by Rilla Askew
Brown stopped his breath. Listened.
Garcia’s snores. The electric hum. Nothing more.
Monday | February 25, 2008 | 2:57 A.M.
Sweet’s house | Cedar
Sweet dragged the covers up over her face, lay quiet a moment, trying to breathe; then she slung the bedspread to the side and lay staring at the black ceiling. She felt like that drawing of Simon Peter denying Christ in her son’s Youth Bible: a scruffy-bearded man in a striped cloak skulking guiltily at the base of a clay wall while a rooster crowed from the top of it. That was Sweet. Denying her daddy. She flopped over onto her stomach, pulled the pillow onto the back of her head. Once again she went over the scene trying to make it come out right, but no matter how she tried she couldn’t dredge up the image she longed for: herself striding boldly across the street, ignoring those reporters and walking right up to the cyclone fence to talk to her daddy. What she saw instead was a picture of herself scurrying along the church sidewalk like a chased armadillo, which was not an image she’d dreamed up—she had seen the blamed thing. On television. On the Channel 8 evening news.
The red numerals on the night stand glared at her. 2:57. Too early to get up, too late to be awake. She wriggled over to Terry’s side of the bed. Oh, the middle of the night was the worst. The absolute worst. At least in the daytime she could do something useful, clean the oven, sort out her junk drawer. Maybe she’d get up and go do that. But she needed sleep. She really, really needed sleep. She pondered the idea of getting up to take one of Mr. Bledsoe’s pain pills. She’d seen how effectively they knocked him out, but then, truly, she didn’t want to add drug addiction to her list of family problems. Had she called the hospital to check on Mr. Bledsoe? No, she had not. Not since day before yesterday. Sweet added that to her list, another little Lincoln log of guilt.
When she heard the knocking at the door, her first thought was that it was another blamed reporter. Of all the nerve! At this hour! But then she realized the soft pounding was coming from the kitchen door, the one to the carport. The one the family used. But Terry would use his key, wouldn’t he? Then she thought: Oh, thank God. Dustin! She scrambled from the covers.
In the dark carport Misty Dawn stood crying.
“What?” Sweet said. “What happened? Oh, my God, where’s the baby?” Misty shook her head. These weren’t silent tears like before, but deep, wrenching, guttural sobs. Sweet pulled her inside the lighted kitchen. “Get hold of yourself!” She made her voice as gruff as she could. “Sit!” she said, pressing the girl into a chair. “Talk!”
Between sobs Misty said, “Go look. See if. Anybody followed me.”
Sweet peeked out into the carport, where she saw nothing but the dim outline of the Taurus. “There’s nobody. How’d you get here?”
“Check the front.”
Sweet went to the front room, spread two blind slats apart with her fingers. All was quiet, a night-empty main street in a dying small town, nothing out of the ordinary. “Where’s the baby?” she demanded again when she returned to the kitchen.
“In the truck.” Misty pulled in a ragged breath. “She was sleeping.”
“Where’s the truck?”
“At the farm.”
“You mean to tell me you left that baby alone out in the country in the middle of the night!”
“Of course not! Her daddy’s with her.”
“Her daddy. Who—Juanito?”
Misty Dawn looked up. “I didn’t know where else to bring him.”
It took a second for Sweet to comprehend what Misty was saying: Juanito had snuck back across the border. “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, Misty. This is bad.”
“No, it isn’t! We had to! It would’ve been, like, ten years or something before they let him even try to come back! Concepción would be practically grown!”
“If he gets caught, he could get sent to prison, don’t you know that?”
“He can’t get caught,” Misty said. “That’s why we had to get out of there.”
Sweet sat down at the table. “The farm’s not a good place, hon. It’s crawling with reporters.”
“Nuh-uh. Nothing like our house. Anyhow, we parked in the barn. There’s nobody out there.”
“If they’re not there now, they soon will be. We’ve got to . . .” Sweet’s voice faded. She looked around the kitchen. Got to what?
“Got to what?” Misty said.
“I don’t know.” Sweet rubbed her forehead. “Damn it, Misty. What’d you bring him here for?”
Misty Dawn stared at her in silence a moment. Then she stood up and started for the door.
“No! Wait! I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Sit down. Let me think a minute. I just need to think.”
