God's Country

And so it was that Bradley stood with her, not just at her mother’s funeral, but at Lupe’s. At least he looks good in a suit, she thought, as the little ladies from Lupe’s knitting circle came and clasped her hands, one after the other.

The morning after her car had broken down, he had unpacked his bag and made her breakfast, taken her to the mechanic and made sure the car was set to be towed and repaired, her work schedule rearranged, before he left her for the day. There had been no discussion. He was a force of nature, and she simply didn’t have the wherewithal to resist him.

Lupe had lingered for a few days, fading a little more each time Miranda saw her, like a morning glory at mid-afternoon. She seemed to brighten when Bradley visited, even working up a little energy to wink and flirt, but soon she disappeared to a place where even he couldn’t reach her. She went quietly, slipping out of life in the middle of a busy hospital afternoon. Miranda wasn’t with her at the time, she was with Rick, helping him with his release paperwork. His fever was over, the random infection cured with the miracle of intravenous antibiotics. Michael stood over her impatiently, waiting to take Rick home. They were both pestering her like four-year-olds, impatient to get out of that white, sterile place and back to the gritty world they knew.

Miranda’s pager went off. She checked it and took off running without a backward glance. She skidded to a stop in front of Lupe’s room. An angel-faced young nurse was sitting with Lupe.

“She went just now,” the nurse said to her quietly. “In peace. Would you like a few moments alone?” Miranda nodded mutely.

She noted it again, instantly, that difference between life and not-life. She held Lupe’s hand, but it felt now like the shell it was. She was gone, migrated back to where she’d started, this tiny sack of yellowed, waxy flesh uninhabited.

“Good hunting, Grandma,” she whispered. She didn’t stay long, just long enough to pick up Lupe’s few possessions – her eyeglasses on a ribbon, a small bottle of Grandma-scented powder. The tears didn’t even try with her this time. She was dried up, as dusty inside as the summer road to Paco Ano. Rick and Michael had alaready gone when she checked back on their floor, so she left and finished up her patients for the day, telling no one about Lupe.

After her last patient, she went to the Civic Center site. The suite of buildings – a new City hall, a large, modern theater, a library, and several other facilities – was going up fast. She could see its pretty bones rising, surprisingly graceful for a suburban administration building. She asked around among the construction crew, ignoring the whistles that followed her over to a small mobile trailer. Bradley was inside, bent over a set of architectural plans with several other weathered men in safety helmets and an attractive woman in a nicely tailored suit who was apparently the architect.

“Hey, darlin’ – wait for me one sec?” he said, ignoring the sharp elbows and sharper grins of his co-workers. She sat down on a lumpy couch in a corner and stared out the filthy aluminum window while he wrapped up his meeting. “Now if y’all will excuse me,” he drawled in his southernmost accent, “my lady awaits.” The crew shuffled out with frank glances in her direction while the woman shook his hand and left, pulling a pair of expensive sunglasses from her trendy handbag and climbing into a BMW. She made Miranda feel very much the blue-collar worker in her jeans and sneakers, her hair drawn back in its usual coated rubber band.

“So, scrumptious, what brings you here?” He sat beside her and stretched his arm across the back of the sofa. He leaned over to nuzzle her neck, but she put a hand on his chest.

“It’s Grandma. She died this afternoon.” He froze.

“Oh, lord. Poor Lupe. Were you with her?”

“No, they paged me after,” she said, omitting the fact that she’d been at the hospital, with Rick.

He hugged her tight. Miranda accepted it, but then got to her feet quickly, pacing the small trailer.

“How can you work in here?” she asked. “It’s so small, and dark.”

“Most of the time, I’m out there,” he said, pointing towards the site. “This is just so the plans don’t get so dirty we can’t read ‘em, and for meetings. Also, as foreman, I get to use the trailer instead of the honey bucket."

She looked at him blankly, then followed his gaze to the line of portable toilets just outside. “Honey buckets. Nice.”

“You all right?” he said, giving her a peculiar look.

“Yeah,” she said, digging at the hard, dark carpet with her sneaker. “She was ready.”

“What about you?”

“I’m never ready, but there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“How ‘bout I take you out for dinner tonight. And even, big step here, a movie.” She smiled. He was trying so hard. He was so kind.

“Sure. That sounds great.” He smiled back, pleased that she was letting him take care of her. “I’ll let you get back to work,” she said.

“Good idea. Those cretins will be making all sorts of lewd suggestions about what we’re doing in here.” He gave her a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. “I’ll be taking notes for later.” He winked at her. “Meet you at home.”

“Meet you at home,” she responded automatically. As they stepped outside, she suddenly turned to Bradley and wrapped her arms around his neck, giving him a huge kiss. Whistles and catcalls went up all across the site.

“What was that for?” he said, both surprised and a little bit pleased at her public display.

