Charity Read Online Free

crawled under the covers. It felt good to sleep. To forget.

    Early the next morning, after leaving a scribbled note stuck in Gustie’s screen door, Lena walked back to Charity. The sky was a clear, light blue, lacking substance. The few wisps of white cloud floated higher and higher till they dissipated altogether. For a bird to get enough purchase with feather and wing in such a thin sky to be able to fly seemed impossible. And perhaps it was, as all the birds around her were hopping from brush to branch or perched on stalks of grass, chirping at one another and preening themselves, passing the time, waiting for the sky to thicken up a bit.
    Ma Kaiser’s house squatted at the edge of town: huge, dark, musty, and unkempt—like Ma herself. Lena never liked going inside. Today, more than ever, she didn’t want to go in or even talk to Ma. But she was sure nobody would come to her, and she had to start somewhere to try to find out what was going on.
    The gate screeched as she pushed it open, then it swung askew since the latch was rusted out. The wooden porch steps squeaked under her weight.
    Lena stopped to listen for voices. She heard nothing but the buzz of flies and the woo-wooing of a mourning dove. She opened the tattered screen door. “Ma?” Lena listened. “Is anybody home? Ma?” For answer there was only a steady creaking from the bowels of the house. Lena followed the sound through the sour smelling kitchen, the dining room, which was lorded over by a mahogany china cabinet crammed with God knew what, and into the living room, the darkest room in a dark house, full of more heavy pieces of furniture that loomed about her, shapeless and colorless. On every one lay a dingy antimacassar.
    As Lena’s eyes adjusted, the source of the monotonous creaking issuing from the farthest reaches of the gloom took form: Gertrude Kaiser, her great bulk shrouded in black taffeta and squeezed into a wooden rocker, rocking back and forth, back and forth. The few timid rays of light that trespassed through the sagging draperies were drawn to the one bright spot in the room. Her thick white hair glowed with reflected light like a patch of snow in a dark gully catching a moonbeam at midnight. Such beautiful hair, Lena thought, on such an ugly woman . Ma’s hands gripped the armrests of the chair; her eyes stared at nothing Lena could see.
    “Ma?” She stepped closer, but the old woman did not acknowledge her. “Ma!” Lena, short on patience, took two strides to the side of the rocker and shook her mother-in-law by the shoulder. “Ma! Where are the boys? Where’s Mary and Nyla? I thought they’d be here.”
    “They’re at Molvik’s seeing to Pa,” her mother-in-law wheezed. “Seeing to things.”
    Molvik was the undertaker. Lena had almost forgotten there was a body to be prepared for burial. She ventured in a more civil voice, “You know they think that Will did it.” Maybe Ma didn’t know that. Maybe they hadn’t told her. Maybe they thought the death of a husband was enough news for the time being.
    “Of all the boys,” the old woman wheezed, “I never thought it would be Will.”
    “He didn’t do it! But I mean to find out who did, believe you me. Now what do you know about this mess?”
    Ma Kaiser turned her small eyes upon Lena. “I don’t know anything,” she mewled, like a fat child confronted with an empty cake plate.
    “Well, when did you last see Pa?” Lena resisted the urge to smack her. “What was he doing in the barn? There’s nothing in that barn.”
    “I don’t know.” The old woman’s voice slipped into a higher register and she started to rock again. “I don’t keep track of what all that man does.”
    Ma Kaiser nor her house ever smelled good, but today the smell of a woman who casually believes all her sons capable of murder and takes for granted the guilt of her favorite was too much. Lena felt herself beginning to gag. She left as fast as she could and, once she had passed the