The girl hesitated, came back and sat. She hunched forward, shivering, her bottom lip quivering. She had on the same denim jacket she’d worn to the store; her mascara was smeared, her long hair tangly around her face. “You want something to eat?” Sweet said.
“I’m not hungry. Juanito might be. And Lucha, she’ll be hungry when she wakes up. I didn’t have time to fix anything. I just seen the coast clear for the first time in, like, days, so I ran out and started the truck. Oh, Aunt Sweet, they’ve been—they been . . . I can’t even describe it.”
“I know. Same here. Okay, let’s just . . . here, get up and help me fix some sandwiches.” Because what else was there to do? As they slapped together peanut butter and jelly, bologna and cheese, Sweet tried to see her way clear. Feed them first, yes, but then what? She couldn’t bring Juanito to her house! Reporters still showed up in her yard ten times a day trying to get Sweet to talk to them. Sometimes they’d just stand out there and film the empty porch. She filled the thermos with water, grabbed a couple of juice packs from the fridge, dumped everything in a plastic Walmart sack. “Come on,” she said, wishing she had a real garage with a proper door instead of an open carport. If there did happen to be anybody around at this hour, they’d for sure see them sneaking out to the car.
“Are you going like that?” Misty said.
Sweet looked down at her nightgown and bare feet. “No. Wait here a minute. Do not go outside without me!” But of course when she returned to the kitchen in sweatpants and a sweatshirt and carrying her purse, Misty Dawn was already outside sitting in the dark car. The girl was born to disobey, that was the fact of the matter. Just like her mother. Sweet should have told her to go get in the car, maybe then she would have waited in the kitchen. Sweet started the motor and backed out of the drive.
Misty Dawn sat tense and silent beside her as they drove the three miles of smooth humming blacktop. When they reached the turnoff to the farm, the Taurus’s tires crunching the gravel, the old transmission whining, Sweet said, “I meant it, Misty. You all can’t stay out here. Those reporters are here all the time because . . .” She didn’t want to finish. Because the farm is where your brother disappeared. She tried to think what excuse she could make for not getting in touch with her about Dustin. Sweet hadn’t tried the TracFone number again, hadn’t even considered making another drive to Tulsa, but Misty Dawn had to know about her brother going missing anyway. You would have to live under a rock to not know. Or watch only the Spanish language stations. “You . . . I guess you know about Dustin.”
“Yeah,” Misty said, very softly. “That’s what the reporters keep asking. Even more than about Grandpa.” A beat of silence, then: “I couldn’t, all right? Juanito was on his way, I didn’t know when! I couldn’t just come down here and not be home!”
“I didn’t say anything. Did I say anything?” Sweet was more than willing to let her niece’s guilt trump her own. She wheeled into the yard, stopped in front of the barn. The heavy wooden door had been tugged closed. It had been standing open for days—ever since the raid. Reporters often made their broadcasts right in front of it: “This is where the boy’s backpack was found mysteriously abandoned,” they’d s
ay, or, “This decrepit barn is where Dustin Lee Brown’s grandfather Robert John Brown allegedly harbored fourteen illegal aliens . . .” The shut barn door was like a billboard shouting, Hey, look in here! We got something to hide! She had to get these kids out of here—tonight. It took all of Sweet’s strength, with Misty Dawn helping, to slide the rattly old thing open. The inside of the barn was very dark. “Black as midnight under a cast-iron skillet”—that was one of Mr. Bledsoe’s old sayings. Back when he used to talk. Poor Mr. Bledsoe. She hadn’t been to visit him not one time since his surgery—but how could she? When could she? Another log of guilt.
“Cariño!” Misty Dawn called softly, and in an instant Juanito materialized out of the darkness. Sweet couldn’t really see him, only hear him, half sense him. The two whispered hard and fast in Spanish. Were they arguing? Maybe not. People talking fast in Spanish always sounded to Sweet like a fight. Her eyes had begun to adjust a little. She saw the ghostly white bulk of the pickup a short distance away; she made her way toward it, feeling along the right side to the passenger door. When she opened it, the dome light came on. The baby was asleep in her car seat in the middle of the cab, breathing slow and even, her brushy thick lashes stark against her pale skin. Lucha, Sweet reminded herself. She really was going to have to quit calling her the baby. The child was long limbed as a colt, her feet dangling to the hump in the floorboard. The soft pink afghan was wadded in her lap. Sweet could see a Sleeping Beauty appliqué on her lavender sweatshirt, the beautiful blond princess asleep in her tower. Sweet reached in, brushed the thick mat of dark hair from the child’s face.
