Covenant

by Ann McMan

  Celine had been happy to see that Bryon had brought Django along when he came by to pick them up. Dorothy asked immediately if Django could go, too, and Byron said, “Of course.”

  Celine had never been to the house where Dorothy grew up. She knew it was located in a rocky, mostly undeveloped part of the county the locals called Babylon Hill, and that it overlooked part of the New River. As they drew closer, she became more than a little bit anxious about seeing it—especially knowing all she now understood about the magnitude of the horrors the girl had experienced living there with her father.

  In her view, the place couldn’t go up in flames soon enough.

  But this was part of Dorothy’s journey—not hers. Her job was to provide whatever comfort and support Dorothy would ask for—or allow.

  When they drove up the long, rutted lane that led to the property from the county road, Celine could see the remnants of a small vegetable garden, and a clearing that contained a burn can surrounded by neatly stacked piles of tree branches and other yard waste. When Byron drew up in front of the house and shut the car off, Celine was surprised by how small the place was. It really wasn’t much more than a story and a half. Its most distinctive features were its large front porch, and how much in need of a paint job its clapboard siding was. There were no curtains at any of the windows, but she supposed they wouldn’t be necessary out here, where there were no other houses within a mile. She noticed that the area beneath the big porch was raked clean.

  She figured Dorothy was responsible for that. Or perhaps, Buddy. Dorothy had shared with her that Buddy sometimes did outside work for her father.

  Byron turned in his seat to ask Dorothy if she wanted him to accompany her inside.

  “No,” she said. “I only want a couple of things. I know where they are, and it won’t take me very long.”

  She got out of the car and Django hopped out with her.

  The house was locked, but Dorothy knew where to look for the spare key, hidden beneath an old bucket filled with now-dead geraniums. That struck Celine as sad. She recalled a greeting card Maddie had once sent her many years ago. “To believe in life,” it read, “is to believe there will always be someone to water the geraniums.”

  Not here. Not anymore.

  Dorothy unlocked the door and stepped inside. Django trotted right along behind her.

  Django certainly wasn’t an orange dog . . .

  “You know you have to let her do this, right?”

  She looked at Byron. “I know. But I don’t much care for it.”

  “How about we go and wait for her on the porch?”

  Celine agreed and they approached the house. It was quiet out here. She couldn’t hear any traffic noise from the county road—or any sounds from the river. There were no birds singing, either—even though she saw what looked like a homemade feeder hanging from a rope tied to a roof truss above the porch. She didn’t see any evidence of floodlights outside—not on the house and not on any posts or poles. She could only imagine how dark it must’ve been out here at night. Dark enough to conceal the damage Watson had systematically visited upon his own child.

  Dark enough for Dorothy to study the stars, as she’d often shared with Henry—stars that lit up the night sky above the appalling landscape below.

  Yes. This place couldn’t be gone soon enough.

  Django came clattering out onto the porch. Dorothy followed behind him, carrying a cardboard box. Byron met her and took the box from her.

  “Do you need help carrying anything else out?” he asked.

  “There’s only one more. It’s heavier, but I can carry it.”

  She ducked back inside—with Django at her heels.

  Celine watched Byron follow her with his eyes.

  “You know you have to let her do this, right?” she quoted.

  He made a face at her. “I hear you.” He looked down at the contents of the box. “I wonder what this stuff is?”

  “I’m guessing those are the attic boxes she talked about—the things that were her mother’s.”

  Dorothy was back a minute later, carrying a larger box full of books. She handed it to Byron.

  “That’s everything. That’s all I want.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “We can stay for as long as you need.”

  “I’m sure,” she replied. “I only want the things that belonged to my mother.” She looked back at the house. “Nothing else in there means anything to me.”

  Celine could tell Byron wanted to press her to be sure, but she stopped him.

  “Do you want me to lock the door for you?”

  “It’s okay.” Dorothy gave her a slight smile. “I can do it.”

  Byron loaded the two boxes into the trunk of his car while Dorothy locked the house and returned the key to its place beneath the bucket of dead plants. Celine waited for her to descend the wooden steps and walked with her to the car.

