Sweeping Up Glass (13 page)

I stir milk in a pan and add a bit of corn syrup, twist a corner of a kitchen towel, and dip in the end. I lift a pup and pry open his mouth, but my fingers are big and coarse, and I feel awkward. The pup sucks. “I never in my life knew how to take care of a small thing,” I say.

“O-livvy, you doin’ fine, uh-huh. They love that sugar teat, and they love you, too.”

I look at her.

Before he is full, the pup gives out, and I put him down and begin on the second.

“This will never work,” I say. “I got to think of a way to force food into ’em.”

“You will,” she says. Then she sits at the table to wait for her tea.

The truth is I can’t afford milk for the cubs and the boy and Ida, too. Ida will have to give hers up—I’ll take her a cup of tea with her supper and add a drop of honey. The second pup won’t suckle at all, and I wring the rag with my fingers and hold him every which way, trying to get the milk down his throat. But his eyes are closed, and his body works with the labor of breathing. The third one swallows some and goes to sleep. They’re going to die, and I hope they hurry up before Will’m comes home. When the pups are tucked back in their box, I pour the tea, sit down, and take up my embroidery cotton.

Then the bell rings over the grocery door, and I go through the curtain and wait while Mr. Haversham chooses a couple of russets and a can of creamed corn. I ring him up on the clangy register we’ve had for eons, and put his things in a paper sack.

In the kitchen, Love Alice is fingering the quilt I’ve worked on so long my fingers bleed around the calluses. “Ain’t this quiltie a prize thang,” she coos.

I take up the thread, and my hands fly with the tying of knots.

She sits across from me in her stockinged feet. Her eyes are opaque. “You know—” she says.

A prediction is coming.

“—A fat ol’ rich man gonna sleep under dis quiltie. He love his mama. Meaner’n a snake with his wife, but he do love his mama. He keep a dog—no, two dogs, an’ he scared of the dark.”

And on and on it goes until I raise my eyes. I’ve known Love Alice a long time. Before she tells me what she sees in my own eyes, she makes sure I want to know.

She gets up from her chair and wanders about the kitchen in her shapeless black dress, laying hands on things—cups on the drainboard, a pot holder, the cellar doorknob. “What in here, O-livvy, you don’t mind me askin’.”

“Stairs. To the basement.”

She tips her head over like spring’s first robin, listening for worms.

“Uh-huh,” she says. “This door need to be unlocked.”

“That’s just my pap’s old work room.”

“It need to be,” she says, shrugging.

I pour tea into cups. “I was down there yesterday.”

“Go agin.”

“Why?”

“’Cause what you thinkin’ ain’t so. But it a place to start.”

“Let’s talk about something else. How’s Junk?”

“He fine.” She comes to the table and spoons sugar in her second cup of tea. “How Miss Ida? Actin’ the fool, like always?”

She makes me laugh, Love Alice does, and I get up to fetch her a slice of dried apple turnover and a fork. “Just like always.”

She reaches across, lays her hand on mine. “You take this quiltie down to Mistah Wing’s place. He puttin’ in a shop, buyin’ brooms and candles and such. He can sell your quilties, too. An’ anyway, Mistah Harris a sweet thang—his wife’s gon’ leave us real soon.”

I look at her. “How do you know that, Love Alice? How can you be sure?”

She smiles. I’ve always marveled at how big her teeth are. “Don’t matter how I know, she crossin’ over. What you really askin’ is—what happen then? He comin’ after you in a fine white carriage, flower in his hand?”

I prick myself with the needle and swear and suck at the blood.

“It all right,” she says, forking up apple. “It ain’t no secret. You want to know, I tell you. He askin’ Jesus to take her soul to heaven.” Love Alice leans across. “O-livvy, what you an’ Mistah Harris did weren’t wrong.”

“That was a long, long time ago.”

“You love him like earth and water.” She put a bit of crust in her mouth. “If I’m lyin’, you take back this pastie—but I speak the truth.”

I put down my needle and look at her. “I was through with all that twenty years ago. It wears a body out to go on day and night in that single-minded way. Never thinking about anything else.”

“Don’t it, though?” she says, nodding. “That’s a truth.”

We sit without speaking, and then she runs her finger over her plate to pick up the crumbs. “Well, I got to pull on my boots and git along. Thank you kindly for the tea.”

