Pew(40)

Nice to see your sweet face, baby, the woman from the gas station said. I never seen a face as sweet as yours. She looked in my eyes, calm and inspecting. You take care, now, bye-bye.
A part of the yard sloped down and there a long, narrow tarp had been laid down, and a hose was running water across it. Children flung themselves down it, one or two at once, on their bellies, face-first, screaming.
You going to give it a try? Dr. Corbin asked, appearing at my elbow. He handed me a piece of cake on a plate. These ladies won’t rest until you’ve had some cake, so you may as well go on and have it. No arguing with them. No, sir.
He and I sat in some chairs beneath a tree too sparse to give shade. People came up to talk to Dr. Corbin, sometimes to pray with him, sometimes just to tell him things. Mostly Dr. Corbin said little in reply. He listened, nodded, his mouth making small smiles that came and went. Sometimes someone would pat my shoulder or say something to me, too, and all the while I thought about the way that stained-glass light bleeds onto the ceiling in those first moments of a morning, spilled and soft. Hardly anyone ever sees it, I thought, and I wondered if Mrs. Columbus had ever seen it or whether Johnny or Dr. Corbin had.
Come here and let me look at you. Someone was standing near, someone large. I looked up, half-shielding my eyes from the sun’s glint—a bright red shirt and a patchy black beard.
This is Leonard, Dr. Corbin said to me.
OK, Leonard said, bending his knees with trouble to stoop at my chair. All right, here we go. He looked right at me with hardly a feeling to see in his face at all. You been here since Sunday?
Yes, Dr. Corbin said, though Leonard had only been looking at me. A woman was at Dr. Corbin’s side, discreetly crying and explaining something sad about someone she loved.
Hm, Leonard said. I imagine we were the last stop, were we? Hm. They had to send you over here because they didn’t know what to do with you? Or they got tired of doing it? That’s how it is? I see. I see how it is. That’s how they’re going to be—and this week on top of everything—today on top of everything. Well. I see how it is. I see.
The Reverend over at the church on Main Street called up and asked me to help out, Dr. Corbin said. And I said we didn’t mind—I don’t mind at least.
Suppose we don’t mind! Leonard said. On top of everything right now, we got to help them out whenever they ask, is that how it is?
The woman crying at Dr. Corbin’s side began to cry a little less discreetly, still whispering something to him through her tears as a mass of children across the lawn screamed in pleasure in the water in the heat.
And who was this kid staying with over there? Leonard asked.
The Bonner family.
And who’s the lady of that house?
Hilda Bonner.
Gladstone, though. She’s a Gladstone.
I don’t know anything about it, Dr. Corbin said.
You ought to though. It’s what I’d been hearing about from Maize. She said last Sunday this family came into her place after church last week because, you know, since last year all these white people come over to her place for their Sunday dinner now. I don’t know why. They must have all agreed about it. I don’t know. But Maize knows Hilda since she used to look after her when she was a little girl until she got word about who Mr. Gladstone was, then she quit real quick.
And so, what—what are you saying? Dr. Corbin asked.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t help someone who needs help. But to be honest I don’t quite know what to think about the whole thing only that it don’t sit right with me. Maize found out from her sister they found the kid sleeping in their church and they take it upon themselves to be the saviors, to take the kid in and try to figure something out on their own—don’t even alert child services or nothing, which I know because I know some people who work over there and I looked in on it—then they give up once it gets too complicated, that is, when half of them start saying maybe the kid’s not white or not white enough and then what happens, huh? What do they do then? They want to make it our problem. They think it’s time we did something about it. That or maybe Hilda’s daddy found out what she was up to and wasn’t having it—
Now, I don’t know about that, Dr. Corbin said. The weeping woman was no longer weeping, her eyes closed, one hand thumbing a beaded bracelet in the other.
I’m just calling it like I see it. It’s just all the timing of it the moment they pick to send him over here, you see?
He? the woman who had been crying asked in a tiny voice. I really—well, I thought—
He, she, or she or he—it don’t matter to me, Leonard said, louder now, I don’t care. It don’t make a bit of difference—
Y’all shush now, talking like that, all kinds of rude, a woman said, leaning toward Leonard as she stood near.
What am I going to say or not say in front of this kid? Leonard asked her.
We don’t know who this child is, that’s all. We shouldn’t be treating them like—
We sure don’t. Leonard’s voice flattened hers. And if he’d showed up on his own volition here, it would be one thing, but they got sent over here by a Gladstone.
A Gladstone? That Gladstone?
There ain’t any other Gladstone families except the one.
Oh, the woman said. Well, I don’t know anything about that.
Everybody knows who he is, Leonard said, seeming to speak to everyone. Everybody knows and nobody says. Isn’t that always the way? Everyone knowing and nobody saying.
The woman had turned to leave but looked over her shoulder to ask, Didn’t they put him away somewhere finally?