Whistling Past the Graveyard (8 page)

The robin-egg-blue patch on the hood sucked all hope from my lungs. I didn’t even stand up, just sat there watching those headlights getting bigger by the heartbeat. The only direction I could run was straight down the road, and I sure couldn’t outrun a truck, no matter how rickety it was.

But this old truck wasn’t creepin’ along. It was coming fast, way faster than Eula drove. A big lump of surrender swelled up in my throat. Black, slimy fear wound itself around it, choking me till my ears rang and my chest hurt. A sob rammed up against that fear and it exploded from me, startling me with its loudness.

Once that first cry was loose, it took over my whole self and there wasn’t nothing left to be but blubberin’ defeat. I’d tried. I’d tried to save me and James. But now Wallace knew my hand. Tears blurred the hulk of hunched-up rust and headlights barreling my way.

I was gonna spend the rest of my life locked up in that bedroom, probably tied up, too.
The truck got closer, not slowing down.
Closer.
It wasn’t gonna stop!
I considered letting death gather me under that truck.
At the last second, I kicked James’s basket, sending it rolling to one side of the road. At the same time I threw myself backward to the other, rolling up and over my shoulders in a backward somersault. As I landed on my belly, head still on the road, I heard my feet hit the water. Had James landed in the swamp on the other side?
The wheels locked up and slid on the wet chip and tar, screaming like a giant bird. The spray splattered my face as the front wheel stopped right in front of my nose.
That wheel didn’t have a hubcap. Why I noticed was a mystery.
My stomach felt like it was still back underneath that truck’s dull, pockmarked front bumper.
I heard James squallin’. He wasn’t underwater and the truck hadn’t squashed him. I couldn’t see if he was hurt. I couldn’t see nothin’ but that fat rubber tire and rusty wheel. It come to me then that I couldn’t move even a finger, laying there with my breath echoing in my body and my eyes on that tire.
The door clunked and squeaked open.
My eyes shifted in their sockets. The shoe that hit the pavement next to me was big and brown.
Tears wetted my cheeks and I hated every one of them.
All the sudden, Wallace had me by the back of my shirt, yanking me up off the ground.
For a second I just hung there, limp with fear.
Fight!
My arm finally listened to my brain and I took a swipe at him. I could only reach his arm. It felt like I was hittin’ a ham.
I opened my mouth to yell, Let me go! But all that came out was a shameful sob.
He gave me a little shake like I was a kitten he had by the scruff.
That knocked something loose inside me. All my muscles woke up. I fought like a catamount to get free of that man, twistin’ and thrashin’ and scratchin’. With a scream through my gritted teeth, I flung my legs, trying to land a kick.
He slapped my face. The sting of it sucked the air out of my scream and stunned my limbs into stillness. My eyes got blurry as I hung there at the end of his arm, half-sitting on the ground.
That’s when I realized I wasn’t the only one screaming.
Eula was coming up and over the side of the truck bed, her hair sticking up like tufts of steel wool, blood running down her cheek. “Stop! Wallace! Stop!”
He jerked his head around, looking surprised to see her.
He moved quick as a snake, whipping me around so my head was toward the water and slammed me down. I grabbed at the marsh grass and tried to pull against him, but my hands kept slipping.
Eula threw herself at him, but he flicked her off like she was no bigger than a bug.
“Don’ make this worse than it gotta be!” he yelled while he pressed me against the ground. The back of my head hit the water.
I wasn’t gonna get tied up. I was gonna die.
“Please, don’t,” I said, my voice so small I could barely hear it. My bladder let go; warmth ran up my back. My heart beat so fast I was dizzy. “I’ll stay with you and Eula. I’ll never tell about James. Never . . .”
His eyes rolled up in his head, looking to the sky. His voice was a harsh whisper when he said, “God forgive me, it gotta be done.”
Eula was up again. She pulled against Wallace’s shoulders, like a bird trying to move an elephant. “Please, baby. You not this kind of man, I know you ain’t. You got a good heart inside you. I promise I’ll keep her locked inside. I promise. Nobody know. Please, baby.”
For an instant, his grip on my shoulders eased.
Then Wallace roared as loud as any bear and flung her away. She landed on her side and rolled into the water.
“I won’t tell! I won’t tell anybody!” I screamed.
The water came up over my ears. I strained my neck to raise my head.
“Don’t look at me!” he shouted. “Close your eyes and don’t you look at me!” His knee pinned my shoulders and his big hand pressed my forehead. Then he pushed.
I kicked and bucked my legs. I clawed his arm.
The water blurred my vision, but I saw him turn his face away. My breath ran out fast.
My mouth opened. Water burned its way in.
This is the end of me.
The hand on my head began to shake.
A lily pad floated into sight. It looked different from the bottom.
All the sudden, I wasn’t scared anymore. Warm calm wrapped me up tight.
I was sorry I wouldn’t see my momma again. Sorry I didn’t tell Patti Lynn good-bye. Sorry Daddy’d have to be without his girl when he came home for a visit next time.
My eyes closed.
Please don’t hurt baby James.
All at once, the hand and the knee were gone.
My face sprung up out of the water. I had to kick with my legs to keep from sliding back in. I grabbed a handful of tall grass and pulled. I coughed and wheezed as I rolled over. I heard my lungs squeal as air rushed in, burning even more than the water as it had inched deep into my chest.
I heard Eula splashing and slipping a few feet away as she tried to get out of the mud and water. It hadn’t been her who made him stop.
Wallace sat on the edge of the road, not a foot from me, his elbows on his knees, the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. His mouth was drawn into an awful openmouthed frown; a string of spit ran from his lower lip. He rocked and muttered, “Sweet Jesus, save me . . . save me . . . I can’t . . . I jus’ can’t . . .”
I wanted to yell his damnation. I opened my mouth and all that came out was a sorry sob; a baby’s sob. I tried to swallow it, but another bubbled up right behind it.
Wallace trained his eyes on me and raised his fist. “You’s alive now, but you run again, I am gonna kill you . . . right after I kill that squallin’ baby.”
Never let a bully see you scared.
I tried to sit up but my arms were too weak to push.
Reaching deep for courage, I found there was nothing left to grab on to.
I wished I’d let that truck run over me.
I rolled onto my back and looked up at the sky, my own barking sobs filling my ears. Suddenly the sunrise turned inside out and time ran backwards, sending the sky toward darkness.
Baby James sounded farther and farther away.
Then everything faded altogether. I reached out and took that blackness by the hand, glad to go away from here. Away from everything forever.