I reach in my apron pocket and lay a nickel on the table. “Thank you for your company.” It’s the price of a reading, or maybe just a gift for a friend, and I always leave the taking to her. Every time, she opens her pocketbook and drops in the coin.

“Love Alice—” I say. “Sometimes, when you’re in town, you go to the drugstore, the post office, the hotel—”

“Say what you want to, O-livvy.”

“Do you—do you ever look in Wing Harris’s eyes? Do you see—his truths?”

Her smile is like the sun coming up. “Oh, I do. I see thangs there. He drownin’ in the hurt.”

I want to ask if I’m a part of the pain, or if I can help somehow. But it seems like too much to ask, and way too much to know.

I
listen for the tinkle of the grocery store bell. In between, I scatter feed for the chickens and milk the nanny goat, chop the ice on their pans, shovel snow, and heat water for washing, which I do on the back porch. Steam rises from the tub, burning my fingers and clouding the windows. I hang sheets and underwear on the line out back, and they freeze before I have the last pin in place. After that, it begins to snow, darkening the sky and coming down so hard that I put the stew on early, potatoes and onion and a joint of rabbit Junk left on the porch. I take Ida hers with bread crumbled in it, setting it on a box inside the door, and I back out before she can utter one Dutch-ugly word.

When the boy comes home, he makes over the cubs.

“I knew you’d get them,” he says, grinning all over himself.

I go off to wait on customers, and at six o’clock I turn over the Closed sign on the door. “They’re a lot of work,” I say, putting stew in two bowls and setting them on the table.

I tell him how I’ve stirred up their milk and tried to feed them, that it’s an endless job. “Don’t set your heart on them living, Will’m. They’re not meant to be without their ma’am.” I slice bread and fetch butter from the bin on the porch.

“I’ll be responsible for them, Gran. I’ll do everything.” He puts the cubs in the box and comes to the table.

I want to tell him responsibility’s fine, but it doesn’t guarantee. Things live, and they die. Instead, I scoop up the last of the turnover for him. Pour cups of hot tea with milk from the nanny. I sit down to my supper, and clear my throat. “Will’m, I hear Alton Phelps is lookin’ for a donkey.”

Will’m looks up from his bowl. His eyes grow round as platters. “You’re not thinkin’ about Sanderson Two! He’s older’n earth, all sway-backed and broke down, and mean as a snake—”

“What I hear, he just wants something to keep the coyotes away from the lambs on the south quarter.” Something about that picture makes me want to laugh. If he wasn’t damned near dead, that donkey’d have those lambs for lunch. Still, I think I’ll scrape the ice off the truck in the morning, and load ol’ Sanderson Two up. It’s a long time since I’ve been out to the Phelps’ place. I try not to remember.

Will’m mops his bowl with the heel of the bread. Looks around to see if there’s more.

“Go on then,” I say. “Eat up the last.”

“You’re not even gonna ask Ida? He’s her donkey.” Will’m grins. He loves the old stories my pap told me—of Ida riding the preaching circuit. Says he can’t picture her loping along on her donkey.

“Ida shot the wolf,” I say. “And anyway, Sanderson One was hers. That old donkey’ll bring a few dollars, and it’ll give me a chance to confront Phelps about the wolves.”

“Oh, Gran.”

“I’ll go in the morning. Then I’ll stop at Dooby’s and ask if
there’s anything to be done for the cubs. While I’m in town, I’m goin’ to take a couple of quilts over to Wing’s hotel—see if he’ll sell them in his new gift shop.”

Will’m clears his throat. “All right, then.” He lowers his face to his bowl, thinking I won’t see him smile.

T
he next morning, I put on my cape and my hat. With the flapjack turner I scrape the ice from the windows of the truck. Because no new snow fell in the shadow of the barn, the wolf’s blood still colors the snow, and I kick and stomp till it’s mostly gone. I start up the old truck, letting it rattle in idle. It reminds me of the one Pap had when I was a kid—the one he was driving the night he died. Except this one has two good door handles. The tailgate’s been ripped off, and rust has spread where most of the paint used to be.

I drive it over into Ida’s yard, lay some lumber down, and lead Sanderson Two into the bed of the truck. He’s as bony as a chicken wing. I tie him tight to the four corners with the rope. Ida doesn’t come out, and it’s a damned good thing. We’re a sight, that old donkey riding with his head up, braying like he needs the attention.

