26
Cello woke in an old shed choked with dusty sunlight. Something about it was familiar, he thought. It definitely wasn’t the kids’ trailer, and it definitely wasn’t the back of the convenience store. He rolled to his side, and in a tide of pain, he remembered. It was where they’d found Joanie. He wondered where she was, and if she was safe.
His arm throbbed and his chest and stomach burned with bruises. His head ached, and he reached up with his good arm, discovering a palm-size wound at the back of his skull, sticky with blood. Maybe he would bleed out, or the wound now clotted with debris and bacteria from the shed’s walls and floor would fester, killing him off miserably, like some medieval combatant.
A word, his name, swirled out from a corner. He put a finger to his ear, gently tapping against it to make sure he could still hear, that he hadn’t been knocked deaf. A girl’s voice repeated itself. Was it Joanie? Were they back to that night a year ago? No, that couldn’t be, because the sun was there, pouring in, drowning him in musty heat. It was so hard to breathe—Cello tried to respond, but he couldn’t quite catch enough air. There wasn’t enough air in his lungs, nothing was happening.
Had the Josephs taken Ben, too? Cello hoped the other boy was far from this place, but he had a life outside of this—people at the college at least. He would be looked for; Ben would be alright.
A hand then, no, not a hand, just a few fingers—began to pull on his shoulder. Cello tried to turn, to examine the source of the pulling, but he couldn’t move his neck. His name again, and then a shake. Suddenly, a face over his face—Marcela. A filthy, weeping Marcela, but still Marcela.
Then, despite the sun, and Marcela’s voice and shaking, Cello dropped away to somewhere else. He heard Marcela screaming, and other voices around her, too. He felt his body being moved and pulled at. A wound at his temple split farther open, and more blood ran down the crusted side of his face.
When Cello managed to open his eyes again, it was still daylight—except now he was outside, on the overwatered front lawn of Mother Joseph’s house. Marcela stood nearby, red-eyed and drooping. Letta was there, too. He could hear the lilt of her voice and saw the outline of her figure slightly blurred by his imperfect vision. He blinked hard, trying to establish clarity of sight, trying to decipher this interaction. He could tell that at least—that this was another negotiation between Letta and Mother Joseph.
As his vision began to sharpen, he saw that Letta’s attempt at looking put-together that afternoon was thin. Her ankle-length slip dress was unwashed, and her dyed chestnut hair was pulled back in a careless bun. But her nails gleamed, Cello noted. He observed the power in her sharply filed, gold-lacquered fingernails, and felt relieved. It was almost like a hug, or the closest Letta would ever come to hugging him, that she was willing to confront Mother Joseph, to reclaim the children who belonged at the garden. Cello was not so naive, though, to believe that this was all about him—it was about Marcela, too, and a matter of pride for Letta, not to be crushed by Amberly Joseph.
In each of the deliveries to the Josephs’, Cello had seen Mother Joseph as an unpredictable, trampling beast, and Letta as her corresponding player, her flashing matador. There was an inherent symbiosis there, a magic in the performance—but never was there a question about who was strongest.
Mother Joseph lurched toward Letta, their bodies only a few inches apart. Letta’s face was a cool blank.
“Well, Analetta, care to have a seat? What all can I help you with today?”
“Just a small family matter, nothing that should take up too much of your time.”
“What, this matter right here?” Mother Joseph’s bushy eyebrows lifted in an arch as she pointed at Marcela, and to where Cello lay on the ground.
“That’s right. Here to collect my children, that’s all.” Letta brushed at the front of her dress, smoothing over the place it puckered in front of her solar plexus.
“Oh, your children? Am I hearing this right, Harlan?” Mother Joseph called toward the house. “Because it sounds like Analetta here is trying to take what doesn’t belong to her. Seems to me, Letta, like you forgot how to make a deal.”
“We both know that’s not fair, Amberly,” Letta said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“Fair is fair,” Mother Joseph fumed, her face flushed and sweating. “You think I like fixing problems you made? Just out of the goodness of my sweet heart?” She beat her chest with the flat of her palm, as though revving the beating muscle there. “These two belong to me now. If you can’t control your own, I’m not going to do it for free.”
