Penny
Chester stood at the bottom of his porch steps. He rubbed his toes in the soggy, brown stretch of mud that should have been his front yard. Three months of rain had left it as soft as fresh bread and the dogs had made a game of digging in the mud. He spat on one of his black and brown beagles as it splashed by in front of him, on the heels of a little gray rabbit.
“Too much rain this year. Everything’s drowning.”
“Too much rain this year. Everything’s drowning.”
“Mmm-Hmm,” his wife said. Her name was Joyce and she sat on her gray wooden porch in her yellow rocking chair. As she sat knitting, she hummed to herself about God and angels and salvation.
“Damned field looks like a lake. Ought to be raisin’ fish,” Chester grumbled.
“Mmm-Hmm.”
“Nothing’s gonna sell worth a damn when harvest time comes. Gonna be a cold winter too.”
“Mmm-Hmm.”
“Something’s gotta change.”
“Mmm-Hmm.”
The sky bulged with gray-blue clouds and a breeze slid across the wrinkles on her face. She pulled her dark, thick lips into a smile. “Lord’s working again,” Joyce said.
“Well your Lord’s gonna wind up starving us to death. Can’t eat rain.” Chester shoved his calloused hands into the pockets of his blue coveralls and stepped onto the porch. The smell of pine trees and rainwater flowed through his nostrils. In the distance, there was the rumble of thunder. Then he heard the light pop, pop, pop of rain on his wooden roof. He sighed.
“God dammit.”
“Lord’s work, Chester.”
“Starvation, Joyce.”
Chester turned and went through the squealing screen door into the house. He mumbled to himself on his way into the kitchen.
“Too much rain, ain’t it Daddy Chester?”
Chester turned and watched his dirty, sticky-fingered niece step in the mud prints left on the floor behind him. Her outstretched arms bobbed up and down as she hopped from footprint to footprint.
“Yeah, Penny. Too much rain.”
Penny was the adopted daughter. Four years old. Her mama had died giving birth and her daddy, Chester’s brother, Al, killed himself the next day. After the bodies were buried and the prayers were said no one in Chester’s family felt like raising another child. Everyone was old generation now, with children and grand children and even great grandchildren of their own. Nobody wanted little brown baby Wanda, so Chester took her in and he started calling her his “Penny.”
“Why does it keep raining Daddy Chester?”
“I don’t know, Penny.”
“Is it really the Lord’s work like Grandma Joyce says?”
“I guess.”
Chester unraveled the piece of string that held the old refrigerator door closed and began rummaging. The refrigerator’s motor bubbled as it switched on, like popcorn popping beneath a pot lid. Chester pushed past the two day old stewed chicken in the burgundy Tupperware bowl; he pushed aside the clear-wrapped lima beans in the white, flowered dish.
“Can I have some watermelon Daddy Chester?” Penny asked, on her knees on the floor between his legs, peeking into the refrigerator with large brown eyes. The plats in her hair were muddy and chaotic.
“Have you had any today?”
“No Sir.”
Chester pulled the last quarter of watermelon from the refrigerator and placed it on the tablecloth on the kitchen table. Then he pulled a plastic pitcher of iced tea from the refrigerator and unconsciously licked his lips.
“Don’t make a mess,” he told Penny over his shoulder as he poured his tea.
“Yes Sir,” Penny said, and pulled the plastic wrap off of the watermelon with small, dirty hands.
On the front porch, beneath the roaring of the rain and growling of the thunder, Joyce sang in her sharp, scratchy voice. “God is tryin to tell you somethin’! God is tryin’ to tell you somethin’! Maybe God is tryin’ to tell you somethin’, right now!”
“Yeah,” Chester said, staring out of the kitchen window at the wall of rain. “God’s tryin’ to tell us to start buildin’ an ark.”
Penny’s mouth glistened red and sticky as Chester sat across the table from her. Her fingers grabbed at the soft pulp of the watermelon in front of her like tree limbs raking at windows. Sharp, persistent motions. Pieces of watermelon flesh slipped between her fingers and dripped onto the table.
“Good?” Chester asked.
Penny nodded. Grinned.
“You’ve got it bad for that stuff, little girl. You’d better be careful. Eat too much and it’ll mess your insides up. It’ll ruin you.”
