Stories: All-New Tales

“You just take one now, Winston, and have it after dinner,” Mary Lou said. “You save that other piece for tomorrow. It’ll give you somethin’ to look forward to.”

“That was mighty nice of you, Tom,” Deel said.

“You should stay for lunch,” Mary Lou said. “Deel and Winston caught a couple of fish, and I got some potatoes. I can fry them up.”

“Why that’s a nice offer,” Tom said. “And on account of it, I’ll clean the fish.”

THE NEXT FEW DAYS passed with Tom coming out to bring the horse and the seed, and coming back the next day with some plow parts Deel needed. Deel began to think he would never get to town, and now he wasn’t so sure he wanted to go. Tom was far more comfortable with his family than he was and he was jealous of that and wanted to stay with them and find his place. Tom and Mary Lou talked about all manner of things, and quite comfortably, and the boy had lost all interest in the bow. In fact, Deel had found it and the arrows out under a tree near where the woods firmed up. He took it and put it in the smokehouse. The air was dry in there and it would cure better, though he was uncertain the boy would ever have anything to do with it.

Deel plowed a half-dozen acres of the flowers under, and the next day Tom came out with a wagonload of cured chicken shit, and helped him shovel it across the broken ground. Deel plowed it under and Tom helped Deel plant peas and beans for the fall crop, some hills of yellow crookneck squash, and a few mounds of watermelon and cantaloupe seed.

That evening they were sitting out in front of the house, Deel in the cane rocker and Tom in a kitchen chair. The boy sat on the ground near Tom and twisted a stick in the dirt. The only light came from the open door of the house, from the lamp inside. When Deel looked over his shoulder, he saw Mary Lou at the washbasin again, doing the dishes, wiggling her ass. Tom looked in that direction once, then looked at Deel, then looked away at the sky, as if memorizing the positions of the stars.

Tom said, “You and me ain’t been huntin’ since well before you left.”

“You came around a lot then, didn’t you?” Deel said.

Tom nodded. “I always felt better here than at home. Mama and Daddy fought all the time.”

“I’m sorry about your parents.”

“Well,” Tom said, “everyone’s got a time to die, you know. It can be in all kinds of ways, but sometimes it’s just time and you just got to embrace it.”

“I reckon that’s true.”

“What say you and me go huntin’?” Tom said, “I ain’t had any possum meat in ages.”

“I never did like possum,” Deel said. “Too greasy.”

“You ain’t fixed ’em right. That’s one thing I can do, fix up a possum good. ’Course, best way is catch one and pen it and feed it corn for a week or so, then kill it. Meat’s better that way, firmer. But I’d settle for shootin’ one, showin’ you how to get rid of that gamey taste with some vinegar and such, cook it up with some sweet potatoes. I got more sweet potatoes than I know what to do with.”

“Deel likes sweet potatoes,” Mary Lou said.

Deel turned. She stood in the doorway drying her hands on a dish towel. She said, “That ought to be a good idea, Deel. Goin’ huntin’. I wouldn’t mind learnin’ how to cook up a possum right. You and Tom ought to go, like the old days.”

“I ain’t had no sweet potatoes in years,” Deel said.

“All the more reason,” Tom said.

The boy said, “I want to go.”

“That’d be all right,” Tom said, “but you know, I think this time I’d like for just me and Deel to go. When I was a kid, he taught me about them woods, and I’d like to go with him, for old time’s sake. That all right with you, Winston?”

Winston didn’t act like it was all right, but he said, “I guess.”

THAT NIGHT DEEL LAY beside Mary Lou and said, “I like Tom, but I was thinkin’ maybe we could somehow get it so he don’t come around so much.”

“Oh?”

“I know Winston looks up to him, and I don’t mind that, but I need to get to know Winston again…Hell, I didn’t ever know him. And I need to get to know you…I owe you some time, Mary Lou. The right kind of time.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Deel. The right kind of time?”

Deel thought for a while, tried to find the right phrasing. He knew what he felt, but saying it was a different matter. “I know you ended up with me because I seemed better than some was askin’. Turned out I wasn’t quite the catch you thought. But we got to find what we need, Mary Lou.”

“What we need?”

“Love. We ain’t never found love.”

She lay silent.

“I just think,” Deel said, “we ought to have our own time together before we start havin’ Tom around so much. You understand what I’m sayin’, right?”

“I guess so.”

“I don’t even feel like I’m proper home yet. I ain’t been to town or told nobody I’m back.”

“Who you missin’?”