The Homecoming of Samuel Lake
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She was letting her thoughts drift now, enjoying the pleasant flow. There was a small, bright stab of light that had surfaced, a little earlier, back at the store, and it was still bobbing along in her consciousness. She gazed at it, mentally, fascinated by it. She knew better than to attempt to examine it for brilliance or for flaws. If she tried too hard to capture it, it would dissolve, or sink, or shoot out of reach. And, anyway she was content, for now, just to look at it.
Her husband was smiling to himself while he drove. This she saw out of the corner of her eye, and her stomach did an uneasy flip-flop. When most folks smiled, it meant something good. With Ras, it could mean anything. Still, she wouldn’t let him and his smile take her mind off the lovely, shimmering Idea. She wanted to keep it in view as long as possible.
“How long you had your eye on that ugly bastid?” Ras asked. He prided himself on his craftiness, as well as on his ability to throw her thinking off. He sure knew how to throw her thinking off.
She just looked at him, without saying anything. When Ras was getting wound up, it was bad to talk, because he could find something incriminating in any words that came out of your mouth—and it was bad not to talk, because silence indicated guilt. It meant you couldn’t think of anything to say that would hide whatever dirty secret he was in the process of discovering.
“I seen you droolin’ back there,” he accused. “Don’t you think I didn’.”
Geraldine was irritated. The Idea was starting to dim a little. If only Ras would shut up so she could concentrate. She said, “Oh, you think you see so much.” She had already forgotten about it not being good to talk.
He laughed. An obscene, snorting sound. “You’d best believe I do.”
Geraldine shifted the baby from her lap to her shoulder and patted its back, rhythmically. She was so disgusted. The stab of light was gone. There was nothing to do now but go ahead and fuss with Ras. If you didn’t give him back a little of his own, he just got worse. Nothing made Ras worse quite so fast as knowing he had the upper hand.
“Well, there wasn’t nothin’ to see,” she snapped.
Ras spat a rusty stream of tobacco juice out the window and wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve. “I reckon I know when I see a woman askin’ for it.”
“You better quit accusin’ me of things, Ras Ballenger.” She made her voice go high and haughty. “You sure are somebody to go accusin’ people of things. Why, I don’t even know that man.”
“Not as well as you’d like, is that it?”
In fact, Geraldine did not know Toy Moses, had never even seen him except for times like today when he had happened to be keeping the store and she had stopped by with her husband and kids. Always with her husband and kids. She was not allowed to go anywhere alone. She knew the stories, though. About how Toy had lost his leg to save a life, and had taken a life to save his wife’s honor. These things she had heard and taken note of. Toy Moses looked out for those who couldn’t protect themselves. It was this realization that had been dancing through her mind like a will-o’-the-wisp a few minutes ago.
She’d met and married Ras when she was only fourteen. Fourteen! Just a little split-tailed girl, and there he’d come along, a soldier back from the war, and he wasn’t bad-looking, even if he wasn’t any bigger than a mess of minutes.
He had come strutting into her life, all quick moves and jaunty airs, and he had fair turned her head. After all, not many girls her age got courted by men who’d been everywhere and seen everything and sent more of the enemy than they could count to meet their Maker. Back then, the killing Ras had done hadn’t bothered her. Wasn’t that what soldiers are supposed to do? The only reason it bothered her now was that now she knew how much he’d enjoyed it. For Ras Ballenger, war had been a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Oh, she had learned things about him, all right.
Their courtship had lasted barely long enough for him to ascertain her virginity. This he had done by testing it, rather roughly. As soon as he had convinced himself on that one point he had brushed away her tears and told her there wasn’t anything to cry about. It was her fault, really, for making him so crazy, plus, he had had to know. He could never have loved a woman who had been used by another man.
That word used should have tipped her off. Should have. But then he started talking about getting married, and she more or less forgot about everything else. She hadn’t known what she was getting into. She’d been finding out ever since.
This upset her more at some times than at others. The first time that it had upset her badly—which was the first time Ras took a strap to her—she had begged her folks to let her come home, but they said she’d made her bed, she could wallow in it. After that, leaving never seemed to be an option.
