One of Us

by Craig DiLouie

  Doubly hard to imagine her lying lifeless in a casket.

  Her first real friend.

  Mama put her flask, Virginia Slims, and Bic lighter in her pocketbook and slung it over her shoulder. They walked to Mama’s old Datsun and got in. The gray sky overhead promised rain. Mama sagged behind the wheel like she was exhausted already. She rolled the window down halfway and lit a cigarette. Then she started the car and drove off.

  Amy stared out the window. They passed the spot where Bowie attacked her. She shivered and looked in the rearview. Saw only swirling brown dust.

  Mama patted her leg. “You did the right thing. Got yourself out of a big ol’ pickle. I’m proud of you.”

  Amy nodded again, but she hadn’t done it for herself. She’d wanted revenge on Enoch Bryant for what he did to Sally. She would go to court and perjure herself to get it. Perjury was nothing to her. She was used to lying for high stakes. She’d been lying her whole life.

  The plague kid would be tried as an adult for sure. He’d die in the electric chair for his crime. The way Mama explained it, her testimony allowed the sheriff to close the book on Bowie’s murder and get herself out from under his scrutiny. Her Amy killed two birds with one stone. Her baby girl, growing up in the world.

  Cars and pickups filled the church’s little dirt lot. The whole county, it seemed, had come out to pay their respects to the Albods. One by one, the church swallowed the mourners in black, everybody walking slow so as to lend dignity to it all. Mama parked on the road behind a Chevy and took a long pull from her flask, leaving a ring of red lipstick on the spout. She sighed and put the cap on.

  “Can I have a drink of that?” Amy said. “I think I need some bracing.”

  Mama handed it over. Amy had a sip and winced as the burn worked its way down her gullet. Mama took the flask back and put it in her pocketbook. She eyed a crowd of reporters standing off the side of the church.

  “We’re gonna need this,” she said. “Get through this day. If any reporter tries to talk to you, you let me do the talking. Worthless nosy nellies, the lot of them.”

  “All right, Mama.”

  “You already been through enough. Here, you better have a breath mint.”

  They got out and walked across the grass toward the church doors. The morning air was cool and moist on Amy’s bare arms. A breeze rustled the dogwoods that dotted the lawn. The sky past the crossed church spire gloomed with thunderheads. A storm was coming.

  Mama linked her arm with Amy’s, still in mama bear mode. Amy chafed at her tight hold. Her mama’s arm was like a manacle wrapped around her bicep.

  An old man handed them programs inside. The stifling church smelled sweet and sour, like cleaning chemicals and flowers and sweat. People fanned themselves in the pews. Folks nodded to each other. Like school was for Amy, church was for grown-ups, a place where people came together. Soon, it would be standing room only. A few heads turned as they worked their way up the aisle, then more. Eyes roamed up and down the Green girls in their black dresses.

  “There was a time,” Mama murmured, “I’d have them all fighting.”

  She smiled as if picturing gladiator combat, the mourners punching each other in the pews until the last man staggered forward to make his claim.

  Amy felt herself turn to stone at the thought of any of these men touching her. She spotted Jake in one of the front pews and slipped her arm from Mama’s. “I’m gonna go sit with my boyfriend.”

  “You know my feelings on that.”

  “I know all about your feelings, Mama. It’s not like they’re a secret. Jake is my boyfriend, and I’m gonna sit with him.”

  “Fine, then. I suppose I’ll just have to entertain myself.”

  “My friend is dead, Mama. It ain’t supposed to be entertaining.”

  Amy left her side and hurried down the carpeted aisle. The organist played a sorrowful dirge. The pulpit awaited the reverend’s oration. Sally’s casket lay ringed by flowered hearts and wreaths and crosses mounted on easels. The air was sickly sweet. She saw Sally lying in the casket and faltered.

  Her friend was really and truly gone from this earth.

  Jake spotted her and stood with wide eyes. He’d combed his hair and wore a clean white shirt and tie. He hurried over and hugged her tight.

