The Grave of God's Daughter (7 page)

I quickly packed the parcels of meat into the waistband of my makeshift trousers, tucking them securely between my skirt and the twine belt Mr. Goceljak had made for me. With the thick packets of meat around my waist, my body must have appeared to have
doubled in size, adding to my disguise. All the better, I thought as I hitched up the pants and prepared to move the bicycle into the field.

No longer weighed down with the meat, the bicycle was much easier to maneuver. Getting it into the field would be the hard part. I pulled the sleeves of my sweater out from under my coat to cover the tops of my hands and hunched my shoulders to protect my neck, then forged through the threshold of briars and weeds. Thorns bit into my fingers and scratched at my face. The underbrush was as thick as mud, making it difficult to plod even a few feet into the field, but a few feet was enough. I stomped down the brush to clear a place for the bicycle and laid it on the ground as gently as I could. Even though it was stubborn, rusted, unconquerable, and ugly, I liked the bicycle. I wanted it to be safe.

Once the bicycle was hidden, I bounded out of the field as fast as I could, brambles snagging my clothes as I went. When I emerged, my coat was covered in nettles. I could feel them through the trousers, but I had little chance to care. There were eleven deliveries to be made, each at various ends of town, and since I had to make the journey on foot, there was no time to waste.

I couldn’t run on Field Street without drawing attention, so I stuck to the alleyway along the field. I was moving my legs as fast as they would go, but the parcels of meat strapped to my sides started to slip and I was forced to clutch my hips as I ran. The regular percussion of my heart was replaced by a relentless pounding. My blood was drumming through my body and air was churning in and out of my lungs. At first, the sensation scared me. I’d run before, run until I was out of breath, but
never like this. For a second, the feeling was akin to fear, a condition I was more than familiar with. Fear could creep along over your skin, climb its way up your ribs, or leap onto your shoulders without warning, I’d learned that much. I couldn’t remember a time when my father didn’t drink or a time when I wasn’t afraid of what he could or would do. He might erupt in rage or laughter, angry about some unimportant incident or amused by some imaginary joke. Both were equally frightening, and the waiting, that constant waiting, was worse than any beating I could endure. The feeling that overtook me that day as I ran with all my might down the alleyway, the weeds quivering in my wake, was like nothing I’d ever known. My fear had turned inside out. It wasn’t gone, but I almost didn’t recognize it.

T
HE ALLEYWAY ENDED NEAR THE STEEL MILL
, and my first stop, Mrs. Zahorchak’s house, was only a half block over on Oak Lane. The homes there were sizable, but Oak Lane didn’t carry quite the prestige of River Road because the houses faced the mill, which was hardly picturesque, and after each shift change, the road was flooded with a mass of men marching back to their homes in sooty coveralls. The street had once been lined with tall rows of oaks on either side of the block, hence its name, but once the mill went up, all of the trees were felled to widen the street. Each oak was lopped off at the trunk and leveled rather than dug up. The thick stumps were left in the ground like tombstones.

I tried to pick the nettles from my coat before I reached Mrs. Zahorchak’s house. There were so many of them that I finally gave up. I doubted the nettles would make much of a difference given my already curious appearance. I was about to knock on Mrs. Zahorchak’s door when I realized there was a doorbell. I knew what doorbells were and had seen them on other houses, but we certainly didn’t have one and I’d never rung one before. The prospect of doing so was strangely exciting. I lightly laid my finger on the button, testing its feel, the smoothness and size, then pushed it and quickly withdrew. The high, clear chime of the bell floated through the door.

Footsteps resounded from inside the house and I pulled the parcel marked with Mrs. Zahorchak’s name from the back of my waistband. Just as I had arranged my sweater to cover the rest of the packets, the front door swung open. Mrs. Zahorchak looked down at me with an imperious glare.

“You’re late,” she said, her English clipped by her accent.

She stood rigidly in the doorway. She was wearing a pale green cotton dress that seemed to have too much starch in it. It hung stiffly off her body and the collar pointed out at a harsh angle. The dress looked like it would hurt to wear it.

“You’re not the regular boy,” Mrs. Zahorchak proclaimed. “Where’s the regular boy?”

