Gabby watched me look toward the hatchet. “You don’t need that.” She went back into the snow.
On the path, Nora slipped her mittened hand into mine. “Please can I come?” Her knees knocked against me. “I won’t be any trouble.” It was hard not to feel sorry for her, always underfoot, lonely since Tomas had gone.
Gabby shot me a look.
“Sorry, kid.”
Nora dropped my hand. I didn’t have to see her middle finger in the tent of the mitten to know what she was doing with it.
There was a plow attached to the front of the pickup, but I’d never seen it used; our food stocks and lumber lasted the winter, which made leaving before the melt unusual. But only twenty minutes on, we were skidding down Bushrow Road, which had gotten municipal plowing. Heat blasted our feet and made our eyes teary. Gabby gripped the wheel and leaned toward the windshield. The radio howled about Waco Waco Waco, until we remembered we could turn it off. I pressed my face against the glass as the trees needled by, already missing the sounds of the Main Lodge, wondering what Abraham had thought when he’d seen us plow away.
There were so many questions to ask—where were we going, did Gabby believe the feds were going to kill us, why was Abraham angry with Butterfly, where had Abraham gone, why had seeing Marta and Sal together sent Abraham away, did Marta and Sal really love each other, did old people have weird sex things—but Issy scrunched down to lay her head on Gabby’s shoulder and I knew not to say a word.
Town was kids making a snowman on a crusty lawn. Town was men in parkas unloading shopping carts in the Food City parking lot, and women in cloth coats walking groomed dogs. We pulled into a shoveled spot in front of the bank, a pillared stone building, all right angles, at the center of town. A man with a briefcase came down the steps. He grimaced at the roar of our busted motor.
Gabby slammed her door and ran up the steps. The man watched her disappear inside, then moved up the street alone. The heat had already leaked out of the cab. Issy shuffled the deck of cards until her fingers didn’t work anymore, then buried her hands in the armpits of her parka. “I saw Butterfly with Ephraim,” she whispered. “It…” Her breath shuddered in. “It wasn’t just talking. She was doing that thing”—she stuck out her tits and batted her eyelashes. “And you know how it works; first she’s talking to a man, then she’s…” and she wanked her hand up and down.
“Not Ephraim.”
“He hits Sarah, you know.”
I didn’t let myself think about it. Sometimes Nora scrambled away when he came into the Main Lodge, and other days, she crawled right into his lap. “Yeah, but he wouldn’t dress like that if he didn’t love her.”
“She’s not the one who makes them dress like that.”
I’d assumed Sarah liked looking plain, or maybe it was a way to keep her brood close in the midst of everyone else. But something about it being Ephraim’s choice made it less charming.
“You know in the cabin?” I said. I couldn’t believe it, but I felt nervous. “When you told us we shouldn’t mention what Ben told us? You said Sarah can’t go back into the Thinged World.” I was remembering Sarah on the banks of the lake while Abraham spoke about love, how she had leaned back against the trunk of Ephraim’s body, and how he’d closed his eyes in the morning light. “Why?”
Issy wouldn’t look at me. “She did something against the law.”
“But you don’t believe in the law.”
Then Gabby was coming down the steps, chin set. She got back behind the wheel.
“Where to?” Issy asked, glad to be out of our conversation.
Gabby’s eyes were fixed at the part of the road that dipped downhill.
“Gabby?”
Gabby took a throaty breath. She turned to look at me. “All that money you gave us? It’s gone.”
“Money?” Issy said. “What money?”
“Where did it go?” A whole year’s worth of money—as Grandmother reckoned it—disappeared. A terrible magic trick.
Gabby nodded up the road. A man, bundled in a Goodwill hat and parka and scarf, was making his way toward the truck from the other side of the street. I knew him from his lumbering cadence.
Issy put her hands over my legs. “Keep going, Gabby. It’s Jim.”
But Gabby rolled down her window.
“Mommy,” Issy said. “Mommy, it’s Jim.”
Gabby waved. Jim waved back. As he approached, Issy turned toward me, putting her arms around my shoulders, gathering me in. She made herself a shield. I could have gotten out, but that seemed worse, to share the open air with him. Now he was almost to the truck.
