Free Then Came Heaven by Lavyrle Spencer Page B

their shapes in shadow across the sidewalk and grass. A couple of late crickets sang in the astilbe bushes at the base of the house. Across the alley, at the Quality Inn, Hub Ringwalski shut out the lights, closed his back door, and locked up for the night. They listened to his footsteps heading for his car, which was parked by the power pole out back. He started the engine and backed into the alley, left the car running and got out to step over the low double-railed wooden fence that separated Eddie’s yard from the alley. Hub crossed the grass, bent down and took Eddie by the back of the neck and said nothing for a long time. Then he uttered in a choked whisper, “So sorry...” and went back to his car.
    When Hub was gone, Eddie said, “What’m I gonna do, Romaine? What’m I gonna do?”
    “Keep working at the church, I guess. Take care of the girls the best you can. The women will help you with them, and you’ll get through it one day at a time.”
    “How do I go in there to that bed?”
    “You can sure come to our house tonight,” Romaine offered. “We’ll find room for the three of you someplace.”
    “I’d still have to face it though, wouldn’t I? Tomorrow night or the night after that.”
    “Yup. You still would.”
    They heard the sound of the bath in progress, and Rose talking quietly to the girls in the upstairs bathroom that Eddie had put in for Krystyna only a little over a year ago. Such a short time she’d had to enjoy it.
    “You know what, Romaine?”
    “What?”
    “From the first time I saw Krystyna I knew I was going to marry her. It was at a wedding dance out at Knotty Pine, and I asked Poppo who that girl was and where she lived and if they went to St. Joe’s. I found out right away that I was seven years older than her, but I made up my mind I’d wait for her. Then when she was fourteen I asked her out for the first time and I couldn’t believe her folks let her go. But it was like they knew I was the one for her, and there was nothing they could do but let her go. They never uttered a peep, just said to have her home by ten, and I did. And we had to  walk ,  too! Clear over to Clarissa to the dance, because I didn’t have no car. But she didn’t complain. Ah, she never complained. When she got old enough to wear high heels, if we had to walk, she just put on her low shoes and carried her high heels, and off we went dancing. Matter of fact, I think the first pair of high heels she wore she borrowed from Irene.” He paused for a moment, then added, “I feel bad for Irene. She’s really going to miss her.”
    Romaine knew all this, but he let Eddie talk.
    Soon Eddie said, a little more animated, “Hey, Romaine, remember that time when you were dating Irene and the four of us drove your Model-T down the railroad tracks?” Romaine laughed. “Lucky that damn car didn’t bust an axle.”
    “Oh, we had some times, didn’t we?”
    “Sure did.”
    “And we picked up that huge snapping turtle out by Thunder Lake and put him in the car to make turtle soup with, and the girls screamed and climbed in the front seat with us.”
    “Boy, did that old turtle stink!”
    “Those women about went crazy.”
    “I don’t think we ever did make that soup.”
    “Nope... never did.”
    Eddie smiled into the dark. Soon his smile faded and he covered his face with both hands. Romaine flopped a brotherly arm around him and massaged his shoulder.
    “I don’t know how to cook,” Eddie said, battling a new round of despair. “How’m I supposed to do my job and come home and fix supper for them, and wash and iron their dresses like she did, and fix their hair in pin curls and comb it fancy and do all that stuff? Hell, I got to be at church to stoke the furnace before Mass in the winter, and shovel the steps and ring the bells at seven-thirty and eight, and that’s just when they should be getting up and getting ready for school. How can I be in two places at once?”
    “We’ll work it