I said, ‘Your mother looked nothing like Phuong and nothing like Lang, but at that moment Amon saw in her face both his lover and their daughter.
‘He stood in the yard, his eyes locked with hers. The heat of the morning seemed to lift and he felt ice on his skin. He thought that he might fall to the ground, colder than anything that had ever lain there.
‘Your grandfather watched him and your mother with alarm. He said to Amon, “That’s my daughter, Kay.”
‘Stunned, unaware of what he was saying, Amon asked, “Might I visit her some time?”
‘Amon was almost as old as your grandfather, and your grandfather knew the stories of the slaughtered hog and the missing goat. He’d heard that Amon was collecting weapons. “Get the hell off my land,” he said. “I’ll have my yardboy deliver the tar tomorrow. If you need more after that, you can send a messenger. I don’t want to see you back here.”
‘But it was your mother who pursued the relationship,’ I said. ‘A week after Amon bought the tar, as he was painting a second coat on the last section of his roof – naked except for his underwear since he owned just two sets of clothes and didn’t want to ruin either – he felt eyes watching him. Your mother had crept on to his land and was sitting with a sketchpad and a pencil in the shade of a hoptree. He asked her what she was doing, and his words caught in his dry throat.
‘Instead of answering, strange child that she was, she just touched her pencil to the pad.
‘He asked, “How long have you been watching?”
‘She kept drawing.
‘He climbed down from the roof, wrapped a towel around his waist, and went to her. He said, “If your daddy found you here, he would dunk me in his tar box, roll me through your chicken yard, and chase me over the bridge and off the island. That’s what I think. And he would lock you in your room and take away your shoes. I think he would consider you guilty of bad judgment.”
‘Your mother looked at him, tipped her head to the side as if trying to square the way his nose aligned with the rest of his face, and touched the pencil to the pad.
‘“You think you’re an artist?” Amon asked.
‘“Take off the towel,” she said.
‘“What?” he said. She’d succeeded in shocking him.
‘She said, “Take off your underpants too. I’m not done with the picture.”
‘“You’re done enough,” he said. “Let’s see.”
‘She handed him the pad. What he saw shocked him again. Your mother’s drawing showed him as he’d forgotten that he had ever been. In lines and shading that were startlingly true, she had drawn his muscular sunbaked body, showing strength where he had seen only weakness.
‘Amon balled up the drawing and said, “I’m keeping this.”
‘“I drew it for you,” your mother said.
‘“Don’t come around here anymore,” he said, and he went into his house.
‘For a couple of weeks, his life returned to normal. He fished. He gardened. He shot at seagulls and egrets with a variety of weapons, some of them leaving little more than feathers that snowed from the sky. In the evenings, he read his books or he stood in his yard, looked up at the Milky Way, and listened to the callings of frogs in the marsh and the skitterings of animals in the grass. But he couldn’t get your mother out of his mind. He couldn’t get rid of the feeling that he saw in her both his daughter and Phuong. Sleepless at night, he wanted to sneak to your mother’s house and look up at the windows to see if she would be looking back, and he dug his fingers into the skin on his legs to keep himself from going.
‘Then one morning,’ I said, ‘he found a new drawing tacked to the outside of his front door. In this one, he was standing, thigh-deep in an inlet, throwing a cast net for bait fish. The sun shined on his shoulders and he seemed to have a lithe strength that in reality he didn’t feel. Three mornings later, another drawing was tacked to the door, this one showing him on his hands and knees in his garden. He seemed to be crawling, seeking something. The next morning produced a fourth drawing. In it, he was standing in his yard, staring at the sky.
‘He started watching for her, gazing into the shade as he stood in the sunlight and into the darker shadows after the sun set. He expected her. He desired her.
‘But he never saw her.’
‘Weird,’ Lexi said.
‘He was in love,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘Finally, in the middle of another sleepless night, he couldn’t help himself. He stopped digging his fingers into his skin, got up in the dark, and bathed his face and arms in a bowl of well-water that he kept on a table. He dressed in the cleaner of his two pairs of pants. He became aware of the sweat, oil, and dirt that were as much a part of his skin as the sun-browned cells. He would present himself outside the windows of your mother’s house, and if desire had the power to pass through the air as smoke or fog did, she would know he was there and would come to see him.
‘But when he opened his door to leave, she was already standing in front of him. The skin on her face was mottled and shiny. She wore a cotton dress and sandals. In her hands she held a drawing and a tack.
‘The sudden opening of the door surprised her, and she turned and ran.
‘Amon stepped outside and called her back, the words sticking in his throat. Moonlight was turning the whole world slate-blue – the dirt yard, the hoptree, the grasses out by the marsh.
‘Your mother stopped running.
‘“Come here,” Amon said, his throat dry, his tongue thick.
‘She came then. She came until she stood toe-to-toe with him and looked him in the eyes.
‘He knew she was waiting for him to touch her. “Why me?” he asked. “I’m broken. Can’t you see that?”
‘She said, “I like broken things.”
‘He felt tears rising in his eyes, tears that seemed as miraculous as water rising up from a dry creek bed. He felt that your mother was a gift. Because he had suffered enough.
