for Angie

 

    

 

          Midway up the ladder, Horace moans and clings like a lizard.

 

          "Here we go again!" Sunny shoves at the seat of his gray twill

 

     pants.

 

          "Snake!" Horace muffles a whimper.

 

          "Just a old rat snake." The red-checked snake lies crinkled

 

     across the loose hay on the edge of the dim loft.

 

          Horace skiffles up the top rungs and lumbers toward the window.

 

     Sunny kicks at the snake flowing beneath the hay and follows Horace

 

     to the bale where they can look out. He starts to cry in a spit-thick

 

     yodel.

 

          "See, yonder's the house," she says, "yonder's Mama."

 

          "Mama," he sobs and juts his long warped face. His blue eyes are

 

     teary, frozen in an upturned gaze. Mouth eternally sprung.

 

          Sunny chews on a slip of hay. "Mama ain't studying you."

 

          "Mama," Horace says, same way he says "snake," another word he

 

     now knows to name off another madness.

 

          "Old man might not even come in for all you know," says Sunny.

 

          Horace hangs his head and croaks--his new way of crying since he

 

     turned twenty. Used to, he bleated like a calf.

 

          "You keep that up and I'm gone leave you."

 

          He cries louder. She looks north over the greening pasture

 

     toward her granny's ranch house, then south toward the shotgun shack

 

     where her mama, Mattie Sue, is taking in clothes. A frieze of sunset

 

     along the west pinewoods casts a saffron glow over the dirt yard,

 

     coloring Mattie Sue's pale face. 

 

          "Now, hush!" Sunny sprinkles a handful of hay out the window and

 

     watches it scatter to the spring grass. "See that roan yonder?" She

 

     knows talking horses will get his mind off today being Saturday and

 

     their daddy coming home and a fight starting up. "I'm gone put you on

 

     that roan one of these days." She points across the pasture between

 

     the two houses where the herd of horses grazes and starts to say Soon

 

     as you're big enough, but thinks better of it--he's nearly twice her

 

     height and half her mental age. She is twelve. Horace is watching his

 

     mama bundle the stiff dried clothes in her arms as she walks toward

 

     the doorsteps.

 

          "I'll saddle up that stallion," says Sunny, "and you can ride

 

     clear across the flatwoods."

 

          "Okefenoak?" he says in a phlegmy yawn.

 

          "To the Okefenoak," she says.

 

          "Sunny ride the nag?"

 

          She laughs. "Sunny ride the nag, uh huh." He's not as dumb as

 

     they think--knows a nag when he sees one, knows the Okefenokee Swamp

 

     is out there. They should have sent him to school.

 

        Horace smiles, showing pegs of rotted teeth. The screen door of

 

     the shack slams and he stares at his mama lifting her nose as if she

 

     smells smoke. She crosses the yard to the wire fence and rakes scraps

 

     from a blue bowl to the daisywheel of yellow cats. He mewls and

 

     hunches his close-set shoulders. He has the long lean arms of the

 

     Lamberts--tall, bronze and tense men--though stringy-fleshed and

 

     hairless pink as a baby's.

 

          "Ain't no call for all that bellering." Sunny gets up as if she

 

     is leaving, but stops at the snake by the ladder to give Horace

 

     another chance. "He might not even come, I tell you. If he does, I

 

     ain't gone let him put you away."

 

                                       ###

 

          At supper, Horace keeps bellering, sitting up at the square

 

     white table with his hands in his lap, while Sunny and her mama eat.

 

          "Son, here," says Mattie Sue, "eat some peas." She tries to

 

     spoon the green mush into his mouth.

 

          "He ain't hungry," says Sunny. "Shut up, Horace."

 

          "Don't rile him no worse, sugar." Her mama is smiling--always

 

     smiling--a smile Sunny knows to be a tic, a twitch of her formless

 

     lips. 

 

          "He can't get no worse," Sunny says.

 

          "Could be coming down with something."

 

          "Huh uh. Knows the old man's coming in is what it is."

 

          "Horace don't know what's going on from Adam." Mattie Sue gets

 

     up and takes her plate to the metal sink-and-cabinet unit.

 

          "He does so; I got him to where he can just about talk."

 

          "Sunny!" Her mama clacks her tongue. 

