“You can’t let him get away with this,” Amy blurts out. We all turn to look at her, the silent one in our family. “Well, she can’t,” she says.
I know she knows something. But whatever it is she won’t say in front of the rest of the family.
“Did he threaten you?” Daniel asks me.
I don’t answer.
“Don’t believe it if he did,” Daniel says. “He couldn’t get to you now if he tried.”
I am not so sure.
“Louisa May, you need to say what really happened,” Mama says.
I am not so sure of that, either.
“You don’t want Johnny doing this to anybody else, do you?” Jo says.
This much is true. I don’t want anybody else getting hurt.
“The only place for Johnny Monroe is jail,” Daniel says.
I pause. “Okay. I’ll tell the sheriff,” I say. My words come out mumbled from my busted lip.
“Good girl,” Daniel says. “You just get well and we’ll take care of it.”
“What are you going to do?” Jo asks. She looks concerned. Like she’s afraid Johnny might go after Daniel, too.
“Now that we know for sure, I’ll go join up with Nathan,” Daniel says to Jo.
Before he leaves the room, Daniel kisses me on the forehead and then kisses Jo lightly on the lips.
“How long have I been asleep?” I ask Jo, who is sitting next to me.
“Two days,” she says.
“Two days?” I ask in disbelief. “I’ve never slept two days in my life.”
“It’s good for you,” Mama says. “Doc Lester says you’ll probably need to sleep for a week.”
“You let that old horse doctor touch me?” I ask.
Mama and Jo smile at each other, like there is still hope if I am complaining about Doc Lester.
“He was the only one around to bandage you up,” Mama says to me. “Sadie was out delivering a baby. She’s over at the Sector’s place now. June’s having a rough time with her latest.”
I remember the red gemstone Horatio Sector gave me the night Daddy died that is still wrapped in paper inside the leather pouch. I hope June is all right. And I am glad Doc Lester won’t get a hold of her.
“Don’t worry,” Jo says. “Mama watched Doc real close so he wouldn’t botch it up.” Jo reaches over and holds my hand. “Do you need anything?” she asks.
“Maybe something to drink,” I say. “My mouth feels like it’s full of cotton.”
“How about some sweet tea,” Mama asks, as if happy to have something to do.
“Yes, please,” I say, and it sounds like “yesh, peas.” I touch my swollen jaw. Simply lifting my arm sends a searing reminder of what happened.
Mama leaves and Jo pets my hand while Amy sews. I’ve never known Amy not to be sewing on something. The world could be ending and she’d have a needle and thread, ready to stitch up a new one. Amy has also never been the type to dwell on bad news. Once things are done, they’re done. But she is dwelling on something now because bad news is written all over her face.
Mama returns with the tea and I pull myself up in the bed, nearly screaming. Nothing has ever been this hard for me. All these years, I took feeling good for granted.
“Just try to stay still,” Mama says, with the tone of voice she used when I was a little girl acting up in church.
Jo shoots her a look like Mama needs to behave. I’ve never seen Jo defiant, especially to Mama, but even in my pain I enjoy it. “What would make you more comfortable?” Jo asks me.
“Can you help me sit up?” I say.
Jo helps me sit upright against the pillow even as I yelp and moan. I sip the tea slowly, taking in the liquid on the side of my mouth that doesn’t hurt.
“Are you hungry?” Mama asks. She doesn’t take to sitting still.
“A little bit,” I say.
“I have some leftover cornbread,” she says. “Would you like that?”
“That sounds good,” I say, grateful that there is still something so ordinary and perfect in the world as Mama’s cornbread. “Maybe I’ll talk to the sheriff tomorrow,” I say to Jo. Every word I utter is through gritted teeth, to keep my face from hurting.
“I’ll tell Daniel,” she says.
Lying there, it’s impossible to take in all that has happened. I want my old life back. I want to be an innocent, thirteen-year-old girl again. Too much has changed. I survived the wrath of Johnny Monroe, but just barely. How do I know he won’t come looking for me again? Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to tell who did it.
