Blood Kin by Steve Rasnic Tem Page B

steps. I called it Reverend , he thought. I called that cat Reverend.
    That afternoon Grandma gave him the photograph albums to study. These were full of pictures of the Gibsons and other inhabitants of the town for generations back. Pictures of Sadie herself, her hair yellow and eyes bright. He was amazed at how closely the images matched his imaginings. But there were differences. Her father, Bobby Gibson, was much better looking than he’d imagined, dark-skinned with high chiseled cheeks, and the one image of the preacher — taken in secret, Sadie said, made him look small relative to the people gathered around him.
    “Think about what you see,” Grandma said behind him. “Then feel what you see.” It was uncomfortably like being in school again.
    He flipped through page after page of pictures, the same people in different settings, in different poses, at varied occasions. Layer after layer of photographs, peeling back, and each new layer told him something new. He felt his shoulders stoop, his hands palsy. He grew old, then drew back to when things were newer, the sun on his face, warming his hair.
    His grandmother looked so old; her skin was like cracked porcelain, glued and reglued but with all the fractures still showing. Something had drained her, cost her, and robbed her. He didn’t have the words for it and it made him feel like a fool. There was nothing he could do for that little girl from the thirties; there seemed to be even less he could do for her now. Again, he questioned exactly what it was she was asking him to do here. Did she understand he wasn’t good at much of anything, and never had been?
    “Clarence Roberts and his son are here,” his grandmother said to him from the parlor doorway. “I think you best take a minute to say hello to them.”
    Of the few dozen or so population left in the town of Morrison, Clarence was the only one he’d actually talked to. Miss Perkins and the others, everybody his grandmother had told him about, they were long gone.
    Clarence and Benny were waiting politely at the bottom of the porch steps. Clarence made a living doing routine maintenance for various real estate companies that still owned parts of Morrison, and for private citizens like Grandma Sadie. He dressed the part, and acted it. In the city, Michael had never met anyone so deferential. Benny hid behind his daddy’s leg; Clarence held on to the boy’s collar. Here in the mountains the children were trained to stay close when strangers were around.
    “Hello, Clarence, Benny,” Michael said awkwardly. “You’re here to clean out the weeds in that ditch line across the road.”
    “Just takin what the Good Lord sends us,” Clarence said easily. Michael didn’t know what to say. Benny looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes.
    “This will be done today, wont it, Clarence?” Grandma had stepped up behind him.
    “Cant promise you nothin, but I spect so.”
    Benny had squirmed away from his father and was looking at a butterfly on a bush. Clarence reached over and pulled him back. “I’ll give you away to that man if’n you dont behave, Benny.” The boy looked stricken. Clarence looked back at Michael. “Best be gettin on with it, I guess.”
    “Sure, thank you, Clarence.”
    “That man’s never been outside this valley,” she told him later. “His son probably wont leave, either. Granddaddy once told me Appalachia was a reservation and probably always would be. One of the truest things the man ever said.”
    Clarence and his son crossed the gravel road and approached the weed-choked ditch. Above their heads, a new shoot of kudzu drifted down from the upper branches of the thick wall of trees. Michael stared as it wiggled slightly in the breeze, making a lazy S.
     
     
    “Y OUR DADDY ALWAYS held you back. I’m afraid I cant explain that.” Grandma rocked furiously, as if gearing herself up to continue the story. “I heard him one time tell you ‘You cant do nothing,’ but that