Meteors in August (11 page)

Later, I smelled something baking, something sweet and delicious. Mom had hot cornbread waiting for me when I got down to the kitchen. “Thought I'd warm up the house,” she said. We each took a steaming golden square big enough for four people. I slathered mine with butter and honey, but we hadn't chewed the first bite before someone rapped on the back door and pressed a pale face against the glass. Mom jumped up to slide the bolt free and let Aunt Arlen inside.

“Are you crazy, woman, coming out in this storm?” Mother said. Aunt Arlen's head was wrapped tight in an old flannel shirt, and she wore a raccoon coat that held the ripe smell of the dead animals. She went straight to the stove to rub her bare hands together over the heat.

Mom offered cornbread and Arlen shook her head. Skinny as she was, I'd never known Arlen to refuse food. She still hadn't said hello. Finally she took the rag off her head and turned to face us. “I'm not going back,” she said, “not even if hell
does
freeze over. I mean it this time. I've had it. Right up to here.” She slashed the air in front of her throat. “He can just see how he likes it, cooking and cleaning up after those boys. They're half his—or more—I can hardly see my part in them now that they're grown. Maybe Justin and Marshall will think to look for their own place if they don't have a live-in maid. Lester can iron his own shirts and mend the crotch of his own damn jeans instead of throwing them in my lap and asking me what the hell I do all day that I can't get around to the ‘few, simple things a man has a right to expect from his wife.' Now that the Fat Lady's shaking for God and speaking in tongues, there's one more ‘simple thing' Lester Munter wants from the old wife. All of a sudden this bag of bones don't look too bad. Well, he can hold his breath till he turns blue and falls on his face. He's not laying a finger on this woman. ‘Come on, baby, let's get warm,' he says, right in front of the boys—and them sneering, knowing their father's gone to Lyla Leona for years, and they've seen her too, wallowed in her flesh. Pigs, every one of them. I had to get myself out of there before I stabbed my fork right up his nose.” She paused long enough to take her first breath.

“Can I stay here, Evelyn? Just until this blizzard's over? I'll look for a place as soon as the weather breaks. Something for me and Lucy—oh, my poor baby; I can't leave her with her brothers for long. They'll turn her into a little slave. Maybe I can get us a room at the boardinghouse, right up there with Minnie Hathaway and Lyla Leona; maybe I can be saved too.”

“Don't even think about living in a dump like that,” Mom said. “You can stay here long as you want.”

I don't believe Arlen ever had any intention of looking for another place. She settled into the den off the living room and slept on the lumpy sofa that was three inches shorter than she was.

For two days she watched her own house like a thief. “Look at Lester,” she said on the third morning, “fat and happy and late for work.” She snorted. “Looks like Justin gave up on that foolish beard. My boy never thought he had enough chin. Maybe that's why he doesn't go out with girls. Maybe that's why Lester did him the favor of taking him to see the Fat Lady when he was sixteen. What a father. Isn't there some law against a man and his son sleeping with the same woman? Well, there should be. Rubs mighty close to incest if you ask me.” Arlen didn't mind that I was the only one listening to her.

“Poor Lucy,” she said. “Look at her. No hat, no gloves, you'd think one of those boys would see to it she doesn't freeze on her way to school.”

Later that morning Arlen sneaked into her empty house and packed enough clothes to stay with us all winter. The whole thing made my father nervous. He asked Mom how long Arlen was staying. “Just a week or so, honey, until this tiff blows over,” she said. She never called him “honey,” so he must have known we were in deep.

On Sunday, Arlen went to church; she wanted to hear if folks were speculating on her reasons for leaving Lester. She wanted to know if the reverend judged her with mercy or cruelty. Daddy stayed home for the first time in months. He said he wanted to have a word with Mother, but he looked too red to talk. As soon as Arlen was out of the house, he pounded his fist on the kitchen table and said, “She's not staying here another day.”

“She's staying as long as she wants,” Mother said.

“It's not right, a woman leaving her husband and kids. I won't be any part of it.”

“She's your sister, Dean.”

