Mommy wip

          His heart lay in his chest much the same as a wrinkled, leather bellows as he slowly puffed warm carbon dioxide into the December sky of Turkey Creek, Kentucky. He listened to the sycamore trees growing along the creek beside him. He could not quite make out what they were saying. Although, in his mind they seemed to be saying, She's your mother, too. He started across the wooden foot log to get to Highway 292. Below him the ice covering Turkey Creek spoke his name, "Jamie, Jamie, Jamie boy, where are you going?" A chill wind lapped across his lips, leaving in its wake tiny crystals of ice clinging to the light blond hairs beneath his nose. Despite his being able to discern the sights and sounds around him, inside his heart was broken. Broken. . .

          He tried to remember the last time he had seen her. It must have been somewhere around August. It had been warm back then. A man does not cry, he thought as the tears rolled across his cheeks. A moan sick with longing escaped from him and spent itself quickly in the sounds of cracking sap from the sycamore trees. Inside him, his heart crouched close against itself, and whimpered at the cold touch of the air in his lungs and the desperation seething in his mind.

          He remembered everything. . . Didn't they think he wanted to see his mother as much as they wanted to see her? It was 1969, old Bailey Ball had came hip hopping up the road with a beer in one hand, a Winston clenched between his front teeth, and sitting his lazy rear end on the seat of a baby-blue, 1957 Chevrolet. Bailey Ball. Old Bailey was his sister's husband. Truth be told, when he had first looked in Bailey's eyes, he had seen something there he had taken an immediate dislike to. A whore hopping, beer drinking, tobacco smoking, woman hitting man had looked back at him for a second before shamefully avoiding his glance. Allie Lea, that was his sister, had been sitting right beside him. Only it hadn't been Allie Lea, not really. . . She hadn't smiled at him as if she had wanted to jump out of that car and take him down to the Cinderella Theater and watch a movie with him. . . that same smile she always reserved just for him.

          Oh, it had looked like her, and he had reckoned the same God who had made this woman had made his sister, but he hadn't put a red bruise on her beautiful, high cheekbone as big as the palm of his hand. He hadn't made the skin around her left eye all puffy and the color of an overripe peach. He hadn't made her pretty blue eyes look down at the ground, shift back up suddenly, and shy away at the sound of one of his Mother's cats meowing. Bailey Ball had done those things all by himself. He had wanted to grab old Bailey by the scruff of the neck and lay into him with everything he had. He reckoned he could have made a fight of it, even if he had been only fifteen years old, but Allie Lea would have frowned on that something awful.

          Allie Lea and Bailey had gotten out of the car, and headed for the house. He had known what was going to happen next. His Daddy would come out of the house, walk down the porch steps and stroll toward him. Directly, his sister Joan would come out and stand on the porch with three packs of Salem menthols in her right hand, and smoking on another one. Then out would come Debby, Tricia and Anita Sue. Bailey Ball and Allie Lea would come out in another minute, and they would all stand there on the porch watching his Daddy.

          "Son," his Daddy would say, as he worked that pinch of Copenhagen beneath his lower lip like he was stirring a barrel of forty degree molasses and came to a halt in front of him. "We're fixing to go over to Pikeville to see your Mommy. I want you to take care of everything here, and next time. . ." After that, they would all load into the car and drive off down the road. Didn't they know he had needed to see his mother as much as they had? He had known she was in the hospital, but they wouldn't even tell him what was wrong with her.

          He had stood there quite shaken, and wanting to grab that Chevrolet by the tailpipe and bring it to a halt, open up that door where his Daddy had sat and say to him, "Get out of that car, Daddy. Today, I'm going to see my mother." Instead, the same as he had done all the other times they had left him standing there, he had simply watched the Chevrolet drive out of his sight.