“She’s been asleep since Broken Arrow,” Misty Dawn whispered behind her. Turning, Sweet saw Juanito clearly now in the glow from the dome light. The top of his head just cleared Misty Dawn’s shoulder. He was thinner than ever, and browner, Sweet thought, like the sun in Mexico these past months had baked him darker. The Indian blood really showed in him, except he was only about half the size of most of the Choctaws around here, short and wiry, smooth faced, and he looked so young. Sweet was always struck by that, every time she saw him. He looked like a teenager to her, though Misty Dawn said he was a year older than she was, which would make him twenty-four. Juanito nodded at Sweet but didn’t offer his usual quick smile. His shirt was worn and ragged. He didn’t have on a coat. Both of them watched her expectantly.
They’re the ones made this mess, Sweet said to herself, and now they’re waiting on me to figure a way out of it. “So,” she said briskly, “what are y’all aiming to do?” She knew perfectly well they didn’t have a plan. They’d never had a plan, so far as she could tell; they’d met, slept together, produced a child, got married. And it had been nothing but a heartache ever since. Well, no, that wasn’t fair. She’d seen them together at the birthday party last summer, holidays before that. Love was part of it, too, no doubt, although why Misty Dawn had to fall in love with a Mexican was beyond her. And an illegal one at that. Sweet didn’t even know how they met. Misty had just called up her grandpa out of the blue four years ago and told him she was bringing somebody to meet him. Juanito didn’t speak English then. Well, he didn’t speak it now, actually. Misty claimed he did, that he was just shy to talk in front of her family, but Sweet had never heard him say anything except Hello, How are you, See you later, Okay. “So?” she said again. “What’s the plan?”
Misty Dawn reached around her, pulled the afghan up, and tucked it around the baby’s shoulders. She said something to Juanito. Juanito answered. “What’s he saying?” Sweet asked.
“He says you’re the smartest American woman he knows.”
“Really.” Sweet very much doubted that’s what he’d said. “All right.” She sighed. “Okay. Let’s think this through. First of all, first thing, the farm is out, and my house is out. Tell him that.” Misty translated. “What about those friends of yours? That girl who keeps the baby? Can’t y’all stay there?”
“Blanca and Enrique?” Misty glanced at her husband. “No,” she said. “That’s no good.”
“Why not?” Silence. Misty Dawn wouldn’t look at her. “What?”
“Blanca’s brother,” Misty said finally.
“What about him?”
“He lives with them.”
“So?”
“He’s not legal. Anyway,” Misty rushed on, “it’d be really bad for them. You know, like, if anything happened.”
“Right, but it’s okay for me?” And with that, Sweet realized for the first time that it wasn’t only Misty Dawn who could be charged with harboring and transporting; it was Sweet, too. Why hadn’t she thought of that? This wasn’t some joke about doing time in a Christian prison with her daddy—the law was real. She had to get them out of here! Not just out of town, but out of the whole blamed state. She could lose everything—her reputation, her voting privileges, her home. She had a son to raise. “We’ve got to get you kids out of Oklahoma,” she said, “that’s the first thing. How about you stay in Fort Smith tonight, then we’ll figure out what next.” Arkansas wasn’t exactly the most progressive state, but the border was only fifty miles away and at least folks there weren’t out beating the bushes to find illegal Mexicans. She didn’t think.
“Stay where?”
“Fort Smith.”
“No, I mean like where. With who?”
“I don’t know. A motel. Have y’all got any money?”
Misty looked at Juanito, who rattled off a long answer. Misty turned back to Sweet. “He had to use everything for the coyote. We borrowed from Blanca and Enrique even. He’s got like three dollars left. I spent my last eighteen bucks on gas in Muskogee. This truck just eats gas.”
