Into the Free

by Julie Cantrell

  Behind the poplar, I am invisible, a good spy, until an old gypsy woman smiles at me. She reaches her arm out to draw me in, but I step back, behind the safety of the tree.

  The wrinkled woman winks and pulls a blue silk scarf to cover her silver hair. She turns back to the group, motioning for them to sit and rest. They fall at her feet like bees at a hive, as if they, too, can sense this woman’s sweetness.

  “Be here today with us, you be blessed,” she begins, and the crowd grows silent. Her accent is strange and deep, but it reminds me of a thick-waisted grandmother. “You be blessed here. With tribe. Your people. This, this what you know, here in heart, how it feel to belong.”

  The circle of dark-skinned travelers clasp their hands together and smile. All I can do is stay tucked behind the poplar and wish that I am a gypsy and that I have a tribe.

  I hurry back through a shortcut in the woods and hope Mama doesn’t find out I’ve been watching the gypsies. Jack doesn’t like them. Claims they cheated Mr. Cauy Tucker out of a fine stallion, traded him a sickly bunch of colts in exchange.

  I don’t get far before I have the feeling I’m being followed, and twice I catch sight of a scrawny boy, one of the two I’d seen throwing coins on the graves. He is wearing a brown tweed hat, a loose-fitting shirt, and dirty trousers that are too short for his toothpick legs. He dashes for cover when I turn my head. I shout at him, “Come out,” but only silence answers.

  I scramble up a steep hill, pulling my weight by clutching weaves of ivy. Just as I reach the top, I see a woman more than a hundred yards away. She is kneeling in the brush. Her back is turned to me, so I stop and watch from a distance. She is holding something in her hands. She is crying.

  I spy from the shadows and wonder if the skinny, brown-capped gypsy boy is spying on the spy. The woman is talking quickly. Jarring back and forth between whispers and shouts. “Time to bury the past,” she says, loud enough for me to hear. Who is she talking to? Why does her voice sound familiar? I lean closer and strain to focus. With bare hands, she digs a hole into the soft ground and places a box into the shallow opening. She covers the box with dirt, and over it she spreads a layer of dead leaves. It disappears under the tree.

  The woman stands as she throws something into the river, something small and shiny. All I see is the glint of it before she yells, “Happy now?”

  She dusts her hands on her skirt, turns, and for just a second, I see her face. She sweeps blonde hair from her eyes and I am certain. She is my mama.

  CHAPTER 6

  I hide behind the face of the hill and hope Mama doesn’t see me on my belly, peeking through newborn cedars and sweet gum scrubs. I spy as she talks to the air, and buries a box, and throws away a key. It is all I can do not to jump out and call to her, but fear speaks first. What if I’m not supposed to know about this? I cower lower, behind the grassy bank. I wait for a long time after she leaves, until I’m sure it’s safe to move. Then I go to the spot where she has hidden her secrets. I know I shouldn’t do it, but I brush away the leaves and I scoop out handfuls of dirt and I find her wooden box, like a coffin, buried under the sycamore tree.

  It is locked, so I feel for my pocketknife. Careful not to make a mark, I pry the lock, but it won’t shift. The sun is sinking, and I am running out of time.

  A branch breaks in the distance and I’m hit again with sizzling. Someone is watching me. I hope it is just the gypsy boy. I hope it isn’t Jack.

  A hawk screams, scared from its perch. The wind howls, the leaves wave warnings. Another twig snaps into the forest floor. Closer this time. I turn to look. Listen. I see only the day giving into night. But I know I am not alone.

  I hurry to cover the box, exactly the way Mama had buried it. I scatter dry leaves over the spot and stand, looking around with wide white eyes, like Mr. Sutton’s horses when stray dogs circle the pasture. “Hello?” I say to the woods. No one answers. Another twig breaks, close behind me now. “Who’s there?”

  Again, nothing.

  I am too afraid to run. I stand, turning, watching, holding my pocketknife. “Come out!” I shout, louder this time.

  Down a bit, close to the water, branches are bending and leaves are crunching. Then I hear the sounds of someone, or something, running away.

