Bent Road - Lori Roy [110]
Daniel shakes his head as he buttons his coat. Then he takes a hat from one of the pockets and pulls it down low on his forehead. Inside, a kitchen chair scoots across the wooden floor and someone walks through the house.
“I’m real sorry about Ian,” Jonathon says, closing the cardboard flaps over the glass and looking at the ground instead of Daniel. It seems everyone is afraid to look at him. “Real sorry that had to sneak up on you.”
“Didn’t sneak up on anybody. I knew he’d die soon enough.”
Jonathon lifts his eyes, one hand still on the pane of glass. “Well, so it wasn’t such a surprise. Still sorry, though.”
When Jonathon looks away again, Daniel wants to kick him hard, so hard that he flies through the door and lands in the kitchen at Elaine’s feet. Instead, he says, “See ya,” and starts to walk outside.
“Hey, Dan,” Jonathon says. “Listen, I’ll be taking off when I get this wood back up. But you ever need anything, just call. You know where to find me.”
Daniel nods and walks across the porch.
By the time he reaches the last stair but before he steps onto the gravel drive, a thought starts to gnaw at him. He stops on the bottom stair and lets it gnaw all the way through. When it does, he looks toward the garage and smiles because now he knows where he’ll find Dad’s shotgun.
Celia offers Ruth a third cup of coffee when she excuses herself to go lie down, but she shakes her head and pats her stomach to signal a tired baby and Mama. At this, Celia smiles, but Arthur still can’t look at Ruth. Celia nudges him for being impolite even though she knows it’s not bad manners; it’s fear. Mary Robison showed them all the truth about the very worst that a man can do to his own daughter. She made them all think, believe even, that Ray might do the same to little Elisabeth. She made them believe it so strongly that it still seems Ray is the one who hurt Julianne. It still feels like he is the one who wrapped that poor child in feed bags and dropped her in a hole.
“Rest well, Ruth,” Celia says. “Things will be better tomorrow.”
Daniel waits in the garage until Jonathon and Elaine leave, and then, thinking someone will put out the porch lights, he waits even longer. No one ever does, so taking a deep breath, he slips behind the oil drum, pushes aside an old woolen blanket and lifts the shotgun. He cracks it open and sees the brass end of two shells. Loaded. It’s heavier than he remembered, and the barrel is cold, even through his leather gloves. He slaps his palm against the wooden stock, getting a good feel, a good God damned feel, and then props it on his shoulder, barrel pointing up like Dad taught him. After looking through two loose slats in the door and seeing no one on the porch, he slips outside and runs across the hard gravel drive, through the gate that used to hold Olivia before Jonathon shot her dead. High stepping it through the snow, he runs toward the spot where the prairie dogs once lived.
Evie crawls into her closet but scurries out when someone walks across the living room floor, footsteps rattling the floorboards all the way in Evie’s room. Through her terry-cloth robe, the floor is hard and cold on her legs. She sits back, pulling her knees to her chest, and listens. The footsteps pass by and Elaine’s door opens. Aunt Ruth has moved into Elaine’s room where she and the baby will live after the baby is born, so long as the baby isn’t blue and dies in the oven. She switched rooms because Evie doesn’t like her anymore. Aunt Ruth said it was because Elaine needed so much help with the wedding. Evie told her it didn’t matter one bit and to go ahead and change rooms. After Aunt Ruth closes her door, Evie falls onto her hands and knees, pushes through the hems of Mama’s skirts and dresses, the ones she only wears in the spring, and drags out a wadded-up blanket.
Waiting and listening and hearing nothing more, Evie slowly untangles the blanket and pulls out the Virgin Mary. She holds her up, looking first into her ivory face and her tiny blue eyes and then at the seams where her