“You look like hell.”
“I feel like hell.” Garrett tried to smile at his sister.
“How’s she doing?”
“Stable. At least she was when I left the hospital.”
“What did her parents say?”
“A whole hell of a lot. It started out ugly. Real ugly. But after we all simmered down, we reasoned through it. I told them I wasn’t going anywhere. The baby’s mine and they can’t keep her from me.”
“And…”
“And we came to a truce. They may not like me, but I think they respect the fact that I’m the baby’s father.”
Angie squealed and balled up her fists, knocking them together. Her face was bright and happy. “Oh, my God, Rett, you’re gonna be a daddy! And I’m gonna be an auntie!”
Rett allowed himself a moment to jump up and down with her. Every time he thought about it, he felt so many emotions—warmth, love, apprehension, and most overwhelmingly, excitement.
After a moment, he and his sister took deep, steadying breaths.
“You ready?” Angie asked Rett as she put her arms around his shoulders.
“No.” He squeezed her. She probably felt the chill that washed over his body. Then he popped away from her. “Thank you for coming home early.”
“No problem, honey. I love you.” She kissed his cheek. Then she held his hand as they went in the living room.
“I need to talk to y’all about something.” Rett pushed out a heavy sigh standing across from his parents. He looked at his mother, who sat very still on the couch. He looked at his father, who was pitching forward in his seat, trying to un-recline his chair.
When Big looked up at him he seemed to recognize something. He began to shake his head. “What have you gone and done, Rett? I told you—”
“I know what you told me, Dad. But that didn’t change anything,” Rett snapped sarcastically. He raked his hands through his hair. He felt Angie’s hand on the small of his back, reinforcing his backbone.
“What’s going on here, Big?” Mary Margaret asked as she came to perch on the arm of his chair next to him, across from her daughter and son.
Big turned to his wife with a look of dread that made everything worse for Rett. Already, without him saying anything, his father knew. And already they both knew how Mary Margaret was going to react.
“Looks like your son has gone and got himself into a little trouble. Or, should I say, your son’s gone and got someone into a little trouble.”
“What?” Mary Margaret asked, stretching the word out to show she really didn’t understand.
“Looks like there’s a little’un on the way.”
“A what? A—” And everybody heard it before she could stop it. Mary Margaret sounded as if she were halfway to ecstatic already. She tried to calm down. “What, Rett, honey? Is Kim pregnant?”
“No.”
“Then who?” Mary Margaret turned to Big, who didn’t say a word. “Who, Rett?”
“This girl from school. Her name’s Tracey.” He swallowed.
“Well, Rett, hon, you know you gotta do the right thing. I mean, we’re Christian people. You have got to look inside yourself and do the right thing.”
“And, Momma, I plan to,” Rett said, but still didn’t go any further.
“Tell her, Rett. Go on.” Big was staring Rett right in the eye. They all knew what was about to come, all except Mary Margaret. Still, Rett didn’t say anything.
Then, as was her way, Angie decided to get it all out. “What they’re neglecting to tell you is that Tracey’s a black girl.”
“No,” Mary Margaret said immediately and shook her head. Somehow, it was as if she thought that was all she had to do to make it go away.
Angie leaned forward and countered, “Yeah.”
Mary Margaret’s stood slowly and her body began to quiver. “Give him a check, Big,” she said, her voice deceptively soft.
“What?” Rett snapped hotly.
“Give him a check, Big.”
“We have to talk about—” Angie started.
“We don’t have to talk about a damn thing! Give him a check, Big!”
“I don’t think he’s going to take a check, Mary Margaret.”
“Oh, he won’t? Well, where the hell is she? She’ll take it. She’ll love to get her welfare-loving hands on it. Give him a check, Big!”
“That was uncalled for, Mother,” Rett returned with tight lips.
“I said, give him a check, Big.”
“Momma!” That was Angie.
“Give him a check, Big! Give him a check, Big! Give him a check, Big!” Her face was mottled with red splotches and her eyes were fixed on Rett’s. She was shaking and shrieking it by then. And her fingers had stretched and frozen into vulture talons. “My son’s not going to have no nigger baby by no nigger whore!” She ground her teeth together, “Give…him…a damn check, Big!” She spun on her heel and stormed out of the room.
The three left stood staring at each other. “You going to go, too?” Rett swallowed deep. His throat was hot and dry. His ears and face burned hot as lava.