9
i

was rocking. I was warm. A soft hum brushed my ears, which seemed to be plugged up with cotton, making the sound far away. I knew it was close though, ’cause it vibrated against my shoulder. Momma?

Keeping my eyes closed, I tried to dig back deeper into sleep. I was safe.That’s all I wanted to let in. But my body worked against me, waking up anyway, poking with soreness and pain. For a while I could ignore it. Then things started to prickle my mind. The storm. The swamp.

A cold wind blew the cobwebs from my head, pulling them string by sticky string, showing more than I wanted to remember.
Wallace.
Oh, dear baby Jesus, no.
The smell of woodsmoke and kerosene snaked into my nose. I was back in the hateful little bedroom. Trapped. Hopeless.
I felt like something was trying to claw its way out of my chest. The pain forced my eyes open.
I was wrapped in the quilt from my pallet. Brown arms wrapped around me. Eula hummed as she pushed the rocker slowly back and forth. My bare toes tapped the floor each time she rocked forward.
Eula smiled.“There now. You awake.”She said it soft and sweet, and the sound of it made me want to cry.
I pressed myself back against her bony shoulder and stuck my nose down into the quilt. My eyeballs felt like they was likely to explode from the tears built up inside. But inside was where they had to stay. Blubberin’ wasn’t gonna help anything. My cheeks burned with shame, thinking on how I’d cried and begged out there on the road. I’d showed I was nothing but a scared little girl.
And now Wallace knew.
“It’s all right,” Eula cooed just like she did to baby James. “It be all right now.”
A tornado sprung up in my chest, a wild swirl of black fear, red anger, and hot frustration. Those feelings spun so tight I couldn’t tell one from the other. They sucked the air from my aching lungs and sent bitter shivers through me. Eula had known she’d stole that white baby. She’d known Wallace was crazy. He’d tried to kill me and here she was acting all sweet, like it was a regular day.
I threw myself from her lap. The water in my ears crackled and fluttered. Tripping over the quilt, I stumbled to the floor. As I rolled over, I caught sight of her face and a tiny bit of my anger went away.
Blood had dried on her cheek over a deep red-purple bruise beneath her brown skin. Her black hair stood in pointy tufts like a crazy clown hat. Her lip was split and swollen.
She had tried to save me.
No! I pushed the thought away. She was wrong! She could have driven right on by, kept baby James, and I could have been safe with Momma right now.
Baby James!
I looked around the room. The bulrush basket was in the corner, dirty and broken. No baby inside. “Oh no!”
“He all right. He sleepin’.” Eula nodded toward the cradle.
All my muscles let go at once. “He’s okay?”
She nodded. “And you, too.”
“I am not okay,” I said, mustering up just as much hatefulness as I could. “I’m not.” I sounded more pitiful than hateful. “You never shoulda picked me up. You kidnapped me just like you did James!”
Her brow wrinkled and her eyes filled with surprise and hurt. She looked away. “No. No, it wasn’t like that. Nobody want James. And you . . . I was worried you come to no good out there all alone after dark.”
“Wallace tried to kill me! How much more ‘no good’ can it get?”
She began to shake her head, burying her fingers in her hair. “It wasn’t supposed to—” She rocked a little. “You was supposed to go on to Nashville. Baby James supposed to stay with me. But Wallace, he so scared . . .”
“He’s scared! I was the one who almost got drowned.”
She sent a quick look toward the glassless window. “Shhh. Shhh, now. No need to be afraid of Wallace.”