Letta turned her back to Mother Joseph, revealing her face to Cello. He could now see that Sil and Sabina were here, too, hanging back in the shadows of the trees. “Just give me the boy, then. You can have Marcela.”
“That’s funny! Ain’t that funny, Harlan?” Mother Joseph didn’t even pretend to engage Harlan this time, only the sky. “Still sounds like you’re asking me for a favor.”
“What about Joanie?”
“What about her?”
“You don’t have her?” Letta was incredulous.
“I haven’t seen that trash in weeks. You know, when they accused me of theft!” Mother Joseph spared a contemptuous wave for Sil. “Maybe we ought to go back to how it was before you started your little garden.”
“Now, Amberly, that was your idea,” Letta said, her hands held in the air like she was pushing some invisible door open.
“And why not? It was a good idea.” She turned her head and massive neck toward Marcela and Cello. “Do the right thing, I thought. Thought the children’d be better off away from the house for a time, let them grow up with some freedom, but seems I was wrong. Can you imagine how that makes me feel?” She turned fully this time to stare at where Marcela and Cello had crumpled over onto each other. “I wanted them to stay innocent while they could, but you couldn’t manage that. You let the devil in, didn’t you? With your lazy, narrow mind. Couldn’t help yourself. You just don’t have a pure heart. That’s your problem.” Mother Joseph stabbed a finger out at Letta. “Only a wicked heart could’ve raised a thief like that.” Here she pointed directly at Cello. “And the child who killed my boy.”
“I know you’re upset, but try to get ahold of yourself and think clearly.” Letta straightened and moved toward Mother Joseph. “My Joanie would never do something like that. She’s a good girl.” Letta pointed a glittering fingernail into the air, perilously close to Mother Joseph’s bulging throat.
It was so odd, Cello thought, seeing them speak this way to each other, outside of the forced, prepared speeches they offered up while conducting business. He thought, in a strange, clear flash, that they were speaking like people who loved each other. It was coming out of them so obviously, Mother Joseph leaning out toward, practically into Letta, and Letta pulling her in. He shivered in his sweat-soaked clothes, and Marcela wedged her elbow into his side.
He looked down at her wrists, tied tight with twine. She was trying to pull off the restraints, but it wasn’t working. Mother Joseph’s angry words wound around all of them, like roads on a map. The Joseph cousins seemed to have shrunk to a harmless toy size. From where he sat, Cello felt in a concrete way that he was no longer in danger from them, despite the pain in his head, the blood on his face and his ruined elbow.
“How dare you, Letta? One of your children killed my son. I tried to be reasonable—maybe it was an accident, I told myself.”
“Of course it was,” Letta said.
“But now this?” Mother Joseph thrust her arm at Cello in a forceful punch at the air. “Disobedient behavior and theft, too?”
“That’s right—theft.” Harlan strode forward, shoving Cello over and banging into his bad arm. “Don’t worry, Amberly. We’ll straighten him out.” Straighten him out, thought Cello. An echo from some other conversation, but who with? He couldn’t remember.
“Shut your mouth, Harlan, and don’t interrupt me. I’ll let you at that boy soon enough,” Mother Joseph snapped.
Letta looked undeterred, but softly said, “Nobody’s perfect, Amberly.” She reached out, trying to grip Mother Joseph’s arm with her bony hand in—what Cello thought had to be—some familial embrace. As Cello squinted, trying to magnify their images, to interpret the bizarre display in the yard, something even stranger began.
Mother Joseph’s face twisted, the pockets of fat under her eyes bulged out as though inflated by some mysterious miniature pump. Her mouth continued to move, but Cello couldn’t identify any intelligible words from the sounds she emitted. He wondered if he was fainting again, if the distortion of sound was some other delayed symptom of the wound that throbbed so mercilessly near his left ear.
