Secret Star (10 page)

“Kamo,”‘ she cried, running up to him. “Kam—I remember. Oh, my God, he killed him. Daddy killed my father.”

Tess sat in Kam's shelter on his folded-up blankets, shaking so hard she couldn't walk. Some kind of reaction. Shock. Kam had the campfire going and was heating water in a pot for washing, for her arm. He was worried about her arm. Worried about her—she could tell from the way he kept looking at her.

Shock, or maybe rage. “I won't go back there,” she was saying over and over. “I never want to see him again, I never want to talk to him again. I hope his wheelchair gets in the way of a Mack truck. I hope the roof falls in on him. Kam, take me with you.” She could just barely talk, yet couldn't stop—she had been babbling since she got there. “Please, wherever you're going, just take me. I'll go with you.”

Kam came over and kneeled by her and checked the strip of cloth he had tied tightly around her arm. He had ruined a good T-shirt to bandage her arm. Now he ripped another strip off and tied it over top of the other one, because the first one was soaked with blood.

“He should have told me,” she said. “He never told me any of it.”

Kam had not said a word. He just lifted his face to her, listening to her, although she had said most of this already.

“I was watching from the stairs,” she said. “I saw the whole thing. I saw my father coming in the door, and I—I wanted to run and hug him, but I couldn't. Daddy was sitting in the big armchair—”

It was hard to understand it was him. He wasn't her Daddy then, just her mother's new husband. But she could see his face in the memory. Younger, more hair, but it was him.

“He told my father to get out, but my father kept coming. Daddy told him again, but my father still kept coming. Then Daddy got up and shot him. He shot him. He killed him.” Her voice had gone high and shrill. “He killed him. I saw him lie there and die. And then—” She choked to a stop. New memories were crowding in. She hadn't remembered this part when Butch winged her.

“Go on,” Kam said quietly.

He was like a pool without a ripple. She could tell him—she had to tell somebody right away or go crazy. “My mother,” she whispered.

“Your mother?”

“She saw. She was hiding in the kitchen, and she ran in, and saw—saw him lying there—and there was only a little blood, I still thought he was just drunk or something—but she—”

The kid sitting on the stairs had gripped the stair railings, and Tess was not a kid anymore but she still needed something to hang on to. She was reaching toward Kam with her shaking hands. He took them and held them, and he was as solid and steady as a young tree.

“She took the gun—from Daddy.” She could just barely say this. “She shot him.” She could see it now, she had the memory back, but it was like watching TV with the sound off. She couldn't hear the gun fire—she just saw Daddy slump down when her mother pointed the gun at him. It felt like watching Mommy shoot a stranger. Yet—it was Daddy. “She shot Daddy.” It was like watching a dream that didn't make much sense, the way she took the gun and he didn't even try to stop her. Then, God, it got worse. “Then she—she killed herself.” Tess's mind wasn't quite letting her see this. Just a black explosion, a red scream, Mommy on the floor with—blood. “She put the gun in her mouth and she killed herself.”

In front of Tess. Hadn't known she was there. None of them had noticed her. She closed her eyes so she wouldn't see the craziness anymore, the three of them, the gun, but she was still seeing it. She felt Kam let go of her hands and put his arms around her instead.

“Godalmighty,” she said, babbling, “it's me that screamed.”

She felt Kamo's head on her shoulder, his eyelashes blinking against her neck.

Wet. He was crying.

“Kam?” She put her arms around him. “Do you think—was it your father too?”

He pulled back so he could see her and shook his head like he didn't think so, though his voice came out husky. “What did he look like?”

Her father. It was almost worth all this dithering and shaking to remember him, a mighty palomino god. “Big and blond. Handsome.”

“Dyed blond, maybe?” Kam's voice had gone taut.

“No. He was blond all over.”

Kam shook his head and looked down at the ground. “My father was dark.”

She let her hands drop away from him. Not trembling any longer, just limp and dead-feeling. They sat there.

“Damn,” Tess said.

He looked up at her with a flicker of a smile, rubbed his face to dry it, then stood up and went to fetch the pot of water from the fire.