“She's Lester Munter's wife, that's what she is, and she belongs in his house, not mine.”

“Blood and water.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“That your sister should mean more to you than Lester Munter.”

“What do you think we're running here, a home for wayward women?”

“She's hardly a
wayward woman
.”

“No? Well I think that's a mighty polite name for a woman who deserts her husband. When I think of her harping away about Elliot Foot, I don't know whether to laugh or be sick.”

“It's not the same.”

“No, of course not. Elliot Foot is a man.”

“Elliot Foot ran off to be with another woman. Arlen left to be by herself. Your sister walked across the alley and Elliot took a Winnebago to Arizona.”

“I could make her go.”

“I'd go with her,” Mother said.

“Are you threatening me?”

“I'm stating a fact.”

They glared at each other. They were both bluffing, but neither one was willing to force the hand. Finally Daddy said, “I wish she'd just find her own place and keep us out of it.”

“You know she hasn't got a dime of her own.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Hers,” said Mom. “She should have lifted ten bucks from Lester's wallet every week and stashed it away for herself.”

Dad sighed. He didn't have a chance with this kind of reasoning. “If Les ever comes over here and wants to drag her home, I won't stand in his way.”

Arlen stayed, one week and then another. The third week began. She didn't have much to talk about now that Lester and the boys weren't around to keep her riled, but that didn't stop her. There was a noisiness to her presence, a clamor of confusion. By the time I came home from school, Mother was worn down by Arlen's jabbering. She soon agreed with my father: it was time to send Arlen back to those children who needed her.

Our house seemed smaller in winter. The tiny windows of my attic room leaked light, but by four o'clock the whole house was dark. In the dim hours, my wallpaper turned chaotic. Nina had chosen it, this tangle of green vines and burgundy roses. I dreaded going home but couldn't stand the cold outside. Often, Arlen followed me from room to room, relating every detail of her day. She stayed on my heels as I climbed the stairs. One afternoon she said, “I couldn't decide whether to wear my blue dress or my green one this morning. So I chose the brown slacks instead.” This amused her. She muttered a few words under her breath and giggled. I tried to slip into the bathroom and close the door, but she was too quick for me. “I had toast for breakfast—with strawberry jam. Your mother had apple butter.” I sat down on the toilet. “No, wait,” she said.

“I can't,” I answered, but she didn't mean me.

“I think she had marmalade.” The confusion concerning Mother's toast perplexed her. She charged out of the bathroom and down the stairs. “Evelyn,” I heard her call. “Evelyn, did you have marmalade or apple butter?”

Later, when I thought about what happened to Arlen in our house, I realized anger was the only thing that had kept her strong. She had to fill her head with nonsense; the steady buzz stopped her from thinking about her husband and sons making love to Lyla Leona, kept her safe from the blinding memory of the day they pulled Jesse from the lake.

I learned something that winter: when things go bad, they can always get worse; misfortune has its own momentum. A week before Christmas, a second storm hit. This blizzard took its toll. In the fields beyond the edge of town, snow blew over the frozen bodies of cows and sheep, the ones that didn't make it to the barn before dark.

Two days after the storm my father roared into the drive. He slammed the door so hard it popped open again, so he gave it a kick and stomped into the garage instead of the house. He growled and knocked cans of nails off the shelves, mad as a bear with a bullet in its hind end. Mom and Arlen and I sat in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and carrots for a stew, leaning over the trash barrel as if it held some magic life-giving flame.

Finally Daddy filled the doorway. The cold air hung in the room, a cloud he dragged behind him. “Red Elk's back,” he said. Mother dropped her potato in her lap. “Josh Holler hired him back at the mill. He says if there's any trouble this time, the Indian won't be the one to go.”

Red Elk, the man my father had tried to drive out of town, had returned at last. I saw Daddy huddled at the kitchen table with those men, their boots thick with muck, their words loud and slurred:
We showed that red devil
. The night I heard that I was only seven years old. I thought they'd driven him down to the swamp, left him to die for the crime of making a white woman want him. But he rose from the sludge, nose broken, eyes full of mud. Now he was back. Red Elk was respectable, a working-man just like my father, no better, no worse.

