Kind of Kin (2 page)

Carl Albert tried to outrace me. He's bigger than
me but I'm the fastest, and I ran to the fence way ahead of him, but when I got
close, I stopped. I didn't want to be like one of those little kids sticking
their hand through the holes, plus my grandpa didn't look right. He looked
smaller than he was supposed to be. The orange coveralls were too big and his
hair went every which way. My grandpa don't go anywhere without his hair combed,
not even to the breakfast table. Carl Albert came chugging up beside me.

“Hello, boys,” Grandpa said, but he wasn't looking
at us. He had his eyes on Brother Oren still standing back by the car. “Where's
your mom?” He was asking that to Carl Albert because my mom is dead.

“She had to stay home with Mr. Bledsoe,” Carl said.
“Are they fixing to throw the book at you?”

“Shut your mouth,” I told him.

“Cody Johnson says they are.”

“Cody Johnson don't know squat,” I said.

“Where's Tee?” Grandpa said.

“He got called in to work.”

Brother Jesus came over and stood at the fence with
Grandpa. I guess he didn't have any family to come see him. Maybe they couldn't
drive all the way up from Texas just to stand around for a half hour outside in
the cold. “Hello, young fellows,” he said, squinting the way he does so his eyes
go nearly shut.

“Hey,” Carl Albert answered.

“Hola,” I said.

“Cómo estás, Dustin?”

“Bien,” I said. “Y usted?”

“Así, así.” Brother Jesus sort of blinked and
smiled at me. He's been teaching me Spanish. He's definitely one of the ones
that's a Christian not a criminal, because for one thing he's a preacher, same
as Brother Oren, except his church isn't Baptist, it's Pentecostal, and he
preaches in Spanish because most of the folks that go there don't speak English
anyway. It's over in Heavener where they raise all the chickens. It used to be a
schoolhouse and then it was a hay barn and then Brother Jesus fixed it up and
turned it into a church. I've went there a bunch of times with Grandpa. Aunt
Sweet says we're grazers when it comes to churchgoing, and what she means is,
the way me and Grandpa go to church is not right. We go to the United Methodist
in Poteau, the Assembly of God at Dog Creek, Wilburton Presbyterian, Living Word
Church in McAlester, just wherever the spirit moves us to drive any given
Sunday. Sometimes Grandpa picks and sometimes he lets me. Aunt Sweet says we
ought to quit that and go to just one church because I need a church home. She
says it's not good for me to be getting all different doctrines like no piano
playing at the Church of Christ and sprinkling instead of baptizing at the
Methodists and talking in tongues at the Holiness and all that Spanish preaching
in Brother Jesus's church. Aunt Sweet's got a lot of opinions about everything
but especially about churchgoing. She's plain Southern Baptist like me and
Grandpa used to be.

“Hello, Mr. Brown. Pastor Garcia.” I felt Brother
Oren's hand on my shoulder. “How y'all doing this afternoon?”

“How do you expect we'd be doing?” Grandpa
said.

“Well, not so good, I guess.”

“Not so good is right. I appreciate you bringing
the boys.”

“Glad to do it. We've got the prayer chain going,
got both your names in this morning's bulletin.”

“Well, that's good. Reckon you could add in the
names of some of them people they hauled out of my barn Friday night?”

Brother Oren's hand got a little tight on my
shoulder. In a minute he said, “If you can get me their names, Mr. Brown, I'll
put them in the bulletin next Sunday.”

“They can't wait for Sunday,” Grandpa said. “Those
people need prayers this minute, all they can get of 'em, plus they need a
bucket of luck and some good lawyering, too.”

“Yes, sir. Sweet wanted me to talk to you about
that. She said for me to tell you she's got a lawyer coming from Stipe's
McAlester office tomorrow. He'll get y'all bailed out.”

“Tell Sweet never mind,” Grandpa said. “I don't
need a lawyer.”

“If it's about money, I believe the church—”

“It ain't about money.”

“We decided to let the Lord work in this,” Brother
Jesus said.

“The Lord can work through Gene Stipe's law office
same as any way else,” Brother Oren said.

“You're a good man, Oren,” Grandpa said, “and I
appreciate you. But you don't know a thing in the world about this.”

Carl Albert said, “You gotta get a lawyer, Grandpa!
They're going to throw the book at you!”

