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Ernetta remembered that when you felt seasick, you were supposed to look right out at the ocean and concentrate on the waves. She'd been on plenty of motorboats, but never on an airplane. It felt a little the same—that tickle under you like a huge finger, that bounce you couldn't get used to. It hurt your knees, even if you were just sitting. The land below looked like an old yellow postcard. She spit between her thumbs and rubbed out a clean circle on the window.

"Gorgeous day," shouted Tom McLeesh over the roar of the engines. Besides the folks piloting, it was just the two of them here on the plane. Tom had kept busy for the last hour typing into some kind of skinny, fold-in-half computer set up on his lap.

"I never rode no jet plane before," said Ernetta. "Kindly shake you up."

Tom laughed. "It's bumpy today, especially on a small plane. There's your home state down there, Ernetta. Recognize anything?"

"That's Alabama?" She sat up and put her forehead against the frame of the window. "Well, good night, nurse!" A wide river coiled ahead of them like a long silver chain. The hills were feathered with spring gold as far as the eye could see—not a road, not a parking lot or a building in sight.

"Must be up north somewheres," she said. "Down where I live, it's just flat, and hardly no hills. Just farms. We raised peanuts and soybeans is what we did, until Arvin got called to march all the time."

"Arvin? That your husband?"

Tom tried not to sound too curious, but she stared at him for a second before she nodded. She'd slipped. Her mouth opened just slightly, so that the flesh of her lips was still stuck together in the front, shiny and pale pink. She stopped nodding and slowly turned away, toward the window. She leaned into it, as if she'd jump right now if she could. Tom closed up his laptop and sighed.

"Whoops," he said, waiting for something more. "Bad question."

She didn't answer.

"Listen, what do you think you'll say to Stannie when you see him? How will you broach the subject?"

"I don't know about that," she said softly. She was looking down at the hills. They reminded her of animals curled up to sleep. Underneath them there'd be all kinds of people and things hiding. Ernetta remembered a few years back when a criminal got loose near to where she lived and they couldn't find him for three weeks. Police and FBI sneaking around everybody's houses for days, jabbering into their radios and searching all the cars leaving town—a marshal came by and pointed a gun right at Ernetta's hedge, then laughed out loud when a cow came limping around the corner.

Turned out the criminal had been hunkered down in a swamp for all those days, keeping just his nostrils above the water while the sun was high, then creeping out at night to dry off and scratch his bites. It was the poison oak and chigger bites that finally drove him so mad he gave up and came out and stole a car from a Philips 66. He got arrested somewhere down around Orlando. You had to wonder what might have happened if he'd lasted in the swamp just a little longer—would the police have figured he'd escaped and given up? Would they have tried Agent Orange or something?

She looked at those hills, fat and green, and imagined them hiding Arvin, like a child in their belly. Arvin was as patient as a long, wasting sickness. He knew how to wait people out. They'd think he was dead and not coming back, but he'd grown up in the mountains; he'd been a sniper in the army, and he knew how to disappear. She didn't want Tom McLeesh or any of these other people, nice or not, to ask her questions about Arvin. If they figured out the first thing about him, they'd sooner or later figure out the whole thing. Then they'd have the National Guard out—they'd be putting his picture at the grocery counter and calling him a murderer. She owed Arvin better than that.

* * *

Walking up the steps to the balcony, Stannie thought of Brent with his sharp little bleached teeth sitting back there on the beach, nodding and saying, "Tyman Cole. I love his work. Very impressive dude."

Stannie let out a little bark of laughter.

Linda Kate stood at the top of the steps in a yellow sundress, looking down at him with a worried face. Her hair swirled around her cheeks. "I'm sorry to interrupt you, Stannie. But I think you might be interested in the surprise—"

"Oh, don't apologize. Anything to get away from the Rat Pack." He brushed past his sister, thinking that Rose had probably showed up after all. She'd felt guilty for disappointing him. Naturally. After a little consideration she'd changed her plans and flown down to the Gulf all compliant and chastened and ready to please, which is basically how he liked women—"Hey, should I apologize for not being perfect?"—and now this really incredibly disappointing vacation was about to turn around. Stannie already had an image of her fixed in his mind—Rose waiting around the corner by the kitchen fireplace, her hands in the pockets of her shorts, golden hair shining down her back; she'd be looking thoughtfully at the montage of baby pictures on the mantle, finding him among his sisters and cousins. "Look at little you on the pony!" she'd say. "The poor pony, you probably made fun of him later for having such a terrible job."

