Annie DeWitt - White Nights in Split Town City

“Get your mother on the phone,” Otto said. His eyes were expressionless. “Tell her we’re headed to the hospital. Tell her your father would like to see her there. Tell her I said so.”

Father was sitting away from us at the far end of the narrow slab of concrete that served as our porch. After he saw me look at him, he put his head in his hands and walked off some distance toward the stream to hide the damage. His face had rearranged itself into a dark mass not so different from the field that had rearranged it that way.

As Otto later recalled the accident, he’d never seen an animal go down with so much weight. They’d been galloping, sure. But they hadn’t been so crazy as to go open reigning in that weather. It was the fault of the rain and the slick of the mud, Otto said. That and Father’s big old Morgan had too much of the carriage in him. He was sturdy on his feet but undependable in the wet. His rear went out from under. Father went down with him. His foot had caught in the stirrup. There was nothing between Father’s face and the corn. “I’ll be damned about that rain,” Otto joked with Father some days later. “It’ll turn even the tiniest field into something famous.”

“Next time,” Father said, “I’ll put some cleats on that fella.”

“Sure,” Otto said. “Or don’t take a carriage horse out sledding in the rain.”

A stalk had nearly pierced Father’s eye. It had threaded itself in the soft spot next to the socket. One eyelid was hanging. Everything else was swollen shut save for the opposite side of his mouth. When he went to speak, he tongued the gap where his tooth was missing. The blood let down from his gums. “Take your sister and get back in the house,” he said. “Everything’s all right here. It’s a close call is all.”

I resisted making the call. Otto went inside to use the phone. When he came back he had a bag of ice in one hand and one of Father’s flannels in the other. He wrapped the shirt around Father’s head. The two men shouldered down the walk toward the Bronco where it was parked in the gravel next to the drive.

The Starlings’ green truck crested the hill. Otto had put the call out to them too.

As the two cars passed on the road, Ray saluted Father through the windshield and swung into our driveway. He parked in the gravel next to the house and turned down the engine. Ruth took over the kitchen and put on a spread while Ray smoked his cigar on the porch. He was drunker than usual from the heat. His smell was thick. He moved as though swimming.

I sat in Father’s rocking chair in the corner. Dumb. Silent. A witness to something but I wasn’t sure what.

“I imagine you can go now,” Ruth said peeking her head out from the oven and speaking to K. “There’s no need for more bodies in this house.”

“If you think so,” K said.

“Sure,” Ruth said. “Just let Ray know you mean to be going. He’ll drive you home.” Ruth was in her element. The pressure of an emergency was thrilling. Within the hour eggs and pancakes and the half-box of Entenmann’s, which she’d grabbed from her counter and stuffed in her purse, appeared on our table. Afterwards, she turned the light off and made a pot of coffee for her and Ray. The dishes she hand washed in the half-light and stacked on a yellow hand rag. The dishwasher brought too much heat into the house. When she was done, she sat with us and watched the night shows that ran in the weekend slot after the morning cartoons, fifties sitcoms, old black and whites with the laugh tracks. Ruth’s laugh was easy and inviting. Anyone would’ve chuckled along with her under different circumstance. That afternoon as the sound of her voice reverberated off the thin walls, I wondered if it wouldn’t finally blow out Mother’s windows altogether and let the world in to consume us.

The day passed by way of the rain. First sheeting and then intermittent waves of mist that descended and ascended in a rolling pattern as dry patches of air moved into the swamplands absorbing some of the moisture until the drizzle came and the doctor’s fields were saturated again. Despite the heat and the film on her face, Ruth kept us in meals. Every few hours she went into the kitchen to prepare something, which occasionally one of us picked at until the temperature got the best of it and she plated whatever it was and put it in the fridge to keep. Ray returned from dropping K home. I showed him where Mother kept the jug of cooking rum. He went outside with the bottle and swept the porch for a while.

It was dark by the time Father’s Bronco rolled into the drive. Otto was at the wheel, Father alongside him. Time resumed with the slam of a car door and the sound of the two men making their way up the gravel. A second pair of headlights soon fronted the street. I could make out Granny Olga’s hair as the car turned into the drive. Gramps’s white Panama hat still shone from where she kept it on the ledge in the rear of the Buick.

“Lord, child,” Granny Olga said clutching the hem of my dress before her bags were through the door. “Get yourself upstairs and put on something decent.”

The moment Mother entered the house every switch was tossed. The lights were on and the windows were open. She was sharing a cigarette with Otto who had her on one arm and her bags on the other. Father was in an unusually light mood. Despite the fact that his face had been beaten and bruised, he was quick on his feet. He was joking about the hard time the hospital had given them. “Nurses. Stiff upper lip from the start. Swore I’d been in a bar fight,” Father was recounting to Ray. “They were jealous of my wife’s right hook.”

“That’s not all they were jealous of,” Otto egged him on. Otto’s flattery went a long way in reviving them. Even Granny Olga gave up a tight-wadded snicker.

Ruth was in kitchen again with the eggs and the éclairs. What with the emergency, we’d worked up an appetite. Granny Olga was bothering Ruth about the tea. There was nothing like a good Catholic woman in her daughter’s kitchen to stir up Granny Olga’s hankering to bring out the samovar. Once, I’d asked Mother about attending catechism.

“I want to go,” I’d said. I’d just finished sitting down to my method. Mother had come into the room to have a cigarette and a listen. It was the only time Mother had ever struck me in the face. The surprise of it was what stung.

Despite her husband’s alcoholism and her penchant for Pall Malls, Ruth was a Catholic. Grandmother could smell it on her, lapsed or no.

“I’ll clean up here, darlin’,” Granny Olga said as soon as Ruth had finished arranging her spread.

The house had the feel of the holidays.

“I heard Jean’s been tending to Helene,” Mother was saying to Otto. Everyone was sprawled out on the L-shape.

“With all her grace,” Otto said. “Never thought I’d see anyone make that old piano sing again,” he said.

“I keep telling her,” Father said. “She could really have something if she just practiced. Not everyone can have a little something like that. A real talent.”

“I think she practices just fine,” Otto said.

I was quiet then. My eyes fell into my lap. I examined the curve of my thigh where Grandmother had touched it. I thought maybe I’d have a fine shape one day if I just discovered it right.

“Speak up, child,” Granny Olga said. “We don’t mind you so much talking.”

Otto cleared his throat. He began telling stories about the bonfire.

“All this celebrating in my absence,” Mother was saying. “You know how much I hate to miss a good party.”

“Nothing doing,” Father said. “Pretty much just a fire and some fancy camping is all. Remember, baby. I took you camping once.”

“Sure,” Mother said. She hadn’t given in to him yet. But she wasn’t denying him anything either. He was injured after all. Everyone could see that. Everyone could see that denying him would’ve made her look too sharp in the light.