World and Town (26 page)

How much they laughed back then!—laughed and laughed until Carter met Meredith, the provost’s daughter
.

“Courage,” she tells Cato again. And there—he’s a bit better now that he’s standing; it’s not as bad as getting up and down, or stairs. She puts some music on. Sweeps the cabin, licks a finger, rubs a window pane to see if the grime is on the inside or out, then gets out a bucket and brush and tackles the spider webs on the outside of the house. Her lights are so encased in filaments, they seem like giant egg sacs themselves, evolved to be not only extra-large but extra-sticky. Her hands are soon webbed with goo.

She has only just scrubbed off her hands and sat down to ink-making when another visitor arrives.

“Sophy?”

Sophy stands stiff as a porch post. Hattie tells her to come in, but she won’t; Hattie has to put down her ink stick to go open the slider.

“I brought you your newspaper,” says Sophy.

And so she has—grasping it so hard, she has given the thing a waist.

“Sarun’s run away,” she says, petting Annie.

“Did he go in the van?”

“We’re not sure.” Sophy picks Annie up by the shoulders. “My dad’s flipping out.”

“Let’s go look for him.”

“Look for him?” Annie, hind legs up, is craning forward to lick Sophy’s face.

“Where are my keys?”

On their red hook.

Chhung declines to come, but Mum sits, small and tense, in the front seat next to Hattie. She has a handkerchief knotted tight around her fingers; she worries the cloth. Sophy holds Gift in the back. As Hattie doesn’t have a carseat, they do have to keep their fingers crossed that a cop doesn’t catch them, but never mind. They circle the lake. Then it’s up into the hills on the east side—rising so high on the inclines that Hattie all but forgets their errand from time to time. They’re so high, they seem to be crossing the sky—the clouds just ahead, immense and otherworldly; the mountains down below, piddling and inconsequential. The trees on the mountains are not trees but tree moss. The roads are like insect trails.

At lower elevations, though, the roads are normal enough again, and finally dry, with cars sending up plumes of dust—the terrors of early spring having given way to something more bucolic. Some of the farms have developments “eating up their fenders,” as people say, but look how they buzz now with plowing and planting. The air smells of grass and manure; the lambs and kids are filling out; and, most spectacularly of all, the dandelions are blooming. The car passes field after field of the most joyous, feckless yellow; it should really be named the state weed. Isn’t Ginny’s old farm around here? Rex’s place, as people still call it—next door to the commune? Hattie reseats her glasses, squinting at a three-story barn with a broken-down sugarhouse; she fiddles with her radio. Tuning into a Christian music station at Sophy’s request. Though what in heaven’s name are they talking about? How men are absent from family life, and women becoming wild, and here it comes, of course, Ephesians 5:22–23:
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.…
Paul seeing eye to eye with Confucius on this one. Can Sophy really be interested in this? But there she is, leaning forward, listening, her broad forehead gleaming like a polished rock. Hattie tries to tune the show out and mostly succeeds, but is thankful when Gift begins to fuss so that Sophy finally has no choice but to sit back and play with him. She bounces him, kisses him, tickles him; she claps his feet and plays peek-a-boo and lets him chew on her knuckle, then bounces him some more until finally Hattie asks, Does he like music? And sure enough, a tape of Greta’s calms him down. Some kind of Social Club—a Cuban thing—maybe it’s just the novelty that does it. Anyway, his eyes widen, and his fists bang; he suddenly shrieks and suddenly quiets. He looks more like Mum every day—Sophy, too—that same broad forehead. Now Sophy wipes his drool with her fingers as the car makes its way from one town to the next—down the wooded lanes, across the open fields. They enter a green valley.

Mum is quiet and unmoving. Her shoulder strap crosses her too high for comfort; another person would draw it down into her lap, or slip it behind her. But Mum just leans back. Never mind that the strap still crosses her chin and part of her cheek; she is holding her handkerchief more loosely now, and watching the road with such interest that Hattie wonders how many times she’s sat in the front seat of a car. Many times, surely, back when Sarun had wheels? Sarun, Sarun. They check out the town centers especially, though a lot of them aren’t much more than a gas pump that works or doesn’t. A Chinese restaurant or a tattoo parlor or a video store; a general store with sagging steps and a live-bait sign. Everything needs paint.

