The Promise (27 page)

All that waving back and forth was foolishness. They were two stubborn men both trying to get the other to change his mind. I took off my boots and stuffed my stockings inside of them. I tied the shoelaces together and slung them around my neck. I slid to the side of the wagon, my feet feeling for the wheel spoke, but Oscar grabbed hold of my arm. ‘Got to get them,’ he said. ‘Take them back.’

‘No,’ I yelled. ‘They won’t leave. And I won’t either. It’d take more than this to drive us out of our own home.’

I shook him off and then I was knee deep in rushing water. It was cold and muddy, and the ground was uneven and thick with tangled grass. Boards bumped against my legs, some of them painted, some fancy trim work, and I didn’t want to think how any of it got here.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Oscar said, the wind biting the edges off his words.

‘No, you ain’t,’ I said. ‘Go home. You’ve done enough, your folks are waiting.’ I hitched up my skirt, and just before I started to wade to the house, Oscar called out my name. Nan. Not Miss Ogden. Nan. Like what he called me before Bernadette died. Like how it was before we both had to step around the other, me thinking of the curse that hovered over me, and him just wanting to keep a distance. I looked up at him and real quick, I saw something in them green eyes of his. It wasn’t like how he looked at Mrs Williams; it wasn’t anything that strong. But I saw something.

‘Nan,’ Oscar said again. He said something else but only one word came through. ‘Tomorrow.’

He nodded for me to go on, and that was what I did. I went home, Daddy taking the back steps, coming to help me. I plodded to meet him, stumbling as my skirt wrapped around my legs. Daddy stumbled, too, his arms going every which way. The ground was mushy and rough all at the same time, the long grass clutching my ankles. The force of the water was as strong as a riptide. I took a few more steps, fell into a dip, and landed on my hands and knees.

Fear swelled. There was water in my mouth; the current was carrying me; I couldn’t get up; the boots around my neck pulled me down. I grabbed ahold of a rooted clump of grass; that stopped my tumbling. I pushed myself up and stood, spitting and swatting the hair out of my eyes. I got Daddy back in my sights. I climbed my way out of the dip and kept on, hearing that word ‘tomorrow’. Just before Daddy reached me, just before I took hold of his hand, I knew.

‘Nan. See you tomorrow.’ That was what Oscar said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Hurricane

Water rushed over the bottom veranda step.

‘House is five feet up,’ Oscar said on the day he brought me here. ‘Never had a drop of floodwater inside.’

The waves thundered. Sea spray shot up over the tops of the sand hills, arching high, then raining down. Gulf water surged landward through the passes, carving and cutting, the sand hills crumbling and collapsing.

Currents crisscrossed and coursed over bushes and around the trees that Oscar called salt cedars. The barnyard fence had fallen. Rain poured from dark, swift clouds as though countless water buckets had been overturned. The horizon roiled with white-capped gray waves. The air whistled and swept the rain in sheets toward the gulf, the wind still coming from behind the house. I was on the front veranda by the door, and using a broom, I swatted at the frogs that leapt up the steps.

Oscar had been gone for two hours.

My clothes and face were wet from the rain spray that blew in from the sides of the veranda but I couldn’t bear to be inside. The windows were closed and earlier, I had drawn the storm shutters. The house was a cave, dark, hot, and stuffy. Unable to see out, I felt trapped and helpless. I labored to breathe, the walls pressing in around me. On the veranda, though, I could see the storm. Here, I could breathe even if the air was heavy with salt. Here, I looked into the shroud of wind-blown rain and watched for Oscar.

Two hours. Something must have happened to him. A wagon wheel had snapped, the horses had panicked. The wagon had overturned.

This morning when I’d gone to the barn to warn Oscar about the water coming through the sand hill passes, he’d been calm and reassuring. ‘We’re on the ridge,’ he’d said. ‘We’re all right here. There’s a little water in the back pasture, too. Just measured it. It’s only five inches. That’s all. We’ve had worse.’ In the barn’s dim light, the sheen of perspiration on his face glistened. He’d been pitching hay into what I thought might be a feed trough in one of the stalls. I was in the aisle, the stall railing between us. My skirt was muddy, and much of my hair had slipped loose from its pins and combs. The wind whined through the chinks in the walls. The cows were in the stalls, and the odors – dung, animals, my wet clothes – added to my ragged nerves.

