Lucky Strikes (2 page)

“Listen, honey, you think you can make an exception? I just need a gallon to get me to Front Royal.”

“Mister, we're closed. If you need gas”—Lord, how it pained me to say it—“you can try Blevins's Standard Oil, eight miles down the road.”

“That's out of my way.”

“Best I can do.”

He looked at me awhile. Then, out of nowhere, give me a wink. “Listen, sweetie, is your daddy around somewhere? Maybe you can run get him for me.”

Now, here's the deal. Any other day, I'd have told him how I felt about being called “sweetie” and how, if he wanted me to fetch my dad, he'd have to tell me who my dad was, and if he wanted to talk to my mom, I'd be glad to take him there, only she wasn't talking so much. I had it all lined up inside me, but it got stuck in my throat somehow, and my eyes was stinging so hard all I could do was go into the station house and lock the door after me.

I waited till I heard him drive away, and then I tried to stand up again, but the tiredness pulled me back down. So I set there, on the damn floor. Dozed off for a spell. Next thing I knew, Janey was standing over me.

“You hungry?” I said.

She nodded.

“Earle, too?”

She nodded.

“Okay, then,” I said.

The real poser was what to do with Mama's eating chair. Didn't seem right throwing it away, but it looked awful creepy setting idle by the table. So we just kinda turned it around, and we picked at our Ralston wheat cereal (no milk) and Royal gelatin desserts, and every so often, we'd raise our heads like we was about to say something, only we forgot what it was.

At last Earle pushed his plate away. “Don't seem right,” he said. “Eating when she can't.”

“She'd
want
you to,” I said. “So you can grow into a big strong feller.”

“She won't be around to see,” said Earle, lowering his chin to the table.

“Melia,” said Janey, “you reckon you miss her more than me?”

“Well, it ain't no pie-eating contest. I reckon we can each miss her our own way. You don't quit loving somebody just on account of they're dead.”

Janey stared at the back of that chair for a long while. Then she drew her arms round her.

“Melia,” she said, “what're we gonna do?”

“Get to bed, that's what.”

“Nooo.” She always gives you the kindliest look when she thinks you're being a dumbass. “Without Mama.”

“Carry on. What choice we got?”

“We gonna starve?” Earle asked in a dull, flat voice.

“What're you talking about? You don't think the station is clearing money? You think—what, we fix people's cars and pump their gas for free?” I give them a nod just to show I meant business. “God didn't make no petroleum trees that I know of. Long as folks got automobiles, they're going to need us, ain't they? And in case you were wondering, there's a plan. Me and Mama worked it all out.”

“What?” said Earle.

“Well, I'm gonna run the business 'cause it's what I been doing anyways.”

“You can fill a radiator faster than anyone this side of the Blue Ridge,” said Janey.

“I suspect you're right. Now, Janey here's gonna learn how to cook and sew and garden, and then, when the time's ready, we're going to get her a husband.”

“He can't be more than thirty,” said Janey. “And he's got to have his teeth.”

“Fine. As for Earle, he's going to college.”

“What if I don't want to?”

“What if I don't care? I'm telling you it's been planned. You just got to do your part, that's all.”

“When we gonna tell folks?” Janey asked.

“It ain't none of their business.”

“But we need to tell 'em. They need to know.”

I leaned across the table and glared at her. “You think this here town had any use for Mama when she was alive? How's it going to be any different now?”

“But Mama had friends,” said Earle. “Minnie-Cora Harper and Mrs. Bean. And what about Mr. Gallagher?”

“He's gonna be
all
broke up,” said Janey.

“When the time's right,” I said, “we'll tell them all. I got stuff to take care of first.”

Janey made a little tower of gelatin cubes on her plate. Then knocked it down, then built it up again.

“I know why you don't want to tell,” she said. “'Cause if they find out, they'll split us up.”

See what I mean? She's a silly child, but she'll surprise you.

