Before We Were Yours(63)

“No’m.”

“And if the house caught fire, they could wind up trapped.”

“If there’s a f-fire, I’d b-b-bust down that door. I w-would.”

“You’re a good man, Mr. Riggs.”

Miss Dodd don’t know the truth about Mr. Riggs. She just don’t.

“Th-thanks, ma’am.”

“And no need in tellin’ nobody about the cleanin’,” she reminds him. “It’ll be our secret.”

Riggs just smiles and watches us, his eyes white around the edges and winter-bear crazy. You see a bear moving in the winter, you better look out. He’s hungry and he aims to find something to fill that hunger. He won’t care much what it is.

Riggs’s look stays with me through breakfast and even later in the day when the yard’s finally dry enough for us to go outside. Crossing the porch, I look down at the corner and think about Camellia and wonder, Could Danny Boy be telling it true? Could my sister be dead?

It’d be my fault. I’m the oldest. I was supposed to look after everybody. That was the last thing Briny told me before he hurried off across the river. You watch over the babies, Rill. Keep care of everybody, till we get back.

Even the name sounds strange in my mind now. People keep calling me May. Maybe Rill’s still on the river someplace with Camellia, and Lark, and Fern, and Gabion. Maybe they’re drifting down in the lazy low-water summer currents, watching boats pass and barges go by and Cooper’s hawks circle wide and slow, hunting for fish to dive after.

Maybe Rill is only a story I read, like Huck Finn and Jim. Maybe I’m not even Rill and never was.

I turn and run down the steps and across the yard, my dress sweeping up around my legs. I stretch out my arms and throw back my head and make my own breeze, and for a minute, I find Rill again. I’m her. I’m on the Arcadia, our little piece of heaven.

I don’t stop when I get to the gate where the big boys have their tunnel. They’re busy pestering two new kids who came in during the rain yesterday. Brothers, I think. I don’t care anyway. If Danny Boy tried to stop me, I’d make a fist and knock him flat, same as Camellia would. I’d knock him on his back right next to the fence and use him to climb up over it and get free.

I wouldn’t stop running until I got all the way to the riverbank.

I circle the old outhouse still going as hard as I can and take a running leap against the iron bars, trying to get high enough to shinny on over, but I can’t. I only make it a few feet before I slide down and hit hard. I grab the bars and pull and scream and howl like a wild thing fighting a cage.

I keep on until the bars are slick with sweat and tears and tinted with blood. The bars don’t give in to it. They don’t move at all. They just hold as I sink to the ground and let the tears take over.

Somewhere outside my own noise, I hear Danny Boy say, “Pretty girl done gone round the bend, she did.”

I hear Fern and Stevie wailing and Fern calling my name and the big boys teasing them and pushing them down every time they try to get through the gate. I need to go. I need to help them, but more than anything, I just want to disappear. I want to be alone in a place where nobody can find me. Where nobody I love can be stolen away.

Danny Boy twists Stevie’s arm around behind his back and makes him say “uncle,” then keeps on until Stevie’s scream stabs me deep down in the belly. It hits the place I want to make hard as stone. Like Arthur’s sword, Stevie’s scream pierces in.

Before I can even think what I’m doing, I’m back across the churchyard, and I’ve got Danny Boy by the hair. “You let him go!” I yank hard, and Danny Boy’s head pops back. “You let him go, and don’t you ever touch him again. I’ll snap your neck like a chicken’s. I will.” Without Camellia here to do our fighting, all of a sudden, I’m her. “I’ll snap your neck and dump you in the swamp.”

One of the other boys turns Fern loose and backs away. He stares at me, white eyed. From the looks of my shadow, I can see why. There’s hair flying all directions. I look like Medusa from the Greek stories.

“It’s a fight! It’s a fight!” kids yell, and come running to watch.

Danny Boy lets go of Stevie. He doesn’t want to get whipped in front of everybody. Stevie tumbles face-first into the dirt and comes up with a mouthful. He spits and cries, and I shove Danny Boy away and grab Stevie’s hand and Fern’s. We’ve gotten over to the hill before I even notice who’s missing.

My heart hitches. “Where’s Lark?”

Fern puts a fist in her mouth like she’s afraid she’ll be in trouble. Maybe she’s scared of me after what she just saw.

“Where’s Lark?”

“Waydee.” Stevie babbles out the first word I’ve heard him say since the day we came here. “Waydee.”

I kneel down in the wet grass, look them both square in the face. “What lady? What lady, Fern?”

“The lady got ’er on the porch,” Fern whispers through her fingers. Her eyes rim with tears. “Like this.” She grabs Stevie by the arm and lifts up, dragging him along a few steps. Stevie nods to tell me that’s what he saw too.

“A lady? Not Riggs? Riggs didn’t get her?”

Both of them shake their heads. “Waydee,” Stevie says.