Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

“Where you been?” he asked, but it was raining so loud that I couldn’t hardly hear him good enough to know what he’d said. I looked at him, and then I looked at the gutter where it was bent. He quit messing with it and took a step toward me and then lost his balance and almost fell. He grabbed on to the rain barrel and stood up and started coming toward me again. When he got close, I saw his clothes were soaked all the way through just like mine were. “Where you been?” he asked me again.

“I went to Joe Bill’s after school,” I said.

He stared at me, and I saw that his eyes looked like he hadn’t been asleep in a long time. It seemed like he couldn’t even look at me for being so tired. He pointed behind him at the rain barrel.

“What happened to this?” he said. He waited for me to say something, but I just stood there without saying anything.

He bent down, and I could smell his breath and it smelled like Grandpa’s did when he laughed out there on that hillside by the fire. Daddy bent down eye level with me and put his hands on his knees, but one of them slipped off because his pants were so wet. “What happened to the rain barrel?” he asked me real slow and loud like he didn’t think I could hear him. “How’d it get broken?”

I looked away from him down toward the creek where it ran through the woods, and I thought about how fast it was probably moving with all this rain. My chest felt like I had somebody standing on it. Daddy reached out and grabbed my shirt. “What happened to it?” he screamed.

I looked back at him, and I saw his face right up against mine and his eyes looked wild and terrifying. The smell of his breath was the only thing I could think about, and I started crying. “Stump fell,” I finally said.

“What’s that mean, ‘Stump fell’?” he asked. He jerked my shirt and pulled me toward him. I put my hands on his shoulders to keep from slipping. I couldn’t even look at him because I was so afraid of telling him.

“He fell,” I said. “He was standing on top of it, and he fell.”

Daddy let go of my shirt and stepped back, and then he turned and looked at the rain barrel. I could tell that he was staring at the gutter where it was bent up and broken.

“Why was he standing up there?”

“Because we heard you,” I said. He turned and looked at me.

“What?”

“We thought we heard you and Mama inside,” I said. “But I know we weren’t supposed to be spying, especially because Mama’d sent us down to the creek and told us not to come back up to the house until we’d caught five salamanders.”

“You should’ve listened to her,” he said.

“But it wasn’t you,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t you inside there with her.”

IWAS CRYING BY THE TIME I FOLLOWED DADDY INTO THE HOUSE because he hadn’t said a word after I told him what I’d seen. I couldn’t stop shaking because my clothes were sopping wet with rain. I saw an empty liquor bottle on the counter in the kitchen. Daddy opened a crinkly, wet grocery bag and pulled out another one and unscrewed the lid and took a long drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took another. Then he picked up the empty bottle and threw it against the refrigerator. It broke, and little pieces of glass covered the floor. I hollered out for him, but he didn’t even look at me. He took another drink, and then he screwed the lid back on and walked down the hall toward his and Mama’s bedroom. I heard him open and close the drawers on the dresser like he was looking for something. He walked back down the hall, and I heard the glass crunching like gravel under his boots when he walked through the kitchen on the way to the front room. He picked up his truck keys off the table.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Go to bed,” he said. He opened the door and walked out onto the porch. I followed after him and caught the screen door before it shut in my face. He was already down the steps and heading across the driveway to his truck. He climbed in and slammed the door and started the engine.

“Don’t leave!” I hollered. “Please!” I ran down the steps and out into the rain and pulled on the truck’s door, but I reckon he’d already locked it because I couldn’t get it open. I beat my fists against the window.

“I’m sorry!” I hollered. “Don’t leave me here!”

It was so dark that I could just barely see him inside his truck. He looked at me through the window. I watched him pull the gearshift down, and I heard his tires on the gravel when he rolled back. I watched him turn around in the driveway, and then I watched his taillights fly down the hill toward the road. Soon I couldn’t even see them through the trees, and all I could hear was the rain.

I WALKED UP THE PORCH STEPS AND BACK INSIDE THE HOUSE. I closed the front door behind me. It was quiet in there, and I listened to the rain falling on the roof and the sound of it running into the gutters and down the spout. I knew the rain would’ve run right into the rain barrel if it wasn’t broken. The lights were on in the kitchen, and those little pieces of glass from where my daddy had broken that bottle twinkled on the floor. It looked like somebody had come through and tossed a handful of ice into the kitchen. I walked around them as carefully as I could. I stepped on a couple of pieces, and they popped under my shoes. I turned off the kitchen light and went into me and Stump’s bedroom and shut the door.

I hadn’t ever been at home all by myself before, especially not at night, and I kicked off my shoes and climbed up on the bed and pulled down the covers and got under them. I realized how cold I was in my wet clothes, and I couldn’t hardly quit shivering. I pulled the covers over my head and thought about where Daddy could’ve gone, and I wondered if he would ever come back. And then I thought about how just a week before it had been me and Stump and Mama and Daddy all here together, but now everybody had gone and it was just me. I laid there under the covers and thought about how I’d bring them all back if I could, but after what I’d told Daddy I figured that even if we were all here together things wouldn’t ever be the same. I thought about Stump’s quiet box where it sat under our bed, and I wished Mama’d made me one too.

I OPENED MY EYES WHEN I HEARD A SOUND LIKE DADDY’S TRUCK coming up the driveway. I turned over on my back and stared up at the ceiling and listened hard until I knew for sure that it was him. My clothes still hadn’t dried all the way, but I wasn’t cold anymore, and I kicked the covers off me and took off my shirt and my pants and my socks and threw them on the floor. Then I pulled the covers up over me again and turned on my side and looked out the window. It had quit raining, but there still wasn’t no moon coming through the clouds and the night outside was pitch black.

My daddy parked his truck in front of the house and I heard him turn his engine off, and then I heard him open and close the truck’s door and I heard his boots coming up the porch steps. It sounded like he tried to open the front door as quiet as he could, but I knew it would squeak anyway. His boots walked through the kitchen, and I heard them crunching on the glass where he’d broken that bottle. He went down the hallway to the bathroom, and I heard him open the lid on the toilet. A second later I heard him peeing. I closed my eyes and thought about how I wasn’t scared anymore to be at home all by myself, and I started to get mad at Daddy for leaving me alone because I knew Mama wouldn’t ever do that. I laid there and thought about where he might’ve gone when he left, and then I heard him coming back up the hallway. He stopped outside my door like he was trying to listen to see if I was still awake.