Stanley jumped away and eyed her like she was a cat that had just clawed his nose.
“Okay,” Franky said, “gonna cut it.”
Mama didn't move.
Thomas had killed her.
Nice work, idiot.
* * *
Glancing back at Franky—and getting an eyeful of fish guts—Thomas squatted next to Mama. Franky apparently hadn't noticed anything, because he didn't look up from the fish.
Thomas rolled Mama over in the dirt. Red dust covered the front of her dress and her face, and even her eyes. He felt weak in the arms and legs. Just a little dizzy. Bending low and turning his head, he listened at her mouth and looked for the rise and fall of her chest.
A hint of breath touched his ear. Her dress lifted a hair.
He exhaled long and hard. His conscience eased a significant amount.
Well, so much for subtlety.
"Is this how you do it?" Franky said.
Thomas didn't look at his brother. "Sure. Keep it up."
His cover was as blown as it would ever be, so he stood and picked Mama up like a sack of potatoes slung over his shoulder, his arms holding her legs against his chest. Her hands hung down, dangled near the back of his knees. He couldn't remember ever holding her body. It weighed almost nothing. She couldn't weigh more than ninety pounds.
"What's going on back there?"
Papa. If he came around the house—
Then what? What would he do? Tell Thomas to stop it? Go back to his rocker? He certainly wouldn't do anything Thomas couldn't handle.
Except—he could tell the others when they got back that Thomas had taken Mama away and hid her. He had to get her away without Papa knowing. Without anyone knowing. Not even Franky.
"Just gutting the fish!" Franky said.
"Just helping him!" Thomas said.
Franky looked up. Slime covered his hands. He'd opened the fish wrong. One slice should have done it, but he'd cut at least two more times. A surprising amount of guts hung out of the body.
"You're not helping me," Franky said.
Thomas darted to the cart at the back corner of the house.
"Where's Mama?" Papa said, his voice closer. He'd actually gotten up off the rocker—a third miracle that day—and was coming around the side of the house.
"Just pretend I'm helping you," Thomas said.
He looked around for a place to put Mama, but didn't know how much time he had. On the other side of the house? Inside? No. Either place could take too long.
So—trying to strike a balance between gentleness and speed—he dumped Mama into the push cart. She didn't fit, entirely, but if he folded her body over and tucked her legs under, she almost did. The boards he’d added to the sides helped, but weren’t enough. He reached under her and pulled out a scoop of dirt, and sprinkled it on her for camouflage. Not nearly enough, but he had no more time. Papa's boots shuffled behind him, not far around the corner.
Thomas did the best he could to stand in front of Mama and the cart, to block Papa's view.
"I guess you're helping me," Franky said. "You told me how to do it."
"Right," Thomas said. "I did."
Papa ambled around the corner and slumped to a halt. His shoulders sagged forward and his gut hung low like always. He frowned at Thomas, then at Franky.
"You boys keep it down back here. You'll disturb your Mama."
"Where is she?" Franky said.
Papa shrugged.
Thomas shook his head and looked skyward. Sometimes it paid to have a brother that leaned to the slow side, and a father that avoided even looking at the implements of work.
"We'll be quiet," Franky said, and turned back to his fish.
Papa went back around the house. Thomas counted to fifteen.
What are you waiting for? Go, go!
He turned and gripped the handles of the cart with sweaty palms. He started up the hill, pushing the cart. Mama still didn't make a sound. With any luck, she'd be dead before Thomas had her grave dug.
The Moabites saw it as an economic decision. A zombie required no food or rest. They were beholden to whoever raised them, like slaves. Well, there are other ways to make slaves of men and women.
Chapter 9: Cries of desperation
Scrub oak grew thick along the banks of the reservoir, and it took Thomas a good ten minutes to push his way through to the little glade he'd seen Mama in a few times—although not recently. It had probably been a year or more since he'd seen her here. He reckoned no one else knew of the place. Or if they did, they didn't know she came here sometimes.
Not that it was anything special. It offered no shade, since the scrub oak didn't grow that tall. It did grow thick, though, and you could only see the clearing from further up the hill. It was only by chance that Thomas had seen her here before. It was a small place, perhaps eight feet long and five feet wide, with the red dirt relatively packed. The density of the trees cut off much of the sound of the Quail Creek; and he couldn’t even see the water, though only a dozen feet away as it ran toward the reservoir.
The glade seemed suitable for a grave. When she died, he could wrap her in blankets and lay her in the hole, then pack the dirt down to how it looked before. No one would know the difference. Later, when the time for resurrecting had passed, he could come back and mark the grave.
He took her out of the cart and laid her out on the edge of the dirt, up against the low branches of the trees. After brushing the dirt off of her, he double checked to find she still lived, and turned to grab the shovel.
But he'd left it by the barn, next to the pile of dirt.
He looked at Mama where she lay, eyes open, staring up into the cloudless sky. If he left, she might try to follow him. He could get the shovel and be back in less than five minutes. At her current speed, how far could she get in that time? Not far.
So he set off for the barn.
