Two Shades of Morning (23 page)

“I pushed open the door then. ‘Hey, mister,’ I yelled, ‘I done sent after the law, so you better just be high-tailing it on out of here.’

“He eyeballed me from where he was squatting, then walked in a squat to check for Emmet and Pap, them eyeing me too with their fists of gravel midair. The man stood up then and went to motioning for the girl to come on.

“‘Go on by yourself,’ I hollered, ‘you ain’t no fitten daddy and you ain’t taking that youngun nowhere.’

“She just stood there with her mouth gaped, and Pap and Emmet did too, and the man headed out toward the Georgia line, walking backwards now and then to watch us, till he was out a sight.”

“What then?” I said, watching her as the girl must have watched, the girl who had to have been Sibyl. “Wellsir,” said Aunt Birdie, inert and dredging memory, “I took her on home with me, me and Pap did, and kept her two whole months. Fed her, cleaned her up, tried to put her in school when it started, treated her the best I knowed how, though I didn’t never love her—I can’t say I did. Something about her wouldn’t let you. At first, she didn’t talk atall, not to me and not to Pap. I put her to helping out in the kitchen, and she’d stand and stare out the window at the woods, long-faced and lonesome. A dreamer’s what she was. Me and Pap even took her to the picture show in Jasper one night, and she set staring at the screen like she’d stared out my kitchen window. Couldn’t make head nor tails of what she was thinking, that one, but I figgered she’d come around. I had me a youngun now, what I’d always yearned for. Didn’t work out that way. When looked like she got a bait of us dull old people, she turnt hateful. Went to blowing up lies. One day her mama had got run over by a car on the road and died under a creek bridge, a bunch of long drawn-out bloody details no normal youngun wouldn’t tell and it the truth, nor dream up on some Mama they loved if it was false. Figgered me for a fool’s, what she done. She’d forget that story in a day or two and figger I had too, and make like she was a princess been kidnapped by Harp. Next, she was his wife and me and Pap had done busted them up, ruint her life. Weren’t long before she got to wandering off to Little Town; be gone two whole days and come back with some fool story bout some big truck driver grabbing her out of the yard, taking her off and using her, then leaving her by the road, other side of Little Town. Pap lit into her that time, called her a liar, and weren’t long before she come to me with big crocodile tears running down her cheeks and told me Pap had been forcing hisself on her. Went to Pap and told him I’d been beating on her. Broke my heart, Pap’s too. We put our heads together and decided to get her a bus ticket to wherever she wanted to go; she weren’t no youngun, we’d done found out, maybe hadn’t never been, and if she was a youngun, she’d been so pumped full of meanness, we weren’t no match for her. Some people’s just born mean, and I believe that. But that was a pretty youngun, I tell you. Just growny acting, and they ain’t nothing no uglier.

“So, we seen her off on the bus to Tampa, Florida—where she hoped to hook up with Harp—and when we got home I found out she’d took everlast dab of my egg money and what Emmet had give me for minding the store.”

“Sibyl,” I said.

“Sibyl,” she repeated. “The first time I laid eyes on her, after she married Little Robert Dale, I knowed there was something about her that put me in mind of somebody. Them gold rattlesnake eyes was what give her away. Then that day she come to be a member of the church, I put two and two together.”

“Did you tell her?”

“I did.” She picked up her rocking speed. “What did she say?”

“About what you’d expect.” She braked the rocker. “Said she didn’t have ery idear what I was talking about. I told her to get on out of town again, to take what was hers and go and let you young people alone. Figger it up for yourself, Sibyl had to of been closer thirty than twenty, old enough to have learnt at least half of what she was gone learn from life. Still claimed she didn’t know what I was talking about. But when she seen I meant business, she changed her tune. Told me if I ever told a living soul, she’d swear up and down I was a lie.”

“That’s not how come you didn’t tell.”

“No.” She glared at me with milky jade eyes. “I didn’t tell because weren’t nothing to be gained by telling. Them boys would of done what they done anyhow. Young people’s got to run into a brick wall before they wake up.” “Me too?” I hadn’t intended to make it a question

“Would anything have been different if I’d told?” Aunt Birdie locked eyes with me in the yellow light, midnight come and gone as if her telling and my hearing hadn’t changed time: morning was set. No sacred shade of darkness to draw over fact now. “She was what she was,” Aunt Birdie sighed.

“She never went all the way,” I said.

“What, sugar?” “Nothing.” I felt the dawn lifting. “You never told how she’d lived—her secret—so she could die respectable.”

“That too, I reckon,” she said, bowing her frayed head. “Ain’t for everbody to be knowing even now.”

“If you’re through, Aunt Birdie, I need to use your fireplace.” I got up and gathered the box in my hands, hearing its secrets knock.

She rocked on, complacently. “I don’t reckon that’s nothing you want to talk about.” “No ‘um, I don’t,” I said. “I mean, I don’t need to now.” I didn’t look at her.

“I got a good notion who that fancy thing belonged to.”

“Yes ‘um,” I said. “It don’t matter, though.”

My back felt cool as I knelt on the depressed slab of rough concrete. I lifted the lid, breathing in the smell of soot, cloves, vinegar and old paper, and placed a letter on the live coals and watched it glow and flare. Then another and another, watching the fire blaze and roll, heat strong on my face. My face in the pictures blackened and knurled, and Aunt Birdie gasped. A horseshoe winked red from the bed of ashes.

“Do you want the box?” I said, sitting on my heels while the fire crackled and died.

“No, I wouldn’t have no use for such,” she said.

I placed it on the horseshoe and watched the iron burn through and blaze, a glorious burning that purged even the soot-feathered chimney.

THE END

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