“Dale had hair like mine, you know?” Juna says. “He was smart too. But he had a softness he wasn’t inclined to outgrow. We worried for him, all of us.”
She tells us they had made their way, she and Dale, to the end of a row of tobacco when they saw the man coming. The road runs straight for a good long time, so they saw him when he was just something rising up out of the horizon.
“Which way had he come from?” Sheriff Irlene asks, sipping from her coffee and leaning back in her chair like she isn’t all too concerned with the answer. “Which way was he headed?”
“Come from town,” Juna says. “Headed toward the Baine place.”
I stare at Sheriff Irlene, waiting for her to say something more, to ask Juna how she knows he was headed to the Baine place. John Holleran said, when leaving me at my door and telling me not to worry, that Irlene Fulkerson was a sharp woman and would see to things. A man walking in the direction of the Baine place could have been walking to one of a half dozen places or more. But Sheriff Irlene says nothing. Instead she reaches across the table, pats Juna’s hand, and gives a nod so she’ll keep on with her story.
“That’s when Dale started tugging on my skirt and pointing,” she says. “He kept on, and the sun was good and hot, so I stopped my work, pulled off my sweater, and watched that man coming toward us.”
There on the southern slope, the air is warmer and drier than back home. The first mistake our daddy made was a lasting one. He built our house on the northern side of the hill. He built our house in the shadows, where the sun rarely falls and the winds are always at their worst. We spend our lives wearing damp socks and clothes that smell of mold because they never dry through and through, not even on the line, not even in front of the fire. Our fingers, cheeks, the tips of our noses, are always cold, all because we live in the shadows.
“The man kept coming,” Juna says.
Sheriff Irlene reaches for Juna’s hand again. “Don’t let it upset you,” she says because she must hear the same rise in Juna’s voice I hear.
Juna nods, takes in a deep breath as if to calm herself, and tells us the fellow was small. Not so tall, not so wide, and walked with a slouch. That’s true for most fellows who walk alone down our dirt roads. They have heads that hang, heavy shoulders, and caved-in bellies. Daddy calls them hoboes. He says they aren’t altogether bad because they bring news of things happening in other parts. Last fellow who came through told of storms so bad they lifted up whole fields and blew them from one state to another, blew red dirt to places where the dirt was once brown, and brown dirt to places were the dirt was once black.
“I thought to say hello, is all,” Juna says.
She craves news of places other than this one almost as much as she craves the feel of a man lying alongside her and his calloused hands moving across her belly. She doesn’t say this to Daddy and the sheriff, but I know.
The other thing Daddy says about hoboes, besides saying they sometimes carry news, is that Juna and I shouldn’t talk to them. That’s a job for the men and damn sure not his girls. Keep yourselves clear, Daddy is always saying.
When the fellow was within shouting distance, he called out to them. How you all doing today? You all got water?
Juna imitates the man’s voice as she tells us what he said. She holds one hand up to her mouth like she is hollering out across the road.
“But I remembered what you’re always saying, Daddy, and I didn’t say nothing back to that man. Only answered a question or two. Didn’t say nothing more.”
Juna looks in Daddy’s direction, but as quick as she does, he turns his head. Sheriff Irlene gives Daddy another look, a warning for him to stay put. He won’t be going anywhere near Joseph Carl until Sheriff Irlene hears the rest of Juna’s story.
Juna told the fellow he’d find water up there a ways and pointed off toward the sycamores growing along the far side of the road. Those trees throw a nice slice of shade the fellow could have walked in, but he didn’t. He crossed into the sun to walk closer to them. She told him he’d find the river on beyond those trees. But the fellow kept coming.
She didn’t recognize him as a Baine. He’d been gone for years, at least five. She sure didn’t recognize him. You’ll hear it before you see it, she told him, and he asked was it good cool water. And he kept on toward them, kicking at the dirt with his leather boots. He stirred up dusty clouds that moved closer with every step.
“He asked was that water deep enough to wade in,” Juna says.
“Joseph Carl asked you that?” Sheriff Irlene says. “He asked how deep was the water?”