Grandpa looked down at Carl Albert. “Which book is
that, Carl?”

“I don't know. That's just what they're
saying.”

“Who's saying?”

“Cody Johnson, Zane McKissick. My mom.” Carl Albert
looked miserable. I was afraid he might start crying. I started saying in my
mind, Don't you dare. Don't you dare. I stared hard at Grandpa's work boots
under his pant legs. They looked sort of normal. I've seen those same tan boots
practically every day of my life, only now the leather bootlaces were gone. I
heard Carl Albert say, “Zane McKissick says you're a beaner smuggler.”

I hissed under my breath, “Shut up, Carl.”

“He says you got caught dead to rights and they're
going to put you in the McAlester state pen.”

“Listen, boys,” Grandpa said. He squatted down on
his heels, grabbed hold of the fence loops to steady himself. There was a white
line on the back of one of his fingers where his Masonic ring was supposed to
be. “This isn't going to be easy on you all,” he said. “I know that. People are
liable to say no telling what. You'll just have to be thick hided, you know it?
Don't pay them any mind.” Crouched down like that, he was actually shorter than
me and Carl Albert. I could see the freckles in his bald spot, and also a little
red-looking gash like he'd whacked his head on something. “Dustin,” he said,
“look at me.” So then I had to. Either because of the sun or the orange
jumpsuit, his eyes behind his glasses were really blue. “I'm going to need you
to take care of things for a little while, okay? Be a good boy. Mind your Aunt
Sweet.” He cut a glance at Carl Albert stubbing his sneaker in the worn spot on
our side of the fence. “Something bothering you, son?”

“No,” Carl Albert said.

“Well, that's a fib.”

“How come, is all. Why'd you have to go and do
that?”

“What is it you think I did?”

“Smuggled Mexicans.”

I kicked Carl Albert in the leg then, and he turned
and jumped me so fast I didn't have time to run. Then we were wallering in the
grass, rolling over and over, till I could feel the asphalt under me, and I
could hear all the men yelling and Brother Oren shouting, “Boys! Boys!” I tried
to get up, but Carl Albert kept punching me in the side of my face till I
grabbed the fat part of his arm and bit the ess-aitch-eye-tee out of him. He
screamed like you never heard nobody scream in your life, but I held on. I aimed
to be like a dadgum snapping turtle, I wasn't going to unhook my jaw till the
thunder cracked. Somebody bopped me in the back of the head, though, and I
accidentally let go. Next thing I knew Brother Oren had me by the belt, dragging
me off, and one of the deputies was swatting Carl Albert on the butt with his
hand. Carl Albert was still screaming and the prisoner men in the yard were all
whooping and laughing. My grandpa wasn't whooping, he was holding on to the
fence loops with his fingers. I could see his face though, and I just felt
sick.

Brother Oren hauled us back to the car. He made me
get in the backseat on the driver's side and motioned Carl Albert to the front
seat on the other side. He told us to keep our hands to ourselves and he'd
better not hear another peep out of us. I'd never seen Brother Oren mad, ever,
so I figured we'd better cool it, but Carl Albert had to pop off. “You're not my
dad!”

“I'm standing in for your dad,” Brother Oren said.
“I'm his eyes and ears here in this situation, and your mom's, too. You want me
to tell them how you been acting?”

Carl Albert got in the car and the preacher walked
back. I was so mad I could spit. “What'd you go and do that for!”

“
Me?
You started
it!”

“You jumped on me.”

“You kicked me!”

“You wouldn't shut up.”

“
You
shut up!”

“Keep your voice down. You want the preacher to
come back?”

“You bit me! Look at that!” He showed me the
mark.

“So what.” I could see Brother Oren by the fence
now, doing the same with my grandpa like he did with Aunt Sweet, listening and
frowning and staring at the ground. I pushed the button to roll down the window,
but it wouldn't work without the key on.

“That hurt!”

“All right,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“Like hell you are.”

I didn't say nothing, I just wanted him to shut up.
I needed to hear what my grandpa was saying. I felt like it was probably
something to do with the rest of my life.

