I felt my whole body sag. All the energy that I had worked up to kill Maddox just drained out of me. As much as I hated Doris for siding with her husband, I wasn’t about to kill her—and certainly not the new baby. That was when I realized I really didn’t want to kill anyone, not even Maddox. Bad as he was, that just wasn’t in me.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all,” I said.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Joe said.
As we watched, Doris took the lid off the can, dropped the bag in, and replaced the lid without putting down the baby. Then she went back into the house, never once looking our way. Joe pulled the tamping bar out from underneath the rock. “That was a right nice fulcrum, though,” he said. “Could have done it if we’d wanted to.”
We headed across the hill, away from the house.
“Does this mean we’re wimps?” I asked.
“Nah,” Joe said. He kicked at a pinecone in his path. “You know, we could get Maddox where it really hurts.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Le Mans.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Joe and I talked about smashing the windshield, but we worried that the noise might bring Maddox running out of the house. Then he suggested keying the car, but we also nixed that idea because it would only do cosmetic damage, and Maddox could still cruise around, trying to mow us down. In the end, we decided that the best course of action would be to immobilize the Le Mans by slashing the tires. Maddox could buy new ones of course, but we’d have made a real statement—and we could always slash the new tires, too.
We waited until the weekend, when Maddox would probably be home. We needed the cover of darkness, so Joe told me to meet him at the library at dusk. He always carried his jackknife on him, he said, so I didn’t need to worry about anything in the weapons department. He said he’d go over the day before and case Maddox’s street and work out a plan of attack. We needed to wear dark clothes, he added. “Camouflage,” he explained. Joe was putting a lot of thought into what he called “the operation.”
When I rode up at the appointed time on Saturday, Joe was waiting at the library bike stand. He got on the Schwinn, and with me sitting on the rack behind, we pedaled over to Maddox’s neighborhood as the sun was going down. It was a colorless December sunset, the sky all silvers and whites and grays.
When we got to Maddox’s street, we could see the Le Mans parked in the breezeway down the block. Joe had me hide with the Schwinn behind a holly bush at the street corner. My job was to be the lookout and if anyone approached, either in a car or on foot, I was supposed to hoot like an owl. By then the sun had gone down, the streetlights had come on, and they cast pools of purplish light. While I waited at the holly bush, Joe casually walked down the street and looked around. When he saw that the coast was clear, he ducked behind a big rhododendron a few houses up from the Maddoxes’.
As I watched from over the holly, Joe scurried from bush to bush, stopping at each one to suss out the situation. When he reached the bush closest to Maddox’s house, he dropped down on his stomach and shimmied over to the Le Mans.
Joe was out of my sight when a porch light flicked on at the house across the street from Maddox’s. The front door opened and an older lady let out a little dog. I started hooting like crazy. At the sound of it, the little dog began to bark. Suddenly, Joe came running as fast as he could toward me. I had the bike ready to roll, kickstand up, when he reached me.
“Got two tires,” he said breathlessly as he jumped on. I clambered aboard and pushed off with both feet while Joe stood up on the pedals, working them as fast as he could.
We circled around town instead of going through it, and fifteen minutes later, we got to the bottom of the mill hill. Joe was about to get off and walk the rest of the way home, and I was going to head back to Mayfield, when the squad car pulled up alongside us. The cop pointed to the side of the road. Joe stopped the bike, and the cop parked behind us and got out, leaving the engine running and the headlights on. As he walked toward us, he put on his broadbrimmed hat and adjusted the chin strap.
“What seems to be the hurry here?” he asked.
“Got to get home for dinner,” Joe said.
“We had a report of some slashed tires over on Willow Lane,” the cop said. “Know anything about it?”
“No, sir,” Joe said.
“You’re saying you didn’t do it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re denying it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re just bike riding,” I said.
“I’m not talking to you,” the cop said. He turned back to Joe. “Son, empty your pockets onto the hood of the car.”
Joe sighed. He climbed off the bike and started taking stuff out of his pockets: keys, change, string, a few screws, a chestnut, and the jackknife.