“I never heard such foolishness,” I said.

But Earle was looking mighty ashy. “Is that so, Melia?”

“'Course not.”

“Hannah Smartt,” said Janey.

“Who's Hannah Smartt?” said Earle.

“She was in fourth grade, same as me, and she set in the back, and her hair weren't never combed, 'cause she didn't have no ma. Then she lost her pa, and she didn't have no kin left, so Hannah and her two brothers, they got sent to Lynchburg, and what I heard?” Janey lowered her voice. “They didn't even get sent to the same family. They got split up.
Fos. Ter. Care.
”

I could see Earle's lips forming the words.

“Listen, missy,” I said. “You think I'd let 'em try such a thing? Anybody with eyes can see I'm the nearest thing to a mama as you brats is likely to get. Who's feeding and dressing you? Putting you to bed every night?”

“That don't count,” said Earle. “You're not a grown-up.”

“Oh, yeah?”

And to prove my point, I sent them right to bed. Oh, they made me tell them a story about Abdullah the Merman, but when they asked for more, I told them what I always told them.

“Show's over, folks. Come back tomorrow.”

I tapped down their eyelids, and I set there until I heard their breathing. Then I walked over to the window.

The moon was fierce that night. I could see the shape of the leaves on the elm tree and the tire swings moving in the breeze.

Go home, why don't you?

That's what Doc Whitworth'd told Mama after he'd sprung the news on her.
Go home, Brenda. Get things squared away. Make your peace.

Well, whatever she made, it weren't peace.

Fos. Ter. Care.

I closed my eyes and listened to the crickets. Then I felt a tug on my trousers. It was Janey. Skinny as a goddamned muskrat in her newly mended gray shift and half asleep in the moonlight.

“Come to bed,” she said.

“I ain't tired,” I said. (Though I was, I purely was.)

“You need your sleep,” she said. “Ain't no man going to marry you with them nasty ol' coon rings under your eyes.”

“Maybe I don't want no man to marry me.”

Janey didn't answer right off. But when she was pulling the sheets back over her, she said, “Wanting's got nothing to do with nothing.”

 

Chapter

TWO

I woke up when the sun did. Eyes blazing, hair heavy on my head. Janey was breathing into my neck, Earle's knee was gouging my hip. I laid there, waiting for the dark to peel away.

“Let's get this carnival on the road,” I said to myself.

I fried up the last of the eggs, and then I rolled the kids out of bed. They each dragged a blanket to the table. Earle just stared at his plate.

“So help me,” I said, “you make me throw that out, I'm gonna kill you.”

“What'd you pack for lunch?” he asked.

“Apple butter sandwiches.” And when he give me that scowl, I said, “Excuse
me,
Daddy Warbucks. Filet mignon'll be here tomorrow. You don't like my lunches, why don't you trade 'em?”

“He already does,” said Janey.

It was a hair past seven when I shooed them out of the house. There was a hard wind coming down the mountain, right in their faces. They stood rocking in it.

“Listen now. Not a word. It's a day like any other.”

“Then why aren't you open yet?” Earle asked.

“'Cause I got business in town, and that's the last nosy-ass question you get.”

I give them each a light little kick in the butt. It's what I do every morning, and when they were littler, that kick would send him laughing up the hill—halfway to school. Today, they was like a pair of jennies in harness. I watched them just to the point where they disappeared around the bend, and then I called after them.

“Watch out for cars!”

It's a queer town, Walnut Ridge. Some half a century back, the citizens got a little cash in their pockets and a couple stars in their eyes and figured they was going to be the next big deal in Warren County—bigger than Front Royal, even. So they went and built themselves a main street. 'Course they couldn't run it but the two blocks before it reached the nearest cliff, but they was so keen on their prospects they decided to call it
First
Street. As in first of many to come.

