Hard Red Spring (13 page)

Mother, still standing behind her bench, had not moved but was no longer smiling. “Well, Evie,” she said. “I think we found a new, brilliant use for wheat. Could revolutionize something, I'm sure. And I bet he'll be in here in about one minute, to ask why I've stopped playing for him.”

And he was. He walked in a moment later, drawn out of the cooking shed by the piano music's absence.

“I don't know what happened,” Mother explained to him. “I was playing I guess a little too hard and tipped over the lantern. Evie saw, didn't you? Was I just playing a bit too hard?” The burned piano still smoked from someplace deep inside, taking up space like a dying dragon. The burned sections revealed strings, pegs, and hammers, looking like lungs, bones, clenched teeth. The porridge coating the parts like an infection.

“Yes,” Evie agreed, because she didn't know how to explain what she had seen. Even to think of her mother purposefully setting fire to her most prized possession made her reorder the events in her mind to make it make sense.

Father's eyes darted from Mother to Evie, seeing a similarity, some treachery between them. His anger, rarely stirred, was best diffused by tears, which now appeared like light in Mother's eyes. “Let's just go, Robert. We don't have to repay her. They won't pursue us, it'll cost them more in legal fees. Let's just sell the few bags we have and
go
.”

Kneeling for a better look at the piano, Father mumbled, “It looks like it's just exterior damage, maybe I can fix it.”

“The exterior's the most important part,” she said. “It's what shapes the sound.”

“Okay, but still, maybe I can fix it, nail some boards over the top.”

She laughed bitterly. “You have no idea what I'm saying, do you?”

“We just have to keep Mrs. Fasbinder away until I have the money to repay her. Cancel your tea next week. Send a note. Tell her we're all sick.”

“Shall I send Ixna down with the note?”

Father sank back on his heels. “Mattie, I've tried. I swear. She's crazy, she won't go away.” Evie saw tears in his eyes now, too, then several traced down his cheek. “She follows me. What can I do? I don't want her here. I've never wanted her here.”

—

That night, Mother baked Evie a dozen cookies. Her version of an apology, for the quiet crying Evie had been trying to control all evening, thinking of the horrors of the cochineal business, her mother's bug-blood mouth, the burned piano, Father's tears. Father had never cried before. Mother was always the one to cry. The piano remained in the middle of the parlor, half burned and horrifying, though Mother pretended it wasn't there. That everything was perfectly fine.

“Don't cry, honey,” she said, smearing another layer of lipstick on, like armor. “Eat your cookies. Why would you cry, having your favorite cookies all to yourself?” Mother kissed her, and Evie could feel the dreaded lipstick stamp burning her skin.

Mother wrote a letter to Mrs. Fasbinder, canceling their tea. “What terrible disease would you like to have, Evie? What would keep Mrs. Fasbinder away?”

Mother finished that letter and began another, to her mother. “Guatemala has killed everything,” she read aloud, holding up the paper. “My baby, my marriage, my wealth, my beauty. Sometimes I wish those Indians would decide to throw me in that volcano. One day, I might just take a walk and never return.”

Evie, not wanting to miss a terrifying word, had stopped chewing her cookies. She broke off pieces, put them in her mouth, and merely sucked on them until they dissolved into a paste that made her back teeth ache.

“Raped and headless,” Mother wrote and read at the same time. “That's how they find them, Mother. Raped and headless on the side of the road.”

What did rape mean? Clearly, it was as bad as, or worse than, being headless.

The letter would not be finished today. Mother exhausted her shallow stores of morbidity and abandoned it, unable to top herself after these opening lines. So she sat with her pen in her hand and asked Evie if there was anyone she wanted to write to. “Do you want to write to any of your friends?”

Evie was surprised to hear that she still had friends in New York. She believed Mother's pronouncement earlier that they had no friends down here. Not that they had no friends in Guatemala, but that moving to Guatemala consigned them to worldwide friendlessness. Her only friend in the world had been Ixna, but not anymore.

Mother pulled a fresh sheet of paper from underneath the letter to her mother. “How about to Sophie?”