Penny shoved an oversized chunk of melon into her mouth with a loud slurp. Her jaws stretched and juice crept from between her lips and ran down her chin.
“Slow down or else you won’t get anymore.” Chester twisted in his chair at the kitchen table as he spoke. Through the front screen door, a pair of headlights carved their way through the rain. Large, black tires splashed through brown, bubbling puddles of mud. A chrome grill with F.O.R.D. across the front glittered, marching towards the house. Underneath the front porch, Chester’s beagles howled.
“Who’s that Daddy Chester?” Small, black seeds flew from Penny’s mouth as she spoke.
Chester stood in the doorway staring. Joyce stayed dry on the front porch, with her knitting in her hands and her hymns on her lips, not acknowledging the coming vehicle. As the truck pulled up to the front of the house, its engine whining and clattering, headlights glaring, Joyce’s singing dwindled to a soft hum.
The driver switched off the engine of his truck and the headlights died. A rusty door groaned open and a man leapt from the cab dressed in rain-darkened blue coveralls that looked like the ones Chester wore. The man bounced towards the front porch with clumsy steps. Most of the time, he avoided one mudhole just to stumble into another.
“Lord’s working!” the man said as he reached the porch. He rubbed his right hand over his balding skull and pushed rainwater down the semicircle of gray hairs on the back of his head. “Yes, sir” the man said, “The Lord is had a busy year. Isn’t that right sister Joyce?”
“That’s right Reverend.”
“How have you been, sister?” The reverend sank to one knee at Joyce’s feet. He wrapped her wrinkled hands in his. His lips stretched into a well-practiced smile.
Joyce kissed the top of the reverend’s head. “I’ve been blessed.” She said. “The doctors keep tellin’ me I shoulda’ passed by now, but here I am. By the grace of God.”
“Amen, Sister Joyce. Amen.”
Chester stood in the doorway watching long enough to catch the reverend’s eye and nod. Then he withdrew into the kitchen and sat back down at the table across from his niece. Penny had given up on eating with her hands and her face was buried in the bare husk of her watermelon. The rind bounced and slid across the table as she slurped and bit at it like a lioness buried in the innards of a water buffalo.
“Penny! Stop! Dammit girl, you know better. Gonna be sick as a dog eatin’ the rind like that.”
Penny pulled her face up and sucked in a deep, satiated breath. Juice dripped from her chin. Her cheeks were red and shiny. She burped and her eyes drifted half closed.
“Go lay down child,” Chester said. “Go lay on the bed before you get sick.”
Penny slid down from her chair at the table and onto the floor. Her small hands held her belly. When she had disappeared into the bedroom, Chester began cleaning up the mess left on the kitchen table. He smiled and remembered the taste of watermelon.
“Evening Chester.” The reverend was already through the front door and seating himself at the kitchen table, in Chester’s empty seat. His soaked coveralls clung to his round belly. “How are you this evening?”
“Just fine reverend.”
“Amen. Amen.”
“I guess. What brings you out here in this weather? Soul searching, soul savin’, or short on cash?”
Chester had raked a herd of watermelon seeds into a shiny, black mound. He pushed them off the edge of the table and into a plastic trashcan.
“That girl of yours sure does love that stuff don’t she? Why, not two weeks ago she and Sister Joyce were at church and, afterwards, when we all sat down for fellowship and supper, that little girl went straight for the watermelon and nothing else. And that’s all she would eat too. She just kept shoving it down piece by piece till her belly was as swollen as a pregnant hound dog.”
The reverend shook his head back and forth as he spoke. He beat his fist against the table and laughed. “Yeah, boy. That girl’s got it bad.”
“What can I do for you reverend?” Chester had finished wiping off the table. He sat across from the reverend in the chair that Penny had been in. His thick, long fingers reached into the top pocket on his coveralls and pulled out a pack of Winstons. He watched the smile fall away from the reverend’s face as he lit the cigarette between his lips and closed his Zippo lighter with a sharp “clack.”
“Well,” the reverend started, leaning back in his chair, rubbing the smooth top of his head. “The church believes in helping all of its members, Brother Chester. And even though you don’t make it out to service very often, we still consider you a part of the flock.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Now, myself and a few of the deacons have been thinking about you, your wife, and your situation.”
