I pulled Kayla out and ran to the porch, to Pop and his lighter, bright as a lighthouse beacon as it flashed in the dark. I skipped the steps and leapt up to the porch, coming to a fast stop in front of Pop like the rabbits that creep around the house when the sun sets: eating, stilling, then running only to freeze again. Saying to me: So delicious, so delicious, but still, still, yes, I see you. Calling to one another: Run run run halt.
“Son,” Pop says, and grabs the back of my neck, his hand large and warm. My wrists feel raw. My mouth comes open and I breathe in. It sounds like a web of phlegm is in my throat. My eyes are burning and I shut my jaw and clench my teeth and try and try and try not to cry. I breathe again and it sounds like a sob. But I will not cry, even though I want to duck down with Kayla, want Pop to fold me in his arms and hug me to him, want to smash my nose in his shoulder so hard I can’t breathe. But I don’t. I feel his hand on me and rise on my toes so he presses harder. I can feel the heat of his fingers. He lets his hand run down my back to rest at the top of my spine, and I even imagine I can feel the whorl of his fingertips, the blood push back under his skin.
“Pop,” I say.
Pop shakes his head, gives my back a little rub.
“Go put your sister to sleep. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
Me and Kayla eat crackers and pimento cheese and some smothered chicken legs Pop got in a skillet on the stove, wash it down with water. I think about putting Kayla in the tub but then I hear the shower, and when I hear Mam’s and Leonie’s voices in the room and see Pop’s lighter flash on the porch, I know it’s Michael. Kayla lays her head on my shoulder, grabs my hair, rolls my curls around her finger like a noodle.
“Mam? Pop?”
Her breathing gets slow and then she’s slobbering on my throat and I know she’s asleep, but I don’t put her down because I’m looking at Richie, who’s looking at Pop, who’s looking out to the black yard, the far road. The boy’s face shows in fire, and I ain’t never seen that look before. Ain’t never seen somebody look at someone else like Richie looks at Pop: all the hope on his face, plain in the circle of his mouth, his wide-open eyes, the wrinkle of his forehead. He step closer and closer to Pop, and he’s a cat then, fresh-born, milk-hungry, creeping toward someone he’d die without. I lay Kayla down on the sofa and step out onto the porch. Richie follows.
“Riv,” he says.
Pop flicks his light, lets it die, and flicks it again.
“Riv,” Richie says again.
Pop pulls phlegm up his throat, spits off the porch. Looks down at his hands.
“It was quiet here without y’all,” Pop says. “Too quiet.” The lighter flame shows his quick smile, and then it’s gone. “I’m glad y’all back.”
“I didn’t want to go,” I say.
“I know,” Pop says.
I rub my wrists and look at Pop’s profile flare and fade in the light.
“Did you find it?” Pop asks.
Richie takes a step forward, and the look changes. Just a flicker. He glances between me and Pop and he frowns.
“The bag?” I say.
“Yeah,” Pop says.
I nod.
“Did it work? It’s a gris-gris bag.”
I shrug.
“I think so. We made it. Got stopped by the police, though. And Kayla was sick the whole time.”
Pop flicks the lighter, and the flame blazes for one half of a second, the fire bright and cold and orange, and then sparks out. Pop shakes the lighter by his ear and lights it again.
“Why can’t he see me?” Richie asks.
“It was the only way I could send a little of me with y’all. With Mam”—Pop clears his throat—“sick. And that being a place I can’t go back to. Parchman.”
Richie is inches away from Pop. I can’t even nod.
“See your face every day. Like the sun,” Richie says.
Pop pockets the lighter.
“You left me,” Richie says.
I slide closer to Pop. Richie reaches out a hand to touch Pop’s face and sweeps his fingers across his eyebrows. Pop sighs.
“You better watch out, boy. He used to look at me like that,” Richie says. His teeth are white in the black: tiny and sharp as a kitten’s. “And then he left me.”
I have to talk against the pockets of silence he creates whenever he speaks: the bugs shush for him with every word.
“Do she feel any better, Pop?”
Pop searches in his pocket for something and then stops. “Sometimes I forget. I forget I don’t smoke,” he says. He shakes his head in the darkness: I can hear the slide of his hair against the wall of the house he sits against. “She got worse, son,” Pop says.
“You was the only daddy I ever knew.” Richie’s voice was soft as a mewl. “I need to know why you left me.”
Richie is quiet. So is Pop. I slide down the wall and sit next to Pop on the porch. I want to lay my head on his shoulder, but I’m too old for that. It’s enough to feel his shoulder rub mine when Pop passes a hand over his face, when he begins to flip the lighter over and under his knuckles, like he does sometimes with knives. The trees murmur around us, nearly invisible in the black. When I hear Leonie come walking out Mam’s room, breathing as hard and deep as if she been running, pulling in her breaths like it hurt, I look up at the glittery sky and search for the constellations Pop taught me.
“The Unicorn,” I say as I identify it. Monoceros. “The Rabbit.” Lepus. “The Great Snake.” Hydra. “The Bull.” Taurus. I learned the proper names from a school library book. I know Leonie must be looking out at the porch, wondering what me and Pop are doing in the dark. “The Twins,” I say. Gemini. Leonie’s room door opens and shuts, and I see Michael babying Leonie when she was sick. I see the way Leonie didn’t do nothing when that cop put those handcuffs on me. Richie looks at me like he knows what I’m remembering, and then he sits across from us, curls over his knees, wraps his arms around his back, makes a sound like crying, and rubs what he can reach of his shoulder blades.
“My wounds were here. Right here. From Black Annie. And you healed them. But you left and now you won’t see me.”
I lay my head on Pop’s shoulder anyway. I don’t care. Pop breathes deeply and clears his throat like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. But he doesn’t shrug me away.
“You forgot about the Lion,” Pop says. The trees sigh.
When we go inside to lay down, Richie still sits, no longer rubbing. Instead, he rocks back and forth, faintly, and the look on his face is broken. Pop shuts the door. I curl around Kayla on the sofa and try to lie still, to forget the broken boy on the porch long enough to drift to sleep. My spine, my ribs, my back: a wall.