She didn’t scold him, but she stood stiffly in the circle of his arms until he let go.
“Who brought you home?” he asked.
“Mr. Wright from down the street.”
“Did he ... was he the one to get her out of the school?”
Naomi hesitated. “Wash brought her out. Got Beto, too.”
It was like a slap. Henry’s jaw tightened.
“It should’ve been me,” he said. “That damn boy, he’s always where I ought to be. How the hell is that?” He stared at the line of pines across the oil-top road. Between the trees, a pumpjack humped the oil up out of the ground. Like nothing had changed.
A long silence lay between them.
Her voice was gentle when she spoke again. “He got Beto out. Then he went back for Cari. Brought her out just before the roof fell in.”
“But what was that nigger doing at your school in the first place?” he asked. So much horror hung in the air, everything scattered by the explosion. He could choose which shattered fragment he would claim as his own. He still had that.
“He risked his life. We should be grateful.”
“Don’t make me angry, now,” he said. “You hear me?” Henry felt a tightening in his throat. He punched the shape back into his hat. “I’m going back,” he said without looking at her.
“What about Beto?”
“Robbie?” Henry shrugged, swallowed. He forced words past the lump in his throat. “He’ll be here when I get back, won’t he?” He put on his hat and pulled on his boots. He didn’t bother to tie them before he walked away.
WASH On the kitchen table. That was where Wash had laid Cari. When he put her down, he tried to keep the jacket over her, but she was broken in so many places.
Hurt bloomed and faded, bloomed and faded on Naomi’s face.
And Beto. Lost without his twin.
Wash wanted to hold them both close. Tuck Beto safe between him and Naomi. Wrap Naomi in his arms and lay her head on his shoulder. Join what could be joined. But the white man was with them. Wash could not even show his friendship.
Then he was in the back of the truck headed again to the school. But his heart was in the tree with Naomi. He would go. When the work was done, he would find a way to her. Give her what wholeness he could. No telling if it would be enough.
At the school, someone gave him a basket, and he worked. The collapsed school looked like a shattered skeleton rising up out of the earth. A lake of loss. He picked his way across the surface along with the other men. He put whole children onto stretchers. Bricks into wheelbarrows. Body parts into baskets. He sorted without thinking. Move it, boy. Find the live ones. When he looked up, he recognized the same sun above him as before. But then there would be a small hand. A toe. So many pieces.
He was pushing a wheelbarrow when he saw Mr. Crane. Glasses cracked. Suit sleeves ripped and dangling. Elbows scraped and flecked with concrete. Bloody hands.
“Kids in there,” Mr. Crane said, stumbling forward. “Beau!” he called. “Garrett!” He clawed at the rubble. His glasses fell.
Wash found the glasses and pressed them into Mr. Crane’s hand. When the older man stumbled, Wash took his elbow.
Mr. Crane fitted the glasses back onto his face. His gray hair hung limp over his forehead. “They wanted to go early, all but begged me. I said, how would it look, the superintendent’s boy playing hooky?” Mr. Crane walked on, studying the ground. “Have to find them. Have to find them all. They’re in there.”
“You need to rest, sir,” Wash said. “Why don’t we get you some water? We’ll keep looking.”
Mr. Crane turned an unfocused gaze on him. “Water,” he repeated.
The path through the wreckage to the Red Cross tents was narrow, and then it was gone. Blocked by a wheelbarrow. Boots. Denim.
Wash looked up. The man had a wrestler’s neck and the shoulders of a chainman. His jaw worked a wad of tobacco. He stared hard at Wash.
“Excuse us, sir,” Wash said. The words tasted oily. Sharecropper, bootlicker, shoeshine boy. His father’s voice in him. The voice of his own fear.
The man did not move. One massive hand held a brick. Another pair of boots joined the first. Then another.
Wash took a step back.
“Whoa, boy.” The gravelly voice was in Wash’s ear, and when he looked back he saw more men. His stomach tightened. His hand on Mr. Crane’s elbow grew hot and itchy.