Cello saw them all—Sil and Letta and Sabina, and the Josephs, too—curling back from the mountainous woman, as though lava were spilling from her mouth, swiftly flowing down to scorch them. Her jaws were stretched wide, frozen in a giant yawn, and then she was falling. Nobody moved to help her, or to break the fall, so she kept falling and then roiled there in the grass at the foot of the porch steps.
It was Letta, and not Harlan, who finally approached Mother Joseph when she stopped moving altogether. She had settled in a painfully contorted position—her pelvis pressed to the earth but the rest of her twisted skyward. The faded yellow sweatshirt she’d been wearing had ridden up over her stomach, revealing a wave of white flesh, nearly the size of a full-term pregnancy. Letta’s hand darted to Mother Joseph’s throat, looking for a pulse, probably.
“Well, help me turn her, Lord!” Letta called to the cousins flanking Cello and Marcela on the ground. The men moved slowly. They flipped her fully on her back, but with reluctance, as though the unconscious woman would snap awake at any moment and gnash out at them in fury, appalled that they’d dared to touch her.
Mother Joseph’s nephews and cousins drew back, and Letta leaned over, examining her for signs of life. It was shocking, Cello thought, the way Letta touched and prodded the other woman’s body as though she’d done it before. The more Letta touched, though, the more she seemed to shrink back.
In the commotion, Cello and Marcela were released. Sil sliced apart the restraints around their wrists with the same knife he used to splice shoots and bulbs. Marcela and Cello followed Sil to the main house where Sabina blotted Cello’s face with peroxide-soaked toilet paper, and Marcela washed her face and hands. Sil and Harlan stayed huddled together on the porch as it darkened into evening. The little kids, Cello noted, were probably waiting in the truck, hopefully asleep.
The mosquitoes were out and biting viciously. Cello wondered when they would leave, or if Sil and Letta would leave at all. He wondered if he’d be allowed to stay with them and continue to work on the farm. He worried about Joanie, and thought about the Stuckey’s on Route 9. His face felt hot and swollen, and when he blinked, he noticed a lingering darkness over his right eye. The elbow still hurt, but the pain hadn’t worsened. He stood up from his cross-legged position on the floor, in the same spot where Sabina had treated him, and went out to the truck to check on Miracle and Emil.
Nobody stopped him as he walked toward the vehicle. Cello noticed that Letta had moved closer to the porch, forming a rangy triad with Sil and Harlan. A familiar expression bled across her face, that ravening look that Letta got whenever she had a plan. Cello knew she wanted the house, that she wanted everything that had belonged to Mother Joseph. He knew, maybe even if the other Josephs didn’t, that she would get it. Because the Joseph men were fools. Mother Joseph had done everything in her power to keep them foolish and easy to maneuver. Most of them could barely read.
Emil and Miracle were awake when Cello found them. They sat up on their knees, both of their faces side by side staring out the window into the dark. Cello snapped open the door, and in the weak light of the truck’s interior bulb, he saw their little bodies slacken with relief and even some joy.
“Cello!” Emil said.
“Letta said we might not see you again,” Miracle said. “Never.”
“Yeah, well, Letta doesn’t know everything.” Cello pulled them into a halfway hug. “Hungry?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Miracle answered, “but Letta said don’t leave the truck no matter what.”
“It’s safe now,” Cello said. “Let’s get you something.”
He guided them out of the truck and brought them around to the house. Marcela sat in a faded lawn chair, fiddling with a cigarette.
“Mar, you want to get them something to eat?” Cello asked.
Marcela looked up at him, her eyes still wide in shock. “Why don’t we all go?” she asked, a panicked lilt running through her voice.
Marcela snatched away Emil’s hand and led them up to the house. Most of the first-floor lights were burning, while a few of the Joseph cousins prowled in the yard.
Marcela pulled the screen door open, held it for them and let it slam behind her.
“Marcela, Jesus,” whispered Sabina. Her feet shifted and creaked on the ancient, swollen planks of the entry hall.
“The children are hungry,” Marcela said.
“They’re having a meeting in there,” Sabina hissed, waving her hand toward the front room.
