Twenty-One
The new statue didn’t look like the green glass man.
It was gold instead of green. It wasn’t shaped like a man, but a hand with the fingers curled gently at the knuckle. The wrist protruded from the earth like a tree trunk. The hand was six feet wide from one side of the palm to the other, and each finger about two feet long. Its golden skin was smooth and unmarred but for a single mark along the heel of its palm that was almost like a scar. The line was so thin that it only appeared in certain shades of light and seemed to blend into the hand the rest of the time. It was easy to imagine that the statue kept going, growing down the length of the arm to the crook of a wide golden elbow, spreading out to form a body hiding in the earth. There might be someone down there all the time, holding their breath while they held the garden up.
And when she looked at the hand, Misty couldn’t help but think of William, too. How he’d held the brown bottle out to her when he found her in the woods. How he had put her hand on top of it and asked her to spin. And that day in the barn when they first played the game, he’d taken her last turn, his hand gripping the neck of the green bottle.
That was where all of this began, that day in the barn with his hand.
She wasn’t sure how the statues were growing, but they seemed to be saying something about Misty and William and it made her stomach ache to look at either of the statues too long.
Misty turned away from the garden and slunk around the front of her trailer. She hadn’t gone outside all day, but had waited until everyone was asleep. The moon hung in the sky with its body sliced in half, hiding between the trees like it was afraid to show itself, afraid that Misty might notice that part of it was missing. She followed its feeble light to the corner of her porch, crouched down, and looked underneath. The crawdad chimneys were still there, but the crawdads didn’t emerge when Misty strummed her fingers against the ground. She waited and waited, but none of them answered her call.
Misty closed her eyes. She thought of her father brushing her bangs across her forehead, the rough calluses of his fingers, the little seams of coal dust that gathered in his knuckles, and the smell of him after work, like something long-buried in deep, cold earth, and a green bottle buried beneath the dirt, and William’s mouth against her cheek in the barn, and his mouth against hers in the woods; the paper-thin feeling of her grandmother’s skin inside Misty’s palm; the rattle of her mother’s breathing, rocking her, begging her to sleep; a fawn in the woods, blood on its hip and pain in Misty’s leg, pain in her chest; a switch against the back of her knee, catching, catching her skin; a crawdad skittering over her thighs, resting on her belly; branches above her; birds screaming in the dark; the fawn struggling toward her; her mother sitting on the couch with her head in her hands; the bedsheet tacked to the ceiling in her bedroom and Penny’s bloody ankles walking back and forth behind it; Earl’s shadow on the living room carpet, growing, distorting; the green light quivering on the wall; the smell of Jem’s bedsheets and the sound of wind chimes; cool water rushing over her ankles; blood rising to her skin, welling bright and red; white roots in dark soil; a feeling of sadness like many small stones stacked inside her stomach; the switch smacking the living room wall; a small cloud of cold breath hanging in the air; a burrow digging down deep into the earth.
Misty let out a gasp of air, her whole body shaking. Above her, bats circled. A half dozen of them, maybe more. It was hard to tell them apart from the darkness, their bodies so slim and black, their bodies sweeping around and around. She felt them like little drumbeats inside her head as they shared their names with her. The barn reached out and so did the trailer and the worms in the ground, and the sleeping redbirds woke and sang her a long and lonely note.
And then the garden said, “There you are, little little. What kept you so long?”
“I got in trouble,” Misty said. Her stomach still churned with the sound of her name, but she was relieved, too. She’d been alone for two long days, and she hadn’t realized how vast the silence was until something filled it. “I wasn’t allowed to come outside.”
She walked over to the garden and knelt in the grass. Earl had finished building the fence, so this was as close as she could get without climbing over. She reached under the lowest board instead and traced her fingers over the dry earth near the green glass man’s base.
“That tickles,” the garden said.
Misty smiled. “Really?”
“No, but it would be nice if it did, don’t you think?”
“It would,” Misty said. “So you’re not mad at me anymore?”
“Mad?”
“The last time we talked. With the trees, remember? You went away.”
The wind picked up and sent the tree limbs shaking, the tall grass bending. The garden said, “No. You got mad at me.”
“When?”
“In the woods. You yelled about her. About Caroline. I was afraid.”
Misty frowned. She didn’t remember it that way. But she had been afraid of what she saw, of the memories the trees shared. So many things had happened since then that it was hard to be sure of herself. Maybe she had yelled.
“Are you sure?” Misty said.
“I thought you’d never speak to me again,” the garden said. “And then you didn’t answer when I called. For days and days I called. I was worried.”
“I’m sorry,” Misty said, though she still felt confused.
“It’s forgiven and gone. Gone and away. Now tell me about this trouble you found.”
Misty shared images of the car ride home and everything that followed. “It was awful. I didn’t want to tattle on Penny, but I was just so, so—” Sadness bubbled in Misty’s chest. It heated her cheeks and brought tears to her eyes, but she blinked them away.