 

          Sunny takes another puffed biscuit from the platter and pokes a

 

     hole in the top and pours it full of canesyrup. She tries to hand it

 

     to Horace. "Eat this. Good, say good."

 

          He turns his face up to the bare bulb over the table, bald-faced

 

     and bleating, as if he's unlearning what little he's learned.

 

          "Just taste it." Sunny presses the syrupy spout of the biscuit

 

     to his lips. He takes it in his blade white hands.

 

          The screen door screaks and Sunny's daddy stands in the frame of

 

     dark. Skin annealed now, more from the whiskey inside than the sun

 

     outside. He tosses his cap to the floor at Mattie Sue's feet, laughs,

 

     ruffs his shaggy brown hair and staggers in. "Ain't ever man got a

 

     good-looking woman waiting at home, huh?" Getting no response, he

 

     shrugs and trips toward the table. "Far as that goes, ain't ever

 

     man's got a house neither," he adds, winking at Sunny, "and two grown

 

     younguns." He smells like hog slop.

 

          Horace bawls with his mouth full and gets strangled--watery eyes

 

     bulging and veins raveling like yarn on his forehead.

 

          "Drink you some tea, buddy." Sunny forces her glass to his lips.

 

          "Wait!" says her mama. "You gone strangle him worse." She

 

     hurries over and beats Horace on the back and the wad of biscuit

 

     shoots across the table.

 

          "A fine howdy-do," says her daddy. "Man comes in after working

 

     all week on the highway to watch his grown son puke like a baby."

 

          "Shut your face!" shouts Sunny.

 

          "Sunny!" scolds her mama and flaps her with the dish towel. 

 

          "Come on, Horace," says Sunny, "let's me and you go set on the

 

     porch."

 

          Her daddy hollers out, "You sass back one more time, missy, and

 

     I'm gone wallop you."

 

          "Got too much on her at her age," says her mama. "Needs somebody

 

     to take aholt."

 

          "Needs to be shed of that big baby you won't let me put away."

 

          Sunny shoves open the screen door for Horace to shamble out.

 

     "Don't pay him no mind," she says. "You ain't going nowheres, not

 

     without me. I ain't let him haul my old mare off to the dog-food

 

     plant yet, have I?" She seats him on the doorsteps overlooking the

 

     woods where frogs throb with the turning of the creek.

 

         "Hear them frogs?" she says. "Well, you got just as much right on

 

     this place as them. And Granny says so too." Not true: what her

 

     Granny had said was We've never had a cripple born a Lambert, but

 

     he's ours, right?  Same way she'd said We've never had a girl born a

 

     Lambert when Sunny was born. But if Sunny can only keep Horace from

 

     underfoot till after Monday--deadline for the opening at Millegeville

 

     State Hospital--maybe they'll forget about sending him off or never

 

     have the chance again. 

 

          "I gotta study harder, Horace," she tells him, "so everbody'll

 

     quit blaming you." One ear is timing the voices in the kitchen, about

 

     to accelerate into arguing. In the runner of light from inside, she

 

     notices the blonde stubble of beard along Horace's jaw. "You a man

 

     now, Horace," she whispers, as if saying it might instill man-like

 

     power. "You're twenty, going on twenty-one. Can't use the excuse of

 

     being a baby no more with me and mama to nuss you."

 

          "Man," he says, same as "snake," same as "mama."

 

          "Sometimes, Horace," Sunny says, "I think you got it all stored

 

     in your head, waiting to come out when you're ready."

 

          "Man," he repeats and smiles, whimpering like a sacked puppy.

 

                                       ###

 

          All day Sunday, Sunny keeps Horace in the loft. She doesn't go

 

     down for dinner and she doesn't ride her splotchy gray mare. She

 

     watches the horses graze the sun-gilded pasture in the morning and

 

     her uncles and boy cousins ride in the evening. Now and then Sunny's

 

     mama calls her name; and finally, to keep anybody from looking for

 

     them, she yells from the loft window that they're not hungry, they're

 

     playing. She has brung two apples and two bologna sandwiches and she

 

     halves them so Horace will have enough to last till sundown.

 

          She finds it hard to stay in the loft with only Horace and the

 

     rat snake while her cousins and uncles ride. Harder yet to shed the

 

     worry of what's coming tomorrow. "I gotta do good, Horace," she

 

     says."I gotta bring up my grades before school lets out for the

 

     year."