‘They met often after that, always in the middle of the night. She would tap on his door, and he would open it, half expecting to see Lang wearing her too-short birthday dress, her hair roughly cut, her hands hiding a secret behind her back – and thrilled that your mother was standing there instead. He would pull her inside, lift her cotton dress over her head, and carry her to his bed.
‘One night, he asked, “What would your father do if he found out?”
‘“Kill you,” she said, with a calm that made him think she was serious but wasn’t worried.
‘“And you?” he asked. “Would he kill you too?” That possibility bothered him more than thoughts of his own death.
‘“No,” she said, and she ran her fingers up his thigh from his knee. “He forgives me for everything I do.”
‘So, for the second time in his life, he was making love to a girl whose father would kill him if he had a chance. But he knew that he would die if he had to give up a love as powerful as this again.
‘Remarkably, considering how many nights they spent together, a year and a half passed before your mother became pregnant. She—’
Lexi said, ‘My mom got pregnant? At seventeen?’
‘A month before she turned seventeen,’ I said. ‘Yes.’
‘She had an abortion?’ Lexi said.
‘Her father opposed that kind of thing,’ I said. ‘Just listen to the story.’
‘She kept the baby?’ Lexi asked.
‘Kept might be too strong of a word,’ I said.
‘She had the baby?’ Lexi said. ‘Eight years before she had me?’
‘Roughly,’ I said.
Lexi was quiet for a moment, then asked, ‘Why would my dad tell you all of this?’
‘Vested interest,’ I said. I felt like I was stepping into space and falling.
‘An interest in you?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Me.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ she said, and I knew that she knew.
She fumbled
in the dark until she found the flashlight. She turned it on and shined it at me. I didn’t blink.
‘If what you’re saying is true I’m going to throw up,’ she said.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Your mother was wrong about her father killing Amon. Instead, he got him charged with statutory rape. He— Would you turn off the flashlight?’
‘No,’ Lexi said.
I said, ‘Would you at least stop shining it in my face?’
‘No,’ she said.
I tried silence but she kept the light on me. So I said, ‘The police threw Amon in jail with the rapists and the child molesters – because they considered him one of them. Amon admitted to everything, but your mother claimed he’d never touched her. She blamed a boy her own age, then said a stranger raped her, then said that her own father got her pregnant, though the investigating detective’s anger made her go back to the story about the stranger. At home, she stopped eating and started cutting herself again – on her hands and arms, her face, and now her belly.
‘Eventually, the police gave up and her father gave in,’ I said. ‘The police released Amon with the understanding that if he ever tried to see your mother again, her father would shoot him, and if he ran out of bullets, the police would give him more, free of charge, and if his body was ever found, the coroner would declare he had died of natural causes because what could be more natural than killing a man like him?
‘The night that he got out of jail, after he unlocked his house, checked the garden, pumped water from his well into his bathing bowl, and climbed into bed alone, your mother came back and tapped on his door.
‘“Go away,” he said, digging his fingers into his thighs.’
‘I know,’ Lexi said. As if she’d been there. As if she’d done this herself.
I said, ‘Your mother tapped again.
‘Amon shouted, “Go away.”
‘She knocked.
‘He jumped out of bed and yanked open the door. Again he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Lang in her red dress and her rough-cut hair. He also wouldn’t have been surprised to see your mother’s father and Phuong’s father standing shoulder-to-shoulder with guns in their hands. He owned ten or fifteen guns himself by then, but he wouldn’t have shot back.
‘Instead, your mother stepped into the house and asked, “What took you so long?”
‘So he lifted her cotton dress over her head and carried her to his bed.
‘As they lay together afterward, he asked, “What will they say? What will they do?”
‘She gazed at him as happy as he’d ever seen her, as happy as he wanted to be, and said, “They can do nothing to us.”
‘They got married on the day she turned eighteen, and – believe it or not – her father went with them to the courthouse. If your grandfather never really liked Amon, he at least got used to him and even learned to respect him as a man who had suffered great losses and had worked with what was left to the best of his abilities. He learned too that although Amon wasn’t educated, he was well read, and if your grandfather had little interest in books himself, he recognized that Amon shared something of the temperament of his artistic daughter.
‘He had allowed Amon to visit and sometimes even spend the night. By the time that the baby was born, they all were on good enough terms that your mother and Amon asked her father to name him. And he did.’
I stopped. The roof beams ticked. Carol and Paul were talking quietly outside.
‘Say it,’ Lexi said.
‘You’re sure?’ I asked.
‘Just say it.’
I said, ‘He named him Oren.’
‘Like you,’ she said.
‘Exactly like me,’ I said.
‘You’re lying,’ she said.
I asked, ‘Where’s the box?’
‘What box?’ she asked.
‘Of photographs from when Amon was here.’
She shined the flashlight on a stack of cardboard boxes that contained our dad’s books and then on a smaller box wedged at the side of the attic where the roof met the ceiling supports. I crawled to it. It was shiny with oil that had leached from the tar on the outside of the roof and seeped through the layers of shingles and plywood. I brought it back and wiped my hands on an exposed wooden support beam. I broke the masking tape and opened the flaps. The box belched a chemical smell. Years and years of oil had bled in and mixed with the photographic paper. ‘I’ll show you,’ I said, and pulled out a pile of photos that stuck together with a thick paste.
