Page 10 of Slander
I feel a hand against the back of my own head, and I don't know if it's the Lord, or my mind, and honestly I don't know which I'd prefer.
I'm about to close my eyes again when I hear the motorcycle.
It comes up the gravel drive of the rental on the other side of the line of pines.
The engine is deep, low, and unhurried.
It rolls to a stop, the kickstand drops with a small metal click, and the engine cuts.
The porch light snaps on at the rental.
I can't see through the pines, but I can see the lit square of a kitchen window between two trunks.
A tall silhouette passes across it.
Slow, unhurried, the kind of body that doesn't need to move fast for anything.
The curtain falls.
Somebody's home over there.
I watch the dark window for longer than I mean to. Hoagie lifts his head and looks at me.
"Don't look at me like that," I tell him.
He puts his head back down.
The fire crackles, the katydids keep on, and I finish my wine.
I put the fire out with the watering can I keep beside the chair, and head inside.
The second I’m inside, I change into some comfortable pajamas and slip into bed with Hoagie.
I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark for a long time.
There's something in my chest that's small and watchful, and it's been there since I walked into my classroom on Tuesday morning.
I've been telling myself, for six days, that someone is going around slandering my name.
That it's the combination of Caleb being removed from class, Lizzie Sue, Patricia at the grocery store, Reverend Hardin in the pulpit, and Beverly earlier in the fellowship hall.
I know now, in the dark, that it's not only that.
Something is happening, and sooner or later, it’ll come to light.
CHAPTER TWO
Njal
The pill organizer sits on the counter where I left it last night, thirty days of squares laid out in a plastic grid.
I open Wednesday and shake the morning dose into my palm before I've even put coffee on.
Lithium. Lamotrigine. The little white one that keeps the rest from turning my stomach.
I don't take them on an empty stomach anymore. I learned that the hard way in the facility, the first week, hunched over a toilet at six in the morning while a nurse stood in the doorway and told me it would pass.
So now I eat first. Two eggs, dry toast, whatever's in the fridge. I stand at the counter, chew, and I look at the thirty squares, and I think the same thing I think every morning.