West of town, the roads are scraped clean by men who live to do Phelps’ bidding. In summer they become his gardeners, gatekeepers, and private assistants. Will’m calls them his bodyguards.

The land, here, is bound by white slatted rails, and snow clings to a couple hundred magnificent Scotch pines. This private forest
makes it hard to see the house. I recall that he fancies himself a master hunter, and have heard that he displays his trophies for the world to see. I wonder how his missus can stand to have all those dead things in her house.

I drive up the long curved drive, past the front door where a man is standing guard, and around to the back—with Sanderson Two braying and kicking in the back of the truck. I park in the same place my pap parked the wagon on that afternoon when I stowed away in back. I rap on the door.

Miz Phelps is in her kitchen, which surprises me, for her husband has money enough to hire three or four cooks. She’s flushed and pretty in her yellow dress, taking peach pies from the oven—and I stand in the doorway with my hat in my hands, just like my pap must have.

“Baking. It’s how I keep busy, Olivia,” Miz Phelps says, and her smile is warm. She pours me coffee even though I say no thanks, pours another mug for herself, and we sit at the table in her big enamel kitchen. I wish I could do business with her and not have to see the mister at all.

“I’m sure he’ll take the donkey,” she says kindly and reaches across to touch my hand. “You tell him you want a pretty penny for it, Olivia. Not a dime less than twenty—no, thirty dollars.”

I look at the dark coffee, the thick cream she’s added, and say, “He’s not worth that much.”

“You’re so like your daddy,” she says, sitting back. “You even look like him.”

I put a hand up, can’t help it, though the scars have faded.

She shakes her head. “Once—when I was a very small girl—and I lived in that house above Rowe Street—you know it, Olivia, big green thing, falling down even then—your father came to our house.”

She’s telling me she didn’t come from money, that we’re alike, she and I.

“We had this old yellow dog. I guess he was a hunter in his younger days, and my father loved him. We all did. He’d go after squirrels in the fall—couldn’t stop that in him. This one time he got ahold of something bad in the woods. Your daddy came to our house in his wagon. He took one look at that yellow dog and wrapped him in a blanket. You were there, Olivia, sitting up on that seat, proud as you please in your red overalls, and I envied you. Having a daddy who was so gentle-handed.”

I swallow a mouthful of sweet coffee and say nothing.

“When women marry, they look for men who are like their fathers—did you know that, Olivia?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I married a man just like mine.” Lines appear between her eyes. “Anyway, we came to your place to see about the dog—I’ve forgotten his name—and your daddy took us down to his basement. And there was that old hound, dining on boiled chicken meat. He sat in the pen, and looked at us with his head cocked over and his tongue hanging out, looking healthy as you please. Your daddy said he’d bring him home in a day or two, and he did, and never charged us a penny. When we all ran out to welcome that yellow dog home, he was laid out comfy on the wagon seat with his head in your daddy’s lap.” She laughs, like it’s a good memory she hasn’t recalled in a very long time.

I smile with her. “His name was Governor.”

“Oh, my land!” She puts her apron to her mouth and laughs some more, and the minutes there in her bright kitchen are so good I don’t want them to end. But I stand up.

“Yes, of course,” she says, wiping her eyes. “You’ve come about the donkey. I’ll show you to my husband’s study—I think
he’s alone this morning—and when you’re done, come back through the kitchen, and I’ll give you a peach pie to take home.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—”

“But you must—as a thank-you for Governor.”

She takes me through a long hall, and a marble entryway, then under a great polished arch. She knocks lightly on a door and puts her head in. They talk in low voices, and finally she opens the door wide. Before I know it, I’m standing in front of Alton Phelps’ desk, which is a monster of a thing that a man could see his face in. Sitting behind it, Phelps is a pale little man with a wrinkled face. His hair, too, is colorless, hanging long in the back and on the sides, maybe to make up for what’s missing on top.

“Miz Cross,” he says without looking up from the papers in his hand.

“Mr. Phelps.” I hold my hat, and am hot in my cape.

He puts the papers in a drawer, closes it, and locks it with a key. Directly over him is a buck’s head with ten—maybe twelve-point antlers. A woolly boar stands in the glass case on the far wall, and other small things are stuffed and mounted over the fireplace, on the coffee table, and in every corner. Guns are stored in racks around the room. Everything in the room is bigger than he is.