really missed her show tunes in the hospital, but she no longer sings along. She told Woody and me, “As soon as I rebuild my strength, we’ll fix up the house. And I’m going to get that job at the library that I was thinking about getting before…”
She trails off like that a lot. I can hear her muffled crying through the thin walls some nights, but when I crawl in bed with her, she pretends to be asleep. So I just hold her hand and tell her,
Woody, Granny Beezy, and I went over to Slidell’s this afternoon to pick up a few odds and ends for the get- together we’re having tonight. That was kind of sad because farewells always are. Vera Ledbetter and her parrot, Sunny Boy, are preparing to fly the coop. Vera wants to go back to her old job entertaining the sailors in Norfolk. She told Woody and me over a couple of brown cows, “Thank you for wantin’ me to stay and be part of your lives, but ya know, I got my own people that I’ve been missin’. Me and Sunny’ll come back for visits. You girls take care good care of your mama, ya hear?” And then she gave us a french fry-smelling hug and some free licorice. As Woody and I were walking out the drugstore door, I heard her tell Beezy, “I tried to walk the straight and narrow, but there’s a lot less nastiness in my previous line of work. More customer appreciation and less wear on my feet, too.”
Since their cottage also burned down in “The Lilyfield Blaze,” Mr. Cole and Louise are staying with Vera until she leaves, and then they’ll take over the lease on the house. They are still our help even if they don’t live with us anymore. As a way of thanking Lou for taking such good care of her girls while she was gone, Mama told me last week when she was braiding my hair, “I’m going to help Louise start up her own business. The women in Mudtown don’t have a beauty salon of their own. I think it’s about time they do.”
I am for that whole hog because Lou really does do good braids and, of course, I will never forget how she saved us by running to the sheriff that night and telling him to go rescue me and Woody. She was mighty brave to risk that. Sometimes just one courageous act is enough for you to change your opinion about somebody, don’t you think? Out of the goodness of my heart, I did not tell Mama how Lou was carrying on with Blackie in the meadow after midnight or how hellaciously mean she was to Woody and me once she’d taken up with him. You know why? Because now I got something to hold over her if she gets it into her mind to quit acting like her former Louisiana self and reverts back to her unrelenting personality self. (Like I mentioned earlier, it is always nice to have an ace up your sleeve.)
Mr. Cole offered to build Woody and me a new fort in the backyard of the new house. I thought about that long and hard, and so did Woody. We ended up telling him, “No, thank you, but we reserve the right to change our mind.” The fort came to mean so many things to us and I think we need time to sort out the good from the bad and see which one wins.
I went up to Lilyfield and the fort tree a few days ago all by myself and kicked around the rubble to see if there was anything left I could save. I found a piece of the family picnic picture that had been taken in more carefree days in the field of lilies. All that love. Gone. And just for a second, looking down at the bit of photo, I hated Papa for making that the truth. I also found the rusty coffee can altar and Saint Jude, too. I’m going to clean that statue off and give him to Woody on our birthday next month, which is very unselfish of me because she will get so above herself on that lost-causes topic.
“Evenin’, Shen. Woody,” Sam says, coming through the garden gate. My sister is sitting on the nearby glider, working on a drawing, Ivory’s snout in her lap. I have seen Mama and Sam holding hands, stealing glances at each other when they don’t think anybody’s watching, but I’m still not sure if that’s in a friendly family way or not. I do know that she never takes off the
Woody smiles and nods at him. I look up and say, “Hey.” He looks fancier than usual and is not smelling like gas.
Sam sits down next to me and asks, “What are you writing?”
“Just putting the finishin’ touches on my diary.”
Mama takes Woody and me to Charlottesville every week to a special kind of doctor who does not stick you with needles or take your temperature. He’s got a comfortable office with beanbag chairs and he helps you talk about what’s ailing you. Not your body, but your heart and head. Dr. Ellis Wilson, Ph.D., was the one who suggested I start writing about my feelings and just about whatever else comes up in my life. I thought that was a good idea. I mean, if Woody and me are going to move to New York City someday so she can be the next Toulouse-Lautrec and I can be the next Harper Lee, I better start practicing.
I ask Sam, “You wanna hear some of what I wrote?”
“Can’t imagine anything I’d enjoy more,” he says, because that’s the kind of encouraging man he is.
I read, “‘Dear Diary, Big day today for so many different reasons. Remmy Hawkins got put in the detention center just like I thought he would. And his grandfather, Mayor Jeb Hawkins, got kicked out of office. I don’t know why, but I’ll ask Granny Beezy tomorrow, she will have heard the gossip by then. She told me this morning when Woody and I were over at her house watching E. J. mow the lawn, that she heard Muffy Mitchell tell June Harding that Miss Abigail Hawkins is dating a man who sells saddles and bridles in Farmville.’”
Sam chuckles at that, and so does Woody, the same way I did when I heard that news about horsey Miss Abigail.
“‘And…,’” I continue after I turn the page, “‘Papa, Grampa, and Uncle Blackie all left for Red Onion State Prison today.’” There never was a trial. Bobby Rudd advised them to make a deal for a lesser sentence. “‘A picture in the newspaper showed the three of them getting on the bus. His Honor looked handsome.’”
Songs of evening blackbirds and a couple of ambitious crickets, a dog barking the next street over, are the only sounds hanging in the air until Sam says thoughtfully, “This is hard on you, isn’t it, Shenny.”
I look into his familiar eyes. “Only when it comes to Papa,” I say, hoping that doesn’t hurt his feelings. Because after all, when you look at how everything unfolded, I might’ve got the ball rolling when it came to finding Mama, but Sam was the one who rescued her. With able assistance from Curry Weaver and Sheriff Nash.
Sam asks, “How about you, Woody?”
My sister has started talking more, thanks to some help from another doctor who is a friend of Dr. Wilson’s who is particularly good with willful children. His name is Dr. Ben Abernathy. He told Mama and me that Woody quit speaking in the first place because of the horrible thing she saw-someone she loved, her own grandmother, trying to murder someone else she loved, her mother. Not because, like I thought, she was grieving Mama’s disappearance. The doctor told me that was a part of it, too, though. My sister’s delicate artistic brain was not able to make sense of all the despicable goings-on, so to protect her, it made her stop talking. (That sounds weak to me, but this man has a lot of diplomas on his wall.)
Woody lifts her head up from her drawing. “What?”
Sam asks, “Do you miss your father?”
She looks down at her scarred, root-cellar knees and doesn’t miss a beat. “No.”
And it’s not only her. Nobody seems to miss His Honor as much as I do and that can make me feel like the odd man out. After Woody falls asleep some nights, Mama and I have a cup of tea out on the back porch steps. I identify the constellations for her and we talk about him. On one of those evenings, she cried into her hands and couldn’t stop for the longest time after she told me, “Yes, honey. It would be all right if you went to Slidell’s and bought a bottle of English Leather to remember him by.” I keep it under our mattress because the smell of it makes my sister sick to her stomach.
The back door opens and Mama, who is wearing the prettiest red polka-dot dress, calls, “Sam? Could you get the serving plate off the top shelf, please?” Then to us she says, “The rest of the guests are arriving. Please finish up what you’re doing and come wash up,” and goes back in.
Sam stands, brushes his hands down his pants, and says, “It’s fine for each of you to feel the way you do. The heart does not answer to the brain. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s that feelings are complicated.”
When Sam heads towards the house, I go sit next to Woody and Ivory on the glider. She is drawing a picture of E. J. A hundred tiny hearts are buzzing around his face like flies attracted to a plate of leftovers. He was by her side