“My situation?” Smoke slipped from Chester’s mouth and curled around the edges of his nose.
“Amen, your situation. You and Sister Joyce, y’all been doing good with that little girl of yours and everyone thinks highly of you two for takin’ her in after nobody else would.”
“But?” Chester thumped the cigarette between his fingers and ashes fell onto the brown, faded kitchen floor.
“Ain’t’ no “but,” Brother Chester, it’s just that some folk at the church feel like it might be better, for everyone, if Penny were with a couple better able to keep up with her.”
“You mean younger?”
The reverend sat forward in his chair. He planted his elbows on the table and folded his hands in front of his lips. “You know how youngsters can be. And you and Sister Joyce ain’t getting the least bit younger. We all know she’s not the healthiest she could be, ain’t nothin’ but the grace of God keeping her alive, Amen.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“The church just feels that it would ease both of your burdens, and be better for Penny, if she were with some younger family. A couple able to keep up with her and play with her and such.”
Chester’s cigarette had burned nearly to the filter. With each sentence the reverend spoke, it glowed hotter and shorter. It was almost to his fingers.
“Reverend,” Chester took the dying cigarette from between his fingers and outted it in his palm, “thank you for coming out to visit. I hope you have a safe drive home.”
The reverend pulled his hands down from in front of his mouth. He rose from his chair and leaned forward across the table. His belly bulged in his wet coveralls and his dark, brown skin shimmered in the flash from a bolt of lightning in the passing storm outside.
“Now Brother Chester, I’m just trying to help you. I just want what’s best for everyone and keeping that little girl all by herself with no one to play with ‘cept a couple of hound dogs and her old grandfolks ain’t doing her a bit of good. You know that.”
Chester’s eyes turned dark. His forehead wrinkled and he rose from his chair. “Good evening, Reverend.”
The reverend pulled away from the table. He rubbed his bottom lip beneath his hand compulsively. After a moment of rubbing and staring at Chester’s large, rough hands and hard, wrinkled face the reverend nodded and started towards the door. “Good evening, Sister Joyce,” he said as he stepped from the front porch into the sheeting rain.
“Good evening, Reverend.” Joyce’s fingers worked on the ball of yarn in her lap. She hummed to herself and kept dry beneath the safety of the old, gray porch.
“Damned field looks like a lake. Ought to be raisin’ fish,” Chester grumbled.
“Mmm-Hmm.”
“Nothing’s gonna sell worth a damn when harvest time comes. Gonna be a cold winter too.”
“Mmm-Hmm.”
“Something’s gotta change.”
“Mmm-Hmm.”
The sky bulged with gray-blue clouds and a breeze slid across the wrinkles on her face. She pulled her dark, thick lips into a smile. “Lord’s working again,” Joyce said.
“Well your Lord’s gonna wind up starving us to death. Can’t eat rain.” Chester shoved his calloused hands into the pockets of his blue coveralls and stepped onto the porch. The smell of pine trees and rainwater flowed through his nostrils. In the distance, there was the rumble of thunder. Then he heard the light pop, pop, pop of rain on his wooden roof. He sighed.
“God dammit.”
“Lord’s work, Chester.”
“Starvation, Joyce.”
Chester turned and went through the squealing screen door into the house. He mumbled to himself on his way into the kitchen.
“Too much rain, ain’t it Daddy Chester?”
Chester turned and watched his dirty, sticky-fingered niece step in the mud prints left on the floor behind him. Her outstretched arms bobbed up and down as she hopped from footprint to footprint.
“Yeah, Penny. Too much rain.”
Penny was the adopted daughter. Four years old. Her mama had died giving birth and her daddy, Chester’s brother, Al, killed himself the next day. After the bodies were buried and the prayers were said no one in Chester’s family felt like raising another child. Everyone was old generation now, with children and grand children and even great grandchildren of their own. Nobody wanted little brown baby Wanda, so Chester took her in and he started calling her his “Penny.”
“Why does it keep raining Daddy Chester?”
“I don’t know, Penny.”
“Is it really the Lord’s work like Grandma Joyce says?”
“I guess.”
