Chapter 8

To Pearl it seemed that #10 Grove Street was weeping, sometimes screaming and other times just moaning. Sometimes, though, she could almost fool herself into believing that those loud cries of sorrow were the sounds of the wind caught in the trees or tearing through the rows of wheat and alfalfa that grew across the road.

But when it came to the blood, there was no tricking herself into believing it was anything but what it was. So Pearl just bit her bottom lip and wrung her hands when her eyes happened to fall on #10 and the spaces on the house where the clapboard had come loose.

The earth was bitter around #10, the flowers were all gone, killed off by weeds or plucked by people who still came to stand and look at the place where she once lived and almost died. They pointed at the window where she’d sat, naked, black and bold. The window where Seth had called to her and then later, where she’d hurled curse words that broke through the night and sent him running.

Pearl couldn’t sleep in full hours anymore, #10 wouldn’t allow it, so she slept during the silent minutes between the moans. She slept during the space of time where the house just fretted before the pain struck again in the rafters, along the floorboards or down the spine of the banister.

Joe never seemed to hear it, or at least pretended not to. In fact he hardly ever looked over at #10. His head didn’t even turn in that direction when he stepped out on the porch to catch a late-night breeze or check the sky for clouds before heading toward town.

He preferred instead to look out at the fields or down the road toward town, allowing his thoughts to drift on something other than #10 and the daughter that used to live there.

Joe had taken to humming to himself whenever he was in the presence of #10, odd tunes that Pearl did not recognize, sad tunes that somehow went along with the misery that was spilling out of #10. Tunes that made Pearl feel as if their time in that place, on that side of town, had come to an end and a change was needed in order to keep on living.

She mentioned to Joe that a change was due and maybe across town, close to where the railroad tracks ran like silver veins through the land, would be the place to resettle and enjoy their old age years together.

Joe just raised bushy eyebrows and asked, “Why, Pearl? Why you wanna up and leave the house we been living in for forty years?”

Pearl couldn’t give him an answer, not without lying, so she said nothing and reached for the Bible as she prayed for a strong wind or violent storm to come along and rip #10 from God’s green earth, hurling it far, far away from there.

Number ten was sold that summer. Joe mentioned it to Pearl in passing over lunch, right before he picked up his glass of lemonade and just as the musical introduction to Still of the Night came across the radio. Pearl nodded her head and waved a fly away from the last biscuit that sat on the small white plate between them. He waited for her to raise her eyes, swallow or at least reach for the biscuit. But she did nothing but continue to chew the food that was already in her mouth.

Joe watched the steady movement of her jaw and the small beads of sweat that formed around her hairline and across the bridge of her nose. He wanted to say something about the dark circles beneath her eyes and make a point of how her clothes had started to hang from her body just as they did all those years ago after Jude was killed and Pearl lost her spirit. But he held his tongue and waited for Pearl to respond. She said nothing.

“It went for about twenty-five hundred. The house and the land,” he said when the silence around them went stale. “They got a good piece of land. Fertile.”

Joe wanted to reach for the biscuit, wanted to reach for Pearl, but he kept talking instead. “The house is sound too. Strong. Solid.”

Pearl still did not say a word.

“That land gives back more than it take. Fertile.”

He stopped then, because the fly was attacking his ear and his thoughts were becoming scattered.

Pearl nodded, flinched a bit as the sounds from #10 cut through Joe’s words and then she reached for the biscuit.

Two days later the sky above Grove Street lit up orange and yellow, and black smoke billowed out and across the fields that marked the south side of town.

The only firehouse in the county was five towns away in Saw Creek. People came out with buckets filled with water to throw onto the growing flames. In the end it was hopeless. There was little anyone could do but stand back and watch as #10 burned to the ground.

“It’s been dry,” some said.

“Hot as hell for June.”

“No rain in weeks.”

There were more than enough reasons for the house to have gone up.

“Anyone seen Alberta’s boy?”

“Harper?”

“Nah, the older one. Kale, I think.”

“Nah, that’s the middle boy. You mean Wilfred.”

“Yeah, Wilfred. He got a thing for matches.”

“Ain’t seen him ‘round.”

“Yeah, that Wilfred got a thing for matches.”

By the time the truck arrived, #10 was nothing more than a pile of smoldering ashes. The grass was black and the trees that stood closest to the house were burnt and naked.

“Damn shame,” Joe said as he stepped up onto the porch.

“Uh-huh,” Pearl said and turned to go back into the house.

Joe watched her walk through the doorway, dismissing the smell of gasoline that followed her.