“Remind me to get a roast from Papa Juniper’s when we get back,” she said.
Me and Lint nodded as we shivered from the cold air coming in Mom’s open window. Just when we thought we would never arrive at our destination, the hospital came into view. It was a chocolate-brown brick, barely two stories. It was a building that would never look any more modern than a yellowed photograph in a box marked “The Past.”
After Mom parked, we quickly got out of the car and waited by the hearse as they unloaded Dad. He wasn’t moving, but his eyes were open, staring up into the bright sun.
Mom followed the stretcher through the hospital’s small door. Lint stopped to stare at the blood on my dress.
“All that c-c-came out of ’im?” he asked.
“He’ll be all right.” I looked around at the people who were on the sidewalk, staring at me, too. “It looks like a lot of blood, ’cause my dress is white,” I told them. “But really it ain’t nothin’ more than a drop or two. Ain’t nothin’ more than that. He’ll be all right.”
Lint quickly looked away. When we got inside the hospital, a nurse pointed the way down the hall to a small room they had put Dad in. Circling the bed was a white curtain on rings that they pulled closed as they hovered around him. One of the nurses shooed us back out into the hall like she was shooing ’possums from her porch come night.
“Go on now, get.” She flapped her hands at us. I noticed she had a run in her white hosiery.
There were windows along each side of the hallway. I stepped into the light, closing my eyes and feeling the warmth of the sun on my face. When I next opened my eyes, I was in our yard. The tall grass tickled my shins as I moved through it toward the barn, where my smiling father stood in the wide-open doorway, the day coming to a close behind him in bright pinks and blues.
“You can go in now and say your goodbyes,” an older voice said.
The grass, the barn, and my father disappeared as I turned around to see the oldest of the nurses standing by Mom.
“Our goodbyes?” Mom asked the nurse.
“He’s still conscious, but I’m afraid this is it for him.” The nurse spoke in a tone that told me she was used to explaining such things.
“But…” Mom looked around lost. “This can’t be it. We’re havin’ roast and noodles for dinner tonight and the dough is risin’.”
The nurse gave my mother a look I’m sure she had reserved for all soon-to-be widows before she turned and walked back into the room. Mom and Lint followed. I lowered my face from the sun and joined them.
“Take my boots off.” Dad’s voice was the weakest I’d ever heard it.
He rolled his head toward us. I think he tried to smile, but I can’t say for certain it wasn’t a shadow of the blood smeared out from the corners of his mouth. It occurred to me then that to be a child is to know the cradle rocks both toward the parent and away from them. That is the ebb and flow of life, swinging toward and away from one another, perhaps so we build up the strength for that one moment we will be rocked so far away, the person we love the most is gone by the time we return.
“Hi, Dad,” I said because it felt better than to say goodbye.
Lint looked at me, then turned back to Dad.
“Hey, D-d-dad,” Lint said, tears on his cheeks.
Mom wiped her eyes as she stepped over to his boots, which were worn to the soles. His shoelaces were tattered in ways that made it seem he had tied frays of something up because that was all he had. I wanted to give my father a brand-new pair of boots right then and there, but it was too late for such gestures. As Mom started to untie his shoelaces, Dad twitched. Mom quickly rushed up to his face and held her apple half against the one on his necklace.
“You shouldn’t see this.” A nurse pushed me and Lint back.
She pulled the curtain closed in front of us, leaving enough space through which we could watch our mother hold the apple halves together, creating something whole between her and our father, who lay dead, unaware his boots were still on his feet.
45
Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.
—LUKE 9:61
No one reminded Mom to pick up a roast from Papa Juniper’s as we drove past it on our way back to the house the dough had risen in. Mom took the dough, which looked like a hill in a bowl, and punched it down. Then she talked. About the yellowing houseplants, about the yard, and about how we were nearly out of coffee.
