The sun rose high and pounded on him as he dug. All the while, that scream haunted him. It seemed that with every shovelful, he again saw her mouth gaping, her eyes widening in pain. He imagined her noise probably sounded like the scream of a new zombie, raised from someone who didn’t want to live again.
He dug the hole about two-feet wide, five-feet tall, and six-feet deep. Not deep enough, but he couldn't really get it much deeper. There simply wasn’t enough space in the glade for him to shovel any more dirt. It kept falling back into the hole as he tossed it out, until finally he figured it would have to do.
He returned to the house, pushing the cart with the shovel in it, seeking a late lunch. However, the moment he stepped into the kitchen, he went to the door of Mama’s room and stood there, not entering.
Doc was in there.
Mama laid in her bed, propped up against the wall, her face smudged with red dirt as she looked straight ahead, out the open window opposite her. She had gray covers pulled up to her waist, and her arms sat next to her, outside of the blanket.
Get these people out of here, her voice said to him. I want to die in peace. And once they’re gone, don’t you let them bring me back, Thomas. Don’t you dare. I’ve served my time. I’ve done my part. You do anything you can to keep me dead.
Papa stood on the opposite side of the bed, holding his hat in his hands, next to Doc, who sat in a chair. Thomas had always thought he looked like a frog, with that round face, those little eyes, and that wide mouth. He also didn’t have a chin. Just a sagging neck.
Clara May had returned. She stood behind Doc, lips tight, eyes wide. She had her arms folded close to her belly, as if a biting cold nipped at her. But now with the day into the afternoon, the room had taken up a relentless heat.
Doc shook his head and furrowed his brow. That neck waggled.
“I can’t find anything wrong with her,” he said. Like many people in Sanctuary, he’d immigrated from another country, and had an accent. An English one. Rumor had it, he’d been a prominet doctor in London before learning about the healing powers of the blessings, and pursuing them. He’d probably never expected to wind up in Hurricane. “Other than she’s got all the symptoms of those who fade. I don’t think she’ll last the night.”
He said it with such solemnity that Thomas knew it for the truth. He’d known already, but the way Doc said it left Thomas feeling nothing but dread and longing. He would live the rest of his life without Mama, the person who’d worked hard by his side his whole life, who’d given him direction and always told him what to do, and been there to show him the way.
He looked into the future, tried to imagine the harvest-ready fields and cool winter house with her not there. He couldn’t do it, though. Everything seemed dim. Lifeless.
Maybe he shouldn’t try to stop them from resurrecting her. If he let them, he would have her a little longer, at least. A man needed his mother.
“I reckon,” Papa said. He looked down at his hands. He bore a hopeful expression. “I reckon you’re entitled to your opinion on the matter, Doc. But the good Lord knows that I need her by my side. He’ll see her through.”
Thomas almost demanded to know upon what basis Papa clung to such confidence that she would live. Because if the Lord had any mercy at all, he would kill Mama right then. Free her of Papa’s dependence. For her, dying would probably feel like the great lifting of a weight off her shoulders. A sedimentary, useless, ugly, jabbering, enormous weight that couldn’t lift a finger because he’d failed at obtaining a gift. What an idiot. By the blessings, a perfect idiot.
No, Thomas couldn’t let them resurrect her. She didn’t want to deal with Papa any more than Thomas did.
But he certainly understood why they wanted her back.
Doc gave a helpless shrug. "I've seen the fading before. With people who've used up all their second-life days. And I've heard that it happens to people with endless second-life days. Never known anyone with endless second-life days, though, so I can't speak to that. But I do know that once the fading begins, there's no stopping it."
"Then I reckon," Papa said, "that she ain't fading."
Doc shook his head and raised his eyebrows. “You’re welcome to think as you will. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got paying customers I need to get back to.”
