Page 15 of The Night the Lights Went Out
Rufus got there first and I was glad, because if anybody could catch Will and not get killed trying, it was Rufus. Except it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to. Rufus caught my dumb brother, but his foot stepped on the bottom of the jug just as he put his arms out. There was a big whoof of air from Will or Rufus, or maybe it was from me because I was so relieved my brother hadn’t broken his worthless neck. But then Rufus lost his balance because of that crockery and he fell backward with Will in his arms, landing right on top of that pitchfork.
“Pa!” Lamar was the only one of us who could move. The rest could only watch the slow stain of red as it poured out Rufus’s side into the dark clay of the ground.
Lamar was punching Will on his arm, trying to push him off of Rufus, but Will’s eyes were closed, a soft snore coming from his mouth. I ran over and kicked him much harder than I probably needed to, but I was scared and angry and I wanted to hurt him as bad as Rufus was hurt.
Throw-up bubbled into the back of my throat, the stink of blood making me think of the hog butchering we did every October. I’d stay up in my room with my head under the pillow so I couldn’t hear the squealing of the pigs, but I could still taste the blood that seemed to paint the air red.
Will fell on his face in the dirt and stayed there. Lamar was crying and trying to wipe his daddy’s face with his shirt, but Rufus didn’t move, just lay there with blood bubbling between his lips, then dripping down his cheek. I glanced over at Harry, who’d fallen out of the saddle and was trying to stand. I wasn’t getting any help there.
“Jimmy! Go run and get Mama and tell her Rufus is hurt bad and needs help.”
He stared at me like I’d lost my mind, but that was because he probably wasn’t thinking of before, when Mama was still herself and had once set Harry’s broken arm and stitched a cut in Jimmy’s cheek when he’d fallen from a tree trying to study a hawk’s nest. She’d known doctoring stuff.
“I’m getting Daddy,” he said, not waiting to see if I wanted to argue. He ran toward the fields, red clay dust puffing out under his feet like time was chasing him as he kept his hand over the tadpoles, the binoculars clinking against the Mason jar’s side.
“Hey, you, up there. Curtis!” I shouted as I looked up.
Curtis stuck his head over the edge of the haymow, looking like he was hoping I’d forgotten he was there. Or what he’d done. “Go get your mama and tell her a man’s hurt bad and she needs to come quick.” The words got stuck in my throat for a second, and I hoped he didn’t notice that I wanted to cry because I was scared. Scared that Rufus was hurt so bad he couldn’t be fixed. And Lamar was making that awful choking sound as he kept wiping his daddy’s face as if that would do any good at all.
Curtis slowly turned around and disappeared for a few moments as he climbed down the ladder. It took him so long that I wanted to rush into the barn and grab at the back of his overalls and yank him down so I could punch him in the face a hundred times like I’d once seen Harry do to Will.
“Run!” I shouted at him. “Run fast and get your mama or your daddy or anybody else who can come help!”
He smiled at me, and it was like a winter wind had just blown through me, front to back. “Do it yourself,” he said, then turned his back on me and poor Rufus and Lamar and walked just as slow as he could toward the woods that sat at the far end of the cotton field.
My head hurt I was thinking so hard, and I was just about to leave Lamar so I could go find someone when I heard Jimmy shouting. He was coming from the direction of the house, Daddy close behind, and I near fainted with relief. Daddy must have been home for supper, which was how he got there so soon. Right behind him were two more field hands, and I had to bite my lip hard not to start bawling.
Daddy told Jimmy to run for the doctor as they brought Rufus to the kitchen table and laid him on top, while I ran to the pretty front bedroom to go get Mama. She sat in bed, leaning against the lacy white pillows that she was so proud of because they’d come with her trousseau from Savannah, and Bobby sat in the rocking chair next to her, reading.
I was running to and fro, telling her what had happened and that she needed to come quick to help, but she just sat there with a frown as if she didn’t know who I was or what I was saying. Finally, she reached for my hand and gave it a soft squeeze, and I saw the opened medicine bottle on her night table, the little dribble of dried brown liquid in the corner of her mouth like she wasn’t using a glass to drink it anymore.
“You’ll be fine, Alice,” she said with a voice full of sleep. She was the only one who ever called me by my real name. “You need to learn how to tend to people on the farm, and I’d say now is as good a time as any.” Her finger pointed to her large armoire as if moving her whole hand was too hard. “My medicine box is on the bottom, with old linens you can use for bandages.” She lay back against the pretty white pillows and closed her eyes.
Bobby helped me pull out the box and carry it down to the kitchen, which I hardly recognized. There was blood everywhere—on the table, on the men, on poor Lamar, who was still making those awful sounds. A red smear shaped like a hand was on the middle of the icebox door, a single bloody footprint right in front but facing the wrong way.
“Mama’s not coming,” I said as I began to unroll an old bedsheet. My voice warbled like a baby bird’s, which I figured was better than crying. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this, but Mama said to bring—”
Daddy put a large hand on my shoulder. “Rufus doesn’t need it now, Sugar.”
“But he’s hurt. It was the pitchfork. He—”
“I know. But it’s too late. He’s already gone.”
I blinked up at him and then at the table. Lamar had stopped crying and was holding his daddy’s hand like he wanted to go wherever Rufus had gone. Blood puddles slowly tiptoed to the edge of the table before falling over the edge in tiny drips. It was so quiet in the kitchen that each drop on the floor sounded like a shout.
“It was an accident.” Harry stood in the doorway, his face whiter than a cotton boll. There was vomit on his shirt and I could smell the moonshine, but nothing was stronger than the smell of copper that covered my mouth and tongue.
“It was an accident,” Harry said again, as if saying it again would make it true. His eyes met mine and I knew he was sending me a warning.
I looked over at Lamar, because he’d been there, too, and seen what I’d seen. His eyes were red and his face wet with tears, but all he did was give a little shake of his head, then turn away, studying hard at his daddy’s hand like he was praying for it to move again.
Daddy looked at Harry, then back at me, his cheeks heavy, and he seemed a lot older than when I’d seen him that morning at the breakfast table. “It was a sad and tragic accident,” he said to the back of Lamar’s head.
I looked at the faces around me, trying to understand something I couldn’t. I didn’t know much, but there were two things I knew for sure right then and there: that truth was as sticky as molasses, and I was never going to be a little girl again. That part of my life had ended the minute Rufus had decided to go to the barn to see if he could help.
I ran from the kitchen, my elbow knocking the tadpole jar from the edge of the counter as I left, the sound of shattering glass following me out the door.
Six
