The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir

by Ruth Wariner

  “Mom! No!” I screamed.

  I raised my arms to grab for her but only caught the air. In a moment, her body collapsed forward onto the barbed wire, then went completely silent and still.

  “Mom, wait!” I yelled, as if there were still time to warn her. I ran up behind her, sucked in the dry air, and waited a second to see if she might respond. But then I saw her head was tilted forward, her forehead impaled on a barb, her eyes wide-open.

  Save her, said a voice inside me, and a second later I knew what to do. The tail of Mom’s blouse hung untucked from her polyester slacks. I touched it lightly and felt no shock, so I grabbed the tail with both hands and pulled. Her body did not budge; the electrical current was holding her to the fence. I gripped her shirttail tighter, planted my back foot, and pulled again. But Mom still didn’t move. I grabbed it one more time, this time pulling so hard the seams of her blouse ripped all the way up to the armpits, and finally I felt her body move. With one more tug she fell back against my left shoulder. I wrapped my arms around her to hold her up, but didn’t have the strength. She fell backward out of my arms and her head slammed into the middle of the dirt road.

  I knelt beside Mom’s limp body. Jagged streaks of blood from the wound on her forehead coursed down the right side of her face and into her hair. Her eyes were open, and I could see just a sliver of her hazel irises at the top of her lids as her eyes rolled upward. A moan erupted from deep within her—she was still breathing. Suddenly, two pairs of little-girl shoes appeared next to Mom’s head. I looked up. Elena and Leah stood there, shaking, horrified and confused.

  “You girls go back inside the house. Now!” I jumped to my feet and reached for Alex, who was standing in front of the boys’ bodies, staring at his brothers. “Take the girls back to the house so they don’t touch the fence! And check on the baby!”

  The children ran to the house, and I turned my attention back to Mom. The moaning continued. I needed to get her to a hospital. I scanned the horizon. There were trees and alfalfa fields, a few houses in the distance, and beyond that, only the mountains. I needed a telephone to call an ambulance. Then I realized, in rapid succession, that the nearest telephone was a mile away, that even if I’d had one, no ambulance would come because there was no ambulance, and that even if there had been one, it would have had to drive forty miles to reach the nearest hospital.

  We were stranded. There was nothing I could do and no one was around. I jumped up and down in the middle of the road—it was all I could do—and waved my arms screaming wildly.

  I knelt beside Mom again, my throat sore from shouting. I leaned over, put my ear to her mouth, and felt a warm, shallow breath, so I decided to try mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I put my mouth over her open lips, pinched her nose closed, and forced my breath into her. But all I’d learned about CPR had come from movies, and I soon gave up, fearing I was doing more harm than good.

  I jumped up, screamed again, and immediately heard the distant sound of a motor and tires over gravel. A white pickup suddenly appeared up the road. Heeding my call, it sped up, leaving huge dust clouds in its wake. It screeched to a halt right in front of us, and two Mexican men jumped out of the cab.

  “Ayuda mi mamá,” I pleaded in my broken Spanish, “y mis hermanitos.” I saw the men look over to the boys suspended from the fence. They gasped, their hands involuntarily flying to their mouths. “She’s still alive, though,” I called out, bringing their attention back to Mom. One of the men approached her, touched her forehead, and lifted her chin. He took off his hat and leaned his ear in close to her mouth and then scanned her body as if giving her a checkup. Looking over his shoulder at his companion, he said something in Spanish I didn’t understand. The other man rushed around the front of the truck and opened the passenger door. Together, they carried Mom to the truck and gently laid her in the cab, her head dangling to one side, her mouth and eyes now wide-open.

  One man got behind the wheel, and I jumped into the passenger’s side, lifted Mom’s head, and rested it on my lap. Before the second man could get in, I slammed the door shut, rolled the window down and told him that little children were in the house. I asked if he could stay. He nodded yes and then darted toward the house.

