After the third shovelful of dirt, the fire is gone and there’ll be no sign of it. I press one hand against the top of the barrel. It’s warm but not hot. Soon enough, it’ll be cool to the touch. I lay the shovel against the house, walk around to the front door, step onto the square slab of stone that acts as a single stair and then up onto the porch.
The Baines’ house is narrow. It’s one room wide and two deep. Open the front door and open the back, and a person could see straight through it. I knock and listen for footsteps. The house is silent. I knock again.
“I have to talk to him, Mrs. Baine,” I say, pressing my face to the door so I don’t have to yell. “Now, before Daddy comes.”
I saw the look in Juna’s eyes when she stepped from her bedroom. I thought it was relief that she’d finally remembered, but I know her better than that. Should have known straightaway. Her lids were stretched wide open. She was breathing too heavy for having been in bed. She was happy, though trying to hide it. The fellow in the white shirt was the answer. He was the one she could say caused her trouble. She’d been silent since Daddy carried her home, not because she’d gone too long without water or too much tobacco had leached into her blood. It hadn’t been the sun or the shock. She hadn’t worked out yet what to tell us. She had tried blaming Daddy, but then Mr. Brashear said they saw a fellow. Whatever happened, it was somehow Juna’s doing, but now she had someone else to blame.
“Whatever Juna tells him,” I say into the door, both hands and my cheek pressed flat against it, “he’ll believe her. You have to let me in.”
The door opens. For all the years I’ve ached for Ellis Baine, I’ve never passed over this threshold. I see him in town, at church some Sundays, walking a field, driving past me in his truck, and still it’s enough to root him in my thoughts every day. In one of his three letters to me, Joseph Carl said my wanting Ellis wasn’t at all about Ellis. He said I was wanting something that would take me away from the life I was living and Ellis was the least common thing among so much commonness. Ellis shaved himself while most others didn’t. His hair was more black than brown, and brown hair was most ordinary. Ellis was tall and so were others, but his back was still straight. You like that he knows a thing for certain, Joseph Carl had written. You want someone who knows things, doesn’t hope for things, because hoping is common. Hoping is easy.
After opening the door to me, Mrs. Baine slips back to her stove, where she pokes at the fire going inside. It doesn’t draw quite right, or something is stuffing up her pipe, and smoke hangs off the ceiling. Joseph Carl sits at a small stool pulled up to the kitchen table. He wears a blue plaid shirt that’s too big through the shoulders and its sleeves have been rolled up. He starts to stand, but because he presses his hands to the table and rocks forward, I see it’ll be an effort, a painful effort, so I wave at him to stay put.
“It’s good to see you, Joseph Carl,” I say.
The small house isn’t so different from ours. It’s tidy enough, what I can see of it, and keeping it such with all those boys living here is why Mrs. Baine always has a worn-out look about her. Her cast iron hangs from nails driven into the wall, and a set of three square tins, one larger than the next, sits on a small wooden shelf near her stove. They’re the palest of green and rusted at their seams. She must think they’re pretty, maybe they’re her only pretty thing, and she keeps them there so they’ll be handy when she’s cooking, though they’re likely empty. A pot sits on her stove. She’s brewing goldenrod and wintergreen, the smell seeping into the air as steam begins to rise.
“Afraid it ain’t so good to see you.” Joseph Carl smiles and begins patting two flat hands against the tabletop.
Just as Juna said it would be, Joseph Carl’s nose is bent off to the side. It wasn’t that way before he left home, so it must have happened while he was living out west. It won’t be a good story, so I won’t ask.
“Didn’t do nothing to your brother.”
“Did you see him? The two of them together?” I ask, staring at his hands. He stops patting the table, looks toward his mama.
“Sure, I seen them. Seen the both of them. Forgot about the little one. Not much more than a baby when I left.”
“She says you took Dale.”
“Give the boy my cards,” Joseph Carl says. “He was there with her. They was picking worms in your daddy’s field. Give him my only deck. Had it for years. Had it since I was a kid, but was almost home. Figured Mama’d have new cards. Didn’t need no deck of my own. Give them to the boy. I was happy to be home. Real happy. Give that boy the only gift I had. Then went on my way.”
“Did you take that shirt, Joseph Carl?”
“Borrowed it,” he says. “Borrowed it, is all. Thought to wear it a few days. Then return it.”
“Where are your brothers?”
“Looking for your boy, I suppose. Some of them, anyway.”
“Don’t tell no one about the shirt,” I say to both of them. “Not even that you borrowed it.”
“I told her I was a Baine,” Joseph Carl says. “She remembered. Joseph Carl, she said, and I told her yes. She knew me. She’s just confused, is all. Won’t tell no one I took that boy.”
“She already did,” I say.
We don’t hear the trucks until they’ve turned off the road and have started up the drive. It’s the hickories and elms that have muffled the sound. There are two trucks, at least, maybe three. Mrs. Baine leans to look out the window, and two headlights fan across her, lighting up her face for a moment. The window goes dark again. I slide onto one of the stools at the table.
“Not a word about that shirt,” I say again.
I expect the door to fly open and Daddy to stomp inside. He’ll be relieved it’s not his curse that’s taken Dale from us. Now he’ll have someone to grab onto. He’ll have Abraham Pace with him and maybe John Holleran, though John doesn’t take much to violence. Daddy will drag Joseph Carl out of the kitchen, right in front of his own mama, throw him from the porch, and put a gun to his head until he tells what he’s done with Dale. It won’t matter to him that Joseph Carl didn’t do it, and that he won’t be able to do a thing to help us. It won’t matter that maybe there’s someone else out there who did something terrible to Dale, or that maybe Juna herself did it. Joseph Carl will be someone to blame. But the door doesn’t fly open. Instead, there is a knock.
With a rag wrapped around her hand, Mrs. Baine taps the door on her stove until it’s closed. Joseph Carl crosses his arms and lets his shoulders roll forward. I look at the door but don’t stand. There is another knock.
“Cora.” It’s a woman’s voice. “It’s Irlene. Irlene Fulkerson. Open on up, will you?”
I stand, but Mrs. Baine grabs me by the arm. “Don’t you dare,” she says. “Don’t you open that door.”
“Be thankful it’s Irlene Fulkerson out there,” I say, reaching for the latch, “and not my daddy.”
The lights of one of the trucks are still lit up, and they catch me full in the face when I open the door. I hold a hand over my eyes, tip my head, and then I see them. It’s Irlene Fulkerson and John Holleran too.
“The Brashears told me,” John says. “Told me about the fellow and Cora Baine. Figured this was best.”
John has a way of looking at me. He holds my eyes a little too long, a little longer than anyone else. It’s his way, I suppose, of trying to fashion something between us. It’s how he’s looking at me now, out on the porch, the truck lights making me squint and dip my head. Even when I turn away to see Joseph Carl still sitting at the table-him looking like a passing glance of who he once was-and turn back, John’s eyes are there, waiting to latch onto mine.