“You're
going
to be
sorry, though.” He shoved his arm over the seat again to show me. “Look!” His
face was smeared red from crying. I turned back to see what Grandpa was doing. I
couldn't hear anything, and it was too far to tell what anybody's face said. The
deputy that swatted Carl Albert was inside the fence again, tipped back on his
high stool with his sunglasses on. I started thinking I could just get out and
walk over there, what was that old deputy going to do? Or the preacher, either
one. I leaned over the seat for the door handle, and my cousin whipped across
and smashed his fist in my nose,
pow!
, like I'd
walked smack into a tree. I didn't yell, or cry, either. I just sat back with
the blood gushing down all over the front of my hoodie and onto Brother Oren's
backseat. I didn't know what to do. I heard Carl Albert shouting, “I'm sorry!
Don't tell them! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!” I got out of the car and stood by the
back bumper. I was trying to catch the blood in my hands but it just poured
through. Somebody in the yard seen me and hollered. I looked up, and here came
Brother Oren across the lot at a dead run.

Monday | February 18, 2008 | 4:30
A.M.

Sweet's house | Cedar

S
weet set her coffee cup on the low table in the dark, took the can of Endust and sprayed the top of the TV cabinet, flicked the feather duster around vaguely, using spillover light from the hall to see by. It was 4:30
A.M.
She hadn't slept a drop. Shoot the gerbil, she said to herself. Shoot the gerbil, shoot the gerbil, shoot the dadgum gerbil. But the gerbil kept scrabbling around on its stupid chattering wheel like it had been doing all night: her daddy in jail, her niece's husband deported, the boys fighting like heathens, and her own husband gone since this time yesterday with no way to tell if he was alive or dead, gone working half the time, gone too much of the time, while their son turned into a coward and bully—no. Hush. Don't say that. Shut up. But, oh, she could wring Terry's neck for not calling. The pipeline break was likely so far down in the mountains there wasn't a cell tower for miles, she knew that, but he could have sent somebody out to call. Or somebody from Arkoma Gas could let the families know their men were all right. Surely. You'd think.

She stumbled against the coffee table, sloshed coffee from the cup onto the doily beneath the Bible. Despite her recent rededication and determination to do better, Sweet cussed. She snatched up the book and hurried to the kitchen for the dishrag. There in the lit hallway stood Dustin, his hair tousled, his nostrils blood crusted, both eyes bruised and swollen, way worse than when she'd sent him and Carl Albert to bed yesterday evening. “What are you doing up?” she said. “Get back in the bed, it's not even five o'clock.” She swept past him.

“I thought I heard Grandpa.”

Sweet stopped in her rush to the sink. For an instant she half believed that her father was calling out for help in that Wilburton jail cell where he was locked up with thieves and dope dealers and one useless Mexican pastor. “You heard Mr. Bledsoe moaning, is all,” she said. “Go back to bed.”

But the boy stood blinking at the huge family Bible in her arms. “Here.” She thrust the book at him, grabbed the dishrag off the sink faucet, and hurried to the front room, flipped on the overhead light. She dabbed at the doily, heard the boy's sticking barefoot step on the hall tiles. “Put it on the mantle,” she said, bobbing her head at the false mantle above the gas stove. Dustin carried the Bible over and set it sideways on the ledge. “Are you hungry?”

He shook his head.

“Go back to bed then. It won't be daylight for hours.”

“Did Uncle Terry get back?”

“He'll be here in a little bit.”

“Is he going to the arraignment?'

She was startled. “Where'd you learn that word?”

“What word?”

“Arraignment.”

“I don't know. Brother Oren maybe.” The boy went to the window and twisted the shade wand to look out.

“Nothing to see this early.” Sweet studied his thin frame, slim shoulders, his too-long brown hair curling down over his collar. Those pajamas had fit Carl Albert when he was eight. Dusty was ten going on eleven, and the pajamas swallowed him. “I'll scramble you an egg.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Come over here and talk to me a minute.” She sat on the divan and patted the seat cushion. Dustin came obediently and sat next to her with his head down, his hands folded quietly, unboylike, in his lap. “You want to tell me what happened?” she said. Dustin shrugged. He kept his gaze on the stained doily on the table in front of him. There'd always been something troubling about the kid, Sweet thought. Not
trouble,
like his mother and sister, but troubling. Wrenching somehow. “You know the rules about fighting.” The boy nodded.