Oscar reached over the railing and took my hand. ‘I’m worried some about the Ogdens,’ he said. ‘Frank and Alice.’ It was a moment before I realized these were Nan’s father and mother. ‘They could flood out; they’re close to the bayou. They might need to get to the ridge. Wouldn’t think much of it if Frank T. and Wiley were there to help. But they aren’t and that leaves Frank and Alice stranded without their horses.’ He paused. ‘I’m going to get them and bring them here. I’ll be gone an hour likely. An hour and a half at the most.’

I had been stunned into silence.

‘You and Andre are plenty safe up here on the ridge,’ Oscar went on to say, his fingers making circles on my palm. ‘Wouldn’t leave if I didn’t think it. Wouldn’t do it if you weren’t who you are. You aren’t the kind to let a storm scare you.’

He didn’t know me, I thought now as I swept frogs off of the veranda. The water was halfway up the second step.

Mats of torn grass swirled past in the water, going toward the gulf, then coming back in the crossing currents. Everything that had been in the garbage heap in the back pasture had been carried off. Glass bottles and rusty pails bobbed and tumbled. Empty tin cans and wagon-wheel rims bumped up against bushes, catching in the branches and then breaking free. The crystal earrings must be somewhere in the water. The waves had uprooted the road that wound through the sand hills and its scattered planks rushed past the house. There were snakes, too, their yellow stripes rippling as they swam. Sleek, shiny rats clung to pieces of broken boards.

Five frogs, six, now seven. I swatted at them, their brown speckled bodies leaping away from me, some of them jumping back into the water. I refused to give in to my panic. I would not allow myself to think the unthinkable about Oscar. He was not hurt; he was not in trouble. Not Oscar.

The veranda floor vibrated from the wind. This must be what an earthquake felt like, I thought. Except earthquakes lasted seconds, not hours. It was one-thirty in the afternoon. The storm couldn’t get any worse, I told myself. These massive waves, this unrelenting rain, this had to be the peak. And Oscar was somewhere out in the open.

Nine veranda steps, I thought. The water was only to the second one. I needed to keep my head. I could not allow myself to panic. The front door was held open with a door jamb and I looked into the house. I had lit every lamp and lantern but their narrow, jittering lights only deepened the shadows. Andre lay on the floor under the kitchen table, at last worn out from playing in the rain and from his fear of the storm. Three of the dogs, their heads raised, lay pressed close to him. The fourth one circled.

They had shown up just after Oscar and Nan rode past the house in the wagon. ‘Daddy!’ Andre had called. It was as though he noticed for the first time how dark the morning had turned. The wagon kept moving, Oscar’s shoulders set as he gripped the lines to control the horses.

‘Daddy!’ Andre’s cry was shrill with fear. The loose ends of Oscar’s and Nan’s ponchos beat and jerked in the wind. Rainwater filled the grooves in the mud made by the wagon wheels. Still wearing my soiled wet clothes, my hair blowing loose, I held Andre’s hand and tried to get him into the house, but he bore down and made himself heavy. ‘Daddy!’ That was when the dogs loped up the steps and crowded around Andre, their fur soaked and muddy. The suddenness of their arrival distracted him. He patted them, his hands skimming their heads and backs, going from one to the next.

‘Where’d you go?’ he said to them. His voice trembled. ‘I was looking for you. Why’d you hide?’ Two of them were almost as tall as he, and their long pink tongues licked his tears. He swatted at the dogs but he grinned and I said nothing about filth or sanitation. I had turned back to watch the wagon, a blurring outline in the rain.

I coaxed Andre into the house with the promise of a teaspoon of honey. Another teaspoon convinced him to have his bath. He sat in the metal laundry washtub with his knees up and his hands gripping the sides. I soaped a washcloth with the bar of Ivory and was all at once lightheaded, its cloying fragrance too strong in the closed house. Outside, the dogs scratched at the front door.

‘Ma’am,’ Andre said, his voice wobbling. It occurred to me that this was his name for me. ‘When’ll Daddy get home?’

‘In a little while,’ I said. I needed that to be true. For the first time in my life, another person was completely dependent on me. I had helped Andre get ready for bed before, but Oscar had always been nearby in the barn. In the kitchen with the storm all around us, Andre looked smaller and younger than before. His back was narrow, and his chest was thin. Everything about him was fragile: his collarbone, his wrists, each finger, the oval shape of his nails. Caring for Andre must have exhausted Oscar when Bernadette died. It was no wonder he turned to Nan. No wonder he never said the first word against her. She had watched over Andre; she had dressed and fed him. She must have held him when he cried for his mother.

