Winter Loon(78)

THE SIRENS SOUNDED IN THE middle of the night, a call to the volunteer firefighters to report to the station. Lester roused me from my sleep. “Wes,” he said. “Radio has the fire at your house.”

By the time the fire trucks arrived, the whole house was engulfed in flames. A barricade of furniture against the door made breaking it down a struggle for the firemen. Mona stayed back at their house with Mariah, and all we could do—me, Lester, Jolene, and Troy—was stand by and watch it burn. We covered our mouths and noses to keep out the stench, to hold in the disbelief. Our eyes watered and stung from the smoke and from knowing what was in the oven of those cinder block walls. Flecks of flaming debris rose in the heat like birds taking flight. The contents I’d inventoried—cans, bottles, medicine, knickknacks, photographs, newspaper and nail clippings, sheets and blankets, television and recliners—melted, exploded, disintegrated in that hotbox. My knees buckled and I crouched on the ground, arms over my head.

We stayed until we heard a fireman shouting, “Cap! We got someone,” long after that someone could have survived. “Let’s go on now, kids,” Troy said. “It’s over.” And it was. The house was reduced to smoldering rubble. The fire, they said, started in the bedroom. They found Ruby’s body burned to a crisp in the bed she’d shared with Gip. We went back to the Hightowers’, the four of us. Mona had breakfast waiting.



I HAD NOT RECOGNIZED THAT Ruby’s face smoothed out the same way my mother’s had because Ruby was old and death had been coming for her for much longer than it had stalked my mother. But now I could see it. Ruby had thrown me out to save me. She had not once reached out to me and begged me to stay. She’d held on to me but she’d let me go. In her violet hour, she had found her shred of decency, long buried. I repeated over and over what she’d said, what she’d done, wondering at what point she knew how it was she would never give up her house, not to the bank, not to anyone. What a joke that I thought she could hurt herself with that knife. Ruby wasn’t much for small gestures. Recalling her insistence that I take the tomato box was what made me open it again. Sure enough, the things I’d replaced had been rearranged. On top was an opened envelope addressed to me and postmarked from Montana a week before my sixteenth birthday. There was no return address.

The birthday card was ragged on the edges, handled over and over. I counted the money, all small bills, none crisp from the bank: $387. A small fortune. My father’s spelling was poor, his handwriting so sloppy, to read it was like breaking code. Whole lines were crossed out. It was clear he’d struggled through each word. I imagined, too, that despite the errors he was not about to go out and buy another card. Or maybe he already had and this was the best he could do.

Dear Wes,

So your 16 now. A man. I hope this money is something you can use. I suspect there tight with you, your grandparents. Can’t blame them. Its hard to keep food on a table. So look here. I have not been much of a dad to you. I been thinking about it a lot and you and I probably make each other worse not better. Probably we both should shoot for better. I will miss you but think its for the best you stay there. Maybe your ready to be on your own. I was at your age. Life is full of hard choices. This was one for me. I hope for your sake you can put me and your mom behind you and make a good life for yourself. It may not seem it but I do love you.

He’d struggled with the signature, writing Moss, striking it out in favor of Dad, though he put a line through that as well, deleting himself in all his incarnations. No mystery then. He didn’t want me and that was that. Though that money. Ruby had left it in the envelope. I couldn’t imagine she ever told Gip about it, since surely he would have pocketed it without a second thought. To hold that amount in my hand, to think of buying anything with it, felt like I was accepting a bribe. In return for your broken heart, in return for all you’ve lost, for all I’ve taken from you, here is a handful of money.

Along with my mother’s keepsakes, Ruby included mementos of her own. A coloring book. A girl’s sweater. A stuffed bear. A gold necklace with a tiny cross. A naked baby doll, her hair cropped short, plugholes exposed. At the very bottom of the box, flat against the cardboard, was the wedding photograph, the one she’d hurled against the wall. A puncture hole from the broken glass went right through Gip’s chest. On top of it, a dark yellow packet of photographs with a receipt from the developer dated the day before Ruby ran Gip down.

So she’d gotten herself dressed and sent me out for cigarettes. Maybe she sat on the living room floor, these remnants around her, arranging them in the box in some order that made sense to her. Had she smelled the doll’s hair, touched the gold cross with her stained fingertips, held the child’s sweater to her face, hoping the scent of little girl still clung there somehow? And those photographs. Fresh fingerprints all over them. On the edges, swiped across the face of my mother holding a baby dressed in pink. Another with my father in profile holding the baby well on his shoulder. Maybe a month or two old, the baby is bulky, robust, a heavy brow over dark eyes. She took after my mother’s side, that was clear. None of it was proof of anything. I knew that. Was giving them to me Ruby’s way of justifying the punishment she had meted to Gip? Or maybe she simply wanted me to see pictures of the long-dead sister my mother missed so much that Ruby could never bring herself to look at? And what did it matter anymore? They were all gone.