Into the Free

by Julie Cantrell

  I don’t say anything. I may just be a kid, but I know what Mama’s thinking because I feel it too. The storms circle around me and threaten to pull me up by my roots. Maybe that’s why I cling to the trees.

  Mama sighs, turns up the radio, and sings “Yonder Come the Blues.” Her tone drops low and sad, and there’s no more guessing. It won’t be long before she’s sinking back into a darker place. A place I call the valley.

  The valley is where Mama goes without me. Without anyone. It’s a place so dark and low that nothing can snap her back out. I sit. And wait. And pray that Mama comes back from the valley soon and that she’ll love me again when she does.

  “Go back blues, don’t come this way.” In slow motion, she drops in carrots while she sings. I hope I’ll never end up like Mama. And that no one like Jack will ever tell me what to do.

  Sweetie hears my thoughts and holds me tight. She’s putting on her new spring leaves, a sure sign that something big is about to happen.

  She’s a good tree.

  I climb higher and try to sneak a peek at three speckled eggs in a nest. A mockingbird squawks and nosedives me, so I flip myself upside down and hang from my knees, careful to tuck my dress between my legs.

  I stretch my arms out long to pretend I am a spider spinning a web. The clouds are getting heavy, so Sloth shuffles inside where he’ll wait out the storm before fishing. There, he sits in his splintered cane rocking chair, his pet rooster in his lap, and stares out his open window. “When it rains,” he says, loud enough so I can hear him, “God be wantin’ us to sit still and take notice.”

  I climb down from Sweetie’s limbs to join him. But before I even make it past Mama’s kitchen window, I am met with a growl. Only this time, it’s not thunder.

  I holler, “Mama, there’s a big ol’ dog out here!”

  Mama doesn’t answer. She just keeps on singing, slow and low. Tuning out everything but the gloomy notes.

  I turn to tell Sloth, but he’s already slouched back into his chair. His eyes are closed, and I decide not to disturb him. Instead, I slide under our sloping porch for a closer look at the growling beast. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust. The colors go black to gray, and then everything comes into focus. Finally, I see what spring has brought me. A stray mutt dog curled up under our cabin. Half-starved and mangy, her swollen belly is full of nothing but fear. And puppies.

  By the time I find her, she has what Mama calls the “pearly glaze of pity” in her eyes, like cold round marbles that the Devil just rolled. Her growl, not much more than a rumble, is probably just a way to ask for help, but it’s still enough to make me think twice about petting her. As I tuck myself up under the porch, the clouds finally give way, dropping rain like bullets. I figure to stay put until the storm passes. Besides, from the looks of her sagging belly, I’m betting the dog hasn’t climbed under here just to stay dry.

  I keep my distance from her while the rain pours down around us, seeping into all the low spots beneath the house, slipping around my muddy toes. Winter has spent the last three weeks packing its bags, but with the rain, even the new spring air makes me cold.

  I sit cross-legged in the mud and bet this dog will have a baby before I count to one hundred. “One-Mississippi,” I whisper. “Two-Mississippi.” Sure enough, the first pup is born at ninety-two. I don’t dare move a muscle.

  She has nine pups in all, and I can hardly keep track. I count three black, four brown, and two with mixed splotches of both. I plan to keep them all, so I give them names like Jingles and Mimi. But every time I try to get close enough to touch one, the mother shows her yellow teeth and growls.

  I’ve waited for almost an hour, but she still doesn’t remove the sacs, clean them, or nurse them. Instead she smothers two with her own weight, just falls right down on top of them. Won’t budge. I can’t stand to watch it anymore, so I crawl closer, hoping to save the others.

  But just as before, the rumbling starts. The teeth flash. The mama jerks her head back and forth, glares at me, and then at her pups. Mud and blood and the juices of birth are flung through the air and cling to my cheek. I crawl out from under the front of the porch and try to come under again from the back of the house. Rain stings me until I sneak in between sagging pilings and sticky cobwebs and walls of wasps gearing up for summer. I keep my belly pressed against the blood-red mud. I slither, snakelike, in slow motion, trying not to startle the mama dog more than I already have. She is shaking, and she has scattered her pups like raw grains of rice across a kitchen floor.

