Winter Loon(70)

“I can take it, what people say. It doesn’t bother me. But lay off Jolene. I mean it.”

She rolled her eyes, lifted her chin in bare-boned acknowledgment, like the highest bidder at an auction. “And for the record, evicting your grandparents? That was my dad, not me. He’s not going back on it. I tried, believe it or not.” She tightened her grip on her books, breathed in, and held it, let her words come out on that breath. “I wish he’d notice me for a change. Give a shit, you know?”

I knew exactly.



I MET JOLENE AT THE library, made out with her in the walnut stacks until the whiskered librarian marched over in sensible black shoes, reading glasses bobbing on the ends of a gold chain around her neck, and pointed to the door. “Out,” she said.

Leftover daylight turned the darkening sky jewel blue as we walked home. We stopped across the street from Jolene’s house, out of the white wedge from the streetlamp. Yellow lights flickered in the twilit windowpanes. Mona passed back and forth by the kitchen window. The bathroom window went dark. Troy emerged from the hallway, wiping his hands against his pant legs.

“I like looking into your house like this.”

Jolene squeezed my hand. “We should pull more curtains.”

“Did I ever tell you my father was a terrible hunter? He never came home with anything. Oh, sometimes he’d help a friend carve up a kill, and they’d send him home with some deer steaks. Never bagged anything of his own, as far as I can remember. Stopped duck hunting because he was too fidgety for the blind. You know the saying ‘jump the gun’? That’s my dad.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

I grabbed her hand and kissed it, then her neck, her mouth. I thought about what Lester had said, stoned but still sage. Love’s good. Until it isn’t.

“I don’t want loving me to wreck you. I don’t come from much good. But I’m going to try. I want you to know that. I want Troy and Mona, Bull, Mariah, Lester even. I want everyone to know that.” I mimed placing a ring on her finger.

“Why don’t you let me be the judge.”

A car lurched up the street, its headlights wobbling. Gip’s Plymouth.

“Christ,” I said. “What now?”

The car stopped half in the street and Ruby climbed out. She didn’t see us. Instead she walked right up to the front door and banged on it. Jolene held her finger up to her lip. We crept closer to hear.

Mona came to the door. Her voice sounded surprised, confused. “Ruby. Hi.”

“I need to see Wes.”

“He’s not here.”

I couldn’t run off and leave Jolene’s family to deal with whatever Ruby had in mind. What had I just said? I didn’t come from much and that not-much was standing on the doorstep. Jolene and I walked hand in hand into the light.

“I’m right here, Ruby.”





CHAPTER 21

IN ALL THE time I’d lived with Gip and Ruby, I’d never known either one of them to be in another person’s house. But there she was, sitting at the table, in the same spot where Mona usually sat, smoking a cigarette in a kitchen where no one ever smoked at all. She dropped the ashes on a plate. We were all on edge.

“So what’s this about?” I asked.

“The cops,” Ruby said. Her eyes darted between Mona and Troy, to Jolene, then back to me. “Maybe we ought to go back home, you and me. I can’t talk in front of them.”

I was as uncomfortable as she was, our trouble on display that way. Still, I knew not to be alone with Ruby right then. Whatever brought her to this house was more than I could manage alone.

“It’s okay, Ruby,” I said. “Let us help.”

She stuck her finger in her ear, twisted it violently. “They’re looking for Gip.”

Ruby told us the whole story, her lips tucked in around her gums like piecrust. Spittle was everywhere. Gip had apparently been running his mouth for hours at the bar, going on about Burt Rook and the eviction notice, about the bank and all. Maybe he was on his way over to the Rooks’ house to set him straight when he saw Kathryn walking down the street. He’d stopped the car and gotten out, stumbling over to her, hoping to give her a lift home, or at least that’s what she told the police. She’d declined nicely at first, but Gip insisted and grabbed her arm. Kathryn apparently told him to get his “filthy hands off her.” He’d slapped her mouth, which stunned her long enough for him to drag her toward the car, telling her the whole time he didn’t think her father was going to take kindly to Kathryn speaking like that to her elders. Kathryn got her wits about her and kicked Gip in the nuts. She ran the rest of the way home. Burt Rook called the police. And now Gip was missing. Ruby found his car parked downtown.

“What happened to your teeth?” I asked.

“The cops come to the door. I was so flustered. I told them he wasn’t there, but they went ahead and searched the house for him anyways. Thought I was hiding him. I run into the bathroom to put my teeth in and dropped the plate. Busted it in half.”

Mariah appeared next to Troy in the doorway.

“Is Wes in trouble?” she asked.

“You go to your room. This is for the adults, not you,” Mona said. “Go on.”

“What can we do for you, Ruby?” Troy asked.