  As the truck sped forward, I heard my voice screaming out the window at anyone who might hear me, “Micah and Junior are dead! Don’t touch the fence!” I sucked the summer air into my lungs in giant gulps while I prayed and cried. The truck shook violently as it bounded over the dirt road toward the highway. The wind stung my eyes, forcing me to close them, and when they opened again, I noticed we were approaching Susan’s driveway. In it a car was parked with its hood up, covering my stepfather’s head as he bent forward underneath it.

  “Para! Para!” I yelled. A quiet moan came from Mom’s throat, and I opened the door before the truck had even stopped. My knees immediately buckled underneath me and my body hit the dirt road. “Lane, help me!” I cried, and pushed myself back to my feet. His head shot up from under the hood, his face stunned and confused. I rushed to him, sobbing. “Lane, my mom was shocked. I think she’s dying!”

  He looked at me a half second, dropped his tools to the ground, and without saying a word ran past me to the truck. I saw Mom’s messy brown hair as Lane lifted her head onto his lap and slammed the door. The driver sped away, and the tailgate disappeared into a cloud of dust as the truck rushed toward the paved highway. Within seconds, it was heading south.

  38

  I fell to my knees once more, alone and shaking in the road. A wooden screen door opened and then slammed behind me, and I looked up to see Susan and her youngest son running toward me. I was surprised to see Aaron following close behind.

  “Micah and Junior are dead,” I said, feeling shocked and disoriented, standing straight up without even looking at them. Aaron cried out and began running toward the house.

  “Aaron!” Susan yelled. “You kids wait here until we find out what’s really going on.” He stopped, turned around, and ran back to us, panting. Susan grabbed my shoulders to keep me from falling again.

  “We need to get back to the house. We need to turn off the electricity!” I screamed. “Micah is dead! He’s still stuck to the fence! We have to turn the power off!”

  “Come on now,” Susan said calmly, patting me on the back as if I were crazy. For some reason I’ve never understood, her first instinct was to think I was delusional. “You must be confused. Now tell me what happened.” I broke away from her and walked ahead up the road toward home, Susan trailing behind. A moment later a speeding car hammered on its brakes.

  “I heard someone screaming. Is everything okay?” asked a woman, one of Lane’s sisters I didn’t know well.

  “Apparently, there’s been some kind of accident with the electricity at Kathy’s house,” Susan explained as she and I got into the four-door sedan. I asked Lane’s sister to take us to the far corner of our property where her brother’s shop was. We seemed to arrive within seconds. Susan and I jumped out of the car, ran into the shop’s dark and dilapidated interior, and pulled the light string above our heads. “Show me where it is,” Susan said, still calm.

  We made our way through the minefield of scattered tractor and car parts, as well as Lane’s multitude of half-finished, abandoned projects, until we’d reached a metal box on the wall in a far corner. Susan wiped away spiderwebs and dust with a freckled hand, opened the box, and flipped the switch I’d pointed to. The shop light went off, and an image flashed through my head, that of two boys plunging to the ground. I doubled over with grief.

  “Come on, Ruthie,” said Susan gently as she ushered me out of the shop. “Let’s go find Micah and Junior. They’re okay, Ruthie.”

  “Micah’s dead,” I mumbled over and over. “I saw him on the fence.”

  “You listen to me, Ruthie.” Susan put her hands on my shoulders, stopping me. “Look at me!” she commanded. “Micah … is not dead. Now settle yourself down. Your mom will be back from the hospital soon
.”

  We walked together in silence toward the spot where I’d last seen the boys. A green truck was now parked there. The late-morning sun blinded me as we crossed the shallow end of the ditch, but as Susan and I approached the tumbleweeds on the fence, I could see two men standing there, staring at something on the ground.

  One of them looked up at us and shook his head. “Don’t bring her over here,” his deep voice warned. Susan grabbed my wrist, pulling me back. Micah’s and Junior’s lifeless arms jutted out from behind the tumbleweed, and Susan gasped. She stood there winded for a moment, then gripped my shirt tightly, pulled me around, and began walking me back to the house.

  She tried desperately to calm herself as the reality of the nightmare began to set in. “Well,” she said, breathing heavily and patting the back of my hand while her own shook like a leaf, “at least we know your mama’s gonna be okay. The good Lord knows what He’s doing. You just have to have faith.” She drew in a deep breath. “He has a plan.”