 

          Horace is terrified of the snake that keeps to the right of the

 

     loft. Now and then a rat squeaks, dwindling to a muffled silence like

 

     time swallowed. "Got him one," she says, hoping to acquaint Horace

 

     with the benefit and necessity of the snake.

 

          He continues to cry, knowing he might get sent off. Her mama

 

     says he can't possibly understand, that he's always cried, but Sunny

 

     knows it's deeper than usual and wishes Horace could be more like the

 

     lunchroom lady's retarded son at school who always laughs.

 

          "Can't depend on Mama," Sunny says, and he says "Mama," gazing

 

     at the snake laced in the hay. "You keep on like this and you're

 

     gone."

 

          The late sun filters through cracks in the wide board walls and

 

     sows orange straws of light across the hay, the smothery air floating

 

     with an updraft of neighs and leathery creaks. Screen doors slam,

 

     somebody laughs. All sounds gathering in a confetti of dust specks. A

 

     rat shrieks and dies and the fat snake waits.

 

          Horace sprawls on the hay and sleeps with his mouth gaped. Sunny

 

     lies beside him. Thinking about another Sunday when all the Lamberts

 

     had gathered at Granny's for dinner, how she'd overheard her mama

 

     saying she wondered if Sunny wasn't more sorry for Horace than eager

 

     to play with him, that maybe Sunny had pity all mixed up with love.

 

     Granny had said something like  What difference does it make?  What's

 

     love anyhow but compassion?"

 

          That night, after her mama falls asleep, Sunny waits in the

 

     bedroom till Horace's breathing settles into its awful rhythm of

 

     puffs and sighs, then goes outside. She follows a horse path through

 

     the pasture toward the big house with a light burning in the south

 

     window. So good to be away from crying for a while, to hear the

 

     nothingness keening of katydids, the echo hark of a whippoorwill. She

 

     climbs the creosote board fence, marching toward the light, and

 

     knocks on the wall. 

 

          The old lady peeps through the curtains, her cheeks sucked in

 

     without her teeth. "Sunny...what? Come on in the back way."

 

          Sometimes Granny scares Sunny, who can see herself growing old

 

     and corpse-like too, not so afraid of losing her Lambert glow as

 

     losing her right to the horses and woods, her rambling freedom. Over

 

     the years she's watched her granny turn from the horses to the house,

 

     watching life from the windows and porches.

 

          "Granny, they gone try to send Horace off tomorrow, ain't they?"

 

          "Looks like it." Granny stoops low behind the screen.

 

          "You gotta stop 'em. I would but..."

 

          "Ain't much you can do about it, Sunny."

 

          "I can run away with him. I can take care of him, I been doing

 

     it."

 

          "Not by yourself, Sunny. More to it than just play." Granny

 

     slaps at a mosquito on the screen. "Your mama could fill you in on a

 

     lot."

 

          "She don't do nothing but bathe him; I can do that."

 

          "Yeah? You're almost grown now, fixing to have a life of your

 

     own."

 

          "I don't want no life."

 

          "You're going through a change, honey; might find on the other

 

     side you do."

 

          "He's the one, Granny; Horace is just about a man."

 

          "He's done all the growing he's going to do and trying to make

 

     him more than he is ain't kind."

 

          Sunny gets still, watching clouds spirit across the moon. "How

 

     you guess he'd take to the nuthouse, Granny?"

 

          "Same as he takes to everything else."

 

          "Cry, huh? Reckon they can help him?"

 

          "No. Not but just so much he can do, just so much brain." Granny

 

     sighs. "Truth is, Horace is more animal than human in some ways."

 

          "I'm sick and tired of people putting him down."

 

          "They won't up yonder."

 

          "Think they'll be good to him?" Sunny feels the tears start as

 

     the pause lingers. "Well, do you or don't you?"

 

          "I'll say this--right at first, I couldn't stand the idea of him

 

     going off either. But at least in Millegeville, there'll be other

 

     people like him. He won't be different like he is here. Sometimes

 

     it's kinder to let people go."

 

          "You're just tired of him, all of y'all are."

