Bilbo, just back from his smoke, said, “Right. Sam shot the kid twice and while he was falling, he picked up a rock and bashed Sam’s head in. Shee-ut!”
Bilbo looked for a place to spit, his way of showing disgust, then thought better of it and shook his head instead.
“I went by the Hi-Ho,” Carl said. “Found out Sam had been in there for a couple of hours drinking straight shots of Wild Turkey.
Did some tough talking, said he was going gook hunting. Tried to stir up some interest, wanted the Mosier brothers to go with him, but they weren’t drunk enough to take him up on it, so he left alone. About fifteen minutes before he ambushed the Vietnamese guy, the way I figure.”
“Sam could never handle his liquor,” Quinton said.
“He was a mean son of a bitch, even when he was sober.” Carl pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. “Guy told me he saw Sam string a German shepherd up by the neck, then beat it to death with a two-by-four ’cause it muddied the door of his truck.”
“Shee-ut.” Unable to control his anger, Bilbo spit into a potted plant. “Shame that horse didn’t bash his brains out sooner.”
“Oh, Brim Neely came by your place, Caney. Caught me just before I left. Said he wasn’t much surprised when he heard about what happened. Told me that gelding had always gone crazy around guns. Said he threw him once when they came up on some target shooters, and you know yourself that Brim’s not been on many could unsaddle him.
“Anyway, I’m going to need a statement from you, Caney. But we can take care of that later, when this is—”
Carl was stopped in midsentence when he looked up and saw Galilee Jackson, Reverend Thomas and several parishioners of the AME Church standing in the doorway.
No one spoke for several moments, then Galilee stepped forward.
“We’re here to see about Mr. Boo,” she said. “He’s a friend of ours.”
T
HE HONK, closed for three days, didn’t reopen until after the funeral on Friday morning. But when it did, those who came didn’t come because they were hungry. Most stopped by just to talk, trying to understand all that had happened.
A few came directly from the cemetery. They’d gone simply to pay their respects to Sam’s mother and his brother, Don, who came in from Idaho where they’d moved not long after Kyle Kellam died. But though Don had gone into the ministry, he didn’t conduct the graveside service for Sam as most had expected. He’d left that up to the Baptist preacher who hadn’t known Sam at all, figuring a stranger might find better things to say about Sam than he could.
Many of the conversations that Friday morning took place at Caney’s counter where those assembled were as hard-pressed to find praise for Sam as his brother was. But since they felt bound not to speak ill of the dead, and with Sam barely into his first hour underground, they recalled with admiration that his boots were always polished and he’d kept his pickup clean.
But much of the talk following Sam’s funeral took place out back where a half dozen men, black and white, were working to restore Caney’s bus.
Reverend Thomas, Brother Junior and Sister Grace’s husband, Jennings Washington, had brought parts pirated from their wrecked Sunday bus, while the others—Bilbo, Soldier and Hooks, contributed some tools, a couple of good tires and a steering wheel Quinton had found at the junkyard north of town.
But they all brought their enthusiasm for helping Bui repair the bus, a project they’d learned about while they waited together at the hospital on Monday night.
No one, however, was more zealous than Galilee who was in the kitchen preparing chicken and dumplings, purple-hull peas and cornbread.
She had insisted on helping out with the cooking since Caney was spending nights at the hospital and Vena stayed through the days. Molly O was happy for the help and the company, though most of their conversations took place in whispers for fear of waking Caney who hadn’t returned from the hospital until almost eight that morning.
They needn’t have worried, though. Caney had gone to sleep as soon as he crawled into bed, a sleep so deep he hadn’t even heard Vena when she was sick in the bathroom just minutes after he closed his eyes.
*
When Vena stepped into the cubicle in ICU, she made sure to have a smile on her face, just in case. But nothing had changed.
Bui was still in a coma.
The surgeon had repaired the damaged spleen, put in a stint for the contused kidney and treated the busted clavicle. But with the concussion, all they could do was wait. And they’d been waiting for three days.
Vena pulled a chair up beside the bed to do what the nurses had told her to do. Talk, they’d said. Pretend he can hear you. Just talk.
