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him. One Saturday evening, though, I finished milking the cow and carried the bucket up to the porch, where John Blain was always squatting, his elbows on his
knees, as still as a plant putting out roots. He stood when he saw me coming and made to open the door for me.
"I can open the door myself," I told him.
He let go of the door, wrapped a hand around my skinny biceps and clamped tight. "Why are you such a brat, Regina?" he asked. His breath smelled like whiskey, a
bottle of which I'd seen him hide
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in the crotch of the apple tree next to the barn. ''Your ma is so nice, and you're so damned mean."
My arm was starting to hurt, but when I twisted to free myself he tightened his grip. When I kicked him a dozen times hard enough to bruise his shins, he squeezed
tighter still. I noticed white, dry salt around the edges of the sweat marks on the neck and armpits of his Tshirt. "What do you want?" I asked.
"A little respect. A kind word, maybe. For your ma's sake."
"I've got to strain the milk. Let me go."
"The milk'll wait. Life is too short to be so mean, Reg."
His grip exhausted me. He was only a halffoot taller than me, but I couldn't come near matching his strength. When tears threatened to drop over the edges of my
eyes, I turned away and looked west, over my garden, toward the hot, dirty sun. I let out my breath in a tired sigh. John Blain leaned toward me and then kissed my
mouth. His lips only just touched mine, then he pulled away with a look of surprise on his face. I sloshed milk onto the porch and on my shoes, and he followed me
into the kitchen. "I'm sorry, Reg. I don't know what happened."
"Go to hell!" I screamed. He shook his head and went back out onto the porch, holding the door so it didn't slam. I set up my milk funnel and filter, but I could hardly
see. I kept knocking the hall gallon bottle over, and finally I just left it all on the table. Ripley jumped up and started drinking right out of the bucket.
After that, John Blain kept a distance from me, as though we'd come to some kind of understanding. The next day he bought me the Detroit Sunday paper, and he
continued to buy it every week, so I could spend Sunday afternoons reading and refolding each part. He wanted only the crossword puzzle. One Sunday, while I was
reading at the kitchen table, Mom and John Blain were sitting in the living room where I could hear them.
"She's a beautiful girl, you know," he said, in just above a whisper.
"She's twelve," said Mom.
"But it happened just like that," he said and snapped his fingers. "All of a sudden, she's beautiful."
"I was beautiful, and where'd it get me?"
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"What do you mean 'was'? Any man would trade his soul for a chance to gaze into that freckled face of yours. I'll die happy, woman, so long as I die with your hair
twisted around me."
Mom laughed with pleasure. When I dared look at them from the kitchen, John Blain was back at his crossword, and Mom had fallen asleep on the couch.
After dinner, I usually worked in the garden, pulling weeds and picking vegetables to sell the next day. Mom did the dinner dishes. John Blain, when he wasn't
working, would go out on the porch and squat down, and smoke cigarettes like a cowboy at a camp or a soldier staying low to avoid enemy fire. Both he and Mom
looked west, Mom's face blurry through the window screen over the sink, John Blain's out in the open in clear focus. By the time I finished in the garden, Mom and
John Blain would have started drinking jug wine, either sitting at the picnic table on the porch, or else in the kitchen if the mosquitos got bad. They'd be reading or
playing cards or John Blain would be doing the crossword, and then after a while, for no reason, they'd start arguing and accusing each other. Sometimes Mom would
tell him to get the hell out, but John Blain knew as well as I did that this was her way of testing whether or not he was going to stay. I took to going to bed even earlier
so I wouldn't have to hear them. If they carried their argument up to the bedroom next to mine, I'd go out to the barn to sleep with Jessie. By the next day they always
seemed to have forgotten whatever it was that had made them fight.
I didn't need an alarm clock to wake up each morning between fivethirty and six, and I'd do the chores first thing. Often I'd come across John Blain lying in a heap
somewhere. Once I found him outside my room, and a few times he was on the kitchen floor, but more often I'd find him outside, as though he'd tried to leave us but
collapsed from the effort. Most of the time he'd be north of the house, up the incline. The farthest he ever made it was into the pasture and to the row of white pines
that made the property line. I'd say, "Get up, you," and if he didn't, I'd nudge him with my foot, then stand nearby until he slogged off.
The day he made it to the pine trees, I didn't find him until the afternoon. When I came in from the vegetable stand for lunch,
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Mom was fidgeting, not drinking the coffee she'd poured. So I hunted around and found him lying awake on the moss, his hands locked across his belly. "I knew you'd
find me if I waited," he said. "I'm glad you don't hate me anymore." We regarded each other, John Blain smiling, myself determined not to smile.
"Mom's worried. She thinks you left."
"She can see my car's still here," he said. "I'm not going to leave her, Reg, so you may as well get used to me." He supported himself on one elbow while he lit a
cigarette. I probably looked skeptical, and maybe I rolled my eyes. "I swear, Reg, I'm not leaving your ma," he said, looking right at me. We walked back to the
house, keeping a distance between us. Probably my dad had promised to stay too.
John Blain fixed the pasture fence during the last week of August. It'd been down in two places one where a tree had fallen on it, the other where a corner post had
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