At least the apple trees are blooming.

How can they find a boy who could be anywhere?

Sarun, Sarun, Sarun.

The city is just outcroppings of signage at first. A pizza place. A car wash. But then, suddenly: storefronts, sidewalks, parking meters, sewer grates. Streetlights and traffic lights; dogs on leashes, the poor things. How are Hattie and company going to search a whole city? Anyway, there’s Gift’s diaper to take care of, first; and wouldn’t it be nice to find him a place to toddle around? Hattie is in truth keeping an eye out as much for a park as for Sarun, when they spot—yo!—a familiar blond ponytail sauntering toward the bus station, alone. He’s wearing a black-and-silver sweatshirt Hattie doesn’t recognize, and swaggering as if he is not coming down a sidewalk exactly, but something with more roll.

“Sarun!” Sophy sweeps her hair back like a girl in one of their Asian romance tapes. “Sarun!”

He startles; stops; does a theatrical double-take.

“Yo! Sarun!”

He hesitates, glancing over his shoulder, but then turns smartly on his heel, strides over and salutes. His hands are clean for a change and, though scarred and scratched up, Band-Aid-free.

“What are you doing here?” says Sophy. “We’ve been worried about you.”

“Had to get out of there.”

“We’ve been driving all over, looking for you!”

“Yeah? Well, you found me.” He reaches in to cuff Gift; he ruffles his hair.

“You hungry?” Sophy’s tone is nothing Hattie’s ever heard from her before—wheedling and appeasing, girly. “Want to get something to eat?”

“You going for pizza? Burgers? What?” He glances across the street at a Mexican restaurant; his pupils are the dark bright of sunglasses. “I’ll pass on the tacos. No burritos today, nope.
Gracias.
”

“Don’t be actin’,
Bong!
” Now it’s Sophy who looks away.

Mum says something in Khmer from behind her seat belt. Her tone is mild, her manner is mild; she does not say more than ten words in all. Though her window’s half up, she doesn’t roll it down; neither does she turn her head. Still, Sarun heeds her in a way that he didn’t his sister. Not answering, exactly—he doesn’t answer. But he does straighten up, stretching. He looks off at the bus station. Then finally, hunched over, elbows on the car door, he thrusts his face in the half-open window and talks, looks off, talks some more, looks off.
Riding a donkey, looking for a horse
, Hattie’s father would say, but if you saw him from a distance you might almost think him flirting.

Mum blinks, her handkerchief in her lap.

“All right,” he says. “I hear you.”

And with that he climbs into the backseat of the car, next to Gift, asking would Hattie shut that noise. “That Goya shit,” he calls it.

A kind of talk Hattie doesn’t like, but all right. For today, a house special: no lecture, she just turns off the music. Gift, happily, doesn’t seem to mind. Sarun’s doing gymnastics with him—launching him from his knees to the ceiling, flying him around like an airplane. Gift squeals and squeals. It’s the kind of overexcited vocalizing that used to end, with Josh, in a tantrum. But Gift doesn’t go over the edge. It’s Sarun who tuckers out—still playing, but more and more mechanically, until finally, when they stop for pizza, Sophy takes over. She touches Gift’s nose, blows on his face, lets him play with her shirt strap. He climbs in under her shirt, making noises. Everyone else is silent, though the atmosphere once they’re back in the car is growing lighter; maybe it’s just that as Hattie drives faster, everyone’s hair is whipping and blowing. In any case, something feels to be streaming away. Mum puts her hand up, keeping her hair from her face, and yet no one moves to close a window.
Yī xīn yī yì
, Hattie’s father would have said—one heart, one will.

A moment of grace
, Hattie’s mother would have said.

Sophy brings a plateful of food over to Hattie the next day, to say thanks. Everyone, she reports, is fine. Her mother in particular is happy.

“Sarun knows her heart,” Sophy says. “She doesn’t have to say anything. He knows her heart.”

Then she nods to herself and smiles a private smile—her own gaze inward, as if on her own known heart.

Hattie hums and goes looking for her wetsuit. Time to see if the lake’s warm enough for a swim.

N
o need to go looking for Everett; this problem male hulks at the corner like a trading-post bear. He’s wearing an unfrayed sweatshirt and a buoyant blue feed hat but his jeans are all grease and wrinkles, his bootlaces all knots and creativity; and there’s something unsettled and unsettling in his normally mild glance.