  Just as quickly as the noise began, the woods quiet down. The hawk returns to his perch, the moon shines a new yellow light on the fading canopy, and all becomes still again. I don’t move. I stand and listen and breathe. A coon shows itself in the clearing, and I finally get the courage to head home to Mama.

  I find her in the kitchen. Ella Fitzgerald sings from the speaker. Red beans are simmering, and the house smells like sausage.

  Mama leans over the counter. Her feet are crossed at the ankles, and she rubs an old string of pearls around her neck. She never looks up from the book she is studying. “Where’ve you been?”

  “At the library,” I lie to Mama. I feel it like a punch in my gut. I stir the pot so I don’t have to see her reaction if she knows. “What’ve you been doing?”

  She keeps right on reading. “Cooking,” she says. “Just cooking.”

  Mama cooked all night, but it didn’t seem to matter. Jack didn’t come home after all. I’m on my way home from school now, hoping he’s still gone, but when I turn the corner I see his truck parked in front of our house. Pins shoot through my bones like I’m one of those voodoo dolls Mr. Sutton brought back for me from New Orleans. I don’t see Mama or Jack, so I climb Sweetie and wait for a sign.

  I count Sweetie’s new spring leaves like stars. Numbers too big, too great for anyone but God to really know. Jack doesn’t like Sweetie. Or much of anything else, now that I think about it.

  I’m sitting in the tree when Jack comes around the house, ax in his hand. “Tired of this nothing tree,” he mutters. His voice puts a taste in my throat like dirt. “Don’t want to pick up no more of these dead gum balls.” He throws one of Sweetie’s old prickly spheres across our yard. The pod is hard and brown and empty of seed. The new ones hang from the limbs. They are soft, green, and smell like Christmas.

  Jack must not notice I’m in the tree. I climb down from her branches and wrap my arms around the trunk. “Chop her, you got to chop me, too,” I threaten.

  He forgets that I turned ten while he was gone, my lucky number. I look at the wilted four-leaf clover on his hat. I am counting on having good luck.

  Jack doesn’t look twice at me before he adjusts his cowboy hat straight on his head and swings the ax. It hits only inches from my hands, taking a bitter bite out of my tree. I jump. Yell. Mama watches from the porch. Just stands there and watches, her arms crossed in front of her like a collapsed X.

  Jack raises the ax out past his right shoulder, both hands tight against its splintered handle, his dark leather skin tight against his square jaw. My arms tight against Sweetie’s rugged trunk.

  Jack swings again. Misses my hands by three inches at most. His breath makes me gag. It smells like nibbled pears the deer leave behind to rot in the pasture.

  “I’ll pick them up,” I yell, looking out into the yard where hundreds of brown sweet gum seedpods shoot their spikes out into the world like tiny daggers. Jack doesn’t listen. Instead, he pulls the ax back again and takes aim. His flannel shirt is soaked dark under his arms. His jeans are worn through at the hems, and his stubbled cheeks look like a fresh field at harvest. Beads of sweat line up between his brows. Heat from the sky, the soil, the sips of whiskey. All there, burning up his insides as he holds that ax, heavy above Sweetie and me.

  “I promise!” I yell again, refusing to move, even if that means he’s taking me down with her. “I’ll pick them up!”

  Jack stares hard. I stare right back. “Every last one of them,” he orders. Then he swings the ax into her trunk one last time and leaves it there. He turns his back and limps up the porch steps, right past Mama, like she’s not even there. Like she’s an invisible, unworthy, nothing mama.

  I spend a good ten minu
tes pulling and tugging on Jack’s ax, trying to work it back out of my tree. But once it finally gives free, I realize the scars are there for good.

  By the time I work the ax out of Sweetie’s trunk, Jack’s gone again. His truck is nothing more than a blurry ball of dust in the distance. I don’t say much to Mama. I’m mad at her for not taking up for me. When I think about it, I was mad at her even before Jack sliced into Sweetie. Mad because she didn’t hold my hand during Sloth’s funeral and because she let me spend two nights sleeping outside alone. Mad because she lets Jack treat her like a punching bag, leaving marks we call bangers and stamps. Mad because she never told Sloth thank you for taking care of me. Mad because she won’t take care of herself.

