Page 43 - Vol. VI #2

down and painted her nails. Enda tipped her head back remembering. “And then I took a nap there in the sun on the good sofa, as if I were Queen for the Day.”
Bobbi hooted and lifted her glass. “Queen for the Day,” she said.
What Enda did not tell Bobbi was that she had slept for hours that day, and barely returned the ring to the pouch before Dally-Boy walked in the door. For dinner she served him scrambled eggs and beans and made up a story about not being able to get the gas stove to light in time to cook a full and proper meal. He took his seat at the kitchen table and regarded her silently, his tongue thrust into his lower lip, a warning sign she knew well. Then, of course, he got up and tried the knobs on the stove and oven and all of them hissed and ignited, as they should.
“Later she wondered what had come
over her, what had made her divulge such deeply held secrets.”
When he returned to the table, Dally slapped her across the face. Afterward he sat down in the chair abruptly, forcing a gasp of air out of the plastic cushion as if to say, that was that. Mother of heaven, she prayed that night, teach me how to hope as if I were not razed.
Bobbi finished the last of her beer and put her glass firmly on the table. Young Sully looked over and she looped one finger in the air to indicate they would have another round.
“Not for me,” called Enda, whose high blood pres- sure limited her to one alcoholic beverage a day. Funny, she always believed it would be Dally- Boy—who ate foolishly and never saw a doctor— who would go first, probably of a heart attack, his big chest silent as an empty birdcage. But be- tween her high blood pressure and pre-diabetes, maybe it would be her.
Though she couldn’t have said why, Enda under- stood that Dally-Boy’s secret ring was related
to the things hidden in the barn, things that did not belong to him, things he had stolen. “There is something about that ring,” she said to Bobbi,
(continued on page 55)
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