The cop picked up the knife and opened it. “This is a concealed weapon,” he said.
“It’s my whittling knife,” Joe said.
“It’s a concealed lethal weapon,” the cop said. “Follow me.” He opened the back door of the squad car. “Get in.”
People driving by slowed down and craned their necks to stare as Joe climbed into the backseat. I stood there straddling the Schwinn as the cop car pulled away. I wanted to wave to Joe, but he didn’t look back.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I pedaled through the darkness toward Mayfield. While Joe and I were planning and then carrying out the operation, slashing Maddox’s tires seemed not only justifiable but something I obviously had to do to defend myself and Liz and to strike back against someone trying to kill us. But it occurred to me that if I tried to explain the tire-slashing operation to anyone, it was going to sound incredibly stupid, the kind of boneheaded crime that landed kids in juvie. Looking back, I almost couldn’t believe it myself. On top of it all, I had gotten Joe into trouble. I kept thinking of him staring straight ahead as the squad car drove off.
I couldn’t tell Uncle Tinsley or Liz about any of it, so I went to bed saying nothing. First thing next morning, I rode the Schwinn over to the Wyatts’ house to find out what had happened to Joe. I never knocked anymore—Aunt Al insisted I come on in, seeing as I was family—and when I stepped inside, Joe was sitting at the kitchen table with Earl while Aunt Al fried eggs in bacon fat. I wanted to hug Joe, but he was acting all nonchalant and offhand. The cops, he said, had confiscated his knife and given him a lecture about staying on the right side of the law, but they didn’t have any evidence that he’d done anything wrong, so they let him go.
“I swear, you’d think those deputies would have better ways to spend their time than bringing in mill hill boys for carrying around whittling knives,” Aunt Al said. “Bean, you want an egg?”
“Sure do,” I said. I sat down next to Joe. I felt giddy that we’d gotten away with the operation, though we couldn’t say anything in front of Aunt Al. Joe poured me a cup of milk-with-coffee, and we just sat there grinning like a couple of crocodiles. Then Aunt Al passed me a crispy, glistening fat-fried egg.
We had finished breakfast and I was washing the plates at the sink, Aunt Al talking about how we might be in for our first snow of the season, when there was a hard knock on the door.
Joe went to answer it. Maddox was standing on the front step. It was a cold winter morning, but he wore no coat, just a hooded black sweatshirt with the hood pushed back. His hands were on his hips, and he shoved his finger in Joe’s face. “I know it was you,” he said.
“You know what was me?”
“Don’t act all innocent with me, you little son of a bitch.”
“Please, none of that language in my house,” Aunt Al said. “What’s this all about?”
Maddox pushed past Joe, entered the house, and looked over at me. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?” he asked.
“She’s family,” Aunt Al said. “She has every right to be here. Now, please, what’s this all about?”
“I’ll tell you what
this is about. It’s about criminal mischief and the wanton destruction of personal property. Your boy slashed my tires.”
“Did not,” Joe said.
“I know it was you,” Maddox said. “At first I couldn’t figure out who did it, but this morning a buddy on the force mentioned that the Wyatt boy had been picked up for carrying a knife, and that he’d been in the company of one of the Holladay sisters at the time, and that’s when the light went on. It was you.”
“He says he didn’t do it,” Aunt Al said. “If you had any proof, you’d charge him.”
“Just because I don’t have proof doesn’t mean he didn’t do it,” Maddox said, “and doesn’t mean he won’t get what’s coming to him.”
Maddox’s voice brought Uncle Clarence into the kitchen. “What’s going on here?”
“Your boy needs a beating,” Maddox said. “Firstly, for slashing my tires. Secondly, for lying about it.”
“Is that true, son?” Uncle Clarence asked.
“He says he didn’t do it,” Aunt Al said.
“He didn’t do it,” I said. “He was with me last night. We were just riding around.”
