Falling to Earth by Kate Southwood Read Free Book Online Page B

around, just spun around in the same place he had left it parked there on the driveway between the sidewalk and the garage. It had stopped him cold when he’d finally seen it, the one funny thing he’d seen all day, and he’d felt the ache it left in the bottom of his stomach and stared a while before he went up the walk to the house, where he stopped again when he saw the sheeted bodies laid out along the front porch. Not yet, not yet. He’d thought he was prepared for that; he’d known they would be there as they were on the other porches he’d passed on his way home, lined up tight, like matchsticks. Paul had closed his eyes then in resignation, knowing as he suddenly did how Mae and Lavinia had been occupied since he’d kissed them in the yard.
    By the time he’d walked into the house, he’d had the last of the day’s bad surprises and was able to look at the group of people gathered in his living room as if he’d been expecting them, because he had been. He had been certain Mae and Lavinia would offer up every extra bed, every chair, every inch of floor for people to sleep on in his absence. Now they were there with their bundles stacked in neat piles in the corners of the room, waiting, polite as invited guests, for him to come home before they spread out all over the floor for the night. The problem of it, Paul had thought, closing the front door slowly behind him, lay in how to greet them. How does a man greet people he’s known all his life when they’re standing in his house because they’ve lost something, lost everything perhaps, and he has not. How do you stop the black joke entering your head,
Welcome folks, sorry about the electricity and the stiffs
, and get past them all without their feeling they have to thank you, because all you want to do now is to get behind a closed door with your own family. How do you look at neighbors and former schoolmates when you know that, tomorrow morning, they’ll be buying wood from you for coffins.
    There had been no way of knowing what he was looking at when he’d finally turned and met their eyes; a child without a brother, a man without his wife, a woman without her child? What could he say to them, now that happy commonplaces were impossible, now that
That boy of yours has sure shot up
had become
Where is your son?
In the end, it had been a statement and not a greeting that was spoken first, and he’d realized to his shame that what was unpleasant for him was impossible for them. It was Vida Long who’d spoken first, who’d come toward him to take his bandaged hands in hers and had simply said, “You were at the school.” He’d looked at her eyes, swollen, red, long past crying now and seen that she’d found a way to thank him without saying the words, and that what she was thanking him for was not the roof over their heads. She was a tiny woman, a few years younger than Mae, and knowing then where her children were, he’d thought,
Now she’ll always look older
. But standing there with her tender hands holding his, wearing the same navy-print work dress she’d had on when the storm hit, she had seemed to tower over him somehow, humbling and magnificent, holding in all there was now to hold inside her.
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    It’s past midnight now. Outside, it’s still. Maybe no more so than any other chill night in early spring before the windows can be left cracked open and the sounds of insects and birds can come into the house, but it feels unnaturally quiet, as if the storm’s roaring voice has frightened everything into silence. Inside it’s hushed. The occasional sounds that reach them from the rest of the house are the sounds of stifled grieving, and are hard to bear. The children’s eyes have finally closed. Time to peel them off Mae, put Ellis and Little Homer to bed on the floor, and Ruby in with Lavinia in the next room. Suddenly, Paul wants to wake them