The Homecoming of Samuel Lake. Jenny Wingfield

you hear your grandma and me saying?”

      “I don’t remember exactly.”

      “Good.”

      “Well, I just think when a relative of mine has committed a murder, I deserve to know the details,” Swan complained.

      “You deserve a licking about nine tenths of the time.”

      Willadee pulled a strand of hair between her thumb and forefinger to see whether it squeaked. It did. She flipped her head back, wrapped a towel around it, and started out of the bathroom.

      “Well, did he kill him or not?” Swan hollered after her.

      “Yes!” her mother yelled back. It might take Willadee a while to get around to telling the truth, but if you pinned her down, she wouldn’t lie. She was Moses, through and through.

      “So what did he use?”

      “His hands!”

      His hands. Uncle Toy had killed a man with his bare hands. Swan sat there for a minute, thinking about that, Uncle Toy growing bigger and more powerful in her mind by the second. He had captured her imagination, and she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Strangely enough, Aunt Bernice didn’t appear to be all that impressed with him. Often as not, she acted as if her husband wasn’t there, even when she was sitting right beside him. And they were so perfect together—him being so strong, and sure of himself, and her with that heartbreaking body, and skin like silk. If Aunt Bernice were just a little entranced with Uncle Toy, it would be the most incredible love story, the kind that lives on after the people are gone.

      Swan stood up in the tub. Bubbles glistened everywhere. She reached down, scooped up a double handful of suds, and plastered them on either side of her chest, teasing them into pointy breast shapes, just like Aunt Bernice had. Willadee came back into the room in search of a comb and caught her in the act.

      “Will you stop doing that.”

      It was not a question. Swan slithered back down into the water. Her fabulous foamy breasts lost all their pointiness.

      “Did he beat him to death? Did he strangle him?”

      Willadee had found her comb and was leaving the room again.

      “He broke his neck.”

      Chapter 6

      Uncle Toy had not spoken to Swan once since the funeral. He’d been around enough. His brothers had “real jobs,” so it was up to him to run Never Closes. His own customers would just have to buy their liquor in public or do without for now.

      Every afternoon, an hour or so before Grandma Calla closed the store, Toy would come rolling into the yard in either his blue outrun-the-law Oldsmobile or his black hit-the-woods Ford pickup. Bernice always came with him, never failing to explain that she was afraid to stay home alone. While Willadee was making supper, Toy would busy himself around the place, finding things that needed a man’s hand—a door hanging out of plumb (all the doors were out of plumb), a hole to be patched in the chicken yard fence, a dead tree that needed to come down before some storm blew it over on the house.

      The first day, Swan had followed Toy around, hoping he’d notice her, and forgive her, and they could become close, the way it had looked like they might. But Toy never looked her way. He just worked until it was time for supper, then ate like a horse and disappeared into the bar. Swan sat at the kitchen table after he left that first night, listening to her mother and Aunt Bernice talk while they cleaned the kitchen.

      “I still can’t hardly stand to think about your daddy doing what he did,” Bernice said. She shuddered, indicating that she was thinking about it all right. In color. She was the only one in the family who seemed bent on bringing that subject up. Everybody else pretty much left it alone. It hung in the air, though. Always there.

      Willadee said, “Let’s just let Daddy rest.”

      Bernice looked over at her like maybe she felt a little insulted that her conversation starter hadn’t gone anywhere.

      “I don’t know how all of you are holding up so well. If I were in your shoes, I don’t think I’d be able to even get out of bed in the morning.”

      “If you had kids, you would.”

      Having kids was something Bernice didn’t like to talk about, so the kitchen got quiet for a minute. Nothing but the clink and clatter of dishes. Then, as if it just occurred to her, she asked, “When’s Sam coming back?”

      “Friday evening,” Willadee answered. “Like always.”

      “Wonder where you’ll be next year.”

      “God knows.”

      “Well, maybe you won’t have to move.”

      “Moving’s not that bad.”

      “I couldn’t handle it myself, I don’t think.”

      “Good thing you didn’t marry Sam.”

      End of conversation. There was empty silence, until Willadee started humming “In the Gloaming,” and then Bernice just up and left the room. Like that. No warning. Willadee wiped her hands on her apron and watched her go. Then she noticed Swan, sitting there all eyes and ears.

      “Swan Lake, what are you doing?”

      “Nothing.”

      “Well, do it somewhere else.”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      Naturally, Swan didn’t move. If you didn’t actually refuse to mind Willadee, you could frequently get by with not minding, at least for a little while.

      “What’s Aunt Bernice’s problem?” Swan asked when her mother had started back washing dishes.

      “Somewhere else, Swan.”

      That had been Wednesday night, and now it was Friday, and time was running out. Swan’s father would be back this evening, and he would tell them where they were going to live next year, and in the morning, Willadee would have all their clothes packed up before they even got out of bed. As soon as breakfast was over, they’d be off. Going home to Louisiana. Either getting back into the swing of things in Eros, the tiny town they’d been living in for all of a year now, or else getting ready to move.

      Swan hoped they moved. People felt sorry for her and her brothers because they moved so much, but she could never resist the excitement of it. When you went to a new place, everybody welcomed you, and church members had you over for dinner and made over you, and things were peachy. For a little while.

      As far as Swan was concerned, once the new wore off, it was time to move again. After that, life got to be a dance, careful, careful how you step, mustn’t get on anybody’s toes, but her father did, all the time. He specialized in it. Just couldn’t resist telling sinners that God loved ’em, and he loved ’em, and why didn’t they put in an appearance at the Lord’s house, come Sunday. And we’re talking the rankest sinners, here. Men who were too lazy to work, and couples who were living in sin, and even one frowsy old woman who used to be a stripper, down on Bourbon Street, until her looks played out. Samuel didn’t stop at trying to get ordinary sinners saved. He wanted everybody on God’s green earth saved, and acted like the whole thing was up to just him. Like the Lord didn’t have any other helpers.

      Sometimes Swan wished her father did almost anything else besides preaching. Probably, if he were the postmaster, or owned a hardware store, or something, and everybody in town wasn’t always watching her, hoping she’d mess up so they could gossip about it, probably, she could just be a regular kid. It must be lovely to be like everybody else.

      But there were bigger things to think about right now. She had less than a day to get in solid with Uncle Toy. Once she and her family drove away in the morning, she wouldn’t see him again for a year, and the whole world could come to an end by then.

      Swan started scouting around for Uncle Toy