Lime Creek by Joe Henry Read Free Book Online

again but hears nothing. Then the slow steady drip of a faucet as if it were nearly closed but not quite. He silently turns the knob and enters.
    A second door opposite him opens into the little boys’ room, and their light is on too. A haphazard trail of empty sneakers and formless garments flung everywhich way as if their erstwhile occupants hadn’t had time enough to discard them before taking their leave runs from the sink across the tiled floor and through the other door where two little naked bodies are cast up on what could be if he narrows his eyes marooned pieces of some recent and obvious shipwreck.
    Luke is turned upside-down clinging acrobatically to the foot of his bed so he seems to balance at just such an angle as to hang above the floor however precariously. His pillow hides the back of his head and his eyes are closed and his mouth open, but his breath makes no sound. His blankets are twisted up in his feet so one leg and buttock and one shoulder and arm are left uncovered.
    Whitney sprawls on his back clutching his blankets to his chest but his legs hang over the side with one foot resting on Lemon’s shoulder, who sleeps beneath him on the floor. Whitney’s eyes are closed too and as he breathes behind his pressed lips he makes a faint buzzing sound as if a honeybee were caught inside him trying to find a way out.
    Spencer closes the overhead light in the boys’ room so a flat pale wedge from the bathroom still shines across the floor. He places his hands under Luke and lifts him into the center of his bed, rearranging his covers and pillowso his dirty face and hands are all that are left exposed. And of course still smelling of little boys in his hair all mixed up with sage and raw soap and cherry and dog. When he lifts Whitney, he rolls over so Spencer has to lift him again to get his blankets out from under him. Whitney sighs and his buzzing grows still when he lies his head back on his pillow smelling exactly like Luke, an amalgam of sweat and claydirt and soap and sugarcherry, and his face and arms and hands are just as dirty.
    Lemon makes a sound when he yawns that’s like opening a door with hinges that haven’t been oiled in a long time, and as Spencer finishes tending to Whitney the dog’s tail beats happily against the floor. When Spencer finally turns from the bed he bends down and kneads Lemon’s muscular shoulders and neck so he lies his chin on Spencer’s foot until Spencer moves away, passing silently back through the bathroom and into the hall.
    When he returns, the dog has gone back to sleep too and both boys are in exactly the same positions as he had left them. He places a piece of notepaper on top of their clothes-bureau, which still has half its drawers open with garments and socks spilling over and hanging down. And a five-dollar bill that almost covers the one word that he’s printed on the paper in pencil. Tomatoes. Then heretrieves one of the little sneakers and places it on top of the money and the piece of paper so the soft breeze in the window curling the filmy curtains won’t blow them away. Tomatoes.
    Inextricably joined from then on, like the rewiring of dissimilar synapses that once touched together become fused so in the fabric of memory. Immutable, irrepressible and inviolable to everything except death. Tomatoes. Forever after inspiring images that have little to do with the nourishment of the flesh. But like everything else having everything to do with the feeding of the soul.
    Tomatoes.

SLEEP
    The barn was closed off to us the whole day of Christmas Eve, Luke says. Because Spencer, our father, would be working there no matter how cold it was. And I remember how small we were, Whitney and me, wrestling and tumbling over each other. And how Lonny, our older brother, was always the leader. And so we always wanted to do what Lonny was doing. And too, how Lonny seemed to have this patient kindness for us, the almost-grown shepherd to his tiny flock of half-wild