You’ll know it soon enough. That feeling you get after you send some words into the world and there’s no taking ’em back, so they kinda spin there in front of you. That’s how it was now. Me and Janey and Earle—and that stranger, gray as fieldstone—all just watching the words spin.
Earle’s satchel dropped straight off his shoulder.
“That ain’t funny, Melia.”
“Do I look like I’m funning?”
“Then you gotta be crazy,” said Janey. “Our daddy’s in jail.”
“No, this here’s my daddy. Which means he belongs to all of us.”
Earle’s eyes got real small. “You never told us you had a daddy.”
“Never come up.”
“Sure it did.”
“Either one of you ask me straight out?”
Earle thought on that.
“Mama always said you was dropped on her front porch one morning. Along with a pint of buttermilk.”
“She told me you come right out of her forehead,” said Janey. “Like a wart.”
“Jesus, she was pulling your leg, that’s all. I got a daddy just like you, only he ain’t a felon.”
“Well, if he’s our daddy,” said Earle, “what in Sam Hill’s he doing here?”
“Why, soon as he heard the bad news, he come a-running, didn’t he?”
“And who told him ’bout it?”
“Me, that’s who. Wrote him a letter.”
Janey got quiet, thinking about that letter and all the distance it must have traveled. But Earle come up to that stranger like he was ready to crawl right up his shirt.
“He don’t look like you,” said Earle.
“Shows what you know.”
“If he’s kin, he should look like kin.”
“That’s just ’cause you ain’t seen him smile yet.”
I hadn’t myself.
“Go on, mister,” I said. “Go on, Mister Daddy. Give your babies a smile.”
His lips shook a little, but they couldn’t get a mind to leave each other, so I had to pull them apart myself. And there they stuck.
It wasn’t what you’d rightly call a smile. When I tried to fix my own mouth the same way, it felt downright unnatural.
“See?” I said. “Don’t we look like blood?”
“I’m pondering,” said Earle.
“Neither one of you’s much for smiling,” allowed Janey.
“Well, there you go. Third degree’s over. Now I believe y’all got some chores and homework to do, less you talked Benito Mussolini into doing it for you.”
But now it was Janey’s turn to dig in.
“If he’s our daddy, where’s he been all this time?”
“Traveling, that’s where.”
“How come he never come round to see us?”
“Business, that’s how come. Keeps him on the road.”
“How come you do all his talking for him?” said Earle. “Someone run off with his tongue?”
I was all set to hush both of them children but good, only—I can’t explain it—the gumption went out of me. All I could do was stare at that poor varmint and wait for something to happen.
And now him and his good eye and his crazy eye and every other part of him had gone someplace where nobody could follow. Then, from the deep dark cave of his mouth, a little peep of tongue come crawling out.
“I’ll be,” whispered Janey.
“Happy?” I said.
“He still don’t look glad to see us,” said Earle.
“Sakes, he just got here! Traveling day and night, all weathers. Lord knows how many buses and whatnot.”
“He ever been on a train?” Earle asked.
“Prob’ly a good dozen in the last day, ain’t that right, Daddy? And now he’s all wrung out, poor thing, so if you don’t mind, Mister and Miss Nosybird, I’m gonna take him to his room and get him settled.”
“Get him washed,” mumbled Earle.
Before I could say a thing, Janey caught him in the ribs. The very next second, she was dragging her big brother toward the house, and I was hauling the stranger into the store. It’s on account of we’re women, I guess, we didn’t need to plan it.
“That’s some grip you got,” the stranger said.
My fingers had left white marks around his wrist.
“I’ll go without a fight,” he said.
Sure enough, he followed me past the counter and all the way to the back of the store to where the steps were, and when I started climbing, I could hear his feet, soft behind. His breath, too. I waited on the landing till he caught up. Then I pushed open the door.
Mama used to call the place our guest suite but only when she was putting it over on somebody. Do not be fooled! It was merely a bare room—sixteen by twelve, maybe—with a single sash window that never opened but a crack and a tick mattress full of straw and corn shucks.
As I remember, on that particular day, there was an apple box in the corner. This box was empty except for some bottles of liniment, a Spanish-language dictionary, and the 1912 Spotsylvania County criminal code.
This was the one room that could break Mama’s will. Anywhere else, she’d have gone in with a broom and a rag and some vinegar and a burlap sack, and she’d have made it bend. But every time she come up here, she’d take one look and say, “Next week.”
The stranger took a few totters around the room—polite-like. Then he bent to read the cross-stitched sampler hanging by the window.
“Cheer up. It might be worse.”
He stood up and give his jaw a scratch.
“I’ll take their word for it.”
He spun in a slow half circle and, before I knew it, started tipping back. The wall caught him, but it was a near thing.
“You want some water, mister?”
“Just need a moment.”
I closed the door after me.
