Fireflies in December (21 page)

“If there’s somethin’ wrong, I want to know. I been sus-pectin’ you ain’t been tellin’ me all. Well, now’s the time. I want to know.”

Tears started to spring to my eyes, and it made me cringe to feel the way I did. I hated feeling the isolation of being a victim.

“What is it?” Gemma asked anxiously. “Tell me.”

“I think Walt’s gonna hurt me,” I blurted out, all the fear of the past days rushing back full force. “He looks at me like no grown man should look at me.”

“He threaten you?”

“As much as he could without actually sayin’ so.”

“Why didn’t you tell your daddy?”

“Daddy’s got enough trouble. . . .”

“He would want to know.”

“No! I don’t want Daddy knowin’. I don’t want no one knowin’. You promised me. It’s between you and me.”

Gemma didn’t understand me. I could see that on her face. When it came right down to it, I didn’t understand me either. But things were what they were, and I didn’t have any experience in handling such things. We barely said two words to each other on the way back to the house.

“Your daddy and momma would feel badder’n I don’t know what if you ended up dead,” Gemma said as we snapped beans for supper that night.

“Hush your mouth,” I whispered. “Luke’s comin’.”

“Looks like your momma’s beans are on the menu,” Luke said happily as he ambled up the walkway. “And I could smell her honey ham all the way from Miss Cleta’s house.”

“I know,” I replied. “Been makin’ me hungry for the last hour.”

He mounted the porch steps in one stride and straddled an old straw chair. “Give me a bowl, Jessie, and I’ll help you out.”

“There’s other more important ways you could help her out,” Gemma muttered.

I grabbed Gemma’s bowl away from her, making her drop a bean onto the floor, where Duke quickly retrieved it. “Gemma’s gotta go help Momma in the kitchen,” I said with a glare at her, knowing full well that she’d hint enough to have Luke guessing at my troubles if I let her stay out with us. “You can use her bowl.”

She sighed and let the door slam extra hard on her way in.

“She seems right sober,” Luke commented to me when Gemma had gone.

“She gets that way when she’s hungry,” I lied.

Luke didn’t believe me, I could see, but he was used to me and Gemma arguing about things. He likely figured he’d be better off not knowing what our spat was about.

We had an end-of-summer storm that night in late August, and since there wasn’t much nearby lightning from it, Momma excused me from dishes so I could enjoy it on the porch. Gemma volunteered to help Momma since she didn’t want anything to do with thunderstorms anymore. So Luke and I sat on the porch glider while Daddy smoked his pipe on an old rocker.

“Ain’t too many more nights like this left,” Daddy murmured after a particularly long clap of thunder. “Gettin’ on to the end of the season now.”

“Yes’r,” I responded quietly. “Summer’s almost gone.” Most years, I thought summer always went too fast, but I couldn’t say that this summer was one I wanted to hang on to any longer than necessary.

“School startin’ soon, Jessie?” Luke asked.

“Next week.”

“You happy to go?”

“S’pose I’m just toleratin’ it. Ain’t like I’ll be long on friends or nothin’.”

“Now, Jessilyn,” Daddy said with a tone that likely didn’t even convince himself, “there ain’t no tellin’ for sure that you won’t have friends.”

“You been around town lately, Daddy? Ain’t no one wants to be our friends.” I crossed my arms and said with sincerity, “I don’t care none if they don’t, neither. If they got worries ’cause we got Gemma, then they ain’t worth bein’ friends with, nohow.”

“That’s my girl,” Luke said, tousling my hair with a hand that nearly covered the top of my head. His brotherly gesture did nothing to improve my opinion of the current summer.

Another loud jolt of thunder sent Duke cowering underneath the glider with a squeal. Then almost as quickly he came flying back out in excitement as Mr. Tinker’s truck rumbled up our gravel driveway.

“What in the . . . ?” Daddy mumbled. “Ain’t expectin’ to see him tonight.”

Mr. Tinker popped his head out the side window and hollered for Daddy.

“What is it, Otis?” he hollered.

“Got some trouble at the Pollard place, and the sheriff’s out in Sellers County for a meetin’. Could sure use your help.”

