Secret Star

by Nancy Springer

  In front of Tess. Hadn’t known she was there. None of them had noticed her. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see the craziness anymore, the three of them, the gun, but she was still seeing it. She felt Kam let go of her hands and put his arms around her instead.

  “Godalmighty,” she said, babbling, “it’s me that screamed.”

  She felt Kamo’s head on her shoulder, his eyelashes blinking against her neck.

  Wet. He was crying.

  “Kam?” She put her arms around him. “Do you think—was it your father too?”

  He pulled back so he could see her and shook his head like he didn’t think so, though his voice came out husky. “What did he look like?”

  Her father. It was almost worth all this dithering and shaking to remember him, a mighty palomino god. “Big and blond. Handsome.”

  “Dyed blond, maybe?” Kam’s voice had gone taut.

  “No. He was blond all over.”

  Kam shook his head and looked down at the ground. “My father was dark.”

  She let her hands drop away from him. Not trembling any longer, just limp and dead-feeling. They sat there.

  “Damn,” Tess said.

  He looked up at her with a flicker of a smile, rubbed his face to dry it, then stood up and went to fetch the pot of water from the fire.

  The warm water soothed her hurt arm. The bleeding had mostly stopped, and the wound was just a shallow two-inch gouge. After he had soaped it and rinsed it Kam tied one more bandage around it and let it alone.

  Her shaking had stopped. But not her anger.

  “Graham crackers?” Kam offered.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He crouched and looked at her. “You feeling okay to walk home now?”

  “I told you, I’m not going back there. Not ever.”

  He sat cross-legged and looked at her some more. “A few things aren’t real clear to me,” he said finally. “Like, you said you wanted to hug your father when he came in the door, but you couldn’t. How come?”

  She didn’t even have to close her eyes to see him in the doorway, haloed in light. Big. Blond. Handsome.

  With a big ugly fishing knife in his clenched hand.

  With words a ten-year-old girl didn’t fully understand coming out of his mouth.

  Kam asked, “Why was your mother hiding in the kitchen?”

  Because she was afraid.

  Same reason Tess had been hiding behind the stair railings.

  “He was—drunk, maybe,” she whispered. “He was—being ugly. He had a knife.”

  “Threatening Mr. Mathis?”

  Tess couldn’t remember the ugly words. Just Daddy telling her father to get out. “Maybe.”

  “Then—when Mr. Mathis shot him—it was self-defense.”

  Maybe. But it didn’t seem to make much difference. “I still hate him,” she said. “He should have told me.”

  Kam puffed his lips like he was getting exasperated. “Look, Tess—as far as I can see, your stepfather must walk on water. Your father comes in and threatens him, your mother shoots him, he ends up in a wheelchair, and he raises you? He’s disabled, with practically no income, yet he keeps you instead of sticking you in an orphan home or something? What’s that sound like to you?”

  She sat silent.

  Kam said, “It sounds like love to me.”

  She couldn’t say a word.

  He said, “I’ll trade places with you, Tess.”

  “Go ahead. I’m not going back.” Her voice wavered. “I don’t care if my father was a mean sleaze, Daddy still shouldn’t have killed him.”

  “Tess …”

  “I’m mad, damn it!”

  “Try being mad at the jackass who did that to you,” Kam said, gesturing at her arm.

  “Butch?” She had told him about Butch, but now she rolled her eyes. “He’s a pants-wetter, he’s still shaking. Forget him. I’m so mad at—at the world, I guess.…”

  “Try to get past the anger,” Kam said.

  “How?”

  It was dark, and the spring peepers were talking. The only light on Kam’s face was firelight, and in that warm light his eye shone, his rugged face glowed, he was beautiful—how, Tess wondered, could she ever have thought that he was ugly? He had broad shoulders, wise brows, a heartbreaker smile. He was smiling it now. Yet he knew all about anger. He had better reasons to be angry than she did.

  “How do you get past the anger?”

  She meant him, personally, and he knew it. He shrugged. “I cry.”

  He was so brave. She gazed at him.

  He said, “Did you love your father, Tess? The blond sleaze?”

