“Good. That’s more like it. Now tie him up.”
“Please, Daddy. Don’t make me.” The boy was crying.
“So now I’m your pa? Now that you want something from me?” Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Do it, and do it right. I know you know how to tie those knots because I seen you reading up on it in your books. You tie him up tight. You do otherwise, and I’ll shoot him dead.”
“It’s okay,” Wash said. “I don’t mind, buddy. It won’t hurt me.”
“Don’t talk to him!” Henry pressed the revolver farther up under Wash’s chin until his breathing turned to a shallow wheeze. “He’s my boy, goddamn it.”
BETO Beto tied Wash to the tree with shaking fingers. He was sobbing now.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Henry said when Beto finished. He crossed to the tree and tested the knots one by one before turning his back to Wash. “Look at me, son,” he said to Beto. “Now I’m going to show you another side of what it means to be a man. What do you do with a field you own? You plow it.” He walked over to Naomi. “Lie down,” he told her.
“Don’t do this, Henry.” Naomi’s lip trembled as she spoke.
“Down,” Henry ordered.
She dropped to her knees. The clouds cleared then, and tears shone on her face. Beto wanted to run to her, but he couldn’t move.
“Lie back. Open your legs. Stop crying. Don’t try to tell me this is the first time you’ve done this,” Henry said.
“Henry,” she protested, “I haven’t—I’ve never—”
“You’ve lied enough already,” he said. Then he pushed her back until her head was on the ground. “Beto, you come here. Watch. But don’t try anything. I’ve got the gun right here.” Beto looked long enough to see the revolver his father held near his sister’s face. The shotgun lay on the far side of Naomi, out of reach.
Beto did not watch. But he heard.
Naomi’s pleas. Wash’s shouts. The sound of him pulling at the ropes. Henry’s fist slamming into his sister’s face once, twice, three times. Henry shouting, “You like that? Keep it up, boy! Every time you holler, I’m gonna punch her again.”
Wash’s silence. The rustle of dry leaves. His father’s rapid breathing. An agony of waiting. His sister crying out in pain. And then the end of it. Henry’s shudder, grunt, and gasp. Naomi’s sobbing.
When Beto could look, Henry was standing up and zipping his pants with one hand. “I’ll be damned, girl,” he said, pushing his hair back off his brow. “You were telling the truth—”
“Stop this!” Wash shouted, still straining at the ropes.
“You haven’t had enough yet, huh?” Henry said. “I’ll be getting back to you in a minute.” He scooped up the shotgun and jammed the revolver into his waistband. He turned in a slow circle.
Henry paused when he was facing Naomi again. Blood oozed from her lips. Her left eye was swollen closed. The front of her dress was damp and smeared with blood. There were swaths of red on her arms where he had held her down. She tried to cover herself with the torn fabric of her dress.
Beto watched Henry’s face, but he could not understand what he saw there.
Then Henry crossed to where Wash was. He hit Wash again and again. He kicked him. He pummeled and jabbed and slapped. If Naomi cried out, he hit Wash harder. He used the end of the shotgun like a baseball bat. He did not stop until the only thing holding Wash up was the rope that tied him to the tree.
“I think that’s enough for now,” Henry said. “Robbie, go untie him. I want to see him on his knees.”
BETO Beto loosened the knots. He felt numb and dizzy now. Shocked at his own weakness. He would betray and betray and betray again. Betray the ones he really loved. He did not know how to make it stop.
When Beto undid the last knot, Wash tumbled to the ground and fell on his face.
“Here’s your chance to redeem yourself,” Henry said to Beto. “I’m going to give you this,” he stretched out the hand that was holding the shotgun, “and I’m going to hold on to this.” He pulled the revolver out of the waistband of his pants.
Wash pushed himself up on all fours. He coughed up blood and something white.
Teeth, Beto realized.
Wash crawled slowly toward Naomi.
“You remember what I showed you when we went out to the woods?” Henry pressed the butt of the gun into Beto’s shoulder. “If you need more shots, remember to pump it. Go on now. Aim at him. He ain’t moving fast.”