“Before I forget, Betty,” she said to me in between sweeping up flour from off the kitchen floor, “your father bought you a typewriter. It’s hidden under the hood of the Rambler.”
I threw open the screen door and ran out of the house. Before I got into the woods, I took off my shoes and continued barefoot over the hard ground. When I got to the Rambler, I couldn’t lift the hood fast enough. In place of the engine was a black case. I opened it to a typewriter. Lying on the keys was the napkin I had wrote the story “The Smilin’ Martians” on years ago.
“You had it this whole time,” I spoke to Dad’s ghost as I held the napkin to my chest.
I looked closer at the paper in the typewriter roll. There was something already typed.
BETTY
Chapter One
My father had given me the beginning. It was up to me to write the rest. I closed the case and lifted it out of the Rambler. My father’s positioning of the typewriter in place of the engine was a sign to my spirit. A parting message of my father’s faith, courting the engine inside of me.
I ran ahead, stopping with each gust of wind and waiting impatiently for it to brush my cheek.
Two days later, we held his funeral. I had slept that night beside Mom in her bed. I woke to the feeling of something rubbing my body. When I opened my eyes, his face was a blur.
“Leland?” I blinked until his face was clear.
“Time to get up.” He talked low, his hot breath slipping into my ear.
His hands were beneath my side of the blanket and trying to feel up under my shirt.
“Don’t touch me,” I whispered harshly before slapping him back.
I looked over at Mom. She was still asleep, but her closed eyes were quickly darting. I got out of the bed without waking her.
Quietly, I pushed Leland out of the room.
“Keep going,” I said to him when he tried to stop out in the hall.
When we got downstairs, he turned to face me.
“Is there anywhere in particular we’re goin’?” he asked.
I yanked him out the front door.
“We goin’ to the barn?” he asked when we were in the yard. “We gonna have some fun before everyone gets here? You gonna be my new Fraya?”
“You’re leavin’,” I told him.
“Can’t.” He jerked his arm out of my hand. “We got a funeral today.”
“It’s only for friends and family.”
“What do you call me?” he asked.
“Not welcome.”
“He’s my father.” He started to raise his voice. “I’m gonna be at his funeral. I’m preachin’ the goddamn thing.”
“Dad didn’t want no preachin’.”
“I’m his son, Betty.”
“No, you’re not.”
I walked over to A Faraway Place and climbed underneath. I had come to realize that buried secrets are just seeds that grow more sin.
“What the hell you doin’?” Leland pounded his fists on the stage before leaning down to look. “Why you got all them rocks under there?”
“I’m a rock farmer,” I said, pushing one aside.
I began to dig until I felt the lids of the two jars. When I pulled them free, the wind blew hard, like a great exhale from the earth herself. Holding them both to my chest, I rose to face Leland.
&
nbsp; “What’s in the jars, Betty?” he asked.
“The story of your father.”
I handed him the first jar. He unscrewed its lid and grabbed out the folded pages.
“You’re readin’ what Mom told me a long time ago,” I said as his eyes devoured the words. He had started to grip the paper so tight, I thought it would catch fire in his hands.
“You’re sick, Betty.” He clenched his jaw until the vein in his neck popped out. “Writin’ lies like this.”
“It’s the truth. Grandpappy Lark tore Mom open. For years, he raped her. She was pregnant with you before she even met Landon Carpenter. It was why she chose him that day in the cemetery to be the man who would unwittingly raise you as his own. She thought it was your best chance. She didn’t want you to be born with the same storms in your hands that were in your father’s.”
Leland crushed the pages in a fist. As he circled me, I could feel his fury. It was so heavy, I thought it could put any one of the hills around us six feet under. Just flatten them down like they were nothing. When he opened his mouth, I waited for a scream all of creation could hear, but he only gnashed his teeth and said, “Liar.”
“You’re the spittin’ image of Grandpappy Lark.”
“Because I ain’t got mud on my skin like you?” He looked at me with disgust. “I took after Mom.”
