The two old men walked through the front room and opened and closed the kitchen door without making a sound. After a minute I could hear them whispering to the old women who were already in there. I heard the pot tap against their cups when they poured the coffee, and then I heard somebody put the pot back on the stove. I leaned back in my chair as far as I could, and I looked around the corner into the front room. All I could see was Mama’s feet, but I could tell that she’d turned over on her side with her back to Miss Lyle. Miss Lyle still sat in that chair by Mama.
I crossed my arms and put them on the table and laid my head down on them. I breathed hard and tried to stop myself from crying, and I knew my breath was probably fogging up the wooden tabletop and I knew it was making my face get wet and hot, but after a bit I knew it was wet from my own tears.
WHEN I LOOKED UP, MISS LYLE STOOD RIGHT BY THE TABLE AND I wondered how long she’d been there.
“Jess,” she said, “can I get you something to drink, maybe some milk or a little something to eat?”
My mouth was dry as a cotton ball and I was thirsty, but I shook my head no anyway because I just wanted to sit there and wait for Daddy without having to talk to nobody. Miss Lyle stood there looking at me like she was waiting for me to say something else.
“I don’t want anything,” I said, and then I put my head back down on the table. I knew she was still standing there looking at me.
“You let me know if you need something,” she said. I looked up, and she was still there. She put her hand on my head and then used her fingers to brush my hair. “Your daddy’s going to be here real soon, but don’t be afraid to tell me if you need anything.”
She turned and walked through the front room, and I watched her open the door to the kitchen. She held the door open for a second, and I could see a little table in there and some of them old people sitting down with their coffee cups. Alton and the other old man who’d carried Stump into the house leaned against the counter with their arms crossed. They all looked at Miss Lyle when she came in. She let the door close behind her and I couldn’t see nothing after that.
I pushed my chair away from the table as quiet as I could, and then I got down real slow and walked over to the doorway and took a look into the front room. Mama still laid on the sofa with her back to me and I could hear her breathing, but I could tell she wasn’t asleep. A voice came from inside the kitchen that was louder than all the others, and I could tell it was Miss Lyle. She sounded like she was angry.
“I don’t care why he was in there,” she said. “He shouldn’t have been. Not tonight and not this morning either. No way.”
“But, Adelaide,” one of those old women said, “I know what I saw this morning, and I know what I heard. It was a miracle.”
“We all heard that boy speak,” the man named Alton said. “Every one of us heard it.”
“Well, that don’t matter now, does it?” Miss Lyle said. “It don’t matter one bit what y’all heard in there this morning. All that matters is what happened tonight, and I can tell you that you’d better be ready to talk about it once the sheriff gets here.” It got quiet after that, and I pictured Miss Lyle with her hands on her hips staring at those old women and those two old men until they looked away from her. I could hear somebody running the water in the kitchen sink, and then it sounded like somebody’s footsteps were coming across the floor toward the living room.
I turned and crept back into the dining room and walked to the other side of the table and stopped at the bedroom door where those men had laid Stump on the bed. Nobody had opened the kitchen door yet, and from that far away I could just barely hear them talking in there, and I could hear the curtains stirring in the dining room from the little bit of breeze that came in the open windows now. I put my hand on the knob, and I turned it real slow and hoped the door wouldn’t make any noise, and then I walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind me just as quiet as I’d opened it.
It was dark and hot in there with the windows closed and the curtains pulled shut. When my eyes adjusted to all that dark, I found where just a little bit of moonlight was trying to get through the windows over the bed, and in that light I could make out where Stump laid in the middle of the bed with his arms by his sides. His face was turned away from me like he was asleep or just lying there and staring at the wall. I couldn’t see him as good as I wanted to, so I walked closer to the bed until I stood right beside him. The bedspread was a white quilt, and with him laying on it his face looked pale blue in the light coming through the curtains. Some buttons were tore off his shirt and it was pulled open and I could see his chest. I just stood there and stared at him, and then I crawled up onto the bed so I could look at his face. There was a speck of dried blood on his lip like he might’ve bit it by accident, and his eyes were closed like he hadn’t woke up yet, and I thought about waking up in the night and looking over at him and watching his mouth puff out air while he slept. At night the house used to be so quiet that I could hear him breathing soft beside me. Sometimes I’d lay there and listen to him for what seemed like forever, and before I knew it I’d be asleep again. But I didn’t want him to be asleep like this on Miss Lyle’s bed with the moonlight outside shining on the curtains of this hot room and Mama crying on the sofa with Daddy on his way. I wanted to tell him, “Wake up, Stump,” but I didn’t say nothing because I was afraid to see that he wouldn’t hear me.
I got up on my knees on the bed beside him, and I pulled back the curtains behind the bed and pushed the window open to let some air in. I looked outside. The moon shone bright, and I saw our truck and the other cars parked in the driveway in front of the house. I left the curtains pulled open, and then I looked down at Stump where the moonlight spread across his face. I lay down beside him and stared up at the ceiling while the breeze moved through the curtains over the bed. I thought about how it felt just like sleeping in our bed at home, and for a minute I imagined that Mama hadn’t come into our bedroom to wake us up yet.
I closed my eyes and thought about me and Stump lying out in the ferns down by the creek where the sun that came through the trees was still bright on his face. There was an old green frog croaking somewhere along the creek, and his voice sounded like a loose banjo string, and I knew if I didn’t keep an eye on Stump he’d take to looking around for that frog until I’d have to get up and go hunting after him. I tried my best to keep my eyes open, but sometimes the water gurgling in the creek can sound like people talking, and I listened to them talk until I drifted off to sleep in all that warm sun, and when I woke up I saw that Stump had fallen asleep too, and it could be late now with the light out of the trees and the air turned nice and cool. I looked at his face until he blinked his eyes and looked up to where the sunlight faded in the treetops and smiled.
“We better get on home,” I whispered.
There was a noise like an old car driving fast down the road, and I laid there with my eyes closed and listened. I heard footsteps running through loose gravel and a screen door slamming shut and the sound of my daddy’s voice come through the walls in a room far away from us. The knob turned on the bedroom door, and I wished it was Mama coming to wake us up even though neither one of us was asleep, and I opened my eyes into that soft moonlight with Stump still laying right there beside me.
“Jess,” somebody said. I looked up and saw Daddy standing in the doorway holding out his hand to me. I couldn’t see his face because he was looking away into the other room where the lights were on. I wanted to tell him about what I’d seen, about how they’d carried him out of the church, that he was in here on the bed with me, but the way Daddy stood there made it seem like it was too dark and quiet for me to say anything at all.