Bluebottle by James Sallis Read Free Book Online Page A

boy turns man, goes off to the city, he commences to talking like that."
    It was the closest thing to emotion I'd heard in her voice for years.
    "I called her, Lew," LaVerne said, stepping in from the kitchen. "I thought she should know. Welcome home, soldier."
    "It's okay," I said. "It's okay." I guess to both of them.
    "You're hungry, I have a meatloaf back there that just came out of the oven," Verne said. "Potatoes and turnip greens almost
     done."
    You could probably see it in Mother's eyes: Dinner at six in the morning?
    "We're not on the same schedule as most folks," I said. "Doesn't mean we're much, different from them." But of course it did.
    LaVerne stepped closer to Mother, probably touched her lighdy.
    "I hope you'll join us, Mrs. Griffin."
    Ignoring me the same way she ignored that we, Mother turned to LaVerne.
    "I'd be pleased to, thank you. Nothing I like better in the world than a mess of freshgreens."
    They started off together towards the kitchen, me trailing behind. Incredible smells. LaVerne had set the table (I soon discovered)
     with cloth napkins, wineglasses for water, her best dishes.
    LaVerne went to the stove to take things up. Moments later she set down a platter with meadoaf, ceramic bowls of roast potatoes
     and turnip greens cooked with fatback, plate of sliced onions, mason jar of chow-chow.
    I pulled Mom's chair out and she sat. Then I went around to hold LaVerne's.
    "Good to see some of how we brought you up has stuck," Mother said.
    "You just call me Mildred from now on, dear," she told LaVerne.

4
    H aving Mother around, I suppose, was no more difficult than learning to swim with cannonballs tied to each extremity. And
     there was something comforting about hearing again (and again and again) the mantras with which I'd grown up.
    Why is it you have to do everything the hard way, Lewis?
    Stubborn as your father was, I swear. Won't ever be half the man he was, though.
    Like we always told you, not that you were ever one to listen: Get your education first. Just look at you—don't even have
     your own place to live.
    Mother was someone who never allowed herself anger, never expressed her bottomless disappointment with life. You asked her,
     everything was alwaysfine. So the pain and despair had to squeeze its way out, and it did: everywhere.
    It was a long time before I admitted to myself how much I was like her.
    We broke the news about my not having an apartment gendy (You take the bedroom, we'll sleep out here, perfecdy good couch
     that makes into a bed) and had her installed with the door shut before she had time to object eidier that she couldn't put
     us out or that she wasn't about to sleep away this good day the Lord gave us.
    Around Mother, somehow the world turned into an endless chain of conjunctions and dependent clauses and qualifiers, just like
     that last sentence. You learned to keep your feet moving, grab a breath when you could.
    Verne in crinkly satin nightgown was asleep instandy beside me. I kept on underwear as a concession to company and lay listening
     to traffic, thinking about my father's death a few years back, about Hosie's sadness, about my son.
    I had an overwhelming desire for music just then. The overture to Don Giovanni would have worked. So would have Blind Willie's "Dark Was the Night—Cold Was the Ground."
    Seemed all my life, unaccountably, I'd been going from solitary existence to a house full of people and right back to alone.
     I didn't know then, of course, how adamandy that pattern would continue, how jumbled my life would be, the whole of its length,
     between private and public.
    A branch dipped towards the window, skeletal hand clutching at the life in here.
    With a start I realized I'd seen it. Watched as the branch bowed towards me. Watched as those fingers reached, scrabbled, and fell away.
    I'd seen it.
    I turned my head to watch Verne's body against the white wall as she turned from back to side tugging covers along.
    I was afraid to close my