By the time he got back up to the glade, Mama had disappeared.
* * *
He checked upstream, searching through the scrub oak, then along both sides of the reservoir. About the time he started figuring it was just as well that she go away and get lost for good, he headed back along the irrigation ditch through the sagebrush and cacti, toward the fields. As he reached the edge of the wild land, he stopped and looked out over the red field down toward the house.
She stood half way down the field, facing him, hardly moving.
He shook his head and nearly cursed. How did she get there so fast?
As he started down the ridge, he couldn't see that she moved any faster than earlier. Yet, she must have, to have gotten there so fast without him seeing. It was like she knew when he watched her, so automatically slowed down.
Franky had disappeared from the back of the house. So had the fish. And Stanley.
Thomas bolted down the hill, past the sagebrush and into the furrows of the field, to Mama. He nearly stumbled once, from how he watched the house to make sure no one saw him. When he reached her, he stood in front of her.
"Where you going, Mama?"
Her expression didn't change. Her eyes didn't move.
"Let's go back up there," he said. "Let you die in peace."
Still nothing. He bent down and once again slung her over his shoulder. Her rotten smell seemed stronger as he carried her back up the field. At the top of the ridge, where the field ended and he could see the scrub oak fifty feet away, Stanley emerged from the trees and loped toward him. It startled him, nearly causing him to drop Mama.
“Stanley!” he said. “You scared me!”
He looked back at the house, worried that someone would spot him. But he saw no one.
When he turned back around, he jumped to find Franky standing fifty feet away, next to the cart at the edge of the scrub oak. Franky looked at him with head tilted to the side, much like how Stanley looked at him sometimes.
Thomas tried not to look guilty. He didn’t know what to say. How had Franky gotten up to here without Thomas
seeing? Or Stanley, for that matter.
“What are you doing?” Franky said.
“What did you do with the fish?”
Franky shrugged. “It’s inside. What are you doing?”
“You should go get Papa to try and start a fire in the stove, so we can cook the fish.”
Franky recognized the absurdity of the statement and grinned. “He can’t start no fire.”
“I’ve seen him do it.”
“You have not.”
“He can start a fire. I promise.”
“He ca—.”
“Please! Just go down to the house!”
“What are you doing with Mama?”
Thomas glanced back at the house. It sat in the middle of the fields like a wart on the land. Still no sign of any other people. To get out of sight of anyone down at the house, he took a dozen steps forward, around a wide sagebush toward Franky. He called Stanley out of the field where he cavorted with a butterfly—to get him out of view of the house, too.
“I’m just—. I’m just helping her.”
Franky’s brow furrowed and his lips puckered. “Can I help you?”
Thomas took several deep breaths. Maybe Franky would keep quiet. Maybe he would get bored of digging a hole and go back down to the house.
“Listen, if you want to help you can. But you can’t tell anyone what we’re doing. You understand?”
Franky nodded.
He adjusted Mama’s position over his shoulder and led Franky and Stanley through the scrub oak to the tight clearing. He put Mama down on the far side, instructed Franky to sit down and tell him if he was digging the hole just right, and got to work. Franky sat cross legged, elbows on knees, chin in palms. Stanley watched the entire affair with apparent amusement.
After Thomas had thrown two shovelfuls of dirt to the side, Franky lifted his head.
“How is this helping Mama?”
"We're helping her die in peace."
“Digging a hole is going to help her die in peace?”
“You can’t tell anyone about this hole. You understand? Can’t anyone know about it.”
Franky shrugged. “If you say so, Thomas. You’re my big brother. You always know what to do.”
Mama sat there, her legs straight out, eyes wide. Franky moved over next to her, extended his legs out, and lay his head down on her lap. With a smile, he looked up at her.
"We're just helping you die in peace, Mama," he said.
She stared forward, closed her mouth and swallowed, let her jaw drop open half an inch.
Thomas continued to dig. The tight space made it hard, but soon he had a hole about a foot deep and a foot wide.
Mama stirred. Franky lifted his head from her lap and sat up with a questioning look. Freed of him, she stood right up, almost as fast as a normal person would. Startled to see her moving, Thomas watched her step past him and begin to push her way through the bushes.
"Where you going?" he said.
He placed a hand on her shoulder, to hold her back.
She pulled her shoulder forward, to escape his reach.
He held tighter.
She screamed.
It wasn’t a normal sound. Not like a human would make. More like the screech of some small animal suffering inexplicable pain—only with the lungs and vocal chords of a human.
The wail filled his ears and made him jump. Stanley leaped to his feet and started to growl. Franky covered his ears and jumped up.
Thomas let go of her.
The sound stopped. She didn't look back, but continued on out of the bushes. She didn’t push branches out of her way with her arms, but let them brush across her body and face.
Thomas watched her go. Stanley whimpered at his legs, but Thomas didn't answer until she'd passed completely through and disappeared from his sight.
"What was that?" Franky said.
Stanley gave him a look that said plainly he didn't want to find out.
"It must be an effect of the fading," Thomas said.
He didn't know for certain. He didn't know a lot about how people acted as they faded. He doubted anyone did.
