The Weight of Blood (24 page)

“We can't take her there.” Panic edged into Jamie's voice. “I can't drive some drugged-up kid across state lines. What do you think'll happen? What the fuck are you gonna say when we sign her in?”

He was right. “Take her to Sarah Cole's, then. You know where she lives?”

He nodded, biting his lip. We bumped off the gravel onto the main road. The blacktop steamed in the rain. Headlights ghosted by, but I couldn't make out the vehicle through the downpour. We watched the mirror nervously but saw no lights behind us.

“Drop me at my house,” I said. He shot me a confused glance but didn't object. “I'll meet you at Sarah's as soon as I can. Just keep Holly safe.” I placed my hand on his arm. His biceps twitched, and he made a loose turn onto Toad Holler Road, the car skidding and correcting as he braked and regained speed.

Crete

Crete left a message for Carl, asking him to reconsider letting Lucy come back to work. He was sure he could wear his brother down, though it might require a bit of patience. He waited a few minutes past quitting time to see if Carl would call back, but he didn't, so Crete locked up his office and let Judd know he was leaving. Rainclouds hung low as he left Dane's, and thunder grumbled in the distance. He remembered how Mama used to say she could feel a storm coming. Her leg would ache along the seam where the bone had broken and knitted itself back together. She was right more often than not, but Crete suspected it was all an act. His nose had been broken twice, and after it healed, it never ached in any kind of weather.

He rubbed a finger over the twisted bridge of his nose, feeling hard knots of bone where it had fused back together. It had been that way for so long, he hardly recognized old pictures of himself where it was straight. He was twelve the first time it got broken, and it was all Mama's fault. She had sat in the rocker in her bedroom for days, eating nothing but oyster crackers she lined up on the arm of the chair, using the toilet only when Daddy carried her across the hall. A bouquet of peonies browned on the dresser, petals dropping onto a doily and curling into themselves, and she did nothing except stare at those petals dropping, at the soft pile they made. Carl had taken sick, fever slicking his little body with sweat, and Daddy had driven him up the road for Birdie to take a look at, leaving Crete to keep an eye on Mama. She couldn't be left home alone when she was having one of her spells. The year before, she had thrown herself out of an upstairs window and landed in a viburnum bush, breaking her leg. After that, Daddy had installed new screens and planted viburnums under every window to catch her if she jumped again.

Crete checked on his mother, who had fallen asleep in the rocking chair, and then he went to sit outside on the porch. The night was warm and breezy, perfect weather to roll his sleeping bag out in the yard. He liked sleeping outdoors, listening to the night sounds all around him. He wasn't scared. Nothing outside bothered him, not even bugs, which rarely bit him. They didn't like his flavor, Mama said. Crete worried she was right, that something in his blood was bad. The bugs smelled it and stayed away.

He heard a loud crash and ran back into the house. On his way up the stairs, he heard another crash, then a moment of silence before Mama started screaming. He flung open the bedroom door and saw her straddling the windowsill, half in, half out, waving her arms as a bat flapped around the room. He guessed that the crash he'd heard was Mama kicking out the screen, and the bat must have flown in as Mama tried to get out. If she jumped, it would be Crete's fault, because he was supposed to be watching her.

Please, Mama
, he said.
Come back in
. He grabbed her nightgown and pulled till she fell to the floor, cussing him. The bat flew back out into the darkness, and Crete closed the window. He tried to help Mama up, but she swatted at him.

I ought to throw you out that window,
she sneered.
You're just like me, something wrong
in that head of yours. I'd be doing you a favor.

Her words burned into him. He wondered what would have happened if he hadn't come to stop her, if she had gone ahead and jumped.

Get out
, she hissed, pulling herself to a squatting position and lurching toward him.
Get out!

He backed to the doorway, and without warning, she slammed the door in his face. Blood spurted out of his nose. He went back outside and sat on the porch swing with toilet paper stuffed in his nostrils, listening, but nothing fell from the upstairs window into the bushes.

When Daddy got home, he handed a sobbing Carl over to Crete and thumped up the stairs to check on Mama. Daddy didn't want Carl to see her, not until he took her back to the doctor in Springfield and got her fixed up with some pills. Heaven forbid Carl learned the truth about anything that might upset him. They had to tell him pretty lies about Mama and Santa and the Easter Bunny. Carl loved their mother because he didn't really know her. It was different for Crete. He wasn't sure that he could ever look at Mama again without seeing the meanness he knew was inside her.