  A soft, brown lump of a puppy is spread across the ground only inches from me. It smells like the rusty old plow in Mr. Sutton’s horse pasture, and I have to snap myself out of thinking about how everything goes to ruin.

  I can reach the brown puppy now. I feel the smooth, silky sac that covers her fur like a thin layer of raw egg whites, slick and waxy and milky. It’d be beautiful, if it wasn’t smothering her. I pick her up, and she wiggles in my hand, scaring me so much I almost let her drop. The mama is on me before I can scoot my way back out to the open air.

  Her teeth are inches from my cheek, coated in a thick yellow paste that smells like all the dead things I find in the woods. She wrinkles her snout and growls from her gut, perking her ears and straightening her tail. I know better than to move. I stay real quiet and keep my eyes on the puppy until the mama dog drops back to the ground and rolls out one long warning. I rub the sticky sac off the puppy and shove her toward the mama, hoping the dog will understand how to take it from here, but she just keeps growling. I get the message.

  I slide back out to the yard and squint my eyes. By now, the heavy gray clouds have moved into the far-off edges of the sky. The sun is shining white yellow again. I grab a long stick, thinking maybe if I chase the mama out from under the house, I can scrub the silver sacs from the babies and clean them in the washtub out back. I swing the stick at the dog, “Get! Get on out of here!” She lifts one of the pups in her jaws and carries it out into the yard. A little lump of life. The pup swings back and forth from the mama’s teeth until it finally breaks one small leg through the sac. The mother digs a rough split in our yard and lets the tiny body drop into the fresh grave. The puppy lands with a hollow thud, like Jack’s booted steps on the wooden front porch.

  Then, digging her claws into the mud, the mother buries her baby alive. I scream. She growls. No rumble this time, but the fear-filled snarl of a mother. She buries baby after baby after baby, and as she digs, I dig too, uncovering each of the pups. One by one.

  I waste no time at all. I tear through the slimy sacs, hoping there’s still a way to save the puppies. When the stray realizes what I’ve done, she falls down. She won’t look at me as I bring four babies back to her. The five dead ones I rebury, deeper, behind the house, where I hope no coyotes will dig them up for supper.

  When I finally finish, I climb back high up in my tree and hope the mother will let her four babies live. I name them Rose, Twinkle, JuJuBee, and Belle. Dark-brown balls of matted hair.

  Mama still sings from the kitchen, stirring the gravy, but she has shifted from blues to church hymns. “All to Jesus, I Surrender.” I can’t help but wonder if I looked like these pups when I was born and if Mama ever thought of burying me.

  CHAPTER 2

  The mockingbird swoops and swirls over her eggs, and from Sweetie’s limbs I watch as Sloth finally comes out of his cabin. He grabs his collection of worms from the porch, shaking water from the rim of the can. I climb down from my favorite branch and take two hops through wet weeds to reach Sloth’s side. The clouds have gone and the afternoon sun stretches my shadow, long and lean. I pretend I am walking on stilts. A circus performer.

  “Ready?” Sloth asks, grabbing two cane poles. I look back at Mama in the window. She has no idea I’ve just watched puppies being born, or that I’ve buried half the litter behind the house. She doesn’t notice that the rain has stopped or that the sun is shining or that a train has just left us all here while it s
lipped away into the free. She’s falling away again. To the valley. And as much as I want to go fishing, something tells me I should be watching Mama instead.

  “I have to keep an eye on the puppies,” I lie.

  Sloth nods and walks off toward the river.

  I climb back into Sweetie’s arms and try to pretend it all away. I become a falcon, soaring and searching for treats from high above the wide, watery fields. “What you gonna do now?” I tease the mockingbird, my sharp claws pointing her way. “You think your little squawk scares me?” I fuss, half believing I am in charge of this place. Not Mr. Sutton. Not Jack. Maybe not even God, even though Mama keeps telling me that everything is in His hands.