"It's true," he'd say, "all my life I've had this urge to ridicule pack animals."

He was smiling at the line—also still smiling at the fact that there was no Tyman Cole ("No such dude, dude")—when he walked through the French doors and glanced to the right of the steps into the kitchen. Nobody in there. He caught his reflection in a copper-bottomed pot hanging over the sink island and stopped to smooth down his hair. Then he glanced upstairs towards the landing and the short flight of steps curling up to his mother's bedroom. The air seemed still and alert, as if someone had been up there just a second ago, watching.

Stannie turned to the left, following a slight rustling noise around through the dining room, through another set of doors into the front sitting room, and then across that hall into a sunroom. This part of the house wasn't used much nowadays, unless Ida came in to dust now and then, or fetch a book for his mother from the shelf. The clock ticked loudly as he walked through the archway. He glanced around and stopped short, taking a breath. A haggard-looking grey-haired woman sat in a rattan chair just to the right of the door, next to a large fern; she leaned forward into the sunlight streaming across the hardwood floor, staring at him.

Stannie blinked his eyes. For a second he thought she might be a trick of the light, a reflection. Her face did come from two places, from the chair to his right and from the picture window to his left. She enclosed him like a pair of bookends.

"Oh, excuse me," he mumbled, uncertainly.

She smiled.

He put his hands in his pockets. "I'm Stannie, I live here. Did you want to see someone?"

"Yes, I want to see you," she said in a soft, familiar voice that made him strangely uncomfortable. Maybe she was just a homeless person who'd wandered in for help—couldn't afford a refill on the lithium, or something. Rose was probably around another corner. In fact, Rose might have brought this person here. That was just the kind of thing Rose might do, bring a homeless woman to the beach.

"Are you here with Rose?" he said. "Do you know Rose?"

She sat up and gave him a funny look. Her mouth fell open.

"Rose?" he said. He stepped over to the window for a look at the driveway. There was an unfamiliar car outside, but not Rose's car.

"Hi there, Colfax," said a voice behind him. Stannie turned and saw Tom McLeesh walking out of the bathroom in the hall.

"Surprised?" said Tom.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"I brought this lady here to meet you."

Stannie hesitated for a second, then looked back at the woman. Her mouth crumpled up in an awkward smile. There were tears in her eyes.

"Ernetta Duckworth," said Tom, "this is Stanley Colfax, one of our most beloved columnists and no stranger to hatred, either. In fact, plenty of people would like to boil him in oil. A lot of people who can't agree on anything else, right Stannie? The Boy Scouts of America, the Girl Scouts of America, the National Rifle Association, the Atlanta Falcons, the Southern Baptist Conference, Barbra Streisand, Barbra Streisand's husband, the Fetal Rights League, Jesse Jackson … "

Stannie took a step back from the sunroom. "So, Tom, what are you doing here, really? What's this about?"

"I told you what it's about. We got a plane and flew down. I wanted you to meet Ernetta."

"Let's talk in private. Excuse us—" He looked at Ernetta but had already forgotten her name.

"'Ernetta,'" said Tom.

"Ernetta. As I said, come have a beer-aide, old Buddy. Just walk right this way."

Stannie gritted his teeth. He put his hand on Tom's shoulder and pushed him through a swinging door into a hallway that led back to the kitchen. "So what's this about?"

"I told you," said Tom. "I brought Ernetta to see you."

"What are you up to? Is this revenge? Is it because your wife hates me? Because I said you write like the pope dresses?"

"No," said Tom, "but don't remind me. And actually, Bobbie likes you. She may be the only person who does like you, other than Rose, and I can't figure that one out. But we're not doing the revenge thing anymore. That's for children. This little trip is for real."