“Flossie. Fraya. They took after Mom,” I said. “But they also took after Dad. I look at you and I see nothin’ of him.”
“Shut up.” He raised the pages in his fist over my head as if he was going to strike me, but I didn’t flinch.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I said.
He spit on my cheek before yanking the other jar out of my hands. Instead of unscrewing the lid, he broke the glass against the stage. Shaking the sharp shards off the paper, he picked it up. I watched his face twitch as he read.
“I wrote that after I watched you rape her in the barn,” I said. “You did the same thing Grandpappy Lark did to Mom, only you did it to your sister. You started on Fraya when she was just five years old. I didn’t know it at first, but then I realized she had been singin’ about it all along in her lyrics. At five years old, the little girl cries, the wolf has arrived to eat her alive. The wolf is you, Leland.”
He grabbed me by the throat, but I only stared him down.
“You know what a five-year-old does?” I asked, digging my nails into his hand. “She sleeps with her teddy bear. She draws with crayons and thinks the world will be as sweet to her as the ribbon in her hair. Imagine bein’ a five-year-old girl and your brother—the boy who’s supposed to protect you—starts eatin’ your fingertips until he’s eatin’ your arms until he’s eatin’ your whole damn body. You ruined her life, Leland.”
“She ruined her life.” He shouted in my face. “She ruined it.”
“That’s exactly what Grandpappy Lark would say.” I pushed him back.
I thought he might grab me by the throat again, but he merely said, “You’re nothin’, Betty. Always have been.”
He threw the pages to the ground, stomping on them.
“You can’t destroy her story, Leland. I keep it here.” I rubbed my forehead. “I keep it here.” I rubbed my cheek. “I keep it here.” I patted my chest over my heart. “I keep it with me. No matter what you do to the paper, her story will always live. I’m gonna let everyone know what sort of monster you are.”
I could almost hear his blood boiling.
“You think you got it all figured out, Betty? You weren’t there in those early years when it was just me and Fraya with Mom and Dad on the road. I wasn’t even tall enough to reach the pedals, but Dad rigged the car so I was the one who drove most of the time. I didn’t have the opportunity to be a kid like you did. Hell, Dad could talk himself into any job, but he never kept ’em. I had to help put food on the table. At ten years old, I had to be a man.” He beat his fist into his chest. “I didn’t have a choice. And, damn, wasn’t I owed somethin’?”
“Your sister wasn’t your compensation. She didn’t belong to you. And you thought she did, for what? Because Dad asked you to do a little work? You raped Fraya because you wanted to. Stealin’ her strength was the only way you could feel important. You’re nothin’ but a weak, pathetic loser. Just like Grandpappy Lark. You both fed on the power of the girls and women in your lives, because neither of you had any power of your own.”
“You’re just as guilty as I am,” he said, showing all his teeth. “You watched what I did in the barn, and you didn’t do a damn thing.”
“The only one guilty is you. And one day, when I write this story, you’ll open the book and find small slivers of mirror. Not everywhere, just over the names I’ve given the devil. When you collect the slivers and put them together, it’ll be your reflection that you see. Now get off our property. Ain’t nothin’ here for ya.”
I started to head back to the house, but stopped when he said, “She was pregnant, did you know that? She was fixin’ on havin’ the kid.”
“We all knew she was pregnant.” I turned to face him. “It was why she used the bark.”
“I’m not talkin’ ’bout that winter all those years ago. I’m talkin’ ’bout when she died. She was dead set on bein’ a mother this time around. It would have come out with claws and a tail. Ain’t that what they always say?”
“I don’t—I don’t understand—the night she died, she knew she was pregnant?”
He wiped his mouth as he nodded.
“That’s why she told me she was gonna leave,” I said. “She was gonna leave you and Breathed to raise the baby.”
“I couldn’t have that,” he said.
