Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [109]
“Don’t get snotty, Raylene,” he said as the girl walked away. “That child is the only thing keeping me alive.”
“And what are you doing for her?”
“Everything I can, sister, everything she wants.”
“You marry her, then?” Aunt Alma looked tired and impatient.
“I’m going to. Hell yes. I am, I surely am.”
“Goddam, Earle, you fool. One of your women gonna have you put in jail one of these days.”
“An’t no woman ever gonna put me in jail.” Earle swayed a little on his old boots. “An’t no woman would dare,”
“Aww, Earle.” Raylene shook her head at him and shrugged. She folded her big arms around his shoulders and pulled him to her breast. “I’m just glad you’re here.” When she let him go, she smiled for the first time since Ruth had died. “That child buy you that suit?”
“Why? Don’t you like it?” Earle ran his hands down the sides of his suit coat. He was so thin that when he bent his arms the dark material flapped like a crow’s wing. His hair was still bristly short and close to his head, but dark again, as if he’d dyed it. He only looked like himself when he grinned in embarrassment. “Don’t you think she got me a good one?”
“It’s good enough, especially since you didn’t have to pay for it.”
Beau was wearing his best dark suit, but it didn’t fit him too well. He kept lifting one shoulder and then the other, trying to settle himself more comfortably. The smell of whiskey clung to him, but he looked more sober than he had in years—sober, irritable, and so nervous he was chewing on his lower lip. “Why the hell we just standing around here?” He turned to Raylene as if she were in charge. “This funeral should have been over two days ago, and now we’re standing on these steps like we an’t never gonna put Ruth in the ground.”
“Beau!” Alma looked disgusted. “Don’t talk like that. The kids will hear you.”
Raylene’s voice was soft and neutral. “We’re waiting ’cause Travis asked us to wait. He’s hoping Tommy Lee, Dwight, and D.W. will get here and go out to the grave with us.”
“Hell! Those boys an’t coming. Nobody’s even seen Tommy Lee in two years, and last I heard D.W. was on his way to California.” Beau cleared his throat and spit. “Travis isn’t using his head.”
“No, he an’t,” Raylene continued in that flat soft tone. “And you wouldn’t either in his place. Ruth wanted all her children to come home, and Travis has just been trying to do everything the way she wanted. Give him a few more minutes and the funeral director will get him moving. I don’t want you saying nothing to Travis.”
“I wasn’t gonna say nothing to Travis.” Beau looked indignant. “I an’t a fool.”
“Come on, Beau.” Earle put his hand on Beau’s shoulder. “Come out to the truck with me a minute.
“Oh God!” Alma sounded like she was going to start yelling. “Now they’re gonna both be drunk.”
“I don’t care.” Raylene took her handkerchief out of her purse and wiped her mouth. “Beau has a drink, I know how he’ll behave. I don’t know that man at all when he’s sober. Don’t know what he’ll do. But if Earle gives him a drink, he might even be able to cry. Let them take care of each other.”
I saw Butch out at the gravesite, awkward in a dark suit that looked too big for him. He told me later that he had come there hours before and watched as the gravediggers finished rigging the canopy over the big hot-house sprays and ribbon-draped wreaths and pegged it down against the wind. It was cold and gray, with no sign of rain, just a steady harsh wind pushing at all the flowers. There was a big heart-shaped arrangement on a stand that read Mother in cursive script. He stood near it with his hands gripped tightly in front of him.
“Bone,” he whispered when I came to stand beside him. “You better get a seat.”
“I don’t want to sit.” The wind rocked the heart wreath, and we both put our hands out to steady it.
“I heard