Mama shows up with a large piece of cornbread on a plate. Jo breaks off tiny pieces and puts it in my mouth like I am a little bird in a nest waiting for its mother to bring a worm. The cornbread, cold and a day old, is still delicious. I yawn, which causes excruciating pain, and I can’t believe how sleepy I am even though I’ve already slept for two days.
With Jo’s help I take bird-sized sips of tea and listen to my family talk about normal things. In a way, this is a salve that soothes me most. My family speaks about what needs to be done to get ready for winter and about Jo and Daniel’s baby that will be coming next spring. We are awash in normalness, but I can’t help noticing that nobody is talking about what happened to me.
I drift off to sleep again and when I wake up the house is dark and quiet. For the longest time I lie motionless in the dark, trying to guess what time it is. Going by the stillness, I decide it must be the middle of the night. I fold my arms across my chest like Daddy when he was laid out in this same spot. I hold my breath, pretending I’m dead, with mourners all around me. I imagine the gold Mary coming to get me, letting me ride in her golden arms to heaven where Daddy waits for me. Then it occurs to me that maybe the gold Mary came for Daddy, too, and that he went to that place that was peaceful and warm. The thought of it makes me want to cry with happiness and sadness all at the same time.
I inhale deeply and my breath catches like barbed wire in my chest. I cuss under my breath, going from heaven to hell in one second. Cussing is a sin, according to Preacher, but it has its place with this level of agony.
Despite the pain, my body wants to function naturally. I need to go to the bathroom. When I notice a figure near the wall, I jump and wince with the pain of moving too fast. My immediate thought is that Johnny has come back to finish the job he started. But then I realize it is Mama, asleep in her rocking chair in the corner. It surprises me that she has stayed so close. “Mama?”
She startles awake. “Joseph?”
“No, Mama, it’s me,” I answer. “Louisa May.” I haven’t called myself by my regular name in four years. But it feels like the part of me that was “Wildflower” died in the woods.
“Louisa May, what is it?” she says. She stands in the shadows. With her hair down she could easily be one of my sisters.
“I need to pee,” I say.
“I’ll go get Bessie,” she says, the name for our chamber pot. Daddy was always naming things, like the stand of four red bud trees at the bottom of the hill that Daddy named as sisters, all starting with the letter “S.” Sally, Susie, Shirley, and Samantha Red Bud.
“I don’t want Bessie,” I say. “I need fresh air. I’ve been in this stuffy old house for days.”
Mama doesn’t argue. “Do you think you can walk?”
“I don’t know, but I might as well find out,” I say.
She helps me out of the bed and holds my arm as I shuffle through the living room and into the kitchen. I move at a turtle’s pace. With every step it feels like Johnny still has a hold on me, squeezing the breath out of me. My head throbs. I feel sick to my stomach. The pain has worn me out, like a dishrag squeezed dry.
With Mama’s help, I slide into a pair of Daddy’s boots at the back door that we all use when we go out back in the middle of the night. As a little girl I always liked the feel of my small feet clomping around in his big old boots. At thirteen, they are still roomy, but not nearly as much.
&nbs
p; We cross the back porch and Mama lights a lantern to help us make out the steps. With a full bladder, the path to the outhouse seems unending. The October air has turned cold. We arrive at the privy with the half-moon Daddy carved in front. The door creaks open and then slaps closed. The smell of lye and earth and urine hits my nostrils. The half-moon lets in a whisper of fresh air, and I aim my nose in that direction. Mama stands outside with the lantern. My pee lets loose, and I feel instant relief. But the pee burns as it comes out, which doesn’t feel right. I’ve never burned down there before.
“Mama, something’s wrong,” I say through the door.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
I can hear her shuffling her feet like she is cold.
“My pee burns,” I say.
Her silence answers me. I don’t know what it means that she isn’t saying anything and now I’m sorry I even brought it up. When I come out of the outhouse she has the light pointing down the path toward the house and I can’t see her eyes.
“Damn that Johnny Monroe,” she says. “I hope he rots in hell.”
