How the Soul Sings

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

“The problem with that boy,” Evee started about Daniel, trying to console my aunt Loraine. “is that he wants to have it both ways and he cain’t. He wants to be respected like a man, but he done want anybody to hold him to actin’ like one.” This was right after the whole business of my aunt Loraine trying to cut down the bullet from above Daniel’s bed.

Like I said, he holed up in his room for a few days, but then he eventually got over it and came out again, but just not as social. Everyone had started to tip-toe around him because you didn’t want to upset him again and nobody was entirely sure of what would set him off again. He’d become moody and easily irritated since the whole bullet incident; kinda like he was before, when he first came back home. Just when we all thought that after he’d been home nearly a year and that he had pretty much rejoined the family and settled into the goings-on of everyday life around here again, it was painfully obvious that things were still very touchy with him.

Me being twelve, I didn’t know of any other way to interact with him and just did what I had always done around him and well, Evee was Evee. Meanwhile, Momma and Aunt Loraine walked on eggshells around Daniel. Interestingly enough, it was Evee and I, who didn’t change a darn thing about how we were with Daniel, and that seemed to annoy him the least.  It was weird. Daniel gave you the opposite of what you expected. You gave him what you figured he wanted and got no-where with him. However, Evee wouldn’t ever dream of changing for anyone and she really didn’t need to. She was never rude, always honest and you always knew where you stood with her because of that. And again, me just being twelve, I just kept on being me around Daniel, too.

However, Evee wasn’t going to stand for Daniel’s cold shoulder toward his momma and mine for too much longer.

“You done, yet, Mr. Daniel?” Evee says to him one morning.

“Huh? What?” He says back to her.

“All this not speakin’ to yo momma non-sense, it got to go. You can be hurt all ya want, but you draggin’ it on like this is jus’ bein’ mean to yo’ momma.”

“Speak to her about what?” Daniel was defensive. “She doesn’t even talk to me like I’m an adult anymore. Everyone acts like my brain turned to mush; I can still use that, it’s my legs that I can’t.”

“It’s ‘cause you take ev’ry thing so personal. NO ONE can talk to you anymo’, boy. You ever thought about that? You bein’ like you is, ain’t jus’ hard on you, son.”

Daniel said nothing; he couldn’t argue with it, because it was true.

Then shortly after is when the tornado came.

It happened on the afternoon of the Thursday a week before my brother and Caesar were supposed to show up in Texas to be drafted into the Army for Vietnam. It came swiftly and with magnificent force. Momma and Willa Jane spotted it about a mile off while out in the pasture with the goats. Momma sent Willa Jane runnin’ toward the house to call her son and daughter to tell them to get down into their basement, then gather the rest of us up from inside the house to hurry on down into the root cellar out back. It was just before you reached the flower garden. Momma stayed behind to herd all the goats into the barn with the horses. I helped Evee get down into the cellar as we waited for my Momma.  Moments later, she joined us, grabbing one end of Daniel’s wheelchair, while Jesse grabbed the other, awkwardly carrying it down the steps with him in it.

We all sat anxiously in the dark of the underground and waited. Willa Jane and Evee began praying and I felt Evee grab a hold of my hand, silently telling me that I needed to join them, then I reached out and grabbed Willa Jane’s. It didn’t take very long for the sounds of the tornado and all its destruction over head to drown out the sounds of our whispered prayers. I wondered in that moment if God could even still hear us, but miraculously, I felt safe as long as I had Evee’s hand in mine.