My grandmother said Okay, she’d see what she could do. She had girls living over that direction, one in Big Stone Gap, one in Norton. Another one in Jonesville but sadly she was dead of the breast cancer. My grandmother got kind of woeful talking about her, tough old bat that she was. This girl Patsy was taken young, a little baby left behind. Patsy being one of the first girls my grandmother raised, so that was a while ago. She still kept in touch with the husband. She could call him up to see how he’d feel about a boy around the house. Mind you, she said, even if he says yes, this deal comes with rules. A trial run, for starters. She always paid the family something to help out, but I would be expected to be a decent young man and do my part.
Oh crap, I thought, here I go paying the rent. I did not like the sound of this house with the dead wife. Who’s taking care of the baby? A husband ruling the roost on his own? There’d be nobody to remind him kids need shoes and haircuts and the shit they don’t really want but you still have to have to qualify as a person, like toothpaste. New ring binders for school. Not to say I’d caught my grandmother’s disease, but let’s face it, guys can be dicks.
“He’s a schoolteacher, so that’s good,” she said. “I think he’s civics, or health. Land, it’s been an age.” She was flipping through her wheel of people, looking for his card. “And something with the sports. I don’t know about that, but he’d not let it get in the way of your lessons. He’s a pretty good one. Here he is, Winfield.”
Dear Lord in Heaven. Sorry about the million times I took your name in vain because I didn’t think you were actually there. Holy God. My grandmother was picking up the phone to call the coach of the Lee High Generals.
I was leaving them. Mr. Dick, my grandmother, and whatever was left of my dad in the graveyard she took me to see. There wasn’t but a flat, shiny marker on the ground with his real name and how long he lived, start to finish. It spooked me to see my first name on a grave. It could have been all me, first and last, if Mom had forgiven him. The graveyard was behind a church that looked abandoned, down the road past her house. The weeds were a sight. She put on her gloves, got down on her knees, and put it all straight. She’d brought a jar of flowers from her yard to set down on him, and collected up jars that were left there before. I’d say she cared about my father more than she let on.
It was that fall type of day where the world feels like it’s about to change its mind on everything. Cicadas going why-why-why, the air lying still, all the fight gone out of summer. My head kept telling me Run! Go now! But I didn’t know from where, to what. She got up from her weeding, settled her hat on her head, and we walked back to the house on the gravel shoulder. She took big steps like a person crossing plowed ground, and I followed behind. It felt like she was mad at me. I still didn’t know what to call her. After all my years wishing for a mammaw, I finally had one and the shoe didn’t fit. I called her yes-ma’am. The sun was behind us. I shifted so my shadow touched her, falling across her skirt and fast, lumpy legs. No good reason.
Back at the house I put the clothes, toothbrush, and other things my grandmother gave me in the suitcase she gave me, wondering if this stuff was Demon now, and if so, was I erased. It’s not that I didn’t like the clothes or the suitcase. They were fine. The next day Jane Ellen was driving me to Kingsport, where Mr. Winfield would meet us at noon in the Walmart parking lot. After all those days and nights that about had killed me getting here, the trip home wouldn’t take but an hour and a half. Crazy. That’s Lee County for you. It pulls you back hard.
I went downstairs to Mr. Dick’s room. He didn’t like to start a new book till he finished his kite on the last one, but he wasn’t doing that. Just looking out the window. I said I’d miss hanging out with him, and he said the same. I wondered if I would ever see him again. The Coach Winfield deal could fall through, of course, but one way or another it looked like I was Virginia bound. Would they come see me? Given her whole cars-equal-death thing, not likely. I told him I’d call on the phone or write, even though I had no idea how to buy a stamp or any of that. We sat quiet a minute. I wasn’t one for hugging, or else I would have.
The clouds had bellied up since morning and a stout wind was kicking up outside, turning the leaves upside down and silvery. Mr. Peg always said that meant rain on the way. I asked Mr. Dick if his kite was ready to fly, and he said it was. Then let’s do it, I said. I got a shiver in my spine. Maybe that’s what my brain had been telling me all day: Run. Go fly a kite.