Winter Loon(28)

I could go live with him and Elizabeth, I thought. We’d travel around with the carnival and I’d eat cotton candy for breakfast and corn dogs for dinner. I asked him with my eyes and she saw me.

“Don’t you get any big ideas, now. Mom needs you here. And you,” she said, pointing at my father. “You try to take him and I’m calling the cops, Moss. I swear.”

“Go on, Little,” he said to me. “I’ll be back soon. After she cools off.”

I climbed halfway up the stairs. What they were saying I couldn’t hear anymore. My mother was waving her arms this way and that, a weather vane in a windstorm. It was like watching a movie, and I thought they might kiss and then he would be home for good. But he got real close to her, reared up, then grabbed her by the neck. I screamed for him to stop and started back down the stairs, but they both told me to stay where I was. My father backed away again. I could see in the fading light that my mother was smiling. He reached behind the seat and pulled out something made of sticks and string and handed it to my mother. She held it at arm’s length and laughed and flung it into the road. He squared off at her like a boxer, like he was going to hit her good. I screamed, and it was like we were right next to each other, the way he could see me. He went limp, and I knew he was leaving me again. A short rope pulled in my stomach, the fibers tugged with each step he took away from me. I picked up Elizabeth and ran after him.

“Little, you stay here,” he said to me when I caught up with him.

“Don’t go,” I said. “Please.”

“Watch over your mom and Elizabeth for me.”

I buried my face in the cat’s coat, dousing her with tears. “No, you take her. She loves you most,” I said, pushing the cat into his arms.

He knelt down next to me and touched the side of my face. “I’ll take good care of her, I promise.”

I raised my hand and held it weakly next to my face, and he did the same. He got into the blue pickup truck, plunked Elizabeth down on the seat next to him, and drove off.

In the morning, I saw the remnants of the thing my mother threw into the street—tangled fishing line, busted branches, and dead songbirds squashed in the road, their cotton stuffing waving gently in the breeze.



HE WAS BACK A WEEK later. I came home from school and there he was, sitting on the couch like he’d never left. Elizabeth wove herself around my ankles, letting me know she was happy to see me, too. He smiled and whistled and told me how much he’d missed me all summer, said how I was growing faster than corn. When my mother got home, she threw her arms and legs around him like he was a soldier come home from the war. She sat on his lap while we ate supper, feeding him with her fingers, which he sucked clean. He stood behind her at the sink, one arm wrapped low around her waist, one high. I had to look away when I started thinking where his hands might be. I turned the television up loud when her giggles turned hoarse. A dish fell to the floor and I startled, thinking a fight would break out next. But instead she swept by me, him in pursuit, and the two of them went into the bedroom and closed the door.





CHAPTER 10

LESTER DROVE A midnight-blue Impala that he’d mostly rebuilt with Bull’s help. The inside was torn up, but he’d splurged on a high-gloss paint job. He used the bandana he kept in his back pocket to buff off fingerprints and bug smudges. Lester said he was in love with that car and would screw it if he could figure out how. I bummed a ride with him to go check on Bull and maybe catch a glimpse of that Jolene, who I hadn’t seen since my birthday but couldn’t get off my mind.

The doctor had insisted Bull take it easy for a couple of weeks, which kept him off the farm. But other than a persistent ringing in his ears that drove him half-nuts, Bull’s only other side effect from the lightning strike was that he swore off beef. Lester said he reminded Bull that the cow was a dairy cow and that he’d be more justified in not drinking milk or eating cheese, but Bull said to honor the dead cow he’d never eat beef again. Lester being Lester grabbed a greasy sack full of hamburgers from the taproom on our way over.

Lester talked about the Hightowers like they were family to him. I thought I’d have to get cagey to pump him for information about Jolene, but she was all that mouth runner wanted to talk about. From him I learned that Jolene was a year older than me, that Mona’s sister Trudy was Jolene’s mother, that Trudy had hung herself—“booze, drugs, sex . . . you name it,” Lester had said—that there was no father, never had been, that Jolene was a “wildcat.” An image of Lester and Jolene popped into my head, the two of them scratching and clawing at each other.

We rode with the windows down, and I put my arm out, tapped the roof with my fingertips, tried to pretend I wasn’t hanging on every word. “Trudy never could keep her shit together much,” Lester said. “Mona and Troy about half raised her and Jolene. Trudy would come around, say she was going straight or something, mooch off them for a while, then pack Jolene off. The two of them were around a lot a few years ago. Shit, she was ugly then. Big forehead, messed-up teeth, flat as a board.” Lester panted, his head jostling from side to side like a big dumb dog. He kept rhythm with the radio and drummed his leg and the dashboard. He pounded my chest with his palm. “But damned if that didn’t wear off, am I right?” I rolled my eyes, tried to sell him on me not noticing. Lester laughed and punched me in the arm. Lester was the happiest guy I ever knew.