The warm water soothed her hurt arm. The bleeding had mostly stopped, and the wound was just a shallow two-inch gouge. After he had soaped it and rinsed it Kam tied one more bandage around it and let it alone.

Her shaking had stopped. But not her anger.

“Graham crackers?” Kam offered.

“I'm not hungry.”

He crouched and looked at her. “You feeling okay to walk home now?”

“I told you, I'm not going back there. Not ever.”

He sat cross-legged and looked at her some more. “A few things aren't real clear to me,” he said finally. “Like, you said you wanted to hug your father when he came in the door, but you couldn't. How come?”

She didn't even have to close her eyes to see him in the doorway, haloed in light. Big. Blond. Handsome.

With a big ugly fishing knife in his clenched hand.

With words a ten-year-old girl didn't fully understand coming out of his mouth.

Kam asked, “Why was your mother hiding in the kitchen?”

Because she was afraid.

Same reason Tess had been hiding behind the stair railings.

“He was—drunk, maybe,” she whispered. “He was—being ugly. He had a knife.”

“Threatening Mr. Mathis?”

Tess couldn't remember the ugly words. Just Daddy telling her father to get out. “Maybe.”

“Then—when Mr. Mathis shot him—it was self-defense.”

Maybe. But it didn't seem to make much difference. “I still hate him,” she said. “He should have told me.”

Kam puffed his lips like he was getting exasperated. “Look, Tess—as far as I can see, your stepfather must walk on water. Your father comes in and threatens him, your mother shoots him, he ends up in a wheelchair, and he raises you? He's disabled, with practically no income, yet he keeps you instead of sticking you in an orphan home or something? What's that sound like to you?”

She sat silent.

Kam said, “It sounds like love to me.”

She couldn't say a word.

He said, “I'll trade places with you, Tess.”

“Go ahead. I'm not going back.” Her voice wavered. “I don't care if my father was a mean sleaze, Daddy still shouldn't have killed him.”

“Tess …”

“I'm mad, damn it!”

“Try being mad at the jackass who did that to you,” Kam said, gesturing at her arm.

“Butch?” She had told him about Butch, but now she rolled her eyes. “He's a pants-wetter, he's still shaking. Forget him. I'm so mad at—at the world, I guess.…”

“Try to get past the anger,” Kam said.

“How?”

It was dark, and the spring peepers were talking. The only light on Kam's face was firelight, and in that warm light his eye shone, his rugged face glowed, he was beautiful—how, Tess wondered, could she ever have thought that he was ugly? He had broad shoulders, wise brows, a heartbreaker smile. He was smiling it now. Yet he knew all about anger. He had better reasons to be angry than she did.

“How do you get past the anger?”

She meant him, personally, and he knew it. He shrugged. “I cry.”

He was so brave. She gazed at him.

He said, “Did you love your father, Tess? The blond sleaze?”

Oh, God damn him. Oh, God damn it.

Then the tears came.

Benson Mathis knew at once that something was wrong, because when Tess came in she didn't speak to him and didn't look at him and didn't give him a chance to ask what was the matter, just rushed to her room and shut the door. Then Kam came in, and Kam looked at him, a quiet, steady look.

“She remembers,” Kam said.

Benson Mathis let out a long breath. Now that it had finally happened, he was very calm. Tess was in the house; there was a chance that it would be all right. He would get to talk with her. “She remembers everything?”

Kamo sat down across from him and looked levelly at him.

Ben Mathis had to know. “She remembers about her father?”

“Yes.”

“And—” Suddenly he couldn't quite say it.

Kam said it for him. “Her mother shot you before she killed herself.”

Ben Mathis nodded. “Is Tess—is she talking about leaving?”

“I think she'll be okay once she gets some sleep.”

Benson Mathis was no fool. He noticed that Kam had not really answered him, and he knew what that meant. He swallowed, then said, “Kamo—thank you for bringing her back.”

He saw that he wasn't the only one having trouble with this; the hard-looking youngster actually blushed. Ducked his head. After a minute the kid said to the floor, “Well—I was barking up the wrong Rojahin. I should go away and let you alone.”