Carl settled down when Crete took him, snuggling his sweaty head against his big brother's neck. Crete took Carl's stuffed bear out of his hands and, with little ceremony, drop-kicked it off the porch. Carl's face quivered on the verge of a sob, so Crete set him down roughly on the swing and retrieved the bear before the crybaby could bawl loud enough to bring Daddy back down and get him in trouble. He would be in enough trouble when Daddy saw the busted screen. But Carl didn't cry. Crete handed him the bear, and his little brother gave it an awkward punch, knocking it to the ground. Carl sniffled and looked up at Crete with a wan smile. Crete held out his arms and let Carl climb back onto his lap and rocked him in the swing long after the boy fell asleep, swatting away any mosquitoes that dared land on his brother.

Decades had passed since the night Mama broke his nose. He'd looked out for Carl all these years, and his little brother had stuck by him, even when the only thing tethering them was blood. Crete trusted Carl more than anyone else, which was not to say that he trusted him completely; Carl's weakness—not of character but of constitution—could be a liability. Carl didn't know everything, for example, about the girls. He knew Crete was invested in some sort of escort business, but the true nature and extent of the operation would have turned his delicate stomach. Crete hadn't set out to hide it. He figured his brother would find out sooner or later, and then, as with most questionable things Crete did, Carl would manage to ignore it. Carl was good at blinding himself to what he didn't want to see, especially where his brother was concerned.

But then Carl had gone and gotten involved with Lila. And Lucy had come along. Crete didn't want Carl to know what he had done, because it might be the one thing his little brother couldn't overlook. He didn't dare work any of the girls in Henbane after that (Emory was to blame for the whole Cheri mess, proving again that it was a bad idea to traffic in your own backyard), though he brought new recruits to the farm as needed and kept them hidden for a few days or weeks until he could transition them to Springfield or Branson or other locations. He'd had girls in trailers and basements and back rooms, in the sticks, the city, the suburbs. It didn't matter where they were, because men would find them, and the money would follow.

He'd learned the basics from Emory, a mentor of sorts who looked more like a senile moonshiner than a businessman. They had met at an Amway meeting, though neither of them was there to join up and start selling vitamins and detergent door-to-door. Crete was there to confront a guy who owed him money, and Emory was there to scout for like-minded individuals who could expand his territory. At the time, business was slumping at Dane's, and Crete needed to make up for a few bad investments. Once Emory trusted him enough to talk details, Crete couldn't believe how easy it sounded.

Even with Emory's guidance, Crete made mistakes at the start. He picked the wrong kinds of girls. Girls who weren't desperate enough, hadn't resigned themselves to their situations, wouldn't cede. And he failed when it came to forcing them. He figured out quick enough that force wasn't necessary when he picked the right ones. There were plenty of ordinary girls who were poor or dumb or lonely, abused, addicted, confused. No need to import exotic beauties. Emory had told him that looks didn't matter—a guy would screw a goat if he got desperate enough—but that was another mistake Crete had made in the beginning, picking pretty girls, girls he'd want for himself. It had backfired with Lila in the worst way. He could admit later how stupid he'd been to think something would spark between them once she arrived. He had lost perspective, let himself feel spurned and jealous and vengeful. And instead of cutting his losses on a sour deal, he'd brought strife to his family, ultimately hurting his brother—the one person who had earned his love and loyalty. He wouldn't let himself be tempted to make that mistake again.

He thought about quitting early on, but it was easy money—which he sorely needed to keep Dane's afloat—and he couldn't argue with the business model. You could only sell a cow once, but you could milk it every day. And no matter how much people drank, they would always be thirsty again. Demand was unceasing, and the supply was bountiful. There were so many girls, like milk cows, giving and giving until they gave out. He took them in, spoiled them with compliments and attention and clothes, and sometimes recouped his investment in under twenty-four hours. Someone told him that way back in slave times, a girl might cost you a thousand bucks. For reasons he didn't question, women's worth had plummeted, and Crete could buy one for a few hundred dollars. And he didn't always have to buy them; sometimes he got lucky and found one on his own.

After a while, the thrill dulled and he didn't touch the girls anymore, even when they tried to touch him. He'd slept with some of them after Lila, hard little creatures with broken parts inside that caused them to malfunction, to seek comfort in his lies, to kiss his stubbled neck, remove their clothes, and kneel before him, an empty offering to a false god. But that was how all gods were, he figured: blind, deaf, and dumb, unconcerned or unaware of what people begged of them. It wasn't guilt that made him stop sleeping with the girls, it was the pointlessness of it. Sex with a broken girl was hardly better than jerking off. He wanted something he couldn't find in girls as empty as he was. Nothing plus nothing equals nothing, he thought, an equation that served no purpose.