Daddy had to treat him right or leave the mill, the only job he knew or ever wanted. He had to look this big Indian in the face, a man he despised even before Billy Elk took Nina in his arms and made her disappear.

Arlen looked from Mom to Dad and back again. She pressed one hand to her mouth. I could see she was about to burst into one of her fits. If she got laughing now, there'd be no stopping her. Mother stood, slowly, watching Daddy the whole time as she walked toward him. Arlen said, “Are you—are you gonna kill him, Dean?” Then she broke up, giggling and puffing.

Mom slipped her arm around Daddy's waist. “I don't want to kill him,” he whispered.

Arlen quieted herself, but her mouth still had that funny look.

Mother led Daddy to the living room and sat him down. “I don't want to kill him,” he said again.

“Of course you don't. Arlen doesn't know what she's saying.”

“I did at first, him and the boy too, but it wouldn't change anything, would it?”

“Not now,” Mom said, rubbing his red hands.

I glanced at Arlen. She wasn't paying any attention to my parents. She was crying as she chopped the onions.

We never ate dinner that night. I hid in my room, but around nine I got so hungry I had to sneak downstairs and grab a bowl of stew. Arlen sat in the kitchen with the lights off. “Close your eyes,” I said. But she didn't, and she blinked hard in the sudden glare of the overhead light.

“Did you eat?” I said.

“I don't remember.”

I looked in the sink: there were no dirty dishes. The drainer was empty. “I don't think you did.” I dished up a bowl of stew for each of us. The stew was lukewarm and unseasoned, but I was hungry and shoveled it down. Arlen took three bites and stopped.

“What does he look like?” I said.

“Who?”

“Red Elk.” I wanted to know this man if I ever met up with him on the street. Aunt Arlen looked at me as if she were going to start hooting again. “Don't you know, honey? Don't you know?” I shook my head. “Then you must be the only one in town who doesn't.” She leaned close to me. “Like an Indian,” she said, “he looks like a goddamned Indian.”

“I know
that
.”

“No, I mean a real Indian—big and dark, no white blood, still wears his hair in a braid down the back, still wears a blanket instead of a coat, still pisses in a hole in the ground.” I wondered how she knew. Arlen cocked her head. “Listen,” she said. I didn't hear anything. “They've been at it all night.”

“Who?”

“Your parents.” She clamped her hands over her ears. “How can they?” The sounds of imagined lovemaking echoed in her head. Grandmother's room was above us, and that room had been dead quiet a long time. “I can't stand it,” Arlen said. “I can't listen to that.” She pushed her chair back and let it fall, ran through the living room to her dark den where she was safe from voices, dreamed or real.

I turned out the lights, moved to Arlen's place and finished her stew.

I couldn't sleep that night. I was thinking about the night nearly seven years before when my father and his gang had chased Red Elk up the mountain. I could almost hear the joyful barks of the dogs as they caught the Indian's scent.

I stood at the window, my nose touching the cold glass. A new moon cut the hard winter sky. I imagined how tired Red Elk must have been. Perhaps all he'd wanted to do that night was to lie on the cool rocks of the mountain. If it had only been the dogs on his tail, he might have given up. But Red Elk knew the men were close behind, so he kept climbing.

The dogs grew weary and took the men in a circle. Those dogs never made it off the mountain, and Mother told me and Nina what the men had done.

Later we heard how Red Elk went home that night and sat with a rifle across his lap. He hadn't bothered to wipe his bloody nose or change his clothes.

Mary Louise Furey told him she wanted him out of there before Billy woke up. No boy of hers was going to see his daddy like that. She let Ike Turner know she'd made the man leave. She said she pulled the gun off his lap and threatened to shoot off his toes.

“They didn't catch him,” Mary Louise said, “but they killed him all the same.” She talked to Ike because she knew he was the only man in town who wouldn't be glad the Indian was gone. And she knew Ike couldn't keep a secret. She wanted folks to believe that Red Elk had left her. She was tired of his kind of trouble.