“Nothing at all,” she said, and strolled off. She might not always be certain how she felt about Bradley, but she sure didn’t want that lady architect to have any doubts as to what on this job site was not hers to touch.

Lupe’s funeral was both horrible and cathartic, in the way of most funerals. Nadine’s had been colder – she had fewer friends, was more isolated from her community, and it had shown in the lack of personal touches. Lupe’s was like a coffee klatch, with tears and laughter and gossip and unwanted advice thrown around all in roughly equal measure. One of Lacey Green’s homemade blankets was spread across the closed casket. It would be spread over her knees and buried with her after. No burning for Lupe, she wanted the feel of solid earth around her.

“You’ll still come by to visit us, won’t you, dear?” said little Yolanda Gomez. “And bring your young man,” she added, craning her neck to look all the way up at Bradley.

“Of course,” she said. “How’s your granddaughter’s knitting coming?”

“She’s doing well,” Yolanda said proudly. “She’s more patient than some little girls I know.” She gave Miranda a pointed glance. “Lacey is teaching her some special stitches.”

“That’s wonderful. Please tell her I said hello.”

Blind Marlena Perkins came by, her hand on her solid son’s arm. “You’ve met my little William, Miranda,haven’t you?”

“Little” William was well over 200 pounds, his suit jacket straining to close over his massive chest and belly. He rolled his eyes under his mop of wild black curls.

“Yes, many times. Good to see you, William. This is Bradley, I don’t think you’ve met.” The pleasantries continued for hours as what seemed like every single resident of Sunshine Gardens came by.

“She touched a lot of people,” Bradley murmured in her ear.

“They probably all owe her money and are happy that she won’t be around to collect.”

“Miranda!” Bradley laughed in startlement.

“You never played poker with her,” she replied meaningfully. He grew thoughtful and began scanning the crowd more closely, looking for signs of relief on the faces of the mourners. She turned away, hiding a smile. Sometimes he was so gullible.

But the smile faded as the mourners left. She sat down in the front row of chairs, slumped against Bradley.

“She was the last of my family,” she said quietly. “Now I’ve got no one.”

“You and me both, darlin’” he said, his cheek resting on her hair. “Gets tiresome, I’ll tell you.”

“What happened to your family, Bradley? I know you don’t have any, but you’ve never really said.”

“You want to hear about that? Now?”

“Yes. Please.”

He heaved a sigh and settled her more firmly into his shoulder. “It’s a pretty boring, pathetically cliched story, but you want to hear it. Well, like many southern white trash families, I had a momma who got pregnant with me when she was just fifteen. She married my daddy, a boy from down the street who went to the same high school, and they moved into some tiny shack and tried to make it. But there was too much responsibility and not enough money and not one single adult in the house. Daddy left early – I don’t remember him at all, and we never heard from him.”

“Like me, sort of.”

“Yes, sort of. At least your momma was in her twenties, and had her momma around to help out. My poor momma was on her own. Her parents threw her out when they found out about me, and refused to help her at all. They died a few years later, cancer I think, I don’t really know. But they left the little they had to my momma’s older brother. Who later died in Vietnam.”

“So it was just you and your Ma.”

“Yes, for awhile. She got a job at a sugar mill and made enough to get us by.”

“Who took care of you?”

“Neighbors, sometimes, but a lot of times, I was alone.”

“Oh my God.”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t the only one like that, by any means. By the time I was six, there was a whole gang of us little kids used to run around the streets during the day. But we weren’t alone that long. My momma, she was young, and lonely. She had boyfriends. Some of them moved in, and some of them even sort of took care of me. One of them got her pregnant again. I had a little sister for awhile. Precious, pretty little thing she was. Amanda.” His face grew tight. She said nothing, letting him take his time.

“One night, one of the boyfriends, not her father, another guy, got drunk and smacked her across the room. She hit her head on the sharp edge of a countertop and her brains spilled out all over the floor. I was fourteen, and I beat the living shit out of him – put him in the hospital.”

“She died,” Miranda said, feeling tired.

“She did indeed. And I went to juvenile hall for three years. My momma committed suicide while I was in there.”

“That’s…awful.” She put her hand on his thigh, feeling his warmth through the wool of his pants. “What was it like, in juvy?”

“Shit, darlin’, that’s not a story for pretty ears to hear. Juvy in rural Louisiana ain’t no joke. It was rough, and I didn’t exactly come out of there with a college-ready education. But I did have a lot of time to myself, and the library was mostly unused. I read a lot. That’s about all I want to say about it.”

“Were you angry with your mother?”

“Not much point. She was just a poor, messed-up little girl.”

The afternoon light faded around them, shafts of mote-filled sunlight striking to the floor.

“Do you have any regrets?”

“I used to think I regretted not killing him. But now I don’t think that’s true. I’d never have my life now if I had done that, and his piece of trash of a life was not worth mine. But I do have a regret. I wish, with all my heart, that before any of that ever happened, I had taken my little sister, and run.”