Free Stony River by Tricia Dower Page B

and turned on the tap to rinse the pan. Nothing came out. What a crock. She’d suss out the backyard pump later, under cover of night. The thought of no water until then made her mouth go dry.
    How long did it take to die of thirst?
    Searching for something to drink, she happened upon the gassylagoon smell: a bag of oozing potatoes. “Them! Them!” she screamed, like the stunned kid in the movie smelling the giant mutant ants. If Richie were here, he’d be splitting a gut.
    She found dishes, oatmeal, crackers, powdered milk and—cowabunga!—cans of baked beans, corn, peas, stewed tomatoes, green beans and Spam. Jimmy hated Spam because that was all the navy fed them during the war. She rooted around for a can opener and spoon. Sat at the high mucky-muck end of the dining-room table, spooning baked beans from the can and washing them down with stewed tomatoes. Miranda and Haggerty must’ve eaten by candlelight. Two brass holders with white candles stood on the table, one candle melted down more than the other.
    A candlelight meal with Tereza’s father had snookered Ma. She’d met him in a tavern on a sleety January night two days before his army unit was to go overseas, exactly where he wasn’t allowed to say. He asked her out for supper the next night and she said yes. Not much else to the story, Ma would say whenever Tereza pestered. She didn’t know if he made it back alive. Tereza was frosted Ma hadn’t asked for a picture.
    â€œHe gave me you. Who needs a picture?” But two years ago she brought home a poster of John Derek in Rogues of Sherwood Forest and said, “Your father looked like this except darker.”
    Although Tereza couldn’t find a speck of John Derek in her face, she saw all his movies after that. Her favorite was The Adventures of Hajji Baba. He played a lowly barber who rescued a beautiful princess as mouthy as Tereza. “Complaints flow from your lips like water from a spring,” the barber told the princess, or something like that.
    She wasn’t finished eating before the beans and last night’s burgers began churning up her guts, making them hot. She fled up the hallway stairs, not caring who or what might be hiding there. After a false turn, she found the crapper in time but had to wipe herself with her skivvies. She tossed them into the claw-foot tub andpulled her shorts over her bare ass. Forgetting about the water, she tried to flush. Swore. Haggerty’s house was bad news.
    In the small scratched mirror over the waste-of-time sink, she looked clown-faced from yesterday’s makeup. Her coarse black hair pointed every which way and she’d sprouted half a dozen new zits. She fingered the lump of bone where her jaw had healed and imagined the shellacking she’d get if she went home now. Ma standing with her back against the wall, her hand on her throat whimpering “Oh, Jimmy” and Allen hiding under the bed. Tereza could take the blows. Worse would be looking up at that King Tut expression on his face after he decked her. Ma said Tereza was too stubborn for her own good, but sometimes stubborn was all you had.
    To the left of the john was a room with nothing in it except a mattress on the floor with dark stains reaching out like bloody fingers. It gave her the shivers. Across from that room was another with a four-poster bed still made up. Against one wall stood an antique desk with a bookcase and four big drawers. The desk and bookcase were locked. She could’ve busted into them easy but Linda would’ve said that whoever boarded up the place left everything inside because Miranda was coming back and deserved better than busted stuff.
    Hanging in a tall, dark, sour-smelling wardrobe were a bathrobe, workpants and shirt, so worn out she could see Haggerty’s shape in them. On shelves: underwear, snot rags and socks. Wearing a dead geezer’s clothes gave her the creeps, but warmth was warmth.