“Son, you come around here whenever you want.”

His head came up, and his smile was almost worth the trouble.

Kids. More and more Benson Mathis realized they came and went like butterflies, visitors in the life. For the past four years it had been Tess, Tess, Tess, but four years was just a drip-drop in the ocean of time. When she grew up and left, or when she fell in love and left, or even if she yelled that she hated him and left—it would hurt, but his life would go on.

He asked, “What set her off? Did something happen?”

“Oh. Yeah, some jerk she works with has been bothering her.” Kam stood up to go.

Benson Mathis frowned. “Bothering her?”

“He won't be bothering her anymore. She took care of him.” Kamo headed for the door. “And I plan to take care of him some more.” Then he hesitated with his hand on the doorknob, looking over his shoulder. “You okay, man?”

“Sure.”

Kam nodded and left.

Benson Mathis sat up in his wheelchair all night. Did not sleep.

Tess slept as if she had been knocked on the head. No nightmares, no dreams. But when she woke up the next morning she felt dead. She didn't want to get out of bed.

Her old windup clock said five till ten. Daddy had let her sleep, as if it weren't a school morning or there was a funeral or something.

She lay there.

After a while she heard thumping noises—Daddy's wheelchair bumping against her door as he tried to open it. A pulpy scraping sound as one of his footrests put yet another gouge in the wood. She pulled the blanket up to her neck as he got the door under control and rolled in.

At the sight of his familiar, ordinary face—weary, careful—her unfamiliar rage blazed. “Get out of here!” She turned away so she wouldn't have to look at him. “Let me alone.”

He did not go away. Instead he wheeled over to the bed and put his hand on her face, stroking the hair back from her eyes.

His gentleness hurt. She lashed out as if he had touched her with a branding iron. Her hand smacked his arm. “Get away!” She lunged out of bed, but he rolled back to keep her from getting out the door.

“Tess. Listen to me.” His voice quavered. “I know how you feel—”

The hell he did. “You killed my father!”

“I had to. He was trying to kill me. Tess, the jury acquitted me. It was self-defense.”

Some sane portion of her was trying to combat the anger, trying to be fair. Had Daddy done anything so terribly wrong? But the hurt-child portion of her didn't want to hear it. “You should have told me!”

“Couldn't, Tess. When it happened—it set you back bad. Real bad. You wouldn't talk to nobody. You just clawed and bit and screamed. I was afraid they were going to take you away from me, put you in a home or something.”

There was a ragged edge of emotion in his voice. Tess stood staring down at him. “Why didn't you let them?” she asked a little less harshly.

“Tess, you were all I had.” His voice hitched, stuck on the words. “Still are.”

She stood stiffly in her sleep clothes, eyeing him.

“I didn't help you as much as I should have,” he said. “I was in a wheelchair, feeling sorry for myself. I should have done more for you than I did.”

Tess knew damn well he had done the very best he could. Knew it and didn't want to admit it. She said nothing.

“So you handled it your own way,” Daddy said. “You just quit remembering, and all of a sudden you were better. And once you buried it—I was scared to dig it up again.” He looked at the floor. “I knew you blamed me.”

She knew she shouldn't keep blaming him. Yet she wondered if she would ever be able to stop. The anger just wouldn't let go.

“Get out of my way,” she told him.

He did not move except to stare up at her, his round face taut. “Where are you going?”

She pushed past him, muttering, “Going to try to handle it better this time.”

11

She took it to the drums. It seemed like music was the one thing in her life she could always count on. She spent the day at the drums, and the drums ate up the anger and liked it.

They helped her sort things out. At first the bad memories kept playing over and over like a videotape—bang, bang, gunshots. Bang, bang, dead on the floor. But later, other memories started bubbling up with the drumbeats. Paradiddle, Yankee Doodle,
riding a pony on the fourth of July
. Soft-shoe brushes on the snare,
Mommy brushing my long blond hair
. Tess could remember her mother's voice, her mother's smile. That was worth something.