Chester unraveled the piece of string that held the old refrigerator door closed and began rummaging. The refrigerator’s motor bubbled as it switched on, like popcorn popping beneath a pot lid. Chester pushed past the two day old stewed chicken in the burgundy Tupperware bowl; he pushed aside the clear-wrapped lima beans in the white, flowered dish.
“Can I have some watermelon Daddy Chester?” Penny asked, on her knees on the floor between his legs, peeking into the refrigerator with large brown eyes. The plats in her hair were muddy and chaotic.
“Have you had any today?”
“No Sir.”
Chester pulled the last quarter of watermelon from the refrigerator and placed it on the tablecloth on the kitchen table. Then he pulled a plastic pitcher of iced tea from the refrigerator and unconsciously licked his lips.
“Don’t make a mess,” he told Penny over his shoulder as he poured his tea.
“Yes Sir,” Penny said, and pulled the plastic wrap off of the watermelon with small, dirty hands.
On the front porch, beneath the roaring of the rain and growling of the thunder, Joyce sang in her sharp, scratchy voice. “God is tryin to tell you somethin’! God is tryin’ to tell you somethin’! Maybe God is tryin’ to tell you somethin’, right now!”
“Yeah,” Chester said, staring out of the kitchen window at the wall of rain. “God’s tryin’ to tell us to start buildin’ an ark.”
Penny’s mouth glistened red and sticky as Chester sat across the table from her. Her fingers grabbed at the soft pulp of the watermelon in front of her like tree limbs raking at windows. Sharp, persistent motions. Pieces of watermelon flesh slipped between her fingers and dripped onto the table.
“Good?” Chester asked.
Penny nodded. Grinned.
“You’ve got it bad for that stuff, little girl. You’d better be careful. Eat too much and it’ll mess your insides up. It’ll ruin you.”
Penny shoved an oversized chunk of melon into her mouth with a loud slurp. Her jaws stretched and juice crept from between her lips and ran down her chin.
“Slow down or else you won’t get anymore.” Chester twisted in his chair at the kitchen table as he spoke. Through the front screen door, a pair of headlights carved their way through the rain. Large, black tires splashed through brown, bubbling puddles of mud. A chrome grill with F.O.R.D. across the front glittered, marching towards the house. Underneath the front porch, Chester’s beagles howled.
“Who’s that Daddy Chester?” Small, black seeds flew from Penny’s mouth as she spoke.
Chester stood in the doorway staring. Joyce stayed dry on the front porch, with her knitting in her hands and her hymns on her lips, not acknowledging the coming vehicle. As the truck pulled up to the front of the house, its engine whining and clattering, headlights glaring, Joyce’s singing dwindled to a soft hum.
The driver switched off the engine of his truck and the headlights died. A rusty door groaned open and a man leapt from the cab dressed in rain-darkened blue coveralls that looked like the ones Chester wore. The man bounced towards the front porch with clumsy steps. Most of the time, he avoided one mudhole just to stumble into another.
“Lord’s working!” the man said as he reached the porch. He rubbed his right hand over his balding skull and pushed rainwater down the semicircle of gray hairs on the back of his head. “Yes, sir” the man said, “The Lord is had a busy year. Isn’t that right sister Joyce?”
“That’s right Reverend.”
“How have you been, sister?” The reverend sank to one knee at Joyce’s feet. He wrapped her wrinkled hands in his. His lips stretched into a well-practiced smile.
Joyce kissed the top of the reverend’s head. “I’ve been blessed.” She said. “The doctors keep tellin’ me I shoulda’ passed by now, but here I am. By the grace of God.”
“Amen, Sister Joyce. Amen.”
Chester stood in the doorway watching long enough to catch the reverend’s eye and nod. Then he withdrew into the kitchen and sat back down at the table across from his niece. Penny had given up on eating with her hands and her face was buried in the bare husk of her watermelon. The rind bounced and slid across the table as she slurped and bit at it like a lioness buried in the innards of a water buffalo.
“Penny! Stop! Dammit girl, you know better. Gonna be sick as a dog eatin’ the rind like that.”
Penny pulled her face up and sucked in a deep, satiated breath. Juice dripped from her chin. Her cheeks were red and shiny. She burped and her eyes drifted half closed.