With raised eyebrows and downcast eyes, he stepped around the bed and past Thomas, out of the room. Everyone followed him, except for Thomas, who took the opportunity to step into Mama’s room. He wanted to see her one last time while she lived. He wanted to apologize again for making her scream.
Her eyes drooped but remained open, staring at nothing. Though he’d looked on her face a million times, and dozens of times in the past week, it surprised him how gaunt she’d become. All of the flesh seemed to have drained out of her face, so that her countenance consisted only of bone and skin, and eyes so sunken she practically needed a telescope to see out of her sockets.
He could hear her shrill voice, demanding his help. Don’t you let them bring me back, Thomas. Don’t you dare. I’ve served my time. I’ve done my part. You do anything you can to keep me dead.
In two steps, he reached her bedside. Her old nightgown had probably been white, once. Any frills or lace had long since wore off. Her wasted torso contracted and expanded with breaths punctuated by long pauses. She would inhale, air rattling in her throat, pause half a dozen seconds, and give a rasping exhale.
Another pause. The slow inhale.
He leaned over enough to take her bony hand in his. Cold. If she didn’t breathe, he would have sworn she’d been dead long enough that her body had already cooled. He nearly reached over to close her eyes, to see what would happen.
The Doc’s voice faded out of the front door, and Papa’s and Clara May’s followed him. Thomas just stood there, not knowing what to think. A rhyme came to him, one of a handful she’d taught him when he’d only stood up to her waist, while they worked out in the field. Patting her hand, he whispered it so only she could hear.
Dog guts outside the red cloth of flame
Outline our protected country name
He had no idea what it meant. She’d probably made it up out of sheer boredom while tending the crops, or in an effort to distract him from the work she kept him at while Charles ran off to ride.
Yet, it connected him to her. Only he and she shared it. He’d never heard her repeat it near anyone else. As far as he knew, she’d taught only him the words.
In the end, the rhyme meant nothing, yet everything.
With a shiver, he placed her hand back on the bed so he could press his forefingers to his eyes. Then he stood there, wet lids clamped shut beneath his knuckles, breath trembling in his chest. He felt woozy, like he was a little kid again, and Mama had just spun him around to make him dizzy. And in a moment she would let go and he would fall into the soft dirt of the freshly plowed field. They would laugh and laugh. He would breathe deep and love that smell and the feel of the ground beneath his fingers. And her above him, for once laughing. Not yelling at him and not cursing Papa. Not fawning over Charles. The red ground and blue sky swaying until his head finally cleared.
For a moment it felt like real life. Not just a memory.
Was any of it real? Had any thing like that ever happened?
With the moment of dizziness past, he lowered his hands and opened his eyes. He saw no laughing or smiling, felt no dirt beneath his fingertips. Only saw a sick hag with a bitter face, staring at nothing, not even knowing it was the last time she would see her son.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” he said. He squeezed her hand. “For everything.”
At the doorway he looked back, wishing for some sign that she knew he’d visited her one last time. An acknowledgement of some sort.
But there was nothing.
He went out to the field to work. In company with the shovel and cart, he waited for his Mama to die.
I married there in Hurricane. At the time I felt it a smart match, viewe
d it as an opportunity to get away from my parents and siblings. I was a damned fool.
Chapter 10: An invitation to court
Perhaps an hour later, David’s wagon rattled up the road and stopped in front of the farm. Thomas finished pushing the cart into the field, and walked the rest of the way down the lane. The sun, high in the sky, beat down on his back. Heat seemed to rise from the ground all around him.
Miss Wendy, three years David’s junior, sat next to him atop the wagon, wearing a gray woolen dress that buttoned halfway up her neck and at her wrists. Thomas had always enjoyed how she’d braided her dark hair down her back, but didn’t know how to feel about how she locked those brown eyes on him.
She smiled, lips closed, eyebrows raised. “How’s your family, Thomas?”
“They’re all fine,” he said, not wanting to get into Mama’s fading. “I’m just getting this field ready for planting.”