“Money’s gone, right?” Jim’s voice was just as I remembered it: friendliness frosting self-disdain.
“I should have seen it coming.”
“You still think I took it?” A car honked as it approached. He waved it around. “I’m not the greatest, but shit, I don’t steal food from kids’ mouths.”
“You just try to rape them,” Issy said.
“Told you they’d be thrilled to see me,” he mumbled.
Gabby turned toward me then. “You trust me?”
“He assaulted her,” Issy was shouting now. Meanwhile I had grown quiet, a mouse, my hands still, my feet freezing against the floor.
“Saskia,” Gabby said, “when things get desperate, we must listen to whoever tells the truth. Do you trust me? Because I believe this man—whatever he may have done to you, whatever price he must pay for that—I believe he is the only one telling the truth, and I believe we must listen.”
Jim didn’t dare look at me—at least there was that. “Abraham’s not who he says he is. I don’t even know if that’s his name. Personally I think he’s a sociopath—”
“You’re a sociopath.” Issy’s arms tightened around me. In fact, I was finding it hard to breathe.
“I’m a scumbag, maybe. But, Saskia, come on, you and I both know I never—”
“Just say what you’ve got,” Gabby said.
Jim sighed. “The sheriff’s a pretty good guy, okay? As sheriffs go. He could have gotten you out of there a hundred different ways, but he lets you all stay. No matter what folks around town say, he says you’ve got a right to be there. But that land is in foreclosure now. Abraham drained the account that was your last chance to pay what’s due. Who knows where your money went? My bet? He lost it all on blackjack. You think someone who believes in Unthinging withdraws money that belongs to some kid, takes it to the nearest casino and loses it on blackjack?
“Look, I know I was stupid, Saskia, and fuck, you’re a kid, and I’m sorry, okay, I’m really fucking sorry, I was messed up. Drinking way too much, okay, making bad choices. But at the end of the day, I want you kids to be safe. I don’t want you caught up in something stupid. Pretty soon the sheriff’s going to have to go up there and get you all off that land. The bank needs you off it, and Abraham’s not doing his part to move things along. You just—you listen to me now.” His fingers gripped the ledge of the unrolled window. Icy air flowed in. “I know Abraham’s got everyone riled up about this Waco stuff, but the sheriff has had plenty of chances to break shit up at Home and he’s never gone for it. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”
Jim drew his hands back into his pockets. He stayed where he was, next to the car. Gabby turned on the motor. “Anything else?”
“I don’t know what shit went down between Philip and Abraham, but Butterfly got us all messed up pretty good.”
“Don’t blame this on Butterfly,” Issy said.
He ducked his head, but he met my eyes. “I’m sorry to hear Philip hasn’t come back.”
Tears stung my vision.
“We’re a lot alike, him and me. We try to do right but we fuck it up, don’t we?” His fingers found his way back to Gabby’s window. “Hey, you know how to get ahold of Teresa? Last I heard she took Tomas down to Florida with her sister.”
“Teresa and Tomas went to Florida?” Issy said. “I thought they were still at the h
ospital.”
“I just want to talk to my family.” Jim’s voice broke. But Gabby was pulling the truck forward. “Please, if you talk to her, tell her I’m stuck here. Please, Gabby.”
In the rearview mirror, I watched Jim standing in the middle of the road. Then we were up and over the hill, back to the woods.
119
From Cornelia’s perky climb down the ladder, it seems she more than survived a night on the ancient top bunk. Meanwhile, my neck will barely turn, my joints are stiff from a night in jeans, and I have to pee so badly that the trudge up to the latrine will be as unpleasant as using it.
Ben has kept his word; he’s still sitting, eyes wide, against the door to the cabin. Xavier and Issy stumble in from Philip’s bedroom; from the tousle of their hair, they both dozed at least a little.
Before Ben opens the door, he checks what he’s hidden in his waistband. Then the world comes bursting: the flurry of the chickadees, the wind in the trees, clouds like white sheep, the wind roiling the tops of the pines. Tomas said he hears Nora out in these woods. But how does he know it’s her? My mind returns to that gold-tipped wing with every step.
