A Place to Call Home (6 page)

“Let’s change the subject,” Mama said, glaring at
Ruby. “Claire, you stay by the car. Hand out a few eggs if you want to. We’ll get the Easter baskets out of the trunk after we’re done inside.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I was relieved. I wouldn’t have to go into one of those foul-looking houses with them. Wouldn’t have to sit in a prayer circle.

“Talk to those kids about Jesus,” Aunt Dockey told me. “And make them say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ for the Easter eggs. Teach them some manners.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

We got out, and the ladies made a fuss over the rag-tail boys and girls, who shuffled their feet and didn’t answer but darted excited glances at me in my ruffled pink splendor and at the basket of Easter eggs I lugged from the backseat. I was glad I hadn’t worn my hat. I suddenly felt embarrassed, and depressed, and a little foolish.

Edna Fae and Lula and Sally strolled out to meet us. They were dressed in tight jeans and tight low-cut blouses, with lots of makeup on their faces. Sally had already been inducted into the McClendon big-bleached-hair club, and she had the kind of body that looked like ripe cantaloupes were stuffed in a thin paper sack. Edna Fae and Lula were intermediate versions of Daisy and Sally. Together the four of them would make a Dorian Gray gallery—Daisy’s tough, worn, cemented sensuality, Edna Fae’s and Lula’s fading freshness, and Sally—I knew exactly what Sally would look like eventually, after too much hard living had sucked the juice out of her.

I was so busy staring, I nearly dropped my basket of Easter eggs. “Well, ain’t you pretty?” Sally said to me in a sly, boisterous way. She leaned too close to me and grabbed a handful of my long hair and stroked her fingers through the curls, all the while staring into my face. “You look just like a strawberry shortcake with blue eyes. Them eyes. Bright as sapphires. You just take in the whole world with them eyes, don’t you? What you thinkin’, little queen?”

I was thinking, You mess with my hair again and I’ll
give you a tittie twister, but I was already on thin ice with Mama, so I kept quiet.

Besides, Mama sidled over and got between us. Polite but cool as a little brown-haired lioness in a mauve suit and pumps. She didn’t say a word, but Sally backed off. Sally was scared of Mama and Mama’s sisters.

“Where’s Daisy?” Aunt Dockey asked. “Isn’t she going to participate in our prayer meeting?”

“Aw,” Edna Fae said, lighting a cigarette and nodding toward one of the houses. “She ain’t up to it.”

Lula giggled and covered her mouth.

Aunt Dockey got a flat-lipped, squinty look on her face and stared hard at the house. “I see. I’ll speak to her later.”

Mama took her box of charity food from the trunk, then bent close to my ear and whispered fiercely, “You stay by the car. Stay away from Daisy’s house, or I’ll skin you alive.”

Whoa. I was in the same league with my brothers. I nodded.

And then, unhappily, I was alone in the yard with a dozen grimy, barefoot kids ranging from my age on down to some who were barely old enough to walk, all of them staring at my basket as if they’d like to knock me down and take it.

“Y’all want to hear about Jesus?” I asked. Silence. I sighed. “Y’all want some Easter eggs?” Quick nods and outstretched hands.

I fished among the hard-boiled eggs and found the candy ones first, because every kid knows the real eggs are a disappointment once you get past the decorations. But the McClendon children didn’t care. They snatched candy eggs and real eggs with the same fervor, and admired them with wide eyes, and touched the decorations, and then tore off the wrappings and peeled the colored shells with dirty fingernails, and ate slowly, relishing every bite.

I was doubly ashamed of myself and mad at this awful place, this sad place and its left-out children, and I knew,
for certain, that the McClendon sisters only put up with a bunch of praying rich women so that their kids could get a little free Easter loot. They were bartering with us, the same as they did with the men.

And I thought about Roanie, who was so proud, and how his daddy was so mean, nobody had ever dared go down to Sullivan’s Hollow to bribe
him
with Easter eggs. I was glad—shivering, goose-bumped thankful—that Roanie hadn’t been turned into a charity exhibit like the McClendon kids.

I heard a car coming down the dirt road, the rumble of an unmufflered engine, and lo and behold, as if he’d materialized from my thoughts, Roanie drove his daddy’s beat-up truck into the yard.

