Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

“Okay, Deb. Why don’t you take it easy on your head there?”

“What?”

“Your head. You’re digging into it.”

She set her jaw and shook her head.

“Take him. Just take him.”

“Where? Where am I supposed to take him, Debbie?”

His hands had slipped off Katie’s ears.

“Wherever you take kids when you take them. Ain’t that your job? I’m asking you to take him. Do your fuckin job. I’m a taxpayer.”

Katie twisted around to see him, alarmed. A touch of want in them too. Would he take her away. Take her with him.

“Nobody is going anywhere.” He put his hands back over her ears. “I don’t know what you think I do, but let me tell you, the world is not filled with people waiting to raise your children.”

“His uncle then.”

Just then, Cecil entered. Air rifle in hand. Pete shunted the girl into the recliner and stood. The boy leaned the air rifle onto the couch. He wore a backpack and was expressionless and heavy-lidded and it occurred to Pete that Debbie was probably a raging drunk when she was pregnant with him. Had to name him Cecil of all things. And now this mess of a person.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “You can forget about me.”

“Hold on—” Pete started.

“Go already!” Debbie screamed, outsized for the situation. “Just leave me! Leave me here with no man in the house!”

“Debbie…,” Pete said.

“You ungrateful piece of shit!”

“Fuck you!” Cecil roared, and he slipped by Pete and had his mother by the hair. Both of them shouting, Debbie kicked him in the groin, and he let out a low moan, released her, and fell to his knees.

“All right, all right, enough!” Pete hollered, but the boy quickly stood and punched her in the face. She wheeled backward arms flailing, and tripped into the television, which fell onto the corner of the flagstone fireplace and cracked open like an egg. A snotty tendril of smoke rose out of the picture tube. The boy lunged, but Pete pushed him down and pressed his knee into the middle of his back.

“Get out!” he yelled at Debbie. “Go!”

She cupped her eye as though the pain had at last occurred and further enraged her. She stepped back to take a run at kicking her son in the head. Pete grabbed at her leg, but she skipped out of range. Pete pointed toward the rear of the house.

“Get out, goddamnit, or I’m calling the cops.”

“You piece of shit!”

“Debbie! Go or the cops again! Your choice.”

She wasn’t listening. Cecil struggled and yelled, and Pete jammed his knee in harder — but then Katie gathered her mother’s long fingers and tugged on her, and Debbie followed her out of the room calling Cecil a sonofabitch, sonofabitch, holding her crying eye.

It wasn’t yet noon and no one was much about on the square in Tenmile or around the Rimrock County Courthouse or the shops. The only person they saw as they drove across the tracks and then the river was a man pumping gas at the station on the way out of town. They were soon in a narrow alley of serried pines that gave way to mowed pastures. Pete turned onto an unsurfaced road that was shortly a ruck of graded dirt and vibrated them silly in their seats until they pulled in front of a white ranch house. Their flesh and ears buzzed in the sudden stillness. Out of sight atop the flagpole before them snapped an American flag in the wind.

The ugly pumpknot on Cecil’s head glowed like an ember. His nose whistled. He gripped the air rifle. Pete had agreed to let him take it, just to get him out of the house.

“You can’t bring that here with you,” Pete said.

Cecil stared straight ahead.

“Now look,” Pete said. “This isn’t permanent. You’re going back home.”

“Like hell.”

“You mother is your mother.”

“I’ll cut her cunt out. How’s that sound?” Cecil asked.

Pete rubbed his face.

“It sounds damn awful, Cecil. You can’t talk like that. Not here.”

“Like what?”

“Like a psycho.”

“I ain’t a psycho.”

“All right, look. Look at me.” Cecil turned. “I need to know that you’ll be good to these people. They don’t want no trouble and I don’t want to bring them any. They wanna help.”

“Just drop me off on the highway.”

“You know I can’t do that. Let’s just get you and Mom apart for a little while, and see if we can’t get things figured out when everybody’s cooled off a little bit.”

Cecil raised his palm. Whatever. Fuck you, Pete.

Pete got out. The house was set back from the fence and the flagpole, and in back were outbuildings and beyond them an empty pasture. Cecil stayed put. Pete went through the gate and then up the path through a trellis to the house. A regal old hound brayed responsibly at his approach but didn’t get up from inside the doghouse. Pete was almost to the front door when an older man came out of the garage, wiping his hands with a red rag, which he stuffed in his back pocket before he pumped Pete’s outstretched hand. The man’s great white mustache twisted out like longhorns. He and Pete exchanged greetings and were now looking over at the boy.

“Thanks for this,” Pete said.

“Not a problem.”

The aproned missus stuck her head out the front door, ruddy and cheerful as a gnome, and said howdy and that she couldn’t come out, they were just about to pour the jam into the jars, but would Pete want one. Pete said of course, and turned back to Cloninger.

“There he is there in the car,” Pete said.

“We looking at a shy fella or a tough guy?”

“Around grown men, he’s pretty docile. But him and his mom are in a bad way.”

Cloninger laced his fingers together, hung them below his belt, and tilted his ashen head at Pete.

“He’s got priors, but they’re sneaky priors. Arson. Breaking and entering. He was with those kids that were busting into pickups outside the basketball game last spring,” Pete said. “He’s older and bigger than that Rossignol kid you took in last time, but I think he’s more bark than bite. That said, you never know. He might could be a handful,” Pete said.

“I see.”

“Really, I just don’t know how he’ll act in a different environment. Probably quiet for a few days and then we’ll just have to play it by ear?”

“They Christian?”

“Not even close.”

Cloninger nodded.

“I hate to ask this, but what’s the longest you can have him?” Pete asked.

Cloninger unlaced his hands and pulled out a small black calendar and a small pencil from his shirt pocket. He thumbed through the little book to the place he needed. He squinted without his glasses.

“We’re going to Plains in two weeks. Marta’s sister. If he gets along, he can certainly come with.”

“Nah. I’ll get something sorted out before then. There’s an uncle. I just didn’t have time.”

“Okee-dokee,” Cloninger said, putting back his calendar and pencil. “Let’s get him set up.”

“One thing,” Pete said, touching Cloninger’s elbow. “Obviously, he isn’t going to be grateful for your hospitality. But please do accept my gratitude.”

Cloninger clapped Pete on the shoulder.

“We’ll feed and shelter him, body and spirit.”

From the car, Cecil observed the man holding Pete’s shoulder and bending his head at him, like they were praying with one another. Then Pete and the man were at the car and opening the door, Cecil going along with it, handing Pete his air rifle, shaking the man’s hand, and then already in his house which was a cloud of sweet moisture and the dog was sniffing his groin, and the mother squeezed his hand, and their children lined up to greet him too, and this was really happening. Pete was already out the door with a jar of jam, and Cecil was shown a spare bed and where to put his things. Then they were sitting down to eat. He was just in time for lunch, they said like it was pure kismet, and the dog would not quit sniffing his pant legs under the table even though he moved his feet and tried to shoo him with his hand.