In the Woods, Bears

Chapter 54 - The Blue of Her Eyes

Jeremiah sat at their kitchen table, adding every option to his bowl of oatmeal; brown sugar, pecans, cinnamon, butter, and cream. Next to him, her Mom looked wan and disinterested in breakfast. She had not slept well, and there were puffy purple patches under her eyes. Pressing the back of her hand against her mouth, her mom said, "I keep seeing it in my head. I dreamed about what she did all night. The way she separated one of his finger bones." When Kennedy offered her some breakfast, she shook her head no. Nan was still sleeping.

"His remains shouldn't have been put in the dirt," Jeremiah explained. "It's against custom to put a body in the ground. Honestly, around here, it's technically illegal." He reached over and placed his hand on her mother's wrist. "I know it's hard to understand for an outsider. Fire cleanses, and sets free the soul." He shrugged. "Putting bones in the ground is asking for ghosts. She shouldn't have buried him in the first place. It was disrespectful to his memory."

"Boy, I lived here for the first eighteen years of my life. I know where bones go." Her mom pulled her wrist free of his touch with a scowl. "You've never buried a husband and longed for the echo of a ghost. What do you know about a woman's grief?"

He raised his hands in surrender before tucking back into his breakfast. Since they had gotten up, he'd been downright chirpy after she'd agreed to go meet his mother and tell her about the baby. Jeremiah had the day off. The idea of leaving Nan and her Mom alone was making Kennedy uneasy. Last night, after Nan went to bed, the guys tried to explain what his mother had done. Something about Terry's mom, trying to make things right.

Tilting her head, her Mother stared in her direction. "She popped it in her mouth like a peppermint."

"What?" Kennedy sprinkled cinnamon on her breakfast.

"The bone. She swallowed it."

*

"Her place is out a ways." His car rattled down the narrow dirt road. They had the windows rolled down because his air conditioning didn't work. The breeze sent her hair in every direction. Tugging the elastic hair tie from her wrist, she pulled the tangled mass of her hair back behind her head into a messy ponytail. The landscape was hilly and speckled with stands of trees and empty fields. She watched the shoulder of the road for deer, even though it was well past sunrise. Lazy cows meandered behind long strands of rusting barbed wire nailed to wooden posts. "I don't want you to expect anything fancy. I grew up in a simple way."

With a shake of her head, she said, "You don't need to worry. After my dad died..." She shrugged her shoulders, "We had to make do." Kennedy slid her hand out the window to feel the wind against her palm. Fingers together, she cut through the stream of air as if her hand were a bird sailing through a storm.

"Red and I have been saving to get her a new roof. She can't see very well, but the stains on the ceiling bother me." He turned into a rutted driveway, and aimed the car into the grass, forking away from the drive.

A large blue tarp covered the left-hand section of a beat-down trailer's roof. Next to it, a Chevy with four flat wheels listed sideways in the yard. Startled out of the weeds, a rooster flapped away as they pulled to a stop. Jeremiah flexed his hands on the steering wheel. "I should tell you something."

"Okay." Kennedy rolled up her window to make sure that she wouldn't find a chicken in her seat after the visit.

"Our family wasn't special. We were like many people around here, who had to work very hard for very little." He took a breath. "And my dad didn't work a whole lot." He nodded toward the house. "My ma used to walk four miles toward town to get to her shifts at Alderson's. They were only open four days a week back then."

Kennedy pulled the elastic from her hair and combed her fingers through the tangles. "We survived on my mom's disability for years."

"So you know what it's like. Back then, the suppression medicine came from overseas and it was expensive. Our family couldn't afford it. Her sister, Red's mom, lived with us. When my daddy got Red's mom pregnant, they didn't have a proper safe room." He pointed to a ramshackle shed tucked at the tree line. "They used to chain her in there at night. She didn't make it. My Dad had the whole, father, mother, ratio thing turned around. He was selfish and cruel." He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. "My mom was stuck, but she wasn't stupid. She knew she had to provide for not just me, but Red too, so she started harvesting Pillar's Weed. It has these tiny blue flowers, and if you consume enough of them, you won't change. Which might sound good at first."

Reaching over, Kennedy rested her hand on his thigh as she listened.

"But it's poison. Taking it keeps you in skin, but it steals things from you. For my mom, it took her eyesight. She sees some light and shapes, but even that is limited."

"Is your dad in there too?"

"No. He's been gone a long time. He was jealous in a way that got him killed."

He placed his hand on top of hers. "I just wanted you to know, before we go in."

*

His mom had once been pretty. She had high cheekbones, an elegant throat, and a smile that came easily at the sound of her son's voice as he led Kennedy into her house. The milky blue of her eyes bled into the white. "You should have told me you were coming," his mother said as she hugged him fiercely.

"I have someone I want you to meet, Ma."

"I can smell her."