“Okay,” she agreed, to please her. She remembered Sophie vaguely.

“What would you like to say to her?”

There were so many things that Evie wanted to say, but not to Sophie.

“Dear Sophie,” Evie tried. “Life in Guatemala is hard, but rewarding.”

It was a phrase Mother often wrote in her letters, but once Evie said it, Mother put her pen tip to the paper, then took it away, leaving a small blue dot.

“Do you really believe that, Evie? That our life here is rewarding?”

Evie nodded. She had believed it until the volcano erupted, anyway.

“I just mean,” Mother clarified, “you don't have to write that. You can say what you want to Sophie.”

“I know.” Evie knew she could say what she wanted, but that did not mean it wouldn't upset Mother. Evie, from now on, would just do her best not to get fired.

Mother hesitated, then wrote down this opening sentence in her tall, leaning script. “What else?”

“I don't know. What do people usually write in letters?”

“Well, that depends. Maybe for Sophie, she'd want to know the best and worst parts about Guatemala.”

“The best part about Guatemala is that we have animals.”

Mother cocked her head, taken aback by the simplicity of Evie's happiness. Her eyes swimming, trying to understand. “Really, the animals are the best part for you?”

Evie nodded. “And tell her that a volcano exploded near our house and ash rained down on everything like snow.” Putting it in a letter like this, the volcano became exciting. She knew anyone in New York would read that and be jealous.

“That's a good simile, Evie. I'll put it down just like that.” And she did. “Do you know my favorite part of Guatemala?”

Evie did not want to know.

“My favorite part was having servants,” Mother said. “I never thought I'd have them again.” Mother used to tell funny stories about growing up with servants, how bad they were, how deceptive. She'd walked in on one of the hired girls trying on her graduation dress. Just spinning in front of the mirror with her hair tied up in a dishrag. “The worst part about Guatemala is having servants, too,” Mother concluded cryptically. Ixna's behavior would never be recounted in silly stories like the one about the dress. In Guatemala, you couldn't even fire servants.

“And what's the worst part for you, Evie?”

The worst part, undoubtedly, was their haunted forest, especially Ixna in their haunted forest. But Evie knew enough to use the second-worst thing, so she didn't sound crazy. “Nothing ever changes. There are no seasons like at home, so sometimes you get confused about time. Sometimes it just feels like the same day dragging on forever.”

“Yes,” Mother agreed. “The Land of Eternal Spring. It sounded nice at first, didn't it?” She put down her pen and Evie felt all the cookies beginning to unsettle her stomach. “I forgot how miserable spring could be.”

—

Evie should not have eaten so many cookies. She went to bed with a tummy ache and woke up later than usual, feeling empty. She lay on her sawdust mattress, listening to the floorboards creak in the other room, someone trying to be quiet. Evie, automatically, matched this caution when she tiptoed into the parlor.

“Evie! Good morning!” Father called from the table in surprise. He was just sitting there, not eating, not reading the paper, not making plans. Just sitting there, staring at his hands, and now at Evie.

“No one woke me up,” she said.

Mother spun from the bureau with a peculiar smile. “Well, Sleeping Beauty! Up to join us at last. Sit at the table with your father and I'll bring you breakfast.”

Evie took her place at the table across from Father. During a harvest, he usually woke hours before her and did not appear in the house until lunchtime.

From the kitchen, Mother returned with a plate. “Cookies for breakfast! What do you think of that?”

“I don't want any more cookies,” Evie whined, pushing them away.

“But you love cookies, Evie. These are your favorite! Cinnamon!” Mother
pushed the cookies back, with the same unusual smile, and sat down herself. Something seemed different about her as well.

“Can I just have some bread? I can get it myself.” Evie moved toward the kitchen, but Mother blocked her way in an instant. “I'll get it for you! Stay here, sweetie. We need you to keep out of the kitchen today. We're cleaning it.”

Mother disappeared again and Evie glanced at her father, who continued to sit there, staring at his hands. She'd never seen him doing nothing before. He did not look up when Mother returned with a thick, buttered slice of bread. Her smile, Evie realized, was someone else's. Pale and open. She breathed through it.