“That night at the diner, she got a phone call.” I started to go through the night’s events aloud to myself. “She said there was no call, but I know there was. And there was arguing.” I fixed my eyes on Leland’s. “It was you who called her that night at the diner, wasn’t it?”
He moved his mouth like he was chewing on something. Then he stared up at the sky and watched the clouds drift for a few seconds before saying, “I caught an eagle once. They say the eagle flies higher than any other bird.”
“What’d you do to her, Leland?” I asked, my fists tightening at my sides.
“Nothin’ special.” He shrugged. “Just kept her in a cage and starved her. Fraya followed me into the woods. She said she was gonna tell Dad what I’d done. I had to kill her.”
“Fraya?”
“The eagle.” He lowered his eyes from the sky. “Why you cryin’, Betty? Was only a bird.”
“You murderer.” I punched him. He reeled back on his heels, holding his jaw.
“I knew she wouldn’t have killed herself,” I said. “It was you who caught the bee. The headlights from the car. That was you driving up. You forced her hand in the jar.”
“She screamed somethin’ terrible,” he said with a smile. “Good thing a pillow was just right there.”
“I’m gonna kill you.” I lunged at him, but he grabbed me by the arm and twisted it behind my back.
“You know,” he said, “it’s funny. When a sad girl dies, everyone thinks it’s her own damn fault.”
He let me go, kicking me in the leg.
“You got anything else buried?” He looked at the ground as if it was suddenly full of every secret he never wanted told. “Well, do ya?”
Feeling rage circle every bone in my body, I softened my tone to say, “Yeah. Fraya buried somethin’. I’ll show it to you.”
I crawled back under the stage where the longest rock lay. Moving it over, I reached into the hole.
When I emerged, Leland was standing with his back to me, tearing the stories into small pieces.
“Hateful Betty,” he said as he watched them blow away. “We’re gonna have to do somethin’ with you.”
He turned around
.
“You?” he asked, staring at the shotgun I was aiming at him. “It was you shootin’ this whole time, Betty?”
“You’re my last shot.” I had my finger ready on the trigger.
“You’re just a girl with a gun,” he said, smiling. “No one has cared all these years. Why you think it’s gonna matter any now?”
“You know, growin’ up in that house gave me a lot of time to think about how the Peacocks might have disappeared without a trace. You better believe you could disappear just as easily, Leland. No body. No blood.”
“You ain’t got the guts, little sister.”
“Wanna bet?” I shot the ground by his feet. Grass and dirt exploded up as he fell back. I pumped the handle, forcing a new shell into the chamber.
“You evil little witch.” He climbed to his feet. “I wish I would’ve killed you, too.”
He moved toward me but was stopped by a rock hitting him in the arm. When I looked back, I found Lint standing there, his pockets bulging. He reached into them, pulling out handfuls of rocks. He threw them so hard, his feet came up off the ground. Leland tried to dodge the attack, but it was as though all the sandstone of the hills was raining down on him. He fought back by lobbing punches. He only hit the air. When a sharp rock struck him in the forehead, it was as though his eyes broke open, bleeding red.
“I’m gonna smash your face in,” he said to Lint.
From out of his waistband, Lint grabbed the slingshot Dad had made Trustin. He quickly loaded the rubber band with a large round rock. I recognized it as the one Leland had brought back from Japan. Lint positioned the rock so the painted eye was looking out on Leland.
“Well,” Leland said with his arms open, “if you’re gonna kill me, then one of ya better do it now.” He looked me in the eyes. “Just promise you won’t cremate me like you did Fraya, Betty. I don’t wanna burn twice.”
“Don’t you feel the flames lickin’ up your calves? Don’t you feel the heat around your heart? Don’t you feel your eyes meltin’ outta their sockets? Don’t you know, you’re already burnin’?” I lowered the shotgun, no longer needing it as my weapon. “There ain’t a flame on this earth or in hell that ain’t got your name on it, Leland. You’re already burnin’.”
Betty Page 44
