TWILIGHT MOLASSES

The boy sat at the kitchen table, his feet kicking quietly at the rungs of his chair. He moved his spoon through the stew in the ceramic bowl in front of him, watching the current of broth and beef and boiled potatoes as it went around and around. The grandmother noticed and spoke soft chastisement in her southern sing-song drawl, the first words spoken during the meal. 

“Hush now, don’t you play with your food. Good God gave you that food to eat, so you get big and strong, not to play with. You’ve got plenty of toys for other times anyhow. You stop that and eat up now.” she said. 

“Sorry Grandma,” the boy said. He stopped stirring his stew and scooped a spoonful of beef and potato into his mouth. He chewed quietly, carefully; not to offend. He had a loose tooth, just barely loose, but chewing the beef made it feel looser than before. He ran his tongue along the tooth when he had swallowed his food. He knew that, once the tooth fell out, he’d put it under his pillow and wake up the next day to find a quarter where it had been. This idea excited him, and he opened his mouth to announce that he had a loose tooth and that soon it would be turned into his own money, but the silence that the table was too heavy for him to break. He shrank back down in the chair and finished his stew without speaking. 

Grandmother and Grandfather were finishing their stews too. Grandfather, the boy knew, could take out all his teeth at once. The boy wondered if he got a quarter for each tooth every night. He watched Grandfather chewing, watched the quick motion of his jaws and the clicking of his teeth. He wouldn’t ask about it. Not now. 

Thomas, the boy’s little brother, was finished with his stew. He was only three years old, and had just started eating the same food as everyone else. He was very proud of it. He had to sit on a telephone book in order to fit into a regular chair, but it was better than his old high chair. He didn’t know any better. When he finished his stew, he picked up the empty bowl and showed it to the table. 

“All done!” he boasted, grinning. His light hazel eyes—light like Father’s eyes, and with Father’s blonde hair too—were illuminated with simple pride. 

“That very good, Thomas” Grandmother said, but there was a melancholy note in her voice, and she was looking at Mother. Mother, who had been quiet throughout the meal and had not touched her own food, was staring into her lap. She did not look at Thomas’s empty bowl. The boy looked at his mother. He knew that something was wrong. He knew it had something to do with Father, and the reason why Father was not at the table with them that night. It was the first time the boy could remember eating dinner without his father. And on the first night that Father did not eat dinner with them, Grandmother and Grandfather came to their house. Usually they went to Grandmother and Grandfather’s house. Everything was different, and it hung in the air over the wooden table. The linoleum floor and the yellow and white tiles of the kitchen counter seemed to be new too, everything different, like the house was a different house without Father in it. The colors were different. Dull, maybe. Lifeless. 

“Isn’t that very good, darling?” Grandmother spoke soothingly to Mother, about Thomas’s empty bowl, encouraging her to look up and praise her son. “Is that something nice?”

Mother finally looked up. Her eyes were bleary with unshed tears. She blinked at the empty bowl, which Thomas still held above his head, and forced a thin smile across her face. 

“That’s very good, Tommy.” Mother said in a soft voice, a tender, fragile voice that sounded as though it might break. 

“Why don’t you help me make the corn cakes?” Grandmother asked, getting up from the table. 

“Corn cakes!” Thomas cheered, wiggling back and forth on his telephone book like an excited puppy. 

Mother got up without words and followed Grandmother into the kitchen. There was the sound of whisking in ceramic bowls, and the hiss of batter poured onto a griddle. 

“Grandpa…” the boy asked timidly. Grandfather, who had been picking his false teeth with a fingernail, looked down. His eyes were big and watery, and friendly without smiling. 

“What is it, boy?” Grandfather asked. 

“Why is mother so…” the boy started, and then stopped. He didn’t know what to ask. He didn’t dare ask the wrong question to Grandfather. He dropped his eyes. The boy, after all, was only five years old.

“Your mother is going through a change.” Grandfather said. He leaned down so that his old mouth was very close to the boy’s ear, so that his low voice which rumbled like the distant thunder would not be heard in the kitchen. “The first day is hard for everybody. Until your father comes back, you’ve got to be the man of this house, you hear?” 

“I do?” 

“Yes, you do. You’ve got to take care of your mother and look out for baby Tommy.” 

“When will Father come back?” 

“Oh, he’ll come back for little bits of time here and there, on leave.” Grandfather said, seeming to forget that he was talking to a child. His eyes got a misty, faraway look in them. “But he won’t be back for good for quite some time. Four years, probably.” 

“Four years…” the boy whispered. This was an unimaginable eternity to him. “And I’ve got to take care of everybody until then?” 

“Yessir.” Grandfather said, “You’ll have me to help you, though, so don’t you worry.” 

“Thank you.” 

Grandfather ruffled his fingers through the boy’s hair. 

“Now, why don’t you run to the kitchen and bring back milk and pour some out for everybody, huh?” 

“Okay.” The boy clambered off his chair. He was back in a moment with milk in a glass bottle. He opened it and poured splashes into the glasses one the table, which Grandfather handed to him. 

“That’s a good boy.” Grandfather said when the boy had finished and was going to put the milk back in the refrigerator. 

Mother and Grandmother came out of the kitchen with corn cakes piled up and steaming on plates. Grandmother carried a bottle of molasses too, and set all these wonderful things on the checkered tablecloths. 