  I have almost reached the mockingbird’s nest when the rattle of Jack’s truck snaps across the yard and clips my ears. He’s coming home from another rodeo competition, hopefully with some prize money from riding the bulls. I pass the sign nearly every day. Cauy Tucker Rodeo. Right there in the middle of town. It’s on my left side when I walk to school. On my right when I walk back home. I always hold my head down, carry my lunch pail, and try not to follow the cowboys as they wrangle cows and herd sheep. They ride past me on horseback, shuffling calves and goats from the railroad stock cars to the rodeo barn, and it’s all I can do not to climb up into one of those saddles and take the reins. I’d pull that horse right through the park, letting her stop for fresh green grass before showing those carousel ponies what a real gallop looks like. Then we’d race to the theater, where I’d reach up to touch the shiny chandelier. From there, we’d ride down to the lawyer’s office window to get a better view of the bullet hole, proof that Annie Oakley really did fire her gun from the street, like everyone says. But horses and bulls, saddles and shotguns, that’s Jack’s world. This is mine.

  Now Jack’s home, and he barely makes it past the porch before his voice hits me, so loud and angry the shutters shake on their hinges.

  “What’s the matter with you? Get out of here!” Jack storms back out of the house after one of Mr. Sutton’s farmhands. The field worker must have slipped in while I was burying the pups. He’s probably here to bring Mama another bag of medicine, and Jack is not happy about it. “Every time I turn my back …” Jack kicks the wall. “I better never see you here again, you no-good rummy.”

  The farmhand runs mouse-like into the yard and skitters back to Mr. Sutton’s barn, looking back to make sure Jack doesn’t follow. Jack stands on the porch and watches him disappear. The he rushes back into the kitchen yelling at Mama. He picks up the pot of roast beef and yells louder. “You think cooking a roast is gonna fix this? Make me not notice?” Mama’s knees shake, and she doesn’t look so different from the dog, who has crawled back under the porch in fear.

  Even the mockingbird feels Jack’s anger, sitting in her nest within arms’ reach of me, trying to save her eggs. I squeeze my hands around Sweetie’s thick trunk. They are just tiny, dirty Mississippi hands. And they are shaking.

  Jack rants and paces back and forth. I climb down to get a better view, slipping quietly to the side of the house. Peeking in through the kitchen window.

  His booted steps pound the floor like war drums. Finally, he stops his prowling and plants both boots. Then he forces Mama up against the bare kitchen wall and shoves a fistful of roast into her mouth.

  She struggles. Coughs. Gags. He shoves down more. And more, squeezing her slender neck with his giant hand. Jack’s knuckles turn pink and then white and his whole arm shakes as he forces meat into Mama’s mouth.

  A few dogs bark in the distance. A train whistle announces afternoon deliveries. The wind picks up. Heat lightning flashes across the sky and the smell of electricity coats the thick, hot air. Like God Himself has struck a match. Then Jack’s fist slams into Mama’s cheek, and I swear I hear the sound of bone scratching bone. I wish for the life of me that I had gone fishing with Sloth.

  After the second blow, Mama breaks loose. She runs through the front door and I jump down, crouching under the porch out of view. Jack chases close behind. So close the screen doesn’t have time to bang closed between them. A fresh green four-leaf clover dangles over the rim of his cowboy hat. Mama screams, “Jack, please. Think of Millie.” Then she tries something else, something he might actually care about. “You could lose your job.”

  No one hears her. No one but me and the dogs and the mockingbird. I know from all the times this has happened before. Jack won’t stop no matter what Mama says. If anyone at the big house hears Mama’s cries, they don’t come to check. They never do. Jack knows he won’t lose his job as a bull rider. Mama would never tell Mr. Tucker or anyone else what Jack is really like. She wants the beatings kept a secret. She keeps lots of secrets.

  Once, after Jack had left Mama with a bloody nose and a busted lip, I set out to find Mr. Sutton. Mama pulled me into her lap, a thick patch of purple rising up across her cheek, and told me never to tell. “It’s one thing to stand in line for free bread or to ask for help paying the rent,” she explained. “But there is nothing worse than the shame of being unloved.”

  Now, Jack tackles Mama in the grass and throws himself on top of her. His dirty boots grate against her bare calves as she wrestles for freedom. “Just as useless as your daddy said you’d be.” Jack punches. “Only thing he was ever right about.”

