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“Please tell me there’s cornbread?” Cole begged with a puppy dog grin.
She turned back to the oven. “Of course there’s cornbread. What kind of fool doesn’t have cornbread with their Sunday dinner?” She grabbed a potholder and pulled a square pan out of the oven, slapping it down on the counter. “Can you reach up there on the top shelf, and get me down a plate to put it on, son? These old bones aren’t so good anymore, I can’t reach up there like I used to.”
“How old are you now, Mama Rose?” Cole asked.
“Getting on in years, son. Be eighty next month.” She turned to Crash, shaking a wooden spoon toward him. “You can take that as a reminder, boy.”
Crash smiled. “I’ll remember. I always do, don’t I.”
She patted his cheek. “You do. You do, son.” She turned to Letty. “Well, don’t just stand there, hon. Get these men some tea!”
Cole turned to her and smacked her bottom. “Yeah, get these men some tea, girl.”
“Yes, ma’am, Gram.” She smiled sweetly at her, and then turned and gave Cole the evil eye.
He burst out laughing.
“There’s chicken, fried okra, butter beans, cornbread…” She turned to the boys. “Well, make yourself useful. Help me carry it into the dining room, boys.”
And now here they sat, having stuffed themselves with some good southern cooking.
“There’s more banana pudding, Cole. Don’t be shy.”
Cole grinned and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his stomach. “Mama Rose, I’ve already had two helpings. You trying to get me fat?”
She grunted. “Huh! A man should have some meat on his bones, in my opinion.” She turned to Crash. “You look more like your mother every day, son. You’ve got her eyes.”
Crash looked away. “I really don’t remember her eyes.”
“No?” his grandmother asked.
“Nope. The only real memory I have of her is her reading us that book about the train that takes the kids to the North Pole.”
“The Polar Express,” his grandmother clarified.
“Yeah, I guess. I was six or seven.”
“You were seven. It was the last time you saw her.” She looked down at the table cloth, brushing non-existent crumbs.
“Yeah.” He looked at his grandmother, knowing she was remembering that day. Six months earlier, his mother had dumped him and his little brother and sister with her mother, their gran. She’d already been raising them full-time by that time. His mom had been a young mom. Sixteen when she’d had him, twenty-one when she’d had Trevor and twenty-two when she’d had Letty. She’d gotten messed up with drugs. She’d take off for days or weeks at a time, bingeing on drugs most likely.
He remembered that day was the last time she’d ever come to see them. She’d been gone more and more often. He’d hardly missed her anymore by that time. She’d become a stranger to him. He remembered it felt uncomfortable at first, having to sit next to her on Gram’s sofa while his mother read him the book she’d brought them. He remembered Trevor wouldn’t sit next to her, she was a stranger to him. Gram was mom to them by that time. So, Crash had sat next to his mother, even though he didn’t really want to any more than his little brother had, but he was the big brother, and he always took care of his little brother and sister. Letty sat next to their mother on the other side. She was too young to think in terms of people being strangers. She liked the pretty lady with the long hair that smiled at her.
But Crash knew. He knew even then that she would leave again. And he wanted her gone. And then she was. For good. And he realized too late that he couldn’t ever get her back.
“That was the month before they found her overdosed in that Southside apartment,” his grandmother explained. She shook her head, and Crash reached over and laid his hand over hers, squeezing.
What could he say? She loved you, Gram? Nothing you could have done, Gram? None of those trite comments made the pain go away. He knew that. And she knew how much he and Letty loved her.
“Well! Enough of that. You staying here tonight? You’re both welcome.” She took in Cole with her offer.
“We’ll probably stay at the clubhouse tonight. But we’ll be back to see you after the funeral tomorrow.”
After they left his grandmother’s house, Crash and Cole dropped Letty back at her shop and met up with Ace, who took them both out to Sloss.
Crash was crouched down in a squat, in the huge open-air #2 West Cast Shed, watching as Ace and a couple of the other artists manhandled the hot furnace and chimney that poured the molten iron into the sand casting. They were dressed in heavy coveralls and gloves.
Crash was fascinated by the whole process. Earlier, Ace had given him a tour, showing him the giant East Cast Shed and the west end of the site, where the artists recycled old radiato