Actually (and Geraldine didn’t understand this herself), she didn’t always want to leave. Sure, Ras was rough with her, but he made up for it, afterward. After a while, it got to where the roughness just made everything more intense. There was a part of her that had come to believe nothing else could match that intensity. Even when she did want to get away, it was hard to imagine life without—that.
Ras reached over now, across the bigger baby, another boy, who was staring off, exploring his nose and mouth with his fingers. Ras ran his hand under his wife’s skirt, and up the inside of her thigh, and gave the tender flesh a vicious squeeze. Geraldine was still patting the baby (her only girl) on the back, and she stopped, just for a second, gritting her teeth.
“You wimmen are all alike,” Ras said. “Always wantin’ whatever you ain’t had. We’ll be to the house in a minute, and I’ll give you something you ain’t never had.”
That laugh again. Edging higher, threatening to go out of control. His laugh could ricochet, change tone and direction all at once, and then hit you like a bullet in the heart. Or the head.
Geraldine shut him out. Sometimes you had to do that, with Ras. You just had to think about other things, that was the only way. She turned her mind back to the river of her thoughts, but they had gotten sluggish and dark. With all her might, she tried to find that lovely stab of light again, that shimmering Idea that had been Toy Moses, Protector of the Helpless. But the Idea had lost its shining fire. Even if she found it now, it wouldn’t amount to anything. Once a shooting star goes out, wishing on it doesn’t do a lick of good.
“What did Uncle Toy use to kill Yam Ferguson?”
“What?”
“What did he use? A gun? A knife? What?”
Swan was sitting in the bathtub, shoulder-deep in bubbles. Her mother had been bending over the sink, washing her hair, but her head had snapped almost straight up when Swan asked her first question, and now she was swabbing shampoo out of her eyes.
“Who told you Uncle Toy killed anybody?”
“Lovey.”
“Lovey talks entirely too much.”
“She’s not the only one who’s said it. I heard you and Grandma Calla talking about it once, a long time ago.”
Willadee bent back over the sink and twisted around until her head was under the flowing tap. Shampoo foamed and cascaded and ran in rivulets.
“What did you hear your grandma and me saying?”
“I don’t remember exactly.”
“Good.”
“Well, I just think when a relative of mine has committed a murder, I deserve to know the details,” Swan complained.
“You deserve a licking about nine tenths of the time.”
Willadee pulled a strand of hair between her thumb and forefinger to see whether it squeaked. It did. She flipped her head back, wrapped a towel around it, and started out of the bathroom.
“Well, did he kill him or not?” Swan hollered after her.
“Yes!” her mother yelled back. It might take Willadee a while to get around to telling the truth, but if you pinned her down, she wouldn’t lie. She was Moses, through and through.
“So what did he use?”
“His hands!”
His hands. Uncle Toy had killed a man with his bare hands. Swan sat there for a minute, thinking about that, Uncle Toy growing bigger and more powerful in her mind by the second. He had captured her imagination, and she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Strangely enough, Aunt Bernice didn’t appear to be all that impressed with him. Often as not, she acted as if her husband wasn’t there, even when she was sitting right beside him. And they were so perfect together—him being so strong, and sure of himself, and her with that heartbreaking body, and skin like silk. If Aunt Bernice were just a little entranced with Uncle Toy, it would be the most incredible love story, the kind that lives on after the people are gone.
Swan stood up in the tub. Bubbles glistened everywhere. She reached down, scooped up a double handful of suds, and plastered them on either side of her chest, teasing them into pointy breast shapes, just like Aunt Bernice had. Willadee came back into the room in search of a comb and caught her in the act.
“Will you stop doing that.”
It was not a question. Swan slithered back down into the water. Her fabulous foamy breasts lost all their pointiness.
“Did he beat him to death? Did he strangle him?”
Willadee had found her comb and was leaving the room again.
“He broke his neck.”
Chapter 6
Uncle Toy had not spoken to Swan once since the funeral. He’d been around enough. His brothers had “real jobs,” so it was up to him to run Never Closes. His own customers would just have to buy their liquor in public or do without for now.
