Sweeping Up Glass (23 page)

“Any chance you’ve got coffee on the stove?” he says.

Under my cape, I wipe my cracked hands on my apron. “Come in. I’ll make us some.”

“Warm in here,” he says, rubbing his hands over the stove that has not quite gone out.

I hang my cape on its nail, set the eggs in a basket with the two
I collected yesterday, throw into the stove a medium thickness of wood, bit of kindling, damn waste. Run water in the pot and add two spoons of coffee. Set it on the burner. Rub a bit of melted tallow on my hands.

“Place still looks the same,” he says, pulling out a chair and sitting.

“You didn’t have to wait thirty years to come out.”

All the time I’ve spent in this kitchen, I don’t know when I last looked at these chairs. Ladder-backed, bare wood worn to a blade. Table’s the same. How shabby we must look.

“… I recall being here a lot,” he’s saying. “I’d come get you, and we’d walk the highway, down toward the river. I think everybody in town knew about us. Remember how Ida used to give us hell—”

“Wing.”

He looks at me, but I turn and adjust the pot on the burner. “That was a lifetime ago.”

I try not to think about the peeling linoleum, pitted wood showing through. I cannot help it if he’s done well while I … I bring his coffee and pour myself a cup. Two weeks ago, I’d have wanted him to stay; today I ache for him to go.

“You been all right out here, Olivia? I mean, since Saul died and everything.”

“Saul’s been gone twelve years, Wing.” I feel as if I’ve swallowed a head of cabbage, and it’s lodged in my chest.

“The grocery going OK?”

“Yes.”

“Remember the Fourth of July picnics we’d have down on the river?” he says, picking at a loose thread of memory.

I nod.

“Dooby’s wife made the best peach ice cream. His old
freezer—we bigger boys took turns cranking. That pretty Olivia Harker would come flouncing along and sit on the lid while I turned the handle. Then I’d take your hand and we’d run off—”

“Wing.”

He looks up.

I look off out the window, remembering Phelps’ angry face and swallowing my secrets.

“Olivia?”

“What?”

“Would you like to ride over to Buelton, see a picture show with me next Saturday night?”

Saturday night
. Something passes across me like a shadow. “Will’m—”

“He can come, too. Or stay at the hotel, if you feel right about it. He might like to listen to the radio—”

I see a possibility, the very thing I talked to Will’m about. I’m going to have to be pleasant, change tracks. “No movie, thanks, but while I’m renovating around here, you think Will’m could spend a night or two with you?”

Wing drains his cup, looks around for the pot. “Of course he can. I’d be happy to have him. When I’m away, Molly’s ma comes up, runs the place fine. So, Olivia, how about dinner?”

Something important has come and gone, but I can’t think what. For a moment I thought I heard Pap’s voice. And Phelps saying, “I know what you’re doing, and—”

What was it he’d said?

“—and I want it stopped.”

Of course. It was the day I asked Love Alice and Mavis Brown to ride out there with me, hidden in Pap’s wagon. The Phelpses had talked to Pap in words as mysterious as what Alton had said to me on the Ridge.

I get up from my chair and stand at the stove, looking at nothing. Press both hands to my belly. “Wing, why are you here?”

For a moment he’s silent. “To see if you’d like to take in a show. Coffee, a piece of pie after.”

I turn and look in his tired face, lines deeper than any man ought to have.

“I have missed you, Olivia,” he says. “The way a man misses an arm or a leg.”

“That’s not fair.”

He drains his cup, stands up.

“There is nothing,” he says, “fair in this life. Things are what they are. I have loved you all these years, sometimes so much I could hardly stand it.”

I am clamped in the jaws of an anvil. A while ago I wanted to shove him down the porch steps. Now I want to beat him with my fists. “You married Grace—”

“Why wouldn’t I? You’d found someone, had a baby. I asked you, I said did you want me to give it my name.”

“
Give it a name?
What kind of love is that? And anyway, it’s not fair of you to tell me all that now. It’s belittling of you, Wing, to mention Pauline.”

“Don’t talk to me about belittling, Olivia. You can’t imagine how I felt, all those Saturday nights, playing at Silty’s, watching the woman I loved make a fool of herself. I’m sorry, but it’s God’s own truth.”

