Where All Light Tends to Go by Joy David

Author:Joy, David [Joy, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Literary, Retail, Fiction
ISBN: 9780399172779
Publisher: PUTNAM
Published: 2015-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

19.

By midday Tuesday, my arms hung loose as broken fan belts and my hands felt tight in places unfit for grease guns. Daddy had me taking off the exhaust on an old Chevy Nova, a car that looked meaner than hell even stripped down and primered. The Nova was a project car Daddy kept around the shop and tinkered with off and on when business slowed. Those times rarely came, so that car had been sitting for years without ever being restored.

I hadn’t told him about the phone call. Didn’t think I would. For the life of me I just couldn’t put my finger on why Lieutenant Rogers had felt the need to call and tell Daddy that Mama was home. Only thing it could have been was that she’d blabbed on that night the crystal drove her crazier than a shithouse rat. And if that was why he was calling, Daddy must’ve had plans to set things right. So that phone call and the fact she was home was something I kept to myself. Sure, he’d find out sooner or later, but every minute I kept quiet was a minute she had for breathing. Truth was I’d never hated her like he did. I’d never blamed her for what she was.

Bologna sandwiches in a lunch bucket were the noontime staple of Daddy’s workday and always had been. But me, I took my lunch break as just that, a break, and left him sitting there in the office smacking white bread against the roof of his mouth. I didn’t like being around him any more than I had to, and two days into working side by side, I was already certain that I hated him more now than ever. I drove the few miles down Highway 107 to Mama’s house and pulled back into that dark cut just as the sun was peaking so straight overhead that shadows vanished.

The front door was propped open like always, though the rotten chinking between pine planks would have offered just as much for cross ventilation. There wasn’t a sound coming from inside, but the house held a noise all its own: creaking planks and the unrelenting chirps of spring peepers living out hot summer days in the cool damp mud beneath the porch. I walked up to the door and peeked inside. Mama was lying across the couch, her back pressed against the far armrest, and bare legs running the length of cushions. She was staring at the wall and didn’t seem to notice me standing there.

“Mama?”

Her stare pulled back from a picture that hung on the wall, a bright-colored picture of an Indian on the back of a horse, the type of artwork that’s sold in dirty filling stations and flea markets. She fixed her eyes on me, her stare brightened, and she smiled a bit, not full-on happiness but an I-ain’t-completely-alone-anymore kind of smile. “Jacob?”

“What you doing?”

“Oh, you know, just sitting here thinking, that’s all.” She pulled her legs up into her chest and tugged a loose-fitting T-shirt over them so that her whole body fit inside that shirt.

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