On my knees, I bathed this small, frightened child who now had his hands over his ears. I talked above the whistling wind and cascading rain, trying to distract us both from the image of Oscar driving off into the storm. I said, ‘In Dayton, where your father grew up, there are alleys between the backyards of people’s homes. Your grandfather once drove a wagon through those alleys with coal piled high in the bed. That coal kept families warm during the winter months.’ Andre kept his eyes squeezed closed but I could tell he was listening. He had spread his fingers apart. ‘Your grandfather’s job was very important,’ and as I said that, I wondered how I had not realized this before. I worked around Andre’s fingers and washed his hair and his face. When he finally lowered his hands, I washed the small curves of each ear.

Something creaked, a long splintering moan. My pulse skipped. Andre whimpered, flinching.

I took a deep breath, willing my nerves to settle. ‘The houses in Dayton have coal chutes,’ I said. Andre peeked at me, then closed his eyes again. ‘Those are tunnels, they’re made of metal, and each house has a little door in a wall at the back. The tunnel goes down into the basement where the furnace is kept. Your grandfather shoveled coal from his wagon into the chutes. When he became ill, your father took his place.’

‘He did?’ Andre said, opening one eye.

‘Most certainly. His family needed his help.’

And I did, too. If the wind worsened, if the water rose, if Oscar were hurt, if—

No, I told myself. Andre needed me to stay calm. As though he had read my thoughts, he was hunched over with both eyes closed and his hands again pressed against his ears.

I said, ‘When your father delivered coal, his horses wore bells around their necks. They made a lively jangle as crisp as the January air. They announced your father’s arrival, they lifted spirits.’

But perhaps not Oscar’s. The constant jangle might have reminded him that he was fated to spend his life in back alleys, his spirits dulling with each passing year as coal dust settled in his lungs as it had settled in his father’s. Those bells might have driven him to Texas, a place where no one knew him, a place where he could shape his own destiny.

Something thudded against the wall of the house. ‘All clean,’ I said, forcing a lilt in my tone. ‘Let’s get you dry.’ I held up a towel. ‘I promise I won’t look, don’t worry.’ I turned away while Andre dried himself and when he told me he was ready, I helped him dress, my fingers clumsy with the shirt and pant buttons. He flinched each time the wind’s whistle turned sharp and stood as close to me as he could. Outside, the dogs still scratched the door. I said, ‘Before your father took over the business, he attended Central High School. It was a big two-story brick building with tall arched windows.’

Andre clutched my hand as we went to the bedroom that I shared with Oscar. Between the two open wardrobe doors, I changed out of my soiled clothes while Andre stood on the other side of one of the doors, his small hand holding on to the edge so that I could see his fingers. The rain and wind were louder here, both pounding the back wall so hard that the crucifix over the bed was tilted at an odd angle.

‘On winter mornings,’ I said, ‘your father arrived early to school.’ This was a memory I had almost forgotten. ‘The school principal depended on him. We all did. He lit the furnaces so that the classrooms were warm when classes began.’

I tied my hair with a green ribbon. I took Andre’s hand and we went back to the kitchen. I said, ‘Your father had to leave school when your grandfather was ill. But he was a good student.’ I recalled an image of Oscar as a boy of fifteen or so. He had on a worn suit jacket but the knot in his tie was precise. Although his trousers were a little short, the creases were pressed. ‘There was a ceremony at the end of the school year,’ I said. ‘The principal called your father to the stage and shook his hand. Your father excelled in mathematics and received a certificate of merit.’

Andre held on to my green skirt as I found oysters in the icebox and while I cut the blackened tops off the corn pones that were on the counter. I knew the water in the back pasture had concerned Nan but the burned corn pones shocked me. She did not make mistakes. She did everything with unquestioned authority. But not today.

I poured Andre’s milk. The spout of the pitcher clattered against his canning jar. The wind howled in the chimney. I could bear anything if the wind would just stop shaking the house. Seated at the kitchen table, I raised my voice above the rain and the crash of the waves, and chanted the prayer that Oscar said at meals. ‘In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.’ My hands made the Catholic sign of the cross and Andre did the same. Anything to bring Oscar home, I thought. Anything to end this storm.