Where We Are Now Read Online Free Page B

jar holding the brush and started out of the barn. Full daylight blinded him. Throwing one arm across his eyes, he tripped over a small stone, and fell flat in the mud made by the hose. The open glass jar didn’t break but rolled mixing turpentine with muddy water as it went.Holding onto the paint bucket, he got to his knees, then to his feet to find Roary had reappeared and was grinning at him.
    â€œGet out of here!” Ambrose shouted as he grabbed the brush from its jar. Still carrying the paint bucket, he chased him through the back yard to the front, the brush lifted before him as if he’d paint the dog when he caught him. Roary circled round the porch, squeezed under a gate, and returned to his favorite spot behind the barn.
    Still furious with himself, with Josephine, and Milstead Dupey, still searching for distraction, Ambrose walked to a corner of the front lawn where he opened the paint bucket with his pocketknife and began painting the top rail of Edgar’s fence blue. When he had to sit on the ground to paint the lower rail, he watched the top one fade into a limitless blue sky. Finding this illusion of the lack of boundaries appealing, he continued painting rails and posts of the fence all along one side of the lawn. Once out of paint, he fell asleep in the shade of a burr oak where Edgar eventually found him when he returned from town.
    Paint spattered, muddy, aching from the falls he’d taken, Ambrose grimaced as he looked up at his brother with Roary beside him.
    â€œI got drunk.”
    â€œYou plan on finishing it?” Edgar asked. He leaned down to pat the dog’s head.
    Ambrose pointed toward the empty bucket.
    Edgar shook his head.
    â€œKate won’t like the color, will she?” Ambrose struggled to his feet and picked up the brush leaving a smear of blue on the fresh green grass.
    His brother shrugged. “It’ll wear off,” he said. “You might let me know when you plan on drinking next. I could have some whitewash on hand.”
    Together, the dog following, they walked back to the house.
    â€œWomen,” Ambrose muttered.
    Edgar gave him a questioning look, which he ignored. A headache began in a far crevice of his skull. It would get worse. What else could he expect? He’d known whisky wasn’t his friend. Edgar and Kate would look after him if he’d let them, but he’d have to talk, have to tell his whole story, have to confess about Jeanie and the boy. Better to go away. Why be bound to Josephine, to Charleston? He could go anywhere.
    Alone after supper, he stared out his upstairs bedroom window. Night fell over the widespread lawn so dark with trees he could glimpse only part of the drive, part of the newly painted fence.
    Kate just laughed at the color.
    Where would he go? Maybe back to New York, or he might take off toward Savannah. He could try to find Jeanie and his son. How many years had it been? Four? What was the boy’s name? How tall was he now? He might even persuade Jeanie to marry him at last. He might. He might not. She could have married someone else. If not she, too, could have made up her mind to despise him. Still he might win her. Why was he filled with such foolish hope? Having more choices was daunting but he could remember waiting for the spring rains to stop the year he was fifteen then hiking out of the mountains while gazing up at a clear blue sky.

THE GRANDS
    T he ground mist eddied around the mule’s legs. He walked slowly toward a farmhouse as if aware that the man on his back was asleep. Behind the hills the moon set, casting long shadows on rows of cotton already stripped. Leftover bits dotted the dark earth, fluttered from the bolls’ dry hulls, caught the eye of the mule’s rider as he woke. Rising slightly, he touched the fiddle tied to the back of his saddle. As he reached the front porch steps, he shook his head then shouted.
    â€œHal-loo! Hal-loo!”
    The front door opened