What You See in the Dark - Manuel Munoz [54]
What would her brother have made of how big Bakersfield had become? He had gone off to Los Angeles after his release from prison, but he had never returned. Just like her husband, Frederick. Her brother had left so long ago that hardly anyone remembered that she had a sibling. She thought of this, how she hid the fact under her tongue, how she rarely told anyone that her own blood had once been in prison. She remembered how everyone from the nearby farms had gathered in the early afternoon to welcome her brother home, his long bus trip from up past Sacramento to Bakersfield. They had led him to the backyard, and the men sat squat-style in a circle, drinking beer, her brother the beginning and the end of the loop, the one who balanced on his haunches the longest without having to get up to stretch. “Prison will harden you to stand anything,” he had bragged, the men laughing, but his voice carried over to her and settled inside like the smoke from his cigarettes, one after the other. He lit one up as a signal to the rest of the men that he didn’t feel like talking, that he’d rather listen to the stories of their years, all that time he’d been locked away.
How much time, Arlene thought as she stared out at the empty parking lot, had he actually been gone?
Those men had spent the entire afternoon like that, the sun coming down and the men still talking, the cigarettes glowing in the dusk. There had been a lot of ground to cover. There had been a lot of ways to say how unfair her brother had had it.
Come along, her mother had said, her hand on Arlene’s head. It’s getting late. Night had come. The ashes in the pit had died down, the food long ago eaten. All the men stayed, dark shadows with dark orange glows.
Arlene had heard them as she lay on the floor in the living room, her eyes once again looking out past the open front door of their old farmhouse, past the porch, and fixing on the dark road outside. The men’s faint talking filled her with a vague comfort, knowing that the dark was not so lonely.
When she had opened her eyes, it was dawn. The front yard was quiet. Her mother was not yet awake. Arlene rose and walked to the kitchen, the open back door. A light dew on the grass, beer bottles strewn everywhere, and the men long gone home. She had never even heard them leave.
Down the hallway, the door to her brother’s room was wide open. Arlene stood in the quiet of the house, looking down the hallway, a chill that she found soothing in the morning air, how it had seeped inside, the doors open for the cross breeze. She stood long enough to listen to the house settle, a creak in the wood somewhere in the roof. She stood and looked down the hallway at the open door to her brother’s bedroom, wondering if he was actually in there or if he’d gone off with the men for more drinking. The answer was right there, just a quiet tiptoe down the hall, the door already open. But instead, Arlene kept standing there, taking in the unfamiliar and delicious chill to the morning air. She was understanding that it did not matter if her brother was in that room right then. Her mother loved him. All that mattered was that he had returned and that life was going to change in their house.
Things change. Everything’s gotta change, Arlene thought, rubbing her arms, and she stepped back into the house.
But how some things stayed. That feeling, standing in the hallway.