The Kept (30 page)
T
hey stood in a grouping of trees with a clear view of the house, the barn, and the paddock and waited. The horse occupied itself rubbing against the fence and protectively trotting around its perimeter. After an hour, nothing more had happened. Elspeth untied the bedroll and tarp from her pack, shrugged out of her coat, removed her gloves, and stuffed them all out of sight at the base of a tree. Caleb followed her example, tossing aside his blankets and extra clothes. She unwound her scarf from her neck, did the same for the boy, and rolled them up and dropped them into the pile. She didn’t think the scarves would weigh them down or get in their way; she’d wanted an excuse to touch him once more.
The sound hit them both at the same time: the crunch of snow, the huff of breath. Instinctively, they looked to the house, but the noise came from somewhere on the path. She signaled for Caleb to position himself on one side of the trail behind a thick tree trunk. With her pistols raised, she inched forward until she reached the broken stump of an evergreen—jagged with splinters the size of her fingers—and took cover, aiming down the bend.
She dropped her pack. She couldn’t tell which gun to aim first but decided on Ethan’s, and tried to keep its bulk steady. All Caleb could think of was his earlier failure, and he gritted his teeth until they ached. The sounds got louder, and he blinked, his vision blurry. His heart beat in his fingertips and he could no longer feel the trigger. A man appeared between the rocks, his head down, his red hair bright in the sun.
“It’s Charles,” Elspeth said in a hissed whisper, and Caleb relaxed his posture. He knew, however, that he had not acted fast enough, that he had failed once again. He flexed his finger a few times to make certain he was capable of pulling a trigger.
Charles shuffled along, his jaw bound, strands of his beard flaring out between the strips of gauze. Thick bandages tied his hands to the grip and forestock of the rifle, winding their way around the weapon and his wrists. His thumb and trigger finger had been left uncovered.
“What are you doing here?” Elspeth asked.
“He might be one of them, Mama,” Caleb said. He advanced, raising the Ithaca. It hurt him, somehow, to have this man intrude on them.
“I told Owen,” he said. He forced the words out between his teeth, his jaw unmoving. “I made a mistake.”
“But why are you here? Do you know the Millards?”
“Only by name,” he said. “Three of them, two of you.” He gestured with his gun, one arm dragging the other with it. He winced. “Are they home?”
Elspeth regarded the two of them as they squinted through the glare and Caleb relayed to him all that they’d observed. Her boy looked so small next to Charles. The sun exposed the pallor of his skin from all the late nights in the brothel and she reminded herself once again that he was only a child. She’d put him through so much. Charles, too, had endured pain in her name, and had followed her into the promise of something far worse. “Caleb,” she said, “why don’t you get Charles some water?” She pointed up the hill.
The jar sat in the bottom of her pack, where Caleb had once found gum and candy, and he unscrewed the lid and poured some water into Charles’s mouth. Most of it ended up on his bandages. “Sorry,” Caleb said. He understood then, and his hands screwed the lid back on of their own volition, and he placed the jar on the stump and left Charles trying to suck the moisture from his gauze. His mother was gone. All of their footprints gathered around the trees, and then one set split off, down the hill, toward the Millards’ farm.
He raced back, snatched his Ithaca from where he’d leaned it against a rock, and sprinted after her.
Elspeth ran crouched over, taking a path that put the few trees in the yard between herself and the windows. She made it to the wide, scarred trunk of the oak tree and slammed into it, hugged the chilled wood with her pistol-laden hands. The horse corral was to her left, the house to her right, not twenty steps away. She prayed for Caleb and Charles to stay where they were, for them both to be safe, and bolted for the building. An indentation in the ground surprised her, and her leg jammed into her knee, her ankle taking all of the weight, and she tripped, crashing into the stone foundation of the house.
Caleb saw his mother hit the rocks, and swallowed his scream. He got to the oak just as she picked herself up from the snow. He held his breath. She shook off the fall. No one came bursting from the front door; the brothers didn’t storm out of the house firing their guns. He got to the wall as his mother reached the front step.