Every afternoon, an hour or so before Grandma Calla closed the store, Toy would come rolling into the yard in either his blue outrun-the-law Oldsmobile or his black hit-the-woods Ford pickup. Bernice always came with him, never failing to explain that she was afraid to stay home alone. While Willadee was making supper, Toy would busy himself around the place, finding things that needed a man’s hand—a door hanging out of plumb (all the doors were out of plumb), a hole to be patched in the chicken yard fence, a dead tree that needed to come down before some storm blew it over on the house.
The first day, Swan had followed Toy around, hoping he’d notice her, and forgive her, and they could become close, the way it had looked like they might. But Toy never looked her way. He just worked until it was time for supper, then ate like a horse and disappeared into the bar. Swan sat at the kitchen table after he left that first night, listening to her mother and Aunt Bernice talk while they cleaned the kitchen.
“I still can’t hardly stand to think about your daddy doing what he did,” Bernice said. She shuddered, indicating that she was thinking about it all right. In color. She was the only one in the family who seemed bent on bringing that subject up. Everybody else pretty much left it alone. It hung in the air, though. Always there.
Willadee said, “Let’s just let Daddy rest.”
Bernice looked over at her like maybe she felt a little insulted that her conversation starter hadn’t gone anywhere.
“I don’t know how all of you are holding up so well. If I were in your shoes, I don’t think I’d be able to even get out of bed in the morning.”
“If you had kids, you would.”
Having kids was something Bernice didn’t like to talk about, so the kitchen got quiet for a minute. Nothing but the clink and clatter of dishes. Then, as if it just occurred to her, she asked, “When’s Sam coming back?”
“Friday evening,” Willadee answered. “Like always.”
“Wonder where you’ll be next year.”
“God knows.”
“Well, maybe you won’t have to move.”
“Moving’s not that bad.”
“I couldn’t handle it myself, I don’t think.”
“Good thing you didn’t marry Sam.”
End of conversation. There was empty silence, until Willadee started humming “In the Gloaming,” and then Bernice just up and left the room. Like that. No warning. Willadee wiped her hands on her apron and watched her go. Then she noticed Swan, sitting there all eyes and ears.
“Swan Lake, what are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, do it somewhere else.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Naturally, Swan didn’t move. If you didn’t actually refuse to mind Willadee, you could frequently get by with not minding, at least for a little while.
“What’s Aunt Bernice’s problem?” Swan asked when her mother had started back washing dishes.
“Somewhere else, Swan.”
That had been Wednesday night, and now it was Friday, and time was running out. Swan’s father would be back this evening, and he would tell them where they were going to live next year, and in the morning, Willadee would have all their clothes packed up before they even got out of bed. As soon as breakfast was over, they’d be off. Going home to Louisiana. Either getting back into the swing of things in Eros, the tiny town they’d been living in for all of a year now, or else getting ready to move.
Swan hoped they moved. People felt sorry for her and her brothers because they moved so much, but she could never resist the excitement of it. When you went to a new place, everybody welcomed you, and church members had you over for dinner and made over you, and things were peachy. For a little while.
As far as Swan was concerned, once the new wore off, it was time to move again. After that, life got to be a dance, careful, careful how you step, mustn’t get on anybody’s toes, but her father did, all the time. He specialized in it. Just couldn’t resist telling sinners that God loved ’em, and he loved ’em, and why didn’t they put in an appearance at the Lord’s house, come Sunday. And we’re talking the rankest sinners, here. Men who were too lazy to work, and couples who were living in sin, and even one frowsy old woman who used to be a stripper, down on Bourbon Street, until her looks played out. Samuel didn’t stop at trying to get ordinary sinners saved. He wanted everybody on God’s green earth saved, and acted like the whole thing was up to just him. Like the Lord didn’t have any other helpers.
Sometimes Swan wished her father did almost anything else besides preaching. Probably, if he were the postmaster, or owned a hardware store, or something, and everybody in town wasn’t always watching her, hoping she’d mess up so they could gossip about it, probably, she could just be a regular kid. It must be lovely to be like everybody else.