Daddy stood and stretched. “What kind of trouble?”

“Same as usual. Old Jeff Pollard’s been into the jug too much today, and his missus swears he’s gonna kill ’em all with his flailin’ and cussin’. You know how she gets.”

Daddy shook his head, handing me his pipe. “Stick this inside for me, will you? And tell your momma where I’m headin’.”

“You need me to go along?” Luke asked.

“Naw, you stay on here.”

“Don’t know, Harley,” Mr. Tinker said. “Might come in handy if Jeff’s all a sight like his missus says he is. He’s no small man, you know.”

“He ain’t so big as the two of us can’t handle him. ’Sides, he gets all tottery when he’s tight. Won’t be able to see straight enough to figure out who to punch.”

“No trouble, if you need me,” Luke insisted.

“Ain’t no harm in a couple more good hands,” Mr. Tinker said.

Daddy turned to Luke, who was now standing near him, one hand hanging on to the porch pillar. “Luke, I’d be just as obliged if you’d stay behind with my girls.” He lowered his voice. “I’d feel mighty good knowin’ they wasn’t alone tonight, you hear?”

Luke tipped his hat. “Yes’r.”

Daddy’s tone and the look on his face when he spoke to Luke made me even more nervous than I’d been. Now I knew for sure that he was scared for us, and my daddy didn’t scare too easily. I pulled my knees up to my chin and hugged them, watching Daddy tug his hat down tighter before heading out into the light droplets of rain that had begun to fall. “Be careful, Daddy.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine, darlin’,” he said with a lighthearted smile.

“Ain’t nothin’ old Jeff Pollard’s goin’ to do to me. He’s been a fine neighbor right these twenty years, and he ain’t like to do nothin’ bad.”

I returned the pipe to its place on the mantel and told Momma where Daddy had gone. I stared out the front window, watching the truck leave the house, my heart heavy. I had a persistent feeling of doom these days, like something awful waited for me around every corner. Fear had become my constant companion, and I hated to see my daddy head off into any situation that could be dangerous.

Momma came up behind me and took a look out the window. “That Jeff Pollard. What a sight.” Then she went back to her humming and dish cleaning.

I left Momma and Gemma to their busy work and walked out to the porch, where Luke sat tapping his foot.

“Rainin’ good now,” he told me.

“S’pose.” I settled in the seat next to him. “You think Daddy’s safe out there at the Pollard place?”

“Don’t see why not.”

“But his wife says he’s bound to kill ’em, Mr. Otis said.”

“Aw, his bark’s worse than his bite, I’ll wager.”

“How d’you know?”

“Well, your daddy says so, and what your daddy says is usually right. Besides, Jeff Pollard works at the factory with me, and he seems a right good man. Most decent men don’t go doin’ awful stuff when they’re liquored up.”

“But the drink does bad things to people.”

Luke looked at me sideways. “How do you know? Your daddy don’t drink.”

I stumbled a little because I hadn’t told anybody about Buddy Pernell’s advances at the Independence Day social, and I didn’t feel like letting on now. So I just said, “I been to enough barn dances to know what men are like on the drink. It ain’t nice, is all.”

“No, it ain’t nice, but I don’t think a basically decent man would kill his family just from bein’ drunk. I’d say he’s gotta be a mean one to begin with if he’s gonna do somethin’ crazy like that.”

I wasn’t so sure I agreed with his theory. “Seems to me when a man loses his senses he’s bound to do anythin’. A man shouldn’t do somethin’ that takes away his senses, the way I see it.”

He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “Well, I reckon you’re right about that. A man gets his sense from the good Lord. I guess he should be mindful of keepin’ it.”

“That’s right.” I sat there for a few moments listening to the thunder as it rumbled further and further away. “Luke?”

“What’s that?”

“You drink whiskey or anythin’?”

“What’s that?” he asked again, and I could tell I’d made him a bit uncomfortable.

“I said, you drink whiskey?”

“Well, you got to realize that there’s different kinds of drinkin’,” he said after a good throat clearing.

“That don’t make no sense,” I said. “Either you drink or you don’t.”

“Now, that ain’t so. There’s a difference in havin’ a little taste, like I do now and again, and in gettin’ good and drunk on purpose.”