“You were probably in on it,” Maddox said. He pointed at Aunt Al. “You work for the mill,” he said. He turned to Uncle Clarence. “And you take the mill’s disability checks. People who work for the mill and take the mill’s money do what I say. And I say that boy needs a beating.”
Maddox and Uncle Clarence looked at each other for a long moment. Then Uncle Clarence walked out of the room. He came back carrying a leather belt.
“Oh, Clarence,” Aunt Al said. But she didn’t try to stop him.
“Outside,” Maddox said.
He led Joe and Uncle Clarence through the house and into the backyard. Joe was staring straight ahead saying nothing, like he’d done in the squad car. Aunt Al and I followed them outside. In the vegetable garden, the dead vines of Uncle Clarence’s tomatoes were still tied to their stakes. Aunt Al clutched my arm when Uncle Clarence told Joe to bend over and grab his ankles, and with Maddox standing by, Uncle Clarence began whaling Joe’s butt with the belt.
At the first blow, I felt the urge to rush over and grab Uncle Clarence’s arm. Aunt Al seemed to sense this, because she clutched me even tighter. Uncle Clarence whaled Joe over and over again. Joe never said a word, and when Uncle Clarence finally stopped, Joe stood up. He didn’t look at anyone or say anything. Instead, he walked off into the woods, along the trail that led to the chestnut tree.
Maddox clapped Uncle Clarence on the back and put an arm around him. “Just to show there’s no hard feelings,” he said, “let’s go have a beer.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Uncle Clarence didn’t much feel like having a beer with Maddox, so Maddox left. Uncle Clarence had a racking fit of coughing, then when it was over, he put on his army cap and headed off to the veterans’ hall. I sat with Aunt Al and Earl in the kitchen. I had the sense that Aunt Al wanted me there.
No one said anything for a minute, and then Aunt Al spoke up. “What in tarnation did you two think you were doing?”
So she knew.
“It was all my fault,” I said. I explained how, ever since Liz filed the charges, Maddox had been throwing garbage on our yard and trying to mow us down with his car, and Liz was hearing voices, so I felt we had to do something to fight back, and Joe was the only one who could help me.
“Honey, I understand the urge to get even,” she said, “but you all was throwing rocks at an angry bull.”
Aunt Al and I sat at the kitchen table for a while. I asked her about Liz’s voices, and Aunt Al said that she sometimes heard God talking to her and at other times the devil. When her family lived in the mountains, all sorts of folk went around speaking in tongues, so maybe it was nothing more than that.
Then Ruth came home from teaching Sunday school. “Why all the long faces?” she asked.
“Your pa had to give Joe a hiding,” Aunt Al said.
“Maddox made him do it,” I added.
“Dad beat Joe because Mr. Maddox told him to?”
“Right out back,” I said.
“Mr. Maddox was here?” Ruth asked. “In our house?” She sat down at the table.
“Just a little while ago,” I said. I started explaining what had happened and when I finished, Ruth looked down and ran her fingers through her hair, like her head hurt.
“You know, I never told anyone why I stopped working for Maddox,” she said.
Aunt Al gave Ruth a startled look.
“He put the moves on me,” Ruth said. “He didn’t do what he did to Liz, but he cornered me and started pawing like crazy. I got away, but I sure was scared.”
“Honey,” Aunt Al said, “I asked you if anything had happened, and you told me no.”
Ruth had taken off her cat’s-eye glasses and was fidgeting with them. “I never wanted anyone to know.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
By then, it was clear that Mom had pulled another one of her disappearing acts. Ever since we’d filed the charges, I’d been calling her in New York, but the phone just rang and rang. I’d call early in the morning, in the middle of the afternoon, and late at night, but there was never an answer.
Finally, after four weeks passed, Mom called. She’d been at a spiritual retreat in the Catskills, she explained. The trip had been spur-of-the-moment with some new friends. She’d tried to call before she left, but she couldn’t get through, probably because Tin had unplugged the phone. She’d stayed at the retreat longer than anticipated, and since the Buddhists had no telephone, she hadn’t been able to call.
