26
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
The house was warm with heat from the kitchen, stuffy even, but the smell of fried chicken in the air made the heat worth it. Atticus and I made our way through the living room where paintings hung on the walls; a cozy recliner sat near the open window; an area rug dressed the hardwood floor. There was a fireplace with a rock mantle and knick-knacks placed atop it; there were even magazines spread out in a half-moon atop a coffee table, and a decorative glass bowl of potpourri shavings.
A fat orange cat sat in the window behind the sofa, pressed against the screen; a tall bookshelf was perched in one corner next to the cat, chock full of mostly hardbacks with their paper sleeves missing. It seemed these people somehow went on living the way they did before The Fall, perpetually oblivious to the world beyond their forty-five acres. I was awed by it. (I didn’t trust it. All it did was further scratch that Hansel and Gretel itch.)
“Come an’ eat,” Rachel urged, batting her dark eyes painted with dark makeup. “My momma is a great cook.” She flitted into the kitchen, passing beneath an arched entrance.
Atticus turned. “I don’t feel comfortable about this,” he breathed in a low voice, “but you need to eat—we’ll stay long enough to get full, maybe get a few things to take with us, and then we’re gone, all right?”
I nodded. “I still think they’re harmless,” I said. “And I’m not the only one of us who needs to eat, Atticus,” I pointed out.
Everyone, minus Sour Shannon, was in the kitchen sitting around the table when we entered the room. Shannon strode by curtly with a plate balanced on her hand and a glass of water in the other, to eat in the living room instead.
“Take a seat anywhere,” David offered, gesturing toward the empty chairs situated neatly around the table littered with strategically-placed bowls of food: scrambled eggs, fried chicken, a stack of pancakes, two jars of jelly, and a pear-shaped bowl of gravy speckled with pepper.
My stomach grumbled.
“You can wash up first,” Emily insisted; she pointed at the kitchen sink over the bar. “Wash on the left side, rinse on the right. There’s a dishtowel on the counter to dry off with.”
“Thank you,” I said kindly.
Atticus just nodded.
Standing at the kitchen sink together, we scrubbed the dirt—and blood, in Atticus’ case—from our hands. I glanced at his hands, making a mental note of their condition. They appeared to heal well; scabs had reformed over the tiny cuts; the redness and swelling had faded considerably.
We all sat around the table and enjoyed the food and conversation, though not so much Atticus, who sat in silence, eating. He had taken the chair where the only thing behind him was a wall, probably so he could keep everyone in his sights.
I thought it was odd to be having fried chicken for breakfast, but then realized how odd it was to be having fried chicken—or breakfast—at all. How was it that Emily still had flour and spices and oil to fry the meat with?
“I ain’t gonna lie,” Emily told me, “that vegetable oil I’ve been usin’ for ‘least four years now”—she laughed and shook her finger at no one in particular—“Y’know, back when we had TV, I saw once on one of them food shows that there’s a mom-n-pop restaurant somewhere in Texas, I think, that’s been usin’ the same oil to fry with since 1979, or somethin’ like that”—she swallowed her food—“that stuff never goes bad. It’s like honey.” She tore off another bite of chicken with her teeth, chewed quickly and pointed her finger again. “And I saw on National Geograhical, or one of them stations, they opened a mummy tomb over in Egypt and found honey still wet in the jar that was over three thousand years old.” She nodded as if to underline her point, then went back to her chicken, grease glistening on her fingers.
“So, where’d you two come from, anyway?” David spoke up across the table from Atticus. He dug his fingers in his chicken breast, tearing the rest of the meat away from the bone. “I’m guessin’ farther north, judgin’ the accents.”
I wasn’t aware I had an accent.
“Yeah, we’re from farther north,” Atticus said, but wouldn’t elaborate.
“And are you…related?” Rachel asked, sitting next to her father, across from Atticus, but she was only looking at Atticus. “I mean…are you together?” She glanced at me sitting next to him. It made me uncomfortable, but I wasn’t sure why.