The only girl he truly cared about was Lucy. He barely trusted Carl to watch over her, doubting his brother could be ruthless enough or smart enough to protect her. And so he was there, always, for Lucy when she needed him. He was there rocking her to sleep while his brother drowned in grief. He was there, with his eye on her, while Carl wandered for work. Carl wanted to send Lucy off to college, but Crete wanted her to stay in Henbane and take over the family business—Dane's, not the other, the buying and selling of girls. He would rather she saw none of that but the assets, the money he had set aside to provide for her and keep Dane's running as long as she liked without worrying about its actual profits. That was a reason he gave himself for continuing in the business when he no longer needed the money; it was a better reason than the simple fact that he liked having control over the girls. The flip side was that Lucy wouldn't want the money if she knew where it came from. She had the same moral compass as Carl but lacked his ability to ignore unsavory things.

When Lila was alive, Crete had been determined to find out if Lucy was his daughter. He was driven by selfish anger and a blind urge to claim what belonged to him. But with Lila gone and Carl floundering, things changed. No one stood between him and Lucy; she was closer to him than ever. He knew that after the loss of his wife, Carl couldn't take a second blow, the one he would suffer if Crete took away his child. He wouldn't do that to his brother. And this way, he didn't have to face the possibility that Lucy
wasn't
his. He would rather not know for sure. Though what would a test result matter? It was just a bunch of letters and numbers. It wouldn't change his love for her. It was real love, true and effortless: stronger, simpler, and more important than what he had felt for Lila or his mother or any other woman. And she loved him back. He gave Lucy everything, and she was enough, a solace for all the other things he knew he couldn't have.

Crete's nose had been broken a second time when he lied and told Carl he'd slept with Janessa Walker. He stood there and let Carl hit him, because he knew he deserved it. Janessa was the first girl to turn down his advances in favor of his little brother, and while he felt bad about hurting Carl, he couldn't stand to let Janessa go unpunished.

Crete was almost home when the sky let loose. Rain blurred his windshield as the wipers struggled to keep up, and he flicked on the headlights. A few minutes later, he pulled into his driveway, parked the truck, and made a run for the house. He fumbled with his keys as he reached the front porch but quickly realized that he wouldn't need them.

Crete stood there in the wind and rain, fully soaked, staring into his house. Beyond the screen, the front door gaped open on the dark and empty hall, and he knew right then, before he ran inside and down the stairs to check the basement, that the girl was gone.

Lucy

Though the rain let up as soon as I got in the house, the sky stayed dark. Birdie would be worrying. I fetched the rifle from the front hall and checked the chamber, knowing the gun was little more than a rattle on a snake, a warning—a plea—to stay away. I wasn't so worried about Emory, who'd already shown that he valued survival above retribution when he sped away from Crete's. But Crete might not believe I'd call the law, that I'd forsake my family to save a girl I barely knew. He wouldn't run on speculation; I'd never known him to run from anything. He was a man of confrontation. If Emory told him what I'd done, he'd want answers from me.

I dialed Birdie, and she picked up at half a ring. “I got caught in the rain out in the garden,” I said. “I'm gonna get cleaned up, and then I'll head back.”

“I'll come get you,” she said. “Radio says it's gonna get worse.”

“No!” It came out harsher than I intended. “I'm fine. I don't need your help. I'll wait it out here if it gets that bad.”

Lightning flared, and her voice buzzed with static. “Well, at least turn on the radio.” She wasn't happy with me, but that couldn't be helped. I had to wait at the house until it seemed likely that nobody would come. Then I could start cleaning up my mess. I'd have to call my dad.

I stepped out onto the porch and inhaled the damp electric scent of the storm. Bruised clouds bulged overhead, leaving a gap of clear greenish sky along the horizon. All through the hills, the treetops swayed like the coat of a giant beast being stroked by unseen hands. I heard no approaching engines, no manmade sounds, just the swell and creak of the house, the shuddering wind, the rustle of ten thousand leaves.
He's not coming
, I thought.
He is letting me go.