“Can you believe, Robert, Evie has turned down cinnamon cookies?”

Father smiled at his caged hands. “Unbelievable!”

They both watched her struggle to break through the hard crust. Once she'd made it to the soft interior, Mother tapped the table and said, “We have some wonderful news, Evie. Don't we, Robert?”

“Yes, yes.” He leaned back and sat on his hands. With this, his leg started jiggling under the table. So hard that Evie had to catch her water glass to swallow down the bread.

“We're going home!” Mother seized Evie's elbow with excitement.

Evie waited for some correction, some protest from Father, but when none came, she asked, “When?”

“Tomorrow!”

“What happened?”

“Nothing
happened
, Evie.” Mother's voice turned light and drifting. “It's just, our project is finished. Your father succeeded. So now we can go back to New York.”

“The Indians are eating wheat? You convinced them?” She held her water with both hands, as Father's leg continued to shake the table.

“I sure did! It was the cinnamon cookies, Evie. Your idea worked! All the Indians in town are eating them!”

“So Guatemala's problems are solved?”

“They are! Can you believe it, Evie?”

Evie did not believe it. She watched her mother closely as she rose to take her plate away. She seemed to be speaking from someone else's mouth. Unpainted. That was it. She wore no lipstick.

“I'll admit I was skeptical for a while,” Mother said. As she leaned in, Evie noticed her housecoat was on inside out. The seams and stitches showing. “We'll be packing today and leaving tomorrow morning. There's so much
to do! I was hoping you could help. We have a very important job for you. Can you help, Evie?”

Evie sat very still, trying to think. But her father's leg seemed to be shaking the whole house.

“We need you to go into town with Judas, to mail some letters and get some supplies. Can you go? Judas won't be able to get into the store without you.”

“Can I mail my letter to Sophie?”

—

Once Evie was dressed and ready to go, Father put his hands on her shoulders, and directed her out the front door and around the house to where Judas stood on the mountain road, waiting, with the volcano hulking over his right shoulder, the forest over his left. The three of them walked to the first bend in the road, where Father handed Judas a pistol and told them to take their time in town.

Judas carried the pistol in his waistband and Evie's letter to Sophie in his shirt pocket, along with the letter to Mrs. Fasbinder. If it worked, the Fasbinders would not know they had left until they were already on the boat to Mexico. What terrible disease, Evie wondered, had Mother given all of them in that letter? Malaria, yellow fever?

“Why are we walking to town?” Evie asked. “Why can't we take Tiny?”

Judas shrugged, put his hands in his pockets.

The morning was still, so still that she felt their steps could be heard for miles. So quiet, as if the woods were crowded with people watching them go.

Something was wrong, Evie could tell. Judas with a pistol, in charge of her now. And, except for the fantastic day of the military band's arrival, she'd never been able to walk on this road before. Mother always insisted on the cart. Walking with Father out the door, she'd seen the cart, with Tiny already hitched. In the back was a covered heap.

Something was wrong, more wrong than usual. More than the familiar worries: the money, the harvest. It had all happened the year before with the early rains. Nothing had been much of a surprise in retrospect. Indians acted terribly, her parents fought, money was tight. The one thing that had taken Evie by surprise was discovering Ixna in the cave. What could she be asking for from the old-man ghost? From the snake? And why wouldn't she leave?

“Judas, what do Indians ask for when they go into the cave?”

His shoes stuttered on the gravel, and he turned around to look through
his own dust, walking backward. “The cave? Why do you care about the cave?”

“Because I know it's important and that people ask for things there. What is it? Is it bad things?”

“Indians go to the cave for many things. To give thanks, to ask.”

“Did someone ask for the volcano to erupt? Did someone talk to the snake and make it happen?”

“The snake!” He laughed. Thick pancake spit, wheat, made long strings between his teeth. “Who told you about the snake?”

“Ixna. I saw her in the cave, Judas. I saw her in there. What did she do last night?”