The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [48]
I yanked the door open. It had been raining again, probably pouring, as I immediately felt when I stepped onto the so-called lawn. Luckily I was barefoot or what was left of my sneakers would have dissolved. An inch of water had pooled all around. And here’s the really strange part: that green stuff which passed for grass had turned all hard and pokey like a welcome mat made of Velcro. Don’t things usually get soft when they’re soaked in water? Anyway, I didn’t have a good feeling about Grum walking in this. The rutty lane was dangerous enough in the daylight when the ground was dry.
“Grum, it’s really nasty out here. You should go back in. I can take the gun. Pa taught me to shoot.” It wasn’t a lie, exactly. He had let me aim the gun at a beer can once when he was target practicing.
My grandmother hesitated, clinging to the railing, and craned her neck out toward the cuckoo ruckus. The porch light made a moony glow around her white asbestos curls, and without her teeth in, her cheeks looked like sinkholes in the strip mine. She could have been some photographer’s masterpiece.
“I’ll pray for Jesus to guide me,” I offered. If anything would convince her to turn back, that would. But no, she was too worried to leave it to me to leave it to Jesus.
“You two each take an elbow and help her,” Ma said. “I’ll light your way—I’ve got the flashlight. Oh, my, we need to get some new batteries. That trip to the commune must have used these up.”
“Yeah, it must have,” I said.
And so we headed out slowly, taking careful steps. There weren’t any lights on in Jed’s castle. The farther we got away from the house, the darker the ground seemed. The dying flashlight cast a weak yellow arc on the puddles and rivulets we steered around.
“Ow!” My bare toe knocked something. It didn’t hurt, though, just startled me.
Ma snapped the flashlight that way, and it spotlighted the cat dish, tipped on its side and spilling milk. “Who’s still wasting our good milk on the cat!”
“Who might that be?” said Grum, pointing the gun at two foot-long shadows. Shoes, to be specific. Ma turned the thin beam on them to reveal a man’s body sprawled toes-up between the henhouse and Jed’s castle.
Ma swore at Pa. They were his shoes.
She traced the light along the rest of him. Yep, his best pants, his dress shirt, and his face, too. What we could see of it. Because on top of his chest sat Stupid, purring like Pa was his best friend. I was amazed. Pa the cat-hater had been taking care of Fluffy Kitty!
“That’s my boy,” Grum said in mock pride. She clucked and gave Pa a poke with the gun. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.” The cat meowed and ran toward the henhouse.
I would have checked to see if Pa was still breathing, but he started snoring when Grum poked him. He was passed out drunk, or so I figured from the sour beer smell. Luckily he’d fallen face up instead of down, or he could have drowned in the mud puddle. Or unluckily! Wishing Pa dead flooded me with pleasure. And then guilt.
The cuckoos were still at it, so we left Pa and carefully made our way out to Jed’s castle. The nonstop cuckoo riot made me feel so crazy, I itched to run ahead and stop the clocks. For once I kind of understood the feeling Pa must have had when he used to go to such lengths shutting them up. But I held myself back to let Grum lean on me. Even though it wasn’t far, it took a long time for Grum to find firm ground to put her weight on. Between steps I wiggled my toes in the nubby mud.
When Ma opened the door, a mixture of smells wafted out. Candles, sour beer, and something sweet that I had been smelling a lot of lately—the Perfume-Lady smell in the cookie dough and the secret tunnel. Barbie glanced nervously at me, and I knew she recognized it too.
Back when he moved to the castle, Jed had run an extension cord from the house for electricity. Pa had yanked that out of the outlet with some flaming words after Jed ran away, so now our only light was a flashlight fading fast. Grum lowered herself onto the bed to rest under