She and Terry had set the rules when Dusty stayed with them last Christmas and the two cousins had argued and jabbed and poked at each other day and night. First offense, no video games for one week. Second offense, no video games and no TV for two weeks. For the third infraction it would be no video games, no television, no movies, no McDonald's or Sonic for one entire year. This was Tee's version of Three Strikes and You're Out, which wouldn't have much effect on Dustin since he lived with his grandpa, but it would devastate Carl Albert. Sweet had never expected to have to deliver the ultimate punishment, but yesterday afternoon was the third fistfight the boys had had since the sheriff dropped Dustin off on his way to Wilburton after the raid Friday night. There was no way she could simply let it slide, act like she didn't know—not with Dustin's bruised face and the bloody bite mark on Carl Albert's arm. Lord, what were their teachers at school going to think? “Who started it?” she said. The boy's only response was to shift his gaze from the doily to the coffee mug. “Well, it don't matter who started it,” Sweet said. “The consequences are the same.”

“I know.”

“Plus, I'm going to add one other little note to it. When Carl gets up, I want to see you two hug each other's necks and say you're sorry.”

Dustin cut her a sidelong glance but said nothing.

“Well?”

Again the boy shrugged. His swollen nose made him look different, older, ethnic, not quite so fragile. Like his father, probably. Had Gaylene known how the boy's looks would turn out when she named him? The same dusty brown color all over, skin, eyes, eyebrows, hair. This whole mess could be traced back to Gaylene, Sweet thought. One more bunch of trouble to lay at her dead sister's feet. “If you're not going back to bed,” she said, “come help me get Mr. Bledsoe up.”

“Aw.”

“Your choice. Back to bed or make yourself useful.”

The boy stood and followed her down the hall. Sweet clicked on the bedside lamp. The old man was snoring, his toothless mouth open, the top sheet all knotted and twisted. Dustin hung back by the door. She knew how Mr. Bledsoe's old-manness bothered him, the sickly sour smell, gaping mouth, whitish gums, the purple marks all over his neck and arms because his skin was so fragile. Well, it bothered her, too, but there was nothing she could do about it. “Get me a diaper out of that sack in the closet.”

The boy rummaged in the plastic bag, brought her a Depends, then edged backward toward the hall, fake yawning, patting his mouth. The old man blinked, staring around the room with confused, rheumy eyes.

“Hand me them wipes.”

Dustin handed her the blue plastic tub, yawning broader.

“All right,” she said. “Don't wake your cousin when you go in.” The boy slipped quickly out the door toward Carl Albert's bedroom. “No playing that Gameboy under the covers!” Sweet called after him before turning to clean the old man. She'd learned all the tricks from her three-month stint at the Latimer County Nursing Home two years ago—how to roll him, how to plant her feet good to hoist him. The nursing home was exactly where Mr. Bledsoe ought to be, but her husband wouldn't hear of it. Well, it wasn't Tee washing the old man's privates and hauling him up out of the bed and into the chair every morning, now, was it? Sweet had quit that nursing home job because she hated the work, and now here she was. That was sure life, wasn't it? Whatever you most didn't want to have to deal with, that's precisely what came your way. Your own daddy in jail, for instance.

When she got Mr. Bledsoe diapered and dressed and sitting on the side of the bed, she clamped his two arms around her neck, put both her arms around him, braced her shoulders, set her legs. “Come on, Dad,” she said. “Work with me.” The old man grunted as she levered him up from the mattress and over to the wheelchair. Mr. Bledsoe was thin as sticks but he weighed like a log when she had to lift him. She unflipped the chair locks and maneuvered toward the door, but then she heard Terry's truck rumbling out front, the diesel engine unmistakable; she flipped the locks back down and left Mr. Bledsoe sitting as she hurried toward the front of the house.

Her husband didn't look at her when he came into the kitchen from the carport. He went to the fridge and stood with the door open drinking 7UP straight from the two-liter bottle, which he knew she hated, but Sweet didn't comment. Terry's thick curly hair was a rat's nest from wind and sweat, and so was his beard, which hadn't been trimmed since she couldn't even remember when. There were pouchy bags under her husband's eyes like two small pale thumbs, and his cheeks were nearly black with dirt, his hands and clothes and boots filthy. He'd tracked dried clay all over her clean kitchen floor. Still she didn't gripe at him, not even when he went to the front room and flopped into his chair in his grimy workpants and turned on the TV, clicked absently through the channels without stopping, which he also knew she hated, and then clicked it right back off.