I’ve never heard Mama damn anybody before, but then her anger turns toward me. “Louisa May, you don’t have the sense God gave you. What were you thinking going out to that graveyard on your own like that?”
Shame crawls up the base of my spine. Did I somehow give Johnny permission to do what he did? My mind flashes on Johnny unbuckling his pants, but I erase the image as quickly as it comes.
“I was just visiting Daddy’s grave on the one year anniversary,” I say in my defense.
Mama stops mid-stride, as if she’s just realized it’s been a year.
“There’s no use crying over spilt milk,” Mama says, the words rough as burlap.
Our breath races toward the moonlight. There is a frost tonight. A hoot owl cries out in the night.
Mama holds the lantern closer to my face, and I cover my eyes to avoid its glare.
“We need to go inside,” she says. “It’s cold out here.”
We walk back to the house in silence. I make the same slow shuffle as when we came out. It irritates me that I want to run and can barely walk. Yet what hurts me more than anything Johnny could do to me is Mama’s silence. Her judgment sinks into me like a heavy stone thrown into the river, its ripples extending out from me for maybe years. She blames me for getting hurt. If I had stayed at home that day and forgotten Daddy, just like her, nothing would have happened.
Silent as Daddy’s grave, she helps me back into bed.
“Try to get some sleep,” she says, pulling the blanket over me.
Before she turns out the light I get a full dose of the disappointment in her eyes. Besides beating me within an inch of my life, Johnny has stolen something from me that I might never get back: Mama’s respect.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next morning Sheriff Thompson of Rocky Bluff knocks on the door. When he enters the room I determine that he is the biggest man I’ve ever seen. The gun strapped around his waist looks small in comparison to the rest of his body. Though he towers over everyone in the room, he stoops his shoulders as if trying not to be so big. In spite of his size he seems kind enough, replying “yes, ma’am” to Mama when she asks him if he wants iced tea. Iced tea runs as free as well water around here. Mama leaves the room to fill his request. Aunt Sadie arrives shortly afterwards with the news of the Sector’s new healthy baby boy. She sits on the bed next to me. I don’t care how old I am, having Sadie nearby always makes me feel braver.
“Your name is Louisa May McAllister?” the sheriff asks.
“Yes,” I answer.
My name had been Wildflower, but I don’t feel like Wildflower anymore, not wild or beautiful in any way. Johnny’s laughter echoes in my head. Wildflower? People should call you weed . . . I think I’ll pull this weed.
Sheriff Thompson clumsily juggles a note pad and the glass of tea Mama hands him and places the glass on a quilt square on her dresser. “I need to know what happened between you and Mister Monroe,” he says.
I’ve never heard anybody call Johnny Mister Monroe. It sounds unnatural. Johnny hasn’t earned the “Mister” yet. As far as I'm concerned, he never will.
“He came up behind me at the graveyard,” I say, my words still coming out in mumbles.
“Graveyard?”
Aunt Sadie sits next to me like a rock, her only job to be solid. She wraps her warm hand around mine and encourages me to go on. I wonder how she and Mama could be so different.
“I was visiting somebody,” I say. “It was the anniversary.”
“Anniversary?”
I feel irritated. If the sheriff is just going to repeat everything I say this is going to take forever.
“Of when her father died,” Sadie says.
The sheriff taps the side of his note pad with his pencil like he is putting something together in his mind. “What time of day was it?” he asks, “when Mister Monroe came up behind you.”
“Early afternoon,” I say.
I don’t tell him that the secret sense told me I shouldn’t go and how I ignored it. I haven’t told Aunt Sadie, either. I don’t think I could bear her being disappointed in me, as well as Mama.
“And what exactly happened when Mister Monroe came across you in the graveyard?” he asks, his pencil poised to take down my answer.
With all this time in bed, I’ve had a lot of time to think. I figure I’ve grown up in these last few days. I can’t look at the world in the same way anymore. Truth is, things happen that you have no control over and sometimes people act in ways that make no sense. From now on I’ll be watching over my shoulder to see who might be coming.
