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By Root 1037 0

could be scrubbed from a ladder, with the hose and a brush. The outside second-story windows could be washed. The grass could be edged and trimmed and raked and rolled for the great open invisible eye of The Neighbors to judge and enjoy. Cars, and trucks, of course, could be washed every day. There could be no limit to your schedule. Even though you had washed the supper dishes as you were cooking, you could jump up from the table when a serving dish got emptied, and wash it and dry it and put it away before finishing your beans. You could follow your husband from the door to the sink, and sweep the dust from his boots into the dustpan and throw it away before he was finished washing his hands, and then you could take the towel he had dried them with and run it downstairs to the washing machine while he was sitting down to his food.

I was amazed at what I didn’t have time for any more—reading, sewing, watching TV, talking to Rose, talking to Ty, strolling down the road, departing from the directives of my shopping list, taking the girls places. That Eye was always looking, day and night, even when there were no neighbors in sight. Even when no one who could possibly testify for or against me was within miles, I felt the familiar sensation of storing up virtue for a later date. The days passed.

Around the first of August, Pete got drunk and took a gun over to Harold Clark’s place and threatened Harold, who was sitting on the porch and kept shouting, “Pete, you don’t think I can see you but I can, so you just get away from here before Loren calls the sheriff! Get away now. I see you for sure,” always turning his head the wrong way. Then after he terrorized Harold, he drove his own silver truck into the quarry and drowned, and nobody knew whether it was an accident. According to his blood alcohol level, he shouldn’t have been conscious enough to drive, much less to stay on the road.

37

IT MUST HAVE BEEN about six. Ty had eaten his breakfast and headed for the hog pens. I had been upstairs making the beds, so I didn’t see the sheriff’s car go by, but when I went outside with the blankets to hang them on the line for the day, I saw Rose stumbling up the road. That was the oddest thing, how she didn’t seem to know where she was going. I was so struck by the strangeness of it that I didn’t go out to meet her, but let her come.

I think that was the only time I saw her hesitate. She staggered up the road and when she got to about ten feet from me still standing in the road, she said, “Ginny, Pete’s drowned himself in the quarry and the girls are still asleep, and I don’t know what I’m going to tell them. Can you go down there?” It turned out the sheriff was going to come back and pick her up and take her up to the quarry. She didn’t know if they’d pulled him out or not. Her face was bleached white and her eyes were like holes burnt in paper. I said, “There’s coffee made, you—”

“I’ll drink some, but just go. Just go down there.”

I dropped the blankets in a heap and ran toward her house. The one time I stopped and turned to look at her, I saw her standing where I had left her, her arms limp at her sides, her feet wide apart for balance. I ran on. That was the only time I ever saw her flinch.

She’d been making muffins. The milk and eggs and butter were in the bowl of the mixer. The flour was half measured into the sifter. A green apple and a measuring cup lay on the floor where she’d dropped them or knocked them. I picked them up and finished making the muffins. There was no sound out of the girls, who were allowed to sleep until eight in the summer. Pete’s work clothes, a couple of feed caps, and a fluorescent orange sweatshirt for hunting hung from hooks by the door. A mug that read “Pete’s Joe” was filled with water in the sink. I couldn’t help stare at these remainders.

I sat down at the table, and except for getting up to take the muffins out when the timer went off, I continued to sit there. I let the girls sleep in. Their rooms were off the kitchen. At eight-thirty, I heard Linda stir. She rustled around, then