Sweet Land Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

something like pomade, and it had small dark eyes struggling to see. Around his wrist was a plastic band.
    I don’t want to hold him, I said. Take him back.
    Oh silly man, she said, smiling, cradling it in her arms. It’s not hard to hold a dear child.
    No, Karen, I mean take him back to the hospital where you stole him.
    I couldn’t do that, Lester. I couldn’t do that—this is my newborn child, this is my tiny little thing his momma loves so that I am giving to you to be your son.
    And she smiled at me that dreamland smile of hers.
    She moved her shoulders from side to side and sang to it, but the little arms sort of jerked and waved a bit and she didn’t seem to notice. There was a dried blob of blood on the front of its wrappings.
    I looked at the clock. It was just noon. Was this a reasonable day, Karen should have been at Nature’s Basket doing up her flowers.
    I went into the bedroom and put on my jeans and a fresh shirt. I wet my hair and combed it and got a beer from the kitchen.
    There were two hospitals in Crenshaw, the private one in the historic district and the county one out by the interstate. What did it matter where she took it from, either one would be just as good. Or I could drive it direct to the police station, not the smartest move in the world. Or I could just take the Durango and leave.
    Instead of any of these things, by which I would finally reform into a person who makes executive decisions, I thought to myself I would not want to shock such a woman in her dangerous blissful state of mind, and so went back and tried again, as if you could argue sense into someone who was never too steady to begin with and was now totally bereft of her remaining faculties.
    This is wrong, Karen. It is wrong to go around stealing babies.
    But this is my baby, she said, staring into its face. I mean our baby, Lester. Yours and mine. I bore it as you conceived it.
    I went over to the couch where she had sat down and I looked again at the wristband. It said “Baby Wilson.”
    My name is not Wilson and your name is not Wilson, I said.
    That is a simple clerical error. Jesu is our love child, Lester. He is the indissoluble bond God has placed upon our union. God commanded this. We can never part now—we are a family.
    And she looked at me with her pale eyes all adazzle.
    Jesu, if it was him, was crying in little yelps and its head was turning this way and that with its mouth open and its little hands were all a-tremor.
    I had known she would finally put me at risk. I tried to pay no attention when she stole things and presented them to me, because they were little things and of no use. A Mexican embroidered nightshirt, whereas I like to sleep in the altogether, or a silver money clip in the shape of an L for Lester, like I was some downtown lawyer, or an antique music box, for Christ’s sake, that plays “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean,” as if anyone would want to hear it more than once. Totally the wrong things for me, if it was me she was stealing for, whereas I was hard pressed to get a decent meal in this household.
    Karen opened her blouse and put the baby to her breast. It hadn’t changed any that I could see—of course there was no milk there.
    I sat down next to her and pointed the remote at the TV: cartoon, a rerun, puppets, a rerun, nature, a preacher, and then I found the local news station.
    Just like them, they hadn’t heard the news yet.
             
    KAREN, I SAID , I’ll be right back, and I drove into town to the Bluebird. It was lunchtime, busy as hell, and Brenda wasn’t too pleased, but seeing the look in my eyes she took a cigarette break out the back door. I told her what was what.
    She stood listening, Brenda, and shook her head.
    Lester, she said, your brains are in your balls. That is the way you are and the way you’ll always be.
    Goddamnit, Brenda, it’s not something I’ve done, you understand. Is this what I need to hear from you right now?
    She was squinting at me