All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 27

27

On Main Street Saint saw Dick Lowell and a few others sitting out front of his hardware store and nursing the kind of sorry hangovers born of the tenth Super Bowl.

Saint did not understand how they went on with their lives like anything else could matter so much again.

That winter, so cold and colorless, she wondered if it would last her lifetime. Norma said she needed another hobby, or perhaps she might like to see that shrink because it mightn’t be so bad to share her feelings. And so Saint borrowed a library book that taught her how to knit, and before long spent evenings sitting by the window just like her grandmother had. She made herself a scarf and hat and one for her grandmother and sometimes caught Norma watching her as if she were the oldest kid in history, like soon enough her hair would gray and her mind would slow.

Jimmy Walters knocked for her one Saturday morning, and her grandmother let him in. Saint silently fumed. Norma fixed them hot chocolate, and together they sat on the back porch, Jimmy’s cheeks flushing when he saw a cotton mouse head into the thicket.

“Little guy only lives five months on average,” Jimmy said, standing.

“Less if I had my slingshot.”

“There’s marshland if you follow the line of woodland in your yard.

Might be a painted turtle.”

“Saint once saw a beaver heading that way,” Norma said, joining them.

Jimmy’s face lit up. “We could take a walk there.”

Saint tried to smile, and did not tell him the marshland was where she and Patch once went to sail paper boats.

She stayed up into the night to watch George Foreman go to war with Ron Lyle. Norma climbed to her feet in the fifth round, hollering and boxing shadows, spilling her drink and making Saint smile.

Together they sat and watched the evening news as tornadoes tore towns apart, a car sat upturned, farmers held their heads, eyes closed in prayer as crops were lifted and taken and barns decimated.

“Lord,” her grandmother said. “Three hundred dead and five thousand close to it.”

Norma got up slow, because a stoop Saint had never noticed had grown worse, switched the channel and poured herself a finger of bourbon to watch the story of Randle McMurphy sweep the board at the Golden Globes. Norma reached for her dog-eared paperback and tossed it to Saint.

“You need to escape more,” she said.

Saint no longer knew how.

On a white Saturday, Jimmy Walters turned up with a clutch of frost flowers tied off with purple ribbon.

Saint told Norma she did not want to see him.

“He’s resilient,” Norma said, tugging her out of bed.

“So is influenza.”

As they strolled in the snow Jimmy pointed to the stems and told her of

crownbeard and dittany.

“Why did you bring these?” she asked.

“I just wanted to show you that sometimes things survive despite the harshest of odds.”

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