  As we walked the length of our long, dry yard, another car drove up, and then another, then five or six, all filled with friends or relatives and neighbors, people I’d known my whole life but who’d never once visited the house. Car doors slammed and Susan answered all their questions. “We don’t know what happened,” she said, her voice saccharine and soothing. “The fence had electricity running through it. We don’t know why.… One of Kathy’s boys and one of Alejandra’s boys tried to cross the fence.… They didn’t make it. Kathy’s with Lane in the hospital.”

  Susan and I walked into the living room. Aaron had come back to the house with Susan’s son, but no one had any idea how to get in touch with my older brothers. Luke was probably wandering the roads, while Matt and Maria and the rest of Alejandra’s family had been in Casas since the party. Susan graciously thanked the man who’d watched the little ones, but he insisted on staying and helping until his friend came back with Mom.

  A soft whimper came from the bedroom. I had forgotten about Holly. She was still in the crib where Mom had left her before she ran out. I rushed into the room to find her lying down, kicking her chubby legs and smiling. I gathered her up in my arms and brought her out into the living room. There we sat, all of us, on the floor, the couch, the rocking chair, the piano bench. Waiting. I could hear sounds of women sweeping and straightening up the kitchen. The house was so hot I could barely breathe.

  “Mommy’s gonna be fine. Don’t worry,” Aaron told Elena while he patted the top of her head. “She’s gonna be home in a few minutes.”

  About an hour later, we heard a sound outside. The man who’d helped me with Mom got up, lifted his hat, and said that he thought his ride was here. I went to the window with Holly on my hip. The white pickup from before was in the driveway. Soon I was joined at the window by others who were sitting vigil in the living room. All of us watched as Lane got out of the passenger seat, said a few words to the man and his friend in Spanish, and then stood there as they drove off. He gave them a wave and then turned toward the house.

  Another truck drove up with Micah’s and Junior’s bodies in the back. Lane gripped the tailgate for a moment and put his face in his hands. “Let me through,” I said to the others behind me at the window, no longer able to watch. Soon, we heard Lane’s crooked steps approach the house and the kitchen door open. My siblings followed me from the living room. Lane stepped inside without saying a word, closed the door, and confronted the crowd somberly, his hand still on the knob. There didn’t seem to be a drop of blood in his face.

  “Lane, is Kathy going to be okay?” asked Susan.

  “Kathy—” He paused and scanned the kitchen, looking at everyone but me, everyone completely silent. “Kathy didn’t make it.” He took in a deep breath and looked away from the eyes that watched him. “We took her to that first-aid center in Lagunitas, but they didn’t have what they needed to save her.” Now his voice was barely audible and he stared at the doorknob. “She died right after we laid her on the stretcher.”

  Died. As I heard Lane say it, the word felt like a sharp needle scratching over the record of my mind, stuck repeating the same thought over and over: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I wanted to go back, start the record over again to see if it might play out differently. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to end. I was sure of it. I looked around the room at my brother and sisters, who all stood completely still around the kitchen table, their mouths agape and eyes darting between Lane and me as if they weren’t quite sure what to do. I started to feel dizzy until I realized I’d stopped breathing, then I sucked in a big gulp of air.

  The rest of the morning felt as if I were living in a series of photographs. I saw only flashes of stunned faces, people watching me with mouths and eyes open wide, waiting for me to react. I walked slowly to the kids’ bedroom, stopping at the sink in the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. I packed clothes for my siblings, stuffing them into garbage bags, not knowing where we would go. I accidentally packed a bag for Micah, then closed my eyes to make it all go away. Voices swirled all around me.

  “The kids can stay with me for now.” “Ruthie, let me hold the baby.” “I’ll go to Casas and pick out the coffins.” “We need to find clothes to bury the bodies in.” “Did anyone find Luke and Matt?” “You have to understand, Ruthie. Your mom is in a better place, away from all the suffering and hell on earth.” “Where are the baby’s diapers?” “Is Leah potty-trained?” “Can’t Holly take a bottle?” “All the kids can fit in my car.”