Numbly, Beto did as Henry said.
His fingers remembered.
“Good boy,” Henry said. “Now shoot him, or I’ll shoot your sister.”
Beto let the gun drop from his shoulder.
“I ain’t playing, boy,” Henry lifted the revolver and pointed it at Naomi.
Beto swallowed, lifted the shotgun again, and stared down the barrel at Wash. Wash who had taught him to fish. Wash who had taught him to handle a hammer. Wash who made the woods magic. Wash who had saved him. Wash who loved his sister.
When he still did not shoot, Henry’s face hardened. “He’s a murderer. He killed Cari. And all them other kids.”
“No, he didn’t,” Naomi called hoarsely, pushing herself up on her elbows.
“Stay down,” Henry warned.
Beto swallowed hard. “I can’t, I can’t.” He could barely speak the words.
Henry took a step toward Naomi, the gun pointed at her. “One ... two...three ... I ain’t counting past seven, son.”
“Please,” Naomi gurgled. “Please don’t—”
“Four ... five...six...”
A shot rang out. Wash moaned. Naomi’s eyes widened in disbelief. Beto gasped at what he’d made happen.
HENRY Henry stared down at the gun in his hand. He hadn’t known until the moment he fired that he was capable of shooting a woman. Red seeped from Naomi’s thigh. Her eyes were glassy in the starlight.
“Tell Robbie to kill the nigger,” he said to her.
She shook her head.
“Tell him!”
“No lo hagas, mi amor. Sabes...”
“Tell him, damn it!”
“Nunca, nunca...,” Naomi murmured. Her voice sounded choked. Weak and weakening.
“I taught you to shoot, boy,” Henry shouted, “now shoot!”
Beto held the shotgun in his trembling arms.
NAOMI Naomi did not hear Henry anymore. Pain knifed through her leg. Her body shuddered. She wanted to scream but could not. And then she felt very cold. She might have passed out from the hurt, from shame upon shame, but Wash was there, beside her, and her only wish was not to miss that moment.
He had dragged himself the whole way. It was only yards, but she could imagine the cost. He was shattered, too. Bleeding outside and in.
They lay together for a moment in their brokenness.
His hand found hers.
She looked up at him with her good eye. He smiled crookedly. Teeth were missing, and his mouth was full of blood. He spat to the side. “Strawberries,” he said. “Just eating strawberries.” Then he collapsed beside her, almost on top of her.
Naomi could not move. She watched the sky over Wash’s shoulder with the eye that was not swollen shut.
It was the same view she’d seen when Henry held her down. She had wanted it to stop. The pain. She had thought, Henry is putting himself inside me. She had vomited a little, and bile had dribbled down the side of her mouth. But even in the midst of it, buried inside the desire to feel nothing and be nothing, was an even stronger desire. To live as long as Wash was alive.
Because the sky she’d seen as Henry raped her held the same stars that shone over Mexico. She had forced herself to imagine life going on. An after to this. She willed that after to wait for her. For them.
We are going to Mexico, she had told herself.
To Mexico.
NAOMI & WASH “Just a dream, wasn’t it?” Naomi whispered.
“That’s right, baby,” Wash said. “What you thought happened now, it
was just a bad dream. When we wake up, we’ll be there. We’ll wake up...en México, mi amor.”
“México,” she repeated.
There was the ferocious pain in both of them but also the promise beyond it. A moment of warmth that they could stand up and walk around in. A world bigger than their tree. A sunny plaza. Bobbing hibiscus flowers the size of dinner plates. Golden-fleshed mangoes. Tiny oranges they could peel with their teeth. The clang of cracked cathedral bells.
They walked through that promise together, the Mexico they imagined. They would meet there. And it would be heaven.
They were far enough into their dream that neither of them heard the next shot.
