Garden of Stones - By Sophie Littlefield Page 0,72

talked, the men loading crate after crate onto the truck, the duck jumped down and walked about in circles. Her wing had been damaged, practically sheared off, its quills broken and jagged at the ends. Without use of the wing, she seemed unable to walk a straight line. The workmen had laughed at the spectacle, but Lucy had cried.

Perhaps Mrs. Sloat was like that duck—trapped, helpless. Lucy wondered if she felt condemned here, in the small life of a motel keeper in a tiny town far from anything except cracked earth and harsh winds and dirt-brown weeds. She had no children to distract her from the monotony of her days. There seemed to be little affection between her and Mr. Sloat; perhaps he had a roving eye, grasping hands, and he was the one who drove the former maids away.

Out the back door, a clothesline stretched between aluminum poles in the middle of an enormous, weed-choked yard. From the line hung a limp pair of men’s long underwear, several billowing white sheets, three or four undershirts.

Mrs. Sloat followed Lucy’s gaze, and her lips turned up slightly at the corners. “Those are Garvey’s, of course.”

Now that Lucy knew her employment was secure, she asked the question. “Who is Garvey?”

Mrs. Sloat tilted her head in mock surprise. “Sister Jeanne didn’t tell you about him? About my brother?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Oh, I see. I’m so sorry, I thought you knew. Garvey is my younger brother. He’s a war hero. He was wounded in Guadalcanal, in the Battle of Edson’s Ridge. Do you know it?”

“No, ma’am,” Lucy muttered, even though the name was lodged deep in her mind along with so many others: battlefields in which Japanese and American blood was spilled, names she’d heard the men talking about as they clustered around the radios for news of the war. Tulagi. Savo Island. Henderson Field.

“I just thought—well, you being Japanese and all.”

“I’m not Japanese. I’m American.” Lucy forced herself to maintain eye contact. What she knew about Edson’s Ridge was that the Japanese were defeated, losing many soldiers for every American loss. Cheers went up around Manzanar when the news came in.

It was impossible not to know some things.

Mrs. Sloat raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. Anyway, don’t pay Garvey any mind. Sometimes he lets off a little steam, but it’s all just talk. You two are going to get on fine.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“There’s nothing wrong with his mind,” Mrs. Sloat continued. “He was lucky, as these things go. It was a lower vertebra that was damaged. He retains some sensation. He’s continent. He gets tired, but don’t worry, he takes care of himself. You’ll do the washing and cleaning, of course, but he can...”

Mrs. Sloat made a gesture with her hand that seemed like she was tying a knot; Lucy was bewildered. Dress? Fold his clothes? Brush his teeth? Here was the reason the Sloats had been willing to hire her, the reason the position must have been difficult to keep staffed. She supposed she ought to be grateful.

Well, so be it. Lucy had been prepared for worse.

“You’ll meet him later.... He’s in his workshop now. He doesn’t care to be disturbed in the afternoons. It’s when he gets the most work done.”

Mrs. Sloat limped briskly across the yard—it had been carelessly mowed, with missed patches sending up long spurs of weeds and sawgrass—toward the motel. It couldn’t have been more than eight or ten years old, but a certain shabbiness had set in. The stucco was dingy along the bottom, a few of the screens were torn, and the weeds had made inroads along the brick edging sunken into the earth. Geraniums grew valiantly in the flower beds, but they could have done with some fertilizer, some compost. There were metal chairs with shell-shaped backs that stood in front of each room next to the door, where Lucy imagined a traveler might rest after driving all day, enjoying a sunset or reading a book. The nicest feature of the motel was the breathtaking view of the ice-topped mountains in the distance.

The motel was shaped like an L, with the long leg fronting the road, and the short end opposite the big house. In a way, the motel resembled the camp barracks: a row of boxy rooms. But these rooms were larger than any in the camp, and they each had their own bathroom. There would be no cracks or chips in the walls or floors, and though the walls might not be thick, a whispered conversation in