“Excuse us, gentlemen,” Wash tried again. He heard his father’s voice again. Stay low. Don’t look them in the eyes. “Just need to get the superintendent a little water.”
“Who asked you to help?” the first man asked, chewing his words and then shooting a spray of black tobacco juice into the dirt at Wash’s feet.
“I was just here, sir...” Wash stammered.
“Look at me when I talk to you, boy,” the first man said.
Wash did. He stared at the man’s dark hairline and tried not to look at the mole on his face.
The man turned to the others. “He’s the one I seen here just after it happened. Hardly a minute after. Handling white children, for fuck’s sake. Touching our kids.”
Next to Wash, Mr. Crane trembled. “Listen, now just listen...”
A man with a crooked nose shoved forward. “I know that boy. He’s that uppity nigger teacher’s son. How come he was here ’fore anyone else? What the hell business did he have dickin’ around a white school?” He pointed at Wash with a nub of a middle finger. His index finger was missing.
Wash glanced at Mr. Crane, but his attention had wandered. “They’re in there. My kids are in there,” he murmured to himself. He was crying.
“Say something, Sambo,” someone called. “You’d better talk fast.”
Silence would get him nowhere. “I was working, see, just over there.” He nodded in the direction of the superintendent’s house. “I heard the blast, and I came to help.” Wash felt a trickle of sweat begin between his shoulder blades.
“You glad to see a white school blow up?” the first man asked, his dark eyes narrowed to slits.
“Nobody could want this, sir. It’s a horrible accident—”
“You know an awful lot about what happened, don’t you? Tell the truth now,” the man continued. “You come over here now to help or to gloat and scavenge books?”
Sweat slid down Wash’s back.
Mr. Crane moaned softly beside him. Then he said something everyone heard: “The gas, the gas, why did we do it?”
“What the hell is he talking about?” asked the man missing a finger.
A different voice sounded from behind him. “Y’all think a minute. Anybody could tell a gas leak sparked here. We all seen it dozens of times. Lay off the kid and let’s get back to work.”
“Not till we get this settled,” the man with the mole growled. “What about Crane? He’s got to answer for it.”
“His son’s in there, too.” The words were shouted from the back of the crowd.
Just then, a hollow-cheeked woman in a stained housedress pushed past the men. Her hands did not leave her sides. “My baby girl is missing,” she said. “Are you gonna let me go on searching alone?”
The men looked down, shuffled their feet. Someone coughed, and then one by one the men went back to work. Wash went back to being invisible. Almost.
The first man held his ground. “This ain’t over,” he said to Wash, showing him a mouthful of yellow teeth. Then he pushed the wheelbarrow to the side and turned away.
Wash felt a hand shove his back, and he spun around. Mr. Gibbler, the school board member who’d laughed in his father’s face, stared at him. He pointed to the hand Wash had on Mr. Crane’s elbow.
“Let go.” Gibbler’s voice was level and cold. “I’ll take it from here.” He settled an arm around the superintendent. “Come on, now, Dan.”
“You’ve done enough, son.” Mr. Crane said. His eyes did not focus.
“You heard him,” Gibbler said. “Get out of here. We know wh
ere to find you.”
HENRY Henry walked into the kitchen with his boots still on. The clock said eight, just fourteen hours since he’d left Naomi on the porch the afternoon before. But time, too, had shattered. Everything was in pieces.
“It’s done,” Henry said finally. He kept his eyes on Naomi. She had washed and put on clean clothes, but her face was swollen from crying. He did not look at Cari. He did not look at Beto.
Without speaking, Naomi set a chair by the heater for him. The gesture reminded him that he was cold and tired and filthy. He turned the chair away from the table.
Even over the stink of his labor, of the mud and the plaster and the rain that had wet him and then dried, he could smell Cari’s body. It smelled like all the other bodies he’d handled.
