No more whiskey. A few days passed, and Tommy’s stomach still churned at the thought of it. His insides remembered what his mind couldn’t. He’d forbidden himself from accepting unidentified concoctions meant to calm and numb. No more coffin varnish. If he needed to soothe a panic, he’d have a gentle, quiet beer, something that softened his edges instead of sharpening them, instead of turning him into a soulless tornado.
Thick disgust for how he’d treated Mama sat heavy in his belly. He kept apologizing and she kept accepting, but he didn’t trust that he’d ever stop seeing his unleashed cruelness in her eyes every time she looked at him. He had to do something to show he was sorry, to force things to evolve.
He’d also apologized to Katherine, whom he’d been told he was also rude to that same night. She’d hugged him tight saying she simply wanted him to be safe and stay out of the bottle. She had been fighting off a cough for some time, and he told her to take care of herself as much as she worried about him. None of them could afford to be ill or drunk if they intended to create a better life. The line between having enough to survive and being dragged into despair was simply too thin and at points, invisible. Purpose, the right path . . . Attention on it was required to avoid desperation.
“I’m all right, Tommy. Even with this awful cold I can’t shake. Aleksey’s been coming around . . .” Her gaze slipped toward the horizon and a peaceful expression spread over her face.
Dorozhka. “Aleksey’s on a good path,” Tommy said.
She had agreed.
“Like his father always said to us.”
“Yes, they are such kind people. So . . . I am just so happy he’s here. I never expected to see him again after everything.” She looked at her hands, her pinkie finger that had to be amputated after frostbite got to it during the blizzard when Aleksey saved her life.
Tommy wished he could take all the awful behavior back from the night he’d fought with Mama. It was as though his mouth had been working independent of his brain, the words propelled with deep anger that had overtaken him. No—pain. It was as though saying what had hurt him so much could relieve it, but it only made things worse. What if Mama didn’t really forgive him deep down? Perhaps he didn’t deserve it.
**
Odd stretches of freezing rain alternating with quick melting snows, then short, but warm days made Tommy patch sections of the shed that had lost too much plaster, that would soon allow critters inside as winter arrived and tightened around them. He spread the thick mortar and considered the work ahead. He was due for a night-lighting of the furnaces at Miss Violet’s. He’d also been hired to perform what Miss Violet termed “listening duties” for Dreama’s readings that night.
“Very, very important tonight, Tommy. We need to capture what is said,” Miss Violet had told him. He barely kept from rolling his eyes, but wanted a closer look at what Dreama did that was so wonderful that he’d lost every single prayer client.
Miss Violet explained that the individual readings were done in the company of an audience, but often Dreama spoke quietly, and the others in the room might be distracted by their own drinking and finance consultations.
He daubed the plaster and smoothed it into the holes at the front of the shed. The sound of a shovel digging into the ground drew Tommy’s attention. With nightfall coming, Mama should be settling in, not breaking ground in the kitchen garden.
Tommy followed the noise and stopped halfway through the hedge. Reed Hayes. Digging along the border near the fence.
“Does my mama know you’re digging up her garden?” Tommy wanted to be nicer to this man even though he seemed the perfect target for the ever-filling anger. “I mean . . . Is that the plan?”
Mr. Hayes leaned on his shovel and squinted at Tommy. “Matter of fact, your mama doesn’t know. She’s out buying buttons and stays for Mrs. Calder. Mother-of-pearl buttons she said—only the best will do for Mrs. Calder. And this work won’t keep. Crazy weather, isn’t it?”
“She could ask me for help.” Tommy’s guilt at the way he’d treated his mother the other evening was banished by his distaste for Mr. Hayes.
“Can we talk?” Mr. Hayes asked.
“No.” Tommy headed away from Mr. Hayes, back toward his shed.
Mr. Hayes followed and took him by the arm. “We’re going to talk.”
Tommy shook his arm free and sat on the broken-down porch.
Mr. Hayes knocked on the pillar that held up the trellis above. “Rotted. It’ll need replacing.”
Tommy shrugged.
Mr. Hayes sat beside him. “Your mother loves you like no one I’ve ever seen. Wants what’s best for you.”
Tommy squinted at Mr. Hayes. “You’re an expert on mothers loving sons?”
Mr. Hayes’s gaze penetrated Tommy, making him squirm.
“You hurt her bad the other night.”
Tommy’s stomach lurched. What bothered him most was that he might not even remember everything he’d said, that Mr. Hayes was witness to the emotional rampage. He couldn’t argue with Mr. Hayes on this point. “I know it.” He despised this man for noting it.
“Saloon juice’ll rot you from the inside out,” Mr. Hayes said.
Frank landed on Tommy’s shoulder. He considered this. The first couple whiskeys never tasted right to him, but then as it filled him up, the sensation that came was glorious, numbing his soul to perfection. When he drank, he carried no worries, no pain, no sadness during the splurge.
The next day was another story. Until recently, Tommy had barely even carried a next-morning headache, as though he and whiskey were made for one another. But the other night, when his anger ripped him open, spewing all over Mama, it scared the hell out of him. Tommy had been awful, but he didn’t need Mr. Hayes to tell him so. Rotten was correct. And, he’d make it up to Mama, but he didn’t have to explain that to this stranger.
“Listen,” Mr. Hayes said, “my parents died when I was twelve, and I kept five younger siblings in good health. I know what it’s like to fall into the bottle now and again. Like tumbling into a canyon, the pain swallowing you up.” Mr. Hayes tapped his chest. “Inside and out. And I just want to help. That’s all. I can—”
Tommy drew away and cackled. “That’s just beautiful. You, the rev, the judge, the world is full of folks wanting to help, apparently, but—”
Mr. Hayes stood and planted his shovel into the ground. “Maybe you should start taking the help.”
“I won’t ever take your help. And my mama doesn’t need it either.”
Mr. Hayes shook his head. “Well. If you’re gonna stay deep in a bottle—”
“I swore off the whiskey, if you have to know.”
“Good.” Mr. Hayes scratched his chin. “Good. And if you want me to help—if you need anything—just ask.”
Tommy nodded. Mr. Hayes walked back toward the hedge that separated the fruit garden from the kitchen garden.
“Don’t you have some science to do or some student to teach? You spend more time in our garden than at Drake University. People are talking. I saw that article questioning your Christian ways, digging and planting in the garden of a divorced woman.”
Mr. Hayes turned. “Like I said, if you change your mind . . .” He disappeared beyond the hedgerow. Crisp icy rain ticked at the earth, at Tommy’s skin. Knifing his cheeks, he let the frozen shards hit him, accepting it as a reprimand from God or some force of the universe.
The rain came faster, accompanying Mr. Hayes’s shovel speed. Tommy thought he heard the man grunt. Good. Tommy had angered the man. Good. Wasn’t fair if he kept all the hostility for himself.