The Homecoming of Samuel Lake. Jenny Wingfield
as a Minefield, but Noble wasn’t looking for mines. Swan let out a ferocious roar and brought her “shovel” down across Noble’s head. That should have done him in, but he didn’t fling himself on the ground and commence his death agonies, like he was supposed to. He grabbed Swan and clamped one hand over her mouth, and hissed at her to get quiet. Swan struggled indignantly but couldn’t get free. Even if Noble wasn’t formidable, he was strong.
“I just—killed you—with a shovel!” she hollered. Noble’s hand muffled the sound into mushy, garbled noises. About every other word, Swan tried to bite his fingers. “No way—could you—have survived. That—was a fatal blow—and you know it!”
Bienville was looking on like a wise old sage, and he made out enough of what Swan was saying to have to agree with her.
“It was a fatal blow, all right,” he confirmed.
Noble rolled his eyes and clamped his hand tighter across Swan’s mouth. She was kicking up a storm and growling, deep in her throat.
“I said shhh!” Noble dragged his sister toward a line of brush and brambles that ran between the pasture and a patch of woods. Bienville flipped over on his belly and crawled across the Minefield after them. When they got close to the brush line, Noble realized he had a problem. He needed to let Swan go, which promised to be something like releasing a wildcat.
He said, very calmly, “Swan, I’m going to turn you loose.”
“Irpulmbfrmlmb, ustnknbzzrd!” she answered, and she bit his hand so hard that he jerked it away from her mouth to inspect it for blood. That split second was all Swan needed. She drove an elbow into Noble’s gut, and he doubled over, gasping for breath.
“Dammit, Swan,” he groaned. She was all over him. Noble drew himself into a wad, enduring the onslaught. He knew a few Indian tricks, such as Becoming a Tree. A person could hit and kick a tree all day long without hurting it, because it was Unmovable. He’d learned this from Bienville, who had either read about it or made it up. Noble didn’t care whether Bienville’s stories were true, just so the methods worked.
Swan hated it when Noble Became a Tree. It was something she had never mastered (she was not about to stand still for anybody to hit her), and it wore her out fighting someone who wouldn’t fight back. It made her feel like a loser, no matter how much damage she inflicted. Still, she had to save face, so she landed one last blow to Noble’s wooden shoulder and licked her sore knuckles.
“I win,” she announced.
“Fine.” Noble let his muscles relax. “You win. Now, shut up and follow me.”
John Moses was sitting under a tree, cleaning his shotgun and talking to God.
“And another thing,” he was saying. “I don’t believe the part about the Red Sea opening up and people walking through on dry land.”
For a man who didn’t believe in God, John talked to Him a lot. Whether God ever listened was anybody’s guess. John was generally drunk during these monologues, and the things he said were not very complimentary. He’d been mad at God for a long time, starting when Walter had fallen across that saw blade, over at the Ferguson mill.
John was pulling a string out of the end of his shotgun barrel. There was an oily strip of cotton cloth tied onto the end of the string, and the cloth came out gray-black. He sighted down the barrel, squinting and angry-looking.
“You expect us to believe the damnedest things.” He was talking in a normal tone of voice, just as if God were sitting two feet away from him.
“For instance, all this stuff about You being love,” he went on, and here his voice grew thick. “If You was love, You wouldn’t have let my Walter get split wide open like a slaughtered hog—”
John began polishing the butt of his gun with a separate rag that he’d had tucked away in the bib of his overalls. Tears welled in his eyes, then spilled over and trailed down his weathered face. He didn’t bother to wipe them away.
“If You are love,” he roared, “then love ain’t much to crow about.”
The kids were all crouched behind a thick wall of razor wire (blackberry vines), peering at the Enemy through the tiniest of openings between the thorny canes. They had a good, clear view of the old man, but he couldn’t see them.
Swan had a feeling that they shouldn’t be here. It was one thing for her and her brothers to spy on each other, since they only said things they meant each other to hear. But this was Papa John. They had never seen him cry, or believed it was possible for him to cry. Usually during their visits, he just slept the days away and ran his bar at night. If they saw him at all, it was only as he walked through a room without speaking or sat at the supper table, picking at his food. Their mother said he hadn’t always been this way, that he had really been something beautiful when she was growing up, but he had let life get the best of him. From the looks of him now, she was right about that last part.
Swan tugged on Noble’s sleeve, intending to tell him she wanted to leave, but he drew one finger across his gullet, indicating that he would slit her throat for sure if she said a word.
Just then, Papa John gave up on talking to God and set in singing.
“Coming home,” he quavered. He had to be tone-deaf. “Cominnng—hommmme—”
Swan shot a look at Bienville, and he shot one back. This was getting harder to swallow by the minute.
“Never more to roammmm—” Papa John caterwauled, but he couldn’t remember any more of the words, so he switched over to a Hank Williams song, which he also couldn’t remember.
He hummed the first few bars tunelessly, while he dug a shell out of his pocket and loaded his shotgun.
“I’m so lonesome, I could—” he sang, suddenly loud and clear. Then his voice broke and quavered. “I’m so lonesome, I could—”
Swan thought he sounded like a stuck record.
“I could—” he sang again, but he couldn’t make himself say that last word. He shook his head and blew out a long, discouraged breath. Then he stuck the shotgun barrel in his mouth.
Swan screamed. Noble and Bienville sprang up in the air like flushed quail.
Papa John hadn’t had time to get his finger situated on the trigger, so instead of blowing his brains out in full view of his grandchildren, he jerked to attention and banged the back of his head on the tree. The shotgun barrel slipped out of his mouth, bringing his upper plate with it. The false teeth went sailing and disappeared in the blackberry vines, directly in front of where the three kids were now standing, shaking like maple leaves. Papa John jumped to his feet, shocked and humiliated. His mouth was working, open and shut. Slack-looking without that upper plate.
The kids hung their heads and stared at the ground for the longest time. When they looked up again, Papa John was cutting through the woods, going back toward the house. Shade and sun rays fell across him, dappling and camouflaging, making him indistinguishable from his surroundings. He never really disappeared from view. He just blended in with the trees and the underbrush, like he was part of the woods and they were part of him.
Papa John didn’t show up for supper, just went into Never Closes and opened for business. Calla and Willadee and the kids could hear the hubbub through the wall that separated the kitchen from the bar. John had bought himself a used jukebox during the past year, and his customers were giving it a workout. Swan and Noble and Bienville kept sneaking anxious glances at each other while they ate.
Finally, Calla couldn’t take it anymore. “All right,” she said. “I want to know what’s up, and I want to know now.”
Bienville gulped. Noble pushed his glasses up his nose. Swan reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out Papa John’s false teeth.
“Papa John lost these this afternoon, and we found them.”
“That’s all you’re