“How come Papaw is so quiet?”
Mama looked at me. “He’s like you,” she said. “Shy sometimes. But mischievous. You get those blue eyes of yours from him.”
“I’m not mischievous.”
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction
Liable To Be
I went to the front yard and yelled their names as loud as I could.
Chris first, then Joseph. Yown Road was quiet enough that it carried. A dog somewhere answered. A car went by slow. The driver stared at me through the open window.
Nothing from across the street.
I yelled again.
After a minute the door opened and Chris came out. He was my age and had a crew cut and sneakers that didn’t match. He crossed the street at a trot and stopped on the sidewalk in front of our yard.
“We can’t right now,” he said.
“Later?”
He shrugged. “If Mom lets us.”
He went back across the street and the door closed behind him.
The yard was a rectangle of grass between the sidewalk and the house. Ours was a small ranch style house with aluminum siding the color of old cream. The neighborhood was full of them, variations on the same theme — carports, chain-link fences. Down the block someone had a truck up on cinderblocks. Farther on, a woman was taking laundry off a line.
We passed nicer parts of Greenville on the way to Mamaw and Papaw’s. We didn’t live in those.
I went inside.
Arthur was on the living room floor, drawing. He had paper spread out and markers uncapped and was bent over something. He had a crinkly face and didn’t look up.
“Chris and Joseph can’t play,” I said.
He made a sound that meant he’d heard me.
I went to our room, my side of it, and got my cars out from under the bed. I had a bunch of them, small diecast things in different colors. Some with doors that opened and some that didn’t open. I arranged them on the floor in rows. Then I rearranged them. I put the convertibles in the front row.
I sold several cars that afternoon to people who came in and had specific requirements. One man needed something reliable. One woman wanted the red one and I told her it was a good choice for a long drive. A family came in and took a long time to decide. I was patient with them. When the car drove away, I watched it go and felt good about the sale.
Mama got home and started dinner. Pasta shells. Then Daddy came in through the back door, still in his work clothes, and set his keys on the counter.
“Hey, little man,” he said.
He changed out of his auto parts department shirt and came back with a flat box from the closet shelf. He set up at the kitchen table. Inside the box were plastic army men, small and yellow and frozen in their poses. There were bottles of paint no bigger than my thumb and brushes so fine they had a single hair. There was a tube of glue and a piece of cardboard for a palette and a shallow dish of water for cleaning the brushes.
I sat next to him.
He worked slowly. He held each figure close and painted it with his other hand steady, turning it, checking. He was making a battle scene on a stone base he’d started the week before. Sand and painted plaster for terrain. A ridge. A tree made from wire and dried plant stuff. He put the men in positions that suggested something about to happen.
“What’s that one doing?” I asked.
“Radioman,” he said. “Calling for support.”
“Will they help him?”
Daddy turned the figure to check the back of it.
“Depends,” he said. “The signal might get jammed.”
He set the radioman down in his place and picked up another one.
I watched him paint. The kitchen smelled like dinner and faintly chemical, not unpleasant. His face was calm, like when he was fixing cars or building something with wood.
“Daddy,” I said.
“Mm.”
“Can Chris and Joseph come inside next time we play?”
He looked up. “Ask your mama.”
Mama was in the hallway.
“Can Chris and Joseph come inside?” I asked. “Next time.”
She stirred something on the stove without looking at me.
“No.”
“How come?”
“We don’t know their parents,” she said. “And they don’t go to church.”
I went back to the kitchen and sat down across from Daddy.
He was painting a prone figure, a soldier lying flat, rifle extended. He held his breath when the brush was at its finest point. Then he let it out.
I watched until dinner was ready.
#
The house on White Horse Road was smaller than the last house we lived in. One story, close to the street. The road was loud, even when you were inside. Across, Tabernacle Baptist was dark and wide and imposing. The parking lot was empty. I could see the marquee sign from our front window.
It was nighttime. The streetlights on our part of the block flickered or didn’t work at all. When it got dark, it got dark completely.