In the Main Lodge, Teresa insists on hugging us, one after the other, as if she hasn’t sicced her gun-toting son on us. “That baby of yours!” she exclaims to a slack-armed Issy. “He’s just adorable!” Tomas shovels in two helpings of his mother’s sticky porridge. We sit and eat. I find I am obedient in this strange reality—chew, taste, swallow. Again, again.
“Remember Grimm?” I say. All that’s left of the moose head above us is the hook it once hung on.
“Tomas thinks he was stolen by teenagers,” Teresa says. “Teenagers like to steal big things, you ever notice that?”
“Construction signs,” Tomas offers.
“Mascots,” says Xavier.
“There’s cow tipping,” says Cornelia. “Does that count?”
They keep talking as Teresa settles in beside me. She peers into my emptying bowl. “You like it?”
“Yeah.”
“Liar. You only liked what Marta cooked.”
“I saw Sarah yesterday.”
She nods as if she’s not surprised.
I glance up to make sure Ben’s not listening. “Why’d you cut her hair?”
“She asked me to.” Teresa shakes her head at my shocked expression. “You should have seen how happy she was to get back up here. She said it made her feel free again. Made her want to start drawing. You know, back in the day, she told me this was the only place she ever knew who she was. And then, up here again, out of the blue she said she didn’t know why she’d kept her braids all these years. I mean, you know, she was in and out. Half the time she’d kind of drift off. But when I asked her to tell me what she meant, she said the braids were Ephraim’s thing.” Ben’s eyes lift at the sound of his father’s name. I soothe him with a smile, and he lets me be while Teresa goes on, oblivious. “He always wanted her to be, you know, that good little wife. I don’t know, I just thought I’d give her a little freedom, right? Show her she didn’t need to keep her hair the way he liked it, however many years after he left her for that slut. Didn’t surprise me at all, actually, when I heard Butterfly had gotten into his—”
“Did Sarah meet with Abraham?”
“Poor thing wandered off before he was available.” This sets a fire in my chest. Teresa glances at Tomas, who’s laughing at something Xavier just said. “My boy looks up to you all so much. It’s good to have you back.” As though we’re not being kept here against our will.
Then Issy’s standing over us. “I need to call my kid.” Teresa looks to Tomas. He shakes his head. “His babysitter knows where we are,” Issy continues. Ben’s eyes flick back to us at the use of the term “babysitter” to describe Jenny. “If I don’t call, she’s going to send someone up to look for me. That was the plan.”
Tomas says: “I’ll call.”
“You have to let her call her kid,” Cornelia says.
Tomas removes the gun from his pocket and places it on the table. “I’ll call.”
Teresa says, “I bet he’s ready for you.” She means Abraham.
It’s a quick walk up to Marta’s. Pine needles scatter over us. Along the water, a mallard—Anas platyrhynchos—frantically flaps his wings, and above us, the Sayornis phoebe lets out its steady chip. We find Abraham in Marta’s bed, like the wolf in a fairy tale. His hair is long but scraggly, his beard unwashed. A bowl sits beside the bed, with a crust of this morning’s gruel. Tomas kneels at his bedside. Their whisper is out of a Dutch Master painting, light streaming in.
“Wait outside,” says Abraham.
Tomas’s shoulders droop, but he lifts the bowl. Abraham’s mouth forms a wry smile when it shuts behind him.
Ben crosses his arms. “So, tell us what you want.”
A breath from Abraham. And then: “I need you to kill me.”
120
It had snowed a powdered sugar dusting in the couple hours we’d been in town. Gabby’s boots imprinted dark tracks on the plowed driveway as she went to Abraham’s door. She opened it, and left it swinging wide. Out spilled light and the shock of radio voices. I could still feel the press of Issy’s hands, bruising with love, as I pulled into the cold air.
Gabby was already yelling. “I’m talking about your xenophobic, self-centered bullshit that allows you to think money that is supposed to feed all of us is yours to spend. Spent in a world, by the way, that you claim is so fucking tainted that none of the rest of us is allowed to go there, or have our own money to spend in it. But you feel free to take ours?”