BETO “Damn it, boy,” Henry glared at Beto. “Look what you made me do. You were supposed to put him down and when you didn’t—when you didn’t—”
There was a patch of red spreading across Wash’s back. Henry nudged the body with his foot and rolled him over. Now Wash and Naomi were side by side, mouths open like they wanted to sing. The patch of red on Naomi’s chest matched the one on Wash’s back.
Beto felt the life go out of them. He felt it as he had in the explosion, the sense of being left behind.
He swallowed.
He turned to Henry. “This is what you wanted,” he whispered. “This was what you wanted to happen.”
“No, son. I just...” Henry wavered for a moment, staring at the revolver as if he didn’t recognize it. “You helped with this, Robbie. You were here. You’re a part of this. Now, you fill that bastard with buckshot. Just in case.”
“No! He was better than you!” Beto shouted. “Not just a little. Twenty times better! A hundred!”
“Do it!”
“I won’t!” Beto screamed. But he felt his finger sliding onto the trigger, felt the gun lifting to his shoulder.
“See? It’s easy,” Henry said. His Adam’s apple bobbed against the skin of his neck. “I taught you this, son. Just fire.”
And it was easy.
◊ ◊ ◊
Henry fell backward. A good part of his head was on the trunk of the tree behind where he had been standing.
Beto had been aiming for Henry’s heart, but he missed.
He looked around at what had been his family.
◊ ◊ ◊
Beto did not notice Jim Fuller’s arrival. Did not register his presence until he pulled the shotgun away and tossed it in the direction of Henry’s body.
Jim crouched down beside Wash and Naomi and checked for a pulse.
Beto vomited, took a step toward the bodies, then vomited again. He was still dry-heaving into the leaves, choking on his own sobs, when Jim turned around.
Wash’s father was dry-eyed and calm.
“Come with me, son,” he said, taking Beto by the shoulders.
BETO Jim stopped Beto before they got back to the car. “You don’t have to say anything,” he whispered into his ear.
Beto nodded.
On the way to San Antonio, Beto rode on the back floorboards with a blanket over him.
It probably wasn’t necessary, Wash’s father told him. It was just in case. Jim didn’t tell his wife and daughter about the horror, not right away. He simply said, “I only found the boy. Now we have to go.”
It was too late for Wash and the girl. But he could save this child.
So Beto lay there under the blanket like something smuggled, and smuggled with him were the following:
(1) Edgar, curled tightly against his belly
(2) several fleas on Edgar’s fur
(3) a knowledge that was as impenetrable as a stone
(4) a lifetime’s supply of guilt and what ifs
(5) a memory
Edgar was only a cat. The fleas were of no practical use. The guilt, the what ifs, and the knowledge were for later. So Beto clung to the memory.
◊ ◊ ◊
It was a warm day, just a month or two after they came to East Texas. And while Cari and Wash talked and Naomi walked alongside them, Beto noticed, really noticed, the path for the first time. Until then, he had only thought of where they were going. But suddenly he was freed to see. And hear. And smell.
He didn’t have the words for it, the feeling that the high, straight pines gave him now that he really saw them. While he hadn’t been watching, the leaves on the maples had turned the color of sweet potatoes. Above the trees, the enormous sky was the clear blue of robins’ eggs. The dirt of the path was spongy and pungent with yesterday’s rain. Wood smoke tickled Beto’s nose. He heard the underbrush shiver with the passage of a squirrel. Then there was the heavier rooting around of an armadillo, stupid and awkward in its heavy armor.
“There’s proof God has a sense of humor,” Wash said.
“I think it’s handsome,” Cari said, contrary as ever.
“You would,” Beto teased.
“We all are,” Naomi said.
“Are what?” The question came from Wash.
“Proof.” Then Naomi took off running, calling over her shoulder, “Race you!”
They were running, all four of them, Cari shrieking foul play even though she’d pulled the same trick herself a hundred times. They rushed over the path to the bank of the river and skidded down the last yards of incline, muddying their shoes.
