Page 104 of Everything Under the Sun

After three T-shirts, Thais decided she liked the plain white one on me best. And because she liked it best, so did I.

She gave me the grand tour after the fitting, telling me about the sheet she’d found in the bathroom closet, and on the way back to the living room she waved her hand about the floor where the cigarettes lay, and she told me about how they were good for bartering. I already knew this but didn’t say a word. I just smiled, privately in awe of her.

She took me into the kitchen where she cheerfully flung open the cabinets to show me where everything was stored. Though it wasn’t much, and the emptiness of the cabinets dwarfed the items, everything was set in a neat row as if on display in a grocery store. And then she opened the cabinet underneath the sink, climbed her little body halfway in—I glimpsed the soft flesh of her round butt through the fabric of her dress—oh dear God, I’m gonna fall over dead if I don’t do something—so she could get to the hidden stash of pills and bottles of Crown Royal.

Finally, when she shuffled me out the back door with my clothes and the frustration between my legs, I couldn’t get to the pond fast enough—and bathing was the last thing on my mind when I got there.

By the time I made it back to the cabin, I felt somewhat better, but to see Thais flit around the kitchen in that sheer flowered dress that hung to her knees, I realized I had a serious problem. Of course, she could’ve been flitting around in a thick wool nightgown buttoned up to her throat and that serious problem would be the same.

“Did you check the line while you were out there?” she asked, setting a bowl of freshly picked salad on the counter in front of me.

“No, but I will in a few minutes. And I’m going to take the snare wire and set out a couple traps, and then after that I’ll probably gather some more wood, and then—.” I stopped and held up a finger. “No, before I do anything I’m getting rid of the bones on the porch.”

Thais frowned.

“I think you should leave him,” she said; she brought her fingers together in front of her, coiling them.

“Leave him? Why?” I looked at her, puzzled.

Thais shrugged her small shoulders.

“I found his wife and son buried beside the house,” she said. “I don’t know…I just, well I just think that if he wanted to be buried, or if he wanted to be dead beside them then maybe he would’ve killed himself beside them.”

I licked the dryness from my lips and ran a hand over the top of my damp hair.

“Thais,” I said after a moment, “I’m going to bury him. You don’t need a reminder outside, just a hair away from a window.”

Thais sighed. “I’m asking you to leave him.”

She came toward me, reached up and touched my face. “He wanted to see the woods,” she said. “Maybe he used to sit there every day, watching his wife and son playing in the small patch of grass in the front yard. Maybe that spot in that rocking chair was the place that never failed to give him peace, and if you take him from it and put his body in the cold ground, shutting out the sun that once warmed his face, you’ll take away the only peace he made sure to take with him when he left this world.” Her fingers grazed the side of my neck. “Please, leave him. For me.”

I thought about it. I didn’t like it—and it bothered me how little it bothered her—but I gave in.

I walked away, heading for the back door.

“Atticus?”

I stopped in the doorway.

“I’ll leave him on the porch,” I said, and my bare feet went into motion again.

“But where are you going?”

I was already down the steps when she ran out onto the porch.

“To check the line,” I called out, and then slipped around the side of the house.

36

ATTICUS

There was no fish on the line and the crickets were gone. I came back with a turtle.

“I won’t eat a turtle.” Thais looked as though I’d offered her a puppy. “I’ll eat just about anything to survive, but never a turtle. They’re harmless, defenseless, and slow—surely it doesn’t make you feel like a man to run down a turtle and expect me to eat it, Atticus Hunt.” She was truly beside herself over this.

I just stared at her, blinking; the little turtle wedged between my fingers and thumb, its yellow-and-black speckled legs moved back and forth as though it thought it was still on the ground; its long head, quite small and cartoonish-looking with beady black eyes and an animated little mouth, smiled up at me.

“Atticus, it breaks my heart! I can’t do it! I won’t do it! Give it to me!” She took the turtle from my hand, named it George and set George free in the yard.

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