American Boy - Larry Watson [23]
“He was an Episcopalian minister. Mom said he was pretty strict. Not like her dad.”
“I still think he looks like a mean bastard.” Louisa cocked her head, as if she needed to consider him from another angle. “I lived with a minister’s family once,” she said, “while I was in high school. He was nothing but an old lecher. All short and shriveled and pockmarked. I think maybe he’d had smallpox. Anyway, he was sneaking around all the time, trying to catch me alone or undressing or something. And I was supposed to be grateful they took me in. They did it as a favor to my mom. She thought it was important for me to go to high school, and the town closest to our farm didn’t have one. A high school, I mean.” Louisa shuddered. “I should have told his wife about him spying on me. She was a fat old bitch and she hated me for some reason. But if I would’ve told on her husband I bet she’d have killed him.”
Louisa continued her tour of the attic. When she came to a sewing machine she wiped a finger through the dust that covered it. “This work?”
“I guess.”
“And it’s just sitting up here gathering dust. Must be nice.”
Louisa grabbed the handle of a baby carriage and rolled it a few feet back and forth. “Shouldn’t there be two of these?”
“There were. My mom gave one to her sister. But she wanted to keep this one. Because it was mine, she said. And because it came from a company in England.”
Louisa wheeled the carriage out of the shadows and toward us. “Mrs. Dunbar and her beautiful baby boy ... I bet the two of you made quite a sight rolling around Willow Falls.”
“I remember those days well,” said Johnny with a smile. I could tell by the way his head rolled from side to side on the chair back that he was drunk. “Didn’t have a care in the world. Just laid on my back staring up at the sky. Let someone else do the driving.”
Louisa laughed. “You remember when you were a baby? Like hell.”
“Yep, those were the good old days.”
Johnny rose unsteadily to his feet and handed me the brandy. There wasn’t much left in the bottle. He made his way slowly over toward Louisa. He looked tenderly into the carriage, as if he expected to find his infant self inside. Then he turned around and flopped backward into the carriage. It wobbled and bounced on its springs, but somehow it didn’t collapse or fall over.
Louisa braced herself and held tight to the handle. “Christ!”
I struggled out of the rocking chair. By the time I arrived at the carriage, Johnny was settling in, his legs hanging over the side.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Johnny imitated a baby’s cry in response, a series of evenly spaced “wah-wah-wah’s.”
I looked up at Louisa. “I think he wants his bottle.”
“Better give it to him.” Her laugh was as throaty and deep as a man’s. “So long as I don’t have to nurse him!”
At that Johnny’s crying intensified, and he reached for Louisa.
“Quick,” she said, “give him the damn bottle!”
I thrust the bottle at him, but when Johnny brought it to his mouth, most of the liquor just spilled down his chin. Then he gagged and coughed, spraying blackberry brandy all over himself.
I took the bottle from him. To Louisa I said, “That wasn’t the answer.”
“We’ll take him for a walk.” With that, she wheeled the carriage around and began to push Johnny toward the attic’s darker end. I hurried to catch up so I could walk alongside Louisa.
As he rolled over the attic’s uneven boards, Johnny bounced in the carriage and shouted gleefully, “Whee! Whee!”
Since they were heading toward the stairs, I ran ahead and spread my arms wide, as if the carriage was out of control and needed to be blocked. Louisa misunderstood my intent and thought I was there to catch Johnny. She gave the carriage a hard shove, but even with Johnny’s wobbling weight, the wheels rolled true.
With the extra momentum provided by its heavy load, the carriage bumped hard into my hands. “Hang on!” I told Johnny, and ran a few steps before sending him back on his way to Louisa.
She crouched to catch him. “Come to Momma!”
Back and forth we went, until well beyond the point where Johnny was