“He broke his arm.” As I spoke, I realized my voice sounded nothing like a boy’s, but it was too late. Mrs. Zahorchak squinted at me, examining my face and clothes.

“What’s your name?” she asked, her tone distrustful.

It was a question I wasn’t prepared for. I scrambled to come up with an answer. I flicked back through my memory and plucked out the first name that came to mind.

“Nowczyk,” I said. “I’m one of Stash Nowczyk’s boys.”

It was another lie, an echo of what my father had told Martin and me about the catfish, and it rolled off my tongue with credible ease. Mrs. Zahorchak appeared to be turning the name over in her head, then she promptly dismissed it as one that had no importance or bearing. She took her package of sausages and kielbasa from me with a quick jerk and said, “Since you’re new, I’ll make an exception about you being late. But I’m a very important customer. I expect to get what I pay for on time. So don’t be late again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Zahorchak shut the door on me, nearly clipping my toes. I stood on her porch for a minute collecting myself, but when I saw her peering at me through the curtains, I hurried off.

The next few deliveries were nearby, however after the scolding I’d taken from Mrs. Zahorchak, I ran all the way to each of the stops. When I knocked on the door at the following house, I was greeted by a teenage girl wearing wire-rimmed glasses and an irritated scowl. Inside, a baby was crying. As the baby began to wail even harder, the girl snatched the parcel of meat from my hands with a huff, then closed the door on me.

The woman who answered at my next stop was holding a toddler on her hip and smoking a cigarette.

“Delivery from the butcher,” I said in as low a voice as I could muster.

“Thanks,” she answered blandly, then she disappeared back into the house as the door lazily swung shut behind her.

It didn’t cross my mind that these women were cold or unfriendly. That was what I was accustomed to. The fact that one had actually thanked me was more than I had counted on.

The next delivery was labeled with an address on River Road, but no name. When I got to the house, I recognized it instantly. Unlike all of the other well-tended homes along the river, this one had fallen into disrepair. The tall brick home rose three floors high and loomed over the street like a crumbling monument. Years of neglect had transformed the house into an ominous, hulking wreck.

The bricks had cracked as the house settled and the posts on the sprawling front porch had begun to bow. Too many harsh winters had forced loose most of the shutters. The roof sagged, as if the sky itself was pressing on it, making the house look as if it might topple with the slightest breeze.

The front steps felt spongy underfoot, liable to give way at any moment. There was no doorbell here, only a massive knocker that hung in the center of the door. It was nearly too high for me to reach. When I finally managed to get hold of the heavy, brass ring and knock it against the door, the sound reverberated in a low bellow. I waited for a few minutes with no response and was about to knock again when the lock turned. The door crept open to reveal an old woman, her thick, white hair disheveled, her eyes nervous.

The air that drifted out from inside the house was stale. The lights were off and all of the window shades were drawn. The rooms were brimming with clutter that overflowed into the hallway, where uneven piles of books and newspapers rose as high as the woman’s hips.

“Delivery,” I said hesitantly, more a question than a statement. “From the butcher’s shop,” I added, but the woman wouldn’t respond.

She had two sweaters layered over a housedress, as if she were armored for a blizzard, yet the weather was mild that day. The
woman didn’t look up or make eye contact with me, but I could see her blinking rapidly, as if she were working up the courage for something. Then she held out her hand for me to give her the package. Her fingers did not extend beyond the door frame, not even the very tips of her nails, which forced me to reach in to her. Just as I laid the parcel in her palm, the woman jerked her hand back into the house. It was a sudden movement, a motion she hadn’t appeared capable of.

The woman stood in the doorway for an instant longer and gave a single, short nod in thanks. It was as though she couldn’t thank me out loud, that those words, any words, were petrifying to utter. She shut the door and rebolted the lock, as though she was trying to keep any more of the outside world from seeping in. I lingered there on her porch for a minute trying to place her. I scrolled back through my memory of faces that I’d seen in town or at church, but I was convinced that I had never seen this woman, not ever.