"Just cut the bullshit. Who's the woman?"

"She's your mother."

"My what?"

"Your mother."

"My mother's upstairs, drunk. Or maybe dead."

"No, your mother's in the living room. She's come a long way to find you, and I'm going to leave her with you for a while." Tom moved through the kitchen and opened the french doors. "Nice view out here. Did you know they have Rose working on a story about the Womb Bomber?"

"Hey!" Stannie said, but Tom had already stepped out on the balcony. He waved to the men below, including Bill Colfax, who had just stood up and wrapped a towel around his waist. The men lifted their cigars.

"Nice to see you all!" shouted Tom. "I'm a friend of Stannie's."

"Come join us," called Jim Colfax. "It's cooler down here."

"You don't want me hanging around. I'm a journalist from Washington, so I know I'm about as welcome here as a bad case of flu."

Jim laughed and shouted back. "That's right. Unless you brought women or booze or both. That's off the record, of course."

Ed Flint was walking up the balcony steps, a bucket hooked in his artificial hand.

"Definitely off the record," said Tom, bending forward to look in the bucket. "Hey, nice catch there. Lobster."

Maybe it was the tone of his voice; maybe it was that word "lobster," mistaken for an insult. Ed Flint snapped his head back suddenly and scowled. His hat tumbled off and swept down the steps in the breeze. Linda Kate, now standing at the bottom, grabbed it. She rushed it back up, her sandals slapping the hot planks. "Here, Ed. You'll get a sunburn."

Ed set the bucket down, put his hat back on, and stomped up the stairs, past Stannie and into the kitchen. Tom stood with his heart pounding. For a moment, he'd looked at something incredible: a living man melted down and re-cast as an object: ears and eyelashes gone, everything else smoothed out to the texture of a pebble. Only the eyes left, tiny pink buds nestled in scar tissue.

Tom walked down to the steps to the patio, then up around the house to the driveway, where the rental car was parked. He'd forgotten Stannie and Ernetta for the moment. What a sight there on the balcony steps—hard to believe it was even human. Phosphorus burns, perhaps? World War II wounds, or were they fresher than that? The whole thing might make a good Veteran's Day column. He made a mental note of it: no need to write it down: he had an excellent memory.

* * *

Stannie went back to the sunroom and found Ernetta looking at baby pictures on the wall. Just what he'd imagined Rose doing, but Rose wasn't here. Rose had stayed in Washington, just to spite him. Through the window, he could see Tom getting into his car.

"Would you like something to drink?" he asked.

Ernetta nodded slowly and sat down. "Just a glass of water be fine."

"How about tea?"

"Sweet tea or hot?"

"Sweet. Iced tea."

"Law, yes, that'd be nice."

Back to the kitchen. He got a jug from the refrigerator, poured a glass, and added ice. He hated people who did it this way, who filled the glass and then added ice rather than putting in the ice first and then pouring the tea. This way, the tea splashed. He hated himself then, he supposed, since that's the way he was doing it right now, splashing tea up the front of his shirt. Little brown spots. He licked his thumb and returned to the sunroom. "Here's your tea, Ernetta."

"Thank you." She took it and seemed to perk up as she gulped it down. "Excuse me!" She laughed. "I'm mighty thirsty. I took something on the airplane so's not to get sick and it seems to have made me bone dry."

"Benadryl?"

"Been a what?"

"The medicine you took. Was it Benadryl or Dramamine or something?"

"Oh excuse me!" She laughed hard and put her hand in front of her teeth. "I don't know what you call it, it didn't work too good. But I enjoyed the plane ride. Do you—you fly a lot?" She nodded hopefully as she said it. She was thinking he was a good-looking boy. Very neat-looking, short but kind of wiry and muscular, with wavy dark hair that had a little streak of blond in it. He favored Arvin the way Arvin had looked around when she first met him. She looked down at his feet but couldn't see much between the straps of his sandals. He even had Arvin's sly look, like he was planning something. She hoped it wasn't something cruel, like it often was with Arvin, even if you agreed with him on the basics of things. She hoped that looks didn't tell you everything about a person.

