Melanie Thon - Meteors in August

“Can I stay here, Evelyn? Just until this blizzard’s over? I’ll look for a place as soon as the weather breaks. Something for me and Lucy — oh, my poor baby; I can’t leave her with her brothers for long. They’ll turn her into a little slave. Maybe I can get us a room at the boardinghouse, right up there with Minnie Hathaway and Lyla Leona; maybe I can be saved too.”

“Don’t even think about living in a dump like that,” Mom said. “You can stay here long as you want.”

I don’t believe Arlen ever had any intention of looking for another place. She settled into the den off the living room and slept on the lumpy sofa that was three inches shorter than she was.

For two days she watched her own house like a thief. “Look at Lester,” she said on the third morning, “fat and happy and late for work.” She snorted. “Looks like Justin gave up on that foolish beard. My boy never thought he had enough chin. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t go out with girls. Maybe that’s why Lester did him the favor of taking him to see the Fat Lady when he was sixteen. What a father. Isn’t there some law against a man and his son sleeping with the same woman? Well, there should be. Rubs mighty close to incest if you ask me.” Arlen didn’t mind that I was the only one listening to her.

“Poor Lucy,” she said. “Look at her. No hat, no gloves, you’d think one of those boys would see to it she doesn’t freeze on her way to school.”

Later that morning Arlen sneaked into her empty house and packed enough clothes to stay with us all winter. The whole thing made my father nervous. He asked Mom how long Arlen was staying. “Just a week or so, honey, until this tiff blows over,” she said. She never called him “honey,” so he must have known we were in deep.

On Sunday, Arlen went to church; she wanted to hear if folks were speculating on her reasons for leaving Lester. She wanted to know if the reverend judged her with mercy or cruelty. Daddy stayed home for the first time in months. He said he wanted to have a word with Mother, but he looked too red to talk. As soon as Arlen was out of the house, he pounded his fist on the kitchen table and said, “She’s not staying here another day.”

“She’s staying as long as she wants,” Mother said.

“It’s not right, a woman leaving her husband and kids. I won’t be any part of it.”

“She’s your sister, Dean.”

“She’s Lester Munter’s wife, that’s what she is, and she belongs in his house, not mine.”

“Blood and water.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“That your sister should mean more to you than Lester Munter.”

“What do you think we’re running here, a home for wayward women?”

“She’s hardly a wayward woman .”

“No? Well I think that’s a mighty polite name for a woman who deserts her husband. When I think of her harping away about Elliot Foot, I don’t know whether to laugh or be sick.”

“It’s not the same.”

“No, of course not. Elliot Foot is a man.”

“Elliot Foot ran off to be with another woman. Arlen left to be by herself. Your sister walked across the alley and Elliot took a Winnebago to Arizona.”

“I could make her go.”

“I’d go with her,” Mother said.

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m stating a fact.”

They glared at each other. They were both bluffing, but neither one was willing to force the hand. Finally Daddy said, “I wish she’d just find her own place and keep us out of it.”

“You know she hasn’t got a dime of her own.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Hers,” said Mom. “She should have lifted ten bucks from Lester’s wallet every week and stashed it away for herself.”

Dad sighed. He didn’t have a chance with this kind of reasoning. “If Les ever comes over here and wants to drag her home, I won’t stand in his way.”

Arlen stayed, one week and then another. The third week began. She didn’t have much to talk about now that Lester and the boys weren’t around to keep her riled, but that didn’t stop her. There was a noisiness to her presence, a clamor of confusion. By the time I came home from school, Mother was worn down by Arlen’s jabbering. She soon agreed with my father: it was time to send Arlen back to those children who needed her.

Our house seemed smaller in winter. The tiny windows of my attic room leaked light, but by four o’clock the whole house was dark. In the dim hours, my wallpaper turned chaotic. Nina had chosen it, this tangle of green vines and burgundy roses. I dreaded going home but couldn’t stand the cold outside. Often, Arlen followed me from room to room, relating every detail of her day. She stayed on my heels as I climbed the stairs. One afternoon she said, “I couldn’t decide whether to wear my blue dress or my green one this morning. So I chose the brown slacks instead.” This amused her. She muttered a few words under her breath and giggled. I tried to slip into the bathroom and close the door, but she was too quick for me. “I had toast for breakfast — with strawberry jam. Your mother had apple butter.” I sat down on the toilet. “No, wait,” she said.

“I can’t,” I answered, but she didn’t mean me.

“I think she had marmalade.” The confusion concerning Mother’s toast perplexed her. She charged out of the bathroom and down the stairs. “Evelyn,” I heard her call. “Evelyn, did you have marmalade or apple butter?”

Later, when I thought about what happened to Arlen in our house, I realized anger was the only thing that had kept her strong. She had to fill her head with nonsense; the steady buzz stopped her from thinking about her husband and sons making love to Lyla Leona, kept her safe from the blinding memory of the day they pulled Jesse from the lake.

I learned something that winter: when things go bad, they can always get worse; misfortune has its own momentum. A week before Christmas, a second storm hit. This blizzard took its toll. In the fields beyond the edge of town, snow blew over the frozen bodies of cows and sheep, the ones that didn’t make it to the barn before dark.

Two days after the storm my father roared into the drive. He slammed the door so hard it popped open again, so he gave it a kick and stomped into the garage instead of the house. He growled and knocked cans of nails off the shelves, mad as a bear with a bullet in its hind end. Mom and Arlen and I sat in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and carrots for a stew, leaning over the trash barrel as if it held some magic life-giving flame.

Finally Daddy filled the doorway. The cold air hung in the room, a cloud he dragged behind him. “Red Elk’s back,” he said. Mother dropped her potato in her lap. “Josh Holler hired him back at the mill. He says if there’s any trouble this time, the Indian won’t be the one to go.”

Red Elk, the man my father had tried to drive out of town, had returned at last. I saw Daddy huddled at the kitchen table with those men, their boots thick with muck, their words loud and slurred: We showed that red devil . The night I heard that I was only seven years old. I thought they’d driven him down to the swamp, left him to die for the crime of making a white woman want him. But he rose from the sludge, nose broken, eyes full of mud. Now he was back. Red Elk was respectable, a working-man just like my father, no better, no worse.

Daddy had to treat him right or leave the mill, the only job he knew or ever wanted. He had to look this big Indian in the face, a man he despised even before Billy Elk took Nina in his arms and made her disappear.

Arlen looked from Mom to Dad and back again. She pressed one hand to her mouth. I could see she was about to burst into one of her fits. If she got laughing now, there’d be no stopping her. Mother stood, slowly, watching Daddy the whole time as she walked toward him. Arlen said, “Are you — are you gonna kill him, Dean?” Then she broke up, giggling and puffing.