The Risen by Ron Rash

Author:Ron Rash
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-07-27T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was a Friday in mid-July when Leslie drove the six hours from Virginia to Sylva. The photograph I’d seen had not done her justice, especially her eyes, their ripe blueberry color but also their almond shape. Taller than I’d thought as well, five ten or so. She was shy and tended to hunch slightly when nervous, perhaps because, like most tall girls in adolescence, she’d towered over both genders, so wished to appear smaller. Knowing she’d once doubted her own attractiveness made me like her even more. My mother warmed to her immediately. Leslie was given my bedroom and I slept on the couch. On Saturday she and Bill spent the day on the Blue Ridge Parkway, taking with them a picnic lunch our mother made. So I polished the office floors without Bill, but I didn’t work by myself. Nebo, seeing I was alone, grunted and took the buffer from my hands.

I sat in the waiting room while Nebo finished, his huge hands guiding the metal disk across the floor, working without pause until the last room was done. When he was through, he put the machine back in the closet and sat down in a chair across from me. He wiped a phlegm-stained handkerchief across his brow and then over a skull made red from the exertion. I’d never been alone with Nebo before and it was unsettling. I had the key so I flipped through a magazine, waiting for him to leave. When I set the magazine back down ten minutes later, he hadn’t moved.

“I guess I’d better lock up,” I told him, but Nebo didn’t acknowledge my words. He continued to sit with his legs apart, forearms resting on his knees. I could see the outlines of the razor and whetstone in his front-right pocket and recalled a particularly frightening childhood dream of that razor. “I had better lock up,” I said louder, and when he still didn’t move added, “Grandfather doesn’t like me to be here if I’m not working.” He stood and went outside. When I heard the whir of the push mower, I went to the closet and, since the decreasing Valium samples might soon be noticed, pocketed two Quaalude packets.

Despite Leslie’s long drive back to Virginia, Grandfather insisted she stay for Sunday lunch. We all went to church together but it was only when we arrived at Grandfather’s house that the interrogation began. He asked Leslie about her family and her plans after college. Her answers, father a Methodist minister, mother a housewife, like her plans to be a lab technician, elicited a tight-lipped nod, as if, as my brother seethed later that day, Leslie were a hunting dog whose lineage was being appraised.

Maybe if it had ended there, nothing more would have happened, because though Leslie’s hunched posture implied tension, she answered courteously. Grandfather then held forth on how medical students shouldn’t marry until at least their residency, and how he was sure Bill had explained this to her. My mother tried to change the subject, but Grandfather stopped her with a glare.

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