34
The drive home was long and stinking hot, and Leon let the air conditioning lay ice down the length of his throat. He smiled as he drove through the marker to the entrance of the town – it still made his heart muscle about inside him to see those strange palm trees stretching up high and away, and beyond them and everywhere the dust that blew over the road, no matter how often the local fusspots swept it. He was hungry, the day had been long, but he’d talked to some kids at a school-leaving event and he had the feeling, just the feeling.
Parking up outside the house he gave thanks, as he always did, that he had this place to come back to. The porch light blinked on and he imagined Merle taking a final glance in the mirror, painting that red on to her mouth, smoothing her eyebrows before coming to the door to see him. As he rose out of the car, there was the faintest smell of yeast, bread or beer. For a moment he remembered the feel of dough, sugar browning, light in a copper pan. Then he closed the door and was back home where he could hear a dog barking a few streets away. He opened the boot and took out his Bag of Bibles, as his wife liked to call it. He rested it against his knees and touched it one extra time to make sure it was there. Then he closed the boot just as his wife opened the door, looking beautiful in blue as she always would. The wind fossicked up her dress and he watched her bat it down. He touched the closed boot of the car as well, to make sure he was still there.
‘Darl,’ she greeted him.
He went and held her round her narrow waist, standing on the step below so that he could inhale her from the body up. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, and some small whispering wind blew as a car engine started up and passed them by.