When I peeled the photos from the pile, I showed her nothing. The pine oil had turned against the processing chemicals and the images had burned. The colors and shapes were gone. The people looked as if they had evaporated in the sun. I checked each picture – each piece of greasy paper – and threw it into the dark. I pulled out another pile and threw it. I gave Lexi just one photo, which seemed to show someone standing next to a child. ‘There,’ I said.
I pulled out a third pile and a fourth. Three photos showed Kay at about twenty sitting on my dad’s lap, but the other shots were washed out and as gray as ash.
I reached into the box once more and found a waxed-paper envelope. I opened it and pulled out a brittle lock of hair. ‘There,’ I said again, and held the lock against the hair on my head.
‘Maybe,’ Lexi said. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What isn’t to know?’ I asked.
The sun was rising outside and the attic vents glowed like electric burners. We sat in the quiet, and I let her think about the story I had told her. But then there was a gunshot from inside the house. One shot. Small caliber. Walter’s .22. Almost quiet.
It didn’t matter how quiet, though. Walter had shot, and that meant Carol, Jimmy, and Robert would be loading rifles and pistols – automatic, semi-automatic, and manual. They would be aiming the guns at the house. I could have done a countdown. Four, three, two, one.
Gunfire exploded in the yard and a spray of bullets hit the outside of the house, punching into the tarred planks, bouncing off the stone chimney, sinking into the oily dark shingles, ricocheting into the sky.
‘I can’t stay here,’ Lexi said, and scrambled for the attic hatch.
‘We’re safe,’ I said, and tried to hold her.
She slipped from my hands and yanked open the hatch.
‘You can’t tell them what I’ve told you,’ I said.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Give me the flashlight,’ I said.
She did, and I shined it through the attic. Again I saw none of my dad’s guns. I saw only boxes and boxes of his books. I said anyway, ‘If Walter learns who I am, he’ll kill me. You can’t tell them my name.’
‘Why have you come?’ Lexi said.
‘Do you really need to ask?’ I said.
Another spray of bullets hit the house.
She lowered herself into the hatch. ‘Who are the people outside?’ she asked.
‘I’m inside with you,’ I said. ‘I’m here because of you and Cristofer.’
‘We don’t even know you,’ she said.
‘We’ll know each other now,’ I said.
Another spray of bullets.
‘Who are those people?’ she asked.
‘They’re outside,’ I said.
‘That’s not an answer,’ she said.
Another spray, and a flash of light burned through the hallway. Dirt and sand showered down on the outside walls and roof, and Lexi climbed out through the closet and stepped into the hallway.
TWENTY-SIX
Lexi
And Oren came tumbling after.
‘I’m not leaving you alone in this house,’ he said.
I said, ‘It’s my house.’
‘You think so?’ he said.
We went downstairs. Bullets hit the outside walls. A haze hung over the furniture. The air smelled like sweat and splintered wood and tar. Mom sat on the floor by the kitchen doorway. Cristofer jumped up and down on Walter’s green chair. Grunting. Walter kneeled by t
he window with his .22. Squeezing one shot for every ten that the people outside fired. The German shepherds barked and barked and barked.
The green chair was safe from the window but I yelled at Cristofer to get down. He kept bouncing and grunting. Dust pumped from the split cushion. I grabbed him but he swatted my face.
‘Hey,’ Oren yelled at him.
Cristofer kept bouncing.
‘It’s all right,’ I told Oren. ‘He didn’t mean to.’
But Oren yanked the chair out. Cristofer hit the edge and fell. Oren stood over him like he would crush him. I yelled, ‘Don’t.’
Cristofer looked at Oren and keened.
Oren bent over him. Whispered something. Then sat in the chair. Pine oil from the box of photos had stained his sleeve. Cristofer smiled at him and stayed on the floor. Oren stared at the clouds of dust in the morning sunlight. As if he could read a message in them. Then he looked at me and said, ‘Anyone for breakfast?’
I gave him the meanest look and crawled to the window where Walter was kneeling with his rifle. The sun was rising over the hill. The ground was wet and glistening from last night’s rain. And breathing out a vapor. The people in the yard had parked the pickups end-to-end by the tar kiln. The bikers stood behind the yellow truck. They were thick-chested and square-faced and tan. The black-haired woman wore a black T-shirt. Grinning.
Walter squeezed the trigger of his .22 and sank a bullet into the rear panel of the yellow truck. Raising a yellow-paint mist. The woman finished saying whatever she was saying. Then lifted a black semi-automatic above the truck bed. Shot at the house.
When the sound died and the shock passed Walter shouted into the yard, ‘What do you want?’
No one answered.
He shouted again, ‘Whatever you want you can have it. What do—’
The woman shouted, ‘Your daughter.’
Walter stared at me. Considering. Then he shouted back, ‘I have no daughter.’
One of the bikers shouted, ‘Your wife.’
The other shouted, ‘Your son.’
Black Hammock Page 12
