If it was her own self in danger, that didn’t matter. Not that she’d commit the sin of suicide, but it wasn’t natural she should be living on after her child.
In case her suspicions were right, Leora had stayed close as she could by the door to the boy’s room when his teacher came that morning. She’d cut his sandwich in extra tiny pieces, even lifting the bread to check the chicken salad surreptitiously with her finger for bones. Left the lunch dishes for the maid to clear while she fussed at nothing in the basement, keeping an eye on him building his boat models till his mother came and insisted they go outside.
“Take the car,” the mother had suggested, standing on the stairs in one of her floaty chiffon numbers designed to hide her weight. Against Mr. McGinniss’s wishes, his wife had hired a new chauffeur. Now she needed to prove he wasn’t a waste of money.
Outside the car’s windows, Belle Isle’s spare spring beauty waltzed lazily around them as they followed the road’s curves. The chauffeur seemed to understand his business. Not real friendly, but then he wasn’t getting paid to talk to the nanny. The 1959 Cadillac was the McGinnisses’ third best car, last year’s model. He had it running smooth and fine; she could barely hear the engine.
He had known the best way to take to the park, too, staying on course as the street name changed from Lake Shore to Jefferson, and passing up the thin charms of Waterworks Park without hesitating one second. And he had circled the stained white wedding cake of the Scott Fountain as many times as the boy asked him. Now he steered them past some people fishing, practicing for the Derby coming in June.
Without looking, Kevin’s hand sought and found Leora’s. He was all of six years old. Six and a half, he would have said. His fingers stretched to curl over the edge of her pinkish palm, the tips extending between her knuckles. Not such a high contrast in color as it could have been. His daddy was what they called “Black Irish,” which was only about his hair being dark and curly and his eyes brown and his skin liable to take a tan easier than some white folks.
A gentle turn, and the road ran between the waters of Lake Tacoma and the Detroit River. Kevin’s hand nestled deeper into her own. She let her eyes sweep slowly away from the window, over the car’s plush interior and the back of the driver’s head, the pierced-glass barrier dividing him from the rear seat, to the boy’s snub-nosed profile. A pause; then she slid her glance past him through the far window to the Canadian shore. So much the same. But different. A different country. Slaves had escaped to Ontario a hundred years ago. Some of them settled there and never came back.
The driver spoke unexpectedly. “Here’s the boat museum site coming up, Mester McGinniss.” A pile of bricks, low and flat, ugly even in the late afternoon sun, occupied the road’s left side. Holes gaped for windows. The driver honked his horn at a man sitting hunched over on a sawhorse with his back to them and turned sharply onto Picnic Way, stopping right on the road. Two red trucks and a beat-up black-and-purple sedan squatted on the muddy lot around the half-finished museum. “You want to get out, Mester McGinniss, take a look around?” What was there to look at that they couldn’t see from where they were sitting? With Kevin’s clean loafers in mind, Leora told the driver to keep driving. Time enough for them to visit when it was open; Kevin wasn’t like most boys his age, excited by earthmovers and heavy machinery.
They headed for the island’s center. The Peace Carillon loomed up, narrow and white like that black-burning candle. Usually Belle Isle’s spacious vistas calmed Leora’s spirit, but not today.
At Central they turned east again, toward the island’s wilder end. “Will we see any deer?” Kevin asked.
“No tellin,” Leora answered.
“I think we should get out when we get to the woods. They’re never going to walk up close to a car.” He took his hand back to hold himself up off the seat cushions with two stiff arms, a sure sign of determination. “We could hide ourselves behind some trees.”
Leora was about to tell him about the one time she’d seen them here, a whole herd, eight or ten wild deer, crossing Oak-way bold as you please. But the driver interrupted her thoughts. “A fine idea, Mester McGinniss,” he said, as if he was the one to decide those sorts of things. “We’ll do just that.”
No one else on the road before them or behind them, and the driver took advantage of that to step on the gas again. What was the man’s name? Farmer, she recalled, and was ready to speak up sharp to him, white or not, when he slowed down. Way down.
He grinned back over his shoulder at the boy, a nervous grin not coming anywhere near his pale eyes. “Like that?” he asked. Kevin nodded, grave as his uncle the judge. “You ever try driving?” Leora clamped her lips firmly shut to make sure she didn’t call the man a fool to his face.
“Maybe when we get safe into the woods I’ll take you up on my lap, let you to steer a bit afore we ambush them deer, Mester McGinniss.” Farmer turned to the front. “If your mammy won’t mind.”
“I ain’t his mammy.”
“Beg pardon, but I thought that’s what—”
“Mammies is Southern. I’m Kevin’s nanny.”
Farmer muttered something, his voice low, lost under the quiet engine’s. She should have kept her own counsel. She should have, but there was only so much a body could take, and after nearly thirty years of passing up on pound cake and plucking her eyebrows and creaming her hardworking hands and pressing her hair and dyeing and altering her employers’ worn-out gowns so you wouldn’t hardly recognize them, Leora was not about to sit silent while some ignorant peckerwood called her after a fat, ragheaded old Aunt Jemima. And her so light-skinned. Even at forty-two, she was better-looking than that. Not long ago, she had been beautiful.
Mr. McGinniss had called her irresistible.
Shadows covered the car hood, the road ahead, the view out of either window. Thin shadows, thickening as she noticed them, leafless branches crowding together to warm their sap in the spring sun. They were in the woods, and suddenly that ignorant driver had swung onto an unpaved side road. The car slowed to a crawl, ruts and puddles rocking it along. Farmer stopped again, for no reason Leora could see.
“Is this where we hide to look for the deer? And I can learn to drive?” the boy asked.
“Yessir, Mester McGinniss. This here’s the place. Just let me take you on my lap.” The driver got out and went around the back to Kevin’s side. As Farmer opened the door, the fear smell came off him in great stinking waves like a waterfall. Leora reached for Kevin. She got him by his waist and held him as Farmer grabbed his arm, lifting him half off the car seat.
The boy screamed. They were pulling him apart, hurting him. Leora loosened her grip, but only for a moment. Then she had him again, by his wool-clad thighs this time, and they were both out on the ground, Farmer yelling and yanking Kevin’s arm, jerking him around so that Leora rolled in the mud. Sharp pains, blows to her sides that made her sick. Someone was kicking her and she screamed, held on tighter as if the boy could keep away the pain.
“Stop.” It was a man’s voice, sounding quiet above all the noise, like smoke above a flame. Leora held Kevin solidly in her arms, sat up on the muddy ground and looked.
There were three of them. The driver Farmer, or whatever his real name was, and two more. The others wore masks, but she recognized one by his sweater, a thick gray cardigan bunched up over his broad hips. He had been sitting on the sawhorse at the construction site. He had a gun. It was aimed at her. And beside him stood a thin man in a long coat with his hands in the pockets.