JEWEL by LOTT BRET

Author:LOTT, BRET [LOTT, BRET]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

_ L She wouldn’t take it this time, only stared at where the bobber sat in the water.

Leston smiled harder, most all his teeth showing now, and held out the pole to her. She still wouldn’t take it. Then he pushed it at her, his move nothing giant, nothing hard, just a gentle push, the pole touching her arm.

She moved quick away from the touch, her eyes on the water.

That was when I turned on the faucet, started rinsing off my hands.

I’d seen enough in just these few moments. I’d seen enough, and there flashed through my head the image of Billie Jean what seemed centuries ago, her bent over at the waist, Leston with his belt pulled out and ready to bring down on her, we three out behind the barn at the old place. I saw in my head the lipstick on Billie Jean’s face, saw her eyes looking up at me, and heard Leston’s whispered words at me, Go on inside, he’d said, and because all those years ago it’d been his job as the daddy to administer the punishment, I’d turned and headed back to the house.

I knew he wouldn’t try that on Brenda Kay, figured maybe the most he might do out there would be to let his voice go even harder, push the pole a little stronger at her. But I trusted a part of me right then, the part that signaled something might happen if I weren’t out there quick enough.

My eyes on Leston as I worked the dough off my hands, I realized I couldn’t remember him ever spending any time alone with her, spending any piece of his life with just her and her alone. It was a fact, a huge and awesome truth that hit me like a revelation, her life and how it’d been spent had always been in my hands, and always would.

Certainly he loved her, had never been one to be ashamed of her, as far as I knew.

But there came to me no pictures of the two of them alone, just me and every day of my life since she’d been born taken up with taking care of her.

So how, I wondered, could I ever let Brenda Kay’s life get out of my hands this way, so far out of my hands I’d thought she could go out fishing with her daddy? He was a man who had no idea, I was certain, how to take care of his baby daughter, how to talk to her the way I did, take her to the bathroom, bathe her, read to her, hold her hand and trace the letters of her name even while she cried through it all.

He had no idea at all.

And suddenly I saw Mississippi for what it was, enemy territory, deep and troubled and ugly, even here with my husband to protect me, care for me as he thought fit. This place would never be the same place he’d thought it would be by our simply moving back, taking up residence in the place he’d seen his glory come and go.

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