  Mama keeps struggling, but Jack has her pinned, like a calf at one of his rodeos. Then he spins around in a quick jolt, jerks his knife from the pocket of his jeans, and flicks it open. As if he’s rehearsed it in his sleep. He forces the slick silver blade right up under Mama’s chin, hard against her throat. She stops moving. Everything is still. I hear my own breathing. I hope Jack can’t hear it or else he might turn the knife on me. He doesn’t need a reason.

  He presses the blade against Mama’s slim neck, and a tiny stream of blood trickles down, pooling in the hollow dip above her left collarbone. I know how ugly this can get. I’ve seen Jack beat Mama to the point she can’t open her mouth to eat, or move her hands to iron, or stand up on her own two feet without falling to the ground in pain. Every time it happens, I swear to myself it’ll be the last time I let Jack hurt Mama.

  I put my hand in my pocket. I rub my fingers across the smooth silver pocketknife, the only gift Jack ever gave me. I know how to end this. Now is the time. I will kill Jack and save Mama.

  Just do it, I think. Hurry!

  I open the blade. Plan the angle of attack.

  But just as I am ready to lunge, Jack’s voice makes a sudden shift. His crazed shouts turn smooth. His voice no longer carves the air. He stops the hitting, leans hard over Mama, and says, through gritted teeth, “I could kill you, Marie. I could.”

  Yanking his blade back behind him, he stands tall and looks down at Mama. She trembles on the ground, tears in her eyes, her breath short and fast, and he spits down into her face. Right in her face.

  Mama closes her eyes. Jack gives her one last hard kick in the side. The sound of a cool watermelon being busted open in the heat of summer, a thick and empty jolt that drains all the sweetness out.

  “You disgust me,” he says. Leaves Mama wadded up in dirt and blood and tears.

  When I finally get the guts to move, I close my knife and put it back in my pocket, trading it for a fistful of rocks. Jack starts his truck and I run after him. I throw gravel at the tailgate and scream, “Don’t ever come back! I hate you! I hope you fall off your big fat bull and die!” The words come out like fireworks. It’s not my voice I hear. It’s someone else’s. Someone brave and strong. Someone not afraid of what her own father might do to her.

  He flips the brakes and pops the truck in reverse. I want to run, but I stand right where I am. I rub my fingers over five jagged stones. “God, give me strength,” I pray, thinking of Mama’s stories about David and Goliath.

  Jack jerks his truck back into our little piece of the Suttons’ plantation and jumps from his seat with anger in his eyes. He stomps straight toward me, limping on his bad right knee. His coa
l-black eyes burn into mine. But, for the first time ever, I don’t look away. I don’t run, either. I stare right back at him and stand my ground.

  What Jack doesn’t know is that this time is different. I’m about to turn ten, and I’ve had enough. This time, I am just as angry as he is. This time, I’m not going to hide. I pull back my throwing arm, take good aim at the man I fear most in the world, and throw the stones right at him. All five at once. I hope to knock out his eyes or bloody his nose or, if prayers be answered, cut a fatal gash across his big mean head. But all five pebbles bounce from Jack’s chest like rainwater, and he doesn’t stop walking for a second, not even when he laughs.

  Instead, he grabs me by the arm and drags me over to Mama. She is struggling to get up from the ground, and he knocks her back down. “Look at her,” he yells at me. “Look at her, I said! Is this how you want to end up?” She tries to stand and he kicks her down again. I hit him. Punch him as hard as I can. My hand stings and blood rushes to my head. I don’t want him kicking Mama anymore. I keep punching and hitting and screaming and yelling for him to stop.

  My punches don’t hurt him, of course, because he’s Goliath, and I’m only nine, even though I sometimes feel like I’m the only grown-up in the family. The only one who sticks around and doesn’t head off for the rodeo or the valley every time things don’t go my way. Jack laughs and paces back to his truck.

  “Go, then!” I yell. “We don’t want you anyway, you stupid cowboy!”

  A trail of dust unravels behind him as he drives away.

  CHAPTER 3

  The noise of Jack’s truck sands my bones as Mama manages to pick herself up and move to her bed. I stomp back to the puppies with hot blood pumping through my veins. I kick the ground and punch the air. But I refuse, refuse, to cry. Mama does enough of that for the both of us.