Just then the bear’s hateful face peered in through the window, and the urge to throw up grabbed me so fast all I could do was lean over and heave onto the floor. My stomach squeezed and squeezed until my eyes felt like they was gonna pop. Nothing but a thin string came up. Then I got a coughing fit, which caused more heaving.
I realized Eula had come onto the floor with me. She rubbed my back, talking quiet the whole time. I shook her hand off. She didn’t put it back.
When I could finally breathe again, I peeked out from under my eyebrows to see Wallace still staring at me. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was thinking, but he looked . . . sad. Guess he was since he didn’t get me all the way killed.
Eula whispered in my ear, “He only tryin’ to keep me safe. He don’t mean it.”
Well, the look in his eyes when he’d pushed me under told me he did mean it. But I was too scared of starting trouble again to say that out loud with Wallace so close.
He put a wide board across the window and started nailing it in place. Every hammer blow was a fresh stab of hopelessness.
Eula held me by the shoulders and pulled me so I was sitting on the floor between her legs with my back against her chest. I was too weak to fight it. She wrapped an arm around me and rocked side to side as she spoke soft against my ear, “He stop hisself.”
I remembered the hand suddenly gone. I remembered Eula still trying to climb up out of the swamp.
I wanted to ask, Why? Why did he stop? But the words jammed up in my throat.
Then I remembered Eula coming up out of the truck bed when Wallace grabbed me up off the road. “Why was you in the back of the truck?” I whispered.
“Wallace goin’ without me. I jump in when he turnin’ the truck around.”
I wondered if she’d cut her cheek and lip then, or if Wallace had opened them up for her before he got in the truck.
“I always keep you safe,” she said as she brushed my hair back.
Eula was crazy if she thought she stood a chance if Wallace got it in his head to kill me again.
Another board thumped up on the window. The room was getting darker fast. And the rest of the world farther away. I was gonna spend the rest of my life locked up in this breathless room. No one would ever know what happened to me. I’d grow up. I’d never get a record player. I’d never get to work as a curb girl at the drive-in.
When I opened my eyes, I kept them on a gouge in the linoleum, the only thing that didn’t have power over me.
Someday Wallace had to get old and die. By then would I be too old and crazy to ever live anywhere else but this hid-away house? Would I be like old Chester Potts out near the dump, crazy as a loony bird, shoutin’ and swearin’ at everyone who went by his house? Mamie said he was crazy ’cause he’d been born to strange folk and had lived locked away from people his whole life.
“It over,”Eula whispered.“He understand now. It ain’t Wallace’s nature to—” She snapped her mouth shut, but I knew what she was going to say: kill, not in his nature to kill, murder. “We be a family.”
“We’re not family.” My voice sounded so weak and broken that it made me mad. I decided I wasn’t gonna talk anymore.
The last board went up on the window, washing us in dimness. The light we did have came in dull, flat slivers and got ate up before it reached deep in the room. Not only would I be crazy by the time Wallace died, I’d be blind like a mole in sunlight, too.
“Sometimes Wallace, he get lost,” she said against my hair. “But he always find his way back.”
Again I felt the palm of his hand pressing on my head, then suddenly letting go. What if he hadn’t found his way back just then?
Didn’t matter. Sooner or later I probably was gonna die here.
I pulled myself away from her and grabbed my quilt. I crawled to my pallet and curled into the smallest ball I could. Pulling the quilt over my head, I sank into a dark place where no one could touch me.