Well, fate had other plans for Walnut Ridge, and it turned into one of those places that just straggles along. Most of the townsfolk just bled back into the mountains till about ten years ago, when they was coaxed back down with the promise of digging soapstone. Company made a bunch of ugly houses for 'em—raw clapboard with tin roofs, each looking like the next. But the Depression took care of the soapstone company, and today the quarry's closed, and folks are back to straggling.

Carpentry, masonry, Civilian Conservation Corps, whatever'll answer. There's some work to be had building Skyline Drive, and there's talk of a rayon plant in a couple years, but that's talk.

First Street, though, is still there in all its glory. Walkways on both sides. A five-and-ten-cent store. A drugstore. A Primitive Baptist church. There's an empty tobacco warehouse that some rich old lady was trying to turn into a temple for the arts, but that never took, and right there at the end of the street, before it drops off the cliff, is a white farmhouse with green shutters.

It's an old house, built before the War Between the States, and it don't look like it's been painted since. The planters are rotting in the window boxes, and the grass in the front yard is losing ground to the weeds, but it's mostly clean and well tended, and it has the best view of the valley. I used to think if a pot of gold was to drop from the sky (it wouldn't have to be a big pot), maybe this was the house I'd want for myself.

Only I would've had to live there all alone. Wake up that way, go to bed that way. And before I moved in, I'd have had to get rid of the birdbath 'cause if a bird can't find itself some water, it's got no business being a bird. But the part that
really
would've had to go was the tiny slat bench in the front yard under the elm tree.

It wasn't the bench I minded, it was the two white plaster kids sitting on it. From a distance, they looked close enough to the real thing to make you wonder who'd been keeping 'em out of the sun. It was only closer you saw the lie of it, and that was when the heebie-jeebies kicked in. 'Cause it was like some terrible enchantment held them on that bench.

So the stone children, they would've had to go.

To speak true, I hadn't come down yet on the door knocker. It was a little fancy for my tastes, but I liked the way it rested in your hand, and on that particular morning, I made sure to hold it a space before I let it drop.

The door swung open, and there was Mina Gallagher, looking like she was already bracing for me. Thin and pinched, with a mouth always folding in and brown eyes always pushing out. Her fingers ran to the collar of her dress.

“Morning,” she said.

“Is Mr. Gallagher there?”

“It's not even eight.”

“Yeah, I know.”

She give me a good look-over.

“Chester,” she said. He didn't answer. “Chester!”

“Yes?”

“Visitor.” She looked at me a spell longer. “Won't you come inside?”

Chester was already jogging down the staircase in an old wool bathrobe. I could see patches of electrical tape on the soles of his slippers.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“I was just going to ask Melia if she cared for some coffee.”

“No, thank you.”

“Well, then,” said Mina Gallagher, “I'll leave you to it.”

She followed the straightest line to the kitchen.

“This is a surprise,” said Chester.

“Reckon so.”

He looked down at his hand, found a lit pipe in it. “Do you mind if I…”

“Nope.”

He took a drag. Jammed his free hand into the pocket of his robe.

“Here you are,” he said.

“Yep.”

“Like you said you'd be.”

After a day's practice, I weren't no better at telling the news. All I could do was stand there like a fool on the cracked parquet tile.

“She's gone,” he said.

He sat on the bottommost stair. “Sorry. I should have … do you want any—”

“Coffee? Your wife already asked.”

“She did, didn't she?”

He stared for a while at his pipe, not really seeing it.

“When did it happen?” he asked.

“Night before last.”

“Ah. Okay. So you—I mean, I'm guessing there'll be a funeral.”

“Already done. No offense, Chester, it was a private affair. Family only.”

“Of course.”

I give his knee a little nudge with mine. He slid over on the stair till there was room for the two of us.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said.

“Well. You being her lawyer and all.”

His mouth turned up at the corners.

“Last time I saw her, she fired me.”

“She weren't in her right head.”

“Oh, I think she was. It was me who wasn't.” He stared at his pipe. “The will. You'll want to see the will.”