He said, “After what I done to him, I know he wouldn’t let me come back anyways.”
“Then you figure out where else you want to go.”
“This is the first time I ever been away from home,” he said. “First time. I can’t hardly even sleep nights.”
“I guess you better get used to it.”
He laughed. “Don’t think I will.” He looked at her. His face was a mess of grief, so she gave him the handkerchief.
“You have folks?”
“My pa. That’s all. So.” He shrugged and gazed out at the field again, calm for no reason except that he was done crying. “You ever talk to a killer before?”
“One. That I know of. She really did kill somebody, too. No doubt about it.”
“Why’d she do it?”
“He’d have killed her. That’s as much as I know. She got the jump on him, so they said she murdered him. I keep the knife she used right there on the old man’s kitchen table.”
“Why?”
“She was a friend of mine. About the only one I had. She give it to me.”
“The preacher know about that knife?”
“I told him.”
He nodded. “So you never turned against her after what she done.”
“I did regret it.”
He was quiet for a while, and then he said, “I tell you what happened. My pa was drunk, and he was yelling at me about nothing, some little thing I done, so I said I was going to run off and leave him. He followed me out to the road, and he was saying ‘Git!’ and throwing sticks and rocks at me, the way you’d chase off a dog. I come back to the house later and he was laying there asleep, and I took a piece of firewood, about yay big.” He made a circle with his hands. “It just come over me.”
“I can see how it might.”
He looked at her. “So now I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Well,” she said, “you stay here tonight, and then tomorrow I bring you some clothes, and you get yourself a ticket somewhere. And you better start telling yourself you don’t know if you killed him, ’cause you don’t. No point making it worse than it has to be. And you sure better stop talking to strangers about it.”
He shook his head, and he said, very softly, calmly, “I think I’ll just go back there. Tell ’em what I done.” He said, “I’d like to take that money, if you’re sure you don’t mind. Some of it, anyways. At least I’d have something to give him. If he’s still alive. I’d have that.” Then he said, “They hang that friend of yours?”
“No. They might’ve been thinking about it, but she got away.”
“You know, I’m kind of hoping they hang me. Then I’d just be done with it.”
She said, “You shouldn’t be talking that way. You ain’t half grown. That’s no way for you to talk.” She put her hand on his shoulder.
He smiled up at her. “I figure, if my own pa got no use for me—” Then he said, “I’m growed. This is all there’s going to be. Nothing much.”
“I don’t know about that. You look like you been working. I bet you been doing your share.”
He shrugged. “I guess I tried.” He smiled at her kindness, and looked at his hands again. “You know, I just wish I’d stayed there with him. Maybe I could’ve helped him somehow. I don’t even know why I bothered running off. Didn’t have no place to go. I knew that right along. I was always thinking about leaving, all them years. Never did. Sure wisht I had now. Scared to, I guess.”
The wind was coming up, bringing cold with it. That would happen for good one day soon. The cold would set in, and there it would be for months and months. The boy crouched over his folded arms. The coat he was wearing was no use at all, and his poor, filthy ankles were bare.
She said, “How long you been here?”
“I come here, to this place, a couple days ago.”
“Well, it ain’t sposed to be this warm. It might change any time. It could snow tomorrow.”
He nodded. “I feel it at night.”
She said, “That’s probably why you ain’t sleeping.”
“It’s a fair part of it.”
“Well then, I think you best come to my old man’s house. Just for the night. He’ll find some clothes for you and get you some breakfast. He’s got a couple spare rooms.”
He shook his head. “He ain’t going to want me in his house. You know that.”
“He does whatever I ask him. Hasn’t said no to me yet anyway.”
“What you ever ask him for?”
“You’re right. Nothing much.” She laughed. “I did ask him to marry me.”
“’Cause you got that baby?”
“Nope. I wasn’t even thinking about no baby. At the time.”
“Well,” he said, and he glanced up, hoping he wouldn’t have to offend her, “I guess I just rather stay here.”
That’s how it is, she thought. Keep to yourself. So long as you can do that, you’re all right. Then somebody finds you in a corner somewhere, and you ain’t even there to hear them say, What a pity. And that
