quilts, Olivia.”
“Sewing’s not a grand idea.”
“Something else then.”
“Like what?”
“Well, what do you think about most?”
“You,” I said. “I can feel you inside me every single minute.”
“Oh-ho!” Wing reached for me. “All right. But besides that, isn’t there anything—something that’s stuck in your heart?”
I stood up and thought about that while he pulled down my drawers and I stepped out of them. He came out of his own britches, and laid down beside me on the dry leafy ground. Wing took my nipple between his thumb and finger. He groaned with my stillness.
“I think about Love Alice and Junk. And Miz Hanley and Miss Dovey—the way white folks treat ’em so bad.”
“Well, there you go,” he said. “What else?”
“I miss my pap.”
Wing climbed astraddle of me.
“I never got to say good-bye. Or tell him I was sorry.”
Wing’s strokes were long and hard, and I never knew if he heard. Afterward, I rolled away. “I wish God would give me better instructions,” I said.
He threw an arm across me. “I love you, Olivia Harker,” he said. “And I’m gonna keep on loving you till the day I die.”
Finally, I told him about Ida never wanting me. How she’d gone away after I was born—and about her coming home. I told him that on the icy road I’d killed Pap with my chatter, but Wingheld me close and said it wasn’t my fault. And that if Pap had to go, at least he carried with him to heaven the sound of my voice.
Wing and I loved for twenty-two months, four days, and three hours, and every minute was like the first. Ida knew. She said we should be dead of shame over what we were doing, and she prayed loudly and often for my salvation. But in my heart, I knew Wing had already saved me.
The following winter, Wing’s pap died of influenza, and one night three weeks later, his ma went to sleep and never woke up. I had no doubt that she’d loved Mr. Harris the way I loved Wing, and she could not live without him. I was sick with grief for my beloved. The whole town went to both funerals. Each time, I stayed in the hotel kitchen, laying out spoons and peeling waxed paper from covered dishes. Wing himself was so broken that he could lift neither his head nor his trumpet, and if Pap had taken my voice to heaven, Wing’s folks went without his music.
After that he seemed always to be busy somewhere in his head. He left school to run the hotel. I missed him desperately and went to visit him in town. I thought he’d take me up to one of the eight pretty rooms with the flowered quilts, but this was a new Wing, solemn and distant, standing crooked like his back hurt. I said I had come to see if he was all right. Then I told him the truth—I wanted to know if he still loved me. He looked away, and asked me the same. I couldn’t get my breath, let alone answer. Our time together shut down that easy, both of us in so much pain that neither of us could see past it.
19
I n the months that followed, the town grew silent, like all of Aurora had packed up and gone home. Around the Kentuckian the brick buildings emptied out and became sooty shells with rats and only a lodger or two. The newspaper office shut down, and even Williford the baker closed his doors. Wing’s upstairs rooms were occupied by a couple of summer visitors or a hunter or two, and the honeymoon suite pretty much stayed rented to a man from Buelton who was cheating on his wife.
I missed Wing’s arms and the sound of his breathing. I’d have died for five minutes alone with him. Suddenly I was fifteen and trapped in a house with Ida.
Christmas night, I put on my coat and wobbled on high-heeled shoes down the highway, to a honky-tonk that had opened up. I sat on a stool at Silty’s Jamboree and admired the colored glass lamps that swayed over the pool table, and the way ladies sat in gents’ laps. In a strip of purple light from the window I waited for someone to speak to me. It took all of five minutes.
“Sewing’s not a grand idea.”
“Something else then.”
“Like what?”
“Well, what do you think about most?”
“You,” I said. “I can feel you inside me every single minute.”
“Oh-ho!” Wing reached for me. “All right. But besides that, isn’t there anything—something that’s stuck in your heart?”
I stood up and thought about that while he pulled down my drawers and I stepped out of them. He came out of his own britches, and laid down beside me on the dry leafy ground. Wing took my nipple between his thumb and finger. He groaned with my stillness.
“I think about Love Alice and Junk. And Miz Hanley and Miss Dovey—the way white folks treat ’em so bad.”
“Well, there you go,” he said. “What else?”
“I miss my pap.”
Wing climbed astraddle of me.
“I never got to say good-bye. Or tell him I was sorry.”
Wing’s strokes were long and hard, and I never knew if he heard. Afterward, I rolled away. “I wish God would give me better instructions,” I said.
He threw an arm across me. “I love you, Olivia Harker,” he said. “And I’m gonna keep on loving you till the day I die.”
Finally, I told him about Ida never wanting me. How she’d gone away after I was born—and about her coming home. I told him that on the icy road I’d killed Pap with my chatter, but Wingheld me close and said it wasn’t my fault. And that if Pap had to go, at least he carried with him to heaven the sound of my voice.
Wing and I loved for twenty-two months, four days, and three hours, and every minute was like the first. Ida knew. She said we should be dead of shame over what we were doing, and she prayed loudly and often for my salvation. But in my heart, I knew Wing had already saved me.
The following winter, Wing’s pap died of influenza, and one night three weeks later, his ma went to sleep and never woke up. I had no doubt that she’d loved Mr. Harris the way I loved Wing, and she could not live without him. I was sick with grief for my beloved. The whole town went to both funerals. Each time, I stayed in the hotel kitchen, laying out spoons and peeling waxed paper from covered dishes. Wing himself was so broken that he could lift neither his head nor his trumpet, and if Pap had taken my voice to heaven, Wing’s folks went without his music.
After that he seemed always to be busy somewhere in his head. He left school to run the hotel. I missed him desperately and went to visit him in town. I thought he’d take me up to one of the eight pretty rooms with the flowered quilts, but this was a new Wing, solemn and distant, standing crooked like his back hurt. I said I had come to see if he was all right. Then I told him the truth—I wanted to know if he still loved me. He looked away, and asked me the same. I couldn’t get my breath, let alone answer. Our time together shut down that easy, both of us in so much pain that neither of us could see past it.
19
I n the months that followed, the town grew silent, like all of Aurora had packed up and gone home. Around the Kentuckian the brick buildings emptied out and became sooty shells with rats and only a lodger or two. The newspaper office shut down, and even Williford the baker closed his doors. Wing’s upstairs rooms were occupied by a couple of summer visitors or a hunter or two, and the honeymoon suite pretty much stayed rented to a man from Buelton who was cheating on his wife.
I missed Wing’s arms and the sound of his breathing. I’d have died for five minutes alone with him. Suddenly I was fifteen and trapped in a house with Ida.
Christmas night, I put on my coat and wobbled on high-heeled shoes down the highway, to a honky-tonk that had opened up. I sat on a stool at Silty’s Jamboree and admired the colored glass lamps that swayed over the pool table, and the way ladies sat in gents’ laps. In a strip of purple light from the window I waited for someone to speak to me. It took all of five minutes.
Similar Books