“Cello, go feed the kids,” Marcela said, shooing them all into the kitchen.
Cello fixed them peanut butter sandwiches while voices—mainly Letta’s—echoed through the old, creaky house.
“Harlan,” she said, “you can’t control those boys, and I sure as hell know Frank can’t.” A long pause. “Even though Amberly and I didn’t always get along, you know it’s what she’d want.”
So, just like that, Cello thought. Letta didn’t care that Mother Joseph’s body was still out in the yard, growing cold. She was ready to claim her authority.
“What about the baby?” At first Cello thought it was Sabina asking. When he left the kids on the kitchen floor and moved toward the front room, he saw it was Marcela. “Now you’re in charge, Letta, you can make them tell us where he is.”
“What baby?” Harlan’s cragged face puckered.
“Joanie’s baby,” Marcela said sharply, edging closer to Harlan as she said it.
“They don’t have him, honey,” Sil said, his voice low. “I think we’d know by now if they took him.”
“Joanie thought he was here,” Cello interrupted. “Said she recognized Mother Joseph’s handwriting on the note. Seems strange you didn’t, Letta.”
“Excuse me?” Letta turned all of the force of her newly amassed power on Cello. “I think I know my own cousin’s hand, and I can tell you that wasn’t it. You think Joanie knows more about Amberly than me? And speaking of Joanie, where is my daughter?” Cello shied away from this new, stronger Letta. He wasn’t going to lie to her, because a lie about Joanie wouldn’t help anyone. If Joanie wanted to be gone, she would be. Cello was shocked by how quickly the fear of that possibility receded, like touching a hot surface and not feeling the pain you imagined.
“She was at the motel on Route 9. By the freeway,” Cello said.
“And how’d you pay for the motel on Route 9, pray tell?” Letta asked, squinting at Cello. “From biting the hand that feeds you? You don’t know how lucky you got, son. You really don’t.”
Cello stayed quiet.
“Joanie have any money now?” Sil asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Really? Oh, we’ll just all have to have a talk about this.” Letta clapped her hands together. “Go on and get her, Harlan. You heard him—the place on Route 9,” Letta said. “We’re going to have a little family chat.” She motioned for Sil to stand beside her.
“Now that it’s just us, you need to tell me exactly what you and Joanie are up to.”
“I can’t,” Cello said.
“What do you mean you can’t?” Letta continued.
“I mean, I don’t know.” Cello shrugged, and winced as his likely broken elbow protested.
“Well, you’re going to find out,” Letta said, pinching the bridge of her nose.
A wave of refusal, of distaste, rose in the back of his throat. He was going to resist Letta’s commands, and he was going to win. “No,” he said quietly.
“Hey,” Sil said, standing abruptly. “You better watch yourself.”
“Maybe you’re the one who should watch yourself,” Cello said, suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to act, as he staggered toward Sil. Cello’s head throbbed and his sight blurred and cleared in waves. Before Sil understood his intention, Cello lunged at the old man and knocked him to the floor. As he slapped and punched Sil into stillness, Cello was acutely aware of the force he used; not too hard, just enough to explain this new turn to Letta. He didn’t know where his strength came from, only that he was grateful for it. Cello hit out at all of the lies he’d been told, striking down for that hard center of truth until he was drawn out of the strange collision of smells and bodies by a voice pealing out: “I did it! I did it, it was me! I did it!”
Sil was quiet beneath him, but his eyes were open. A thin stripe of blood trickled down from his nose. Cello felt the man’s labored breaths pulling his ribs wide. The pain from his own injuries hurtled back into him with surprising force once the adrenaline of the fight had dissipated. He brought Sil to his chest and soothed him like he would Emil, patting his back right there on the floor.
“I did it—it was me!”
Sil and Cello watched as the voice elevated and persisted, coming from—of all places—Sabina.
Letta turned from Sabina, to the halted scuffle, then back to Sabina again. Marcela had already approached her sister and looped an arm around her shoulders.
Daughters of the Wild Page 26