“You want me to fix you some eggs?” she said from the archway.

Terry shook his head no, staring at the black screen as if it were on.

“Where was the line break?”

“Wasn't a break.”

“What then?”

“Explosion.”

“Anybody killed?”

“Only the idiot digging postholes without calling Arkoma.”

“Oh no. That's terrible. When will people learn? It's not like there's no signs posted.”

“He was a Mexican they said. I expect he couldn't read.”

“Or read English.”

“Or read period.”

“All right,” she said. She waited for him to say more, and when he didn't, she asked again where it was.

“Down past Honobia.”

“Y'all stop for breakfast?”

He nodded, still staring glassily at the blank screen. “The Hateful Hussy in Talihina.”

“They got cell towers in Talihina,” she said, meaning,
You could have called and let me know you hadn't been blown to pieces,
but she didn't say it with much force. Pick your battles, she thought. Terry clicked the TV back on, turned to the western channel. Her husband had seen every western ever made, most of them dozens of times, but when there was nothing on, that's the station he tuned to. Either that or the farm channel. He yawned, scratched his cheek beneath the beard. “Hadn't you better be getting the boys up?” he said.

“In a minute. Listen, you're going to be here today, aren't you?”

“Got to be back down there by three.”

“No, Tee! You've been at it forty-eight hours straight!”

“Twenty-seven.”

“They can't ask you to keep going without any rest!”

“Can if I aim to keep my job. Line's shut down from Nashoba all the way to Battiest. Them people don't have any heat.”

“It's not cold.”

“Fixing to be. You get your daddy bailed out?”

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Brother Oren was up there yesterday. He says Daddy doesn't intend to get bailed out.” Her husband looked up, frowning. Sweet said, “Well,
I
don't know what the Sam Hill he's thinking! I need you to stay with Dad while I go to the arraignment. It starts at nine thirty but I might have to . . . oh, Lord. Dad.” She hurried to the bedroom, where the old man was asleep in his chair with his head tilted backward, fortunately, instead of forward; otherwise he would have tumbled out of the chair.

She let him sleep on as she wheeled him toward the front room, where she found Terry snoring in his recliner and Jack Elam rolling his wild eyes in silence on the TV. All right. Let them sleep. She tied the old bathrobe sash around Mr. Bledsoe's chest to keep him from falling forward, went to check on the boys. In the light from the hall she could see her son snoring on his back with his arms flung over his head and his breathing coarse as a turbine. On the inflatable mattress on the floor Dusty lay curled up with the covers pulled over his head. She couldn't see any light leaking around the quilt to show he was under there playing Carl Albert's Gameboy, which was a relief. She wasn't even sure she'd call him out if she did see it. Sometimes a person just got tired of trying to make them grow up right. Sweet returned to the front room and stretched out on the divan. Terry was home now, it wasn't yet daylight, she had time to rest her eyes a minute, she told herself, before she had to start getting the boys ready for school.

Grayish light was seeping in the front windows, dull and murky looking, when Carl Albert woke her. “You'll never guess what Dustin did.”

“What!” Sweet sat up like a shot. “What time is it?” The mantle clock said almost eight thirty. “Oh my word. Terry, honey, wake up and go to bed.” She rubbed her face. “Carl, get your backpack. Y'all hurry up and get ready, you're going to be late.”

“Come look.”

The quilt was thrown back on the air mattress to show where he'd rolled up a bunch of her son's T-shirts and briefs and old pajamas in the shape of a sleeping boy.

“He's gonna get it now, ain't he?” Carl's voice was gleeful.

What do I do? Sweet thought. She was still half asleep, rum-dum, she couldn't think. “Go wake your daddy. Tell him to come here a minute.”

“Dustin's in big trouble this time, right?”

“Don't sound so proud. Go on.”

She found the note on the floor where it had fallen when Carl Albert pulled off the quilt. The boy's hand was small, extraordinarily neat, laid out in tiny block penciled letters on ruled notebook paper:

I'LL BE BACK FOR SUPPER, PLEASE DON'T WORRY. PLEASE. YOURS TRULY DUSTIN LEE ROBERT BROWN