She thought maybe she had a cold, or flu, but she didn’t feel bad all the time. Just in the mornings. Queasy. Like her insides were being boiled in hell’s kitchen. Then she would explode, get rid of it. Usually after lying down for five or ten minutes, she was good as new. It had been that way for several days now, and her appetite had at first been dull, then suddenly ravenous. She found herself craving fried and peppered pig skins, which she hadn’t had since she was a child. That and mustard. She hadn’t found any pig skins, but last night she’d made herself a mustard sandwich, thick with the stuff, on two slices of bread, and when she finished it, she ate another, and even now, after vomiting, the smell of mustard in the puke, she was craving it again.
She held her head in her hands until it quit trying to spin around, was about to get up, go back in the house, when Marilyn came out on the porch and sat down beside her.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I threw up.”
“I heard that.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Oh, girl, I been up for hours. I was in the kitchen. Maybe you should take some tonic.”
“I’m all right now.”
“Something you ate?”
“Probably… I don’t know… Grandma… Can you get pregnant… doing it the first time. I thought the first time didn’t take.”
“Oh, God. You didn’t?”
Karen turned to look at Marilyn, her face looking as if someone had sucked all the juice out with a straw.
“I did.”
“Hillbilly?”
Karen nodded. “How’d you know?”
“Figured immaculate conception was out. You been sick mornings, besides this one?”
“Couple, three days now. Mama didn’t even notice.”
“She’s got a few things on her mind these days. I don’t suppose you told her?”
Karen shook her head.
“I’m such a tramp.”
“No. No. You’re just a girl. He’s a grown man. He knew how to play you. Some men, they don’t care about anything but the feeling they get.”
“I liked it too.”
“Well, least you got that out of it, and you don’t always get that.”
“I love him so much.”
“You’re in love with love, baby, not him. He’s a man thinks he’s a play-boy. I knew soon as I saw him. And I think that’s good of me. I don’t know I pick men so good, and even if Pete was my son and your father, I don’t know Sunset picked so good either, or is picking good now.”
“What am I gonna do? I can’t tell Mama.”
“You have to tell her.”
“Then what?”
“Have the baby, or get Aunt Cary to take care of it.”
“Take care of it?”
“Get rid of it before it’s born.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Then you’ll have it. And you’ll raise it.”
“Won’t nothing ever be the same again.”
“No. But you can live with change. Me and your mama can live through what we’re living through, you can live through what’s gonna happen to you. And we can help you.”
“I did a bad thing.”
“I’ve done a bad thing or two in my time, honey. Some things I don’t even talk about. Sometimes, you get like a fever, and it just happens. All kinds of things can happen, and then you got to live with regrets. Some are easier to live with than others.”
“I can tell you things I can’t tell Mama.”
“That’s what grandmas are for. Hell, girl. You ain’t done so bad. Just followed the path all us animals want to follow. At your age, girl goes into heat, it don’t take a lot of persuading. Unlike a dog, we people stay in heat, and it’s at its hottest when we’re young. Get some pretty fella like Hillbilly saying the right things, it’s easy to do something you ought not. Ain’t a thing wrong with loving, girl, it’s who you love and what they want from you that matters.”
“He said I was pretty.”
“He didn’t lie. You got your father’s coloring, your mother’s bones. Did he tell you he’d marry you?”
“No. I thought about all that, and he didn’t ever make me any kind of promise. Just told me good things about myself, and he touched me, and when he did, I felt like I had to have him.”
“Like you wanted to be burned up by him.”
“That’s right. How’d you know?”
Marilyn laughed. “I haven’t always been this old. I ain’t been that hot in a time, but I know what it feels like. You keep a memory for it.”
“Grandma, I feel like I been put in a sack and shook up and throwed out.”
Marilyn took Karen in her arms and held her. “Relax now. We’ll figure this out.”
“You gonna tell Mama? She likes him, you know. I heard Willie say she kissed him.”
“I know she likes him. I don’t like that she does. And yeah, you got to tell her.”
“I don’t know how.”
“I’ll help you.”
That morning Sunset drove over to see Hillbilly in his camp, but the little hut he had built of limbs and leaves and old shirts wasn’t there anymore, and neither was he. It was as if he had been plucked up and toted off by the wind. She got out and looked around and found where he had dragged the little hut apart and thrown the pieces of it up into the woods. There was a kind of savage finality to the way it looked.
She drove home.
Back at the tent, Clyde and Ben were out front. Clyde had made coffee and was sitting in one of the chairs by the water pump, drinking a cup. Ben was sitting beside him, Clyde’s arm around his neck. When she drove up, Clyde went inside and came out with a cup of the same for her. They sat in the chairs and she sipped the coffee.
After a while, Clyde said, “Hillbilly coming in to work?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wasn’t at his spot, was he?”
“No.”
“Could have just moved it, found a better place.”
“You don’t think that, do you?”
“Nope.”
“You hope he’s gone on, don’t you?”
“Yep. And nope.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I hope he’s gone. But I don’t want him to lie to you and make you sad.”
Without looking at him, Sunset put her hand on his arm.
Clyde swallowed. He made himself relax so he could feel the warmth and weight of her hand through his shirt sleeve. He took a deep breath. She was wearing a bit of perfume, just enough to sweeten the air around her.
