The air was warm and I felt no chill in my jeans and Drag County Fall Fair T shirt. At my house I wedged behind the tangled peonies, tiger lilies and bleeding hearts in Sylvia’s flower garden and looked in at the violet shadows Sam and Nicky made on the living room wall as they watched TV Nicky got to come home in the evenings. Vi and Sam both said it was at my grandmother’s insistence, not my father’s, but I wondered if I had been sent to live with Vi because Sam was a man and fathers weren’t supposed to raise girls.
Already I had forgotten my mother’s face. I relied on the Sylvia of Vi’s story, dark-eyed and -haired, rising up in the midst of the elements, commanding them to retreat once they’d served her purpose and calling them back when she was ready to leave.
This I remembered: each day the week before my mother went away there’d been a thunderstorm. The same weather that had delivered my mother had taken her away.
I continued north in the opposite direction from Vi’s. I needed to walk, was all. To walk and think about how I was connected to Sylvia’s craziness. Was I crazy too? Maybe I was too young to be sent to the crazy ward of the hospital so Vi was looking after me instead. Maybe they thought I would catch what Sylvia had because I was a girl.
Beyond our place, the houses were farther apart and the driveways longer. The road was lined with maples and beyond them stretched apple orchards and fields of corn, clover, sod and potatoes. I liked the sod best: acres and acres of shiny green lawn that made me want to run off the road, lie down and roll the entire length of it, folding the sod around me like a thick green blanket. The corn was good too; it reached past my waist. Endless inviting rows of stalk after stalk, a place I could wander into and walk and walk and never leave. I sniffed in deep, letting the corn smell fill my nostrils. Everything was growing; nothing had been cut down.
Two or three cars slowed down, then passed. I was almost at the next sideroad when a truck stopped, pulling onto the soft shoulder. A man leaned out, removed his cap and said, “You must be Sam Brewer’s kid.” He pushed his hand through hair greased back like Fonzie’s. His skin was the hard red of some coats.
I said, “Yes,” my voice clear.
The man was quiet then, scratching his head. He was familiar. I had seen him somewhere, with Sam, but I couldn’t remember where.
“C’mon, then,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride as far as my place.”
His offer confused me. It assumed my journey had a destination. If he drove me to his farm, I would have a longer distance to walk back. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t go back. Vi’s house smelled like the budgies that sat three to a cage and screamed in her kitchen.
I nodded and walked around the front of the truck, one arm outstretched to protect myself in case the vehicle rolled forward. The door was open, and on the third try, I lifted myself onto Jack Sousa’s oily front seat.
I’d been in trucks like this before. It was the truck of a farmer, the floor cluttered with stained work gloves and bits of hay clumped with manure. The truck was old and had a comforting outdoor smell, like Sam’s suede jacket when he came home from hunting.
Mr. Sousa didn’t talk for a while. His farm was a couple of lines over. In the summers he had a honey stand painted with a big cartoon bee by the side of the road. I had been there once with Sam. Mr. Sousa had joked about his daughters being out at confirmation class. He seemed to think I’d be bored without other girls to talk to. It turned out I was, but I didn’t want him to know, so I spent the time petting a bony, bowlegged rust hound that had teats as long as my fingers. The dog’s ears were silky. I explored further and found bites which I rubbed with my finger pads. When I’d asked if I could let the hound off her chain, both men had laughed and Sam told me to get away from the dog and find something else to do, his voice suddenly harsh like Jack Sousa’s. Sam believed dogs were for hunting or farms and wouldn’t let us keep one as a pet.
“You’re the one with the crazy mother, aren’t you?”
I stiffened, my eyes on the passing headlights.
“That is correct.”
“What’s your name again? Mary? Martyr? I remember something odd and churchy about it. Nobody said anything to Sylvia at the time — she wouldn’t stand for it — but I know it was a doozy.”
“Mercy. My name is Mercy.”
Mr. Sousa picked his hat up from the seat and put it back on.
“Sorry if I offended you. I’ve known Sylvia a long time. You know how gossip travels. Don’t think anyone was surprised. You?”
I opened the window. I turned my face toward the fresh air, letting the watery corn smell wash over me.
“I keep forgetting she’s your mama. I tend to let my tongue run away with itself. You’ll have to forgive me. My wife says I’m a worse gossip than the church ladies. I ‘spect you see her all the time.”
Mr. Sousa looked over at me and grinned.
“Who?” I hadn’t seen my mother for weeks, since she went away. I edged closer to the door.
“My wife. Mrs. Sousa. She comes practically every day now to your place to do what all needs doing. Your brother’s at our place every day. Your father says he’s a bit girly, that one, but I’m putting him to work. Seems alright to me. Who’s taking care of you? Not Vi, is it?” He looked at me again, his smile forgotten.
I folded my fingers around the door handle. What if I opened it, hurled myself onto the road and rolled into the ditch? If I curled into a ball, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much. As long as it didn’t kill me.
Mr. Sousa glanced at the road, then back at me.
“Seems like you take after Sam. Sensible and practical. He always was that. He and me went to school together after Vi and her husband split and she moved down here. I was pretty good-looking in them days, believe it or not, an old farmer like me.”
He laughed, filling the cab with a wet tobacco smell similar to the stink of feet.
“I swear, I don’t know what we thought when Sam announced he was marrying her. ‘Course, we were all pretty taken by her when she came to town like that. Good thing Sam’s brothers was too young, or there might have been some competition. But Larry was thirteen, not yet in high school and Reese younger’n that. Besides, them two went back up to live with Earl after that one year. Least I’m pretty sure that’s where they went because it wasn’t Vi what raised them. Probably what killed Earl in the end, those two boys. Sam was the best of them and he stayed though not with Vi. He and Sylvia were hitched by then. Anyways, Sylvia was too unpredictable. Sam should of stuck with what he knew.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. I straightened and stared right at Mr. Sousa. Maybe if I was nice to him, he would take me back to his farm and I could see Nicky tomorrow. Mr. Sousa’s two daughters, Tory and Elizabeth, were a year apart like Nicky and I, but older. Like Lucy Stevens. Elizabeth taught Sunday school. Though it seemed as if Nicky was happier without me. Maybe he thought the Sousas were his new family.
“I don’t think you know my mother very well.”
Mr. Sousa snorted.
“Perhaps you misunderstood me there. I’m talking about events that happened a long time ago. Before your time.”
I shifted so my hip was pressed against the armrest on the door. I put both hands on the handle.
“I would like you to let me out now, please,” I said, my eyes on the dirt shoulder.
“That wouldn’t be very neighbourly. We’re almost at the farm. You can get out there and call your father to come and get you.”
I pictured Nicky playing with the Sousas’ hound.
“I’ll jump,” I said, my voice level. I was almost as surprised as he by the threat.
Jack