Out of Darkness

by Ashley Hope Pérez

  I will not play truant when I should be learning my lessons.

  I will not play truant when I should be learning

  I will not play truant when I

  I will not play truant

  I will not play

  I will not

  I will

  I

  I

  I

  NAOMI Naomi winced with each step back to the home economics cottage. Her heels hung off the back of her mother’s shoes; she could not even buckle the straps. She averted her eyes as she limped past the wall of the gymnasium where a few mothers had ducked out of the afternoon PTA meeting to smoke. The school buses were lined up in the side parking lot of the school, waiting to be filled with kids who lived too far out in the county to walk home. The final bell would ring soon. She had to think. She had to figure out what she was going to do with Beto and Cari. She had to make them understand.

  She would do better. She would find some way to give them a part of the truth about Estella’s last days. And when the time came, maybe that would help them understand why they had to leave East Texas—and Henry—behind.

  Naomi bit her lip, exhausted all over again by the complicated dance she was going to have to do during the coming weeks and months. She wished things could just go on as they had been, the four of them in the woods, laughing and playing without a plan. Carefree. Careless.

  There was no point in dwelling on it. Instead, she forced herself to envision the dress she would make for Cari. An apology dress. Layers of bright red sandwiched with a pink floral pattern. She would let Cari wear their mother’s red shoes with it. A double peace offering.

  As she climbed the front steps of the cottage, she thought about what she might give to Beto. Then she realized that she had forgotten the baking soda. She was turning back to the cafeteria when the blast knocked her off her feet. She hit the edge of the porch and rolled onto her side. The earth rippled under her. From the ground, she watched the roof of the school rise up and rip open in a fountain of debris. Then it all came down. She held her arms over her face against bits of falling brick and wood and concrete. Something smacked wet against the porch steps. Naomi felt a splatter against her arms.

  There was screaming from inside the cottage. Naomi pulled her arms away from her face and rolled onto her stomach. Chunks of brick littered the grass in front of her. A lunch pail. A splintered slate. She reached out and touched a bit of denim. Her hand came back wet with blood. She pushed herself up on her elbows and managed to sit. There were bodies across the lawn. People, lying there.

  She needed to get up. She needed to help. She needed to find the twins. But instead, she sat in the dirt, arms at her side. It was a leg inside the denim, she realized now. Her brain was catching up. Go, go, she thought, but her body refused to obey. She stared through the clouds of dust at the cafeteria, which was still standing. Then she looked again at the shattered school building into which she had just sent Cari, Beto, and the others.

  THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 1937, 3:25 P.M.

  BETO Screams and shouts filtered into Beto’s brain. He thought of flour. He thought of chalk.

  His eyelids were sealed shut. Vaguely he remembered being punched in the stomach. Then a roar and a long whiteness. But now—now he was floating.

  Beto forced one eye open, then the other. He saw blue sky. Wash’s face. Wash was carrying him. Beto closed his eyes and tried not to know what he knew.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  The second time Beto woke up, it was to the sound of Naomi’s voice. She was talking to Wash, and Beto saw the look that passed between them before they knew he was watching. And he knew a second thing that he did not know how to live with: neither of them belonged to him. They belonged to each other.

  Naomi said something again, but Beto didn’t hear. He didn’t blink. He didn’t ask her about the look. He could only think: Cari, Cari, Cari.

  NAOMI Naomi rocked Beto in her arms and stared, numb. Teachers and students stumbled around them. Mothers from the PTA meeting called the names of their children and clutched at each other. Men from the oil field arrived in truckloads. They ran into the school and came out carrying injured children. Also bodies. The dead were laid out in rows on the sparse grass. She watched and watched, but Wash did not come out.

  “Wash is going to get her,” she whispered into Beto’s hair. “He’ll be back soon.”

  WASH Wash was pushing aside a desk when he saw it: Naomi’s other shoe. This time, the shoe wasn’t empty. He recognized the gray and blue stripes of Cari’s sock sticking out from under a fallen bookcase. He sucked in a deep breath and began emptying the shelves. When the books were mostly out, he flipped the bookcase over.

