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"Nothing going to happen to him," I said firmly. The picture of Zeb shaking and slapping Vile was burned into my mind. It was hard to believe she was worried about him.
"It's the booze, you know. He's a good sort, really. Don't mean no harm."
I looked at the red spot on her cheekbone. "Well, he may not have meant to, but that rosebud on your face is going to bloom into a beauty of a shiner."
She patted her cheek gently. "It don't hurt none."
"Maybe not," I said. "But let's just wait out this crazy spell, okay?"
She didn't argue, just kept following me. We came down behind the first shed. The back door opened easily. There was still dust in the air of the shed, giving it a twilight feel. Inside, large blocks of still-raw granite were mixed with tombstones in various stages of progress.
"I don't like it," Vile whispered. "It's like a graveyard."
"It's just granite," I said. "Stone. There ain't no bodies buried here."
"I'm saying what it feels like," she said in a more normal tone of voice.
I sat down on a rectangular block that was resting benchlike on one side. I patted the place beside me. "Might as well rest."
She obeyed, perching on the edge of the granite. After a while she got up and began to pace among the stones. I felt too tired to stand up, much less walk, though the cold of the stone was penetrating, especially where my pants legs were damp.
She came back to where I sat. "I need to go look for him," she said.
"He won't thank you," I said. "He's likely still mad about the bottle."
"I shouldn'ta done it," she said. "It's his only comfort." I couldn't believe she'd defend him and said as much. "He can't help it, Ed. It's like a sickness."
I grunted. "More like demon possession."
"You don't understand. You're a preacher's boy."
"I've heard plenty about the demon rum," I said. And I had. Leonardstown had a very active chapter of the Temperance Union. They'd even brought traveling theatrical companies to town, who acted out melodramas about the evils of drink. In fact, if at that very moment one of those pious ladies had magically appeared, pledge card in hand, I think I would have signed it, swearing off intoxicating spirits for the rest of my natural life. I'd had too vivid a sample in the last hour of what alcohol could do, and it made me furious as well as scared.
She wandered off again, leaving me to ponder the evils of drink. "Hey!" she called a few minutes later. "Look what I found." She came around a stone angel at the far end of the row, carrying what looked like a lunch pail. "Somebody forgot to eat their dinner."
She put it down on the stone and lifted the lid. It was a feast—bread, cheese, even a large slab
of pie, which when unwrapped proved to be raspberry. "It's a miracle," I said, "just when we were about to starve." She looked at me oddly. I didn't try to explain that if God provided a miracle, then it couldn't be considered stealing to accept it. And even if, strictly speaking, it was stealing to eat somebody else's dinner that they'd forgotten to eat earlier, well, I didn't have to worry anyway, being currently an unbeliever. It was too complicated to explain to her.
Vile smoothed out a piece of the paper wrapping and spread the feast out on the granite. "There's even something to drink," she said, taking a corked green glass bottle out of the pail. She yanked out the cork, smelled the contents, then handed the bottle across to me.
I sniffed. It was some stonecutter's homemade—there was no mistaking it. "It's wine," I said.
"Oh," she said, replacing the cork. "Then I'll save it for Paw."
"Are you out of your mind, Vile?"
She sighed. "I guess I won't." She put the bottle back into the pail. "Here," she said in a more cheerful voice, breaking the longish loaf of bread in two and then the cheese. "Let's eat."
The bread was crusty on the outside and a little bit hard, as was the cheese, but it didn't matter to either of us. By the time we had worked our way to the pie, we were full enough to eat more slowly, rolling every bite around in our mouths to get the last bit of flavor.
"I bet the president of the Yu-nited States don't eat this good," she said, smacking her lips, which were now more stained with raspberry juice than before.
"Probably not," I agreed, knowing in fact that in the white manse on School Street we ate like this on many an ordinary day, but I had never been truly hungry before. It does add something powerfully delicious to a meal to eat it when you're so hungry.
When we had pinched every crumb from the wrapping papers, she gave another tremendous sigh. "We didn't save Paw a bite," she said. I could see her eyeing that little bottle of wine.
"No, Vile," I said. "You give that to Zeb, you'll only be sorry after."