  “I’ve been missing you something fierce,” she said.

  “I was real worried about you.”

  “I’m all right, honey,” she said, her heart leaping at his touch.

  He smiled against her cheek. “I love you, Amy Green.”

  “I love you, Jake Coombs.”

  People cleared their throats and frowned at them. Jake led her to his pew and sat her down, still holding her hand. Michelle and Troy welcomed her with dazed smiles.

  “I don’t know if I can go up there and say goodbye,” Michelle said, choking up.

  Troy nodded and sighed, shoulders sagging. Amy remembered he had a thing for Sally. He looked like something that got run over in the road.

  Jake leaned close. “I heard you was with that guy.” His tone wavered between offhand and pointed. “That guy bugging us that day at the A & P.”

  “Ray Bowie.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was giving me some hassle, and then that creeper came out of nowhere and killed him.”

  He gripped her hand tighter. “Must have been something awful.”

  “I didn’t remember it for days. Mama nursed me through. I was a real mess. Other than that, I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Well, you’re safe now. I’ll take care of you.”

  “Yes, you will,” she told him.

  “It’s a good thing Bowie is dead, or I’d be the one killing him.”

  “He’s dead. A man couldn’t get any more dead than he is.”

  “I can’t believe that boy Enoch did all that killing. When we all met up in the clearing, he was so nice. George was the one who seemed a bit bent.”

  “No more monsters, Jake.”

  “I was just—”

  “I mean it,” she told him. “I can’t handle it after what happened. It’s too painful. No more monster talk. Promise me.”

  “I promise. It’s just awful, that’s all.”

  Michelle leaned across Jake and patted her hand. “We was worried about you. I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “I ain’t okay,” Amy said. “Not really. But thank you.”

  Michelle sucked in her breath. “Oh, God. It’s Mr. Albod.”

  The farmer walked down the aisle surrounded by his blond daughters. They made a striking image all in black with the organ playing an arresting hymn. The girls seemed to be holding the man up. Mr. Albod had always struck Amy as a giant, one of the county’s great men. Now he looked sunken in and sucked dry, a deflated copy of himself. A man gone old before his time.

  “That poor family,” said Michelle.

  Troy didn’t look. He stared at the casket.

  Reverend Coombs greeted Mr. Albod with a firm handshake as if his touch might convey the needed strength. Amy looked at the casket with its glimpse of Sally’s face and hands clasped over her chest.

  Really and truly gone.

  Jake squeezed her hand as she cried. He pulled a handful of tissues out of his jacket pocket and gave them to her. She balled them in her fist.

  Still shaking his hand, the reverend eyed Mr. Albod with fierce compassion and spoke a few words to him. The farmer nodded, then nodded again. The Albods took their seats as Jake’s daddy mounted to the pulpit. Behind him, a giant cross hung suspended from the ceiling on aircraft cable.

  The organ stopped. The crowd fell into a respectful hush and waited.

  “Friends,” Coombs said. “Friends, neighbors. Reginald Albod wants you all to know that while we are all mourning such a tragic loss, he is rejoicing assured Sally left this earth a Christian. A man says, ‘Where there is life, there is hope.’ The believer says, ‘Where there is death, there is also hope.’ Hope in life ever
lasting at the side of Christ.”

  “Amen,” the crowd murmured.

  The reverend raised his hands to pray. “Lord, we have gathered here to thank you for the life of Sally Mae Albod. Express sorrow you took her from us so soon. We do not always understand the goodness behind your plan, but this time you have spoken plainly. The loss of a child is a clarion call to battle.”

  The congregation growled its assent as the first peal of thunder crashed outside. Rain lashed the stained glass windows. The world seemed to close in until only the church remained.

  “Every Sunday, we pray to you to deliver us from evil,” Coombs said. “Lord, we hear you loud and clear that it is about time we did our own delivering. We have suffered a great loss. You have our full attention now. This time, we’re listening.”