  Oh, God damn him. Oh, God damn it.

  Then the tears came.

  Benson Mathis knew at once that something was wrong, because when Tess came in she didn’t speak to him and didn’t look at him and didn’t give him a chance to ask what was the matter, just rushed to her room and shut the door. Then Kam came in, and Kam looked at him, a quiet, steady look.

  “She remembers,” Kam said.

  Benson Mathis let out a long breath. Now that it had finally happened, he was very calm. Tess was in the house; there was a chance that it would be all right. He would get to talk with her. “She remembers everything?”

  Kamo sat down across from him and looked levelly at him.

  Ben Mathis had to know. “She remembers about her father?”

  “Yes.”

  “And—” Suddenly he couldn’t quite say it.

  Kam said it for him. “Her mother shot you before she killed herself.”

  Ben Mathis nodded. “Is Tess—is she talking about leaving?”

  “I think she’ll be okay once she gets some sleep.”

  Benson Mathis was no fool. He noticed that Kam had not really answered him, and he knew what that meant. He swallowed, then said, “Kamo—thank you for bringing her back.”

  He saw that he wasn’t the only one having trouble with this; the hard-looking youngster actually blushed. Ducked his head. After a minute the kid said to the floor, “Well—I was barking up the wrong Rojahin. I should go away and let you alone.”

  “Son, you come around here whenever you want.”

  His head came up, and his smile was almost worth the trouble.

  Kids. More and more Benson Mathis realized they came and went like butterflies, visitors in the life. For the past four years it had been Tess, Tess, Tess, but four years was just a drip-drop in the ocean of time. When she grew up and left, or when she fell in love and left, or even if she yelled that she hated him and left—it would hurt, but his life would go on.

  He asked, “What set her off? Did something happen?”

  “Oh. Yeah, some jerk she works with has been bothering her.” Kam stood up to go.

  Benson Mathis frowned. “Bothering her?”

  “He won’t be bothering her anymore. She took care of him.” Kamo headed for the door. “And I plan to take care of him some more.” Then he hesitated with his hand on the doorknob, looking over his shoulder. “You okay, man?”

  “Sure.”

  Kam nodded and left.

  Benson Mathis sat up in his wheelchair all night. Did not sleep.

  Tess slept as if she had been knocked on the head. No nightmares, no dreams. But when she woke up the next morning she felt dead. She didn’t want to get out of bed.

  Her old windup clock said five till ten. Daddy had let her sleep, as if it weren’t a school morning or there was a funeral or something.

  She lay there.

  After a while she heard thumping noises—Daddy’s wheelchair bumping against her door as he tried to open it. A pulpy scraping sound as one of his footrests put yet another gouge in the wood. She pulled the blanket up to her neck as he got the door under control and rolled in.

  At the sight of his familiar, ordinary face—weary, careful—her unfamiliar rage blazed. “Get out of here!” She turned away so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “Let me alone.”

 
; He did not go away. Instead he wheeled over to the bed and put his hand on her face, stroking the hair back from her eyes.

  His gentleness hurt. She lashed out as if he had touched her with a branding iron. Her hand smacked his arm. “Get away!” She lunged out of bed, but he rolled back to keep her from getting out the door.

  “Tess. Listen to me.” His voice quavered. “I know how you feel—”

  The hell he did. “You killed my father!”

  “I had to. He was trying to kill me. Tess, the jury acquitted me. It was self-defense.”

  Some sane portion of her was trying to combat the anger, trying to be fair. Had Daddy done anything so terribly wrong? But the hurt-child portion of her didn’t want to hear it. “You should have told me!”

  “Couldn’t, Tess. When it happened—it set you back bad. Real bad. You wouldn’t talk to nobody. You just clawed and bit and screamed. I was afraid they were going to take you away from me, put you in a home or something.”

  There was a ragged edge of emotion in his voice. Tess stood staring down at him. “Why didn’t you let them?” she asked a little less harshly.

  “Tess, you were all I had.” His voice hitched, stuck on the words. “Still are.”