“I know that feeling,” the garden said. “When you’re so full and there’s nothing to do. There’s no place for it to go. It has to come out somehow.”
“I didn’t mean to get Penny hurt.”
“I believe you.”
“Penny doesn’t.”
An image of the sheet that Penny had hung from their bedroom ceiling drifted through Misty’s memory, though it seemed longer in her mind, blocking out all hints of light, and thicker, too, almost like another wall.
“She’ll never forgive me,” Misty said.
“She will.”
“She won’t.” Misty didn’t know how sad she was until someone asked, or how afraid she was until someone listened. It all surged inside her at once, but it felt good to say it, too. It felt good to talk. “And Mom won’t, either. I was bad and now—”
“How were you bad?”
“I lied,” Misty said. “I played a game I shouldn’t have played. I yelled and told people our business.”
“Those are things you did,” the garden said, “not things you are.”
Misty shook her head. “There’s no difference.”
“There is. I swear, I swear.” Misty felt sunlight on her cheek like a warm touch. “Doing bad doesn’t make bad when you’re sorry. When you do better after.”
“I guess. Maybe.” She ran her thumb across the garden’s dry earth, slowly, back and forth.
“I was whipped before,” the garden said. “It isn’t nice, but it isn’t your fault.”
“Whipped? Why would somebody whip a garden?”
“Oh.” The garden’s presence retracted, almost pulled away completely, and for a moment Misty thought that the garden had gone again. An image of Caroline jittered between them, her face breaking in and out of Misty’s mind like static. Then the garden said, “I meant ‘whipped’ like hurt. Like when Earl dug me up.”
“I know it sounds mean, but I don’t like him. He’s been acting so weird lately. And he put that gate at the end of the holler so nobody can get in.”
“A gate?”
“Yeah. He d
oesn’t want anyone seeing the statues.”
Anger flared in Misty’s cheeks, and the garden’s voice was low and grating. “He’s trying to hide them. That’s all he does. Slither further and further away. But it won’t work this time. I have help now. You and the crawdads and—”
“The ones from under my porch?” Misty asked. “I was worried about them. They wouldn’t answer me when I called for them.”
“They can’t speak when they’re working.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” the garden said, “they’re going to help me until they’re finished. That’s what we agreed.”
Misty drew her hand back to her lap. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s something I learned a long time ago. I take a little of my name and a little of their name and I join us together. That way, they can help me make him stop.” An image of Earl surfaced in Misty’s mind, but it wasn’t the Earl she knew. It was a much younger Earl, and Caroline was there, too, but her face blurred and disappeared almost instantly.
“But you don’t have your name yet.”
The garden’s presence subsided for a moment, then returned like a wave lapping tentatively against the shore. “I have part of it. You helped me remember the dogwood trees. That’s all I need, a little part.”
Misty frowned. The garden’s presence surged in her mind.
“This isn’t a frowning thing. It’s a good thing. The crawdads are helping me make Earl afraid,” the garden said, and Misty felt the familiar simmer of hatred in her chest. “For what he did. What he does. I’m going to make people see him for what he is.”
“How can the crawdads help with that?”
“They have little claws for digging, but I don’t. I needed them.”
Something about the way the garden said it made Misty feel nervous, but she tried to tamp the feeling down, to keep it hidden. The garden could sense everything that Misty felt and thought while they were connected, and she didn’t want to upset the garden.
Misty looked back at the yard. More crawdad chimneys broke through the grass here and there. Most of them were clustered near Earl’s trailer.
“Do they want to help?” she asked.
“It doesn’t hurt them,” the garden said, “and I’ll let them go when they’re finished.”
“You can do that? Make other things do stuff?”
“That makes it sound mean,” the garden said.
“I just worry about them. The crawdads are my friends.”
“I won’t hurt them. Promise.”
Misty nodded. “All right. Well, maybe let them talk to me sometime, okay?”
“Soon,” the garden said, “when their work is done. I’m feeling tired.” Another image blinked through Misty’s thoughts. Caroline standing by a dogwood tree, her fingers sunk into its bark. For a moment it seemed like Caroline was sinking into the tree, but then the image was gone. “I need to rest now.”
“Okay,” Misty said. “Well, sleep sweet then.”
“You, too, little little. I’ll see you soon.”
And their connection was gone like a cold gust of wind slamming a door shut, so quick and sudden that Misty didn’t hear the sound of a real door shutting nearby. She didn’t notice William until he whispered her name, and by then he was right beside her. Misty jumped.
“Hey,” he said, “were you talking to somebody?”
Misty shook her head. “No. Just sitting.”
William looked up at the green glass man and smiled. “They’re awful pretty, ain’t they? Especially at night.”
Pretty wasn’t the word she would use but Misty nodded anyway.
William sat down beside her in the grass. “What happened to your legs?” He pointed to one of the cuts from her whipping. “Somebody got ahold of you good.”
“My mom.”
“Really?” William shook his head. “I didn’t figure her for that. She seems so nice.”
