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“Dottie, I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to say right now.”
“Never mind about that, baby. Let’s just get going. Got a long ride ahead of us, and I’m sure the last thing you want to do on your day off work is cart around a woman old enough to be your granny.”
I reached over, sliding my hand into hers. “I’m a lot more excited about the trip now that I know you’re coming along.”
Dottie was quiet until we hit I-20. Then, as Leah Grant-Carter’s voice bellowed through the car stereo, Dottie sang along with her. I didn’t know why Elmyra had insulted her voice. In that car, on that long stretch of interstate with nothing but the wind in her hair and a song on her lips, Dottie Pruitt came alive.
After the fourth song, she reached for the stereo, turning the volume down so I could hear her over the wind pouring through the windows.
“I have a son, Kent.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “Isaac.” She sniffed softly and paused. “He was fourteen when he died.”
“Dottie, I’m—”
She held her frail hand in the air, her finger wagging back and forth. “You never met my husband, Johnny. He wasn’t a kind man, sugar. He was spiteful. Mean just for meanness’ sake. My Isaac came to me one day. Said he’d been having feelings. We didn’t have a word for it in those days. Sure, we had our scripture, and we hadLeviticus,but we didn’t really have an understanding of it. Not back then.
“Johnny and I talked to the pastor, back before your daddy’s time, you see. Said that it wasn’t right. That we ought to lift him up. How it was our duty to teach him right from wrong. When he said it, he gave my Johnny this look. I couldn’t tell what he meant, but I knew it wasn’t good.” She was quiet for a while after that. As she sat beside me, a storm brewing inside of her, I held her hand.
“I was taught that a woman’s role is to be submissive to her husband. To be obedient. It was a different time, baby.” She peeked over at me, her lower lip trembling, like she was asking forgiveness for some unknown sin. I didn’t know what to say to her. “One night, Pastor and Johnny took Isaac out to the lake. Said they were going to re-baptize him. Get him right with God again, like he’d somehow gotten wrong with him along the way.” She looked over at me with fire in her eyes. “He didn’t do nothin’ that he needed forgiving for, Kent. Nothing at all. Never even touched another boy, not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
I nodded, unsure of what else I should do. I’d never been good in situations like these. The feelings were there—heartbreak and overwhelming levels of sympathy—but the words got stuck somewhere between my head and my heart, and I just sat there floundering.
“I grabbed my coat and went to follow, but Johnny just shook his head. Said I needed to stay at home. That it wasn’t women’s work. So, when they left, I did just that. A woman’s work.
“My Isaac, we used to call him Twister, ‘cause he would leave a pile of destruction every time he left a room. While they were out at that lake doing whatever it was they went out there to do, I fixed his room up real nice. I knew he’d be tired when he came home. Knew they’d be out there talking all that scripture, and I knew … Kent, I knew he needed me, but I just sat there cleaning his room and praying. I didn’t know what else to do. I made his bed, and I picked up all his toys. The little rag-doll I made him—Hattie, he called her—he’d left her right out in the open for anyone to see. I knew he’d be real embarrassed if he came home and saw her just sitting there for his daddy to find.” She laid her hands in her lap, palms up like she was holding something precious, afraid it might break. “So I took her. I took little Hattie, and I put her under the corner of his bed where he kept her.Our little secret,I used to tell him. He made me promise not to tell anyone about her. He loved that doll so much. Used to beg me to make her new clothes. And I let him hide her. Let him hide that part of himself.
“When they came back, my Isaac … Johnny was holding him in his arms. Johnny’s teeth were chattering, cause it was cold, you see. Real cold out that night. They brought him in and laid him out on the floor. Didn’t even have the decency to put him on the couch.” Her frail fingers squeezed my hand as tightly as her muscles would allow. “I asked Johnny what in the world took them so long. He had school in the morning, and I knew he’d be tired. I thought he was sleeping at first but then I saw them lips of his. They’d gone blue.”
“Oh, God.”
“Johnny, he said that the water was too cold. That he must’ve caught a chill on the ride home. Those words of his just kept playing over and over in my mind, though.We gotta teach him, Dot. Gotta teach him right from wrong.I know what lesson they taught him out in that water.
“That lake. It takes, Kent. It takes, and it takes, and it takes until there’s nothing left. Took my Isaac. Damn near took you, and thank God it didn’t.
“I think I knew you were gay before almost everyone. But not before your momma.” She picked up my hand and brought it to her lips. “We know, honey. A momma knows her boy. Caterina knew about my Isaac. She was still just a little one herself when he died. So young, I thought she might not have even remembered him. About a week after you came back from the lake, she came to me. Said that she was torn. That she didn’t understand how God could let something like that happen to someone so pure. Someone that never hurt no one, just ‘cause of something as silly as who they love. She asked me how I got past it. How I reconciled my faith after losing my baby.”
“How did you?”
“I didn’t.” Dottie looked out the window, up into the big, blue Texas skyline. “I don’t got a whole lot to say to God these days.”
I turned on my blinker and took the offramp into Priscilla. The house wasn’t far off the interstate, maybe ten minutes out. As we pulled into the driveway, I gathered one last round of courage.
“Mom said that your husband ran off with a carhop.”
She turned toward me with an unreadable expression. “Like I said, that lake takes. Thought it was about time it took someone that deserved it.”
I nodded. “Good. Good for you, Dottie.”
“Maybe it’ll take Trevor Collins one day, too.”
***
The drive back had only taken an hour, but she’d asked me to make a detour once we made it inside the city limits. I parked by a familiar, treacherous tree and shut off the ignition.
There was a lake surrounded by greenery ahead of us. Even then, after twenty years, I could still smell the gasoline. The air was warm as it floated in through the open windows, but sitting there in that same spot, it felt like ice against my skin. I’d even convinced myself that if I got out and looked down at the dirt pile beside the oak tree, I might somehow find the remains of seventy-one partially burned matchsticks.
