The Clearing by Tim Gautreaux

Author:Tim Gautreaux [Gautreaux, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Literary, Literary Fiction
ISBN: 1400030536
Amazon: B000XUAEUI
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

After lunch, Randolph and his wife stepped out onto the second-floor porch on a hot August Sunday and watched children playing below on the brick street. Lillian had not said much during the meal, and he imagined a certain grimness around the corners of her mouth.

“Are you feeling all right?”

She nodded. “Of course. It’s just that it’s time for me to make my monthly announcement that I’m not going to have a baby yet.”

He slid his wicker chair next to hers and put a hand on the back of her neck, under her short brown hair. “It’ll happen.”

“Maybe we’re not trying enough. Maybe four times a month isn’t enough.”

He nodded. “I can take a night train on Wednesdays, then the four o’clock mixed back from Algiers.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about this. I love New Orleans and my friends in church, but I’m not doing anything here.” She swung around to him, her dress whistling against the wicker. “I want to come live with you at Nimbus.”

He took his arm back. “It’s not healthy. It’s a slough full of the worst types of men. I only have a privy.”

She cocked her head at him. “You know, you squeeze a nickel until the buffalo pees.”

He slumped back in his chair. “What’s that mean?”

“Build me a bathroom, Rand. Feed it with a cypress cistern. Run the drain to the swamp or the privy hole. And how much would it cost to add a front parlor where I could read and sew and have a little office of my own? The price of nails?”

“You want to be down there?” He imagined her in the mornings, the feel of her smooth neck against his lips.

“I can help you. With the mill, even.”

He shook his head. “It’s just unhealthy.”

She raised her chin and glanced at something across the street, then sideways, at him. “Wouldn’t it be harder for the Sicilians to bother me in Nimbus than here?”

He stood up and walked to the end of the porch. “Maybe we should move back North.”

“So you’ve stopped worrying about your brother? You’d rather go back to a little hardwood mill where your salary would be considerably less than what it is now? And do you honestly think that pistol you left here for me can protect me more than you and Byron?” She came up beside him, leaned over the rail, and picked a magnolia blossom out of a welter of dark waxy leaves.

“What would you do?”

“I could help your doctor. I could give you advice.”

He laughed. “About lumber?”

“About your degenerate mill town. Why don’t you hire more men who’d bring their families?”

He looked at her sharply. “It’s more expensive. Families need larger cabins.”

“More expensive than all the work lost to the savagery?”

“You think the place can be gentled down some, I suppose?”

“It can.”

He surveyed the street. “It’s no tea party out there,” he muttered.

She took his arm and coaxed him around. “Last week there was a man down on the corner standing there looking up at me.

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