“No.” Big shook his head. “Won’t do any good anyhow. You tell me now, what it was you planned to say.”
“I don’t see what the point is.”
“You heard me.”
“I came here to tell you that Tracey is pregnant. It’s a long story, but she’s going to deliver in a month’s time. You’re going to be a granddaddy, whether you want to be or not.”
“Well,” Big said and reclined in his seat again. And that was all there was to be said.
* * *
“Does that word bother you?”
“What word?” Angie asked as she sipped lemonade across the table.
“That word,” Rett said.
“Oh. Yes, it bothers me.”
“Has it always bothered you?”
“Since I was old enough to know what it meant,” Angie told him. “Why?”
“Just wondering.”
“Does it bother you?”
“It didn’t used to bother me. In fact, it didn’t bother me that much even when I was with Tracey. I mean, there was this one time when she was over at the apartment, and Charles, being who he is, said it under his breath. I threatened to kick his ass, but that was only ’cause I knew Tracey was offended.”
Angie just sighed into her glass. Her disapproval was not disguised.
“You know, it really didn’t bother me until today, ’til Momma said it, especially the way she said it.”
“Well, why do you think it’s bothering you now all of a sudden?”
“It was so horrible when Momma said it ’cause when she said it, she wasn’t just talking about Tracey. She was talking about my baby, and that’s like talking about me. I mean, it’s like she was saying it to me about me.”
“Nothing ever fazes you until it’s about you, right?”
“Shut up, Angie.”
“I’m just saying.”
* * *
“Wake up!”
Rett nearly jumped through the ceiling.
“What the—”
“You heard me. Wake up!” Big told him again. Rett put a hand to his head, hoping to clear it. Rett could smell the liquor on his father’s breath.
“I’m up,” Rett grunted, looking around for his clock. He could have sworn he’d just laid down. He was disoriented. “What you want?”
“I want you to get up and put some clothes on. We’re going shooting.”
“What time is it?”
“Time to get up. I got the truck running. I’ll meet you outside in ten minutes. Count ’em, ten minutes.”
This was not the first time Big had awakened his son in the middle of the night drunk as a skunk and wanting to go shoot. Hell, it had happened fairly frequently when Rett lived at home. But he was already uneasy. He and Angie had sat in the kitchen listening to Big and Mary Margaret yell all night long. Well, no, his momma had yelled all night long, but Big had been in there with her. Then she’d stormed out of the house and left. Rett didn’t figure she’d be back that night. She was probably going to her cousin Betty’s. But after she’d left, Big had come into the kitchen with them. They’d watched him get as drunk as drunk could get—which was easy for him—and now, here he was. Well, actually, there he had been, ’cause he was out of the room on the way to his truck by then.
“Damn,” Rett hissed and got dressed. He was pulling sneakers on as he made it outside. Sure enough, there was Big sitting in the truck. He slipped in on the other side. When he noticed that Big’s head was lolling around, he slammed the door.
Big jumped, then snapped his head around every which way, confused. Rett tapped him on the shoulder. Big turned to look him solemnly in the eye. Rett wanted to laugh so bad at this immediate desire to sober. Especially when Big announced gravely, “You’re my son, son.”
“Yep,” Rett agreed, nodding.
“You’re my blood.”
“Uh-huh,” Rett agreed, putting his hand over his heart.
“And you can’t do anything to change blood, no matter what your momma says.”
“Yep.” This time Rett couldn’t mock his father, because, as usual, Big was trying to tell him something important. This just happened to be the way he did it. Even with Angie, when she won her first medal and Big wanted to congratulate her, this was what he did. Rett turned to face forward, thinking about what his father was telling him.
“And you know what else, son?”
“What?” Rett asked, humbled.
“I’m not giving you a damn check!” And after saying that, Big Atkins slumped over in the driver’s seat, passed out.
“Damn,” Rett hissed for the second time that night. He was sorely tempted to just leave Big there in the car. Let him sleep it off. But he couldn’t do it. So he gritted his teeth and got out of the car. As he always had done in this situation, he spent a moment looking at his father and wondering how in the hell he was going to move a near three-hundred-pound man back into the house. But, hey, Rett actually smiled to himself, he’d been doing it since he was a skinny fourteen-year-old. Somehow, he’d managed it then.