They had found the last survivors just before midnight. After that, it was eight hours of digging and sifting and hauling to find what was left of the children. When he closed his eyes, he saw images from the school. Broken children gathered piece by piece. A whole school taken apart by hand.
They moved two thousand tons of debris, someone had said. Henry felt as if he were trapped under the weight of it all.
Naomi touched his shoulder, and he looked up.
“Eat something,” she said.
He took the plate from her and began to eat. It was too late to wash his hands.
BETO Beto watched the square of light from the window above the sink. It shifted slowly across the floor with the sun’s progress. He knew that this meant time would not stop. No Joshua moments for him, no sun stilled in the sky. Minutes and hours and days without Cari.
Her absence would always be with him. Along with the knowledge of why she was gone.
Beto felt Naomi on the floor beside him. She tried to put her arms around him, but he pulled away. He still had not spoken to her. He couldn’t bear to tell her what he’d done.
NAOMI Naomi opened the door to Pastor Tom. He stood on the porch with his hat in his hand. Scratches crisscrossed his arms, and his knuckles were scraped raw.
“Naomi,” he said, “I’m so sorry for your loss.” He picked at the clay and grime streaked across his shirt and tie. “I was walking through, thought I should check in on you all.”
Naomi gestured at the table. At Cari’s body, still draped in the sheet, waiting for the undertakers. She had washed the body, but there was still a smell. She saw that Beto had taken Cari’s hand again.
“That’s all right. Let’s talk out here,” the pastor said. He shifted his feet and thumbed his belt loops.
“Get you a glass of water? Washcloth?” she asked. Time only seemed to move when she could assign herself a task. And she needed time to move.
“Thank you, sister.” Pastor Tom sat down on the porch stool.
BETO Beto watched the square of light and measured the darkness around it. Cari’s hand was cold, but it was no longer stiff. He could fit his fingers inside hers. He could pretend.
He let go when he heard Naomi walk by. She knocked on Henry’s door. “Pastor’s here. On the porch,” she said.
Then came heavy footsteps.
Beto pulled his eyes away from the square of light and looked at his father.
Henry’s eyes were red from crying or maybe from drink. He looked everywhere but at Cari on the table and Beto beneath it. Dead daughter. Son, as good as.
Naomi filled a glass with water.
Henry shoved open the screen door.
Cari remained dead.
Beto returned to his square of light.
HENRY Henry opened the porch door, and Pastor Tom stood up from the stool. “Brother,” he said. He held out his arms.
Henry ignored him and slumped against the side of the house.
The pastor tried again. “Should we talk about arrangements?”
A bark of a laugh slid from Henry’s mouth. He spat over the edge of the porch. “I don’t know. Can you arrange away that dead little girl off of my kitchen table, Pastor? Work out a Lazarus number?”
“Whoa, now, Henry—”
Henry turned away from the pastor. He kicked the screen door. It hammered against the frame and then sprang back, trembling on its hinges. He swiveled back to the preacher. “Where was he, Tom? You tell me, where the hell was he when this happened?”
BETO Next to Deenie. That’s where Beto had been when Cari went to sit in the empty desk at the front of the room.
HENRY Of course, Henry meant the “He” of the twenty-third psalm and of the gospels and of all the pastor’s sermons. The God that Pastor Tom had promised would be with him now and always but who had been elsewhere when the school was exploding with the children inside.
“You told me to bring them here.” A sob crept into Henry’s voice. “You said it was his will.”
“Let me pray with you, brother,” Pastor Tom said. Hairy hands settled on Henry’s shoulders.
The preacher’s voice rose and fell with the same rhythms that had first drawn Henry to the altar. But even now, inside the prayer, Henry knew that it was over. The baptism waters of the Sabine were drying up inside him. Pastor Tom had nothing for him. There was no new life, just the end of false beginnings.
Henry snapped his eyes open and stepped back, leaving the preacher laying hands on air. “And where is she?” he demanded. “Tell me my girl’s in heaven. That she ain’t suffering now.”