She shouldered open the front door. Wind swept in and around her, making the curtains on the opposite side of the large living room dance. The room held seven or eight chairs in a semicircle around an empty fireplace, a black stain from the smoke rising all the way to the ceiling. A threadbare rug occupied the floor, and an empty picture frame hung on the wall. A staircase in the back right corner and a door directly to her left were the only other ways in or out. Caleb was there, behind her, and she jumped, startled, and then tried to body him back outside without turning her attention from the room.
Silence except the door creaking back on its hinges.
“Mother,” a voice called out, “the door blew open.” No one answered. “Damn it,” the voice said. They heard a chair scrape out in the next room. Elspeth readjusted her fingers on the triggers, and pressed harder against Caleb, trying to shove him to safety, but he fought against her. “Run,” she said to him, “please. Please, Caleb, run.”
He stopped pushing and stepped to the side. He brought his gun to his shoulder. He heard each crack of gunfire early one morning. The lifeless gazes of Emma, Jesse, Mary, Amos, and Jorah all flashed through his head, and looked to him, hopeful.
The door opened. They caught a quick glimpse of the kitchen. A young man came into the room, a hunk of bread in his hand. His mouth was full, his cheek distended. Caleb recognized him as the gangly man whose glance had urged him back into the sharp hay of the loft, the man who’d killed his family. Here his legs, knock-kneed and thin as cornstalks even in patched trousers, seemed they could barely hold his weight.
“It’s him,” Caleb said. “He did it.”
“Oh,” the young man said, crumbs tumbling from his mouth. He disappeared back the way he’d entered. Caleb squeezed the trigger of the Ithaca, but too late. The shot peppered the door and clanged into the kitchen beyond it. Elspeth emptied both pistols, praying that one of the bullets would luck its way through the plaster and into the man. She heard scrambling but no cries of pain. She cursed herself. She drifted apart from her body, as if instructing someone else’s hands to empty the smoking shells from the cylinder. Ethan’s pistol she let fall. Frantic, she pawed at her jacket pocket, unable to find the opening. At last, her hysterical fingers closed around three bullets and she jammed them into the chambers and slammed the cylinder shut with her palm. Every second that the other Millards didn’t stampede down the stairs, firearms in each hand, Elspeth viewed as a blessing. She forced Caleb back into the far corner of the room, where she could see both the staircase and the door.
Caleb, too, expected the other Millard brothers to thunder out of the kitchen or in from the barn, and against three gunmen they had no hope. He wished his mother had waited for Charles. Something squeaked from the kitchen. His mother slapped an arm to his chest, impelling him to stay behind her. The door opened a sliver, and Caleb pushed his mother’s arm aside and fired. The knob dropped from the wood, a large hole in its place.
A spindly leg kicked the door open and the man, cheeks still full of bread, cocked a repeating rifle. Caleb’s shot went right, and the Millard flinched before firing at them, the room exploding with noise and shrapnel. Elspeth rushed her three shots. She put herself between Caleb and the Millard, drawing herself up to seem bigger, like a bear lifting onto its hind legs. The bullets ripped into her body. Each one announced itself with a blazing flare of pain. Shin. Meat of the thigh. Forearm. The gun slipped from her fingers. The bullets ceased to matter. She collapsed back against Caleb. She fought to stay on her feet, to keep him as long as possible, but she could not combat the sudden weight of her body. She tried to move her mouth but it was too far away from her thoughts.
The thump of the bullets made him gag. His mother draped over him and he yelled for her to get out of the way. The man slunk back into the kitchen. The door drooped from one hinge. Her head was between his arms, heavy on his chest. He succeeded in ejecting his spent rounds and loading two more with hands that looked very small, the shells very big. The Millard’s rifle preceded him out of the kitchen, the muzzle flashing again and again. Caleb heard bullets hissing past. Splinters and shards struck him. He squeezed his eyes and the world went white. He opened them when he didn’t die. His mother was upon him but she was not moving.
Elspeth struggled to reach the surface. Her son squirmed behind her, and she saw the gun in his hands. He sat by the side of a creek, fishing, and she dropped a ruined shirt into the water to make him happy. She wanted to apologize and couldn’t recall if she had, and she tumbled through the floor, moving fast, light and darkness swirling.
