Then I heard Momma. She sounded stuffy like somebody with a cold. “I know it is Mamaw, but that’s how it was. I wouldn’t have hesitated anymore than if it was a bug!”
“Aw now, Ruby,” Granny said.
“I mean it Mamaw. The next time that son of a bitch will be dead!”
Granny let Momma cry; then she said, “I thought ya’ll was goin’ in on a house together.”
“We was. Then he fell in with those men.” Momma blew her nose.
“What men?”
“One’s to do with that Pink Flamingo. You know, that hotel? If you was to ask me, that bunch is up to hell and no good!” A sound like a kicked dog came out of Momma then. “They had women, Mamaw! Sorriest looking old Jezebels you ever seen!”
“Whores?”
“Waitresses, Victor said they was, worked in the bar there at the hotel.”
“Whores then,” Granny said. “Lord.”
“Them men. They treated me like I didn’t have sense enough to spit.”
“You run off, didn’t you?” Granny said. “They’s plenty sense in that.”
“They was lots of places down there,” Momma said. “Too expensive, most of them. Ones we could afford was too far away. Then he up and buys one on his own, a ranch house on the beach. Like it wasn’t none of my business. Armstrong give him the money.”
“That lawyer?” Granny said.
It got quiet a while; then Momma cleared her throat. “Fords made Victor take a leave of absence.”
“They Lord!” Granny said.
“They made a bunch of people take a leave. Victor said it was just a formality, a temporary thing he said, just to make everybody happy. A period at the end of a long, long sentence is how he put it. We fought over it. He started in bad mouthing Jessie then. Said Armstrong had found out Jessie was some kind of stool pigeon. I never heard of such a thing. Talked like it was all Jessie’s fault what happened!” Momma was full out crying now. “I tell you what’s the truth, Mamaw. He so much as even touches me or my little girl again, I’ll kill the son of a bitch!”
“Try not to think about it, Sweetness,” Granny said. “You’ll make it worse. Victor will get his due, as sure as I’m sitting here he will.”
I stepped into the kitchen and saw Momma bent forward in Granpaw’s chair at the end of the table. Granny’s calendar flashed a big number 27. It was Saturday. Momma was making blubbering-drippy sounds in a hankie she held over her nose, her hair piled on top, still combed nice but with some loose strands hanging down. Her left arm rose up slim and pretty as a movie star’s. She wore black slacks with a wrinkled yellow shirt pulled out at the waist. Granny sat with her arm around Momma’s shoulder. With her eyes still closed Momma took both her hands together with the hankie and blew her nose.
“Momma?” I said. “Momma, it’s me.”
Momma opened her eyes. The whole left side of her face was swollen half again its normal size — a puffy purple bruise with a two-inch-long scabbed over gash bleeding around her eye. The other side was still pretty, but her eyeliner stuff had run down, streaking her cheek with milky gray tears. She looked like a beat up clown, ugly and bulging on one side, sad but still pretty on the other.
“Oh, Momma!” I yelled and jumped in between her arms. I hugged her so hard my hat fell off.
“I missed you!” Momma said, letting that you-word stretch out. We stayed like that awhile, hugging each other by the kitchen table. “Victor throwed that thing away,” Momma said. She was looking down at the cap that now lay right side up on the kitchen floor. “Out the window, he did. I could have killed him.”
I bent over and picked it up. “A boy found it. I got it back from him Momma. It was magic.”
“If that don’t beat all,” Momma said. “Magic. I could use a little magic right about now. We all could I guess. You ain’t been in no trouble, have you?”
“No,” I lied. “Momma, what happened? Where’s Missy?”
“In there in the bedroom,” Granny said. “Poor thing.”
Right then Granpaw came walking up on the back porch with an arm full of boards and the paint he had bought in town. He put it all down out there on a table by the door and came in. The second he saw Momma he grabbed his hat off and whacked it against his pant leg. “What did that jackassfool do now?”
“Strode,” Granny said.
Granpaw gave Granny a look but didn’t say anything. He stood over Momma, waiting, his hat resting against his pant leg.
Finally Momma said, “I don’t know Papaw. He went crazy I reckon.” She looked at me real quick, then back at Granpaw.
“We tried to set up house down there but it didn’t take.” She started to cry again. Another string of hair fell over her face.
Granny passed Momma another hankie.
“Sum bitch.” Granpaw looked around the room as if he thought Victor might be hiding somewhere, behind the stove maybe, or maybe behind the refrigerator. “Where’s he at?”
“Florida, I reckon,” Momma said.
“Floridy?”
“He can rot down there for all I care.”
“She run off, Strode,” Granny said. “Had to.”
Granpaw looked around the room again, mad, lost, that one hawk eyebrow like a hook. Then he reared back like a horse and I saw the gray of his eyeball disappear upward inside his head. He started to cough. He coughed and coughed till he had to go out on the back porch. Out there he kept on coughing. Granny and Momma both had to go out there with him. I went too. He coughed up blood and knocked over the table with the wood and the paint cans. He fell down on the porch trying to get his breath.
“Strode! Strode!” Granny yelled. “Lord, he’s having a fit!”
“Papaw!” Momma said.
Granpaw’s mouth was going like a fish when you take it out of water, opening and closing and opening again. Pink foam bubbled over his bottom lip.
Momma got down on the floor, lifted Granpaw’s head and put it in her lap.
“I’ll run get Nealy!” Granny stomped down the porch steps and out across the yard, her big boney hips swinging side to side like a bell. “Don’t let him swaller his tongue!”
Granny had already got back and was standing over Momma and Granpaw when Old Man Harlan came up in the yard. Bird came up behind him, both arms moving like a bug in a glass of water. Granny wrung her hands, rocking one foot to the other.
Old Man Harlan pointed to a place on the door where the screen had come loose. “Thought ya’ll was gonna mend that.”
“We ain’t had time Nealy,” Granny said.
“Humph. It was my farm I’d make time.”
“It is your farm, Nealy,” Granny said.
Granpaw groaned, “Ohhh, ohhh.” He lay face up in Momma’s lap. The knot on the side of his head glowed fiery red. Momma bent over him; trying to wipe his face with a washrag, her own face lopsided and splashed with tears. I was sitting on a bucket next to the door. I looked at the screen, at the paint cans that were scattered over the porch.
Bird’s lips went tight. She frowned and shook her head and looked at Old Man Harlan. Then she looked at Granny. “Bad time for such as this. What with the crops and all.”
“That’s right, Mattie,” Old Man Harlan said. “I can’t offer you no more credit.”
“Well, I ain’t asking for none!” Granny said. “You gonna help us or just stand there complaining?”
Granpaw was breathing fast now, moving his head this way and that.
Old Man Harlan put his beak nose forward. “Strode?”
“He can’t hear you!” Granny hollered. “We got to get him up from here!”
Right then, Moses and Willis came round the corner. Moses with a stepladder. It was the first time I’d seen him since I took a hold of that snake.