My Monticello(26)
As Knox finished talking, other folks took turns telling and retelling what they’d experienced on First Street the night before. The hissing insistence of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The way the men had moved in rough formation, like soldiers on TV. They were pouring petrol at the doors and the wood around the windows! Papa Yahya said, his voice breaking. So that the people could not get out, I believe. We were grabbing the children so fast!
They gonna come up here and kill us! KJ said.
Devin peered back at the Jaunt, then over to Mr. Byrd. If we go up higher, can we see town from here?
You’re not supposed to go in the house, Georgie said, but Devin cut in: Nobody’s even talking about that house—I just wanna get somewhere where I can see.
Mr. Byrd said you could probably see town, if it was clear, if you walked up the hill toward the upper shuttle-bus stop. You could see some of the taller buildings on Pantops, rooftops breaking through the trees. You could see more if you hiked up the zagging path to the adjacent hill, Montalto, about an hour’s hike there and back. It wasn’t long before a group started toward that higher peak, Devin walking out in front, his head the tallest, with Mr. Byrd beside him, a makeshift walking stick under the older man’s fist. The twins went too, along with KJ, who galloped behind, looking lighter without his suitcase. I did not see it on the patio; he must’ve hidden it.
Knox and I remained at the welcome pavilion, along with everyone else. I stayed to watch over MaViolet, though part of me wanted to hike up and see for myself. I thought maybe if I could gaze down at that sprawling view, I’d be able to figure out a way back. After the group was out of sight, Georgie set out a line of bottled waters, a meager assortment of snacks, blinking nervously. Then he made his way out to the lot to keep watch, his rifle on its strap gently sloping across his back.
When the group returned, they funneled across the patio in a staggered line to get at the remaining waters. A wet heat radiated off Devin when he passed me, his T-shirt even blacker and clinging to him. He tossed a bottled water over Ira’s head to where KJ stood, then twisted the cap from another, halving it in one pull.
Faces bronzed in sweat, Devin and the others gave their account. They could see smoke rising above what was probably our neighborhood. But they’d also seen evidence of fires elsewhere: sooty columns rising from at least three different parts of town. Was our whole neighborhood burnt, we asked, or just some of it? Could they tell which other places had been on fire? It was hard to tell beneath the haze.
All I know is we can’t go back—not yet, Devin said.
Jesus, Knox said, pacing again. It’ll get better soon. It has to.
I’d known, since the start of the unraveling, that Knox believed our problems were largely technical and logistical: the power, the weather. He knew there were sick and dangerous people, but there were more good people, he’d told me more than once. He felt sure things would start to get better as soon as they got the power back on, the planes flying again.
We need to make a sign, Knox said. Something visible from the air. And he did just that, later that day, along with the children. They staked out words using white plastic bags found in the café storeroom, asking me what they should write. When they finished, I walked the edge of each wavering letter: WE ARE HERE, it read.
* * *
The heat did not let up that whole afternoon. MaViolet hunched in her café chair, attempting to raise some kind of smile. I helped her get up, walked with her, arm in arm, back to the restrooms. By then, the guards had put out buckets of water; we washed our hands, ran wet paper towels over our faces.
When I was a girl, whenever Momma worked late driving buses to and from events for the high school, MaViolet would run a bath for me before supper. While I lifted clouds of bubbles in the tub, she’d finish a stew, a casserole, whatever she was cooking. Some nights Ms. Edith would stop by to leave a basket on our counter: cockeyed cukes, wobbly green tomatoes, or some such rebellious bounty from the garden. Other nights random neighbors might drop in. If it was just the two of us eating, MaViolet let me put on one of Papa Alred’s old records. Was I working hard, she wanted to know. Were those teachers of mine treating me all right? Had I found any joy that day? Now I swished soap into the bucket and helped my grandma untangle her arms from her housecoat, exposing a thin nightgown underneath. Through its pale sheerness, I could see her sturdy underthings, bright and white as bone.
You’re a good girl, she said to my reflection in the mirror, but I knew she could only see certain parts of me. I bent to peel off her tall stockings, which helped with circulation, and dunked them in the filmy water. I balled up her housecoat next, figuring I’d wash her gown if we were still stranded the next day. That’s when I felt the husk of something in her pocket and fished it out. It was an inhaler: her inhaler. I felt my guts sink. Still, I tucked it deep into my pocket, hoping MaViolet hadn’t seen it along with the wave of panic that must have crossed my face. While her housecoat dried on a chair in the sun, I sat with MaViolet in the relative privacy of the theater—the door propped to allow for a wedge of light.
The afternoon sun cast orange on our limbs. Ezra started a card game with LaToya, gambling for matches torn from stray packs. She won three times in a row then quit after Ezra kept accusing her of cheating. Devin and Elijah went back to the loop, reclaiming their chairs beyond the Jaunt. More than once, I heard Georgie’s familiar refrain whenever Mr. Byrd came near: They aren’t supposed to be here, remember? I leaned back in a café chair and tried to rest my eyes. In the blackness, I saw the boy from the pickup, his fingers spidering over a ledge. When I startled awake, Carol was not far from me, her silvery bob frazzled by the heat, her hens at her feet. She was testing Ira’s forehead with the back of her hand the way you might check a child for fever. Are we hiding, she said. Are we waiting?