  She stood stiffly in her sleep clothes, eyeing him.

  “I didn’t help you as much as I should have,” he said. “I was in a wheelchair, feeling sorry for myself. I should have done more for you than I did.”

  Tess knew damn well he had done the very best he could. Knew it and didn’t want to admit it. She said nothing.

  “So you handled it your own way,” Daddy said. “You just quit remembering, and all of a sudden you were better. And once you buried it—I was scared to dig it up again.” He looked at the floor. “I knew you blamed me.”

  She knew she shouldn’t keep blaming him. Yet she wondered if she would ever be able to stop. The anger just wouldn’t let go.

  “Get out of my way,” she told him.

  He did not move except to stare up at her, his round face taut. “Where are you going?”

  She pushed past him, muttering, “Going to try to handle it better this time.”

  11

  She took it to the drums. It seemed like music was the one thing in her life she could always count on. She spent the day at the drums, and the drums ate up the anger and liked it.

  They helped her sort things out. At first the bad memories kept playing over and over like a videotape—bang, bang, gunshots. Bang, bang, dead on the floor. But later, other memories started bubbling up with the drumbeats. Paradiddle, Yankee Doodle, riding a pony on the fourth of July. Soft-shoe brushes on the snare, Mommy brushing my long blond hair. Tess could remember her mother’s voice, her mother’s smile. That was worth something.

  Daddy stayed away from her until afternoon, then wheeled into the living room and asked her whether she wanted some lunch. She shook her head.

  “You feeling any better?”

  “Some,” she admitted. She put down the drumsticks for a moment and looked at him. “What was my father like?”

  He hesitated, but then told it to her straight. “He was a dangerous man.” His eyes scanned her face as he talked. “Jealous. Violent. Never accepted that Teresa left him. While he was in jail it was okay, but the minute he got out—he was in my house. Busted in. Coming at me with the knife.”

  “He was in jail?”

  “He was in jail a lot. Doing things that might land him in jail was kind of his profession.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s how I knew—when Kamo came here—see, Rojahin is the name on your birth certificate, but God knows what the guy’s real name was. He went by Marcus Rojahin, Mark Rojohn, John Ryan, uh, Rory Jones, Rory Jamison—a bunch more I can’t remember. I figured it was a pretty good bet he wasn’t Kamo’s dad.”

  “Great,” Tess muttered. “My father was a criminal.”

  “He was big,” Daddy said quietly, “and good-looking, and exciting, and he never did a bad thing to you or Teresa, though sometimes he scared her. That’s why she left him. But she always loved him better than me.”

  The matter-of-fact way he said it made her gawk at him. He answered her stare for a moment, then wheeled away and left her alone with her drums.

  Bang, bang. How had it felt when she shot him down?

  When Tess finally headed toward her room to get out of her sweatpants and into some real clothes he was sitting in there waiting for her. “I don’t want you to go to work today.”

  Anger flared again. She pushed past him to get to her dresser. “Don’t you try to tell me what to do!”

  “No. Tessie, listen.” He said it more softly. “I don’t want you to go.”

  Then somehow for a moment she actually understood that he was not trying to order her around, that he was worried. More: frightened.

  Yet she could not look at him, and her voice insisted on coming out rough. “I’ll be back.”

  “Tess—”

  “Look, I’m doing the best I can. I’ll be back.”

  She had to go to work. Butch would think it was on account of him if she stayed away, and partly it would have been on account of him, and she wasn’t going to lose a job because an ignorant no-neck male with an attitude had hassled her. In flannel shirt and jeans and her old Red Wings she started hiking toward the IGA.

  Walk, walk. When she was in kindergarten, Mommy used to walk her to school. Hey, I’ve got memories! Of walking to school past the fancy-painted fire hydrant on the corner and the big dogs behind a spiky fence—Mommy would growl back at them. Mommy was goofy and a lot of fun, with jars and jars of pink bubble stuff so she and Tess could run around in the back yard blowing bubbles. Laughing at the big ones. Mommy was like a big kid.