“You work so hard,” she said. “I don’t know how you do it—what with your Papa not helping at all.”
“Or Charles,” David said. “It’s just you and your Mama running the farm, isn’t it?”
Thomas nodded, a little wary of David’s tone. In the past they’d joked about Papa’s laziness, and it had always been fun, a way for Thomas to release frustration. They’d always supported him.
But that had changed in about the last year, as his friends had taken on the work of caring for a wife and making a living. They understood, now, how Papa’s laziness placed a weight on others. Folks hated to see people’s kids starve, and so they supported and helped them, which kept them from caring for their own as much as they could. Kept them from what leisure or improvement they might’ve had.
Thomas sensed all of that in David’s tone. He knew his friend well enough. They’d talked about it enough.
“You know, Thomas,” David said, “I understand you. Wendy, here, understands you. Not everyone does.”
“What do you mean by that?” Thomas said.
David smiled. “Not everyone understands that you work hard. Not everyone would let you . . . court their sister.”
Miss Wendy gasped and hit David’s arm with the back of her hand. Her face turned red. So did Thomas’s, but for a different reason. He didn’t like to be lumped with Papa and Charles.
“I’ve got to get back to work,” Thomas said. He hadn’t thought of Mr. Brady much during the day, but suddenly worried for David’s wife and child. “And you should get back to your farm. Make sure everything is fine, there.”
“Right,” David said, and lifted the reins. But he didn’t whip them. Instead, he raised his eyebrows at his sister.
Still blushing, she looked down at Thomas’s feet. She cleared her throat.
“Thomas, I’d be disappointed if you didn’t call on me while I’m staying with David.”
His cheeks reddened more—for a different reason than before. “Well. That’s nice of you.”
“I’m about ready to petition for the culinary blessing. I’m getting right good at baking little cakes. I’d like to bake some for you if you came."
“I’ll see what I can do.”
She smiled and looked at him from beneath her eyelashes. The stare struck him as sly and shy and forward all at once. It made his knees go weak. He’d always found her pretty, and she looked more like a woman every time he saw her.
The touch of Miss Sadie’s hand in his, his cheek against her neck, flashed through his head. The feel of his arms around her, hers around him. Her skin had smelled like flowers with a touch of sweat.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said again. “About visiting.”
David nodded and whipped the reins. “We’ll look for you, Thomas. I’ve got to be off. A man’s got to work and support his family, after all.”
The wagon lurched forward. David leaned in close to Miss Wendy and said, “At least, some men do.”
She tossed her head back and laughed.
Thomas knew that David hadn’t meant him to hear the comment, but the words cut him to the core. It made his ears burn, his heart pound with anger.
David had said he understood that Thomas was different than Papa, but did he really believe it? Did everyone think Thomas was like Papa? Surely many of them thought he would spend the rest of his life living off of other people. Well, he wouldn’t. He already worked harder than most men with families and children, running the farm. But they couldn’t see that. Papa’s reputation clung to him like dung rubbed into his face.
Thomas clenched his jaw and turned back to the field. He’d only covered a small corner of it with the loam—soil enchanted at the cost of his second-life days, for a no-good Papa and brother and sister.
Maybe he could leave. Maybe he could go somewhere they’d never heard of William Baker. St. George wouldn’t be far enough. Somewhere far off. East, maybe. Back to the Midwest where the fields stretched for miles and miles, and God meant the land for farming. Not like this dry, barren ground here. He heard that they didn’t have to use any second-life days to fertilize the soil or soften the ground for plowing.
There, he could find new friends. Ones who hadn’t sacrificed freedom because of their obsession to get bedded.
Thomas, don’t you dare think like that. Ain’t nothing but sorrow and trouble can come from shirking your responsibilities on this farm.
He would do it. He would leave. Find a life without the reputation of his Papa overshadowing him. Mama’s passing would open that door. She would not be around to make him stay.
