Page 21 of Moonshine Lullabies

“Ah-huh.” I heaved a big sigh of my own and he waited, cringing.

Finally, he asked me, “You’re not gonna yell?”

I wanted to, boy howdy did I want to – but I’d lost my cool last night and he didn’t need more of that.

“I might yet, hold on.”

I read over the letter from the school, tellin’ me I’d need to pick him up an hour after school ended the rest of the week, that he’d be missing the bus to serve his in-school detention.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a breath.

“An’ just how am I supposed to do that with no car?” I muttered. I lit off in a string of cursing in Cajun French and looked at my boy.

“What made you lose your cool?” I asked and most of the house had fallen quiet, watchin’ our interaction. I didn’t much like bein’ the center of attention like that, and Tater sure didn’t either as he squirmed in front of me.

“It was that kid Tommy,” he finally confessed. “He had a bunch a shit—” I raised my chin and he flushed and said, “Sorry, stuff, to say about our door gettin’ kicked in last night and me hiding like a – sorry again, Mamma but I’m just tellin’ you what he said. He said hiding like a pussy to let my mommy fight for me, so I popped him right in his mouth.”

The men around us put up a cheer, and I hollered, “Alright, now! That’s enough! Knock it off!”

“An’ so you hit him in front of the teacher?” I demanded.

“Yeah.” He hung his head.

“I say goddamn, boy, you gotta be smarter den dat!”

He flinched and looked about ready to cry. I sighed and told him exactly what I thought.

“You had every right to pop that little cocksucker in the mouth but you need towaitan’ do it where you ain’t get caught! Then he runs and tattles,he’sthe snitch!”

I was surprised to see Cor, a teacher, nodding her head, and thought to myself,well, alright. She ain’t bad. She passed the vibe check…

“I don’t know how I’m gonna make the rest of this week happen,” I said, huffing a sigh. “I gotta work, and—”

“Relax!” J.P. called. “We’ll figure it out, we always do,” he said and I couldn’t help but throw up my hands.

“No,Ifigure it out, J.P.! An’ right now, this is a little beyond me!”

“I’ll get you to work,” Collier said from where he sat at the dining room table. “I assume Cy is on whatever list there is to get Tate from the school?”

“Yeah,” Tate piped up when I just stared at Collier wordlessly.

“Alright then, we all here… can we agree that we look out for our brother, that he gets his ass to his nephew’s school on time every day to pick him up and bring him home the rest o’ the week?”

The guys all looked from one to the other and nodded. “I’d say you just took us to church on this Col, and it’s a good call.” Lenny rapped his knuckles against the coffee table in the living room and I sighed.

“See, it’s all good, Honey. Just breathe.”

I nodded and turned back to the onions I was working with, to get ‘em peeled.

“So… we cool?” Tate asked.

“Your homework done?” I asked.

“All except my reading,” he said.

“Well get that done and we’ll be cool,” I told him.

“Yes, Mamma—” and that’s when Corliss jumped in and asked him what his reading was.

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