A tender ache flowered along my cheek where Emory had struck me. I hadn't bothered to check my face in a mirror, but now that I had time to think straight, ice seemed like a good idea. I went back inside and cracked ice cubes into a kitchen rag to make a compress. Remembering Birdie's advice, I clicked on the radio and changed stations in time to hear the weatherman speak of a hook echo. His instruments and calculations had detected a pocket of rotation. I waited as he read the names of towns in its path: Theodosia, Isabella, Sundown, Howard's Ridge, Henbane. The list kept going. I wondered if the tornado siren was blaring in the town square; we were too far out to hear it.

A tornado had torn through town when I was in grade school, and for a long while after that, every time a tornado watch was issued for Ozark County, I'd drag Dad out to the root cellar with me. We would huddle on the dirt floor and use the flashlight to count the preserves on the sagging shelves.
If Birdie don't quit with the pickled beets
, he'd say,
there won't be any room left in here for us.
I outgrew my fear, letting myself believe Dad's assertion that twisters skipped right over the holler due to geography.

Now I imagined the tornado warning's angry magenta blotch on the radar screen, and all my fears rose up inside me like floodwater. I didn't want to be here alone, waiting for something terrible to happen. I picked up the phone, and it crackled at me. I jabbed the buttons until I got a dial tone and called Birdie. When she didn't answer on the first ring, I knew she wouldn't answer at all. I'd told her I was fine. She was probably already in her cellar with Merle. I didn't want to consider the alternative—that Crete had shown up there looking for me.

I paced the kitchen floor in tears, marveling at my stupidity, my stubbornness. I was stuck here until the storm passed. I hoped that Jamie and Holly had already made it to Crenshaw Ridge, to some sort of safety. Outside the window, the trees were thrashing, eerie tendrils of cloud trailing down as the sky closed in. Hail pelted the yard, a scattering of pearls, and I knew that I should take shelter, just in case. I grabbed the rifle and opened the back door.

From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the truck. And Crete stepping out of it. Staying in the house wasn't an option, so I dashed for the concrete mound of the root cellar, rain lashing me as I ran.

“Lucy!” He sprinted across the yard, catching up to me before I could push the cellar door closed. He wedged himself in the entryway so that I could neither escape nor shut him out. I backed into the darkness, holding the rifle in front of me, the safety still on.

“Lucy, honey, I just wanna talk to you,” he said. “Put that down.” He pulled the gun easily from my hands.

“Just leave me alone,” I sobbed. “Please.”

“I wanna tell you I'm sorry,” he said. “There's been … misunderstandings. But I love you, and I'd never do anything to hurt you.” He edged into the small space with me. The wind howled at his back, tugging at his hair and clothing. It was absurd, him trying to carry on a conversation as the storm bore down. I scooted into the corner, brushing cobwebs from my face.

“You wanna know the truth about her,” he said. “Your mother. That's what all this is about, all your poking around and causing trouble.” I covered my ears.
Truth
. It didn't mean much coming from him. He would say whatever was necessary to distort the things he'd done, to lay blame on everyone but himself.

“Listen!” he shouted. “What happened to her in the cave … she didn't kill herself. I know that for a fact. It was an accident, that's all. It was black as pitch, and she fell. She was gone, and there was no getting her back. There was nothing I could do.”

I slowly grasped what he was saying. He'd been there when she died. He'd known all along that she was never coming back. He had known it my entire life and never said a word. If it truly was an accident, if there was some good reason he'd been alone in that cave with my mother when she died, he could have told me years ago.

I lifted my head and looked him in the eye. “What did you do to her?”

I felt the
boom
before I heard it, a reverberation in my chest, and then Uncle Crete fell to the floor, his face in the dirt. I thought at first he'd been struck by flying debris, but then Birdie dropped down into the cellar, her hair plastered to her head so I could see the pink scalp beneath. She set down her gun and wrestled Crete's legs out of the way so she could bar the timber door. I didn't move. My eyes struggled to adjust to sudden blindness. In the faintly lit circle beneath the ventilation pipe, Crete's blood crept across the floor. There was a shift in pressure, a horrible sucking at the pipe, and my ears popped. The door groaned but held. And then Birdie's arms were around me, cradling me so I couldn't tell whether her body was shaking or mine, and we stayed there while the roar outside died away and for some time after that.

We stepped gingerly around Crete's body and out into the gray evening light. “Are you all right?” Birdie asked finally. “I heard the warning on the radio, and I know you said you were fine, but I promised to look after you … and then I saw him there with the rifle …”

“He wasn't going to shoot me,” I said. “It was my gun. He just took it away to keep me from doing something stupid.”