Sweet sighed. “Okay. I’ll go back to the house and defrost my credit card. But listen, Misty, we can’t leave this truck sitting here, you never know when somebody might come snooping around. We’ll hide the truck, y’all stay in it, eat your sandwiches, and keep quiet till I get back. Have you got a flashlight?” Misty spoke to Juanito. He reached in and tugged the seat forward slightly, retrieved a large yellow square-shaped Energizer from the floorboard behind the seat. Sweet took it from him, switched it on and off a couple times. The battery was weak, but it would probably last long enough. “You remember where that old trash dump is?” she asked Misty. “Out by the fence at the end of the pasture?”
“I think so.”
“Drive out there and park, but don’t use your headlights. One of you needs to walk in front with the flashlight, shine it low on the ground in front of the tires, don’t be waving it around. Hear?” Misty nodded, told Juanito. Sweet could see the quick comprehension in his face. He slipped around the front of the truck and climbed up, started the motor. Sweet guided him in backing out with low sweeping motions of the flashlight, then handed it to Misty. She waited until the truck rumbled around the side of the barn and disappeared into the dark pasture. Good thing that battery’s low, she thought. A passerby wouldn’t even notice the dim light bobbing along close to the ground—though who she thought might be passing by at this hour, she couldn’t say. Just them somehow. The strangers who’d been hounding her. She didn’t use her own headlights until she was well out of the yard. Her mind was moving fast.
The main thing was money—well, wasn’t money always the main thing? But in this case it really was. She didn’t like using the credit card; they’d gotten into such a mess, her and Terry, but that was a few years ago, and it was almost all paid off now. Sweet had cut up all their cards, including their ATM cards because they’d both gotten in a bad habit of stopping at the E-Z Mart to get cash and paying those stupid fees, and then they’d end up broke before the end of the month and have to start charging gas and groceries on the credit cards again. So she’d cut up everything except their two VISA cards, which she’d put in an empty Cool Whip tub and filled it with water and stuck it in the freezer. They were only supposed to thaw them out in case of an emergency, but what would you cal
l this if not an emergency?
When she arrived at the house, though, she couldn’t find the container. She took everything out of the freezer, every tray of chicken legs and tube of Jimmy Dean sausage and box of frozen peas, laid them all in the sink, but the white tub wasn’t here. For a moment she panicked, thinking somebody had broken in, until she realized it was Terry. At the Black Angus Motel in Poteau. Using the credit card. Their credit card. She thought back to their final fight Thursday evening, Carl Albert sobbing and hiccupping in the hallway, Terry stuffing his things in a duffel bag in the kitchen, yelling at Carl to get what he wanted from his room because they were not coming back! She’d been pacing and fuming in the front room and she didn’t watch him, but of course he would have just grabbed the whole Cool Whip tub; he wouldn’t have taken time to stick it in the microwave to thaw it and retrieve only his own card. Hardly.
Now what? she thought. Now what. She sat on the wooden stool at the kitchen counter with her hand on her purse. She didn’t need to take out her check register; she knew what it said. The number would not have magically improved since she wrote their tithe check yesterday morning. But that deposit wouldn’t have been made yet, would it? She could call Brother Oren. A wave of relief swept her. Yes. She’d call the preacher as soon as it got to be a decent hour, ask him to hold on to the check till next week, and when the bank opened in Wilburton she’d go to the drive-through and get cash. It’d be broad daylight by the time the kids got on the road, but that couldn’t be helped. They couldn’t go without money. Sweet doubted they even had enough gas to make it to Fort Smith. She began to gather a few items. They would have a long wait in the truck. She unplugged Terry’s rechargeable flashlight from the pantry outlet, grabbed a bag of chips and an unopened jar of salsa, stopped by the hall closet and got down an old quilt, then snuck out to her Taurus and coasted back out of the driveway with her lights off.
As soon as she hit the gravel turnoff to the farm, she knew she’d made a mistake. In the rearview she saw not one set of headlights but two. How dumb could she be? She should have told the kids to drive on to Wister, she’d catch up with them there. They were hemmed in now—the pasture fence was all grown up with briars and those ugly little wahoo trees; Daddy hadn’t sprayed or cleared it in years. The only way out for Juanito’s truck was back here through the barnyard. Sweet pulled over close to the house, thinking maybe she could draw the reporters this direction. Her mind clicked fast, trying to come up with some kind of a story for what she was doing out here in the dark at this hour, alone.