T
HE SUN WAS BEGINNING TO FALL
and the breeze coming off the river was laced with a wet chill. It would be dark in an hour, if not less, and still I had one delivery left to make—Mr. Beresik. Him I knew, but only by name. He lived on the opposite end of Hyde Bend, beyond the salt plant on a lonely dirt road that didn’t have a name. For years, he had made a living fixing people’s farm equipment. However, when the steel mill and the salt plant went up, people stopped farming the nearby fields and Mr. Beresik was
put out of his job. Few people in Hyde Bend had cars. There was almost no purpose for them. Most men worked only blocks from their homes. So in Hyde Bend, owning a car was considered an extravagant luxury, and having a new car was the ultimate in status symbols. A new car attracted as much attention as a parade. Children and adults alike would stop and stare whenever one of the brand-new Buicks or Fords rolled by with their burly frames, pearly paint colors, rounded features, and chrome trimmings. Those were the exceptions. Most of the cars in Hyde Bend were used and looked old beyond their years. They ran slow and loud. There were a handful of rusted mammoth sedans and the occasional two-door coupe, yet all showed the scars of age. Crumpled fenders, dented hoods, and missing hubcaps were common casualties. Even those metal bodies weren’t immune to the ravages of the winters in Hyde Bend. Even they weren’t safe.

I’d never ridden in a car and didn’t think I ever would. Each time I saw a car bumping down the road I wondered what it would be like to sit inside, to feel the ground moving beneath me. However, I’d never considered what made a car run. I knew that automobiles had engines, a hidden heart that made them move, though I couldn’t conceive of what else it would take to bring a car to life. That was until I strode up the road to Mr. Beresik’s house. The scattered parts of disemboweled cars and tractors were heaped in the grass and burrowed in the dirt. The cast-off parts were strewn everywhere, most half buried, giving the place the feel of a ransacked cemetery where the earth has been upturned and scavenged. But it was the other way around.

Mr. Beresik’s house sat on a flat plateau of land on top of a steep incline overlooking the nameless road that connected it to
the only civilization for miles. It was a low-slung, rambling building made up of various lean-to-like additions, and it squatted along the hill’s summit like a ramshackle castle. Behind it was a jagged wall of pines. These were the closest trees to town and they stood like a marker between our world and whatever lay beyond.

Once I crested the hilltop, I heard something that made my heart halt. It was the sound of barking, loud, fierce, unbridled barking. I froze and watched as more than two dozen dogs poured out of the listing barn behind the house. They charged over the grassy ridge in one clamoring wave, then hurled themselves at the high, chain-link fence that ran along the property, creating a sprawling pen. The dogs clawed the metal and stood up on their hind legs as if to scale the fence. I had never seen animals like these. They looked more like gargoyles than dogs, thickly muscled with skulls far larger than mine. As each savage bark erupted from their jaws, a cage of teeth would flash. I couldn’t move. I could barely blink. Then the front door to Mr. Beresik’s house opened. The shadowed figure of a man stepped out onto the porch. His very presence silenced the dogs instantly. Some trotted toward him while others stood guard, watching me.

“Quiet,” the man commanded in Polish. The dogs didn’t make another sound.

The figure took another step forward into the light. It was Mr. Beresik, a stiff cap pulled low on his head, a hunting jacket hanging loosely from his shoulders. His physical build was hardly imposing, but the sheer control carried in his voice gave him the supreme air of a king.

“Don’t mind ’em,” Mr. Beresik said, waving me toward the house.

I took a few tentative steps and the dogs retrained their eyes on me, following my every move, though they remained as still as statues. As I neared the house, they began to move too, to trail me. I could hear them sniffing the air, hard. They must have smelled the meat, but they knew better than to bark.

“You must be Goceljak’s new boy.”

I mounted the steps with the package of meat outstretched in my shaking hand. It was the largest one of the day, and because it was the last, the blood from the meat had seeped through the paper wrapping.

“They could smell you coming,” Mr. Beresik declared, nodding to the pen. “You’ve got their supper.”

The dogs were lined up along the fence, their clipped tails pulsing in anticipation. A few whimpered softly. Now they seemed almost docile.

“They’re nothing to be afraid of,” he said, taking the package from me. “As long as you’re on this side of the fence, that is.”