My mouth fell open. He was only twelve years old! Yet he rolled that vintage rattletrap into the yard and jerked it to a stop, and he pushed the door open and climbed out. Then he froze, staring at me with an almost painfully surprised expression. His T-shirt was dirty and his bare ankles showed between his jeans and his worn-out tennis shoes.

He was only twelve, and he’d driven to Steckem Road to visit the awful McClendon women. “What are you
doing
here?” I demanded hoarsely.

My accusing tone stamped the surprise out of his face. All emotion receded behind a flinty mask. At that moment the front door of Daisy’s house banged open.

Daisy ran out wearing a bra and a pair of cutoff jeans, her gold-plated hair tangled around her face. One of her eyes was swollen shut. “You come git him, Roanie! You come get that son of a bitch outta my bed! I ain’t gonna put up with his shit no more!”

The kids scattered like roaches when a light’s turned on. I stood rooted to the spot, fascinated and afraid. Roanie walked into the house with his fists clenched beside him and his head down. Daisy flew in behind him, cursing.

Oh, Mama, come out here and bring your pistol
. That’s what I tried to shout, because I knew Mama had put her little .32
revolver in her purse, but my mouth wouldn’t work and neither would my feet. I was all ears, listening to Daisy’s muffled voice and the crashing noises, and then the low, slurred boom of Big Roan Sullivan’s voice. “Git out of my face, bitch, or I’ll hit you again.”

The door slapped open and Big Roan staggered out, lopsided on his metal leg, bare-chested, the waistband of his tan trousers hanging unfastened beneath his hairy beer gut. He was huge and black-haired and had a jaw like a bulldog’s. His bloodshot eyes settled on me and I froze. “Don’t need no Maloney starin’ at me,” he said loudly. “Hymn-singin’, Bible-thumpin’ hypocrites—don’t you look at me, you little fluffball.”

I backed against Aunt Dockey’s car and gaped at him. He staggered down the steps toward me.

“Leave her be, Big Roan,” Daisy ordered. “She’s just a little girl.”

“Shut up.” He limped forward, swinging his arms. “See that youngun over there?” Big Roan swung a hand toward a barefoot baby boy with light brown hair. Sally must have seen him from the other house, because she bolted outside and snatched the baby up.

“Big Roan, you stop!” she yelled. “He ain’t yours. Don’t you mess with him!”

He grunted at her. “I ain’t got nothin’ to mess with, you bitch. Gov’ment sent me off to fight and left me poor.” Big Roan swung toward me again. “Your daddy and his kind—gov’ment sent them where they’d be
safe
. I done their dirty work for ’em.” He slapped his metal leg. “I come back, what do I get? A little piss-wad of gov’ment money and a free shithole for a home. You quit lookin’ at me! Quit it!”

Roanie ran out of Daisy’s house and down the warped wooden steps. He got between me and Big Roan. “Go on,” Roanie shouted. “Get in the truck.”

“Get out of my way, boy!”

“It ain’t her fault she’s rich,” Roanie said. “She ain’t done nothing to you.”

“Boy, when I want you to talk to me, I’ll beat some talk out of you!” Big Roan pointed at me, then at the baby boy in Sally’s arms. “Cain’t let a poor girl alone, can you? Cain’t even admit you done it. Just shit on her and her kid and pretend he ain’t worth nothin’.”

“You’re just mad ’cause he’s too good to be
yours
,” Sally screamed.

I thought I’d swallow my tongue. My knees shook. They were all crazy. Big Roan jabbed his finger toward the little boy. “That youngun, you know what he is? You ask your Uncle Pete. That there’s your fine Uncle Pete Delaney’s thrown-off bastard!”

My Uncle Pete’s
? Daisy got between Sally and Big Roan. “Big Roan, keep quiet!” she mewled. “You want to git us all in trouble?”

Roanie made a sound like a wounded dog and shoved his daddy. Big Roan lost his lopsided balance and sprawled on the ground. Roanie stood over him. “Git up,” he said between clenched teeth. “Git
up
.”

“Don’t gimme no orders, boy!” Big Roan swept one thick arm out. He caught Roanie around the ankles and jerked his feet out from under him, and Roanie went flat on his back. The breath gushed out of him and he gasped. Big Roan rolled onto him in a flash, pinning him by the throat. “Don’tcha gimme orders, boy!”