  His pulse pounded in his ears. His mouth went dry. There was no right way to do what had to be done. He took off his jacket and wrapped Cari’s leg in it.

  Then he looked for the rest of her.

  He told himself that he needed to hurry, that she was losing a lot of blood. He told himself that because it made it easier to search.

  He heard a shout of “Everybody out!” just as he saw the plaid of Cari’s good dress showing under a block of concrete. The walls groaned around him. Plaster began to fall in chunks. He ran to the spot and fought and fought to shift the block. He could not move it, could not move it, and then he could and he did and he found her. Her face was flattened. A trickle of blood marked her temple. More was matted in her pale hair.

  He lifted Cari onto his shoulder, scooped up his jacket, and ran.

  BETO Beto lay still and silent with his head in Naomi’s lap. His eyes were glued to the bottom level of the building’s east wing, which was where the third grade classroom had been, which was where Wash was looking for Cari. Now two men were helping Deenie Edwards through the doorway of the school. He wanted it to be Cari instead. He wanted it with all of himself. He wanted it even if that meant wishing for it not to be Deenie. Deenie with freckles and carrot-colored hair. Deenie who liked him. Deenie who had been sitting in Cari’s seat.

  The east wing began to move.

  It shifted to the right. Farther and farther until it looked like a crooked drawing. And then it fell. Beto stared at the roof of the building, now on the ground. Naomi’s cry was a live thing in the air.

  WASH Wash carried Cari’s body around the back of the building, shaking with the closeness of the call. A man in overalls ran past him, muttering, “Damn lucky, damn lucky.”

  Wash couldn’t call it luck, not with Cari like this. He tried not to think of all the ways she was broken.

  Naomi and Beto would have to see her, he knew, but he would tell them first. Try to prepare them. He laid Cari beside a flimsy crepe myrtle sapling he’d planted the spring before. He placed the leg under the hem of her plaid dress and spread his jacket over her.

  NAOMI Naomi stood by Beto as a man with round glasses and shaky hands examined him. She stared numbly at the school building.

  She almost laughed with relief when she saw Wash walking toward them. Then she saw his face. “You didn’t find her.”

  Wash swallowed and wiped his hands down his pant legs. He eyed the doctor cautiously. “I did,” he said finally. He did not look at her.

  “Well, where is she? Is she hurt?” Naomi asked. She did not let herself think.

  “I was too late. I—I think it happened at the moment of the blast.”

  “She’s dead?” The blunt words surprised even Naomi. She felt the finality of it. A dark curtain falling. No more. No more.

  She looked at Beto. His face was frozen and gray, but tears rivered down his cheeks.

  “We need to see her,” Naomi said. She turned to the young doctor. “Can we go now?”

  He frowned. “He might have a broken rib or two, but there’s not much to do about that. Just keep a close eye on him.” He nodded at the three of them and walked on to the next injured child.

  Naomi held out a hand to Beto, but he did not take it.

  BETO Beto lay down beside Cari on the groun
d. He picked up her hand. Her fingers were cramped together as if to hold a pencil. I will not play truant ... I will not play ... I will not ... I will ... I...I...

  The lines they had written, apart. The lines they should have written side by side. The lines she had died writing.

  Two men came with a sheet. One was very tall and the other was very short. Their dark suits were gray with dust and smeared with stains. They took off their hats and talked to Naomi. And then she was kneeling beside Beto, trying to pry his fingers free of Cari’s hand. He held on tighter, shaking his head. Trembling.

  He did not let go. He didn’t because he couldn’t. He couldn’t because he knew they would never let him hold her hand again. He wanted to check Cari’s pocket just in case he had forgotten, but he knew. He hadn’t given her anything for luck today. Everything would have been different if he had.

  “Look,” the tall one said to Naomi. “You can carry her home for now. The funeral parlors are already full. It’s gonna be a while before we get to everybody.” His face loomed over Beto. “Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of your sister when it’s her turn.”