I should say nothing. Instead: “I was angry and lonely without you, and I couldn’t stand living with Ida—”

“Watching you lay down with one man after another—”

I wanted to take up the skillet and beat him senseless.

“—after all we’d meant to each other.”

“We were children! How can you be so unkind?”

“I’m hurting, Olivia. Did it make love any less, because we were young?”

My knees are so weak I can hardly stand. “God, Wing, I don’t know what was real. My heart was breaking. I put you away.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Only a fool would grieve for a lifetime!”

Wing nods slowly.

“That’s a lie,” I say sadly. “I never stopped loving you.”

“You don’t much sound like it.”

“Neither do you.”

Wing sets his mouth, reaches for his coat, shrugs into it. I’m sending him packing one more time. But there’s no other way. All I’ve felt for him amounts to nothing.

“Wing—”

“Send Will’m down. Anytime.” He pulls the door shut behind him.

I
have not told Will’m about my quarrel with Wing. I do, however, tell him that I’ve seen Wing and that he’s invited Will’m to stay at the hotel now and then. The boy is delighted. In the event of trouble, I’ve covered all my bases.

We sit, after supper, when Will’m’s taken Ida home and read to her. We’re at the kitchen table, sorting out what we know. Not that anything gets in any way sorted. After a while, Will’m brings his notebook and writes things down, hoping that will make it clearer.

“We know this,” I say while he writes. “Alton’s taken a strong liking—or disliking—to our wolves. He’s cutting off as many right ears as he can.” I look up from the muslin square I’m embroidering. “Molly said the club comes three or four times a year.” I knot an intricate stitch. “Funny I don’t remember ever seeing them on the hill on a Saturday.”

The word
Saturday
, clearly, has stuck in my mind.

I look up, past Will’m to the boarded window.

“Gran? What’re you lookin’ at?”

“Saturdays.”

“Why?”

“When I think of them, I see the back of Pap’s head.”

“Gran—”

“Pap said something about Saturdays. Then I asked him what happened at the Phelpses’ on Saturdays.”

Will’m says nothing.

I’m thinking out loud. “He told me to forget we’d been there. Huh. Not likely the boys were makin’ whiskey; they bought their liquor from Pap. When Pap cut them off, it was the start of all the trouble….”

“What trouble?” Will’m says.

Has all this been about running whiskey? Or gambling, maybe. Did Pap owe them money, somehow? Still, what difference does it make what Alton Phelps did at his place all those years ago? Unless, of course, he’s still doing it. On Saturdays.

I can’t imagine Pap involved with the likes of the Phelpses. Still, bootlegging wasn’t exactly legal. Did any of that tie in with James Arnold’s death night on the road? Had James Arnold come looking for Pap that night? Had Pap seen him climb up out of the ditch and made a quick choice to be rid of him? But Pap would never have deliberately put me in danger.

Phelps said, on the Ridge, that I
had information
. What is it, exactly, that he thinks I know?

I mix mustard paste for Will’m’s poultice. He has no option but to pull on his nightshirt and climb into bed. I smooth the smelly flannel on his chest, kiss his forehead, and go off to my room where I change into my gown and huddle under the blankets. I want so badly to figure this out.

T
uesday night, after Will’m’s breathing better with his cold, I realize that Phelps believes Pap let me in on a secret—whatever that was. He did not. Along those lines, I wonder if Pap ever told Ida. I’ve always suspected she knows more than she’s saying.

On Wednesday, while Will’m is in school, I sit quilting and waiting on the coloreds.

Across the room, Aunt Pinny Albert is picking out canned goods. Her sisters Iva and Wellette are haggling over thread and lengths of elastic. Lengths of yardgoods.

“I got a nice bolt of red in,” I tell them. I count four running stitches and draw the thread through. “Would look real good on you, Miss Iva.”

The sisters look stunned.

I look up. “Something wrong?” I say.

“This a nice yeller,” Miss Wellette says, quick. “Jus’ right for spring.”

“Sisters, that’s two months off,” says Aunt Pinny Albert, batting their hands. “You-all forget, we shoppin’ light today.”

“Just saying, you’d look real fine in the scarlet, Miss Iva. Done up pretty with a belt or a big white bow.”

Miss Iva’s face freezes, and she’s barely breathing. Her mouth
pinches up, like I’ve maybe spat on a grave, or suddenly cussed a blue streak.

I get up and come around, looking over at the bolts of new cloth.