As he emptied the push cart and returned to the pile by the barn, he made up his mind and began making plans.
He would rid himself of the burden of his family.
* * *
Thomas worked out in the field the rest of the day, waiting for a sign that Mama had died. A bank of dark clouds rolled in and passed by without raining. He must have filled and emptied the cart fifty times by the time Charles returned near evening, and stood there talking to Papa for a few moments.
Thomas only overheard some of it. And he tried to ignore all of it, but he couldn’t help but catch bits about horse races Charles had won while in town. He always went into town to race. Every week. And now he’d arranged another race in two days, with the horse everyone in Hurricane believed to be the fastest in Sanctuary.
When Thomas heard that, he shouted through clenched teeth.
Not long later, Mama died.
Thomas was walking back to the farm, pushing the cart with the shovel inside, still ignoring the aching in his muscles from the beating he’d taken earlier that day. Sweat dripped into his eyes. Clara May began to wail.
It wasn’t nothing like the cries Mama had released earlier that afternoon, but it had about the same effect on Thomas. The handles of the cart slipped from his grasp and the cart nearly toppled. His knees went wobbly and a strange weakness seeped down into his arms.
What had her last words been to him? He couldn’t even remember. Did that screaming up by the creek, in the glade, count? What had been his last words to her, just a few hours before as he’d looked at her sitting there in her bed, eyes open but seeing nothing? What had he said? He couldn’t remember. He could only recall her propped up like a doll, ears hearing nothing. Hands feeling nothing. Not even one last squeeze from a son.
His Mama had died.
He needed to spirit her body away and get it buried.
* * *
He didn’t return to the house until after the sun set and it became too dark to work. Then he went straight to his bed, without talking to no one, without eating nothing, and pretended to sleep. In the other rooms, everyone else kept moving about. The boards creaked beneath their feet. Clara May wept. Franky asked dozens of questions. Charles assured everyone else that Mama would live again. Papa lamented the dinner that Clara May had cooked.
Eventually the noises settled down. Clara May went into her room and after a time her tears subsided. Franky came to bed and jabbed Thomas with his elbows and heels as he got in. Pa
pa moved off into his room, and his bed squealed under his weight. He heaved an enormous sigh, as if glad to rest after a long day of back-breaking work. Charles left the house, presumably going to the barn to tuck his horse in for the night, and came back in through the rear door. He settled into bed on the other side of Franky.
And Thomas waited.
He waited and waited, listening to the sounds of the house. Franky’s even breathing. Charles’s snorting and snoring, the occasional mumbling about some race or another. The sigh of a breeze through the house. Something scurrying outside. The occasional noise from the chickens. A coyote howling in the distance.
He lay on his back, staring into the darkness, never moving, yet wanting to pounce on Charles and return the beating he’d received that day. In the darkness, as he lay looking at the moonlight filtering in from the cracks in the walls, he re-lived the moment when he’d seen Charles coming around the corner of the house on that horse. Then, the futile flight, and the feel of Charles tackling him and nearly breaking his back. The moonlight provided enough illumination that he could see the shapes of things around him.
To push Charles from his mind, he tried to remember the feel of Miss Sadie’s skin, the sound of her voice. He wanted to experience them both, again. Would Miss Wendy’s neck feel as soft? Would a mere handshake with her make his legs wobble? Had Miss Sadie already forgotten him?
He tried to push the sound of Mama’s screams from his head, but they returned to him often. That gaping of her mouth, that noise rising from her throat, and Stanley and Franky reacting with despair.
Those and so many other things filled his head that he might not have slept even without a reason to stay awake.
Mama dead. Clara May’s wail that he heard while out in the field. How Mama had already looked like a zombie the last time he’d seen her alive.
Deep into the night, he finally rose.
He stood next to the bed, stretching the ache out of his body, the floor boards cold on his bare feet. His heart rate accelerated, and only increased when he slipped into the kitchen.
Keep Mama Dead Page 8