The Millard headed for the freedom past the open front door. Caleb fumbled with his Ithaca and tried to untangle himself from his mother. He brushed her hair from his eyes and mouth. The man stopped short of the threshold and fired. A blast from outside vaporized a chunk of wall. The Millard covered his face with his forearm and fired blindly. He wheeled and cocked his rifle. The shell soared through the smoky room. He pointed the gun at Caleb, who pulled the trigger on his Ithaca. His elbow slammed into the wall. The Millard lifted off the ground—one of his boots left behind—and skidded across the floor, his other sole scraping a black streak on the marred wood. Blood burbled from his mouth. His shoeless foot kicked, still running. The exposed sock had a stain in the shape of his toes on the bottom. His knuckles rapped a dying code on the floorboards.
Charles limped into the house, pushing two fresh shells into his gun.
The smell of gunpowder and the dying rasps lingered. Wood settled, buckled, and broke. His mother sprawled across him, her eyes open, her mouth agape. Caleb hurled his Ithaca like he’d never hated anything so much in his life. He began to cry. He pressed his forehead against his mother’s, gently at first and then harder. The bruises on his face sang with pain, and the nicks and scratches he’d gotten had left new cuts, and he bled against her. He banged his skull on her skull, bone on bone, and ground his skin against hers. When he pulled away, his blood had smeared her brow crimson. This made him cry harder, and Charles handed him a handkerchief. Caleb dabbed away the bright splotches of blood, and then tried to wet the bandage with his tongue or spit but couldn’t manage any. He wiped her forehead, only making it worse. He expected her to react to every touch. Each time she didn’t, he lost a beat of his own heart.
Charles used his rifle like a cane. His right shoulder and arm were wet with blood. He sank to the floor.
“Casey, are you there?” a woman’s voice called from upstairs.
Charles pushed himself up with his gun, but couldn’t straighten fully. The stain on his shirt expanded. One of his knees gave out and the leg bent underneath him awkwardly. He’d gone glassy and drained of color, making his orange hair and beard brighter, and Caleb thought he must look like one of William’s ghosts. Whatever strength Charles had was gone, the reserves exhausted, and he dropped his head to the floor.
Caleb didn’t know how to get out from under his mother with the kind of respect she deserved, so he settled for rolling her onto her side and inching his way out from beneath her. His feet had fallen asleep and they tingled with each step. He nudged the bare foot of the Millard brother. His face had been shredded and his neck torn open by the Ithaca. The gun had ended up next to the Millard’s foot, and it looked foreign to Caleb, the trigger guard bent, the muzzle dinged, the wood cheap and overworked by polish.
C
aleb climbed the stairs to a dim hallway with two doors, one on each side. The left stood open, and there an old woman lay in bed. The shades had been drawn on the low, squat windows, but sunlight crept in at the edges. Her thin gray hair sparkled, but her skin was dull and cracked. The walls had been papered with flowered prints, and Caleb thought he could smell them before he saw the dresser laden with rows of perfumes and powders. The old woman wheezed and searched for him, her eyes drifting back and forth, milky white and blind. Her long, thin fingers held covers that buried her up to her neck. “Could you fetch me some water?” she asked.
“Where are the rest?” Caleb asked. She didn’t answer but coughed so violently he felt certain she didn’t have long to wait.
The other door in the hallway opened almost by itself. The narrow space allowed for three beds against the far wall and a long squat dresser along the near. The cant of the roof forced the Millards to align the foot of the bed with the wall, the head in the center of the room. The bed closest to the window had been slept in, the sheets dirty and yanked from the lurid striped mattress, while the other two were covered in dusty blankets with large lumps beneath them. Mindful of the graves on the other side of the hill and the countless bodies beneath the tarps in Watersbridge, Caleb threw back one of the blankets to reveal nothing but a pillow and some neatly folded sheets. Dust filled the air. It tickled his throat and dried out his eyes. When it had cleared, and he’d wiped away the tears, he saw that the dresser, too, was covered in a thick film. He wondered what the drawers held; whether the man downstairs had a collection as he had. He emptied out his pack, and there, at the bottom, was his feather. Against the blood and dirt on his hands, the feather looked blacker than ever, a darkness he could sink into. With the back of his fist, he wiped a square of the dresser clean and placed the feather in its center.
