After all of the eating, talking, praying, and being among family, the house finally fell quiet. No one paid Caleb any mind, baying and carrying on into the night. He hadn’t been the same since Sheriff Charles gave him Vonetta’s nightie to sniff. He had “the scent” and kept pulling at his chain and baying.
The churning of things both bad and unknown kept me awake. It was mostly being in our room. Feeling the before and the now in every corner. Caleb’s noise didn’t help any more than knowing my father must have driven the Wildcat as far as Virginia by now. Or North Carolina.
All I had wanted was to have every single one of us under one roof. Now, with so many of us, and Papa and Mrs. coming, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I crept by Mr. Lucas, who was asleep on the sofa, and picked my way through my uncle and cousin camped out on the living room floor. I hoped the floorboards wouldn’t give me away. Thanks to Mr. Lucas, our floors didn’t creak as much as Miss Trotter’s old wooden floors. Uncle Darnell turned over and I froze at the door, but neither he, JimmyTrotter, nor Mr. Lucas woke up.
I stepped out on the porch in my bare feet. Caleb wouldn’t stop barking. His chain never bothered him before. He had been content to sit in the sun and watch the chickens scratching around in the chicken run. But now he tugged at the pole, spiked down into the ground extra hard by Mr. Lucas.
I listened to him and heard something familiar in his song. It was more than Caleb wanting to be free of his chains. He made the same sounds as when Sheriff Charles came riding up in his police car and again when Miss Trotter, JimmyTrotter, Sophie, and Butter came from out of the pines. I never thought about a meaning behind Caleb’s baying. Only that he made his noise. But now I could hear that Caleb’s third dog song—two during daylight and one at night—was a song to announce an arrival.
Still, I said, “Hush, boy.”
Caleb wouldn’t hush. He pulled at his chain and sang louder.
I turned on the porch light. I saw movement in the dark. A person approaching. My eyes combed through the dark for a better look but all I could see was the figure that was now coming through the field and moving toward the house.
I didn’t move. I only watched. The dog kept crying as the figure came closer. Then she was upon me. It was my mother. Cecile.
She hadn’t even gotten fully to the porch but she was already speaking. “They find Vonetta?”
I had to stop myself from saying, “No, ma’am,” knowing my mother wouldn’t like that southern talk. I said, “No, Cecile. They didn’t find her.”
“Your father here?”
“Not yet,” I said. I wanted to hug my mother but she didn’t open herself to let me. So I stayed where I was. All she wanted from me were answers, so I gave what I had. “Uncle Darnell said the way Papa drives, he and Mrs. will be here just after noon.”
“Mrs.?”
“Pa’s . . . wife.”
“Her name is Marva,” Cecile said flatly.
“Yes, ma’am.” It slipped out. I knew right there my mother hated the South in me. She cut me up with her glare.
Then Uncle Darnell came to the door and pushed it open. “Sis!”
She clomped past me—her footsteps heavy, like I remembered, and hugged his neck so hard. They stood there wrapped in each other. Her eyes shut tight. I heard her say to him, “I never meant to leave you.” Something she’d never said to me or my sisters.
Then he spoke into her neck. “I know, sis.”
“I just couldn’t stay,” she told him.
He said, “I know.”
I was right there but on the outside. It didn’t seem real. My mother, wild-eyed and tired, suddenly here. Close enough to touch, although she didn’t reach out to me or let me touch her. But I smelled the coconut oil in her hair and the sweat of someone who’d been marching ten miles. When I thought I had the right to hate her, she was there. Right there. But not for me to touch. Except for the big drawstring bag slung around her shoulder that hit me when she went to hug Uncle Darnell. The bag was soft and full, its punch dull against my side. It was a bag I knew she’d made of old clothes.
My mother stomped on the welcome mat to shake the dirt from her boots and went inside with Uncle Darnell. I stayed outside with Caleb, who was now back to baying and pulling at his chain.
I stayed out on the porch all night and didn’t slip back inside until nearly daybreak. Cecile slept in the living room next to Uncle Darnell as if they had fallen asleep talking. Mr. Lucas now lay on his back. But JimmyTrotter had moved from his spot. I walked through the living room into the kitchen and out the back screen door. There was JimmyTrotter with Sophie and Butter.
He had one of Big Ma’s mixing bowls on the ground and sat at Sophie’s side. “Come on, girl. Come on, Sophie.”
I sat at his side. “Maybe she can’t.”
“I’m hoping she can,” JimmyTrotter said. “It’s too early for her to be dry. We don’t have much use for a milk cow that don’t milk.”
“Don’t let Fern hear you say that.”
He gave a weak smile. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try breeding her in a few months. Maybe she’ll give me a dairy cow. We sure haven’t been lucky lately. Both Butter and Sophie gave us bulls.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t keep them.”
Even as he spoke, I didn’t quite believe him about breeding Sophie to try for another milk cow. I think he said those things because they were hopeful things. I think he said those things for me.
“Who’s that woman?” he asked.
“Cecile,” I said.
“Cecile, as in your mama? All the way from Los Angeles?”
“Oakland.”
“Same difference from where I’m sitting.” He looked up at the sky. “She flew to get here. A red-eye from Oakland to Montgomery, I’ll bet. I’m figuring on a Boeing 707 or a DC-8. You know they’re coming out with commercial planes almost as fast as the speed of sound. Wouldn’t mind flying one of those.”
“Is that so?”
He gave up on milking and set the mixing bowl aside. He kept looking to the sky. “My model planes are all smashed,” he said. “If only I could have saved the Warhawk—or my brother’s bomber. I only had time enough to grab Miss Trotter and the picture. Had to get the picture. She wouldn’t move without her mama and papa.”
“Onchee,” I said.
“Onchee is right.”
I told him I was sorry about his model planes when I wasn’t. A model plane wasn’t a sister, but JimmyTrotter was the only one speaking to me. And he had lost a brother, a mother, a father, and a grandmother. All at once. He knew.
“Wanted that Cessna, too. Last kit my daddy bought me.” He wasn’t really speaking to me. Just talking into the sky. “All of them gone.”
Out of the blue I said, “It’s not my fault.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“She’s my sister. I want her back.”
“I know, Delphine.” Then we said nothing for a while.
“You must be glad to have your mama here,” he said. “Even as sad as things are.”
I knew from that he didn’t believe we’d get Vonetta back but I couldn’t think that way.
“Cecile’s not a mama,” I told him, but not angry or snippy. I was just stating a fact.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s Cecile. That’s all.”
He nodded like he understood, but I knew he didn’t. We’d never run out of things to talk about before but we hardly had anything to say to each other now. I figured he’d stop talking to me like everyone else. And then Papa would be here and it would get worse before it got better. And it might never get better.
JimmyTrotter got up from his stool and I stood with him.
“Darnell’s going back with me to pick through what’s left. Maybe we can find some photos or something.”
“I’ll come too. I can help.”
“Cousin Del, you don’t want to see the house. Tornado hit us hard. Radio says it was a two but I think it was a level three.”
There it was. His nice way of saying, Leave me alone. I don’t want you around. I said, “Cousin, I just don’t get it.” He waited for me to finish. “Why did it take down your house and Mr. Lucas’s house? Why is ours still standing?”
JimmyTrotter shrugged. “House is here. But you still got hit. Hard.”