But there were bigger things to think about right now. She had less than a day to get in solid with Uncle Toy. Once she and her family drove away in the morning, she wouldn’t see him again for a year, and the whole world could come to an end by then.
Swan started scouting around for Uncle Toy as soon as she woke up. Noble and Bienville were nowhere in sight, thank heaven. They had gotten disgusted with her the past couple of days, what with her trailing around after Uncle Toy all the time, and they’d started playing by themselves. Which suited Swan just fine. Everything that had seemed exciting less than a week ago had paled in comparison to Uncle Toy, who was bigger than life, bigger than anything she had ever seen in life, or could imagine ever seeing.
She found him out beside the house. He was on the ground, under Papa John’s old truck, just his feet sticking out, and he was tinkering with something. Swan squatted down and looked under the truck, and cleared her throat loudly. Uncle Toy didn’t have to glance over to know who it was.
“Can I help?” Swan asked.
“Nope.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind.”
“Well, I would.”
His voice was blunt as a sledgehammer. Swan narrowed her eyes into slits and got this faraway, thoughtful look on her face.
“Do you know what?” she asked, after a while.
“What.”
“I have purely been wasting my time on you.”
“Is that so.”
“It damn sure is.”
She stood up and tapped her foot a couple of times. Disdainfully. She had her arms crossed in front of her chest, and she was staring down at his feet. If she’d known for sure which foot was the real one, she’d have given it a good hard kick. But she didn’t know, so she just used words to try to hurt him.
“Here I’ve been, dogging your tracks like you were some kind of hero, when all you really are is an old, one-legged bootlegger. I bet you never saved anybody’s life. You prob’ly lost your leg running away from a fight. And as for Yam Ferguson, he must have been one puny sombuck if he let himself get done in by the likes of you. I wouldn’t be scared of you in a graveyard on a dark night.”
It was awfully quiet. Uncle Toy wasn’t tinkering anymore. He could come sliding out from under that truck any minute. But Swan didn’t care. She really wasn’t scared of him. She had decided not to care one way or the other about him. He had become completely insignificant to her, the way she had to him.
She said, “And I don’t want to be your friend anymore, either.” That part was hard, because she didn’t mean it, even more than she hadn’t meant all the other things she’d been saying. She had a heavy feeling in her stomach, the way you do when you close a door that you don’t want closed, not ever. But she had had it with him. Begging wasn’t in her. So she turned, and stalked off, too proud to look back.
Toy slid out from under the truck and sat up. He could see her, heading into the house. Shoulders straight, head erect. “Well, I’m so glad,” he said softly.
Not that it was entirely true.
By the time Samuel’s old car pulled into the yard, it was almost dark. Swan was sitting on the porch steps waiting for him. The instant his feet hit the ground, she hurled herself across the yard and tackled him, hugging him and dancing up and down.
“Hey, hey, wait a minute,” Samuel protested, but he liked the reception.
“Are we moving?”
“We are.”
“Good. Where to?”
“We’ll talk about that later. Where’s your mama?”
Just as he asked, Willadee appeared on the porch and waved, and the two of them started walking toward each other. Bernice was sitting in the swing, sort of off to one side, almost hidden by the morning glories that meandered across the porch rail. She watched while Samuel and Willadee moved into each other’s arms. Noble and Bienville, who had been off in the pasture, were charging into the yard, bearing down on their parents—hugging them both at once, because those two were still standing welded together. One thing about Samuel and Willadee. They sure said hello like they meant it.
Eventually, Samuel turned loose of his wife and picked Bienville up and shook him like a rag, and made noises like an animal roaring, and set him down again. He greeted Noble by boxing him on the shoulder. Noble boxed back. Samuel grabbed his shoulder, as if that had hurt more than he expected, and while Noble was wondering whether he’d hit his old man too hard, Samuel cuffed him another good one.
All this, Bernice observed from her perch in the swing. Samuel and Willadee and the kids were starting up the steps, all jabbering at once. When they got even with Bernice, she stood up, sleek and graceful as a cat. She was wearing a soft little cream-colored dress that clung to her curves when she moved. And when she didn’t. Everybody stopped stock-still. Bernice had that effect on people.