On his way out of the bedroom, his jacket snagged on a series of notches etched into the doorframe. At first he understood it to be a list of victims, a roll call of the dead that he scanned for his brothers and sisters, but instead he found the same names repeated over and over again, leapfrogging one another: Leonard, Oscar, Edmund, and Warren. The uneven carvings recorded the heights of the boys, and he traced over the letters, digging his nails into the deepest wounds. He resisted the urge to measure himself and add his own name.
He granted the old woman’s wish, happy for something purposeful and easy and not knowing what else to do. In the corner of the room, a toilet table held a pitcher, a crystal glass, a washbasin, and a silver comb. She patted the cup reassuringly when he gave it to her. Once she’d taken a small sip and replaced her head on the pillows, she said, “I forgot all of your stories.”
He collapsed onto a plain chair in the corner next to the table. He stared at his hands and pressed his thumbs along his fingertips, searching for feeling.
“I can remember one, I think,” she said. She brought the cup to her lips again, and it clicked against her teeth. “Could I trouble you to open the window, my son? Let some of that summer air in for an old woman.” Caleb pushed the curtains aside and she winced. The window wouldn’t budge at first, but then yelped and went up halfway and stuck. He did the same with the other. The winter air lashed at his face and hands, the curtains undulating like living things. There was blood on his sleeve and Caleb couldn’t register what it was or where it had come from.
The old woman smiled. “When I was a girl,” she said. The wind blew in, gentler, and the cold restored the flush to her cheeks. The sun smoothed her wrinkles. Caleb stared at the prisms made by the bottles and mirrors that crowded the room, casting all the colors he’d ever seen onto the ceiling. With his index finger he pushed one of the perfumes, and the rainbow traveled across the wall by the window and Caleb’s gaze followed. Two new horses rested in the paddock, saddled and glistening with sweat. He saw below him the other two Millard brothers, laughing and exchanging punches. The bearded one slapped the other and then took off running toward the barn. His brother tackled him. The horses shifted out of the way, used to such roughhousing. Both Millards—and their brother—had a pronounced widow’s peak that pointed down to their thick eyebrows, and a thin nose that ended in a small knob. Their eyes were almond-shaped and accentuated by the deep lines beneath them. They chased each other around the horses’ enclosure, hooting.
He wondered what they would do with the bodies. Would they burn them as he had his siblings? Would they bury them in the yard when spring came? Or would they leave them in the snow like London White, awaiting some devil to take them away? There had been one time—after he’d discovered the graves, when he’d stopped listening to the prayers—when he’d tried to understand, and he’d asked his father a question that had been bothering him. “Why, if heaven is above us in the sky, do we stick the dead underground, closer to the Devil? Why not burn them and let them go into the air, nearer to God?”
His father had stared at him for a long while, and Caleb expected a Bible verse, but Jorah had bitten the inside of his lip. “Sometimes we just like to keep them near to us.”
Once the Millards saw the tracks and the hole in the side of the house, Caleb would be trapped. When they saw their brother, the Ithaca by his feet, Caleb would be dead. He could run down the stairs and out the front door, but they would likely see him before he got very far. The windows were too small for him to fit out of if he tried to jump. He clutched the windowsill. His broken fingernail screamed with pain but from far away.
He tried to fit names to the men outside, and the one downstairs, but none of them looked like an Edmund or an Oscar or a Leonard or a Warren. The curtains brushed against his face with the breeze. The bearded brother leapt onto the back of the other and drove him into the snow. The long-haired one slid out from under him, his movements as smooth as they’d been entering Caleb’s house. An emptiness in Caleb’s stomach grew with each gesture. The bearded brother slapped the snow roughly from the other’s jacket in apology. Caleb took a shotgun shell out of his pocket and stood it on the windowsill. He did the same with another. And another. His pockets emptied and he watched the brothers advance on the house. His heart fluttered. He heard footsteps. The shoes and boots of Jesse, Amos, Mary, and Emma joined in a raucous army calling his name, ready to play another round, annoyed he was still out there, and he could already feel himself giving in, knew he would scream out and run, daring them to catch him.