“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “We’re not together like that, we’re just—.” I stopped abruptly when I felt Atticus’ knee knock against mine underneath the table.
“She’s my sister,” Atticus cut in, though I got the feeling it wasn’t what he had wanted to say. “And we’re on our way to Shreveport. We have family there.”
Rachel’s eyes seemed alight with relief and excitement.
I looked over at Atticus. He didn’t look pleased that I’d spoken up.
ATTICUS
I wanted no one—David especially—to think Thais was fair game. It wasn’t safe for her to be unattached to a man. And while although I settled with pretending to be her brother—because it was too late not to—and took comfort in thinking David may not pursue her on that account alone, I felt that later, when we came in contact with more people on our way to Shreveport, we would need to play a different role.
“So how is it you’ve survived here like this,” I asked between bites, “without being attacked by raiders?” I thought about the raiders from Lexington City, recalling the maps, knowing that scouting parties had been this way before.
David pointed his fork at me; a lopsided smile hung on his lips.
“Oh, we been attacked all right,” he confirmed, “but we can protect ourself. There used to be ‘bout fifteen of us here.”
“But we ain’t been here but ‘bout two years,” Emily spoke up. “We was travelin’ like you, all the way from St. Louis, until we found this place. It wudn’t this nice in the beginnin’, but we been makin’ it nice since we moved in.”
“What happened to the rest of you?” I asked.
“Died fightin’,” David answered straightaway, chewing.
“Well ‘cept for Dana and her husband,” Rachel said, and the table got grimly silent.
I glanced askance at David, Emily, and Rachel, in turns.
“What happened to them?” Thais spoke up.
Emily and David exchanged dark glances; Rachel looked down into her food, moved her eggs away from the gravy distractingly.
“M’daddy killed ‘em,” Shannon said matter-of-factly as she entered the kitchen.
She walked past everyone and set her plate on the counter. Then she turned to face us sitting at the table, crossed her arms firmly over her busty chest. I made note of the hardening of her jaw and the threatening gleam in her eyes as she looked across at me and Thais.
“They came on our land,” Shannon began. “We fed ‘em, boiled water for their baths, gave ‘em a place to sleep. Then after a week they robbed us, held Aunt Emily at gunpoint and tried to make off with weapons, food, and our hospitality.” Her arms fell at her sides. She looked at her father with frustration, anger, and went back toward the kitchen exit. “So m’daddy shot ‘em.” She stopped underneath the archway and looked me dead in the eyes. “And if you’re here to hurt my family, or take anything from us, you best expect me to be the first one to come at you—and I ain’t afraid to blow a man’s brains against a wall. It wouldn’t be the first time.” Her tall, athletic figure disappeared around the corner.
Thais and I looked at one another in stunned silence.
“Don’ worry about my Shannon,” David spoke up. “Thing was, I knew those two were trouble—I could sense it”—his gnarly finger came up and tapped his temple—“I’m smart like that, can tell if yer bad people or not.”
“Then why did you let them stay here?” I asked.
“He let ‘em stay,” Emily said, “’cause David ‘ere always tries to see the good in people, to give ‘em a chance, y’know?” Her fork clanked against the glass plate as she rose into a stand. “He always knew my James was a bastard, but I never would listen to ‘im.”
Breakfast gave me more reason to believe these people were not dangerous. And before nightfall, late in the afternoon, I gave in enough to enjoy David’s conversation.
We sat outside on the porch for a long time, drinking. Trick, the family dog, came bounding across the yard toward us, a dead rabbit dangling from his slobbering jaws. He dropped the rabbit on the porch at David’s feet with a plop and sat still on his haunches until David gave the go-ahead signal, waving two fingers, and the dog snatched the treat off the porch railing and ate happily.
I wondered why the dog didn’t just keep the whole rabbit for himself instead of a much smaller piece of meat, but I decided that a dog was a dog, and loyalty and love made dogs—and people—do strange things sometimes.
