Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells Read Free Book Online Page A

with their full sweet smell, smashed on the ground.
    Mama yelled out, Bay, that’s enough! Leave him alone!
    He turned on her and said, Get away from me before I knock you upside the head too!
    She went on back up to the porch. She was wearing that blue printed-cotton housedress, the one with the flowers that looked like bluebells.
    He busted me in the eye, knocked one of my teeth loose, and did something to one of my ribs. I don’t know if the rib was broke, no doctor ever looked at it. But I couldn’t take a deep breath for weeks without hurting. If I coughed, I near-bout fainted with the pain.
    I don’t care how much my four kids rile me, I never knocked loose one of their teeth. I never broke a one of their ribs. I hope they remember that when they get older. When they count up the things I did and didn’t do.
    I never gave the drinking a second thought. It was normal as eating in Pap’s house. Everybody in the state of Louisiana drank like that, far as I knew. Neverthought one way or the other when Mama used to take her “naps” in the middle of Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner. Never said to myself, Mama’s not napping, she’s passed-out drunk. Never even questioned it the time Pap peed on the goddamn radiator one night instead of in the commode, he was that juiced up. Piss-steam rising up everywhere, Mama leading him out of the room, and me standing at the edge of the door thinking, Maybe he did it to be funny.
    My Daddy drank his bourbon as far back as I can remember. Him and Mister Thibeaux used to sit back on the porch of the playhouse and tell stories and drink their highballs in those café glasses Pap bought wholesale by the case. The man was always proud as hell anytime he could get anything wholesale. Sometimes he’d end up with things he didn’t even need, just because he’d run across them wholesale. Bought fifteen cases of those little no-good triangle-shaped café napkins one time, just because he got a good deal on them at a restaurant sale. They were too tiny for napkins and he ended up making us use them for toilet paper.
     
    It was a few months ago when I was driving Vivi and the kids home one Sunday evening from Chick and Teensy’s that the drinking started crawling across my mind. Vivi and I were both pretty sauced and the kids were cranky and I was driving fast so we could get home. Must of swerved or something because someG.D. policeman pulled me over. I got out of the car to shake his hand before he even asked for my license.
    I said, Shepley Walker. What can I do for you, son?
    He paused for a minute, then he said, You Shep Walker? Mister Baylor’s son?
    Yessir, I told him, you got that right.
    He looked at my car, then down at his shoes.
    I said, What’s the problem, officer?
    He said: Oh, well…I guess there isn’t no problem. You know, your daddy got my brother a job with Wildlife and Fisheries. He’s been with them for eight years now.
    Is that a fact? I said.
    He nodded and said, Sorry I bothered you, Mister Shep. Have a good Sunday evening. And he walked back to his car.
    I got back in my car and all the kids said, Daddy, what happened? What’d yall do out there?!
    I said, Oh, it was a man wanting to talk to me about a dog, been having trouble catching up with me. Old podnah of mine.
    Vivi laughed. She said, Shep Walker, you just slay me.
    But Siddalee looked at me like: You liar, Daddy, you big liar.
    I don’t know why I’m thinking about these things—except I got some half-ass idea that if I think enough, I might be able to breathe better. This asthma is a old length of chain that wraps tighter and tighter around my chest every year. In the middle ofthe night when I wake up, it’s all these thoughts that fly at me like cats off the wall. Sometimes I have this dream where I just tell it all, and then this special-made vacuum cleaner comes and sucks all the crap out of my lungs. Stops me from drowning. Clean oxygen reaches deep in my chest like it hasn’t for so