “We still do. Don’t have to sign nothin’ till tomorrow.”
    She quits bobbing Jesus to look at me. She starts up: “You’ll like Akron. Law, I bet Marcy’s youngest girl’d love to meet you. She’s a regular rock hound too. ’Sides, your father always said we’d move there when you got big enough to run the farm.”
    I know she has to say it. I just keep my mouth shut. The rain comes, ringing the roof tin. I watch the high wind snap branches from the trees. Pale splinters of light shoot down behind the far hills. We are just brushed by this storm.
    Ginny’s sports car hisses east on the road, honking as it passes, but I know she will be back.
    “Just like her momma,” Mom says, “racin’ the devil for the beer joints.”
    “She never knew her momma,” I say. I set my plate on the floor. I’m glad Ginny thought to honk.
    “What if I’s to run off with some foreman from the wells?”
    “You wouldn’t do that, Mom.”
    “That’s right,” she says, and watches the cars roll by. “Shot her in Chicago. Shot hisself too.”
    I look beyond the hills and time. There is red hair clouding the pillow, blood-splattered by the slug. Another body lies rumpled and warm at the bed foot.
    “Folks said he done it cause she wouldn’t marry him. Found two weddin’ bands in his pocket. Feisty little I-taliun.”
    I see police and reporters in the tiny room. Mumbles spill into the hallway, but nobody really looks at the dead woman’s face.
    “Well,” Mom says, “at least they was still wearin’ their clothes.”
    The rain slows, and for a long time I sit watching the blue chicory swaying beside the road. I think of all the people I know who left these hills. Only Jim and Pop came back to the land, worked it.
    “Lookee at the willow-wisps.” Mom points to the hills.
    The rain trickles, and as it seeps in to cool the ground, a fog rises. The fog curls little ghosts into the branches and gullies. The sun tries to sift through this mist, but is only a tarnished brown splotch in the pinkish sky. Wherever the fog is, the light is a burnished orange.
    “Can’t recall the name Pop gave it,” I say.
    The colors shift, trade tones.
    “He had some funny names all right. Called a tomcat a ‘pussy scat.’ ”
    I think back. “Cornflakes were ‘pone-rakes,’ and a chicken was a ‘sick-un.’ ”
    We laugh.
    “Well,” she says, “he’ll always be a part of us.”
    The glommy paint on the chair arm packs under my fingernails. I think how she could foul up a free lunch.
    Ginny honks again from the main road. I stand up to go in, but I hold the screen, look for something to say.
    “I ain’t going to live in Akron,” I say.
    “An’ just where you gonna live, Mister?”
    “I don’t know.”
    She starts up with her fan again.
    “Me and Ginny’s going low-riding,” I say.
    She won’t look at me. “Get in early. Mr. Trent don’t keep no late hours for no beer drinkers.”
    The house is quiet, and I can hear her out there sniffling. But what to hell can I do about it? I hurry to wash the smell of turkle from my hands. I shake all over while the water flows down. I talked back. I’ve never talked back. I’m scared, but I stop shaking. Ginny can’t see me shaking. I just walk out to the road without ever looking back to the porch.
    I climb in the car, let Ginny kiss my cheek. She looks different. I’ve never seen these clothes, and she wears too much jewelry.
    “You look great,” she says. “Haven’t changed a bit.”
    We drive west along the Pike.
    “Where we going?”
    She