The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

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Authors: Jenny Wingfield
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control. His laugh could ricochet, change tone and direction all at once, and then hit you like a bullet in the heart. Or the head.
    Geraldine shut him out. Sometimes you had to do that, with Ras. You just had to think about other things, that was the only way. She turned her mind back to the river of her thoughts, but they had gotten sluggish and dark. With all her might, she tried to find that lovely stab of light again, that shimmering Idea that had been Toy Moses, Protector of the Helpless. But the Idea had lost its shining fire. Even if she found it now, it wouldn’t amount to anything. Once a shooting star goes out, wishing on it doesn’t do a lick of good.

    “What did Uncle Toy use to kill Yam Ferguson?”
    “What?”
    “What did he use? A gun? A knife? What?”
    Swan was sitting in the bathtub, shoulder-deep in bubbles. Her mother had been bending over the sink, washing her hair, but her head had snapped almost straight up when Swan asked her first question, and now she was swabbing shampoo out of her eyes.
    “Who told you Uncle Toy killed anybody?”
    “Lovey.”
    “Lovey talks entirely too much.”
    “She’s not the only one who’s said it. I heard you and Grandma Calla talking about it once, a long time ago.”
    Willadee bent back over the sink and twisted around until her head was under the flowing tap. Shampoo foamed and cascaded and ran in rivulets.
    “What did you hear your grandma and me saying?”
    “I don’t remember exactly.”
    “Good.”
    “Well, I just think when a relative of mine has committed a murder, I deserve to know the details,” Swan complained.
    “You deserve a licking about nine tenths of the time.”
    Willadee pulled a strand of hair between her thumb and forefinger to see whether it squeaked. It did. She flipped her head back, wrapped a towel around it, and started out of the bathroom.
    “Well, did he kill him or not ?” Swan hollered after her.
    “Yes!” her mother yelled back. It might take Willadee a while to get around to telling the truth, but if you pinned her down, she wouldn’t lie. She was Moses, through and through.
    “So what did he use ?”
    “His hands!”
    His hands. Uncle Toy had killed a man with his bare hands. Swan sat there for a minute, thinking about that, Uncle Toy growing bigger and more powerful in her mind by the second. He had captured her imagination, and she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Strangely enough, Aunt Bernice didn’t appear to be all that impressed with him. Often as not, she acted as if her husband wasn’t there, even when she was sitting right beside him. And they were so perfect together—him being so strong, and sure of himself, and her with that heartbreaking body, and skin like silk. If Aunt Bernice were just a little entranced with Uncle Toy, it would be the most incredible love story, the kind that lives on after the people are gone.
    Swan stood up in the tub. Bubbles glistened everywhere. She reached down, scooped up a double handful of suds, and plastered them on either side of her chest, teasing them into pointy breast shapes, just like Aunt Bernice had. Willadee came back into the room in search of a comb and caught her in the act.
    “Will you stop doing that.”
    It was not a question. Swan slithered back down into the water. Her fabulous foamy breasts lost all their pointiness.
    “Did he beat him to death? Did he strangle him?”
    Willadee had found her comb and was leaving the room again.
    “He broke his neck.”

Chapter 6
    Uncle Toy had not spoken to Swan once since the funeral. He’d been around enough. His brothers had “real jobs,” so it was up to him to run Never Closes. His own customers would just have to buy their liquor in public or do without for now.
    Every afternoon, an hour or so before Grandma Calla closed the store, Toy would come rolling into the yard in either his blue outrun-the-law Oldsmobile or his black hit-the-woods Ford pickup. Bernice always came with him, never failing to

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