“So, how’re you doing today, huh? Yeah, I can tell. You look a lot better.”
She reached through the rails of Bui’s bed and curled her fingers around his.
“Me? I’m fine. Great. I’ve got this one little problem, though.
Looks like I’m pregnant. You’re the first to know.
“Happy about it? No, I wouldn’t say that. Well, I’ll try, but I don’t know if I can make you understand.
“See, Bui, I just don’t have the right stuff to be a mother. There’s something missing in me, I think. I mean, I don’t feel anything for what’s growing inside me. And that’s pretty sad, isn’t it?
“Other women, they get pregnant, they think it’s the most wonderful thing ever happened to them. That’s all they can talk about.
Is it a boy? Is it a girl? They start thinking up names and making quilts. They buy baby beds and teddy bears, start taking vitamins, stop smoking.
“Well, yeah, I have, but that’s because they make me so sick.
And not just cigarettes, either. Coffee, onions, eggs. Let’s not talk about it or I’ll be sick again.
“But what I’m trying to say is, I don’t see myself holding a baby in my arms and singing lullabies. God, I don’t even know a lullaby.
“Now my sister Helen, she would’ve been a great mother. She loved kids. Talked about having babies when she was just a little girl. Made me play house—she’d be the mother and I’d have to be the baby. Sure, I went along with it. Had to. She was my big sister.
“But me? What I wanted was to go somewhere. Get on a horse and ride as far as I could. Climb into the back of my dad’s pickup, no matter where he was going. I just wanted to move.
“I’ve always been like that. Get on the road, see where it would take me. I figured there was always something new, something waiting for me just down the highway or in the next town or across the next mountain.
“So, that’s the story. Probably hard for you to understand, you being so happy about your baby, but—”
A nurse stopped at the door, peered in at Bui, smiled at Vena, then disappeared.
“I guess my time’s about up, Bui. . . . I know, but we just get ten minutes with you, and they’ll only let us come back here every two hours.
“No, Caney doesn’t know, has no idea. He’s got enough problems of his own. I mean, what would he do with a baby? And what about when she’s older? What if she turned out like Brenda? Hell, what if she turned out like me? Can’t stay in one place, can’t really call any place home. And you know why? Because home doesn’t last. That’s for the movies.
“Look what happened to me and Helen. Look at yourself, Bui.
You live in a church. Caney lives in a cafe. You ask me, no one has a home anymore.
“So I’m going to get rid of the baby. But it’s not the first time for me. No, it doesn’t hurt. Not the physical part, anyway.
“The other part? I was only seventeen, so it’s hard for me to remember exactly what I felt.
“Oh, sometimes I’d see a baby and I’d think about mine. But one funny thing . . . see, if I’d gone ahead and had that baby, it would’ve been born in April. So I picked a date. April eighteenth.
Now, every April, on the eighteenth, I sort of go through the birthday thing in my mind. And I think, Today she would’ve been five. This week, she would be eleven. Next Tuesday, she’d be fifteen. That’s crazy, isn’t it? But . . .”
Vena pulled the strap of her purse over her shoulder as she stood.
“You know what, Bui? I’ve never told anyone this stuff. And I don’t know for sure why I’m telling you except I’m leaving and I figure you’ll keep it to yourself after I’m gone.
“I can’t wait much longer, but I’d like to stick around until you’re back on your feet again. Caney never really needed me there, but he needs you. You and Molly O.
“No, I won’t be coming back. See, Bui, Caney’s a good man. A fine man. He deserves a hell of a lot better than me.”
“Excuse me, ma’am.” The nurse was the same one who had stopped by earlier. “I’m sorry, but—”
“Sure. I’m going.”
Then Vena leaned over and brushed her fingers across Bui’s cheek. “You rest now. I’ll see you in a couple of hours. And we’ll talk again.”
*
“What’s wrong?” he asked, steeling himself for bad news.
“He woke up, Caney! He woke up an hour ago!”
Molly O whooped as she ran from the kitchen and grabbed Vena in her arms. Caney, a smile spreading across his face, let out a breath he felt he’d been holding for a long time.
