“I went to our place,” Wilson was saying to Moa, “but no one was there, and I was trying to figure how to knock on this door when Gerald and Miss Marie came up the drive.” It wasn’t their place to have seen him first.
Moa put her hand on Wilson’s shortened arm.
“This is Roscoe’s fault,” Marie said, already starting new blame, replacing the unconfirmed knowledge of Wilson in a dark mine shaft with this new, fragmented man in front of her. Roscoe had done this. He had employed Wilson in his crooked work, and he had left him to the destruction of greedy coal miners and foremen, to the self-serving hand of the State, selling off its convicted men for pennies. Roscoe was the new face of convict leasing, the new villain and perpetrator. He was the foreman, the owner, the coal itself, hunkering deep in the earth, hard to reach, tempting and tempted, looking for a fiery explosion to set it free.
“Now, Ms. Marie,” Wilson said. “I knew what I was doing.”
Moa spoke over them. “Come inside. Let’s all go inside. I’ll make us some coffee, and you can tell us what’s happened. Oh, my love. Oh.”
Gerald stepped forward — Marie had forgotten him for a moment, hidden back behind Wilson — and she caught him by the arm. “Go find Charles and Henry, and Jenny. Get them to come to the house.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Marie trailed behind as Moa led Wilson to the kitchen. Moa held that shadowed arm as though the rest of it might disappear should she let go. Marie could see it — the slow disintegration of this incomplete man. First, that stranded biceps and its shoulder would go, then the chest and neck, the evaporation traveling down at a quicker rate, taking his stomach and hips, his thighs and knees and shins, his ankles and feet, and then his face would dissolve, one feature at a time: chin, lips, cheeks — all those places Moa had just kissed — gone. They wouldn’t be able to tell whether he’d been there to begin with, or whether they’d simply wished him there, conjuring him out of their great need.
Wilson sat on a stool at the butcher-block table, and only then did Moa let loose of him. She went to get the percolator from the stove, and Marie stopped her before she made it to the sink. “Sit with Wilson. I’ll make the coffee.”
Moa relinquished the pot without a word, but didn’t sit. Instead, she pulled his great head against her chest, the fingers of one hand turning small circles along his temple and forehead, up into his hairline and then back down. Her fingers had turned the same circles on Marie’s back when Marie was a little girl, stranded in the dark of her room after her mother’s death — night was the only time the hurt could control her. “There, there,” Moa would say. “Hush, now.” She’d coax young Marie back down to lying, then trace her long fingers in slow circles up and down Marie’s small back. Marie had spent her childhood falling asleep to that touch, and she remembered it stronger than any specific intimacy she’d shared with her mother.
The Grice children came in while the water was heating, all three of them falling over themselves to get at their father, all three of them letting out the same remorseful wail upon seeing the missing arm. “No,” they said, and “Papa.” Marie watched Wilson’s family encircle him, all of them pressing into him, their words split between joy and lamentation, excitement and anger.
Gerald came to stand next to Marie by the stove. She wanted him to lean against her shoulder or press himself against her as he once had. She wanted him to take her hand or link his arm through hers. Anything. Any small touch to help her feel the presence of her own family, to let her think she had some semblance of the scene in front of her, some bit of that same devotion. But Gerald kept a foot’s distance between them, and when he spoke, his interest wasn’t in her.
“Does this mean Pa’s coming, too?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He has a longer sentence.”
“Wilson didn’t have to stay for his whole sentence.”
The Grices continued their praising and cursing, their holding and squeezing. They had become one mass, the children and Moa fusing Wilson to them, guaranteeing his place.
“Mama,” Gerald said, “I want to visit him.”
Marie shook her head.
“He’s my father.”
Marie turned to the percolator behind her, bubbling at its lid.
“I’m going to write to him,” Gerald continued, “and tell him you’re the reason I haven’t written before. And you’re going to let me read his letters.”
Marie tried to find words, something to say to convince Gerald of his mistake. Her mouth was sticky, though, every word catching in the dry pull of her gums, the trap of her tongue. She couldn’t say anything. She could only pour coffee into mugs.
“Mother,” Gerald insisted. He was closer to her than he’d been in more than a year, his mouth next to her cheek, his breath on her skin. He had a boy’s breath, still, a smell like autumn soil, dry and sweet, but he stood inches taller than her, his pants too short before they’d been broken in, his shirts too tight across his widening shoulders, his sleeves hanging silly inches above his wrists. He was nearly twelve.
“No.” Look at Wilson, Marie wanted to say. Look at what’s left of his arm. Look at the scars on his one hand and the broken weight in his face. Your father did that. He is no one you want to know.
Gerald brought his fists down on the countertop, rattling the mugs, sloshing coffee over their edges into shallow pools.
“Gerald, honey,” Moa said. “What is it?”
“Nothing, Miss Moa.” He ducked his head and went to the back door, stopping there to look at Wilson. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Thank you, son.”
“Gerald,” Marie called. “Wait, love.”
But Gerald was out the door.
“He missin’ his father?” Wilson asked.
Marie pressed her hand against her eyes and tucked her chin. “Yes,” she whispered.
“How often have you been to visit?”
Marie looked up to see Moa whispering in Wilson’s ear. She was brief, and Marie watched Wilson take in his wife’s words. What would he think of Marie’s decision to stay away? She wanted Wilson to see the solidarity in it, the defense of his side, the anger and pain and resentment she felt for Roscoe. But he could just as easily see her as an angry, self-indulgent woman, flaunting her privilege to make that choice. Moa had been left with nothing — no information, no location, no letters — while Marie had been given everything. She knew Roscoe’s employment at Kilby, his cellmates, his librarian and deputy warden and barn foreman. She knew how easy it would be to schedule a visit, and that they could even request an afternoon furlough because of Roscoe’s good behavior. She could come with a picnic and they could eat together in the oak grove Roscoe had described in his letters, just as Eddings had suggested that day he took Roscoe away.
Would Wilson see her as petty and vindictive, worse, even, than the man who’d gotten them all there?
“Boy’s missin’ his father,” Wilson said again. “How’re you doing, Miss Marie?”
“I’m doing fine, Wilson, just fine.” She appreciated his turning the subject away from her own guilt. “But you, can you talk about your time?”
Wilson brought his hand to the top of his head, rubbing the short bristles there, the black peppered with white. He’d always rubbed his head when confronted with a question he wasn’t sure of answering, and Marie smiled at the habit, something familiar and comforting.