  Beto held on to Cari’s cold fingers.

  NAOMI Naomi could not make Beto let go of Cari, so Wash carried them both to the back of a truck on a blanket. She limped after them in her mother’s tiny shoes. Everywhere children were laid out on the ground and covered with shirts and jackets and pieces of notebook paper stained red in places.

  Naomi tried to put her thoughts in order. Go to the house. Put Beto to bed. Call for Henry. Clean Cari. Do not think, Cari is dead. Do not think, it’s my fault.

  She was skimming the surface of the world again, but now that surface was shattered, littered with debris. A dark undertow threatened to pull her under, down to the horrible truth.

  She heard a high voice call her name. She looked up. There, in a second story window of the school, Tommie’s bloody face was framed by broken glass.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  By the time the men got Tommie down, she had begun to wail. Wash stayed with Beto while Naomi ran to her and held her hand. The men on ladders passed Dwayne’s body through the jagged remains of the windowpanes. It was too late to worry about cuts.

  Tommie sobbed into Naomi’s shoulder, her chest heaving. “He was right there across the table from me, and then he was on the other side of the room.” Tommie pulled back, suddenly silent. Her mouth hung open. Snot trailed through the dust on her face. She moved her mouth again. “He wanted to skip this afternoon, did you know that? Wanted to go down to the river, but I wouldn’t—I was mad—if I’d listened—if I’d only listened—”

  “Hush now,” Naomi said. She coaxed as much gentleness into her voice as she could manage. “Come on, let’s get you seen to.”

  HENRY Henry was squatting elbow to elbow with a couple of oil hands at a new drilling site when a Diamond T company truck barreled into the clearing. It stopped just a foot from them, kicking up dust all around.

  The window of the truck rolled down, and Ken Martin stuck his head out. His face was red and beaded with sweat. “Boss said to send everyone to New London.”

  Henry felt something clench in him. He lifted his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. “A well fire? Can’t he get somebody who’s closer? It’s a good forty-minute drive from here.”

  Ken was already shaking his head. “It’s not a well, it’s the school. The school, man. They’re talking dynamite, maybe a bomb. Nobody knows for sure.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Henry pushed the truck as fast as it could go down the dusty back roads. A couple of miles from the school, the traffic slowed. And then it wasn’t moving at all.

  He slammed on the brakes and got out. “You drive it, Gary,” he said to the worker beside him in the cab. “My kids are there.”

  He ran hard along the gravel shoulder of the oil-top road, racing against the knowledge that if anything had happened to his kids or to Naomi, he’d be to blame.

  Once he reached the school grounds, he had to navigate the rings of vehicles parked on the lawn. He saw reporters and gawkers pointing at what was left of the school.

  And he saw the dead. Rows and rows of them.

  Parents filed between them with handkerchiefs pressed to their mouths. Looking for their children.

  He pushed into the chaos. “Carrie and Robbie Smith! Carrie and Robbie Smith!” he meant to bellow it, but it came out a breathless wheeze. His next words, “And Naomi,” were sucked back into his own mouth as he gasped for air.

  Two men he did not recognize jogged over to him. “Easy, friend, easy,” one of them said. “Catch your breath.”

  “Shit, shit, shit.” Henry was trembling. He shook the men off. “I got to find my kids.”

  He scanned the bodies for clothing he recognized, for children the right size.

  He saw a mangled form inside a dress like one of Cari’s, but it was not her. The girl’s face looked like a rubber doll someone had left in the sun. Twisted. Melted. Not the twins, Henry prayed. Tell me you spared mine.

  “Henry!” Bud called to him from across the crowd. His overalls were soiled; his hands were cut and bruised.

  “Bud,” Henry shouted, jogging toward him. “Have you seen the kids? Naomi?”

  “Naomi wasn’t in the building. Beto was, but somebody got him out before the collapse.”

  “Carrie’s still in there, then? I’ve got to get to her.”

