The Girl in the Maze (15 page)

“Your father would—”

“Daddy never—”

Martha leaned forward, strained to hear details. Something about Jarrell's father. Something about “that girl.”
The root of all their trouble
. She wished she could vanish.

“Look at what—”

“Don't even talk to me about—”

“Mama—”

Martha hugged her shoulders, embarrassed. Her thoughts drifted back to the Pritchett House, to those other late-night arguments, the noises she'd heard down the hall. She picked up a copy of
Smithsonian,
leafed through it, tried to distract herself. The inflections rose and fell again and subsided into hushed tones. After a pause, Astrid reemerged, followed by Jarrell. Astrid dabbed at her face with a crumpled green tissue.

Martha picked up the crutch and started to rise. Jarrell held the flat of his hand toward her. “Stay put.” He turned toward Astrid. “I need a few more minutes, Mama. I just want to get some things together. Some things we need from the garage. Then we'll be gone.”

Astrid nodded her head slightly, looked at Martha. “You can use the shower in the hall,” she said. “You both look like you've been living on skid row.”

Martha glanced at Jarrell.

“It's all right,” he said.

“I'll heat up a pot of she-crab soup,” Astrid continued. “Let's get both of you fed. Then I want you out of my house.”

A savory scent wafted into Martha's nostrils when she hobbled out of the bathroom, freshened from her shower and wearing a clean pair of cutoff jeans and an old beige T-shirt Astrid had scrounged up. She limped down the hall and paused at the doorway to the kitchen. Astrid stood over the stove, stirring a pot. Jarrell was nowhere in sight. “Have a seat,” Astrid said, not turning.

Martha limped to the dining nook, leaned her crutch against the counter and took a seat on a vinyl chair. Astrid put a steaming bowl in front of her, then sat across the table with a glass of ice water.

“Go ahead and eat,” Astrid said. “We don't let folks go hungry on this island, I don't care who they are.”

“Thank you.” Martha ladled a spoonful of the broth, blew on it, tasted it. The texture was rich and creamy.

Martha could feel herself being sized up, and voices started to gibber inside her head. “Thank you,” she blurted. “You're kind to do this.”

Astrid glided her glass in a slow circle on the tabletop. “That article in the paper said you were a pretty good student.”

“I used to be. I got a journalism scholarship. My parents were both academics.”

“I imagine they would have been proud.”

“I suppose so.”

“Going back?”

“Yes…that's the plan, anyway. My therapist wanted me to take things slow at first. My job here—the internship—was supposed to be a low-pressure situation.”

“Didn't exactly turn out that way, did it?”

Martha shook her head. She heard footsteps in the hall, then a door closing, a shower running.

Astrid laced her fingers together and rested her chin against them, staring down at the Formica. “That boy's got anger in him. Too much anger. Some folks got enough sense to get away from all this. I thought Jarrell would be one of them. He was in school for a while, you know. Morehouse, pre-med.”

“He told me about his job at Grady Hospital.”

“I want to get him back in there, away from this trouble. His daddy fought these battles for years. It helped put him in his grave. That's the way Jarrell sees it, anyway.”

“What happened?” Martha wiped her chin with a paper napkin.

“When Clarence was alive, we had another place, a much better place than this one, out on Daufuskie Island. We had a house right by the sound. There was a whole community of us out there, a lot like this one. We lived off the marsh and the land, and the money Clarence could make doing maintenance on the lighthouses. It was a good life.”

“Why did you leave?”

“You might say, that place left us. Developers come along, and they kept grabbing up bits and pieces of our land, buying folks off. They just kept picking away at the community, like vultures, till there wasn't nothing left to stay for. Clarence fought them for years. We hired lawyers and nearly went bankrupt. Clarence took to drinkin' heavier during that time. He'd been drinking on the day he died.”

Martha put down her spoon. “I'm sorry.”