“We don't know what he would've done,” Birdie said sharply.

When the phones came back up, Birdie called Dad. He was already on his way, having heard about the tornado. Birdie took him out on the porch when he arrived, and I couldn't hear what she said to him. She had her hand on his arm and kept him facing away from the window so I couldn't see his face. He pulled away from her at one point, and his shoulders slumped, but she kept talking, and a minute later, she was following him to the root cellar. Birdie came in through the back door and took me by the hand. She was trembling. “I tried to explain …” she said, trailing off. “He needs time. Let's go to my place for a bit.” We rode in silence, observing the storm debris—shredded leaves, snapped branches, a lawn chair in the ditch—without comment.

Birdie plied me with tea and sugar cookies that I didn't want but ate anyway, for the sake of doing something normal, familiar. Bite, chew, swallow. I could do that much. She didn't eat anything, just sat in her chair watching me from the corner of her eye, knitting needles working an endless skein of yarn.

When night fell, I knew Dad was taking care of Crete. Wrapping his body in a tarp and dragging it from the cellar. Cleaning up the evidence. Mourning the loss of his brother, who, despite everything he was suspected of, everything he'd done, was still Dad's blood, the last of his family. Except for me. I was and would always be a Dane, with all the good and bad that entailed, and like my forebears, I would keep the secrets entrusted to me until they slipped from my naked bones. But Birdie had taught me that I needn't be bound by the unspoken laws of kin; that I could have a family based not on bloodline but on love. She had kept her promise to my mother to look after me. I didn't know why I hadn't seen it sooner, that Birdie loved me as she loved her own children—enough to take a life to save mine.

Frogs started up their courting songs. After a while Birdie took out her worn Bible and read aloud in a quiet, soothing voice until at last sleep beckoned
. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

We took a somber tour of the storm damage the next day. The tornado had skipped through Henbane in typical fickle fashion, demolishing some buildings and leaving others untouched. A mangled pickup balanced precariously on the roof of the Great Southern Bank. One of the ancient gum trees on the courthouse lawn had toppled, smashing into the Donut Hole across the street. Sections of the blacktop road leading to the river had been scoured down to bare earth, and a handful of homes had been reduced to a confetti of insulation, splinters, and glass. The storm took pieces of Henbane with it, snatching up photographs and receipts and pages of books with greedy fingers and dropping them out of the sky as far away as Howell County.

Dane's general store was intact minus a few shingles and the patio awning, but the landscape around the building had been swept clean—the hand-lettered signs advertising firewood and night crawlers, the planters overflowing with petunias, the trash can and ashtray and wooden benches, the old wagon where Crete had stacked melons and pumpkins for sale. Even the morning glories that climbed the walls and gutters had been stripped away. Devoid of all its familiar adornments, Dane's appeared alien and unwelcoming. Cheri's tree, along with countless others, had been uprooted and tossed in the river.

Several people had been wounded by flying debris. Arleigh Snell had been rescued from her crushed trailer after hours spent pinned under the rubble, and one person remained unaccounted for. Whispers spread through town that Crete Dane was missing. A storage shed behind his house had been ripped apart, the contents lost to the wind, and it was thought that he might have been borne away in the funnel cloud. The sheriff expressed hope that Crete's remains would be recovered, but with thousands of acres of forest on all sides, it wasn't feasible to launch a search.

An anonymous tip led to a raid on Caney Mountain, but no trace of Emory was found. While it was possible, authorities acknowledged, that a significant trafficking ring had operated in Ozark County, they were unable to locate the victims. They couldn't even prove the existence of the suspect; his identity had never been captured on paper. I wanted Holly to come forward, but I couldn't force her. Much of the experience was blurry for her, and she wasn't ready to bring it into focus. I filled my journal with alternate endings, things I could have done to save her without letting Emory go. I felt the weight of the other girls I'd endangered with his escape. I hadn't seen Jamie since he'd driven off into the storm, but Sarah told me he'd stayed by Holly's side that whole night, watching over her, keeping her safe. He had stayed until I finally reached Ray and asked him what to do with her.

Ray had no trouble getting appointed as Holly's temporary guardian, something her mother did not emerge to protest. He and his wife had been looking for a child to dote on for a very long time, and if they had their way, they'd adopt her. I still thought of Holly with her 4-H rabbits, waiting on the curb for someone to take her home, and I was glad she now had a family she could rely on. I didn't know what it would take to heal her after all she had been through, but I believed the Walkers would do everything possible to mend her wounds.