“I don’t see no difference if it makes you fuzzy, and Daddy says even a little makes him fuzzy, so that’s why he don’t take it.”

“Well, each man’s different.”

I turned to him, and I’m sure my shock and petulance must have shown on my face. “Luke Talley, you tellin’ me you’re a drunk?”

“I ain’t no drunk!”

“You just told me you have a taste of whiskey some days. Seems to me that makes you a drunk.”

“No, it don’t! You just hold on to your britches there, little girl. I ain’t no such thing as a drunk.”

“I ain’t no little girl,” I hollered, standing up. “And I know a drunk when I seen one.”

“Now, Jessie . . .”

“For all we know, you got yourself a still hidin’ in your backyard.”

Luke stood to his full height and gave me a look that made me shiver. “Don’t you go sayin’ things like that about me, Jessilyn. You want to have the law on me? I may be many a thing, but I ain’t no moonshiner.”

He looked at me expectantly as though I’d feel sorry for my words any second, but my idol of Luke had been chipped, and I was fit to be tied. I turned away from him sharply and slammed the screen door open so hard it shook the house.

Momma came walking to the kitchen doorway when I marched inside. “What in the world . . . ? Jessilyn, what’ve you got a bee in your bonnet for?”

“Luke’s a rotten drunk,” I hollered, and then I ran up to my room with the vehemence of a woman scorned.

It was about twenty minutes of thinking about the bad side of alcohol before I decided I’d have to see Pastor Landry about my dilemma sometime. Surely a preacher man would have the right answer on such a subject. So it was with a heavy heart and a faded view of my perfect Luke that I wandered back downstairs about eight thirty. I avoided eye contact with him when I found him resting in Daddy’s chair in the den.

Momma was sitting by the lamp, her face as close to her embroidery as it could be without poking her eye out with her needle. “There you are, Jessilyn,” she said as though I’d never been distraught to find out my true love was a drunkard. “You think I should use sky blue for this pillowcase or cornflower?”

I really didn’t care about shades of colors just then, but as I plopped down next to Gemma on the couch, I mumbled, “Cornflower, I guess.”

“That’s what Gemma said. Cornflower it is.”

Gemma was reading her book quietly, but she took time to whisper to me, “What’s got you riled?”

“Nothin’,” I bit back. “Girl’s got a right to get her back up now and again, ain’t she?”

“Sorry I asked.”

I felt sorry for being so harsh, and I couldn’t quite figure why I had been either. But then, I couldn’t figure out much about myself those days. Luke tried catching my eye several times over the next ten minutes, but it was no use. I kept my eyes trained so hard on the portrait of my great-grandparents that my eye sockets felt about ready to pop.

At nine fifteen, the clock disturbed the silence to chime once. I was starting to worry about Daddy not being back yet, but one look at Momma’s easy expression told me I was probably exaggerating. If there had been real cause for worry, Momma would have been the first person to have it.

The clock wasn’t the only thing that disturbed the quiet, though, as Duke started to bark like crazy. There was all sorts of ruckus coming from the back of the house, a mixture of barks and growls with a few yips mixed in. We sat and listened for about a minute before Momma finally said, “Sounds like Duke’s fightin’ with somethin’.”

“We’d better find out,” I exclaimed. “He might get hurt.”

“Probably just a raccoon,” Gemma said with a yawn. “He’s done that enough times.”

“But what if it has rabies or somethin’?”

“Ain’t none of the other ones had rabies.”

“That don’t mean this one can’t. We need to go help him.”

“Jessilyn,” Momma said, “we can’t do much to help him if he’s fightin’ with a dangerous animal. We can’t fight wild animals.”

Luke was looking out a side window, so I appealed to him instead. “Can’t you get Daddy’s gun and see what’s hap-penin’?”

“I’ll find out what it is. Y’all stay here inside the house.” Luke stuck his hat on, unbuttoned a couple buttons on the bottom of his shirt, and reached inside to pull a pistol from his waistband. I could not believe my eyes. Now my Luke wasn’t just a drunkard, he was a drunkard who carried a pistol. Heavens, he was a drunken gunfighter!