A Long and Happy Life by Reynolds Price

Author:Reynolds Price
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Scribner

THREE

THE Sunday morning before Christmas (Christmas being Wednesday that year), Milo left Mama and Rosacoke cooking dinner and Sissie lying down upstairs and drove to Warrenton to meet Rato who had set out by bus from Fort Sill, Oklahoma two days previous and had ridden upright through four states, barely closing his eyes, to get home—not because after nine months away he wanted so much to see his people or to leave camp awhile and certainly not to be in a Baptist pageant but in order to pass out the gifts he had bought with his own money and to show the family in person his Expert Marksman badge and the uniform he meant to wear for the next thirty years if the U.S. Army would let him.

When Milo was gone Mama set Baby Sister as the lookout. She squatted at the dining-room window and stared to the road through the dull cold day till an hour had passed and dinner was ready on the stove. Then a car came in sight with two people in it and turned towards the house. Baby Sister hollered “Here is Rato!” and threw herself out the door to meet him. Mama left the kitchen just as fast, not putting on a coat, and they got to him halfway down the yard. He had never been much on kissing, but he let Mama touch him on the cheek and gave Baby Sister his free hand to pull towards the door where Rosacoke stood (the other hand held his duffle bag). When he was almost at her, he set down the bag and pulled his hand out of Baby Sister’s and stopped—not looking Rosacoke in the eye but grinning from under his overseas cap (the only clothes on him not wrinkled like paper from the ride).

Rosacoke didn’t speak at first or smile. She was studying Rato with something like fear, and thinking back. He had come between her and Milo in age, and Mama had named him Horatio Junior for his father before she could see what was plain soon enough—that the mind he got would never make any sort of man. He had grown up mostly of his own accord, running sometimes with Milo and her and Negroes and taking what candy Mr. Isaac offered but seldom laughing and never being close to a soul or asking a favor. Still, he had been there all her life until last April. He had sat by her on cold school buses till he turned fourteen and stopped school completely and she met Wesley Beavers, and after that he had spent every Saturday night looking on from the porch at her and Wesley in the yard saying goodbye slowly. He had gone with her to the Raleigh hospital that week they sat with Papa before he died. And always, if he was nothing else, he had been one thing she could count on not to change, which was what she looked now to know—covering his face with her eyes (long yellow face rocked forward on his neck).

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