“Go lay down child,” Chester said. “Go lay on the bed before you get sick.”
Penny slid down from her chair at the table and onto the floor. Her small hands held her belly. When she had disappeared into the bedroom, Chester began cleaning up the mess left on the kitchen table. He smiled and remembered the taste of watermelon.
“Evening Chester.” The reverend was already through the front door and seating himself at the kitchen table, in Chester’s empty seat. His soaked coveralls clung to his round belly. “How are you this evening?”
“Just fine reverend.”
“Amen. Amen.”
“I guess. What brings you out here in this weather? Soul searching, soul savin’, or short on cash?”
Chester had raked a herd of watermelon seeds into a shiny, black mound. He pushed them off the edge of the table and into a plastic trashcan.
“That girl of yours sure does love that stuff don’t she? Why, not two weeks ago she and Sister Joyce were at church and, afterwards, when we all sat down for fellowship and supper, that little girl went straight for the watermelon and nothing else. And that’s all she would eat too. She just kept shoving it down piece by piece till her belly was as swollen as a pregnant hound dog.”
The reverend shook his head back and forth as he spoke. He beat his fist against the table and laughed. “Yeah, boy. That girl’s got it bad.”
“What can I do for you reverend?” Chester had finished wiping off the table. He sat across from the reverend in the chair that Penny had been in. His thick, long fingers reached into the top pocket on his coveralls and pulled out a pack of Winstons. He watched the smile fall away from the reverend’s face as he lit the cigarette between his lips and closed his Zippo lighter with a sharp “clack.”
“Well,” the reverend started, leaning back in his chair, rubbing the smooth top of his head. “The church believes in helping all of its members, Brother Chester. And even though you don’t make it out to service very often, we still consider you a part of the flock.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Now, myself and a few of the deacons have been thinking about you, your wife, and your situation.”
“My situation?” Smoke slipped from Chester’s mouth and curled around the edges of his nose.
“Amen, your situation. You and Sister Joyce, y’all been doing good with that little girl of yours and everyone thinks highly of you two for takin’ her in after nobody else would.”
“But?” Chester thumped the cigarette between his fingers and ashes fell onto the brown, faded kitchen floor.
“Ain’t’ no “but,” Brother Chester, it’s just that some folk at the church feel like it might be better, for everyone, if Penny were with a couple better able to keep up with her.”
“You mean younger?”
The reverend sat forward in his chair. He planted his elbows on the table and folded his hands in front of his lips. “You know how youngsters can be. And you and Sister Joyce ain’t getting the least bit younger. We all know she’s not the healthiest she could be, ain’t nothin’ but the grace of God keeping her alive, Amen.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“The church just feels that it would ease both of your burdens, and be better for Penny, if she were with some younger family. A couple able to keep up with her and play with her and such.”
Chester’s cigarette had burned nearly to the filter. With each sentence the reverend spoke, it glowed hotter and shorter. It was almost to his fingers.
“Reverend,” Chester took the dying cigarette from between his fingers and outted it in his palm, “thank you for coming out to visit. I hope you have a safe drive home.”
The reverend pulled his hands down from in front of his mouth. He rose from his chair and leaned forward across the table. His belly bulged in his wet coveralls and his dark, brown skin shimmered in the flash from a bolt of lightning in the passing storm outside.
“Now Brother Chester, I’m just trying to help you. I just want what’s best for everyone and keeping that little girl all by herself with no one to play with ‘cept a couple of hound dogs and her old grandfolks ain’t doing her a bit of good. You know that.”
Chester’s eyes turned dark. His forehead wrinkled and he rose from his chair. “Good evening, Reverend.”
The reverend pulled away from the table. He rubbed his bottom lip beneath his hand compulsively. After a moment of rubbing and staring at Chester’s large, rough hands and hard, wrinkled face the reverend nodded and started towards the door. “Good evening, Sister Joyce,” he said as he stepped from the front porch into the sheeting rain.
“Good evening, Reverend.” Joyce’s fingers worked on the ball of yarn in her lap. She hummed to herself and kept dry beneath the safety of the old, gray porch.
from “…hide behind me…”
Appears in “Nota Bene”
Follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.