  An hour later, I found myself in the front seat of a four-door sedan with my five-month-old sister sitting on my lap. I don’t remember who was driving; I only remember the feeling of Holly bouncing on my lap as if this were any other day. I felt the car dodge many muddy potholes and hit many more as I turned my head to look back in the seat. Aaron, Elena, and Leah sat behind me in silence, all of them numb. Behind them, off in the distance, our house—our home—was getting smaller and smaller in the rear windshield. The kitchen door was wide-open, the adobe bricks peeking through jagged pieces of cement that barely clung to the walls. The house looked empty and broken—as if it too had touched a buried wire and been electrocuted, as if its heart had also stopped beating.

  Alex, Micah, and Junior.

  39

  The funeral was scheduled for the next afternoon. I passed a long, fitful night in an oversize wooden rocking chair with Holly, trying to train her to accept her first rubber nipple. Earlier that evening, Lane’s sister Lisa and I had driven from house to house in the colony, desperately searching for a woman who might be able to nurse Holly. Even when we found someone willing to help, Holly refused to latch on and suckle. She kicked her chubby legs at every nursing mother we presented, clenching her fists and screaming each time one of them tried to feed her. She would cry uncontrollably until put back in my arms. I was the only one who could calm her.

  Every time I offered her the rubber nipple, Holly jerked her tiny head back and forth, stubbornly resisting it. My hands began to shake when I thought about how helpless I was. I couldn’t help my Mom when she lay dying at my feet, and I couldn’t help my sister, even when she hadn’t eaten in hours. But just as I was at the point of giving up, a tiny drop of liquid dripped onto Holly’s tongue. Either she no longer found the taste of formula offensive or she was too hungry to care. Soon, she was sucking with abandon, closing her eyes and relaxing her body. I sighed as my sister’s warmth began to flow into my arms. It was as if she were melting into me.

  Lisa came into the living room and congratulated me on my achievement. I thanked her for her help, carried Holly to a bed in a back room, and lay beside her, my mind replaying every detail of the day. Micah’s and Mom’s deaths might not have happened if I’d prevented any one of the dozens of bad coincidences that occurred within seconds of each other. If I had been able to stop Mom, to say the exact right thing to keep her from touching the fence, or if I’d been watching the boys play—if even one small detail had
played out differently, their lives would have been spared. Why couldn’t I have saved them? Why had electricity been running through that fence?

  Holly’s stomach gurgled and she soon woke up and started to cry. I put her on my shoulder to burp her and almost immediately felt her little body convulse and vomit chalky-white formula all over my nightshirt. I hardly reacted, so minor did this seem in the grand scheme of things. I calmly cleaned us both up, fed her another bottle, and watched her fall asleep again, by which time roosters were crowing outside and a cool blue glow began to wash over the room.

  As the sun rose, its harsh light piercing my eyes like tiny shards of glass, I handed Holly off to Lisa and left the house in search of Mom and Micah, whose bodies were being prepared for burial in another nearby house. Just as with Meri, there was no money to pay for a proper embalming so the burials would need to happen quickly. As I walked to the makeshift morgue, feeling the July sun burn into the dry Mexican earth with every step, I had a sick feeling about what I would find. Still, I had to be certain that they were being given the best possible care, that whoever had dressed Mom had put her in the outfit I’d picked out for her, that they’d curled her hair as I had requested, that they’d used the right kind of makeup.

  I opened a wooden screen door directly into a square living room. It was dark and empty except for the three bodies lying on long, portable tables. Mom, Micah, and Junior were all dressed in burial clothes. Box fans whirred in each corner of the room, circulating warm, damp air that only seemed to speed up the decomposition. The breeze made the pleats in the boys’ dark slacks tremble, and I noticed that they’d been dressed identically, in stiff white shirts and navy-blue ties. Micah’s and Junior’s hands had been placed at their sides and their hair slicked back like two proper Mormon boys. Micah’s face was still freckled and sunburned, and a straight black line ran across each of his palms where they’d made contact with the fence. His fingers looked as if they’d been burned from the inside out.