Barbara White - The In-Between Hour

The fist of grief grabbed his throat, cutting off his air supply.

“Hey,” Poppy said. “You okay?”

“Fine.” Will forced himself to breathe. “I’m fine.”

“Here. Directions. Take them.”

She placed the scrap of paper on the quilt, hopped off the bed and disappeared before Will could say, “I have a GPS.”

The odor of bleach in the room was thick, thick enough to mask the lingering fumes of death. It transported him back to a summer evening fishing on the oxbow behind the ghost field, the year after the excavation of the Occaneechi village started. He and his dad had just caught a bucket of bream when Will snared himself on a hook. Bled all over his new shorts—thrift-store new, but his mom had bought them for his first day of kindergarten. “Your mama’s gonna be real upset,” his dad said, and young Will was terrified. Mama being upset could mean anything from her dragging Will by his hair to screaming that he was worthless. But his dad told him not to fret, told him bleach was the magic cure. Possibly, but not in the quantity the old man had used. Will never wore the shorts again, and his mom never noticed.

“Willie?”

Will jumped. In the five minutes he’d been responsible for his dad, he’d forgotten him. The old man was standing in the doorjamb, trailing empty boxes with one hand and clasping the roll of cardboard to his chest as if it were the family Bible.

“Had me a real bad thought while you were talking to Poppy. Heck of a bad thought, son.”

“Hey, it’s okay. Come here, sit.” Will guided his dad onto the rocking chair. “Want to tell me what happened?”

“Nope.”

“The gist of it?” Will crouched down.

“Somethin’ real bad happened to Freddie. He were in a car with his mama....”

Strange, how moments of heartbreak didn’t announce themselves, they just ambushed you. Shouldn’t there be an earthquake measuring nine point five on the Richter scale when the plates of your life shifted? But outside this room with the cheap print of Jesus and the bed with hospital corners, traffic continued to speed through the forty-five-miles-per-hour zone. And in the time it took to inhale, the cycle of grief regenerated. The wound tore open.

Will would never know what happened in the minutes after the crash, sometime around sunset. The sudden loss of light had added to the confusion. One witness had heard screams but couldn’t determine if they’d come from a child or a woman. True or false, Will’s brain had latched on to that snippet of information and created a scenario he could never escape: his son dying in pain and terror.

The chair clicked as his dad rocked back and forth, back and forth. “But I ain’t listenin’ to my no-good brain, son. My brain, it’s a trickster from one of your mama’s fairy tales. And I choose not to listen. Freddie’s the only good thing we got in our lives, ain’t that true? You didn’t tell me where he and his mama were headin’ this week.”

Will fell to his knees. Relief swamped him—ridiculous, selfish relief. He could still hide behind his story, one that wasn’t finished.

“They’re leaving for Florence,” Will said, “so Freddie can see Michelangelo’s David.”

“Woo-wee. Who would have thought? My grandson, seein’ a real live Mickel-angelo. Remember how you wanted to see that statue when you was a boy? Darren thought it meant you was, you know.” His dad’s right hand flopped as if his wrist were broken.

“You remember?”

“My mind ain’t gone, son. Full of holes, but some things I remember just clear as sunlight. Just clear as sunlight.”

Will stood and shifted the books to his hip. “Here. Let me take the boxes.”

Jacob handed over everything except the cardboard tube. “Heck, my memory’s just fine. Ask me about how your uncle and me went fishin’ down in the Eno this past summer with cedar poles we cut ourselves. Caught a lot of suckers down there.”

The window opened a crack, then slammed shut. Oh, Dad. You haven’t left this place in two years. And Uncle Darren died right before Mom. I know, because I paid for both funerals.

“If you throw liquid in the Eno, it’ll end up in the Atlantic Ocean.” His dad creaked up to standing. “It joins the Neuse River down in Durham.”

“I know, Dad.”

“And those rivers, they was trade routes and a source of food ’cos animals like bison got to have water. After the Europeans came they killed all the bison. One of the presidents, I forget which one...”

“Dad?”

The old man glanced around as if trying to orient himself. “When we was kids, Mother only let us play on the rivers and creeks. And on Occoneechee Mountain. It ain’t now like it was then. We was labeled colored and segregated in church, in school and in the movies, but they couldn’t segregate us in the woods. That’s how I met your mama. ’Course, she were only a little bitty thing first time I spied her.”

“Come on, old man.” He took his father’s arm. “Let’s get you packed.”

“Packed? We joinin’ Freddie?”

“I wish, Dad. I wish.”

Will stared up at the ceiling covered in bobbly plaster. Thirty-four years of practice at smothering his emotions, but how could he talk about Freddie with his dad person-to-person, lie-upon-lie, and not mentally disintegrate?

Five

Poppy smacked her cell phone on the steering wheel. Stupid cheap piece of shit. Best she could afford, but still... Aha! A ring tone.

“Han, it’s me. Where are you?”

“About to leave Saxapahaw. I had to put a Siamese cat to sleep.”

The line crackled.

“And how was that?”

“Peaceful. You’re not driving and talking on the phone, are you?”

Poppy laughed. Her friend had her pegged years ago, even before she’d liberated Miss Prissy and accused Asshole of felony animal abuse. He’d tried to bully her out of the lawsuit, since he hadn’t wanted his rich friends to know about the banging of the hired help, but it was Hannah who’d persuaded her to walk away. And offered up her pasture for Miss Pris. That was Han, the world’s biggest fan of lost causes and underdogs. Underdogs, ha! Besides, if she hadn’t done the dirty with Asshole, she might never have been fired from the interior design company for sleeping with a client, might never have branched out on her own, might never have met Will Shepard.

Will was definitely no asshole. Plus he was the cutest guy she’d met since dumping the last putz. But dating was like baking. Pie crust didn’t always turn out right the first time, either.

“Poppy, honey? You called for a reason?”

“Sorry, girl. Miles away.” Poppy swerved around a black snake. Dang. Car nearly off the road. “Guess what? I just met this total hottie. Looks kinda young, but didn’t Demi Moore prove age is irrelevant? Isn’t whatshisname fifteen years her junior?”

“What are you talking about?” Hannah said.

“Wait, forget that. They’re divorced. Still. Age doesn’t matter these days, does it? This guy looks like a young Daniel Craig. With more hair.” Poppy fanned her T-shirt against her boobs. “Lots of hair you want to run your fingers through. Bone structure says Johnny Depp, but his abs are definitely Brad Pitt in Troy. You know what? Picture the love child of Johnny Depp and Daniel Craig. He’s mighty purty.” She slathered on the sassy Southern accent that had cost her parents a small fortune to erase.

“Daniel who?” Hannah’s voice echoed.

“Girl, I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask that.”

Poppy pulled down her visor, grabbed the Green Day CD she’d burned with a continuous loop of “Horseshoes and Handgrenades” and shoved it into the slot.

“When d’you last go to the movies?” Silly question since all Han did was work and sleep. Sleep was so not Poppy’s thing. Lucky if she could crash for five hours a night. “You still there?”