On the phone, there’s a long string of texts from Dakota’s number.
fuc u bring me my phone
if u don’t i will say u attacced henry
i will say i saw it
im the only witness
answer me u coward
jo
JO
jo?
dakota says u ran away
did u?
where r u?
r u okay?
y won’t u answer me?
im worried about u
I’ve always told Savannah she should spell words out. But the u makes me smile now. Poor u, what a fool. Never can keep out of trouble. I miss Savannah terribly. I never even got a chance to show her the pictures. If I did, she’d believe me. She would have to, right?
I type a reply, saying I’m okay, but that’s a lie, isn’t it? I’m not okay at all. I’m sick and lost and everyone I know has betrayed me. Even Savannah. Especially Savannah. If I sent her the pictures now, she’d probably fire back with Jack says that’s just you or Jack says it’s obviously shopped. She can claim to be worried all she wants, but a few texts earlier she was threatening to turn me in. To frame me.
You don’t give a shit about me, I type instead.
The phone buzzes almost immediately, a flood of replies.
where r u?
what happened?
did he hurt you?
For a second I think she means Brandon, but there’s no way she knows about him. No one but my sister knows where I am now. Does she mean Jack? I start to type another reply, but her texts keep coming.
r u safe?
i checked myron’s u weren’t there
No shit.
jo please im really worried
I type: I’m sure Jack will be happy to comfort you. Hit Send.
There’s a moment of nothing, then the phone buzzes like crazy. Incoming call. It startles me so much I drop the phone. Frantic, I snatch it back up, power it off, shove it in my pocket with the picture of Mama. I squint toward the dark doorway where Brandon disappeared, but I can’t see a thing.
If I unlatch the front door, will Brandon hear it? Will he come after me? Maybe he’ll get his gun. He must have a gun. Everybody who lives in the woods has a gun.
The room is swimming around me. The fever is definitely back. My mouth has gone dry. I stumble over to the kitchen area. My eyes are mostly adjusted to the gloom. I can make out a pulpy red mess of tomatoes in one of the many mason jars stacked on the counter, skinny green beans huddled together in another. One jar holds what looks like a dozen blind eyeballs. Onions, maybe.
There’s a sink but when I turn the handle, nothing happens. Which makes sense. He’s off the grid out here. That’s why he’s got the big jug of water sitting on the counter.
There’s a large metal box with a latch on the floor against the front wall. It looks like a smaller version of the chest freezer we have at the bar, though it isn’t hooked up to anything as far as I can see. I open it. Inside, a hunk of flesh sits on a slab of ice. Raw. Bloody. A jut of bone. My heart leaps, and I shut the freezer.
I take a few shaky breaths, open the freezer again.
It’s just meat. Venison, I’d guess. Most of it wrapped in plastic. There are a few beers sitting beside it. I grab one, pop the tab. Take a swig.
It tastes perfect. Cold and sharp, with a warmth that follows, unfolding slowly through my body. I chug the rest, crumple the can, and shove it deep into the black trash bag hanging from a nail on the wall.
I could unlatch the door, dart out. Run, but not straight ahead like an idiot. Run around behind the camper. Disappear into the woods. Keep running until my legs fail.
And then what? I’d be cold and sick and alone. I don’t know the way back to town. I’d have nothing. Worse, I’d be a coward. I’d be giving up my best chance to learn the truth. The real truth. Not just hearsay. Not just the gossip of old drunks, twisted by the years.
The little black cat appears and winds around my feet, mewing plaintively. I shush it, ease open drawers, most of them empty, until I find the knives.
In my mind they glitter like emeralds, catching the faint green light of the aquarium, but really they are dull, pitted and water stained. I grab the biggest of the bunch: a butcher knife with a smooth black handle.
I march back through the living room and through the door on the left. There’s a tiny bathroom, no bigger than a closet, and then another door, which is slightly ajar.
The little black cat squeezes past my feet, swishes through. I follow.
This room is the half-collapsed one. Even in the gloom, I can see where the walls stop and the plywood and tarp begins. Dark shapes hunch in the corner. A cracked mirror leans against a beam.
Brandon is tangled up in a big quilt on a mattress, which takes up most of the room. One bare calf sticks out from the bottom of the tangle. One bare foot, the toes long and bony.
There’s nothing threatening about him like this. He’s practically tied up. I take a step into the room. I’m the threatening one now, awake in his house while he sleeps.
I take another step, startle when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. But it’s just the mirror, flashing myself back at me. My knife hand shakes. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m not my sister.
Brandon’s face in the dark is like a painting. Broad brushstrokes. Cheekbones catching the light, eyes sunk in shadow. The more I stare at it, the less it even seems like a face. The whole room is like that. Not a room, really, but a collection of shadows.
I’m sure he’s got a gun somewhere. I could find that, instead. Kill him before he even wakes.
Or I could hold the gun to his temple, the metal rim cold, pressing an O into his forehead. His eyes fluttering open, focusing slowly on me, on the gun.
You, I would say, are going to tell me everything.