“Yeah, maybe. Until you give her a switch.”
William smiled. “My mom used to be like that. She said she thought whipping was fine until my dad whipped me with a belt once. I don’t remember it at all. She threw him out after that. I don’t know which is worse, a belt or a switch.”
“A belt sounds pretty bad.”
“I guess so,” William said.
Earl coughed from inside his trailer and William leaned back to get a look at his front door, but Earl didn’t wake up. Not yet.
“Did you see the gate he put at the end of the road?” William asked.
“Not yet. He gave Mom keys to it this morning.”
“Mine too. She about had words with him right there, but she was already late for work. She called me at lunch and said she thinks he’s going crazy.”
“Why?”
“He keeps talking about birds spying on him. And he thinks God’s trying to send him some kind of message with the statues.”
“About what?”
William shrugged. “I don’t know. But he don’t want nobody seeing them until he’s figured it out. I don’t care what he thinks as long as he don’t hurt them.”
Misty watched William watching the statues. His expression looked like a hand outstretched, waiting for another hand to meet it.
“What did your mom think of the new statue?” Misty asked.
William sighed. “She didn’t seem to mind it as much as she did the green glass man. She still thinks he’s creepy.” He shook his head. “She’s been acting funny, too. Sleepwalking. I found her in the kitchen the other night drawing on the cabinets with one of my markers.”
“What was she drawing?”
“Trees, I think. It’s all right, though. I ain’t giving up on the statues. I still think they can get her to stay. I was actually thinking about that, and about you. There’s something I wanted to show you.”
“Okay,” Misty said. “But I have to hurry. I don’t want Mom catching me out this late.”
“It won’t take long. Promise.”
Misty followed William to the barn, which looked cleaner than the last time she’d been there. The puddles of water and oil that had sunk into the earth had dried and fresh dirt had been added to the dips in the floor. William led Misty to the back wall, ducking beneath two sawhorses and a pile of unused lumber. He pointed out the bent nails jutting from the boards and told her to be careful. The back of the barn was even cleaner than the rest—the floor swept in long, even strokes, the cobwebs torn from the corners, like someone had been preparing the barn for something special. There were footprints like William’s in the dirt and Misty overlapped them.
“Look through that crack there,” William said, pointing to a gap between two boards.
“What am I going to see?”
“It’s not scary,” he said. “I promise.”
There was a sinking feeling in Misty’s stomach that made her want to turn back, but she couldn’t think of a way to leave that wouldn’t hurt William’s feelings, so she pressed her nose to the crack in the wall. One half of her trailer glowed in the darkness. The trees behind it were honed to their black silhouettes. The wind rattled something in the hayloft overhead that sounded like paper.
“It all looks the same to me,” Misty said.
William inched closer until he could see through the same crack that she was looking through. His breath was warm against the back of her ear. He smelled like milk.
“William?” Misty whispered.
He wrapped his arm around Misty’s waist like a hug, but it didn’t feel like a hug. It felt like a clutch, like a hook. She turned toward him but all she could see was the top of his head. His other hand slipped to the waistband of her shorts. His fingers pried beneath it until his skin was against her skin.
“Maybe we should go back to the garden,” she said.
He took a step close
r, his knees knocking against the back of Misty’s knees until she had no choice but to press her hand against the barn to keep from falling. She held herself up as William’s hand moved over her panties. His fingers kneaded her skin like he was searching for something in the dark. He leaned harder on her back until her muscles strained to support the weight of them both, their bodies clenched together. She pushed back, trying to dislodge him so she could stand, so she could breathe, but he was heavier than she was, and he rocked his hips against her, slowly, back and forth.
Misty pressed her eye to the crack in the barn’s walls, groping for the yard, the woods, the dark. She willed herself outside, willed the barn into a window, her body into air. She willed herself small enough to slip away, but her body was there, her body bent awkwardly, her shoulders aching, and other feelings, too, that she couldn’t understand. She tried to breathe slowly but her lungs wouldn’t listen. She wasn’t even sure what was happening, but she felt the same panic as when her mother closed her hand around Misty’s wrist and held her in place, the lash of the whip hovering in the air, the same need to get away, and the same knowing that there was no getting away, not from her, not from this.
In her head a chorus played without an answer: what did I do, what do I do, what did I do, what do I do.
She dug her fingernails into the wooden board beneath her and the barn stirred. The barn whispered its name in her chest like a flame, guttering. Over and over again, it spoke, and Misty closed her eyes and listened. The harder she focused on the name, the more she felt the wood under her hand. The more she felt like the barn did—the more tired, the more sleeping, the older and grayer and softer. She felt sinking and crumbling. She felt less and less herself, less her body straining against William’s, less her fingernails bent against the wood.
“It’s okay,” William said as he scraped the inside of her thigh.
Misty reached further, searching the trees. She found birds sleeping in their nests. One and then three and then ten. Dozens of them in the woods behind her trailer, all of them curled up safe and Misty clenched her fist.
Every Bone a Prayer Page 13