“Did you talk to him?” Molly O asked. “Does he seem . . .
well, did he make sense?”
“He didn’t talk much, didn’t act like he remembered what happened, but he asked if he’d had a letter from his wife and he told me to be sure the gelding gets his carrots.”
“Oh, thank you, Jesus,” Molly O whispered.
“His damned carrots.” Caney laughed then, his first in many days.
“The doctor came in just before I left. Said they’ve got the infection under control, and he thinks the urologist might take the stint out tomorrow, see how his kidney’s going to work. But he told me everything looks good.”
“I’m going to call Life.” Molly O reached for the phone.
“I was reading to him, Caney,” Vena said as she slid onto a stool.
“Some fishing magazine I found in the waiting room. And when I finished, I looked up and he was looking at me. He said, ‘Miss Vena, you go to fishing today?’ ”
Vena let the tears come then as Caney reached across the counter and took her face in his hands.
“He’s going to make it, Vena.”
“Yeah. He is.”
Molly O hung up the phone and said, “Life’s coming right over.
He thinks we should have a glass of champagne, but he doesn’t like it, so he’s bringing a jug of cider.”
“I’ll settle for a glass of tea.”
“You look so tired, Vena. Let me get you something to eat. How about some of Galilee’s chicken and dumplings?”
“That sounds good.”
Molly O scooted off to the kitchen as the phone rang. “I’ll get it back here,” she said. “I’ll bet a dollar it’s Wanda Sue trying to get a scoop on the news.”
“She’s right,” Caney said. “You look worn out.”
“How about you? You don’t look much more rested than I feel.”
“I slept till almost noon.”
“How’d things go here today?”
“Fine. Looks like it’ll be a while before they have the bus running, but Molly O and Galilee kept things going out here.”
“Has she left?”
“Yeah, not long ago. Doc Corley was by again.”
“And?”
“He says the gelding’s not any better. Thinks an infection is setting in. He’s changing the medication, but . . .”
“But what?”
“He still thinks we should put the gelding down.”
“What did you say?”
“I said we’d give it a few more days.”
*
Caney had fallen asleep around eleven, while Vena, feigning restlessness, sat in the dining room with a book. She waited until nearly midnight when she heard him snoring softly before she slipped into the kitchen, grabbed a long sharp knife, then stepped outside, closing the door soundlessly behind her.
She had prepared what she would need earlier that evening when she went to the barn to check on the gelding—dead branches and dry twigs for the fire and the bundle she’d hidden nearby.
“Sorry to make you walk on that leg,” she said as she haltered the gelding. “But you’ve suffered enough.”
After she led the horse from the barn, she tethered him to a sycamore not far from the kindling she’d stacked. Once she had the fire going, she retrieved the secreted bundle and laid out what was inside. Then she picked up the knife and went back to the gelding.
“This won’t take long, boy.”
The animal turned his head toward her, his eyes reflecting light from the fire as she cut switches of his mane and tail, whispering words to calm him as she worked.
When she finished, she squatted beside the fire to pour water from a plastic bottle into the dirt, then used her hands to work it into loose, thin mud.
With the fire blazing, she picked up a large strip of clean cotton cloth and waved it back and forth through the smoke coming from the flames, and as she did, she started to chant, words and sounds passed from her great-grandfather to her grandfather to her, from a memory as old as her tribe.
Still chanting, she stripped sage from the stems she’d gathered, making a small pile of the weed in front of her. Then she took a handful of sage and one of horsehair and rolled them together between the palms of her hands.
Finally, she spread mud on the cloth, then worked the sage-and-horsehair mixture into it.
Finished, she went to the gelding, knelt and pressed the poultice to his leg, while the moon cast them in lacy patterns through the branches of the sycamore tree.
M
OLLY O AND GALILEE sparred for five days over where Bui would stay when he left the hospital, but Galilee finally won out, her strongest argument being that she’d midwifed fifty-three babies. Caney couldn’t quite see the connection, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
Fresh from her victory, Galilee spent the next twenty-four hours working to make her house patient ready. She aired pillows, bleached sheets, boiled dishes and sanitized the bathroom, growing faint once with the fumes of ammonia.