By 1963, they had been with this particular carnival, Billy Bradford Family Amusements, for almost four years, traveling from one end of the hot, humid South to the other from early spring until late fall in a retired school bus packed with moldering canvas and folding chairs and metal poles, always setting up in dusty, pig-shit towns where the locals thought a couple of creaky whirly rides and some toothless, flea-bitten jungle cats along with a tattered freak show was high-class entertainment. On a good night, Roy and Theodore could make twenty or thirty bucks. The Flamingo Lady and Flapjack the Clown got most of what they didn’t spend on booze or bugs or at the hot dog stand. West Virginia seemed like a million miles away, and the two fugitives couldn’t imagine the arm of the law in Coal Creek ever stretching that far. It had been nearly fourteen years since they had buried Helen and fled south. They didn’t even bother to change their names anymore.
19
ON ARVIN’S FIFTEENTH BIRTHDAY, Uncle Earskell handed him a pistol wrapped in a soft cloth along with a dusty box of shells. “This was your daddy’s,” the old man told him. “It’s a German Luger. Brought it back from the war. I figure he’d want you to have it.” The old man had never had any use for handguns, and so he’d hid it away under a floorboard in the smokehouse right after Willard left for Ohio. The only time he’d touched it since was to clean it occasionally. Seeing the elated look on the boy’s face, he was glad now he’d never broken down and sold it. They had just finished supper, and there was one piece of fried rabbit left on the platter in the middle of the table. Earskell debated whether or not to save the haunch for his breakfast, then picked it up and started gnawing on it.
Arvin unwrapped the cloth carefully. The only gun his father had kept at home was a .22 rifle, and Willard never allowed him to touch it, let alone shoot it. Earskell, on the other hand, had handed the boy a 16-gauge Remington and took him to the woods just three or four weeks after he came to live with them. “In this house, you better know how to handle a gun unless you want to starve to death,” the old man had told him.
“But I don’t want to shoot anything,” Arvin said that day, when Earskell stopped and pointed out two gray squirrels jumping back and forth on some branches high in a hickory tree.
“Didn’t I see you eatin’ a pork chop this morning?”
“Yeah.”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “Somebody had to kill that hog and butcher it, didn’t they?”
“I guess so.”
Earskell lifted his own shotgun then and fired. One of the squirrels fell to the ground, and the old man started toward it. “Just try not to tear ’em up too bad,” he said over his shoulder. “You want to have something left to put in the pan.”
The coat of oil made the Luger shine like new in the wavering light cast from the kerosene lamps hanging at both ends of the room. “I never did hear him talk about it,” Arvin said, lifting the gun up by the grip and pointing it toward the window. “About being in the service, I mean.” There had been quite a few things his mother had warned him about when it came to his father, and asking questions about what he had seen in the war was high on the list.
“Yeah, I know,” Earskell said. “I remember when he got back, I wanted him to tell me about the Japs, but anytime I brought it up, he’d start in about your mother again.” He finished the rabbit and laid the bone on his plate. “Hell, I don’t think he even knew her name at the time. Just saw her waiting tables in some eatin’ place when he was coming home.”
“The Wooden Spoon,” Arvin said. “He took me there once after she got sick.”
“I think he saw some rough things over on them islands,” the old man said. He looked around for a rag, then wiped his hands on the front of his overalls. “I never did find out if they ate their dead or not.”
Arvin bit his lip and swallowed hard. “This is the best present I ever got.”
Just then, Emma entered the kitchen carrying a plain yellow cake in a small pan. A single candle was planted in the middle of it. Lenora followed behind dressed in the long blue dress and bonnet that she usually wore only to church. She held a box of matches in one hand and her cracked leather Bible in the other. “What’s that?” Emma said when she saw Arvin holding the Luger.
“That’s Willard’s gun he give me,” Earskell said. “I figured it was time to pass it on to the boy.”
“Oh, my,” Emma said. She set the cake down on the table and grabbed up the hem of her checkered apron to wipe back a tear. Seeing the gun reminded her once again of her son and the promise she’d failed to keep all those years ago. Sometimes she couldn’t help but wonder if they would all still be alive today if she had only convinced Willard to stay here and marry Helen.
Everyone was silent for a moment, almost as if they knew what the old woman was thinking. Then Lenora struck a match and said in a singsong voice, “Happy birthday, Arvin.” She lit the candle, the same one they had used to celebrate her fourteenth birthday a few months ago.
“It ain’t much use for anything,” Earskell went on, ignoring the cake and nodding at the gun. “You got to be right up on something to hit it.”
“Go ahead, Arvin,” Lenora said.
“Might as well throw a rock,” the old man joked.
“Arvin?”
“The shotgun will do you more good.”
“Make your wish before the candle burns out,” Emma said.
“Them’s nine-millimeter shells,” Earskell pointed out. “Banner don’t carry them at the store, but he can order them special.”
“Better hurry!” Lenora yelled.
“Okay, okay,” the boy said, setting the gun down on the cloth. He bent down and blew out the tiny flame.
“So what did you wish for?” Lenora asked. She hoped it had something to do with the Lord, but the way Arvin was, she wasn’t going to hold her breath. Every night, she prayed that he would wake up with a love for Jesus Christ glowing in his heart. She hated to think that he was going to end up in hell like that Elvis Presley and all those other sinners he listened to on the radio.
“Now you know better than to ask that,” Emma said.
“That’s all right, Grandma,” Arvin said. “I wished that I could take you all back to Ohio and show you where we lived. It was nice, up there on the hill. At least it was before Mom took sick.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time I lived in Cincinnati?” Earskell said.
Arvin looked at the two women and winked. “No,” he said, “I don’t recall it.”
“Lord, not again,” Emma muttered, while Lenora, smiling to herself, lifted the stub of the candle off the cake and put it in the matchbox.
“Yep, followed me a girl up there,” the old man said. “She was from over on Fox Knob, was raised right next to the Riley place. Her house ain’t there no more. Wanted to go to secretary school. I wasn’t much older than you are now.”
“Who wanted to go to secretary school,” Arvin asked, “you or the girl?”
“Ha! Her did,” Earskell said. He took a long breath, then slowly let it out. “Her name was Alice Louise Berry. You remember her, don’t you, Emma?”