A black-brown-white group on a sandy patch by the Sabine River. A human noisemaker flooding the woods with laughter and scaring away all fish within a quarter of a mile. A family with a short shelf life. Four souls perched on a wide, flat rock. A passing proof of God’s sense of humor.
If only He liked laughing more, they might have won more time. Or maybe Wash and Naomi were wrong, and their borrowed time had nothing to do with God.
As he remembered, Beto made a mental note: the dead are not always right. The dead are not saints. But the dead are ours. We carry them with us like it’s our job. And maybe it is.
Beto left his younger, happier self by the river and walked back up the path, searching the memory for the tree Naomi had taken him to. There it was. Mostly hidden from view by brambles. But now Beto knew where to look.
And so inside his memory, which was not a memory at all but a story he was telling himself, Beto ran for the hiding place. He made himself a beetle high in the rotten wood of the hollow tree and determined to stay there until he understood.
◊ ◊ ◊
In the stillness of the tree, wrapped in the faint smell of rot, Naomi and Wash held each other. Her fingers found his neck, worked their way into his dark hair. She marveled at its softness, like tightly coiled silk.
He took her hand in his, slid his thumb along the soft flesh between each of her fingers.
He stroked the smooth skin of her wrists. He kissed the stretch of her right forearm, which had healed from the burn at last. He continued, showing her the perfection of wrist, ankle, neck, collarbone—all the thresholds he could reach.
She bit her lip and thought she could not bear the delicious agony of his touch, and then a slow-boiling sob rose up into her throat. When it came out of her, it turned to laughter.
That was it, then. His first gift to her. The shuddering joy of her own laughter.
When the rain began to fall, they didn’t notice, but they did notice the sudden shift in sound when it stopped. They climbed out, squinting a little. The sky was the color of wet slate, and the wind ripped through the crowns of the trees.
“Look,” Naomi said.
A wedge of light had forced itself through the dense clouds. The cottonwoods along the river stood out like pillars against the gray backdrop of the sky, their white bark shining in the sudden sun.
“Look,” Naomi said again, more insistently this time.
“I told you,” Wash said, reaching for her face, “that there was beauty here.”
◊ ◊ ◊
Smuggled in the back of the Chevrolet, smuggled into a memory, smuggled into a tree inside that memory, Beto was starting the work that would save him.
EPILOGUE
When they
got to San Antonio, Jim Fuller gripped Beto tightly by the arms. “The woods?” he said. “You were never there. You were here, in San Antonio.”
Beto nodded.
San Antonio took him back, but it was not the same.
Instead of beginning the day by reading La Prensa or rearranging the canned goods in the store, Abuelito sat in a chair in the sun. He could not speak, but he was there. Beto kissed his bushy eyebrows each morning.
Beto slept on a pallet because the new family Abuelita had taken in was using the other bed. He wanted to go to work, but Abuelita would not hear of him missing school. “No, señor,” she said, shaking her head emphatically and pointing to the dictionary, the sole book to survive the pawning of items after Abuelito fell ill.
Every day, the fact of his breathing surprised Beto. He did not want to be alive and whispered as much into Edgar’s fur each morning. But still he rose and folded his blankets. He washed his face and ate the eggs and beans his grandmother prepared. He went to school. He spent afternoons working in the store or reading aloud to Abuelito.
He moved around the enormous empty spaces in the world where Naomi and Cari and Wash should have been. He did not forget.
Beto passed silently but brilliantly through his classes, blending in with white classmates at the junior high where a savvy elementary school teacher enrolled him by calling him “son” during registration. With his teachers’ recommendations, he went on to the new Crockett High School, and he was the first Mexican American to be permitted to follow the distinguished scholar path to graduation rather than the vocational track. He was also the first Mexican American from San Antonio to attend the University of Texas at Austin. There, he annoyed his advisors by majoring in English despite his obvious brilliance in math and science.
He rarely spoke to his roommate, a lean, cheerful boy with sandy hair and an endless parade of girlfriends. When Beto wasn’t reading for classes or working at the pharmacy where he’d gotten a job as a clerk, he wrote.
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