 

          "Ain't no enemies, Sunny; all made up in your head. But say I am

 

     tired of him, say your mama's tired of him--what about you? I could

 

     hear him up in the loft crying the livelong day. No worse sound in

 

     the world, but most of the time people get a letup. Aren't you tired

 

     of watching his misery?"

 

          "If he's gotta be miserable, I don't reckon it'll hurt me."

 

          "But what purpose does it serve?"

 

          "Ask God."

 

          "That's not what... What's the point in you being miserable?

 

     You've never played half a day with anybody but Horace."

 

          "I don't like to play." Sunny socks her fists into her jeans

 

     pockets. "You're just selfish--all of y'all are."

 

          "Maybe, but life's for living"--and Granny leans close, talking

 

     through the screen--"so if you get the chance, you better take it.

 

     Even eighty years goes by fast."

 

          Sunny starts to sob. "Granny, I might not never stop crying if I

 

     let him go."

 

          "But you will. I've laid two babies and a husband to rest and

 

     I've overed crying. Laughing's what's natural. As much sadness as

 

     there is in this old world, we go the long way around to get to

 

     laugh. How come people to go to fairs and stuff."

 

          "Granny, he would die locked up, I know he would."

 

          "Doctor says he won't live long anyway, you know that."

 

          "Well, I'd rather see him free."

 

          Sunny winds back along the horse path, toward the shack at the

 

     other end of the pasture. Then she angles across to where her mare

 

     grazes obliviously. "Hey, you old bag of bones," Sunny says. The mare

 

     snorts, lifts her head, jellied eyes brimming with moonlight. "I

 

     ain't letting the old man ship you off to no dog-food plant, don't

 

     you worry." She buries her face in the furry spring coat, smelling

 

     the dead sweat of winter struggle.

 

                                       ###

 

          Now that Sunny has made up her mind, she has to hurry. Come

 

     daybreak, her mama will be making breakfast for her daddy. And his

 

     lunch. Sunny has used the entire pack of luncheon meat and a whole

 

     loaf of white bread for sandwiches. No lunch meat, and she can

 

     imagine what her daddy will think about that. What will he say when

 

     he finds Sunny and Horace gone? What will her mama say?

 

          In the livingroom, she stares at the round white clock on the

 

     mantel. The ticking sounds loud in the small square room with

 

     moonlight shafts on the wide board floor that make it look like

 

     daybreak, Monday and doom.

 

          She tiptoes through the living room toward the front porch and

 

     pushes open the screen door and places the plastic jug of water and

 

     the bag of sandwiches on the slat wood chair by the door. Then she

 

     goes inside, to the front bedroom to wake Horace.

 

          Leaning over him, Sunny whispers, "Wake up, Horace. We going

 

     riding."

 

          He whimpers and rolls to the other side of the bed with his back

 

     to her.

 

          "Shh!" she says, following him. "You wake Mama and she won't let

 

     us go."

 

          "Go with Mama." He sits up.

 

          Sunny clamps one hand over his mouth and the other at the back

 

     of his sweaty head. "You make the least bit of racket, and I'm going

 

     to the Okefenoak without you."

 

          She waits till his head tilts down and his wet lips close, then

 

     lets go. "Now get up. Let Sunny get you dressed and we'll go."

 

          "Go," he whispers.

 

          "Good boy." She dresses him--shirt, pants, shoes--then takes the

 

     olive-drab wool blanket from the chest at the foot of the bed, and

 

     leads him into the moonlight that looks like daybreak, Monday and

 

     doom.

 

                                       ###

 

          Sunny rides the old mare into the east woods. Horace sitting

 

     behind her, whining because she had promised to let him ride the roan

 

     stallion--that's how smart he is. Not that it matters now.

 

          "Give me about thirty minutes, Horace," she says, "and you can

 

     bawl your eyes out." Behind her, she can still hear traffic on the

 

     highway between her house and the woods.

 

          "Sunny ride the nag," he says and tightens his arms about her

 

     waist.

 

          At least she is keeping part of her promise.

 

          The jug of water hangs from a length of hay string tied to the

 

     saddlehorn, along with the bag of sandwiches. The blanket is folded

 

     behind the saddle on the bony rump of the mare for Horace to sit on.

 

          Sunny lets the mare pick her way through the honeysuckle and

 

     bamboo vines, around pines, palmettoes and myrtle bushes, heading

 

     toward the taller pines.