Pastor Tom lowered his hands slowly. “Only the Lord knows her heart, only...” he trailed off.
“You go on and tell me that God let somebody blow up that school, and then he sent them babies to hell? Say it. I want to hear you.”
“Past the age of reason, each is accountable to the Lord. That’s all we know.”
“She never answered the altar call, did she now?” Henry pressed him.
“There are many altars ... we can hope that ... in her heart of hearts...” the pastor stammered. And then he was silent.
But the pause was no surrender, and the preacher began to preach. “Any day can be our last; and the fires of hell are real, realer than we can imagine, there to make sorrow for the mother or the child, the young or the old, for all who fail to repent and acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The confession of sins, the cleansing blood of Jesus, only that can save. There is a Redeemer, but we must each call to Him, ask Him into our heart. Before that moment we are already committed to the burning torment of hell, a suffering that has no end, a heat that burns to the very core!”
NAOMI The screen door slammed open again, and Naomi flew out. “Stop it!” she cried. Heat flooded her face, and she dropped the glass of water she’d brought for the pastor. It rolled on its side, and the water ran down between the planks of the porch.
She wanted to push Pastor Tom. A mighty shove off the porch and a magic that would make the drop tremendous. She imagined him down below, a crumpled sack of bones in a rat’s skin.
“How dare you?” she demanded, taking a step toward him. “My sister was baptized as a baby. I was there.”
“Baptism is only an outward sign, empty without a decision. Did she know Jesus Christ as her personal Savior? Only that can save, hear me now, only that can—”
“Enough!” Henry took a menacing step toward the preacher. “You’re done here, damn it. Don’t come back.” He towered over the smaller man, moving forward into his space, forcing him to retreat.
Pastor Tom held tight to his hat as he backed down the steps, still preaching. “It’s a hard lesson but a powerful one. Any day can be our last. We must get right with the Lord.”
Naomi covered her ears and turned away. When she turned back, the pastor was in the yard. He raised his hat and placed it on his head carefully. He brushed the loose dirt from his shirt and walked up the side road until he got to the oil-top road that led to the church. His steps were slow and heavy as if he did not carry his message lightly.
Henry pulled Naomi’s hands away from her ears. “It’s all right now,” he said. “He won’t darken this doorway again.”
/> She freed her hands from his. She was frightened by this rare moment of shared emotion, uneasy with the lack of tension between them. It felt like a betrayal, and for a moment her need for Wash was bigger even than her grief. She crossed her arms and tucked her hands in under her armpits to hide her trembling.
Henry smiled at her sadly. “She used to do that when she was upset.”
Naomi stiffened. He knew so little; Cari never trembled and rarely showed her sadness as anything but anger. But then she realized who he meant. Her mother. Estella. Yes, she had done that with her hands, wedged them away under her arms when she was afraid or sad.
“Please,” Naomi choked out. “Not now. We have ... the funeral to think of.” Then she turned and ran into the house, unable to bear his gaze.
“It matters now more than ever, don’t you see?” he called after her.
BETO Beto watched the square of light move half the width of a floorboard. He felt the fact of Naomi’s silent crying beside him. He couldn’t move.
NAOMI Naomi could not leave Beto or Cari. She could not put on the shoes Cari had died in. She could not run to the woods. She could not fold herself into the hiding place and wish and wish and wish for Wash to come.
She couldn’t do these things, but she did them anyway.
Even inside the tree, there was a heaviness in her chest. It was Cari on the table. It was Beto’s silence. It was what she had said and what she hadn’t. It was Cari’s anger. It was Henry, the hunger in him, the fraying boundaries. It was the want of a mother. It was being in the tree without Wash.
Then he was there.
WASH & NAOMI They held each other. Wash’s shoulder went wet with Naomi’s tears. Her skin was hot under his fingertips. For her, he was coolness and touch and not needing to speak. She could open his mouth and he could open hers. A kiss. For a moment, desire and relief were greater than grief.
Out of Darkness Page 26