  Bud shook his head. “They found her, too.”

  “Found her?” Henry’s heart lifted. Then he saw Bud’s face.

  “I’m sorry.” Bud braced Henry’s shoulders with both hands and pulled him close. “I’m so sorry.”

  Henry felt an inexplicable desire to laugh. He twisted out of his friend’s embrace. “You’re wrong, Bud. I checked.” He gestured at the patchwork of broken children across the grounds. “She’s not there. She’d be there, if she was dead. She’d be there, wouldn’t she?”

  Henry turned away from Bud. He grabbed the sleeve of a man nearby. “Are there others? Where are they?”

  Someone else answered him. “All over—Kilgore, Tyler, Henderson, Overton, even Marshall.” The voice came from behind him. “Anywhere there’s doctors and...”

  “And what?” Henry demanded, turning wild eyes on the man who’d spoken. He was a short, stooped man with an underbite.

  “Undertakers.” The man intoned the words softly.

  For a moment, Henry and Bud were swept along with a group of parents pressing toward a telephone pole. Some reporter had rigged up a connection to the line.

  “Can’t you call Tyler and ask who they’ve got over there? How do we find our kids when we don’t know where they got took?” someone asked.

  The man pressed the receiver to his chest. “It’ll take time, folks.”

  “I don’t have time!” a woman shouted, her voice shrill. “I’ve got to find my Johnny.”

  “Telephone circuits are jammed up. Everybody’s doing their best. Lists of the dead and the living and the missing are going out on the radio. Give your messages to him.” He jerked his chin toward a pale man with watery blue eyes who crouched over a radio microphone. “The best would be to head home and listen so you know where to go.”

  “You want us to wait? Would you sit on your hands if it were your child?” shouted a man with a patchy blond beard.

  One woman was muttering, “Eddy, Eddy, Eddy....Please, sweet Jesus, please.” So Henry wasn’t the only one trying to make a deal with God. He wanted to slap her. The more prayers, the worse his odds.

  Then Dalton Tatum was in front of them. Henry knew him from his drinking days at Big T’s. Dalton had a mole that looked like a horsefly on his cheek. His hair was slicked back, the comb marks still visible. “I sure wouldn’t a let no nigger touch my daughter’s body.”

  “Take it easy, Dalt,” Bud said. “You can’t be picky when folks are rescuing your kids, now.” He steered Henry toward the path that cut through the woods to th
e Humble camp. When they were at the tree line, Bud hugged Henry. “Go see about your kids. And then, if you want, come back. Work’ll hold off the hurt for a while.”

  HENRY Henry took a long time to walk to the house. When he got there, he couldn’t go in. He pulled off his work boots. They were crusted with mud.

  He thought, when did they get so bad?

  He thought, I could clean them now.

  He thought, if I don’t go in, it can’t be true.

  But he knew. And not just by what Bud had told him. He felt it in his own hesitation. He felt it in the stillness of the house.

  The screen door opened. Naomi came out, barefoot. Her blue dress was filthy with dust and dried blood. She had not washed the dirt and tears from her face.

  “Henry,” she said.

  There was no warmth in it, only a truth as hard as anything he’d ever faced. He thought back to Estella and the phone call after she lost the second baby. The long silence. The miles of distance in her voice.

  Here was another disaster laid before him.

  He shook his head, pulled off his hat, and crumpled it in his hands. “Jesus Christ.” His shoulders began to shake. “Please don’t say it. Just don’t say it—”

  “You already heard.” It wasn’t a question.

  He stood up and stared through the screen door. A sheet was draped over the kitchen table. Under it, Henry knew, was the daughter he had not loved enough. And so she had been taken from him.

  “I only just got Beto to sleep. He wouldn’t leave her.”

  Only then did Henry see the boy curled under the kitchen table, a quilt laid over him.

  He could feel the grief rising again and he wanted her body against his, any bit of comfort. “Oh God, Naomi,” he whispered and pulled her to him.