Roanie coughed and struggled, latching both hands around Big Roan’s wrist. “Let him go!” Daisy shrieked. “You’re chokin’ him to death!”

“Ain’t gonna gimme no orders!”

I had a mean arm. A strong arm, honed by baseball-playing brothers who’d taught me to throw. I didn’t think, I didn’t breathe, I was blind with sheer rage and terror. I snatched a hard-boiled Easter egg from my basket and drew back like a major leaguer. I beaned Big Roan right between his shoulder blades.

He kept one hand on Roanie’s throat but twisted on one hip and glared woozily at me over his shoulder. I drew back another egg and edged toward him. “
You let him go
!”

“Whadtha hell?” Big Roan mumbled.

I hit him right between the eyes.

They don’t call them
hard
-boiled eggs for nothing. If he hadn’t been drunk, it might just have dazed him. As it was, his eyes rolled up and he slumped backward.

I had killed him. On Easter. I was sure.

Roanie got up slowly. His face was tinged with blue and the skin of his throat was dark red. He gasped for air and hunched over. A thin, watery stream of vomit dripped from his mouth, and he dragged an arm across his lips. But he managed to keep his head up and he scrutinized me with his unwavering gray eyes.

“That’s for Neely Tipton,” I told him, saving him a thank-you. “And for everything Arlan and Harold do to you. Now we’re even.”

He nodded weakly.

The battle had only lasted thirty seconds. By now Mama and everybody else had run out to us, and Edna Fae McClendon’s lousy husband straggled over, and he and Edna Fae helped Roanie drag his father to the truck and hoist him into the back.

“Did I kill him?” I asked Mama tearfully.

“No,” she said, putting one arm around my shoulders. She held her revolver in her other hand. “I’m afraid not.”

“Mama, he said Sally got her little boy from Uncle Pete.”

Mama’s mouth flattened. Color zoomed up her cheeks. “There’s some things we don’t talk about.”

“But Uncle Pete comes down here to visit Sally all the time! I heard all about it and—”

“
Claire Karleen
. What your uncle does when he visits is nobody’s business and nothing but gossip. Forget about it.”

Roanie didn’t say a word. He climbed into the truck’s cab. Twelve years old and hauling his drunk, passed-out
daddy home on Easter Sunday, humiliation stretching every inch of his face. I couldn’t let him go like that. I sprinted around to the trunk of Aunt Dockey’s Cadillac. The lid wasn’t fastened. I shoved it up and grabbed the giant chocolate rabbit from my basket. Mama had wrapped it in wax paper.

I ran to the truck as Roanie cranked the engine. He stared at me warily as I leaped up on the sideboard. I thrust the rabbit into his lap. “You take this,” I said, crying. “This is from me to you. It’s not ’cause it’s Easter, and it’s not ’cause of Jesus, and it’s not for charity. It’s because I
like
you. You take this rabbit and you eat him!”

He swallowed hard. He shrugged. I struggled not to pull back from the stink of vomit and garbage and unwashed clothes.

After he drove away, I handed out Easter baskets to that pack of quiet, fearful McClendon kids. Sally ran into her house carrying her little boy. Uncle Pete’s son. My cousin. It was true. We couldn’t talk about it, but it was true.

I didn’t make even one of those McClendon kids beg me for some Easter eggs with a “Please” or a “Thank you.” I was so ashamed of all of us.

One of Daddy’s cousins, Vince O’Brien, Ruby’s husband, was the town sheriff. Ruby told him what had happened and he sent a couple of deputies over to the Hollow to make sure Big Roan hadn’t killed Roanie later. But Big Roan was still asleep in the back of the truck. The deputies said Roanie had taken off into the hills, anyway. He’d learned when to disappear.

I was much praised and told that I’d done a good, Christian deed, like David with Goliath. Evan tried to read me the Bible story, but I told him to shut up and leave me alone, I needed to think.

I had too much, and Roanie had nothing. From that day forward I vowed to save him from the evil that pervaded our lives.

I
didn’t get to see Roanie much for the next couple of years, especially after he entered Dunderry High, but I heard about him regularly.