The bell rang and the double doors opened and children filed out in lines with teachers leading the way and some loaded onto buses and others crossed the street and made their way home along the sidewalks. Other children walked to the end of the breezeway to where the cars were lined up and one by one they disappeared into backseats. Every day he had to wait for Annalee to appear. She told him that she didn’t like going out with everyone else. That she wanted to wait until they were gone. When the crowd thinned and the cars and buses moved out into the street the double doors opened again and a woman with glasses held the door while Annalee walked out with her arms folded and her steps careful. She looked up and down the breezeway and when she was satisfied she looked across the street and Russell waved to her and then he cranked the truck and drove over to pick her up.
She tossed her backpack in first and then she climbed in and he said hey and she asked if they could go get a milk shake. They drove down Delaware Avenue and stopped at the Star Drive-In and she got banana and he got chocolate and then they drove out to Mitchell’s where he planned to let her out and then use every minute of daylight to paint as much as he could. Mitchell and Consuela and Maben were sitting in chairs in the backyard shucking corn and dropping the husks into silver bins. He looked out into the backyard and noticed that the statue of the Virgin Mary was draped in a white sheet and he asked her what that was about. It’s a ghost, she said. A big white ghost. For Halloween. Consuela tied two sheets together. You mean sewed two sheets together, he said. Sewed, she repeated. He nodded and told her he’d be back later and she got out of the truck with her milk shake and she shut the door. She ran a few steps but then she stopped and turned around and waved at Russell.
He had hoped that his father would understand in the way that his father had asked him to understand Consuela and he had. I want them to stay out here over the barn but I’ll pay the bills, he’d said. Fine, Mitchell answered. But it ain’t gonna be easy. I know, he’d said. But she’ll be up and going good before long. And then it’ll be better. And that was as much as they had talked about it. Mitchell fished with Annalee and drove her around the place on the tractor and Consuela had tried to make her a dress once or twice though success was still on hold. Maben moved from chair to chair. Dizzy often. But not as often as before. Beginning to help in the kitchen. Learning from Consuela. They all ate dinner most nights out at his father’s place and then they would sit on the back porch and take turns reading with the child while the nights fell cool around them. After the reading and the sitting were done Maben and Annalee would say good night and walk out to the barn and up the stairs and Consuela would take her slow, melodic walk out into the backyard and around the Virgin Mary and out to the pond. She would touch Mitchell on the shoulder as she would return and then she would go inside and Russell and Mitchell would have a bourbon or two before calling it a night. If someone were watching them from the road there would seem nothing peculiar about this collection of people.
He finished the milk shake as he drove back to town. The house he was painting was in his neighborhood and he stopped in front and admired his work. A little sloppy on the window frames but nothing that couldn’t be scraped. Solid work on the trim. Nothing splattered on the roof as far as he could tell. He had planned to come back and put in another hour or two but the milk shake had weighed him down and he decided it could wait. He needed to stall some anyway until he could find another house to start on.
He put the truck in drive and he rode around town and like he did in nearly every empty moment he thought about Boyd. He had passed him on the road a couple of times and they had exchanged waves but that had been it. Sometimes at night as he lay awake he felt guilty over what he had asked Boyd to do. That if anything ever came about all the risk belonged to his old friend. But then he thought of Maben out in that black and silent country with her eyes shut and there was nothing to do but hope there would never be another word about it. He had heard something about the sheriff winding up retired after frustration with the case had reached beyond his limits and that seemed as good an omen as there was.