Louisiana Lament

vaguely that they were still talking about Clayton in the present tense. She’d be doing it for months, she suspected. “You mean about the scalping thing?”
    Once again, Hunter took her eyes off her offspring, and once again they were angry. “You know about that?”
    Talba nodded.
    “Sure you do. Everybody that knew her knew about it. It was the defining fucking moment of her whole fucking life. Look, I know it was a terrible thing and all that, but it turned her into Clayton-the-victim. That’s all she was. Expected everything from everybody every second just because she got her precious self hurt.”
    “Like what? Give me an example.”
    Talba could have sworn a tiny flicker of surprise crossed Hunter’s face, as if the question hadn’t really occurred to her, but she just said, “You didn’t know her. It’s just the way she was.”
    She wanted to say,
I did know her. She wasn’t that way.
But the last thing she wanted was an argument.
    “May I tell you about my last experience with her?”
    Grudgingly, Hunter nodded. “I hurt my back in an accident. I could barely walk, no kidding. I just got the tow truck to drop me there. She practically carried me up the stairs, Hunter. I arrived in a heap and I left walking. She could work miracles, almost. You could feel something very unusual in her fingers.” Talba meant love, but she didn’t quite have the courage to say it. “You could feel it, do you know what I’m talking about? Does that sound like someone who’s a victim? Who only cared about herself? Wasn’t she ever kind to you when no one else was?”
    “Yes.” Hunter’s voice was choked. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Lou Ann always took up for her. She talked about that too.”
    “Lou Ann?”
    “Lou Ann Ferris. Her best friend in high school. She made me remember that. How sweet Clayton was when my marriage broke up; how she said I could come visit her anytime I wanted and stay as long as I wanted, and bring Lily. Mama and Daddy tried to make me stay with the bastard, even though he was cheating on me. And other times, when I was in high school, Clayton took up for me. When Mama got on me.”
    “She had a side to her no one in town saw. Why was that, do you think?”
    “I don’t know. I guess ’cause she was always so hateful to Mama and Daddy.”
    “Was she really? Or was that the family myth?”
    Hunter wrinkled up her nose. “What?”
    Talba dropped it; she could feel herself start to get argumentative.
    “Tell me something. Do you think she was using drugs?”
    “I sure didn’t think so. But how else do you explain… it?”
    “Why didn’t you think so?”
    “Oh, you know. She was so pure. So holy.”
    “So completely the opposite of what the preacher said.”
    Hunter winced. “I was real upset about all that,” she said softly.
    “It must have been a hard night for a little eight-year-old,” Talba said. “The night she got attacked.”
    Hunter’s blue eyes got bigger and bigger as she saw where Talba was going, as if she just couldn’t believe what was coming out of the black woman’s mouth.
    “Do you know? The weirdest thing. Nobody’s ever asked me about it.”
    “Oh, come on. You never had a college gabfest, and every one told secrets?”
    The girl’s eyes strayed back to the children. “I didn’t go to college. I married a boy I grew up with. We went to school together, church together, swimming at the country club together, camp together. He probably knew more about me than I knew about myself.
    “He knew me, but I sure didn’t know him.”
    There was something so hurt about her Talba ventured a guess. “Mean streak?”
    “Mean, drunk streak. Oh, yeah. I could put up with it when it was me, but when it was that tiny innocent child…” Her eyes flooded again.
    “I’m sorry.” Talba paused long enough to give the words some weight. “So you never met anybody who didn’t know your sister got scalped in her own bedroom with the whole family at home?”
    Hunter tossed her head from side to side, as if trying to shake something off. Talba could see that the girl profoundly wanted her to shut up. She wasn’t about to. “That kind of thing could stay with you forever. They didn’t even take you for counseling or anything?”
    “Well… no. I don’t guess they thought about it.”
    “Do you ever dream about that night?”
    “Oh, God! I used to. I used to all the time. And I started wetting the bed—at eight! Can you imagine? And Mama