I don’t remember falling asleep, I only remember waking. The trailer pitched as if the ground had split open beneath it. For years we’d been warned that Willis sat on a fault line. I prayed I would end up in the same hole as my parents. Gwen clawed at my back. “Jesus, somebody’s trying to knock the trailer over,” she said. Only then did I realize it was the trailer shaking, not the earth. “Damn you and your crazy trapper,” she sputtered. She thought that talking about a man could bring him to life. The rocking stopped and the trailer shuddered as it settled back into its ruts.
Gwen said, “Lock the door.”
“Why me?”
“You’re closest.” She gave me a little kick.
I wasn’t scared, but I believed the best thing to do at times like these was to screw your eyes shut and pull the covers over your head until the bad thing went away. I slid the bolt in place. “Anyone who can rock this trailer can rip the door right off the hinges,” I said.
Gwen jumped out of bed to rummage through the closet. She came up with a broken broom handle and a flashlight. When she flicked it on, I knocked it from her hand and the light blew out. “He’ll see us,” I said. The trailer swayed again. I tugged the broken broom handle away from Gwen. Its jagged edge gave me a vague idea of how I might use it.
“I bet it’s Myron Evans,” she said, “that dirty little creep.”
In my mind I saw Myron dragging his bad foot. “It can’t be Myron,” I said. “He’s not strong enough.”
“It is Myron. Who else but a pervert would try to scare us this way? I’ll beat his head with the flashlight if he comes in here. I’ll crack his skull, I swear.”
Suddenly everything was still. I pulled myself up to the window just in time to see two boys leap the fence and duck down the alley, Gwen’s rotten brother and his slow shadow.
“Can you see anything?”
“No, nothing.”
“Do you think he’s gone?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“I bet Myron knows Zack told us what he tried to do. He wants to scare us so we won’t talk. They can lock a man up for good for the kind of stuff Myron Evans likes.”
Poor Myron. He even got blamed for things he didn’t do. I remembered a time when a gang of us followed Myron home. We hid behind trees and shrubs and called to him: Myron, oh Myron. We sang it. Sweetheart, Dear One. He twirled in the street, looking for us, nearly stumbling over his lame leg. Myron, my darling. And he hobbled away, trying to run. But he was brave, much braver than I was. When he was just a child and those boys pinned him to the ground, he was strong enough to beat his own head bloody.
Gwen said, “Maybe it was the trapper. I bet he saw my hair and thought I was the Indian girl.” She was no longer afraid. The trapper was no different from the boys cruising Main, and Gwen was smiling, her teeth wet and shiny in the dark. She whispered, “Do you think he’ll keep after me?”
7
WE CALLED ourselves Lutherans, as good as any in the county, but we only made it to church when the mood struck my father. In late September the feeling hit him hard. That’s when I heard the story of Freda Graves, how she’d fallen away, possessed by some private passion.
It all began on a Friday night. I’d been in school for only three weeks, and I was already fantasizing about diseases and accidents that might keep me out of class for months at a stretch. Not long after my father got home from work, someone banged at the front door. I thought one of my teachers had discovered I’d stuck Marlene Grosswilder’s locker shut with twenty pieces of chewed Super Bubble. I still owed that girl for things that had happened in third grade; I might never be done paying her back.
I opened my door a crack. If Mr. Lippman, the science teacher, was the bearer of bad news, he would take great pleasure in the details, throwing in a few of my other bad habits as long as he was at it.
I sneaked down the stairs and realized I wasn’t the one in trouble today. A small woman was slapping at Daddy’s chest. He was too surprised to defend himself. She cried, “Look at you, a big brute like you. You nearly broke my Lanfear’s arm. You can have your damn twelve dollars.” She threw a wad of crumpled bills at his feet. “What do you care if my kids don’t eat dinner? It’s better to have them go hungry for a week than to have you beat on my husband so he can’t work.” She was young, her hands tiny as a child’s. I’d seen her at church and knew her name — Miriam Deets. She was not a pretty woman, but her skin was smooth and rosy. You knew just by looking at her she’d be sweet to touch. Miriam had married a man twice her age. Lanfear Deets worked under my father, and I’d heard Daddy say he was lazier than an Indian.
Father dropped down to his hands and knees in front of Miriam and plucked the money off the floor. She looked as if she wanted to kick him in the ribs. But she didn’t: she just stared at him, seeing some kind of hideous animal too vile to strike, a two-headed calf, an earless dog.
When Daddy got back on his feet, he stuffed the bills in Miriam’s fist and told her to get on home. Her mouth was a tight circle of struggle. She was too proud to take it and too poor to hand it back. “Tell your husband the debt’s canceled. Tell him not to bet money he don’t have to spend. And tell him the one thing that makes me sick to my stomach is a man who sends his woman out to do his talking for him.”
The guys at the mill always owed my father. He had to write all his poker winnings down in a little black book just to keep track. I’d never known him to forget a debt or let a single dollar slide, and I wanted to tell Miriam Deets to shoo before he came to his senses.
All evening Father fretted and paced, popping out of his chair every five minutes. Mother must’ve said, “What is it, Dean?” six or seven times. Even a night’s sleep didn’t snap him out of it. At breakfast he put four teaspoons of sugar in his coffee and was ready to dump the fifth when Mom said, “What’s eating you?”
“You’re eating me with all your damn questions.” He stomped out the back door. Mom and I watched him tramp across Aunt Arlen’s lawn and pound on her window. When she appeared, he gestured toward the chicken coop. Arlen nodded. She doted on her chickens as long as they were alive, but she wasn’t sentimental when one’s time came.
As Daddy unlatched the door of the coop the chickens sensed his purpose and squawked, fluttering against the cage. In less than a minute he had what he wanted. Holding the chosen one by her scrawny neck, he made straight for Arlen’s chopping block. He laid the hen on the stump, grabbed the ax, and swung once. I jumped. The headless chicken twitched.
“Guess he has a craving for fried chicken,” Mother said.
He carried it inside and plopped it in the sink. Mom followed him, crouching to wipe up the trail of splattered blood. Daddy didn’t say a word: he just started plucking, both hands moving like pistons.
When the hen was bare and pink, he opened her up to clean out the innards. He dropped the dark liver, the heart and kidneys into a plastic bag, scooped the stomach and lungs and tangled bowels into the garbage, then ripped open a paper sack to wrap around the naked chicken. With the bundle in one hand and the giblets in the other, he shouldered past Mother and me and stalked off down the alley.
“Where is he going?” Mom said.
“How would I know?” My voice gave me away.
“Lizzie?”
Traitor or liar, I had to choose. Father or Mother, who loved me best?
“Do you know about this?”
I spilled the story, minus a few details. The look on Mother’s face told me I’d done her no favor. Honesty would win me no grace.