  “Justice,” Mr. Albod said loud enough for all to hear.

  The packed room held its breath. The fanners stopped fanning. Everybody craned their necks for a look at him.

  “Amen,” somebody called out.

  A glimmer of lightning through the windows. Another rush of thunder. The air became electrically charged.

  “Speak, Reggie,” the reverend said. “Open your heart.”

  Mr. Albod scanned the room until he fixed his eyes on Sheriff Burton. “You hear me, Tom? I want justice, and I will get it.”

  Sheriff Burton squirmed in his pew. He didn’t like being put on the spot like this. Then he nodded.

  The farmer returned to his seat like a collapsing tent. He hunched forward, head down, shoulders quaking as his daughters patted his back.

  The reverend leaned on his pulpit. “Reggie wants justice. Don’t we all? You know there is evil in our midst. You know where the evil is. You know exactly where it is. What are you going to do about it? Are you ready to give this suffering father the justice he needs? Are you ready to fight for your God? If not for Him, will you fight for your own children?”

  “We’re ready,” somebody shouted.

  “We’re with you, Reverend.”

  “We’ll fight.”

  “We’ll see,” Coombs said. “And so will God.”

  He nodded to the organist, who began playing a hymn. The Albods rose from their pew and crossed to the casket to view their kin one last time. The aisle filled with mourners waiting their turn.

  “I don’t know if I can go up there and see her,” Troy said.

  “We have to,” Michelle said. “We have to say goodbye.”

  Amy spotted Sheriff Burton standing in the aisle next to his regal wife. The sheriff squinted at her as if she were a puzzle he couldn’t figure out. It was the same look he gave her at his office when she offered her statement. Unsettled, she looked away.

  “I listened to him bark all these years,” Jake murmured.

  “What?” Amy said.

  “I never thought he’d bite.”

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “Pa just declared war on the Home,” he said.

  Twenty-Nine

  Amelia Oliver lectured her class about the War Between the States. The free and slave states disagreed over whether Washington had the power to prohibit slavery in new territories not yet become states. After the nation elected Abraham Lincoln president in 1860 on a platform promising no slavery in the territories, seven states left the Union and formed the Confederacy. Civil war ensued.

  No feedback from the kids. Like lecturing a brick wall.

  Amelia regarded teaching as two-way communication. You teach the kids, and their body language tells you whether they’re learning. The problem with teaching plague kids was many of them didn’t look remotely human.

  Even after doing this job for two years, she still had a hard time figuring out what they were thinking. They looked threatening no matter what they did. Large asymmetric features, grotesque proportions, bared teeth. They said hello, and your mind translated that on an instinctive level as, Hey, I’ll bet you taste like chicken.

  Amelia relied on the old standby of asking questions. “Can anybody tell me why the North didn’t just let the South go its own way?”

  Nobody raised their hand.

  “Come on, George. I bet you know the answer to this one.”

  “I refuse to answer,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m on strike.”

  “Why are you in class if you’re on strike?”

  “I am compelled by force to attend class,” he said. “Not to participate.”

  God, he was being serious.

  “Okay. Why are you on strike?”

  “A week ago, one of the students at this facility was murdered during disciplinary measures,” he explained. “Five days ago, another student was falsely arrested on murder charges and is being detained without legal counsel.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  She’d been told Toby Freeman fell down the stairs. She had no reason to disbelieve it, though she’d heard enough here and there to piece together that Discipline existed and what went on there. Regarding Enoch Bryant, as far as she was concerned, he murdered two people and mauled a teacher. She’d always known him to be a fine boy, but the evidence screamed his guilt. It was a real tragedy.

  No point in arguing with George, though. He’d once eaten up an entire hour of class time arguing that communism accomplished more material good than harm purely based on utilitarian ethics. Even when she knew he was wrong, she had a hard time proving it. Sometimes, he argued both sides of an argument and tied her in knots. He introduced an exciting but exhausting element to class.