THAIS
Inside the house I helped Emily with the dishes, and we went on about things that seemed insignificant in a world turned on its head: how nice the weather had been in Kentucky the past several days; we talked about canning jellies and preserving meat; Emily showed me her handmade quilts and the scarves and sweaters she had knitted before she ran out of yarn. I showed Emily—and Sour Shannon, who joined us for a while, even if only to keep her eye on me—how I could braid hair in unique ways. And I spoke in great length of my love for books and poetry and stories.
“Yes, I do know some poetry by heart,” I said, sitting in the living room with Emily and Shannon. “Sosie Fenwick was one of my favorite poets.” A tear nearly slipped from my eye, but I smiled instead, thinking of my sister.
And I recited one of Sosie’s poems, standing in the center of the room, my arms gesturing in a dramatic, graceful motion as I performed.
Emily, and even Shannon, watched me perform many other poems afterward, even a few of my own. I was shy at first, because poetry had always been Sosie’s thing.
And I told stories and we laughed and we sang—oh how I loved to sing.
ATTICUS
As I sat outside on the front porch with David, Thais’ angelic voice filled my ears. And broke my damn heart.
More every day I spent with her, I felt something new, yet familiar, something from so long ago that I had thought dead to me: hope.
Hallelujah…Hallelujah, she sang, and I felt my chest constrict and my hands tremble and a warm wave of what I could only describe as happiness raise every hair on my arms.
Hallelujah…
I forced her voice out of my ears, swallowed down the unwelcome emotion caused by it, and accepted reality.
A fire burned in the front yard; coils of thick black smoke rose from the brush pile where an old tire had been tossed; it had been burning for three hours and was finally dying down. I drank down my second homemade beer and set the empty mug on the porch beside my boots. I peered absently into the distance at the field that rose out against the darkening horizon, and glimpsed the mare we’d left at the barn, standing out in the open, her head lowered to the grass.
David also gazed into the field, but with a strange interest, I noticed right away.
“Is he usually back by now?” I asked, looking over at David in the chair next to me. “Lance? Is that his name?”
“Oh yeah,” David said, realizing. “I was wonderin’ ‘bout Lance. But he’ll be all right. Been gone longer before huntin’. Was worth it when he came back though—had an eight-point buck.”
The rusty hinges on the screen door squeaked as Rachel came out onto the porch. I caught her gaze as she stepped closer, and it turned her lips up at the corners. I looked away, intent on remaining a respectful guest and not taking advantage of the host’s daughter.
“How ‘bout bringin’ us another beer,” David told Rachel.
Rachel, standing so close now that I could smell the light perfume she wore, gave me all of her ambitious attention.
“Would you like more beer?”
“Sure,” I said, avoiding her eyes. “Thanks.”
Rachel bent over in front of me—I could see down her shirt—and she took the mug from beside my boot, bumping her arm against my leg. Then she went back into the house, her long, brown hair swishing behind her; the screen door slapped against the frame as if she were in a hurry.
I sensed David’s movement beside me as he leaned over, the lawn chair creaking underneath his weight. “Y’know, Rachel is available,” he said in a low voice.
I tensed.
“My sister has been tryin’ to get that girl a decent man since we found this place. She’s twenty-two”—he reached down and positioned his hands on his hips and made a vulgar gesture—“could carry lots o’babies with those hips; and she’s quite a looker, don’ ya agree?”
I went to take a drink from my mug as a distraction, until I realized the mug was no longer in my hand.
“Um, yeah she’s pretty.”
David raised back up. “Don’ get me wrong,” he said, “she’s my niece, and I’d never look at her that way myself, but she needs love as much as any of us”—he pointed at me and chuckled—“or jus’ a good time, if ya know I mean.”
Yeah…okay.
Rachel came back out onto the porch with two mugs of beer, handing David one first, and saving me for last. I couldn’t avert eye contact this time. She held onto my mug, dragging her fingers over the top of my hand as she slowly pulled away.