“Bless us oh Lord, and these thy gifts…” 

The boy ate three corn cakes, yellow, hot and buttery, with molasses combining with the corn in his mouth to make a sweet, sweet heaven.

Thomas, who had been so good throughout dinner, finally broke. He started to cry. 

“I want daddy.” he said through his tears, “Where’s daddy?” 

And Mother, who had been silent and solemn, put her head down and wept. Grandmother wrapped her arms around Mother’s heaving shoulders while Grandfather cleared the dishes. The boy went to comfort Thomas. 

“He’ll be back, Tommy.” the boy said. 

“I want daddy!” Thomas wailed. 

“Me too.” The boy said. He felt tears in his own eyes, but he remembered what Grandfather had said about taking care of Mother and baby Thomas. “He’ll come back soon.” 

Thomas stopped crying for a while. Grandmother had taken mother out to the front porch, had sat her down on the swing and was cooing sweet southern nothings into her ear. Grandfather, who had washed the plates and the griddle, walked to the table. 

“Boy, you take you brother and get him ready for bed. You get ready for bed too. Mind you brush your teeth and wash your hands and face. Grandmother will be in to check on you in a little bit. 

Then Grandfather went out to sit in the wooden chair on the porch with Mother and Grandmother. He had his pipe in one hand and a banjo in the other. 

The boy did not brush his teeth. He splashed water on his face and on Thomas’s face, then helped Thomas to put on his flannel pajamas. Outside, the evening was turning purple and the breeze, which had picked up, took on the first chills of autumn. The boy put Thomas into the bed that they shared, then sat up on his knees and looked out the window onto the porch. He saw Mother. She had gone totally limp, with her head on Grandfather’s shoulder. Grandfather was smoking his pipe, with the banjo resting against his leg. He was running his fingers soothingly through mother’s silky brown hair. Grandmother saw the boy peering at them through the window. She gave him a sweet, sorry smile and stood up. The boy heard her come into the house from the porch. He laid down in the bed. A moment later, Grandmother opened the bedroom door and came in. Thomas was already dozing in the bed next to the boy. 

“Did you brush your teeth?” Grandmother asked. 

“Yes.” 

“That’s a good boy.”

“Grandma,” said the boy, “I don’t think I can go to sleep.” 

“Why not?” Grandmother asked. 

“Father always sings us a lullaby with his guitar. Can you sing it?” 

“No, I’m not one for singing. I can’t play a guitar neither.” Grandmother said. There was a long silence. The evening light through the window was growing darker every moment. 

“I miss Father.” the boy said in the twilight shadows. 

“I know,” said Grandmother, “We all miss your father. You’re being very strong, boy. You’re a good boy. Your father is very proud of you. You can be proud of your father too. He’s doing a very hard thing, but he has to do it. He’s very brave.” 

“I know Father’s brave.” the boy said, “I just wish he could be brave and still stay here with us.” 

“That would be wonderful.” Grandmother said. 

The boy lay back and turned back and forth, trying to find sleep among the wrinkles of the sheets and the folds of the pillow. Thomas was breathing peacefully. 

“Grandmother, I can’t sleep without Father’s singing.” the boy said. Grandmother seemed to be listening to something very far away, something the boy couldn’t hear. Then she smiled a little. 

“Tell you what” she said, moving from her chair to the window, “I’ll open this a little so that you can hear when Grandpa plays his banjo. It’s not the same, but maybe it’ll help. It’ll be our little secret, hear?” 

“I hear.” the boy said. Grandmother opened the window just a crack. Voices spilled lazily in from the porch. Grandfather was saying something about “bootcamp” and “I remember my first night in the barracks, without my wife. I didn’t have no children, though. He must be missing you all right now just like you’re missing him, darling.” The boy wanted to sit up and look through the window again, but his Grandmother was still in the chair, watching him. He shut his eyes and listened. 

Ten minutes passed, and Grandmother stood up, walked carefully out of the bedroom. The boy, who was still awake, heard the front door open as Grandmother went back out onto the porch. There was the twanging of the banjo as Grandfather played the first notes. The smell of grandfather’s pipe, the smell of grass and of night air leaked in through the open window and surrounded the boy in a sweet melancholy blanket. He listened to the music, to the gentle cooing of his grandmother and to the weeping of his mother. He listened to the breathing of his brother and to the song of crickets in the distance, the bullfrogs down by the creek where he played on summer days and the howl, once in a while, of a lonesome coyote somewhere. 

The boy ran his tongue along the loose tooth, tasted leftover molasses from dinner, sweetened the moment. He felt his eyes growing heavy as the music of the night kept on and kept on, filling his mind. 

As he drifted to sleep, he though he heard a new voice. It was Mother’s voice, Mother singing along with the banjo, sorry sad sweet notes that were beautiful and pale as moonlight. The boy had never heard his mother sing. It was the voice of a young woman. His mother was only twenty-three, his father twenty-four. 

The boy fell asleep listening to his mother singing the notes of her soul out to the night, out into the darkness where, somewhere out there, Father was missing them. Somewhere out there, his father was being brave, with his head shaved and a new set of green clothes, but he was still the same Father in his heart and he missed them. 

And Mother sang to Father across the miles, and Father sang silently back. 

“How will you get along without me?”