I considered the situation for a moment. “I suppose I understand how they feel, in some ways.”
Mama paused, raising a brow at me.
“I don’t agree,” I clarified, “but I understand. There’s an … unpredictability about the homeless, isn’t there? Drugs and alcohol are problems, sometimes violence. It’s harder to tell who’s good and who isn’t just by looking.”
Mama snorted a laugh. “Take a look at the wealthy people in this town and rethink that. I could name five terrible people who, by all appearances, are well to do.”
“True enough. And anyway, good and bad aren’t absolute. Nobody’s made of pure good or evil. Everyone has reasons for their choices, those little justifications they make so they can sleep at night.”
“Everyone’s a hero of their story and a villain in someone else’s.” A sigh. “I see their point too. But in the end, it’s not about how we feel so much as it is what we do about it. And belittling a man on the street isn’t what we would do about this particular problem.”
“Maybe not to a homeless person. We might belittle a man like Doug though.”
“Well, I don’t doubt Jo gave him a taste of his medicine.”
“She didn’t have to. Keaton Myers was there, and he was so mad, I’m surprised he didn’t give Doug a bloody nose.”
“There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. How’s he doing?”
“Mad as all hell when I saw him last, but I’m sure that was circumstantial.”
Mama smiled with a certain fondness. “His daddy was the most handsome man in Lindenbach, maybe the one man in town I would have dated after your father died.”
“Really?” I asked, shocked.
“True story.” She handed me another honeycomb. “But he never recovered from his wife passing, on top of having his hands full with four boys and their business. I didn’t have much more time with you three and the farm.”
“I had no idea.”
“Why would you? We weren’t talking much about my prospects when you were sixteen.”
“No, we talked about Drew.” Even twelve years after his death, it hurt to say his name.
“We did talk about Drew.” She was still smiling at the memory. “Your sisters never dated much. As a parent, I expected boys to be a much bigger problem than they were.”
I didn’t note that Drew’s death terrified them into permanently swearing off love, but we both thought it. At least they went on the occasional date. I might as well have been a virgin for all the time that had passed. And what I remembered was probably not superstar action, considering Drew and I were teenagers who knew next to nothing about sex beyond the very basics.
“You know,” Mom started, recapturing my attention, “I was kind of hoping Keaton would manage the barn restoration. I’ll be glad when it’s finished and ready for events, but the time might pass a little sweeter with Keaton around here every day.”
“Isn’t that the truth. Cole’s handsome, but Keaton?” I whistled.
“Well, Cole is about as mysterious as a cellophane bag.”
“Mama,” I said, laughing.
“What? It’s alluring to leave something to the imagination. That’s all I’m saying.”
“So that’s what makes Keaton more attractive?” I asked, considering it.
“Wouldn’t you say? The less he says, the more you wonder what he has to say.” After a beat, she continued. “He was front and center in the town’s spotlight with Mandy, given she was the mayor’s daughter. Boy was homecoming king and the star quarterback, smiling face perched on the back of a convertible rolling down Main Street. And in the span of a year, the man turned into a ghost. I understand, but it’s hard to draw a line between the two versions of him. Makes you wonder what happened to him.”
“We know what happened to him, Mama.”
“Sure, but we all handled it different, didn’t we? We don’t know just what it did to him.”
We fell quiet again as she handed me another honeycomb and we went about our work.
Truth was, I knew just what it had done to him. He’d buried his heart in the cemetery behind the church just a little ways from where I’d buried mine. Maybe he figured himself to be as cursed as I thought myself to be and vowed never to put anyone else in such a position. Maybe he believed he’d had his one shot at love only to lose it.
Or maybe he couldn’t stand the thought of digging up his heart only to bury it again.
The sound of Dad’s old truck floated toward us, and when I looked over my shoulder, it was to the vision of my sisters in the cab, smiling and singing along to George Strait, their dark hair whipping out of their ponytails to float around the cab, weightless. I smiled at their joy, enjoying it second-hand as I did so many things.
Briefly, I wondered how much life I’d lived through them and decided I didn’t want to know the answer. It was easier this way, safer.
And I’d keep reminding myself of that until I believed it.
4
OLD HABITS
KEATON
My alarm went off before the sun a few days later, but I was already awake, waiting for the sound so I could get today done.
It would be a day like any other. I’d get myself up, go to work, keep busy until dinner. Eat because I had to. Watch TV with my brothers and my niece Sophie, shower, and go to bed. But there would be no rest. I’d lay here in the dark and beg for sleep so I wouldn’t have to be alone with myself.
This was where I’d been the night the police knocked on the door to tell me my wife had died.
Dad’s gravestone hadn’t even been put in place yet. We’d just moved back into my family home, still had boxes in the corner, just over there under the window. I hadn’t been asleep that night either, not after the fight she and I had.
I didn’t know where it came from, her wanting to move. His death had changed me, she said, but how could I ever be the same? It was too much, she noted, for me to bear. She once told me I’d be destroyed by the weight of it, that there was no way for me to move on if we stayed here. We could start over, away from her family and mine, an escape from the yoke of my responsibility. That she would even suggest it was madness. Maybe it was some survival instinct she had, a fear that I wouldn’t be the same. As if leaving would have turned back the clock.
She knew I couldn’t leave. That I wouldn’t leave.
The fight had escalated, almost from the second Dad died. The last time I saw her, we’d shown our ugliest selves, slinging accusations and insults at each other down to the stupidest, smallest things that only people who have been together a long time fight about. In the end, she’d stormed out, tears on her cheeks and keys in her hand.
On that moonless night, on that unlit country road, she didn’t see the little hatchback with the young family inside pull out of their drive.
Her truck flipped and rolled down a slight hill. They said she died on impact, as did the family she hit, all but a boy in Sophie’s grade. Only a toddler at the time, he was adopted by a local family, one I knew well and saw often. Seeing his face kicked the wind out of me every time.