“Mind if I walk, too,” he says.

To which the walking group replies, No, no, of course, though—a man in their midst! And a man who wants something. They maintain an unaccustomed silence as they head down the main road and over the culvert. They pass the big field. They pass the four corners. They pass the new speed-limit sign that had to be put up after the other one got run over. They wave hi to Judy Tell-All driving by in her exhaust-spewing pickup; and is that Jill Jenkins out in a car with Neddy Needham? Who’s a lot less of a puffball since he started his crash fitness course; and what a nice sport wagon he drives, with a bike rack and a sunroof. And now look.

“Two-timing Carter?” asks Beth, quietly. “Having a side dish?”

Hattie shrugs.

“Because isn’t Carter seeing Jill? That’s what I heard.”

Dá guān
—detachment. “I’m trying not to know,” says Hattie.

“You’re what?” says Beth.

Above them, the clouds darken, then lighten, then darken, then lighten.
There’s no one more bipolar than Mother Nature
, Lee would say. But never mind—Everett is still keeping pace with them. Not hurrying them. Just kind of keeping them company, though their pace can’t be his pace. There’s a grace to the man, thinks Hattie. If only all men knew what he knows. Though maybe that’s his trouble, or related to it—his obligingness. A willingness that can turn mulish. Hattie minds him less with every step, in any case, and can almost believe the group could walk the rest of the walk the way they’re walking now, preoccupied.

But finally Greta asks, “Is there something on your mind?”—tilting her head in her Greta-like way. Lee’s first lines showed up around her mouth—all those faces she made. Greta’s, in contrast, are forming zip across her forehead, and what surprise is that? When she spends every day lifting her eyebrows, as now, with interest.

Everett straightens his hat. “Ginny kicked me out.”

“No kidding.” Beth slows up. “Did she really?”

“I am so sorry to hear that,” says Hattie.

Greta throws her braid behind her back, a sign of concern. “So where are you living now?”

“In a tent. Here I built that house with my own two hands, with my own two hands.” Everett holds them up. “And what did it get me?” His normally shaven face is unshaven. “A tent,” he says. “I’m neighbors with a rosebush.”

Beth stops dead. “A rosebush!” she exclaims. “We’re going to have to do something about that!”

“A hydrangea’d be great,” Everett says drily.

“She means about the tent,” says Greta. “Is there something we can do about the tent?”

“Nothing wrong with a tent,” he says.

They walk a bit more, their eight arms swinging. The mist shines brilliant; the sky is like a light box. Then it blinks off.

“You’re upset,” says Hattie, finally.

“She changed the locks on me, Hattie,” says Everett. “She changed the locks.”

“That’s outrageous!” says Beth. “What gives her the right?”

“She says the house is hers. Says the money came from her farm so it’s hers.”

“When you’ve been married for thirty-seven years?” says Hattie.

“You remembered.”

“That is not right,” says Greta.

“ ’Course, she’s said stuff like that before,” says Everett. “It didn’t just start. But the locks, now.” He shakes his head. “The locks’re a development, see. They’re a development.”

“You’re going to have to fight that,” says Greta, firmly.

“Am I,” he says. “Take her to court, right?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, guess I’m going to need a phone line, then—what do you think? And maybe a lawyer. Think I’ll need a lawyer?” He winks.

“You will,” says Greta.

“A lawyer need payment?” he says—his mock earnestness a little like Sarun’s, thinks Hattie, only with a different laugh. “We can help you with the fees,” says Greta. “You can use my phone,” says Hattie.

But Everett gives a sideways jerk of his head, as if trying to get a fly off his neck. “Guess what I’m going to do to thank her,” he goes on.

Hattie pictures his clothes hung up all over, like last time.

“Kill myself,” he says instead. Calmly—with an air of satisfaction, even. A kind of grin cuts across his face.

Still, Beth looks him in the eye. Long way up as it is, she telescopes herself skyward, like a mother talking to a grown son, and says, “You are not.”

And Everett, sure enough, takes a more or less immediate interest in his shoelace knots. “Might as well, now,” he says and starts walking on. “Wouldn’t you say? Might as well. I gave her my life. Gave her everything I had. Don’t you think if she was going to dump me at the end she should’ve warned me?”