“How you doing, Bernice?” Samuel asked.
Bernice said, “Fine as wine.” Smooth and warm, like butter melting.
Willadee rolled her eyes up in her head and drawled, real slow, “I’ve got something on the stove, Sam. You just come on in whenever you’re ready.” And she went inside the house. Talk about trust.
“Where’s that husband of yours?” Samuel asked Bernice. She motioned toward the backyard. A vague gesture. Samuel glanced in the direction she had pointed and nodded, as though indicating approval of Toy’s presence out there, somewhere. “I hear he’s been keeping things going around here the last few days.”
“Some things, yes.”
Samuel’s eyes played over Bernice’s face. No fondness, no malice. Just a look that said he knew where she was heading, and he wasn’t going along with her. He looked at her like that until she looked away. Then he opened the screen door and waved his children inside.
“C’mon, c’mon, your mama’s waitin’.”
“Sure am, preacher boy,” Willadee called out. Drawling again.
All during supper, Swan and Noble and Bienville kept after Samuel to tell them where they were moving, but he kept putting them off. This wasn’t like their father. Usually, he couldn’t wait to give them the news, and to embellish it with every single positive comment he’d been able to drag out of anybody who’d ever seen the place. As a rule, the new town was so small that it wasn’t easy finding people who’d been there, even just passing through—except for the pastor who was leaving, and he was apt to be more full of warnings than full of compliments. But Samuel always managed to find something good to tell about it. The people were the salt of the earth, or the countryside was a sight for sore eyes, or the church building was a relic and there were rumors that it had secret passageways, or the parsonage yard had a good spot for a playhouse, or something.
Tonight, though, was different, and everybody noticed. Even Calla and Toy and Bernice had questioning looks on their faces.
“Anything wrong, Sam?” Willadee asked.
“I was planning to tell you about it first, and then break it to everybody else.”
Willadee passed the speckled limas across to Toy. “They must be sending us to bayou country. We’ve been everywhere else.”
Samuel said, “They’re not sending us to bayou country.” He set down his tea glass and rested both arms on the table. Everybody’s eyes were on him. Waiting.
“They’re not sending us anywhere.”
Swan broke all records getting out of the house after supper. She had to find a place to think this thing through. She would have settled into the swing, but Aunt Bernice would be out there again before you could even spit. She always hogged the swing as soon as she’d finished helping to clean the kitchen. Swan herself never had to assist with such chores, although she knew unfortunate kids her age who did. Willadee was of the opinion that you’re only a kid once. Grandma Calla thought that once was a dandy time to learn some responsibility, but Swan could wear you to a frazzle, so she never pushed her point. If Aunt Bernice had an opinion, she kept it to herself. She just did her share of the work as quickly as possible and disappeared into the porch shadows until bedtime. You wouldn’t have known she was there, except for the gentle squeaks the swing made.
Swan wondered sometimes what Aunt Bernice found to think about, sitting out there all alone. She had asked her once. Aunt Bernice had lifted her hair up off the back of her neck and murmured, “Hmm? Oh. Things.”
Anyway, the swing was out, so Swan passed it by and went on through the yard, past the haphazard jumble of vehicles parked between the house and the road. The regulars had been gathering in to Never Closes for over an hour now.
Any other time, Swan would have crept around to the back of Never Closes and hid out, trying to get a peek inside. She and her brothers were strictly forbidden to do that, but they did it anyway, every chance they got. So far, they hadn’t seen anything worth looking at, and they’d have given the project up if it hadn’t been forbidden. But the fact that it was had to mean something, so they’d kept after it.
Tonight, though, Swan didn’t feel much like spying. All she wanted was privacy. She reached the road and walked along the grassy shoulder. She could see perfectly well, even once she’d gotten away from the lights of the house and bar. The moon was almost, almost full. She’d never realized before that the moon could shed enough light to give the world any real brightness. She’d also never strayed far from her family in the dark. But it wasn’t dark. The night was luminous.
Out there, walking along beside that easy-curving road, Swan decided she didn’t need to find a place to think. Who needed a place, when you could just keep moving, putting one foot in front of the other, enjoying going nowhere.