"I fly an average amount," he said "So, where are you from?"

"I'm from Alabama. South Alabama. Not too far from here, truth to tell—just a couple hours or even less, but I thought you was in Washington, D.C., so that's how come I went there before I come here."

"You went there to find me?" He crossed his legs.

"Yes. I got hold of that column you wrote, the one about your toes—" Her eyes flitted down. "And all. That's how come I went up there first. I got the address in the magazine."

Stannie didn't blink. He was working it through, processing it. "So you read about me in Tops, and you went to Washington, and you met Tom, and he brought you here."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I am your mother," she said simply, her brown face tightening.

He smiled.

"I am," she said. "You were borned with your daddy's webbed toes, is how I know. I give you up for adoption, plain and simple, because I couldn't have kept you without my own daddy killing me."

Stannie sat quietly, and then he began to nod. "My toes," he said finally. "I understand. You got pregnant by a man with webbed toes."

"Yes, my husband." She looked embarrassed. "I did marry him," she said quietly, "oncet I had you. But it was too late to get you back. I been real sorry about that, ever since it happened."

He tapped his feet on the ground. "You know what I think, Ernetta?"

"What?"

"I think Tom must be paying you to do this."

"No!"

"He is! He's always trying to get at me, him and Corbin together. It's a great joke, but I'm just not that gullible." He laughed and put his hands up. "Sorry, Ernetta."

She squeezed her hands together, trying not to cry. "I wouldn't lie to you, Stanley. I wasn't positive till I saw you, but my law, you look like your father's twin. I can show you a picture of him." She took a beaded white change purse from her pocketbook, opened it, and pulled out a pair of picture frames that folded together and latched. Stannie leaned forward to see as she pulled them apart. In the left frame was an old snapshot of herself, younger and smoother but not too much prettier. In the right frame was a portrait of a handsome man who did look a lot like Stannie, except that his hair had been shaved almost to his skull and he wore a Marine uniform.

"Tom believed me," said Ernetta, in a sad voice.

Stannie sucked in a breath. He felt sorry for her, even if she was wrong about this. He slipped his feet out of his sandals and hiked one foot up on the other knee. "I do have webbed toes," he said, pulling his big toe apart from the one beside it. "I do, in fact, have webbed toes."

She looked at the foot, at the tender pink membrane he held spread out like a bat's wing, like a curiosity of the natural world revealed, and she nodded. "Yes," she said. "It's for sure. Oh, yes. Just like Arvin." Tears came up in her eyes again and she blinked them back.

Stannie nodded at his foot. He wanted to laugh, but he didn't. This was just the kind of bad pass that you expected from your life, when everything was going to hell. But you had to go with it. When it came along, when a pass like this dropped in your hands, you held on and you ran whichever way you could. Run hard enough either way and people would pay attention. At least it was funny. He started making notes in his head.

"I want you to know that I ain't come to mess around in your life," she said in a kind voice, "or to ask you to let me in your life. It's a favor I'm asking of you which I don't deserve after what I done, but I got to ask it anyway, see, because I got no other kin to help."

Another long moment passed while Stannie calculated, figured it out. "What did you do that was so terrible?"

"Well, I didn't want you born at all. I tried to get me an abortion, but Arvin wouldn't let me. Then I give you up for adoption."

"Neither one's a crime," he said calmly, sticking out his lower lip. He wondered if she knew he was playing a game with her. "Maybe you should have aborted me. The world might be a better place today because of you. Too late now, though."

She frowned.

"Anyway," he said, "what favor do you want from me? Do you need money?"

"No. Law, no, I don't need money. What I need's help."

He leaned forward and took a cigar from the box on the coffee table. "What kind of help do you need?"

"I need you to find your daddy for me."

"Mind if I smoke?" He lit the cigar.

"No."

"Who is my daddy, anyway?"

"He's—" Her eyes closed. She opened her mouth. "It's hard to explain. What your daddy done to me. Well, I was married to him after, so I guess I forgive him. But I ain't forgot."

"Forgive him for what? He get you pregnant?"