“Listen,” I said, “I ain’t gonna sugar it for you. Room’s hotter than damnation in the summer. Colder than an Eskimo’s ass in the winter. Tolerable nice in spring, but you can’t keep the window open too long or you’ll get all fumey from the gas.”
He didn’t say nothing.
“That bucket over yonder,” I said. “You can use it for your business. Saves going to the privy. The other bucket is where you can burn your charcoal. Being as there ain’t no fireplace.”
His mouth was forming words now, but I couldn’t make ’em out.
“Listen now,” I said. “This ain’t nothing you can’t walk away from. Ain’t no one here holding you captive.”
He walked toward the little rhododendron-root table in the corner. Which was the one thing in that room that seemed made for something better. In a nice house, it would’ve had a family Bible sitting on it or a couple of old tintypes in a silver frame. Would’ve been waxed once a week. Here it was all on its lonesome, thick with grease and soot.
“Maybe you can tell me,” he said, “what kind of mess I’ve gotten into.”
“It ain’t no mess. Least it don’t have to be.”
He set himself on the mattress. A puff of dust flew up.
“Go on,” he said.
“My mama’s name was Brenda Hoyle, and she got belly trouble in January, and one thing led to another, and she went over.”
Weird how it all came flooding back. Mama clawing herself so fierce she’d have blood on her hands. Or laying back in her sheets (wet with piss because we never could get her the bucket in time) and staring the bejesus out of the ceiling.
“Point is,” I said, “I ain’t old enough to be in charge of them two children. Which is the goddamnedest stupidest thing I ever heard, but that’s the state of Virginia for you. So what I’m proposing is—well, it’s a business arrangement, that’s all. Say some folks from the county come out here and they say, Whoa, now, where be the father to these here children? Why, all you got to do is step up and say, That’s me. I am the feller in question. Then these selfsame folks, they go away and leave us alone. It’s a romp in the clover when you come right down to it.”
“Oh, sure,” he said.
“Well, it ain’t hard.”
“It’s against the law.”
“Yeah?” I hocked a fleck of tobacco spit onto the floor. “Then I ain’t got time for your damned law. ’Cause that law’s what’s going to split the three of us up. So if you’re feared of a pack of old spinsters—”
“Could be a hell of a lot more than spinsters. Could be a sheriff.”
“If you’re so feared, then why don’t you just catch the next coal truck heading west?”
He looked down at his fingers. Long spindly things.
“I’m not your father,” he said. “I’m not anybody’s father.”
“That don’t matter. You just gotta be here when the spinsters come a-knockin’. Like, just pretend I’m, what’s his face, Coburn? And we’re in this play together, and I got lines, and you got lines, and we fool ’em into thinking it’s all true.”
“What about your brother and sister? Are we going to fool them, too?”
“They’ll think what I tell ’em to think.”
Though just then I was recalling the look on Janey’s face as she hustled Earle into the house. An old look.
“Like I said before, mister. If you got someplace else to be…”
He was quiet.
“Hell,” I said. “You ain’t got a bindle on you. Bet you ain’t even got a toothbrush. Less it’s in one of them holes you call pockets. Here I am offering you food and a bed and a roof over your head. I call that a square deal.”
Quieter still. I could’ve busted a head on that quiet.
“Well, goddamn it, mister, what’s it gonna be? You in or out?”
His eyes went straggling around the room again till they found that little rhododendron table.
“It won’t work,” he said.
“Well, if it don’t, it’s on me. And you don’t need to bother yourself about the sheriff or nothing. If things go south, I’ll tell ’em it was my idea.”
“Not sure they’ll believe you.”
“Sure they will. I got witnesses to my bad character.”
He come very near to smiling.
“So we got us a deal?” I said.
“We got us something, all right.”
I tossed him a packet of Lucky Strikes as I was walking to the door. And a book of matches.
“We don’t got no ashtray,” I said. “But you can use the bucket.”
“I thank you.”
“Listen, mister.” I give my forehead a scratch. “Maybe you should tell me what your name is.”
“Name?”
“Seeing as I should know it, probably.”
“It’s Hiram. Hiram Watts.”
I let the sound of it settle in my ears.
“Well,” I said, “reckon you can hold on to that. I mean, it ain’t like you and Mama got hitched or nothing.”
“In fact, no.”
“Keeping it simple is all.”
“Of course.”
“So make yourself at home, Hiram Watts. There’s food down in the store if you’re hungry. If you’re just fixing to sleep, that’s okey, too.”
He ran his fingers round the rim of that root table. Once, twice.
“All right,” he whispered.
I closed the door after me.
Now I was all set to go back downstairs, but instead I sat down on the floor and leaned my head against the door. A minute or two later, I heard his voice on the other side.
“Thanks for the smokes.”
Even then I stayed. Till I heard his snoring. Which was ’bout as high as his speaking voice was deep.
Hiram, I said to myself. Hiram Watts.