“Massive heart attack,” Astrid said. “One morning I woke up, and he was laying next to me like that, cold as a statue, already gone. Jarrell was fourteen. Anyway, we had to use his life insurance to pay off the debts. We sold the place on Daufuskie and moved out here to Shell Heap. This is our last stand.”

Martha remembered the tattoo on Jarrell's bicep, the broken chain, the snake's head. “Is it true, what they said at the commission meeting? Are gangs behind the graffiti and vandalism?”

“Yeah, some of our young people are behind that mischief. But drugs got nothing to do with it.”

“Is Jarrell involved?”

“It's just him and a few other kids. They call what they're doing civil disobedience, but the law has another word for it. I had to bail him out of jail once, after they broke out the windows on a surveyor's trailer. I told him I won't do it again. I can't afford it.” Astrid drew her hand into a fist. “I've told him it's the wrong approach, and I've got no truck with it. He's just playing right into their hands.” She looked across the table at Martha. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him, even if I can't.”

“Me?”

“I don't know much about you yet, but I know evil when I see it. And you ain't evil.”

Martha's eyes moistened. “Then you believe what Jarrell told you? About what happened?”

“Yes, I believe it.”

“Thank you. I wanted to help, but I've only caused more trouble.”

“Don't blame yourself.” Astrid rose, smoothed out her skirt, and walked to the picture window and looked out. “At times of crisis, this community pulls together. That's our strength, that's what sustains us. That, along with our faith. I'm going to call a community meeting tomorrow night and tell them what has happened. I'll explain to them, just like my son explained it to me, that it was greed that killed Lydia Dussault, not a young girl from Atlanta. They'll believe me.”

Martha finished the soup and heard rattles in the kitchen. Jarrell came in from the hall with a steel thermos in his hand and a leather satchel strung over his shoulder. “We've gotta get going.”

“You need to eat something first, Jarrell.”

“I put some soup in the thermos.”

“What have you got in the bag?” Astrid stood up.

“Nothing.”

“That's his hunting bag, isn't it? What do you aim to do with that?”

“It's just got some stuff I need,” Jarrell said.

Astrid shook her head. “Don't be stupid, Jarrell.”

“Don't worry, Mama.” He turned toward Martha. “C'mon. We can't stay here.”

As they crossed the yard, Astrid stood in the sliding doorway, watching them leave. “Don't be stupid, Jarrell,” she said. “You got your whole life.”

Jarrell worked at an impromptu station in the shade of a sweet gum tree while Martha sat in an aluminum lawn chair, her foot propped up on an inverted pail. Jarrell unwound the beige bandage, bunching the stained gauze into one hand. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the air was hot.

“Does this particular sand spit have a name?” Martha asked, leaning against the woven straps of the chair. Cleaner now, and nourished, she felt she had a grip on herself, at least for the moment. She wondered how long it would last.

“No.” Jarrell squeezed out a sponge over a steel pan. “No name. At least, not on the maps. When my father and I found it, we called it Blackbeard Island. There are dozens of little islets like this around the marsh. Most of them don't have names.”

“Who built the cabin?” Martha asked.

“It was just me and him. We brought all the stuff here by boat.” Jarrell continued unwinding the bandage, revealing an eggplant-colored bruise that ran the length of Martha's calf.

“What was it for?”

“We were just fooling around. It was a base for hunting and fishing.” Jarrell chunked the first section of bandage into a metal pail. “Glad to see you feel like talking now.”

“I'm just curious. I can't help it. I guess that's why I want to be a journalist.”

Jarrell pulled off the last of the bandage, then a bloodstained square pad. Martha could smell the odor of the wound. She leaned forward to get a better look. The puncture was smaller and cleaner than she had expected. It looked like a blood-rimmed belly button.

“How's it healing?” Martha asked.

“Not bad.” Jarrell gently poked at the skin around the bullet hole. “It's just a soft-tissue wound. No sign of infection. The clot is firm. You should be okay to walk without the crutch in another day or so.”

“It doesn't look as bad as I expected.”