She looked up. "He took me out regular and, well, yes I did get in trouble. I weren't a bad girl, you know, but I was stupid. Stupid. Nobody had told me … and he was the only one, ever, I want you to know that, Stanley."

"What a relief."

"But I was scared to death. I was. I was all set to get rid of you. It's no excuse, I know, but my daddy like to killed me if he'd found it. He wouldn't have just kicked me out of the house, he'd have beat me to death with the belt. So I went to a doctor, but Arvin came and took me away from there and took me to his house. He wouldn't let me get rid of you. Arvin was real religious, or I thought he was back then. He said you was a life and he didn't want your blood on his hands. I tried to run away from him, but he kept me in his room. He tied me up until I had you. Then he brung you into the world with his own hands, right on his bed in his house. He had you in his hands, and that's how you come into the world. You'd have been dead without him, you'd have been dead today."

Stannie smiled, but he felt a slight stir in his stomach, a faint sea-sickness. He licked the tip of his cigar. "So did you report him to the police after that?"

"Oh no," she said, "I married him."

He stared. "Why did you do that?"

"Arvin took you off and give you to some folks to take care of. Then he come home with empty hands and it about killed me." Her lips trembled. She put her hand to her cheek.

"And that's why you married him?"

"Maybe. Because he was the one who knew about my baby, so it kept me close. And I don't know why else. People do stupid things. I guess I went from living with a mean daddy of my own to living with Arvin. I couldn't see things normal. Then they made abortion legal right around that time, and Arvin went on the road with some other folks to protest it. I went along with him and carried his signs and marched, till he got violent and started setting clinics on fire and acid and all that. Then I said I couldn't no more. Not his way, anyhow." Tears streamed down Ernetta's face. "I'm still against it. But I don't hate nobody or want to hurt nobody, no matter what they done. I just feel sorry for people, that's all." She brushed her face. "It's God I wished would stop it."

"So what happened to him?"

"He left me and did his own thing. Sometimes I'd hear from him or about him. Last I heard, they thought he was dead in New York State. A few years back. You got to help me find him. You got help me stop your daddy from killing people. They think he's dead but he ain't dead, and he ain't through with killing people. He's got a plan to get a lot of people at once. He done wrote to me. I got the letter."

"OK, wait." Stannie was now feeling positively sick. He stubbed out the cigar. Without thinking about what he was doing, he put his thumb down and touched his toes again. The cigar tasted disgusting. "Just who are we talking about, here? What do they call him? What is his name?"

"The Womb Bomber is what they call him."

He narrowed his eyes. "He's the Womb Bomber?"

She leaned forward. "Yes."

"My real father is the Womb Bomber."

"Yes."

"Wow," he said quietly. "That sucks."

"The fact is Stanley," she said firmly, her voice trembling, "that your daddy saved your life. He made me keep you when I was set on getting rid of you, and then he done delivered you with his own hands in his own bedroom, on his own bed—I seen you drop right in his hands, with my blood all over you. He was wrong to do it the way he done it, it weren't right, and it was terrible what he done at them clinics, but if anybody's going to stop him, I think it ought to be his kin. Because you setting there is something he done good in this world, even if there was bad in it, too. You setting right there is something Arvin done good in this world, and ain't nobody can say it ain't." Her whole body was shaking now. "You're alive, ain't you? He went to a lot of trouble for that—"

He sat up and laughed out loud. "A lot of people would say it was trouble for nothing."

"No, it weren't. Nobody's no waste. It's just that people's so wasteful about each other. Stopping loving people, and throwing away folks they don't like. It ain't supposed to be that way."

"How do you think I should do what you're asking? Find him?"

"Same way you found me. It's as plain as day."

"Through the magazine."

"You write to him, you find a way to write so he knows you want to find him. Then when he comes, you talk him out of killing these people. He thinks he's religious. Try to tell him there ain't nothing religious about killing people."

"All right, yes I see." Stannie looked out the window and thought for a moment, and then he went to get himself a beer. His heart was pounding; for some reason, he believed her.

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture Magazine.
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