“Not a thing, baby girl,” Aunt Pinny Albert says, slapping Miss Iva a good one.

I ring up their purchases. There’s a great deal of haggling over what they’ll pay for and what will have to go on account, but they’re distressed, and I’m saddened to think I caused it.

For now, however, I’ve got enough to brood on. I take up my needle and replay the day Pap drove the wagon to the Phelpses’, how I stood up in Alton’s face. By nightfall, my eyes burn from tiredness—or from looking so far into the past.

Will’m and I agree to sit tonight, and try to figure things out, but he’s equally tired, and by eight o’clock we’re ready for sleep. I’ve taken to tucking him into bed, the way I did when he was small. I drop a kiss on his forehead, and give the cub a pat before they both close their eyes. It’s a ritual that keeps us sane and safe and remembering who we are.

On Thursday, there’s almost no business. I make myself tea and sit at the table, listening for the bell over the front door. I work on the silver-blue quilt, and I remember more. After I came home from the hospital, Alton came often with presents and money—I’d always thought they were thanks for Ida’s services. But maybe Ida knew something, and Alton brought her gifts to keep her quiet.

Another thing I don’t understand—if he feels so threatened, it seems like over the years he’d have just killed us all.

I can’t think anymore. Sometimes I’ve shared thoughts with Will’m, but he’s busy—getting off the school bus in town afternoons, stopping by Wing’s for a cup of chocolate. Then he goes
on to Dooby’s or French’s for a quarter’s worth of shelf-stocking and to sweep up at closing.

On Friday I realize I have not fetched Junk, not given one more thought to the moving of Pap’s grave. Some memory in my mind won’t show itself clearly. Whatever it is, I’ve dragged through the week with the sheer weight of it.

One night, Will’m comes late from French’s store where he’s been uncrating nails. While he eats his supper, I ask, “Stop by Wing’s, did you?”

With his mouth full, he nods.

“He doing all right?”

Will’m forks another potato. “Says he is, but—were you mean to him, Gran?”

I put down the scissors and hug my elbows. “Why do you ask?”

“When I talked about you, he got real quiet. There was this look on his face—”

I need to change the subject. “Phelps’ club still there?”

“Molly was running on about them tracking in mud, but I didn’t see any of ’em. You hear any shots?”

“Couple,” I say. It is then that I see clearly what’s to be done. Like a pool of water, the notion finds its own level—so logical, I never question it.

Thus far, I have shared most of my thoughts with Will’m, but I’m terrified something will happen to him. First thing in the morning, I’ll see Wing. If things fall into place it’ll be a sign that I’m on the right track. Wing and Will’m have become fast friends, and if Will’m’s well enough with his cold, their closeness will serve my purpose just fine.

By the next afternoon I’m a full case of nerves. Will’m’s
delighted to be staying at the hotel, and although we’ve never been apart one night, I can’t get him out of here fast enough. I end up sending him down an hour before Wing’s expecting him. That way, I say, he can see Molly before she leaves for the day. He’s sweet on her, and that gives me a new set of worries, but none that I can think about right now.

I fold his nightshirt into a bag, add an apple and a cold biscuit, hope he doesn’t tell Wing. Clean drawers for morning, and a laundered shirt. At the last minute I give him a hug that he stoically endures and returns.

When he’s gone, I close the grocery and pass another hour walking the floor—around the creaking boards of the front room, through the kitchen to the porch where the cold slaps me sharply. Then I head for the front door and begin again. Through the one kitchen window, I watch the sun go down as if its bottom’s on fire, and I swear twilight’s brighter than midday was.

I must wait for full dark, for it’s Saturday, and tonight I’m going to see what goes on in Phelps’ barn.

But an icy fog has begun to roll in.

I
f I catch Phelps running prostitutes or gambling, I’ll call the sheriff, clear my mind, and get back to the business of moving Pap’s grave. I’ve seen Junk twice this week, but I’m sure he’s hoping I’ve forgotten or given up. Or that I’ve gone and done the job myself.

Still, something about this just doesn’t lie flat. And Phelps has said Sheriff Pink is a friend of his.

Even full dark, this night is not black. The fog is lit by particles of ice and the snow on the ground, making everything a sort of silvery white in which, from the back door, I can see only the porch steps. Still, it’s a perfect cover for snooping.