Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [121]
“It’s your Aunt Alma,” she said. “Little Earle called. Sounded terrible. Couldn’t even get out what had happened, so don’t ask.” Mama looked stern—scared and angry at the same time. I wondered what was wrong, if it was something Uncle Wade had done, or maybe one of the cousins. It could be anything with the way Aunt Alma had been since Annie died.
“Don’t we just lead charmed lives?” Aunt Alma had said the last time we saw her. “Bad things seem to be happening all the time.”
I concentrated on gripping the door handle while Mama roared out toward the West Greenville Highway. She took the Old Henderson Road turnoff, past the gas station where Uncle Wade had been working before his accident, and turned onto the dirt road that cut through open country where the interstate was supposed to go in next year. Aunt Alma had gotten a deal on one of the condemned farmhouses out there, and had moved in after Ruth died.
Little Earle was waiting for us beside the cow grate down near the mailbox, his face white and his shirt streaked with muddy brown stains. There was snot all over his upper lip, and he kept wiping his hands down over his middle where the worst of the mud had smeared. Mama didn’t get out of the car, just stopped for a minute and leaned out the window. “You all right?” she yelled, and he nodded. He sure didn’t look all right to me.
“She’s up at the house,” he whispered, as if he were afraid to talk too loud. “I tried. I tried, but she wouldn’t let me do nothing.” He hugged his shoulders tightly. “She’s up there by herself. I got the girls away and called you.” There was a pause as he gulped air between every few words. “And then Uncle Earle. Uncle Earle said not to go back, and anyway, she scared me. Mama scared me.” He stopped and looked back up the dirt drive that wound to the side and disappeared into the pines. “Oh God, Auntie, she’s gone crazy as a milk cow, just like Daddy said she would!”
“Wipe your face and keep quiet,” Mama told him fiercely. “I’ll send Bone down for you in a little while, and I don’t want you scaring your sisters. You wash your face and get some of that dirt off yourself.” She sounded almost hateful—a way I had never heard her talk before to any child. I turned from watching Little Earle to look at her and almost rolled across the seat when she started the Pontiac racing up the drive again, Behind us I heard another engine, and looked over my shoulder to see Uncle Earle’s flatbed truck trailing a cloud of red dust, a rattle of tools bouncing around. He yelled something, but Mama didn’t stop, just sped into Aunt Alma’s yard and nearly knocked over her garden barrels before killing the engine and jumping out of the car. I pushed over to the driver’s side to follow right behind her, but Mama yelled at me to stay there without even turning around. I froze where I was while she ran toward the porch and Aunt Alma’s hunched still figure.
Chickens were screeching and running away, dust was settling behind the Pontiac, but everything else was dead still. I could see a row of white faces watching from Aunt Alma’s chicken-wire garden fence—Patsy Ruth, Reese, and Fay’s girls, Grace and Mattie. The sun was pouring down, hot and steamy, and there were puddles under the black walnut tree that hadn’t had a chance to dry up. There was no sign of Uncle Wade or his truck, and everything looked strangely peaceful. Then I saw that all Aunt Alma’s flower baskets were lying in the yard, buds and herbs scattered. Near one of the baskets was the porcelain wringer off her old washing machine, and the lumps in the dust and mud seemed to be clothing.