“Like I said, Sheriff, Johnny came up behind me in the graveyard. And when I tried to get away he grabbed my wrist, and I couldn’t get free. Then I hit him really hard in the nose and made a run for it. I took the shortcut I found, because I thought that would get me home the fastest, and that maybe Johnny didn’t know that back way as good as me.”
I sit straighter with Sadie’s help. My head has ached for days and all these questions are making it worse. Though the pain has lost its ragged edge, I am still reminded of what happened every time I move.
The sheriff takes a sip of tea and wipes the droplets off the dresser top with his sleeve. “Please go on,” he says, sounding more official than he looks. Dark hairs grow out of his nostrils and join up with his mustache. From this angle I also see that his socks don’t match, though his shoes are as shiny as Doc Lester’s hearse the day of Daddy’s funeral.
“Well, Johnny caught up with me,” I say. “I bit his hand pretty bad when he tried to cover my mouth.”
“Why did he cover your mouth?”
“Because I was screaming bloody murder!”
“Wouldn’t you?” Aunt Sadie says to the sheriff, putting a protective arm around me. He gives her a long look, clears his throat and looks at his notes.
“At what point did Mister Monroe leave?” he asks me.
I want the sheriff to quit calling Johnny Mister Monroe.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I passed out and when I woke up Johnny was gone. After that, I knew my family would be looking for me, so I started trying to get home.”
The screen door squeaks open, slams, and Daniel walks in. He and the sheriff greet one other. Then the sheriff turns his attention back to me.
“I suppose that wasn’t easy,” the sheriff says, “hurting as you were.”
“No sir, it wasn’t,” I say.
I can only imagine what the sheriff sees when he looks at me. A thirteen year old girl with two black eyes, a swollen jaw and bruises on her throat and arms that are deep shades of red and purple and yellow, like the fabric Preacher slung over the arms of the cross at church during Easter. I don’t see any reason for the sheriff to know everything, at least not now and maybe never, so I stop there.
“Is that all?” the sheriff asks.
I consider for about a half a second telling him about
Johnny messing with me. That is the real crime. But with my family all around me, I don’t have the guts to say it. Not to mention that Sheriff Thompson is a stranger. Mountain people don’t trust strangers, even if they only live over the next hill. “That’s all,” I say.
“One more question, Louisa May. Do you know the direction Mister Monroe went in after he left you?” he asks.
I pause to remember any clues in those last seconds before Daddy came to get me. I can’t think of anything else so I shake my head, no.
“I don’t think he would have crossed over that bridge,” Daniel says. “I got a look at it the other day. A girl could cross it, but not a man. He must have backtracked to the graveyard or went higher up on the ridge. Those Monroes know these woods pretty good.”
“Were you the one who found her?” the sheriff asks Daniel.
“Yes. Me and Nell, Louisa May’s mother.”
Daniel looks over at me like he’s caught himself not using my real name. I don’t know how to tell him that it doesn’t matter anymore.
“When we found her she was pretty bad off,” Daniel adds.
“You’re lucky you found her,” the sheriff says. “We’ve had cases that don’t turn out that well.”
It is hard to imagine anything really bad happening around Rocky Bluff. Maybe a shoplifter gets caught at Woolworth’s or somebody accidentally shoots themselves in the foot while cleaning their shotgun.
Sheriff Thompson closes his note pad. “Well, we’ll get men out looking for him,” the sheriff says. “Don’t worry, Louisa May. If he’s still around, we’ll get him. But chances are he’s long gone.”
I like the thought of Johnny being long gone, but I doubt I could be that lucky. Johnny can hide out in the woods for years if he wants to and once he finds out that I told what happened, he’ll want revenge.
“So you don’t think he’ll come back here?” Mama asks.
“No ma’am. I don’t think he will,” the sheriff says.
“He wouldn’t be that stupid,” Daniel says.
But Johnny is that stupid, I think. He’ll come back to kill me just like he said he would.
The Secret Sense of Wildflower Page 13
