Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [24]
Jude puts his hands behind his head, gathering his shoulders into the depths of the sleeping bag, which smells like gasoline and his mother. She used to take it camping at Camel’s Hump with Jude’s father, who now has a piece of pot caught in his beard like a crumb. Jude asks if he can try some, but his father shakes his head.
“You let me try the eggnog with rum in it.”
“Reefer is for grown-ups. But some grown-ups are too grown-up for it. Some grown-ups think it’s unfashionable now.” His father takes a smooth hit. “I’m afraid I’m not needed here anymore, champ.” When Jude says nothing, his father asks, “You know why people smoke reefer? It’s a comfort, champ. It restores you, like sleep. It makes you like a baby again, a sleeping baby. Know what I mean?”
“No. You won’t let me try.”
“You’re already a baby. You don’t need to become one again. When you’re older, you’ll know.”
“I’m not a baby. I’m nine today.”
His father rocks slowly in his chair. “You’re right. You’re not a baby anymore.”
“Do you know what Mom and Mr. Donahoe were talking about outside?”
He stops rocking. His gray eyes, which have been rolling around the greenhouse with a liquid dreaminess, fall on Jude’s face, as though he’s just spotted him there, lying at his feet. He looks almost pleased.
“As a matter of fact, I believe they were talking about moi.”
“How come?”
A sheet of snow tumbles off the warming roof.
“I’m going to tell you something, champ, because I need another man’s opinion. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Mrs. Donahoe, she’s pregnant. You know, she’s going to have a baby.”
Jude absorbs this information. As cold as it is outside, he’s hot in his sleeping bag, his forehead sweating under the lights. “Then why were they talking about you?”
“Well, because I’m the one who made her pregnant. You know how that happens and everything?”
Jude nods slowly. He knows, more or less. When he asked his mother where babies came from, she drew him a diagram in colored pencils.
“And what do you think about that?”
“Is Mom pissed?”
“Yes, she is. She’s very pissed and doesn’t want to be married to me anymore. And she’ll probably be even more pissed that I told you all this, but you should know the truth. You’re a big guy. You can handle it, right?”
Jude is lying perfectly still, even though he wants to crawl into his father’s lap and touch the red spot on his cheek. He wonders if it was Mr. Donahoe who hit him, or Jude’s mom.
“What will happen to the baby?”
“We find ourselves in a strange position. Do we keep the baby? What happens to the baby?”
“Where will it go? Does—will it be Mr. and Mrs. Donahoe’s?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“But where will the baby go if they don’t?”
His father takes a quick hit of his pipe, then puts it down on the workbench beside him. Reluctantly he exhales the smoke.
Then something occurs to Jude. “The baby’s going to be my brother or sister, isn’t it?” He was just a baby when Prudence was born. He doesn’t remember his mother being pregnant.
“Would you like a baby brother or sister? Would you like that?”
“I guess,” Jude says, because his father sounds as though he needs cheering up. His eyes are glassy and wet, like they are when he tells scary stories about Vietnam, stories he’s stolen from friends who were there. Jude remembers one about an arm in a tree, waving.
“Here’s the thing.” Jude’s father rubs his beard. “There are lots of things that can happen to babies. Sometimes—sometimes babies aren’t born at all. Sometimes when they do get born, they get raised by their parents, and sometimes they get raised by other people. For example, what’s the name of that program you and