AT HOME, I CHANGED INTO MY EVERYDAY CLOTHES, and then Aunt Tildy and I cooked up our big Sunday meal: fried chicken, crowder peas, cornbread, and a mess of green beans. Oh, and tomatoes. Had to have tomatoes in the summertime, picked fresh and lightly salted.
I fixed a plate for Daddy and delivered it to him in his trailer out back. He moved out there when my mama died and had stayed ever since. He took the plate, settled it on the built-in TV tray of his belly, and pulled out the jug of Aunt Jemima syrup he kept under the La-Z-Boy. "You ain't gonna tell on me to your aunt Tildy, are you, kitten?" he said.
That's what he called me, like I was an itty-bitty puffball with a yawning mouth and harmless claws.
He poured the syrup over his food, and I said, "That is just nasty, Daddy."
He laughed, and I could smell the corn liquor on his breath. Also, the sour odor of him needing a bath. Sadness overwhelmed me: for Patrick, for Daddy, for the whole hard lot of everything.
Daddy must have picked up on it, because concern clouded his eyes. "What's wrong, sweet pea?" That was his other nickname for me. I was either a kitten or a sweet pea, each incapable of making a dent in the world's injustice.
Of course, my big smelly daddy was pretty helpless himself. I loved Daddy, but in the way I might love a loyal old dog who could no longer follow me around, just thump his tail whenever I came near.
"Ah, nothing, Daddy." I tried for a smile. "I'm fine."
"You know what you need?" he said as he forked a mouthful of syrup-drenched chicken into his mouth. "Some good clean sunshine. Yessir, that's exactly what you need." This, from a man who spent his days holed up in his trailer, with just his liquor bottles and his TV for company.
"Okay, Daddy," I said.
He wasn't done. "Young girl like you? You should be out stirring up trouble with your friends, not bothering with all them books you read. You know it's them books what make you talk funny."
"Ha-ha," I said, as this was an old joke between us. He poked fun at my school learnin', as he called it. Daddy liked to tease me, but I knew he was secretly proud that I hadn't dropped out of school like so many other kids, including my brother. Patrick and Bailee-Ann and I were the only kids from Black Creek to complete our junior year at Toomsboro High last month, and the three of us were the only ones planning to return in the fall as seniors. We were going to make it all the way to graduation. But with Patrick in a coma, who knew what would happen?
No. I pulled myself back, because Daddy and me had a script that needed following. Otherwise, we wouldn't have a thing to say to each other.
"I don't talk 'funny,' Daddy," I said. "I talk proper. You just talk country."
"Well, you might have a point there," he said, chuckling. "But don't let that fool you." He tapped his temple. "Your old daddy didn't fall off the last turnip truck, you know."
"Yeah, Daddy. I know." I kissed his stubbled cheek and headed back to the house, where Christian, Aunt Tildy, and I sat down at the table and tucked into our dinners. None of us talked. While I ate, I thought about Daddy's advice and decided I'd take it after all. Tomorrow I would go out and stir up some trouble, just not in the way he expected.