“Can I…talk to you for a minute?” Rachel asked.
I looked to and from her and David.
“I-I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I finally said.
I took a drink, hoping to wash down the awkwardness.
“Oh, go on and talk to her,” David pressed. “If you’re worried about my sister, then don’—she don’ mind.”
“No, I really don’t think—”
David stood, mug of beer clutched in his hand. “Nonsense,” he said with a dismissive gesture. “I’m goin’ out back to clean the rabbit before it goes bad; give you two some privacy.” He bent over and scooped the dead rabbit up.
The sound of his old leather boots went heavily over the creaky boards as he strode past, descended the steps, and left me and Rachel sitting alone as he made his way around one side of the house and out of sight.
Rachel boldly took up residence on my lap, sitting sideways across my legs. I froze in surprise. Her long fingers swept across the back of my neck; her breath was warm and minty; her skin smelled of heat and soap and woman. Instinctively, my hand moved to lay against her thigh, where I squeezed the flesh gently.
The tip of Rachel’s warm tongue snaked out and caressed the shell of my ear. “I have my own room, y’know,” she said. “You can do anything to me you want.” She tugged my earlobe with her teeth.
It’s not about want. It’s about need.
I couldn’t help myself. My mouth found hers, where it lingered, our lips parted, touching, and I breathed hotly into her mouth, letting her taste me—or was it I wanted to taste her? She tried to kiss me fully, and I almost let her, but Thais’ kind and innocent face flashed across my mind, and I helped Rachel off my lap promptly.
Fuck…
“Look, I’m sorry, but this can’t happen.”
After getting her balance from the abrupt move, Rachel stood in front of me, arms crossed tightly over her chest, head cocked to one side with disbelief, her mouth pinched with resentment.
“Why not?” she demanded.
I stood. “It just can’t.” I tried to walk past her.
She stopped me, pressing her hand against my chest.
“Is it because of my mother?” she asked. “You can go in there and ask her right now if she minds, and she’ll just tell us to use her room if we want.”
God, it was so tempting—it had been days since I’d been with Evelyn. This girl was somewhat like Evelyn, and I knew I could probably take her in the same way, without fear of consequence or guilt, and that she’d only thank me for it, and want to do it again, and again, and again.
Rachel made a move toward me, exchanging a bitter face for a genial one. “You could stay here,” she proposed, hopeful. “There’s nothing for you out there on The Road. ‘Cept death. Why don’t you stay here with us where you can have a life?”
“I have a life elsewhere,” I lied.
“It’s a long way from here,” she pointed out. “You’re as good as dead if you try to make that trip on foot—even with a horse.”
She moved in closer, shrinking the space between us, her darkly-painted eyes pleading. “Your sister can stay too,” she added. “I’ll talk to my uncle and my momma—they’ll agree to it. You’ll both be protected here. Just say you’ll stay.”
I stepped around her, intent on leaving her there, but I stopped again when I felt her hand on my arm. I looked at her, long and hard and contemplatively, and she looked at me with the same intensity.
“I’m clean,” she whispered, her eyes sweeping over the curvature of my mouth. “You won’t find a woman like me out there on The Road.” She slipped a hand into her pants, touched herself, and then put her fingers to my lips.
Jesus Christ…
I grew so hard I knew I’d regret it later, but I released her hand and went inside the house.
Thais was sitting on the sofa with Emily and Shannon, her legs drawn up beneath her, laughing and smiling and looking like an angel.
“Atticus, come sit with us,” Thais said, gesturing me over.
Without a word, I walked past them all and went into the kitchen, grabbed the backpacks we’d left on the floor during breakfast, and hoisted them both over one shoulder.
“Where are you going?” Thais called out when I came back through the living room.
“Nowhere,” I answered, in motion toward the door. “I’ll just be outside. Stay here and enjoy yourself.”
The screen creaked closed behind me.