Chapter Eleven

The two men crashed through the back door. If it had been built by men lesser skilled than their grandpa then it would have come right off its hinges. Riley slammed the door behind him but not before he saw Stella storming off towards the cottage. Shit.

Sully tried to swing on him, but he was slow and drunk. Riley pushed him away in disgust.

“Why in the hell would you do something like that?!” He asked in pure confusion.

Sully had landed on his narrow backside onto the floor. He jumped up prepared to fight the bigger man, because in his eyes Riley would always be that little kid that had tagged around him since he was only knee high. In his drunken state he truly thought that he could take the younger man and teach him a lesson or two. But he cared about the kid and wanted to understand why he was being attacked for basically no good reason.

“Why are you siding with them niggers against me?” he asked in earnest.

Riley closed his eyes briefly. “Don’t say that word again.” He looked at Sully. “Those are my boarders. You just…” Riley shook his head while staring at Sully in disbelief. “Do you have a thousand bucks to give me now because you’ve chased that lady away? You got even half of that to put on the property tax? What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Sully quieted and then dug his hands into his pocket. Riley’s words were sobering. He’d just fucked with his cousin’s money and that was the greatest sin that one man could commit against another. You could fuck his wife, run over his dog or even take the last bottle of beer from the fridge. But one man never fucked with another man’s money. Ever.

“Damn. Riley…” Sully ran his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry, man. I was fucked up. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry, man, really.”

Riley’s nostrils flared as he breathed but he didn’t speak.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Riley. I was wrong.” Sully suddenly looked sober as he stared at the wall to one side of his cousin. “My…my own grandmother didn’t think I was good enough to set foot in the gingerbread house.” He gestured weakly in the direction of the cottage. “Them two boarders of yours can rent the place but I was never even allowed to set foot in it when I was a kid. I guess that always made me want it more. I always thought that I’d grow up and granny would figure out that she actually gave a shit about me after all.” He looked at Riley. “But we both know that ain’t never happened.”

Riley looked down at the aged linoleum floor and felt the guilt that he’d lived with for so many years flare back to life. He knew why Sully ended up the way he had. If things had been just a little different then he could have ended up just like him.

He looked at Sully and saw the blossoming of bruises forming on his arm where he’d grabbed him and the sight was like a blow to the pit of Riley’s stomach. No. He was not the type of man that would do something like that to Sully. He would never be that kind of man. He refused to be that type of man.

For a flash he was seven years old and he saw Sully standing here in this very kitchen as a sixteen year-old boy and his Uncle Lloyd was in a boxer’s stance slamming his fists repeatedly into the skinny boy’s face. Sully’s eyes were swollen closed and blood was streaming from his mouth and broken nose. He was barely conscious but the blows came so swiftly that they practically prevented him from hitting the ground.

Not any kid of mine, you little faggot…

Everyone had stood and watched—including the adults, and not one person had put a stop to it. Afterwards granny had been the one to clean up the blood including two teeth, which she had dropped into the trash bin without a word.

No kid of mine…

At six years old, Riley had vowed that he would never be like the other Prangers and he would never do anything to cause his cousin to ever be hurt again.

Riley sighed and reached out carefully towards Sully. The idea of the man shrinking from him would kill him, but Sully was still contemplating his own past memories.

“Come on, cuz.” He placed his arm around Sully’s shoulders. “Let’s get you to bed. You can sleep it off in the spare room.”

“I’m sober, Riley.” Sully said, but allowed himself to be led to the stairs and to the spare bedroom. “Besides. I ain’t staying no place that I ain’t welcomed.”

“Yeah, well it’s too dark to be taking Cobhill Rd this time of night. You’ll go down tomorrow.” They were silent for a few more moments. And then Sully turned to peer at the younger cousin that had been more like a little brother to him.

“Hey, you still pissed at me?”

“Nah,” Riley said. “You’re my blood. I can’t stay mad at blood.”

“That’s right. Blood is thicker than water. It ain’t tighter than money, though.” Sully chuckled and Riley fixed his lips to form a smile. “Sorry for messing with your money. I guess I wasn’t thinking. You go on and make that money, black, white, red or yellow; the most important color is green.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of that.”

“I’ll apologize if you need me to-”

“Uh, no.”

Once they were in the neat bedroom that had once belonged to Riley, Sully kicked off his boots, stumbling in the process. Riley reached to right him but Sully just fell onto the bed with his pants still on.

“Go ahead and get comfortable. There’s beer in the fridge.” Riley said while turning to leave. But no sooner were those words out of his mouth than Sully jumped to his feet.

“Well whyn’t you say that while we were in the kitchen?”

 

 

Stella was still pacing when Adam came downstairs, a full half an hour after returning to the cottage.

“Mom. Do you think those apples are ready yet?”

“What?” She asked giving her son an incredulous look.