Arthur was in our room reading. Mama was lying down.
She had been on the couch a lot lately. Not sick. Just there, her arm across her eyes sometimes, or looking at the ceiling with a face I didn’t understand. She said she was just resting. Daddy had been making our meals, which meant peanut butter and honey sandwiches. I didn’t mind.
Daddy was across the street at the church, talking to Dr. Winter. Dr. Winter had founded Tabernacle and was old enough that the church had grown big around him like a tree around a fence post. Daddy wanted to work for him. They talked a lot at night.
The spinet was against the wall in the living room. We always had a piano. We used to have an upright, this one was smaller. The keys were yellowed at the edges. Mama was the one who played. She read from sheet music, her posture straight, her hands moving to the notes on the page. Papaw made all his daughters learn piano.
“Mama,” I said.
She looked toward me but not at me.
“Will you play piano?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Mama.”
“Okay.”
She got up slowly and went to the bench. I brought the hymnal from the shelf and opened it and pointed to I’ll Fly Away. She played without saying anything, just reading the music, foot pressing and releasing the pedal. The sound filled the house and went into the walls. I sat next to her on the bench and watched her hands.
It was the only music I got to hear outside of church, except for Papaw’s guitar when we went to Asheville. He played a special way with a pick on his thumb.
“Play the boogie woogie song,” I said.
She looked at me, then at the keys. She set the hymnal aside and found a book of contemporary songs. Her left hand did something her right hand argued with. The whole thing moved faster than the hymns. It was loose and percussive. I watched her fingers. They knew where to go without looking.
When it ended, I asked for El Shaddai.
She found the sheet music and played it. It was slower than the hymns and had something in the melody that sounded sad. I didn’t know why I liked sad songs. Mama didn’t like them the way I did. They always made me feel better.
When she finished, she stood up and went back to the couch.
I stayed on the bench. I looked at the keys for a moment, then put my right hand on them and found the first note of El Shaddai. Then the next. I went through the melody slowly, one hand, fishing for the notes by ear, finding most of them.
“How do you know how to do that?”
Mama was looking at me from the couch.
“I watched your hands,” I said. “And I can hear it.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“That’s a gift,” she said. “You’re like your papaw.”
I played the first few notes again to see if I still could.
Someone hit the front door hard. Three times. Loud, like a fist, not sharp, like a knuckle. I jumped off the bench and backed away. Mama sat up.
A man’s voice outside, high and urgent.
“Hello? Somebody help. Please.”
Mama was at the door. She didn’t open it.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“My friend fell down a manhole,” the man said. “He’s hurt bad.”
“What do you want?”
“Please, ma’am. He fell down an open manhole. I can’t get him out. He’s hurt.”
“My husband isn’t home.”
“Please just call somebody. Please.”
Mama looked at me. I stood still in the middle of the room.
“Okay,” she said. “Hold on.”
She picked up the phone with the long cord and called 911. She told them what the man said and that she didn’t know if it was the truth. She told them she had small children and her husband was not home. She stayed on the phone. After a while she looked out the window.
“He left,” she said into the receiver.
She stayed on with them until the sirens came, then hung up.
We sat quietly in the house. The sirens got closer and then stopped somewhere on the street. Red and blue light came through the front window in slow sweeps.
After a while there was a knock at the door, different from before. Measured.
Mama looked out the window and then opened it. A policeman stood on the step, his car at the curb.
“Ma’am,” he said. “The man’s friend did fall. Open manhole, down the block. Broke his leg real bad. Compound fracture.” He looked past her, briefly, at me. “You did the right thing calling it in.”
“Is he okay?” Mama said. “It’s not a good area and I didn’t know what to do.”
“He’ll be alright.” He took out a notepad. “Your husband home?”
“He’s at the church,” she said. “Across the street.”
He wrote something down and asked a few more questions she answered in short sentences. Then he thanked her and left.
Mama closed the door.
