Bent Road Read Free Page A

hat and slapping it against his thigh. Underneath, his dark hair is matted and sweat sparkles on his forehead. Even from several feet away, he smells of bourbon.
    After shaking Arthur’s hand, Ray replaces his hat and bends down to look through the truck’s cab. His cloudy gray eye, the left one, which Celia only remembers when she sees him up close again, wanders off to the side while the eye that is clear and brown stares at Celia. He winks the bad eye.
    “Well, if you damn sure aren’t still the prettiest thing I ever seen,” he says, scratching his two-day-old beard. “The good Lord’s done well by you, Arthur.”
    Ray’s good eye inches down Celia’s body and settles at her waist. He had looked at her the same way on her wedding day, like her taking one man meant she would take any man.
    Celia wrinkles her nose at his sour smell. “So good to see you, Ruth,” she says, reaching for the pie that Ruth holds out to her.
    “It’s strawberry.” Ruth straightens the pleats on her tan calico dress. “We had a late season this year. Thought they’d never ripen.”
    Celia cups the chilled pie plate. “You always did bake up the nicest desserts.”
    Celia says this even though her own wedding was the last and only time she saw Ruth. Almost twenty years ago. They were barely more than kids; Ruth a new bride herself. The years have worn heavy on her, stooped her shoulders, yellowed her skin, and peppered her brown hair with gray, though she still wears it in the same tightly knit bun that she did all those years ago.
    “Arthur said you had an accident on your way in,” Ruth says, still pressing her pleats. “You and the children are all right?”
    Celia rubs her neck with one hand and rolls her head from side to side. “Shook us up a little. Frightened the children, but we’re fine.”
    Once they finally settled into bed the night before, Arthur had said they probably saw a deer. Or maybe not. Never could tell. “But that spot at the top of Bent Road is a tricky one,” he had said. “Better take it slow next time.” Celia had rolled over, putting her back to him, and said that perhaps next time he would be inclined to slow himself down. When she woke this morning, she had a sore neck, an ache in her lower back and made Arthur promise to check the front of her car for damage. He found nothing but still couldn’t say for sure what they had seen out there.
    “Good God damn,” Ray shouts to the driver of a second truck towing a trailer into the drive. “I don’t pay you to drive like a fool, boy.”
    A young man steps out of the other truck. His light brown hair hangs below his collar and covers the tips of his ears. He wears a sleeveless chambray shirt, the frayed shirttail left untucked. Ruth tells Celia that his name is Jonathon Howard. He’s a local boy who has come to help Ray, though he’s not so much a boy anymore.
    “You don’t pay me at all, Ray,” Jonathon says. “Quit all that fuss you’re making.” He nods at Celia and Arthur, tugs on the raw edge of his Silver Belly hat and walks toward his trailer.
    At the back porch, the screened door squeals open and slams shut. Elaine walks across the drive, blotting her cheeks with a tissue. Though she is small like Celia—narrow shoulders, a slender waist, hips that flare ever so slightly beneath her skirt—she has Arthur’s brown hair and eyes.
    “Elaine,” Celia says. “Come say hello to Aunt Ruth.”
    Tucking the tissue into her apron and smoothing back her hair that hangs in dark waves down her back, Elaine steps around the truck’s open door and leans inside to hug Ruth. “So nice to meet you, Aunt Ruth,” she says, and standing straight, she looks down the drive toward the young man with the frayed chambray shirt. As if trying to get a better view of him, she leans away from the truck and stumbles over Celia. “Sorry,” she says.
    “Quite all right.” Celia smiles and glances between Elaine and the young man.
    “Celia,” Ray