 

          The mare plods indifferently, as if suspecting this is another

 

     of Sunny's games--any minute Sunny might saw back on the reins and

 

     yank them left or right. But she doesn't, and the mare keeps moving

 

     with her anvil head swinging low to the ground. Keeping time like a

 

     pendulum to the sucking of her hooves in the peat bog.

 

          The sun is at ten o'clock, and Sunny has quit trying to shush

 

     Horace, just keeps riding, eyes on the mare's bobbling head and the

 

     spaced pines between the sharp, scooped ears. Crows caw. She dozes

 

     and dreams that she is still awake, still listening to the crows caw

 

     and gazing between the horse's ears, but wakes to find that her head

 

     is bobbling like the mares and looks up to see that the sparse trees

 

     have thickened with scrub oaks and reeds, that the rosy light of

 

     morning has blanched to mid-day and the sun is shining behind her.

 

     Birds are singing and the horse's shadow has switched sides. But

 

     Horace is still crying and latching on to her waist. She has never

 

     heard him cry so close, for so long.

 

          Suddenly, she lets go of the reins and the gray mare stops.

 

     Unfastening Horace's hands from her waist, Sunny swings her left leg

 

     over the head of the horse and drops to the dirt. While she coaxes

 

     Horace down, the mare cuts her murky brown eyes back at Sunny. Sunny

 

     feeds Horace water from the jug and a sandwich from the bag. The

 

     smell of doughy bread, mayonnaise and meat makes her hungry, but she

 

     doesn't eat and doesn't let Horace have another sandwich. Doesn't let

 

     him wander off when he tries--not yet.

 

          She strips leaves from the branches of a wax-berry myrtle bush

 

     and crushes them between her palms and rubs the wax on Horace's arms

 

     to repel mosquitoes.

 

          On the horse again, she keeps riding deeper into the woods and

 

     doesn't talk to Horace except to point out a giant red-headed

 

     woodpecker, called a "lordgod," that looks stuck sideways by its feet

 

     to a scaly brown pine trunk. "See the lordgod, Horace," she says. But

 

     realizes even she cannot reach him, and anyway he can't understand,

 

     and she is talking only to hear somebody talking. No point in trying

 

     to teach him to say "lordgod" either.

 

                                       ###

 

          She stops to feed Horace again when the sun lays long shadows

 

     across the forest floor. The russet pinestraw is torched by the

 

     setting sun.

 

          Nearby is a blackwater slew surrounded by towering cypresses

 

     with flat bristly tops and pop-bellied tupelos. A blue heron unfolds

 

     its great wings and flies up from the deepening shadows. Sunny

 

     spreads the blanket on the pinestraw and makes Horace sit, then hands

 

     him a sandwich. He grips it with both fists and bites and keeps

 

     biting till about half of it is gone. He chokes, coughs, his face

 

     turns red as the sun. She doesn't try to help him, just watches him

 

     choke, but when he is done with the first sandwich she hands him

 

     another; she drinks from the jug first, then passes it to him. His

 

     teary blue eyes lock on hers while he drinks and drools water on his

 

     shirt. After he has gobbled the last sandwich, he lies on his side

 

     and closes his eyes.

 

          "You're free now, Horace," Sunny says and sits beside him with

 

     her back to a pine trunk, watching the hippy mare graze the

 

     watergrass along the mud banks of the slew, alternately glancing back

 

     at Sunny and down at her own reflection in the water. Sunny had

 

     planned to ride farther, but now she won't, though she fears she's

 

     not quite in the heart of the Okefenokee--alligators, snakes and

 

     bears. She should have taught Horace about fireants--look out for

 

     fireants. Instead she has taught him about birds and butterflies.

 

          When the moon rises, half full, she goes to the mare and

 

     unbuckles the girth on her belly, slides it from her swayed back and

 

     tosses it aside. Then she unbuckles the bridle on the mare's neck and

 

     lifts the bit from between her ground-down teeth and slips the

 

     jingling rig over her head, then hurls it out into the palmettos and

 

     huckleberry bushes. As she starts up the bank, the mare swings her

 

     head around and steps in behind her. "Stay," Sunny says and holds out

 

     both hands, walking backwards till the horse stops, then turns and

 

     heads toward home.