Bent Road - Lori Roy [30]
“Hey, look,” Evie shouts, holding one mitten to her forehead to shade her eyes and pointing with the other toward the fields south of the house. “There’s Daniel. And that’s Ian with him.”
“Where do you suppose they’re going?” Celia asks, knowing that it’s Daniel not because she can see his face but because Ian’s limp gives them away.
“Out for a walk, I suppose,” Elaine says as the two silhouettes disappear over a rise in the pasture.
“Well,” Evie says, swiveling on one heel so she can march back down the hill. “I hope they’re not up to no good.”
Celia pats the small of Ruth’s back and gestures for everyone to follow Evie toward home. “I’ll tell you what,” Celia says. “No good will be had if we don’t all get warmed up soon.”
At the bottom of the hill, Evie stops, points toward the road straight ahead where a black sedan appears out of the glare of the late-day sun and shouts, “Look. It’s Father Flannery’s car.”
Celia stops midway down the hill and pulls her jacket closed. “We don’t have to go back, Ruth,” she says. The prairie chickens rise up again as the car passes, kicking up dust and gravel. “Arthur can see to him.”
Elaine nods. “Yes, we could stay out a while longer.”
“They’ll be waiting,” Ruth says, tugging on the edges of her stocking cap and continuing toward home. “Can’t hide from this forever.”
Daniel stares down at Ian and thinks that even flat on his stomach, Ian is crooked. Not as crooked as when he has to swing one leg over the bench seats in the school cafeteria, but crooked all the same. He is wearing his new black boots and even though his mother said they were only for church and school, Ian wears them all the time because they make things almost normal for him. One of the boots, the right one, has a two-inch heel while the other has a normal, flat heel. The thick heel is almost thick enough, but not quite and black boots don’t do anything about a spine that looks like a stretched-out question mark. As Ian lifts up on his elbows, pressing his cheek to the stock of Daniel’s new .22-caliber rifle, his shoulders sink under the weight of his head. Black boots don’t do anything about Ian’s oversized head, either. None of Daniel’s Detroit friends had giant heads or lopsided legs. They were regular kids with regular-shaped bodies. Not knowing why but wanting to look somewhere else, anywhere else but at Ian, Daniel turns toward the road as a black sedan drives over the hill to the north.
“That Father Flannery?” Ian asks, lifting his head up out of his shoulders for a moment before letting it sink again.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Everyone knows he’s coming today.” Ian rests his right cheek against the rifle.
Pulling his jacket closed, Daniel exhales and squats next to Ian.
“Not too close,” Ian says so Daniel scoots a few feet away, flipping up his collar and wrapping his arms around his waist. “Go there, behind the grass where they won’t see you.”
Daniel waddles a few more feet to the left where he’ll be hidden by a clump of brome grass. “Won’t my folks hear the shots?” he asks, still able to see the roof of his house. “I mean, we’re not so far away.”
“No one thinks anything about a gunshot this time of year. Hush and let me get the first one. The rest are easier.” Ian inhales and lifts his head again. “There,” he whispers. “Did you see it?”
Daniel stretches enough to see beyond the grass into the pasture on the other side of the barbed-wire fence. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“It’ll be back. Sit tight.”
“How does everyone know? About Father Flannery, I mean.”
“Everyone knows everything.” Ian props the gun in his right hand and breathes short puffs of warm air into his left fist. A clump of brown hair has fallen out of his hat and across his forehead. “Everyone knows everything about everybody,” Ian says, tucking the clump of hair back under his stocking cap with his warmed-up left hand.
In Detroit, nobody knew anything about anybody. They were too busy worrying about the Negroes who wanted to work side by side with the white people. They were too busy worrying about the color