What This River Keeps: A Novel

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE O f course the visit was something she was anxious to converse about. She'd waited months just to see Ollie and now he'd given her so many additional things to say about his new family. But at the moment Frank was outside messing around and she had no one to talk with. She sat at the table and relived the visit-what he'd said, what the little girl was wearing. She hadn't seen too many things she'd classify as miracles, but she was considering adding Ollie meeting Summer to her short list. Even though Frank had provided Ollie with strict instructions on how to re-fasten the chain after he headed back home, or wherever he was staying, as soon as he left Frank drove out there to make sure he'd done it correctly. In the headlamps' beams he studied it. Not exactly as he'd told him to do it, sure enough, so he unlocked the padlock and positioned it so it hung down, not up. Otherwise the key works might fill with rain and rust. That was his son right there: he could do some things, but nothing exactly right, and a lot of them wrong altogether. Redoing the lock gave Frank a chance to think about the mess Ollie'd walked into before Ethel got started. "Well, now I know why we haven't heard from him for a while," she said as soon as Frank walked through the door. It was late, but she hadn't even changed into her nightgown. "He's been involved with her all summer." Frank grunted to let her know he'd heard. He took off his cap and hung it by the door. He put Catfish up for the night in the corner of the kitchen. The pup sat down and looked around like he couldn't imagine why such an injustice had been done to him again. Then he spun around twice and lay down on the Indian blanket. "And I think he was really good with that little girl," she said, following him through the kitchen. Frank started up the stairs. "Didn't you see him with little Spring?" she asked. "He was really good." "Get changed. You need your rest. It's too late for us to be up talking like this any more tonight." "Oh, I'm fine!" she said, climbing up the steps. "But this means a lot to him! And to us, too. That was one thing I could tell about him tonight." He walked into their bedroom and turned on the bedside lamp. She met him there. "There's a name for his kind of girl, but I ain't gonna say it out loud," he said. "Frank! Where in the world you'd get that idea?" "She's a loose woman, is what she is, if you're gonna make me say it. And now she's lookin to pawn off her kid." 285 286 Greg Schwipps She smacked her hand on the dresser. "I can't believe you're saying this. She told us her baby came from someone else! She freely said that. And you don't want to know what I thought about how you treated her tonight." "Well then, how's that work?" He was seated on the bed, pulling off his boots. "So now he's got to raise it like his own? Pay for all its medical bills and whatnot?" "If he wants to, yes! And I think he should. He'd be a good father-I've always thought that. His time just came in a different way, that's all." "He's in over his head, the way he is. He won't stick with it long enough to finish the job, and then that girl's back out on her ass. With the way she looks, I'd say she likes it that way." Now Ethel removed her clothes, her hands snapping in anger at the buttons. "She's a pretty girl, and you saw that. Her and her baby both. They both have such pretty eyes. You better stop your talking like that." He hung his thin cotton shirt on the bedpost and said nothing. She stood staring at him for a while and then went across the hall to the bathroom and shut the door. The pipes shuddered like they always did when the sink started running. The older girl had been...