Chapter Twenty-Six

On the first night in December, cold mist pelted me as I walked from the United, but I found little refuge when I got home, where the thermostat only registered a few degrees warmer than outside. JohnScott would have gladly picked me up, but lately we seemed to be growing further and further apart, and I wondered if he wouldn’t have added to the iciness.

After changing into dry jeans and a sweatshirt, I raised the setting on the heater, but only slightly. A high electric bill would wreak havoc on our makeshift budget, so Momma and I tended to seek warmth next to our tiny wood-burning fireplace.

Dashing out the door, I grabbed an armful of damp logs from our dwindling woodpile by the front porch and made a mental note to ask Ansel to bring more. He was in the process of clearing a pasture and cut down several mesquite trees every week or two. The wet logs I held in my arms dampened the sleeves of my sweatshirt before I dropped them into the box near the fireplace. I’d have a dickens of a time getting a fire started, but I knelt and began the slow process, which only darkened my mood.

For days I had been mindful of the preacher. He seemed aware of my attention even though I did my best to hide it. He would shift his gaze toward me and smile. Or wink. I could tell he wanted to give me time to figure things out, and he hadn’t asked for a date again, but I had the sensation of being monitored, as if I were walking a tightrope while he lingered below, ready to catch me as soon as I fell.

I sat on the floor in front of the fireplace and stuffed wadded newspaper around the wood, pushing guilty thoughts of Dodd from my mind.

Momma came through the front door. “Thank goodness you’re building a fire, Ruth Ann. I’m frozen and soggy.”

“Yeah, well, so is the wood.” I struck a match and held it to the paper.

She joined me on the floor, and together we watched the flame engulf the newspaper and flicker away without so much as warming the bark. “Is gasoline a bad idea?” she asked.

I enjoyed the scent of the match while I crumpled more paper. “I think so.”

A tap at the door startled us.

In general we lived comfortably in our house, but it had one fault—the small, diamond-shaped window in the front door, decorative from the outside but bothersome from the inside. Anyone standing on the front porch could look into the house, and at times like this, with the porch light off, our visitors could spy on us, but we couldn’t see them. Granted, we didn’t get many guests, but as I knelt at the fireplace across from the door, my spine tingled.

The knock hadn’t sounded right. Not that I’d ever put much thought into the sound of knuckles on wood, but I didn’t recognize this particular knock as JohnScott or Velma, the only two people who ever came to see us. It was just three light taps, tapering off toward the end, and if a knock could sound hesitant, this one did. It put me on edge.

Momma stepped to the door and flicked on the porch light, then peeked out from an angle. “What does he want?”

My nerves coiled like a roll of barbed wire as I prayed it wasn’t Dodd or Grady. Or even JohnScott.

Momma opened the door three inches, prompting me to try harder to light the fire. I could already feel the icy draft.

“Hey, Lynda.”

The man’s gruff voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

Momma leaned against the doorframe, still in her work clothes. They weren’t as wet as mine had been, but she looked damp. “What do you want, Clyde?”

Clyde? Sweat moistened my armpits, and I abandoned the fire and scrambled on all fours into the hallway where he couldn’t see me.

“Thought I’d pay you a visit,” he said. “Been a long time.”

“You sober?”

He cleared his throat and mumbled a yes.

“Well, you might as well come in, then.”

Curiosity and apprehension rooted me to the spot, and I stayed in the hall even though my gut suggested I hide in my room with the door locked. Why would Momma let Clyde Felton in the house?

“Sorry it’s so cold in here. Ruth Ann’s having trouble with the fire.”

“Ruth Ann?”

She huffed. “Well, the girl’s hiding now.”

Clyde’s shoes scraped the hardwood floor, and after a pause, I heard newspaper tearing. “Can’t blame her. I scared the daylights out of her a while back.”

“For crying out loud, what’d you do?”

A match struck. “Aw, I’d been drinking. Didn’t mean nothing by it.”

Silence followed, filled by the sound of scrunching paper. I hoped the man wouldn’t feed newsprint into our fireplace for the next hour, because that’s how long it would take to get the wood burning.

“I guess prison’s awful.” Momma’s voice wavered slightly, reminding me of every tale I ever heard about prisons.

“You get used to it.”

The couch creaked as Momma sat. “I wouldn’t have come back to Trapp if I were you.”

“You might if you’d been where I’ve been.”

I peeked around the corner. Clyde squatted by the fireplace while Momma lounged on the couch with one leg draped over the armrest. Obviously they had known each other before Clyde’s imprisonment, and even though their conversation sounded harmless, the idea of a convicted rapist in my living room made me sick to my stomach.

He continued to mess with the fire, and I wanted to scream at him to give up. Go home. Leave.

He surprised me by saying, “I’ve been to church a couple times. Expected to see you.”

“You went to worship?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“Under the circumstances, yes.” She chuckled bitterly. “How’d it go?”

“Last time most of them were frosty. Pretended not to see me.” The fireplace tools clanked as he replaced the poker. “Tonight Neil asked me not to come back.”

Momma grunted. “Ah, yes. Midweek service.”

“He said I’d be more comfortable at the congregation over in Slaton.”

“Well, surely you didn’t expect him to send out the welcome wagon.”

Clyde hesitated so long, I looked around the corner again. Momma had a sad expression on her face.

“You wanted to see them, didn’t you?”

Clyde shifted. “I learned a lot in prison. A couple missionaries came every few weeks and talked to us about Jesus. And I listened.”

Momma cackled. “You got religion?”

“I know it’s hard to believe.” Clyde laughed a little too, but his suppressed cheer tapered. “The religion here is different than religion in prison.”

“The religion here is different than religion anywhere.”

“You didn’t used to feel that way.” He paused. “You ever see Hoby?”

Momma didn’t answer, but I knew she must have given him a gesture to indicate the negative.

“You know where he is?”

“No idea.”

“You should find him, Lynda.” A long silence filled the room, seeping into the hallway, before Clyde asked, “How are things between you and Neil?”

Momma spoke quickly. “What are you doing with yourself anyway? To keep your mind off the bottle?”

Clyde hesitated. “I got me a job at the Dairy Queen, flipping burgers in the back. Why won’t you give me a straight answer?”

The springs in the couch squeaked, and the front door opened. “Ruth Ann and me—we’ve got work tomorrow. We should call it a night.”

Yeah, right. Momma never made it to bed before midnight, but her lie calmed my nerves because it meant Clyde would get away from us.

“I guess that’s good-bye,” he said softly.

Then he left.

I crept back to the living room and glanced at the door, thankful Momma had left the porch light on.

She stood in front of the fire, which now burned steadily, but she didn’t look at me. “How do men get fires started so easily?” she asked.

“Must be in their genes.” I held my cold fingers toward the increasing warmth as a million questions ran through my mind. My heart felt like a balloon, filled to near bursting, then quickly deflated into a misshapen form that would never be quite as strong.

“What’s the deal with you running off?” Momma demanded. “You too uppity to talk to my friends?”

I found her question humorous, since she hadn’t had a friend in years. Not really. The humor died when I remembered Clyde had asked me almost the same question on the wall at the school. “He’s your friend?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “He used to be.”

I rubbed my hands together, unsure of how to talk to Momma but desperate to know what Clyde Felton had to do with my daddy. “What happened with him, Momma?”

She opened her mouth to speak and then snapped it shut. “Aw, it don’t matter.”

When she turned and shuffled to the kitchen, she effectively shut me out of her mind with all the finality of a slamming door.