Jarrell removed a small tube from a zippered pouch and squeezed a worm of white ointment onto his fingertip.

“Where'd you get all the medical supplies?” Martha asked.

“I have connections.”

Martha gripped the plastic handles of the lawn chair as Jarrell gently applied the ointment around the perimeter of her wound.

“I have a question for you now. How are you feeling?” he asked.

“It doesn't hurt. You're doing a good job.”

“I don't mean your leg,” Jarrell said. A large black fly lit on Martha's calf and Jarrell waved it away.

“Oh.” Martha leaned back, looking up at the leafy branches, and took a breath. “I think I'm okay.”

“That's good.” Jarrell pulled out a pair of white paper packages from the pouch. He tore one of them open, removing a square gauze pad. “How will I be able to tell?”

“What?

“When you're—you know—”

“Psychotic?”

“If that's the way you want to put it.” Jarrell gently pressed a clean pad onto her calf. It stuck to the ointment.

“It depends. I usually try to hide it. When I was at college, I went for months before anyone knew anything was wrong with me.”

“No one noticed anything unusual?”

“Oh, people knew I was acting strangely. I withdrew from everyone. I lost all my friends during that period. I thought they were all plotting against me. That's really the worst part of it. It makes you distrust everyone. Even people who care about you.”

“What about your parents? Didn't they know something was happening?”

“My parents were already dead.”

Jarrell paused, looking at her, holding a fresh beige bandage in his hand. “Sorry.”

“They died before I got sick. Four years earlier. But that's not what made me get sick, you know. It's biological.”

“You seem okay to me, right now. Maybe you've recovered.”

“I don't know. It's like Pandora's box. At least, that's what my therapist said.”

“How's that?”

“Once psychosis emerges, there's no turning back. It's always there, to some extent. You just have to deal with it.” Martha watched him work. Focused, confident. “What about you?”

“What about what?” He snipped the end of the gauze bandage and secured it with a metal clip.

“You said you were studying medicine. Are you going back?”

“Definitely. Once I take care of business out here.”

Jarrell put his implements away, zipped his pouch, and stood. “You're good to go.” Martha raised herself out of the chair, holding on to Jarrell's shoulder. Her fingers touched the fabric of his vest and her palm rested against his bare shoulder. She could smell the musk of his skin.

It was good for him to hold her like that; she wanted him to keep doing it. She tilted her head back and looked up into his big, dark eyes. His lips parted a little. “Listen—” he said.

In some distant corner of her psyche, Martha heard an alarm bell going off. She broke contact, and he lowered her to her feet.

“I'm tired of sitting around so much,” Martha said, her heart fluttering. “Is there someplace I could—maybe—take a walk?”

“There's a little trail my father and I made that leads around the perimeter of the island. It's about half a mile. Go ahead. If you stay on the island, you can't get lost.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, Martha—”

She turned toward him, balancing on her crutch. It was the first time she'd heard him speak her name.

“I wasn't kidding about the marsh,” Jarrell said. “It's dangerous. You'd get lost in five minutes. You wouldn't try to go anywhere, would you?”

“No, I wouldn't.” She took a single step, then turned back toward him. “I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid.”

Jarrell looked up from his gear, eyes wide. Then his lip did that curling thing, the funny half grin. But this time it didn't stop; it spread across his face into the real deal, with teeth bright as the sun. Martha turned and hobbled along the path with her crutch, not wanting him to see the blush on her face.

She rounded a corner past a palmetto bush and paused to catch her breath, to think.

You're starting to like him, aren't you, Lovie?

“Maybe I do. I think he's nice, underneath the surface.” Now that she'd stopped taking the drugs, their flattening effects were lifting, and things were different. Her libido was returning. She hadn't felt attraction for anyone in a long time. And recovery was possible, wasn't it? People can get better. Who knows what might be possible for her.

Just don't get any ideas.

Martha leaned on the crutch, slapped her hands over her ears. Lenny's voice rasped on, undiminished.

Remember, you're damaged goods.