The Vanishing Half(92)

Oh, he realized. C. L. It dawned on him, closing the paper as Dr. Brenner called Adele’s name, that, in a way, Ceel had been his oldest friend.

By then, he hadn’t run a job for Ceel in three months. “I oughta throw you a retirement party already,” Ceel had told him, in their last phone call. “You ain’t that kid no more I first met. You lost your killer instinct.” Early hung up, knowing that Ceel was just trying to goad him, knowing that Ceel still needed him, the old man telling Early, more than once, that he was the best hunter he’d ever had. Once, his insults might’ve worked. But now life was different. Early wasn’t a kid anymore. He had responsibilities. A woman he loved. Her mother, whom he loved too, who had nearly burned the house down when she had turned on the stove to boil water for coffee, forgotten about it, and gone back to sleep. He had gone out to Fontenot’s that day, bought a Mr. Coffee for the kitchen, taught Adele how to use it. But after that morning, she never made coffee again. When Desiree left to open Lou’s Egg House, he woke up and made a cup for Adele. And if he was off working for Ceel, who would be home to do that?

For the first time in his life, he found a job, a real one, at the oil refinery. Now he went to work every day—like a proper man, Adele would have once said—in gray coveralls with his name stitched over the heart. Early Come Lately, his foreman called him, since he was the oldest roughneck in the crew. He worked mornings when Desiree closed, evenings when she went in early, seesawing their schedules so that Adele was never left alone.

One morning, he took Adele fishing down on the river. Swallows swooped overhead, rustling through the pines. Adele glanced over, tightening her sweater around herself. She wore her hair in two long braids now. Each morning Desiree combed her hair, or if she had to get to Lou’s, Early did. She’d taught him how to braid one afternoon, demonstrating with pieces of yarn. He’d practiced, again and again, amazed that his fingers were capable of anything so delicate. He liked the mornings when he braided Adele’s hair. She only allowed him to because she was forgetting, and he could forget, too, that she wasn’t his mother.

“You warm enough there, Miss Adele?” he asked.

She nodded, gathering her sweater closer.

“Desiree said you like goin fishin,” he said. “That true?”

“Desiree say that?”

“Yes’m. I told her we find her some fish to fry up tonight. Sound good, don’t it?”

She stared up at the trees, wringing her hands.

“I ought to be gettin to work myself,” Adele said.

“No, ma’am. You got the day off.”

“The whole day?”

She was so surprised and delighted by the idea that he didn’t have the heart to tell her that she hadn’t gone to work in the past nine months. The white folks she cleaned for had been the first to notice her lapse in memory. Dishes ending up in the wrong drawers, laundry folded before it dried, canned beans chilled in the refrigerator while chicken rotted on the pantry shelf.

“Oh, I’m old,” she’d said. “You know how it is. You just start forgettin things.”

But Dr. Brenner said that it was Alzheimer’s and it would only get worse. Desiree cried on the phone when she called to tell Early. He cut a job in Lawrence short to be with her. It’d be all right, he’d told her, rocking her, even though he couldn’t think of anything more terrifying than looking into Desiree’s face one day and only seeing a stranger.

“Are you my son?” Adele asked.

He smiled, reaching for his fishing rod.

“No, ma’am,” he said.

“No,” she repeated. “I don’t have any sons.”

She turned, satisfied, to the trees, as if he’d just helped her solve a riddle that was troubling her. Then she glanced at him again, almost shyly.

“You not my husband, are you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I don’t have one of those neither.”

“I’m just your Early,” he said. “That’s all I am.”

“Early?” She laughed suddenly. “What type of fool name is that?”

“The only fool name I got.”

“I know who you are,” she said. “You that farm boy always hangin around Desiree.”

He touched the end of her gray braid.

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s exactly right.”



* * *



—

WHEN THEY RETURNED to the house, there was a white woman sitting on the porch.

Early had caught two small speckled trout, delighting Adele, who’d watched them wriggle on his line. Now, heading back home, Adele humming, her arm looped though his, he spotted the white woman through the clearing and gripped her arm tighter. Once a woman from the county came by to check on Adele. Desiree was humiliated, some strange white woman wandering around her house to make sure that the living conditions were suitable.

“It must be suitable enough,” she told Early, “she been livin here sixty years!”

He hated the thought of government workers poking around, as if the two of them were not capable of looking after one forgetting woman, but the visits came with the assistance. They needed money for the medicines, the doctor visits, the bills. Still, he wasn’t too thrilled about meeting the county woman. No surprise what she’d think of him.