  Walk, walk. Daddy, the big blond daddy, walking in the door. See what kind of mood he’s in. If it was a good one, he’d grab Tess and tickle her just long enough to make her laugh. If it was a bad one, she’d go to her room.

  She was a kid then. Not a kid anymore. Too big now to stay away from a stud in a bad mood.

  But when she got to the IGA, Butch wasn’t there. “Called in sick, said he had a headache,” Lupe told her.

  “I bet he does,” Tess said. She had clobbered him pretty good.

  So that was one good thing: no Butch. The memories were another good thing. Yet, trying to do her job, Tess felt miserable. Grieving. As if somebody had died. Well, somebody had: her father, her mother, years ago—but it felt like yesterday. That on top of Butch and his gun on top of all the usual worries: no money, Daddy’s health, maybe having to move, school—Tess ached. Her whole chest felt empty with just wanting—something. Wanting to be done wanting.

  Crux came on.

  In this dirty world

  you can’t see far

  but you gotta believe

  there’s a secret star…

  Yeah, right, Tess thought. She didn’t want to believe anything anymore. She didn’t want to dream anymore. Believing, dreaming—they hurt too much. She threw down the potatoes she was sorting, strode past Lupe, and whacked off the radio.

  When she got out of work, Kam was not there.

  Tess looked all around, peering into the dusk. She’d thought for sure Kamo would be there. Where was he? He knew she was going through all kinds of crap. She couldn’t believe he wasn’t there for her.

  But he wasn’t. Tess stood by the Dumpster, darkness coming, shifting from one big foot to the other, alone again.

  Can’t depend on anybody.

  She pressed her lips together and started walking, out the gravel lot to the alley, up the alley toward the street. Staring at the ground. Tired. Too damn many hills. Kam was probably loafing in his camp, the slug. Listening to Crux on his radio.

  Wait a minute. She remembered a couple of times when she had run to his camp in the night and thought she heard a radio, but she’d never seen any—

  A car roared up behind her, slowed beside her. Someone laughed.

  She turned
her head, startled, afraid for a moment. But no, it wasn’t Butch. One of his friends, in a thunderous old Barracuda. “Hey!” he yelled at her. “You going to the fight?”

  She gawked at him. He laughed again and roared off.

  Fight? What was he talking about?

  Why had he laughed?

  Tess walked, head up, alert now. Just as she reached the end of the alley, Butch’s truck whizzed by, headed up Main Street. Butch hadn’t seen her, but she had seen him.

  Oh, God. Why had that kid yelled something about a fight at her? Why had he laughed? Only one possible reason.

  Only one good reason why Kam hadn’t been at the IGA to meet her.

  Tess started to run up the steep Main Street hill. When her chest hurt, she kept running. When her lungs caught fire, she kept running.

  She got to the top just in time to see Butch’s truck disappearing down the lane that led to the salvage yard.

  Made sense. Of course they’d meet there. Of course they’d do it at dusk, when the men who worked there were gone.

  Oh, God. Oh, Kam.

  Tess ran. Across somebody’s yard and into woods, trying to get to the salvage yard faster. But a creek had cut a ravine in the hillside and the ravine was filled with blackberry tangles. Tess swore, tore through the brambles, ran through the rocky shallow water, lunged up the far side of the ravine. At the top was a tumbledown stone wall topped with a strand of rusty barbed wire; Tess felt it rip her shirt and slice into her back as she dove through. “Damn it!” Kamo, what kind of stupidity is going through your head? “Idiot!” She knew some of what he was thinking. At one point after all hell broke loose he had asked her, with that tight lost look on his face, “Did you like Butch? Ever?” and she had almost laughed. No, she hadn’t liked Butch. She had wanted Butch to like her. There was a difference.

  Kamo, please. Don’t get yourself hurt.

  She barreled over the hill and down toward the salvage yard, bleeding.

  Panting, she reached the edge of the woods.

  Then she stood still, feeling her heart clench. Two of Butch’s friends were holding Kamo by the arms while the others gathered around. Tess saw the guy who had laughed at her. And she saw Butch strutting and showing off his muscles in front of Kamo. And she heard him.