Outrun the Moon(74)

I roll and roll, managing to find every painful rock or stick this knoll offers. Elodie finds them, too; I can hear each of her yelps a few moments after mine. My head continues to spin even after I’ve stopped rolling. So this is how it feels to be bread dough.

Something lands on top of me, and then another something follows, shrieking loudly in my ear.

Elodie and I lie heaving in a tangle of limbs, bruised and bloodied. The sky looks like the eight-treasure juk I once made of black sesame and millet. I boiled it too long, and it became eight horrors, with little specks and brown clots floating in the ashy liquid.

After a moment, I sit up with a grimace and pick hay from my hair. Lincoln Street lies twenty feet to my left. Elodie shakily sits up as well. Grass stains cover her uniform, and one sleeve has torn away from her dress under the arm. A clump of mud sticks to her ear, and there’s a reddish-purple bruise developing on her cheek.

A sneeze wracks her body. She managed to hang onto her purse, and from it, she pulls out her peacock handkerchief that she embroidered for the Wilkes boys. She dabs at her eyes, blots her face, then finishes the job with a loud honk.

When she’s done, she stares at me. “Tell me I don’t look like you.”

“You don’t. You look worse.” I glance at the meat, which is lying in silent repose between us. “But not as bad as him. You think he cracked any ribs?”

Her face twitches, and then a smile elbows its way out. Her shoulders begin to quake, and I realize she’s laughing. It’s as contagious as applause. We snort and guffaw, seized by a kind of fit that is hard to shake off.

“So that’s—” She tries to get it out, but another wave of laughter shivers through her. “That’s”—gasp—“how you make a rolled rump roast!”

A fresh wave of giggling consumes us, and I wipe tears from my eyes.

Oh, Jack would’ve laughed to see me at the bottom of this knoll covered with grass and bested by a beef.

Before I realize it, my throat tightens, and the tears of laughter run bitter. I dreamed of the day I could afford to buy Jack not just the bones of the ox, but the meat, too. Now that day will never come. His bowl will never again need filling.

To my surprise, Elodie begins to weep, too.

How fine the line is between hilarity and grief. I’ve seen it happen at the cemetery, where in the middle of a service, someone will be hit by a funny thought, and then the laughter will spread like wildfire, made funnier by the inappropriateness of it all.

Maybe sorrow and its opposite, happiness, are like dark and light. One can’t exist without the other. And those moments of overlap are like when the moon and the sun share the same sky.

A middle-aged couple has stopped to stare at us. The woman puts a black-gloved hand to her mouth and turns her wide eyes to her husband. Untucking his arm from her, the man crosses the lawn to us. Elodie stops crying and begins to quietly hiccup.

The man’s horrified gaze flits from the bloodied burlap sack to each of us, with our puffy eyes and tearstained faces. “We’re so sorry for your loss. Take this, and God bless.” The man tucks a five-dollar bill in each of our hands, then hurries back to the woman.

He thinks we’re mourning a body.

The woman twists her head back a few times as they leave. Elodie stares at the money in her dirty hand, then lifts her astonished eyes to me.

I smile, and she grins back. It’s funny how one little moment of truth can undo hours of hostility.

“Well, now we have enough money to get this cut and delivered,” I say.

“Are you kidding? I’m not giving Blowhard another red cent. We can handle Brisky, as long as we don’t climb any more hills.” She gives me a firm look, but it is hard to feel chastened by anyone who names her meat Brisky.

We haul ourselves up and take the gentler zigzagging path. Somehow, Brisky feels lighter than when we started out.





34



WE CARRY BRISKY PAST A GROVE OF PINE trees, where men are installing hammocks.

“So, who is Mrs. Lowry?” Elodie asks after a while.

I gape at the burrs stuck to the back of her hair and almost stop walking. “How do you know about her?”

“You talk in your sleep. You’ve said things like, ‘Mrs. Lowry says, if you don’t like the rules, change them.’”

Well, that’s a revelation, and a notch disturbing. I’d take snoring over sleep talking, even if I don’t have many secrets worth guarding. “She wrote a book called The Book for Business-Minded Women. It taught me a lot about life . . . and business. For example, she says, ‘Adversity makes a great teacher.’ I’ve had to use that one a lot lately.”

She stops in the shadow of a bush with popcorn flowers. “Brisky needs a rest.”

We sit side by side and watch people lighting fires and brushing the ground with branches of longleaf pine. I suppose it is the natural thing to do—make house, even when you don’t have one. Ma said, a clear mind starts with a swept porch.

Most folks have tents by now, and some have personalized theirs with ribbons, flowers, or even * willows. Sonoran women in bright shawls fan themselves with magnolia leaves, while their children play hide-and-seek. A white woman approaches one of the children—a girl about five—and offers a basket of crackers. Before she can take one, the girl’s mother places a firm hand on her daughter’s shoulder. The two women lock gazes, and though no words are spoken, a complex tide of emotions ebbs and flows between them: sorrow, embarrassment, pride, empathy, and gratitude.