Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [48]
In the kitchen, Carolyn located a clean spoon while Jim washed some cups. Carolyn couldn’t find the cup Mom had left in the refrigerator. As she took out the carton of boiled custard, Jim said, “It must be a very difficult day for you.”
Carolyn was startled. His tone was unexpectedly kind, genuine. She was struck suddenly by what he must know about her, because of his intimacy with her sister. She knew nothing about him. When he smiled, she saw a gold cap on a molar, shining like a Christmas ornament. She managed to say, “It can’t be any picnic for you either. Kent didn’t want to put up with us.”
“Too bad he couldn’t get gas.”
“I don’t think he wanted to get gas.”
“Then you’re better off without him.” When Jim looked at her, Carolyn felt that he must be examining her resemblances to Laura Jean. He said, “I think your family’s great.”
Carolyn laughed nervously. “We’re hard on you. God, you’re brave to come down here like this.”
“Well, Laura Jean’s worth it.”
They took the boiled custard and cups into the dining room. As Carolyn sat down, her nephew Jonathan begged her to tell what was in the gift left under the tree.
“I can’t tell,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I’m saving it till next year, in case I draw some man’s name.”
“I hope it’s mine,” said Jonathan.
Jim stirred bourbon into three cups of boiled custard, then gave one to Carolyn and one to Laura Jean. The others had declined. Then he leaned back in his chair—more relaxed now—and squeezed Laura Jean’s hand. Carolyn wondered what they said to each other when they were alone in St. Louis. She knew with certainty that they would not be economical with words, like the monks in the story. She longed to be with them, to hear what they would say. She noticed her mother picking at a hangnail, quietly ignoring the bourbon. Looking at the bottle’s gift box, which showed an old-fashioned scene, children on sleds in the snow, Carolyn thought of Kent’s boat again. She felt she was in that snowy scene now with Laura Jean and Jim, sailing in Kent’s boat into the winter breeze, into falling snow. She thought of how silent it was out on the lake, as though the whiteness of the snow were the absence of sound.
“Cheers!” she said to Jim, lifting her cup.
THE CLIMBER
The former astronaut claims that walking on the moon was nothing, compared to walking with Jesus. Walking with Jesus is forever, but the moon visit was just three days. The preacher emcee, trailing the long cord of his microphone, moves with slow-motion bounces, as though trying to get the feel of the astronaut’s walk on the moon. The preacher has on a pink plaid jacket, and because the TV color isn’t tuned properly, his face is the same bright shade.
Dolores has the Christian channel on only for the music. She likes to think she is impervious to evangelists. She usually laughs at the way they talk so urgently, even happily, about the end of the world. But today the show sends a chill through her. After the astronaut leaves, a missions specialist describes the “gap of unbelief” that can only be bridged by Jesus Christ. The gap of unbelief sounds threatening, like the missile gap.
“Quit it, Petey. You’re giving me the heebie-jeebies,” Dolores says. She refrains from kicking at the little boy from down the street, who is underfoot. She is arranging dogwood blossoms in a vase and Petey is repeating “Fuzzy Duck” in a monotone. Petey is nine, and he wears a strange little sweatsuit with the arms and legs cut off and the edges hanging in shreds.
“Jesus is a vampire,” says Petey.
“Where’d you get that idea?”
“My brother said so.”
“How does he know?”
“He studied it. In a book.”
“I’ve heard a lot of things, but I never heard that.”
Petey slams the door and charges down the driveway on his bicycle, making hot-rod sounds. He rides an old bicycle with a banana seat, a hand-me-down from his older brother, who is in jail for breaking into an insurance agency and stealing three calculators. In Dolores’s opinion, their mother is an alcoholic who lets her kids run wild.
Petey has