Solemn by Kalisha Buckhanon

Author:Kalisha Buckhanon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781250091581
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

2

THE FUTURE

EIGHTEEN

A wispy echo of tight little baby feet with smooth, soft soles, a few mistakings of spines in the pantry for a tiny thigh, a few months of hungering for more than day labor, wonder of what (if anything) his dutiful daughter remembered—all distracted his focus.

Redvine was the only man in the house now, a thought he hadn’t fussed with since the two years before he married Bev. He missed his son. Then after Solemn happened to hold the hand of a girl gone down at the Festival (now less attended for it), he had less strength to compete for a daily spot at the electronics plant or a weekend odd job around Bledsoe. It was taking too much gas to get to Kosciusko just for nothing but a look. While he couldn’t necessarily complain too much—my kids good, never gave me too much trouble, wife rarely scrap, I ain’t been perfect, they love me—Redvine had to admit: he was slowing down. He could still be playing off high roller, had the future not been so guerilla. Now the Malibu and trailer and fine wedding were leftovers cooled. The duffel bag he once carried out the door to work held the stuff they piled to send to Landon: his mama’s cookies and notes, DVDs, CDs, boxer shorts. Change.

The utility and just plain living bills piled. Work did not.

Mostly because Akila had gone on to take the baby, and there was no one to look after Solemn, and tuition money went extinct did Beverly permanently lose her classes at the Bible college. She settled for shelving books in the library. Lots of free books, more than welcome. The trailer had no room for them. Sometimes in twos or threes they hogged up books for the Oprah club, on account of it being on the TV and in the stores and something big in the world. Gave her something to read besides Landon’s notes. She even thought about asking a few other high-attendance ladies to potluck with her after church, for a ladies’ book club, like Stephanie thought of and they tried to plan. Bev figured the books were too hard. Nothing like the Bible, or a few of Landon’s teachers gave like Sounder and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. She saved those books. In January One Hundred Years of Solitude by a Spanish man and a white woman’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter in April. She heard a book in Russian was coming up. She wanted Ann Rule next and thought to write a letter to the Harpo station in Chicago. But she was too scared of her English. Bev knew Stephanie would read the books in a heartbeat. Forasmuch as it appeared Solemn and Desi were the twosome to note, she was the grown woman who most missed her friend. So much more marvelous she had felt.

The boredom expanded. Unfaith took root.

Landon stayed on in the service, stationed at Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg with Akila now, a daughter to add to his son.

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