“I want my roasted apple,” he replied. “That man that called his grandma that bad word said that it’s like apple pie.”

She stopped pacing and knelt down on the floor on one knee in order to look him in the eyes.

“Adam. Do you understand how rude that man was?”

Adam hesitated before nodding, and then he shrugged and finally he shook his head admitting that he had no idea. All he knew is that his mother was suddenly mad but it wasn’t at him, so while her anger was bad, that part was good.

Stella studied him silently, considering what she would do next. There would be many teachable moments in her son’s life. But was this one of them? He was just four months from being six years old and he didn’t understand what had just happened. Maybe that was a good thing.

What finally made up her mind was her reaction to the situation. She’d allowed that man to get the upper hand. She’d allowed him to do to her what she had vowed that she’d never allow a white person to do, and that was to get a rise out of her.

She sighed. “That man was so rude to come barging in to our picnic and eating our food without first asking. There were just enough burgers and dogs left for you, me and Mr. Riley to have leftovers, but then that man took a hot dog and a burger!”

“And then he took two more! Yeah. He didn’t ask first. And did you notice that he smelled like he spilled wine all over himself. I bet he was drunk.”

Stella stood and placed her hands back on her hips. “And what do you know about that, little man? When have you ever seen a drunk person?”

“I see drunk people all the time on television.”

She went into the kitchen and dug up a small saucepot. “You are going back to watching Sesame Street,” she muttered under her breath. She then headed for the door. “Wait here. I’m going to go get those apples…”which is proof positive that I’m not intimidated by a bunch of hillbillies. She backtracked hillbill(y). She still wasn’t sure about Riley. He had been pretty pissed. And when the N-word was used he looked like he was going to beat the hell out of his cousin. Still, Stella was convinced that all white people were racist in secret. And in private places where no one could hear they all used those kinds of words. These thoughts were almost unconscious to her because these were the thoughts that were always a backdrop of her mind whenever she was around friendly, laughing white people--that today they were buddying up with her but yesterday they were probably calling her a nigger behind her back.

Stella once again silently reminded herself that she could never really trust a white person, which is why she had never desired to date a white man. She was convinced that in the back of a white man’s mind was a history of bigotry and no matter how apologetic they sounded, they had to feel that there was a sense of right that they were on top of the food chain—without once taking responsibility for the fact that they had lied, raped, stolen and tortured in order to get there.

While Stella Burton didn’t hate white people, she certainly didn’t trust them.

 

 

The backyard was dark when she returned. The only light was coming from the windows of the main house. It was ridiculously dark in the country where there were no streetlights and even the moon and stars didn’t provide enough illumination to allow her to see. She blinked, trying to get her night vision adjusted and thought about running right smack into a bear. To hell with that hillbilly, she wasn’t scared of him, but she sure didn’t want to run into a bear.

She stumbled over a thick patch of wild dandelion and cursed under her breath. Now that she was out here she realized that this was stupid. Those apples were probably nothing more than mush by now. But it was the principal of the thing. She had to do this.

“Stella?”

She bit back a surprised yelp and then she made out the figure of someone by the picnic table. She blinked a few more times and saw that Riley was holding a garbage bag and cleaning up.

“I just came for those apples. My son wants them,” she said flatly.

“Sure. I’m very sorry for my cousin’s behavior. Sully doesn’t represent the people on Cobb Hill, or me, for that matter.”

Now that she was at the grill she could see him clearly. She located the stick that had been used to lift the grate from the grill.

“You don’t have to apologize for another man.” She said in a clipped manner. She used the stick to carefully roll the roasted apples into the pot.

“Well I do. When you’re on my property you’re protected by me and my rules.”

She looked at him…protected by him and by his rules… He said it like that was supposed to mean something to her. Did that mean that it was okay to be a racist as long as you didn’t act like one on his property? How in the hell was that supposed to mean anything to her?

“I just want you to know that I’m sorry that you had to face something like that while you were here and I hope that it won’t cause you to want to leave. You’re welcome here.” He meant every word. It wasn’t about the money. He liked that someone was in the house next door. He even liked Stella and Adam. It had been so long since someone had been around and he found that after getting to know them over the last few hours that he liked them.

“I’m not planning on leaving.” She said defiantly.

“Okay, good.” He added quickly, “There’re plenty of vegetables left if you want to take them-”

“No thank you,” she said simply. “Goodnight.”

He watched her walk away.

It was clear that she was pissed, but Riley could see that it was more than that. She was also hurt. He didn’t know what Sully had said before he’d gotten to the back yard, but it involved her son and while witnessing good people being hurt was something that he didn’t want to be a part of, what bothered him most was that Stella seemed to almost expect it. She wasn’t surprised that this had happened. She knew it would.

“God damn you, Sully.” He muttered as he tossed the leftovers into the trash.