“It was all so good for my head,” she said. “I feel very balanced.” She started going on about how the Buddhists had taught her about her chi and how to center it, but I cut her off.
“Mom, there’s been trouble,” I said. “This man attacked Liz. There’s going to be a trial.”
Mom let out a shriek. She demanded to know the details, and as I filled her in, she kept yelling things like “What?” “How dare he?” “My girls! My babies!” and “I’ll kill him!” She was leaving immediately, she said, and would drive all night to get to Mayfield in the morning, adding, “This has shot my chi all to hell.”
Mom didn’t reach Byler by the time we left for school in the morning, but she had arrived when we returned, which was good because Uncle Tinsley had been able to explain the legal details and Liz didn’t have to go through it all again. Mom hugged her. Liz didn’t want to let go, so Mom kept hugging her, stroking her hair, and saying, “Everything’s going to be all right, baby. Momma’s here.”
Then Mom turned to hug me. I was surprised by how angry I felt at her. “Where have you been all this time?” I wanted to say. But I said nothing and hugged her back. Mom started rubbing her face against my shoulder. I felt a little wetness, and I realized she was crying and trying to hide it. I wondered if Mom was really going to help us get through all this or if she was just going to be one more person who needed reassurance.
When Liz told Mom how the other kids at school were treating her, Mom said Liz didn’t have to go anymore, at least until the trial was over. Mom would homeschool her.
She offered to homeschool me, too, but I took a pass. Most of the kids had stopped giving me a hard time, and besides, the last thing I wanted to do was sit around Mayfield all day, brooding about Maddox, listening to Mom explain the world as she saw it, and reading a bunch of depressing poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, who had replaced Lewis Carroll as Liz’s favorite writer. I needed to be out and about.
Since Liz and I had gone back to sharing a bedroom, Mom moved into the other room in the bird wing, the one that had been her playroom when she was growing up. When she told the Byler High authorities that she would take over Liz’s education for the time being, they were happy to oblige, since the upcoming trial had caused nothing but tension at school. Mom avoided getting into arguments with Uncle Tinsley and spent the days with Liz, the two of them writing in journals and
talking about survival, transcendence, and life energy, all the subjects Mom had been exploring during her spiritual retreat. Liz clung to Mom and to her words, and Mom clearly enjoyed being clung to. They composed poetry together and finished each other’s sentences. Mom had brought her two favorite guitars with her—the Zemaitis and the honey-colored Martin—and she gave the Martin to Liz, promising her she would never criticize her playing no matter what rules Liz broke.
I had been ticked off at Mom when she first showed up, but she seemed to be rising to the occasion. Liz told her about the voices she kept hearing. She was hearing them more often and they were getting scarier. “If the voices are real, I’m in trouble,” Liz said. “If they’re not real, I’m in bigger trouble.” I was afraid Mom would drag her off to a psychiatrist, who would send her to a nut house, but instead Mom said Liz shouldn’t fear the voices. That was how the mind and the soul talked to each other, she said. When you argued with yourself, those were voices. When your conscience told you something was a bad idea, that was a voice. When the muse whispered lyrics in your ear, it was a voice. Everyone heard voices, Mom said. Some of us just heard those voices more clearly than others. Liz should listen to the voices, channel them, and turn them into art, poetry, and music. “Don’t be afraid of your dark places,” Mom told her. “If you can shine a light on them, you’ll find treasure there.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Mom had never made a big deal out of Christmas, telling us every year that it was a pagan holiday the Christians had co-opted, that Christ was actually born in the spring. Uncle Tinsley said he had ignored it ever since Martha died, but when school let out for Christmas break, he told us that because this was the first family gathering at Mayfield in years, we should do something to acknowledge the holiday. Uncle Tinsley and I found a small, perfectly shaped cedar in the hedgerow along the upper pasture. We chopped it down, dragged it back to the house, and decorated it with the Holladay family collection of fragile antique ornaments, some of them, Uncle Tinsley said, dating back to the 1880s.
The Silver Star Page 17