He threw down the shovel and pushed his way out of the glade, followed by Franky and Stanley. Half a dozen steps through the sagebrush and red dirt, he caught up to Mama and stepped in front of her.
She stopped moving forward, eyes still blank. After a moment, Thomas began to reach out for her, to put her over his shoulder again, but her mouth dropped open, gaping wider than he'd ever seen a mouth gape, and once again the sound bugled from her throat. High-pitched. Agonizing. It pierced his ears like needles. Her rotten breath battered him. Her eyes stayed hollow, empty.
What hell was she living in? What was the fading doing to her?
Stanley howled.
Franky grabbed Thomas by the arm and tried to pull him to the side.
“Make it stop! Get out of her way!”
Thomas stayed firm, frozen, covering his ears with his hands, trying to decide what to do. She wanted to go back to the house. He could feel it. She wanted to go there, and it caused her insufferable pain to experience any kind of impediment.
“You’re hurting her!” Franky said. “Let her go!”
She screamed on and on. Franky finally let go of Thomas’s hand and covered his ears as he began to cry. Once, she stopped to take a hissing breath, as if inhaling all of the air in the world in a second, and released another scream that seemed to never end.
Surely anyone at the house could hear it. Surely Papa wondered what animal suffered up by the reservoir.
Surely it had to end, eventually.
Thomas gritted his teeth and grabbed Mama by the arms. It was for her own good. It was so she could die and stay dead. He dragged her back toward the scrub oak—remembering almost too late how he’d made her fall over, earlier. He caught her with both hands, and slid them under her arms. Her sound increased in pitch, as if the pain had doubled. He began to back through the trees, pulling her so her heels dragged through the dirt. She weighed almost nothing. She put up no physical resistance. It should have proven no trouble for him. Yet her primal noise drained his strength, so that he could barely make it through to the glade.
The fading. The fading did this to her. Whatever it was.
Stanley had rolled to his back in the dirt, as if in supplication for some incredible mercy, and continued to wail. Franky didn’t follow. He stood outside the trees, crying.
Thomas straightened her and moved in front of her without letting go of her arms. Her eyes didn't touch him, yet her voice pricked his soul.
"Stop that!" he said.
He shook her. The scream trembled as her head flipped back and forth.
"Stop it! It's for your own good."
But the wail continued, beating against the walls of his resolve, tearing them down in enormous swaths, so that in only a few moments he could take it no more. He released her arms and she crumbled to the ground.
The sound stopped.
He dropped to his knees, his ears ringing. He removed his hat and ran a hand through his sweaty hair.
Behind him, Franky crashed through the bush, panting hard and still holding his hands over his ears.
“This don't feel like helping her.”
She stood, and without so much as an accusatory glance, stepped by Thomas, into the scrub oak. He didn't turn to watch her go, but did put his hat back on.
He wasn’t no murderer, but he'd mishandled his Mama. He'd moved her against her will, and shaken her. What a son. What a son.
Charles wouldn't have done that. Neither would Franky. Nor Clara May. None of them would have put her through that, abused her body like that. Why did he?
To protect her. She couldn't think, didn't know what would soon happen to her. She would die and be resurrected, and have to live on for more years—and she wouldn't want that. He knew it. He knew it deep in the pit of his soul. She wanted to die and stay dead. She'd wearied of life, of the endless days of working in the hou
se and on the farm for a worthless husband.
Was that really it?
Was it?
He cast his mind back to previous days, to times he'd spent with her in the field or in the house. He searched through the months and years for the source of his certainty. Did she want to die and stay dead? Had she ever said anything about it?
Nothing came to him. Nothing specific. Only floods of memories. Times she'd berated him for not working hard enough. Occurrences when she'd told Papa she hated his lazy guts. Snippets of complaining about the weather or the leaks in the barn. Visions of her screaming at Clara May for being worthless.
No—she'd never said she didn't want to be resurrected, but she hadn't exactly relished life. She'd lived in a begrudging acceptance of her lot. He knew it, and that knowledge spoke to him as surely as if she'd told him she didn't want to come back.
But why did the others want her to live, again?
For one thing, she was their mother and wife. That was something—and Thomas understood it. You depended on your Mama. You loved her because she brought you into the world. He understood that.
But they also wanted to bring her back because she worked for them. She cooked for them and kept the house and the farm for them. Along with Thomas. Chances were that if he died and had used up all his second-life days, they’d want to resurrect him, too—and the thought burned up his guts; he wouldn’t want to come back.
But they would want him back, to be their slave, just like they wanted her back. Even if she didn't want to come back.
Well, he would stop them.
Even despite the arrival of the Doc.
* * *
Thomas committed Franky to keep the location and hole a secret, and sent him on back to the house with Mama. Franky could be counted on to keep the secret. He’d kept plenty in the past.
It took several hours—until long past noon—to dig the grave. He might not succeed in keeping Mama away from the family until she died, but at least once she died he could sneak her away before they resurrected her. He had no other choice, and foresaw no other opportunity.
Keep Mama Dead Page 7