Abraham was in there, we could hear him, but we couldn’t make out what he was saying, not over the radio, a jabber of sound and anger and Waco, always Waco.
“Turn it off,” she said into the cabin.
He turned it off.
When Gabby spoke again, she didn’t yell. In fact, I wouldn’t have heard her if we hadn’t crept close. “That was our mortgage, Abraham.” When he didn’t reply, she turned and pointed at Issy. “Pack your things.” Her breath was a cloud.
Abraham appeared in the doorway, shirtless, hair loose over his shoulders. “Do you know your mother didn’t want you, Issy?”
“What did you say?”
But he wasn’t looking at Gabby. Even though he was barefoot, he moved across the snowy ground toward Issy. “The day we met, she told me you were too much. Those were her words, ‘she’s too much for me.’ She said she was thinking of giving you up.”
“That’s a lie,” Gabby said. “Issy, baby, he’s lying to you.”
“Oh, poor Iss.” He took her face in his hands. “My heart broke. To think of someone not wanting you. Wonderful you. Vibrant you. Electric you. Why do you think I asked Gabby to join me here? It would have been much easier without two extra mouths to feed. I would have welcomed the quiet. But Issy, my heart was filled with love for you. I couldn’t bear to let her—”
“You don’t believe him, do you?” Gabby said.
Issy’s chin quivered.
Right then, a feather drifted down onto the crown of Abraham’s head. There was not a bird in the sky. It was a black feather—not touched in gold, not like the one you gave me the day you died. But a feather, nonetheless, and as Abraham felt it land, and pulled it off, and held it in the air, a smile spread over his face as though Gabby wasn’t there anymore, and he held it high as the Homesteaders gathered to witness this strange omen—Sarah, Ephraim, Amos, Xavier, Ben, Cornelia, Butterfly, Nora. Hope zinged through me; you had given me another sign. Issy gripped my hand. She pulled me away, down the hill, into the safety of our cabin, away from the person who had given her life, back into the belly of Home, back into the chance of your return.
121
“It’s not murder,” Abraham says, “if I ask you to do it.”
“It’s not not murder,” Ben says, with a certain amount of relish.
“I’m not killing anyone.” Cornelia’s eyes dart over each of us. �
��We are not killing anyone.”
Abraham puts up his hands. “Surely you’ve noticed I’m not at my best. I’ve been ailing, for some time. I came back here to—”
“Yeah, where the fuck you been, man?” Ben says. “The only good thing about finding out you’re still alive is that—”
“Shut up, Ben,” Issy says.
“Thank you, Isobel,” Abraham says.
“It’s Issy, you fuck.”
Abraham suppresses a smile, then opens his hands as if to say, shall I continue? No one stops him. “I’ve been in pain—”
“Good,” says Ben. Issy offers a warning growl.
“A lot of pain. I don’t want to bore you with the details, but the symptoms will certainly be familiar.”
Xavier’s fingers comb through his lovely crest. “If Ben was allowed to talk right now, I think he’d say to get to the fucking point.”
“Ah, yes,” Abraham says. “There are contingencies in place to make sure you consider my request with fair and open minds. You have two days. I assume you’re all quite grown-up and moral now and will need a little time to hammer this out among yourselves. So. Two days, then. If you kill me by sundown tomorrow, I’ll have Teresa call my lawyer to destroy the letters I’ve written to your families”—he glances over to me—“in the case of those of you who have families; to your employers; and to the papers in each of your hometowns.”
“Oh boy, more mystery letters.” But no one tells Ben to shut up now.
“And if we don’t kill you?” Xavier asks.
“If you fail to kill me, or you leave without doing so, then, well.” Abraham’s hands lift toward the ceiling in a trill of surprise. “That little thing you did, that terrible little thing, gets out.”
Cornelia crosses her arms. “How do we know you know what it is?”
“I mean the murder,” he says, right quick. No mistaking that.
“The murder you promised would mean we could stay here? The murder you orchestrated and then abandoned us to? We were kids, Abraham.” Issy’s voice swells with emotion. “We’d been told, by the person we trusted most, that we wouldn’t be able to survive in the outside world.”
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