And he would. He would be crying, tears catching in his beard. He would beg my forgiveness. He would tell me how they shot her. Or strangled her. Or beat her. How he stood by and watched his brother. Or how he did it himself. He would cry and cry, beg me to spare him. It would hurt, to hear how she died, but I would pull every little detail from him. I would force it out. I would stay strong. I would not cry. When I had wrung him dry I would say something about how Mama lives on in me and I would brace myself for the kickback and I would pull the trigger. Blow his face apart, blood blooming like a rose on the pillow. His jaw hanging loose. I’d walk out the door, camera tight on my face, a few flecks of blood on my cheek, a wry smile on my lips.
Brandon grunts and shifts on the mattress.
I stumble backward, heart pounding, and nearly trip over the little black cat. I gasp, slap a hand over my mouth.
Brandon sits up. His chest is bare. The light catches on his ribs, the darkness settling in the valleys between them, tangling in his beard.
He’s staring at me. At least I think he is. His eyes are all shadow. I hide the knife behind my back.
“Jolene?” he says.
“No.” My mouth has gone dry again.
“You can sleep in here,” he says, “if the couch is too hard.”
“I—”
“There’s room.”
“No thank you,” I say.
“You do look like her,” he says. “In the dark, you look just like her.”
He stares at me a moment longer—I can’t breathe—and then he lies back down, pulls the quilt over himself.
I scramble back to the door, through the bathroom, into the living room. I’m feeling bad again. Dizzy. Nauseous. My forehead is blazing.
The muted light from the aquarium makes the whole room seem like it’s underwater. I sink onto the couch, unable to stand. With shaking hands, I slide the knife under the pillow. Then I slump over onto my side, tuck the
blanket around me, shivering. I will rest, but I will not sleep. I slip one hand under the pillow, trace the smooth plastic of the knife handle with my thumb, think of the blade beneath my head, keeping me safe. Think of swinging it, letting it slide through flesh like butter.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I startle awake and sit bolt upright, scaring the shit out of the little black cat, which flings itself off the couch and dashes across the room. Sun peeks through the curtains and the door of the woodstove is open, a cheery flickering light coming from its belly. Brandon has his back to me, doing something at the kitchen counter. I slide my hand under the pillow, reach for the knife.
Brandon turns around.
His hair looks even worse, which I wouldn’t have guessed was possible. It’s sticking up in the back, plastered this way and that.
“Coffee?” he asks. There’s a tarnished silver pot with a black handle and a glass knob on top of the lid sitting on the woodstove.
“Okay,” I say.
I let go of the knife, stand up carefully and stretch. I feel a lot better actually. My forehead isn’t blazing. My wrist still hurts, but it looks like the swelling has gone down.
Last night doesn’t feel real.
I fold the blanket, set it neatly on the couch. Savannah would absolutely lose her shit if I told her that I’d slept over at some guy’s place. That he was offering me coffee now. It seems a very grown-up thing. To be offered coffee in the morning by a stranger.
I watch the little candy-colored fish dart through the plants in the aquarium, their iridescent scales catching the firelight from the stove. The tank light is off. I try to switch it on, but nothing happens.
“Battery must have run out,” Brandon says. “I usually don’t leave it on for long.”
He sets two tin cups of dark liquid on the table. Everything seems less sinister in the daylight. I’ll be strong. I’ll ask him what happened to Mama. I’ll ask him to tell me the things my sister never has, about her life before she met me. And then I’ll ask him to take me back to town.
“Can I feed the fish?” I ask instead. There’s no rush.
“Go ahead.” He smiles. “Just don’t eat them.”
I open the lid of the tank, shake a few flakes in from the plastic jar. The fish swarm up, their tiny snouts, or whatever it is you call the front end of a fish, pushing at the surface of the water.
Something glints in the back of the tank, deep within the plants, in the shadow of the driftwood. Another fish? I squint at it through the glassy distortion of the water.
“Can I have some water?” I ask Brandon, who is sipping his coffee, watching me.
Wordlessly, he turns to fetch another cup.
I roll my right sleeve up as far as it will go and plunge my arm into the tank. The fish dart away from my hand, which looks bloated and pale in the water. Little bubbles cling to my skin. I fumble at the gravel until my fingers close around something thin and metallic.
“What are you doing?” asks Brandon from behind me.
I yank my arm back out of the water, flinging water across the couch, the carpet. I’ve got my fist clutched tight.
“Don’t eat them,” he repeats, a note of panic in his voice.
I open my fist.
The broken chain of a necklace lies curled in my palm. Hanging from the chain: a tiny silver cross.
Mama.
I look up at Brandon. He’s standing by the curtain, cup of water in one hand.
“You killed her,” I say.
“What?” he says, frowning.
I hold the necklace out, let the cross dangle in the air between us. He recognizes it, I can tell, though he looks more sad than surprised. I feel rage building up in my chest, hot as a fever.
“You fucking killed her,” I say.
“Nobody killed her,” he says. “It was just an accident.”
I turn and push the pillow off the couch, grab the knife from beneath it. I hold it out in front of me, blade pointing at Brandon’s belly.
