I Went Down (NaNoWriMo Read-Along)

31 Cal

“Cal!” Minnie was calling his name. Her voice echoed through his misty dreams. “Cal! Wake up, now!” He was surprised to hear her say something new after so many years. When was the last time that he had fallen asleep beside her, when she shook him awake?

“Minnie?” he mumbled into the pillow and opened his eyes.

The form standing over his bed was much larger, much more tangible than Minnie.

“Calstin Delanton! I need you!” Helen said. “Shake your bones!”

“What?” He sat up slowly. The striped quilt fell back and he felt the coolness of the morning.

At the foot of the bed, Minnie was rocking back and forth silently. She looked up suddenly as if just noticing him. “Cal,” she said softly, “I need to talk you.”

Cal sighed and looked through her, where he could just make out the hands on his alarm clock. It showed an early morning hour when he should definitely be asleep. “What do you need me for?” he asked wearily.

“Dapper Jack came,” Helen said. Behind her Minnie twisted her hands together, choosing her words and steeling herself to tell him goodbye.

Cal pulled his eyes away from Minnie and stared at Helen’s face. She was alive in the here and now. She was trying to tell him something more important than Minnie’s repetitive message. There was a smudge of flour standing out white on one of her brown cheeks. She must have brushed her face in the middle of making the day’s bread and not realized it yet. “What did he want?”

“Emmy Jane. He took her away to do something for Jimmy Primrose.”

“What? When?”

“Just now.” Helen sat down heavily on his chair, taking no notice that Cal’s pants were now beneath her and inaccessible to him. “Harlan couldn’t not let him in, you know. He came in, calm as you please, and said Miss Emiliana Josephine must come away with him directly.” She paused. “I don’t know if I ever spoke with him before; I didn’t know he talked like that, but that’s just what he said. ‘She must come away with me directly.’ As in immediately. So I went and got her, and she went and now I’m waking you up, too.”

“But where did he take her?” Cal set his feet on the floor but pulled the sheet over his lap. His brain was still muzzy, but of the reasons he could imagine for Dapper Jack to visit Minnie’s at this peculiar hour, when everyone but Helen should be asleep, none of them were comforting.

“He said he was going to buy her a new wardrobe, so Mister Primrose can look at her in pretty clothes,” Helen said. “But Cal, you and I both know that the way Jimmy Primrose wants to look at her doesn’t involve any clothes. I have a bad feeling.”

Cal ran his palms over his face, rubbing the grit from his eyes and feeling the stubble on his chin. When he looked again, Minnie drifted into his view behind Helen. “I’m going to Delta Mouth,” she said with great gravity. “I can’t stay here.” Her voice sounded distant, as if she was underwater or in the next room. Reuben’s medicine was still hazing his mind, pulling invisible cobwebs over his ears.

He tried to focus again on Helen’s face. Emiliana had left with Dapper Jack. Jimmy Primrose had visited yesterday, but only briefly. “You’re sitting on my clothes,” he said.

Helen stood up and shook out his pants before handing them to him. “You have to go find her.” She turned her head away while he pulled them on and struggled to his feet. The floor tilted underneath him but Helen caught his arm. Her grip was strong; years working with heavy bread dough had given her muscles as strong as her brother’s. “I’ll make you some coffee,” she said when he was steady again.

“That would be good.”

Helen started for the door and he followed her. Behind him he heard Minnie. “There’s no future for me here. There’s no future for us.” Another wave of dizziness and disorientation caught him and he grabbed blindly at the doorframe to stay upright.

“Saints be merciful,” Helen said. “Will coffee be enough?”

“Does it matter?” Cal took a deep breath. His vision cleared. He stepped out onto the landing, away from Minnie. “I’ll be fine. I’ll go look for Emiliana.”