  Her eyes swept her students. “Does George speak for the rest of you?”

  Atticus Churchill nodded his blocky head. He was a giant horned thing, though the kids in their aberrant logic called him Tiny. So big, he sat on the floor, as no desk would hold him. Fifteen years old, one of the first of the plague generation.

  “We’re with Brain,” he said in his deep baritone. “All of us.”

  She sighed. “Class dismissed.”

  The plague kids got up and headed to the exit.

  “Not you, George,” she added.

  The kid resumed his seat and waited while the other students filed out. At last, Atticus hauled himself to his feet and shambled across the creaking floor. He bent and squeezed himself through the door, and then he was gone.

  “I’m leaving the Home,” she said.

  George had no problem using body language to express himself. His face’s wrinkled lines articulated shock and dismay. “My turn to ask why.”

  The only truly frightening thing about the boy was his intelligence. Amelia felt sure he had a genius IQ, perhaps even surpassing that level. She doubted he would fail to comprehend anything he told her. Understanding was another matter.

  Things were bad all over in 1982. After college, she couldn’t find a job up North, so she’d accepted a position to come down to Georgia and teach plague children at one of the many Homes. She’d envisioned an exciting and fulfilling adventure, like joining the Peace Corps. In Philadelphia, life felt like a game of beat the clock. She looked forward to a simple life where people moseyed instead of rushed and took time out to smell the flowers.

  She’d grown to hate almost everything about it ever since. She hated Stark County and its heat, bugs, and affected manners laid thick on every social interaction like sickly sweet icing covering a big fat turd. Up North, people said, Fuck you. In the South, they blessed your heart and called you precious. People were always asking her, You ain’t from around here, are you?

  No shit, she wanted to say. No shit and fuck you.

  Many saw her as an uppity Black woman, citified with highfalutin liberal ways, a woman who didn’t need a man. An outsider with no kin or connections in town. The only thing the locals did more than complain about Yankees looking down on them was look down on everybody else.

  She hated the Home most of all. This gloomy, smelly, derelict old slave owner’s house masquerading as a school. The pathetic curriculum, mostly forced labor an
d social conditioning, that passed for an education. The children frightened her, though over time she had grown used to them. Some, like George, she’d even grown quite fond of. The teachers, however, terrified her. Ex-cons, cokeheads, and losers. Almost all men, always smiling at her when there was nothing at all to smile about. Willie Jefferson, Nathan Byrd, Charlie Rucker, the others. Principal Willard was the worst of the lot, the old buzzard she called the Warden behind his back. They scared her enough she carried an old .38 revolver in her purse.

  Then somebody murdered Ray Bowie and Sally Albod. The police arrested a student for the crimes. The townspeople dropped the pretense of good manners and now glared at her at the supermarket and post office. Somebody keyed her car.

  For her, it was the last straw. It was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

  There was no way to explain all this to a fourteen-year-old, even if he was a genius.

  “I’ve been here two years,” Amelia said. “I’m sick of it, George. All of it. It’s time for me to see what else is out there.”

  “You’re sick of us is what I’m hearing.”

  “You’d be surprised who I’m sick of,” she said. “You least of all.”

  “The North couldn’t regard Southern secession as legitimate,” George said. “The elites feared secession would undermine the republic and establish a precedent leading to the disintegration of the United States into small, weak countries.”

  Amelia smiled. “Thought you were on strike.”

  “You said you don’t work here anymore. We’re just talking now.”

  “I’m going to finish the month.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Back to Philly, maybe.”

  “We’ll miss you, Ms. Oliver. I mean that. We all will. It’s safe to say you’re the only good thing about this place. The other teachers don’t even bother trying. We’re all destined for manual labor when we grow up. You try, and that’s what counts. You give us knowledge even though you don’t have to.”

  “Oh,” she said, touched. “Thank you, George. I tried my best.”