Moira came in wearing the gauzy blouse and dark red jeans. She had her hair back in a stumpy ponytail. She scooted her chair a few discreet inches toward me, on my right, to be a little closer to me than Gwen, who sat to my left.
We looked a happy family, and whatever tension there was in the air was smothered by the delicious smell of the bread bowl and pot. We helped ourselves with a joking selfishness, slapping each other's hand away from the ladle. I got hold of it and would not surrender it until Gwen promised to stop calling me 'Hang.'
I can still taste it: pats of butter melting on the split corn bread, oozing against the dollops of honey; sweet relish on the white beans and Tabasco drops on the chunks of smoked ham hocks. I paid detailed attention to emptying my ceramic dish as Moira dodged questions about boyfriends and countered with inquiries into seamstress work. Outside the dogs barked at the occasional vehicle grinding down the route to Little Bullshit Road. Soon the crickets started up and from somewhere a ways off a howl, which might have been a neighbor's hound but which sounded like a wolf.
Gwen got up to flick on the ceiling lamp. "We've fudge brownies for dessert. Better eat 'em up they're getting rigid."
Later we sat on the front porch in the creaking basket chairs drinking the brandy that Uncle Steph had brought over after Gwen chased off Kenny. She told about her girlhood with Reb and her father, a short-haul trucker, and how industrious her mother was growing collard greens and okra, raising flocks of chickens; how the rooster bit her nose one morning and found itself boiling in a pot that evening. She brushed aside the death of her parents and spoke of them as if they were still there, hiding in the ruins of the barn until Judgment Day, she made it sound.
Whenever she mentioned Reb I invariably looked at the rat bike, leaning just a little on its kickstand, the front wheel locked at a forty-five degree angle, seeming to nibble at the grassy weeds when patches of moonshade flickered over it from the rustling leaves of a sycamore. To me it was not an insentient thing. It was alive, tame, and loyal. One of the dogs lay on its belly near the back wheel, sniffing the air and snapping at flying bugs. I could hardly tell the difference between the two of them; dog and big iron rat.
When Moira went inside to charge her phone, to text and the devil knows what else, I stood, stretched, and asked Gwen if she'd like to take a stroll. She got up eagerly. Going down the split-log steps she linked her arm in mine.
The dogs followed us, at a polite distance. We walked down the rutted drive and then along the tree-line of the route, stepping leisurely. Neither of us said anything until I stopped to pick up a rock that glittered in the early moon. "Fools gold," Gwen said, smiling. The slight breeze was swinging her jet-black hair along one rounded cheek. She still wore the flower-print shift, or smock; whatever it was. It seemed as thin as tissue paper, so that her breasts and hips were defined with every sway of the cloth. She was a good-looking woman. A tough woman, but all woman. Never more so than then.
I would, I decided, take her roughly to me and bear a biting kiss down on her mouth, damning to hell all the repercussions. But the decision hung fire until she stepped up to me and gently grasped my denim shirt in a hand that trembled slightly. She was looking down at the rock in my loose fist. I let it drop and brought the fist up to her chin where it opened and seized the bone under the soft damp skin. She let the pressure lift her face up to mine. I don't know why I'm describing this so minutely, except that it is seared in my memory; emblazoned there because of what I would see in her face the following day.
"You don't have to mean it," she said. "Just do it."
So I did, prolonging it, and heard the front-door's screen screech open and close with a thud. Gwen's lips flinched under mine. I was hoping Moira didn't see us, and I think Gwen was hoping she did.
The dogs ran back to the house, probably thinking that Moira had some ham fat for them. When I looked at her, Gwen's face rolling back and forth on my chest, I saw her phone glowing in the dark.
"Sleep with me," Gwen whispered. "She'll get over it."
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