Kenny's Back. Victor J. Banis
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held lightly between his fingers.
It had been different for us that time. Much different, but good, like all our times together were good. Nearly all, anyway. Some weren’t so good.
I stirred from my memory. Yes, I thought, it was silly for me to remember. All those time, and all those memories staying with me—and Kenny hadn’t even remembered my name, not the name he had always called me. All the times that I had wished Kenny were with me, that we could fuck again.
Well, he was back now and, in a way, I guess I had my wish: I really felt like I had been screwed.
CHAPTER TWO
Strange, we had waited in tense excitement, not only that day, but I think through the whole time he was gone, for Kenny to come back. Olsen and Ingrid had cleaned that house until every inch of it glistened, and Olsen had practically worked herself into a lather cooking and baking every single dish she could think of that Kenny had ever liked. It was like a son returning from the wars, a prodigal son, and that night should have been a time of celebration and high spirits. But all we had done was gather the wood and the kindling, and we had heaped it plenty high enough, all right, but the match that was needed to set it blazing was missing.
I was the first to see Olsen come into the kitchen, and I knew from her pale face and hot red eyes that the meeting we were all waiting for wasn’t going to take place—not this night, at least. Kenny’s back was to her and when she put her hand lightly on his shoulder, he jumped high enough that he all but scraped the ceiling. I had never seen or imagined Kenny that tense.
“Tomorrow,” Olsen answered the question in his dark eyes. “She’ll see you tomorrow. She’s as weak as a kitten tonight.”
I looked away when she said it. I didn’t want to see the reaction in his face. But at least she hadn’t sent him away, and she hadn’t outright refused to see him. Olsen would never have lied about that, not even though she loved Kenny as much as she did. So now we’d have to wait some more, for another day, at least.
All of us showed the strain of that waiting as the evening passed. I thought about all the things I could do to make it easier, if not for me, then at least for Kenny. I almost suggested showing him the barn, and some of the work we had done around the place since he had been gone. I thought of taking him into town for a beer or something. We had done that sometimes, even though back then Kenny hadn’t been dry behind the ears. I thought of a dozen things we used to do on nights like this, when Kenny wasn’t up to some mischief or wanted someone to share his mischief with him.
There was a wall five years thick between us, though, and I sat quietly and waited for Kenny to come over it, or open a gate in it; but if there was such a gate, Kenny didn’t find it, or else he passed it by without notice. The closest we came to conversation was when he remarked to me, “It sure is hot for October, isn’t it?” and I said, “Spring came late.”
It was Ingrid who kept things moving along. I don’t know whether she alone escaped the strain of the evening or whether maybe she felt it worst of all, but she talked almost without stopping for a breath. Olsen had always said that what Ingrid lacked in things to say she made up for in words to say it with, but at least she filled up some of the empty spaces of that night with her words, and I think we were all glad for that.
Kenny talked too, and kidded around with her, but his heart wasn’t in it any more than it was in the spread that Olsen set before us. I had seen Kenny many a time put away a whole apple pie without making a dent in his appetite, but this time he picked at the one piece like it was made of sawdust. At nine o’clock, at least two hours earlier than I had ever known him to think of bed—at least, for sleeping—he yawned.
“It’s been a long day,” he said in a voice that came as close as he had ever let it come to apologizing.
“I’ll show you your room,” Ingrid said, jumping up from her chair.
He fixed a peculiar look on her, one that I couldn’t make out. “I haven’t forgotten it,” he said simply. He stood up then and started from the room alone.
“See you all in the morning,” he said, and he was gone.
I smiled to myself at that. How had the little devil known that the old room was still his? It was the nicest bedroom in the house and it might well have been taken over by one of us in the years that he had been gone, instead of being kept like a shrine for him. But he had known—and as usual, he had been right.
“He hasn’t changed a bit,” Ingrid said, looking after him with a wistful expression.
Olsen snorted in the funny way she had and busied herself clearing the rest of the table. “As though you had sense enough to notice,” she commented, but in such a way that said she didn’t mean it.
“Funny, I’d forgotten how handsome he was,” Ingrid said. She chewed at the knuckle of one hand, a habit we both shared, and stared thoughtfully at the door through which he had gone. She remembered me finally and turned her blue eyes on me almost accusingly.
“Mar, aren’t you happy to see him back?” she asked. “You’ve been as quiet as a parson in a brothel.”
“Ingrid.” Olsen banged a bowl into the sink disapprovingly.
“Well, he has,” she insisted.
“It’s his home, isn’t it?” I replied, standing up and avoiding Ingrid’s eyes. “This I where he ought to be. Some day he’ll own all this, if…” I shrugged and didn’t finish it. We all knew that whether he would ever own it or not depended upon that meeting with his mother. It was no secret that for more than a year now Mrs. Baker had intended changing her will, when she was strong enough to deal with the lawyers. If she went ahead with those plans, it would be the church, and not Kenny, who would own the place someday.
“And if he does, what’ll happen to us? What’ll happen to you, Mar?” Ingrid asked in a cooler voice. “You might not be running things then, Mar. At best you’d be just another hired hand.”
That stopped me. Even Olsen, at the sink, turned around with a shocked expression. I suppose both of us still thought of Ingrid as young and sweet, forgetting that she could also be spiteful and mean.
The worst of it was, though, that she was right, even if I had never thought of that before. If Kenny stayed and patched things up with his mother, he would end up running the farm in place of me—and I would be just another hired hand, or maybe out of a job altogether.
“Is that why you were so cold toward him?” Ingrid asked cuttingly.
“Ingrid, may the good Lord forgive you for talking this way,” Olsen said. She put a hand to her breast. It had always been hard for her to see that people had their selfish sides too, and it was a part of life she had never been able to cope with.
“No,” I said, holding my own temper in check, but with some effort. “No, that’s not why.”
It wasn’t until I had gone out, banging the back door behind me that I realized she had goaded me after all into admitting that I had been cold toward him. I even wondered if maybe she didn’t know why. For all her giddiness and apparent helplessness, I knew full well Ingrid was as sharp as she was pretty. Even if she had been stone stupid, she’d have known about the other, about what had happened before Kenny left. I doubt if there was anyone in Hanover who didn’t know about Dexter Holloman. If Ingrid still had a crush on Kenny, it wasn’t because she didn’t know about that—and there was no telling how much more she might know.
I thought about Dexter Holloman while I finished up my chores, and the thought of him made me shiver even though it was a warm night.
They, the others in the house, were waiting with anxious breath for the meeting that was going to take place tomorrow in the pink house. Right now, that was as far as any of us had thought about things.
But Dexter was there, hanging back in the dark part of all our thoughts. Sooner or later, planned or accidental, there was sure to be another meeting too—and