He wasn’t expecting that. Good. His eyes widen. He puts his hands up in the air, still holding the cup of water in one of them. He shakes his head.
“You and your fucking brother,” I say. “You’re monsters.”
I move slowly toward the door, still holding the knife out, not taking my eyes off Brandon for a second. I will run, run until I find Lester or my sister or until someone finds me. I will tell everyone where Brandon lives. I’ll tell them what I found. I’ll tell the pastor. I’ll tell Aggie. I’ll tell Grandma Margaret. They’ll come out with their shotguns, with their Bibles. We will set this fucking camper on fire. We will burn it to the ground with Brandon still in it. Mama the white-hot heart of the flames.
“I didn’t kill her,” says Brandon, hands still raised.
“Shut up,” I tell him. I’ve sidled nearly to the door now.
“Nobody killed her,” he says again. “I thought you knew that.”
The little table is between us. The door is two steps away. I’m holding every muscle in my body tense, ready to run. The door is still locked. If I fiddle with the latch will that give him the opportunity to grab me? Tall as I am, he’s even taller. He’s thin, too, but I’m sure he’s stronger than me. He’s a full-grown man. If I run now, he’ll chase me, I’m sure. He’ll get his gun.
“You killed her,” I say again, doing my best to make my voice hard. I try to dredge up the self I imagined last night, the dry-eyed one, the one with no mercy. “Or Logan did and you helped.”
“No,” Brandon says. He looks deeply sad, his face all knotted up. Remorse? His arms are still in the air like he’s strung up by the wrists.
Maybe if I run now he won’t chase me. Maybe he’ll pack up his cats, his fish tank, his knowledge of what happened, and fuck off. Get away with it again.
“Where did you hide her body?” I demand. My heart hammers hard against my breastbone, but I move slowly around the little table, toward Brandon.
“I thought you knew,” he says, which is stupid. If I knew I wouldn’t be asking, would I?
“Where did you hide the body?” I ask again.
All those fake graves I made for Mama over the years, pulling flowers from the weeds around the edges of the cemetery, piling them at the base of some tree. Somewhere out there is her real grave. I could have run right by it a hundred times, run right over it even, without realizing. This man knows where it is.
There’s barely two feet between us now.
“Where?” I demand, and I jab the knife toward him quickly, a feint. He drops the cup. It hits the floor, splashing water across his boots. The cup rolls away across the floor. If he moves toward me, I think, I will thrust this knife with all my strength into his stomach. I can do it. I will do it. I am strong. I’m as wild as her.
“Nobody killed her,” Brandon says. He tries to take a step backward, but bumps against the wall. He reaches for the back of the chair to steady himself. “She wasn’t dead.”
“That’s a lie.” I’m tense, ready, every muscle in my body clenched like a fist.
Brandon is squinting at me. “You really don’t know, do you? I thought you knew.”
“You make no fucking sense,” I say. He’s as bad as my sister. Can’t seem to spit out a sentence longer than four words. He’s lying anyway, covering his ass, trying to talk me down. I’m holding a knife. I’m the one with the power here.
“She didn’t die when you were a baby,” he says. He lowers his arms.
He’s lying. She is dead and he is lying.
If she were still alive she would have come back for me. I know that. I can’t let him trick me, can’t let myself hope.
“So, what,” I say, “she’s just in the next room, huh? She’s going to jump out and shout surprise?”
“No,” says Brandon, shaking his head. “Shit, I’m s
orry. I thought you knew all this. She is dead. But she didn’t die at fifteen. She was alive. She lived to twenty. Overdosed.”
I don’t understand why he’s saying this. It’s cruel. My knife hand is shaking slightly. I transfer the knife quickly to the other hand; hope Brandon didn’t notice the shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought she would have told you.”
“Who?”
“Your sister.”
“What are you talking about?” I hold the knife a little higher, pointing it at his heart. He doesn’t seem afraid of me anymore. Maybe I should stab him, just a little. Show him I’m not fucking around here.
“Have you asked her about your mother?” he says.
“Of course I’ve asked her. She doesn’t know anything.”
He shakes his head again. “Jolene raised her,” he says. “For the first five years, anyway. She really never told you?”
He’s lying. Right? Mama died.
“No,” I say.
And yet…
There was no body. I know that. Everybody knows that. The police never found a damn thing at the Cantrells’ camper. No sign of a baby, for sure. But my sister survived somehow. I’d taken it for granted that the Cantrells kept her, raised her, at least for the first few years. It seemed like the only answer.
“I really thought you knew,” Brandon says again.
He is lying. He must be. And yet…
I remember when my sister stole the picture of Mama. She snatched it out of my hands before I even told her who it was. I always thought she did it just to make me mad.
But what if she recognized Mama?
If she recognized her.
If she knew her.
“I’m sorry,” says Brandon.
I squeeze Mama’s necklace so hard that the points of the cross dig into my flesh. So hard that it hurts.
And I remember yesterday. My sister rubbing my forehead like a mother comforting a child, tracing a shape with her finger. The shape of a cross.
I lunge around the table, unlatch the door, push it open, stagger out into the light.
Some Kind of Animal Page 16