  Right now, Mama is ironing a basket of clothes for one of the rich ladies in town. She’s singing “Stormy Weather,” and I don’t want to be here. I want to be with Sloth, catching fish or hunting deer or cooking stew.

  “I’m going fishing,” I tell Mama. She nods and keeps right on singing, and by the time I hit the porch, Sloth is there to greet me with two cane poles and a can of worms.

  I can see him, plain as day. “You ready?” he asks.

  But Sloth is dead. He died right next to me. Under the dogwood. I watched four men drop his casket into the ground, heard Mr. Sutton call him a “good man,” spent the long, lonely night crying at his grave. Yet here he is, standing on my porch, saying, “Ready?”

  It’s Sloth. It has to be. With his round chin, his deep wrinkles, his happy smile, his rough voice. He takes a step toward me, “twisted like a tornado” from the old gunshot injury to his foot. I drop the sandwich I’d packed as a snack and fumble for the doorknob behind my back. I keep both my eyes on Sloth. Mama opens the door and I rush in. “Sloth!” I say, shaking from the inside to the out. “Sloth. On the porch!”

  Mama steps outside and looks around calling “Hello?” but she finds only an empty evening.

  CHAPTER 7

  March 1942

  It has been six years since I first followed gypsy laughter to the cemetery, spying on them behind the poplar tree, then running through the woods with a gypsy boy on my trail.

  And it’s been six years since Sloth died, but I still feel him with me. When the warmth of the sun wakes me in the morning, Sloth calls to me, “Morning, Wild Child.” When I stir the roux for gumbo in the heavy iron pot, Sloth helps me glide the wooden spoon in smooth, round circles. “Color of a penny.” When I check the trotlines and set a turtle free, Sloth clicks his tongue. “Coulda made a mighty fine soup.”

  It’s been six years since Sloth died, but I see him all the time. I see him in the woods and in the garden and in the chicken coop. I see him between the stacks at the library and in the swaying cornfields and in between the warm green rows of cotton. He watches me when I climb my tree and gather eggs and walk to school. I am not afraid of Sloth’s ghost. I am only afraid of myself. Afraid I’m going nuts, like Jack and Mama, and that there’s no way for me to escape the madness. My blood runs crazy. That’s all there is to it.

  “Those gypsies’ll steal anything not tied down,” Jack says to himself before leaving for another rodeo. I prop my feet against Sweetie’s trunk and lie flat against the grass. I try to block the sounds of Jack by focusing only on Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men.

  I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain’t no good. They don’t have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin’ to fight all the time.

  Jack locks his guns and whiskey into a long metal box. Lets the metal from the lock and the box both bang together. Makes me jump. I’ve never seen a gypsy steal anything, so I don’t believe a word Jack says. Not about the gypsies—or anything else, for that matter.

  Jack keeps slamming things and banging things and stomping his boots across the porch, so I give up on Steinbeck and climb my tree, hoping for a glimpse of the gypsies. I always long to see them come. Little dashes zipping through like light before heading back out to the free. When they finally do arrive, I find a spot in town, usually behind a brick corner or a budding tree. From there, I watch them spin colored scarves through the streets. Some come in silence, others in song. But none come alone. They are never alone.

  They come every year, right on time, with the birth of spring. And with them comes the boy in the brown cap. The one who first followed me when I was just a girl. He’s no ghost, like Sloth. He’s as real as I am. I’m sure of it because others see him and talk to him, and in a strange sort of scratch across time, he has grown up with me. A living, breathing, aging human being. Not suspended like Sloth.

  I have never said a word to the boy, with his dark hair and even darker eyes. But my nights have become filled with dreams of him. In my younger years, the dreams involved us steering pirate ships together or climbing foggy Asian peaks. But in recent months, the dreams have shifted. Now he fills my thoughts. Both night and day.