She went back to the couch and lay down and put her arm across her eyes.
I went back to the piano bench and sat down. I didn’t play anything.
The red and blue light moved through the window a few more times and then it was dark again.
#
Mama did the easy crosswords so I could help.
She had the book open on the cushion between us, pencil in her hand, reading the clues out loud. She always waited for me to say something before she wrote anything down. Sometimes I had a word. Most times I didn’t. I was never right. She always filled it in and never made me feel bad.
The only times I got to sit close to her were when we did crosswords or when she played piano.
“Did you do crosswords with Mamaw?” I asked.
Mama looked at the page.
“No,” she said. “Mamaw was busy.”
“With what?”
“Everything,” she said. “Four girls. The house. Your papaw.”
I thought about Mamaw’s house, the one I knew. It was on a mountain in a nice neighborhood.
“Was your house big?” I asked. “Since you had three sisters and I only have one sister and one brother.”
Mama smiled a little.
“No,” she said. “It was a log cabin. Two bedrooms. One bathroom.”
“For all of you?”
“For all of us.”
I tried to make a picture of it in my mind.
“Where was it?” I asked.
“Candler,” she said. “Near where they live now. Deeper in the valley.” She looked at the crossword. “No neighbors. One road. The woods came right up to the yard. Just mountains around.”
“Did you like it?”
She paused.
“I didn’t know no better.”
She wrote a word in a box and scratched out a clue.
“Did Mamaw work?”
“No,” she said. “She kept the house and took care of all of us.”
“What did Papaw do?”
Mama tutted at the crossword.
“He worked,” she said. “He had a few different jobs back then.”
I watched her pencil move.
“How come Papaw is so quiet?”
Mama looked at me.
“He’s like you,” she said. “Shy sometimes. But mischievous. You get those blue eyes of yours from him.”
“I’m not mischievous.”
“Yes, you are.”
I thought about whether that was true.
“Have you ever seen him smile?” I asked.
“I’ve seen him smile plenty,” she said. “He’s funny when he wants to be.” Her face changed. “Daddy’s never said he loves me, though.”
“Not ever?”
“Not that I can remember.”
“Why not?”
She was quiet, staring at the crossword but not looking at it.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it’s hard for him to say. Some people are like that.” She found the next word. “Don’t mean he doesn’t.”
We worked through a few more boxes.
“Do you think Papaw loves me?” I asked.
She looked at me, then away.
“When I was a little girl,” she said, “I was playing in the yard one day. My Uncle Doug drove by real fast, but he waved at me.” She stopped. “He was the youngest, like you. Your papaw the oldest. Ten of them altogether.”
“What happened?”
“He got killed,” she said. “That same day. Somebody shot him and he died. He was just twenty-seven.”
I held my breath.
“Papaw has never been the same since that,” she said. “I never saw anyone so sad, much less my daddy. That’s the only time I ever seen him cry.”
I thought about Papaw’s face. I looked at it while he played guitar. I never knew whether he was sad or happy.
“Is that why he doesn’t let me and Arthur play with toy guns when we visit?”
Mama thought about it.
“Probably,” she said. “He hates guns.”
She looked back at the crossword. We finished it slowly. She just read the clues and filled in the words. When the last box was done, she closed the book and set it on the side table.
I tried to think of another question. Something she’d have to think about before answering. Something that would take a few minutes.
But I couldn’t think of anything.
“Go find Arthur,” she said. “I’m going to rest a little while.”
I went around the corner into the hallway and stopped. I looked back. Mama was lying on the couch, arm across her eyes.
The crossword book was on the side table where she’d left it, the pencil on top of it.
I stayed for a little while.
I didn’t want to go find Arthur yet.
Jonathan Daniel Gardner is a writer originally from the American South, who currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Disappointed Housewife, Identity Theory, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. He holds a degree in Creative Writing from The New School and is at work on his first novel, In Moon I Keep You. Find him on Instagram: @jonathandanielgardner