Chapter 2: Where the Lane Runs Out

The wrap had dried onto the arm in the night and come off in pieces, and she got the shirt on with both hands and did not spare the arm. Out in the yard a hen was making her case about something and quit. Somebody had the pump going at the sink.

Then the door moved and Bobbie came in with Frankie behind her, and Frankie stopped in the middle of the floor and looked at Nell’s face.

“Does it hurt?” Frankie said.

“Come here,” Nell said, and Frankie came and stood against her leg, and Nell put her hand on top of her little sister’s head.

Bobbie put her back against the door and stood there with her arms folded.

“He’s got the strap back on the peg,” she said.

Nell looked out the window at the shed.

“Before breakfast,” Bobbie said. “Uncle Vern hung it up on the same peg like it was a piece of harness. And Grandma’s had the wash water on since milking, and she’s been in the kitchen talking at Mama all morning without stopping for a breath.”

“Talking about what?”

“Nothing yet.”

Nell got the second shirt off the nail and got into it, one arm at a time.

“You don’t say anything to her today,” Bobbie said. “Not one thing. Not even yes ma’am.”

“Where’s he at?”

“Out at the truck with Roy.”

“Doing what?”

“Talking about the gate.”

Which was how it went. A thing got done in that yard, and then the house talked about the gate.

Nell took the brush off the shelf and did what she could with her hair with the left hand and gave it up.

“You’re on the wash,” Bobbie said.

“I know it.”

“Let her yell.”

“Take Frankie out,” Nell said.

Bobbie stood there a minute. Then she took Frankie by the wrist and went, and pulled the door to behind her.

She did the wash. The water was cold when she started it and she heated it the way it was done, and she carried it left-handed and set it down careful. She stood in the washhouse door a while and let the arm hang.

At noon Bobbie brought her a piece of bread and stood and ate the other half of it and told her the truck was still in the yard, and then went back in.

Nobody else came out to her. She kept one foot up on the washhouse step all afternoon — the step she was supposed to have slipped on.

By dark they had all come in and sat down. Ida at the head with the bread in front of her, Roy at the other end, Vern at the side nearest the door, Darlene on the bench at the corner with Frankie up against her.

Nell sat where she always sat, with the hurt arm on the outside. Ida said the blessing and they ate.

For a while it was any other night of the week. Forks went and plates went around, and Nell ate with her left hand, and Bobbie watched her do it and did the same thing with the salt, which was Bobbie.

Then Ida set her fork down and looked down the table. “Now,” she said. “You fell on the washhouse step.”

Nell cut what was on her plate.

“Say it.”

She chewed and swallowed.

Ida said it for her, slow. “I slipped and I came down on the step and my arm hit the boards.”

Nell looked at her grandmother’s hands, one flat on either side of her plate.

“Say it back to me.”

Nobody at the table moved. Vern went on eating.

“Say it and go to bed,” Darlene said. “Nell. Say it and we’ll go to bed.”

“Say yes ma’am,” Ida said.

Nell put her fork down and pushed her chair back and stood up.

Everybody’s eyes came up, because nobody had expected the chair.

“I’ll take the girls,” Nell said.

Darlene said her name. Bobbie’s fork stopped on the plate.

“Take them where?” Ida said.

“Out of this house.”

“Out of this house,” Ida said.

“Fifteen years off this table. Who do you think’s going to feed those two.”

“I will.”

“With what?”

“I’ll work.”

“Who’d hire you?”

She had been over that one all afternoon and had not got any further with it than Ida had.

Roy said, “She wants to be big.”

“Roy,” Darlene said.

“Let her be big,” Roy said. “It’s down the lane. Let her find out what it costs to eat. And I’ll not have it said in this county that I turned a girl of mine out on the road.”

“Nobody’s turning anybody out,” Ida said. “She’s taking herself down the lane.”

Frankie slid off the bench and came around the table and stood against Nell’s leg.

“I don’t want anything out of this house,” Nell said, “and I’ll not owe anybody in it.”

“You owe for what you ate,” Ida said.

“Then count it,” Nell said.

Ida looked at her. Nobody else said anything, and Vern finished what was on his plate.

“There’s the old house where the lane runs out,” Ida said. “Nobody’s lived in it in years. There’s a roof on it. That’s all there is on it.”

Darlene had the dishrag in her hand already, the way she had it at the end of a meal, though nothing was over.

“Nell. Take it back.”

Nell didn’t say anything.

“Take it back,” Darlene said, “and I’ll not say another word about any of it.”

Bobbie got up off the bench without making a sound about it and went back through the house and came out with the quilt off the pallet in her arms and stood by the door with it.

“The bed you slept in’s mine,” Ida said. “The quilt off it—“

“Let her have the quilt, Mother,” Roy said.

Nobody said anything else about what she could take.

They went by the end of the table, and Vern set his fork down and said to Roy, not looking up, “That gate by the yard wants a bolt on it.”

“I’ll look at it,” Roy said.

Outside it was dark and the porch light was on. Darlene came as far as the step with the dishrag still in her hand.

“Keep her off the wet,” she said.

She stood there, and then she went in and shut the door.

They went up the lane. Frankie walked to the fence and quit walking, and Nell carried her the rest of it with the left arm and let the right one hang down.

The house at the end of the lane had two rooms and a lean-to, a stove in the middle room with no wood anywhere in the house, a window with glass in it, and a window boarded over, the boards gone gray. It smelled like dirt after a rain.

Bobbie set the quilt down on the floor. “It’s got a chimney,” she said.

Nell went back to the door. It had an eye screwed into the jamb and a hook to match, and the hook went in.

Out the glass window she could see back down the lane. The mailbox and the fence and the porch light at the house, still on, and two more lights past that where other people lived, and then the dark where the road was.

She hooked the door and put her left hand flat on it and pushed, and it held. Then she got down on the floor with the girls and pulled the quilt over the three of them and lay with her back to the door.