  Over the years, while I’ve tended Sloth’s coop and managed his garden, kept up my studies and taken care of Mama, the gypsy boy has become my secret. But he is not the only secret I keep. Every year I watch the caravans of color weave their way through Iti Taloa during the gypsies’ annual pilgrimage. And every year, their music triggers thoughts about that wooden box Mama buried under the sycamore tree when I was just a little girl. I have never dug it up again, believing that the box is not mine to touch. Nor have I ever told a soul about it. Instead, I have watched the ivy swallow it whole.

  I have tried to forget the box. To set my sights on the gypsies and the boy. But I’m sixteen now and craving a change. I wonder if today is the day.

  When Jack finally leaves, I climb back down and go inside. I stand over Mama’s bed and tell her to listen. “The gypsies are coming,” I say, but she doesn’t answer. She’s back in the valley, and as always, there’s no telling when she’ll come out.

  Last week, she spent two afternoons planting daisies, even though I warned her that a cold front was coming. I could feel it in my bones. Mama put both hands on her left hip, cocked herself to the side like a banana, tilted her narrow chin with a quick nod, and said, “You got that from your father. Listening to the wind like that.”

  Even though I warned her, she kept planting daisies. And sure enough, a late freeze came and got them all.

  “They’ll grow back. Daisies always do,” I said.

  But Mama couldn’t take the hit. “Not this time,” she said and went to bed. She’s been there for nearly a week, wouldn’t even get up to cook for Jack. So I’ve done it for her. But she isn’t willing to eat what I cook, or wear what I set out for her, or go to the market with me. She’s locked in again, back in the valley, where nobody can reach her. Not even me.

  I barely remember the years when she still sang and laughed and danced. Truth be told, I hardly remember the last time she looked up. She spends more and more time looking down. Down at the ironing board. A book. The stove. Down at the floor. Sometimes, I feel like the only thing that can snap her out of it is one of Jack’s punches. I hate to admit it, but sometimes I think about hitting her myself. Get her to come back to life. I wonder how it would feel to flash my fist into Mama’s sallow cheek. Give her one quick slap. Snap her back into my world.

  But, of course, I’d never hurt Mama.

  Instead, I’m here. Taking care of her. Jack has packed his bags and driven away again, and now it’s just the two of us. The afternoon sun shines bright through Mama’s window, so I adjust her pillow to turn her face from the light. I pull up a chair next to the bed and I sit, holding Mama’s hand. I just want to rest for a minute before I start lunch. I smooth her hair back from her face and I watch her breathe, swallow, blink. Part of me is sinking with the sounds of her. I’m tired of her diving deep into nothing and leaving me on the surface. Waiting for her to come back up for air.

  Then it happens.

  Out the window, streaks of yellow fly by. Followed by red and purple and green. A rainbow has formed just outside our worn-out cabin, and I
want to dive right in. I peel back the flimsy cotton panel hanging crooked over Mama’s bedroom window. Wiping a layer of dust from the pane, I tell Mama, “Look.” The rainbow is a batch of silk scarves waving in the wind.

  At its end is the happy old woman I see every year. The one who caught me spying in the graveyard when I was a little girl. “Look, Mama,” I say again. I try to prop her up to see the traveler and her dancing scarves, but she just stares down at her hands and resists my attempts to reposition her. So I leave Mama in her bed and go out to the porch, hoping the gypsy boy will be here too.

  The woman is surrounded by children, both gypsies and locals. It’s Friday, but school was canceled today. Something was wrong with the plumbing, so the kids are free to play. They all follow the old gypsy woman, skipping and clapping and singing. A children’s song about birds and mothers and learning to fly. It’s like a scene in a fairy tale. Nothing like anything that happens in real life. Especially at my house, where doors slam and glass breaks and adults never skip or clap or laugh. I scan the faces, looking for the boy’s deep eyes, crooked smile. He’s not here.

  For years I have watched the travelers trail through town, but I’ve never seen locals join them, and they’ve never taken this route, in front of our cabin.

  The woman waves to me with fingers that curl the air. I smile shyly, embarrassed to be caught staring. She motions for me to join the parade, but I slide behind the peeling porch column and try to disappear. The woman walks my way, leaving the children to wait for her in the thin edges of our gravel lane, giggling and whispering about the strange girl who thinks they can’t see her on the porch.