  Dorothy did not look back at the house.

  “Are you okay?” Celine asked.

  Dorothy kept her eyes focused ahead of them, on Byron’s car.

  “I will be,” she said.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Maddie and Syd stood on the porch and watched David leave. He’d stopped by unexpectedly on what he called, “the second leg of his apology tour.”

  “Think Hugh Grant without the hookers,” he added.

  But the tale he’d shared with them about Gladys, and his unplanned flight to the cemetery after the 4th of July altercation with Watson, was very welcome news. Especially to Maddie, who’d begun to worry that David was emerging as a potential lead suspect if Watson’s autopsy showed any indications of misadventure.

  Now they could all relax. David was now willing to account for his whereabouts during that critical hour—and he had a witness who saw him there.

  But the mystery of what had happened to Gerald Watson would continue to churn and disrupt the lives and serenity of nearly everyone in Jericho until they knew, with certainty, what events had contributed to his death at the river.

  David shared other revelations with them, too—gruesome and disturbing details about the extent of the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of his father. Maddie had been sickened by his admission of all he’d endured. She felt indicted by her own obliviousness and failure to recognize what had been happening to him.

  “How could I not have known about that?” she asked him. “Why did I not see it?”

  David tried his best to reassure her. “Because I hid it from you—and from Mama.” He gave a bitter laugh. “It figures that keeping this a secret was the only thing my father and I ever agreed on.”

  Syd gave up on decorum and got up to wrap her arms around David from behind. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

  David leaned into her. “Thanks, Blondie. I’m sorry, too. That bastard stole years of my life from me.”

  Maddie had never been prouder of her best friend—or more impressed by the courage it took for him to own the truth about his past.

  Even though she was overwhelmed by the callous way his innocence had been stripped away by the one person he should’ve been able to trust the most.

  How could this happen? How could a parent ever damage a child in this way?

  She thought about David—and Dorothy. Charlie, too. All of them. And how many others like them did they cross paths with every day? The silent victims . . . the ones with no voices to cry for help.

  She reached across the table to take hold of David’s hand.

  “It’s okay, Cinderella,” he said softly. “You were always there for me. You took care of me in all the ways I didn’t know I needed.”

  “I hope I always will,” she pledged.

  David left shortly after that, saying he had one more stop to make before it got too late.

  Syd leaned into her as they watched his car drop out of sight.

  “Dear god. When is this all going to stop?”

  “Watson, you mean?”

  “No
t just him,” Syd explained. “Everything that created him. Everything that created a thousand more just like him. Everything that feeds this ugliness and allows it to flourish. It just needs to stop.”

  “I know. It’s like trying to find your way through the fog of nuclear winter—even though the sun keeps shining. What we thought we understood has been turned upside down. We can’t tell up from down anymore because we’re all spinning around inside Yeats’s apocalyptic gyre, and the center isn’t holding.”

  “God. How do we keep Henry safe?”

  “We have to keep telling him the truth—about everything. No matter how difficult it is. We have to show him the same kind of courage David has just shown us. And we have to promise that we’ll never turn our faces away if things get too hard, and it would be easier or more expedient just to ignore them. The only way to push back the darkness is to stand in the light.”

  Syd tightened her arms around Maddie. “I knew you’d know the answer.”

  “I don’t know about that. Sometimes, I don’t think I understand anything anymore. But I do know one thing: if you and I can manage to stay as constant and steady as we are, we’ll probably do okay.”

  “I think so, too.”

  Maddie kissed her hair. “I’m too agitated to head back inside. Do you want to walk down to the pond?”

  “Sure. We can see how Henry’s fish are doing.”

  “Since the water usually looks like it’s boiling, I’d say they’re multiplying like locusts.”

  “It might be time to fish a few out,” Syd agreed.

  They left the porch and started their slow descent toward the pond.

  “Good luck breaking that news to Henry,” Maddie told her. “He’s not going to be happy about seeing any of his little buddies end up on somebody’s dinner plate. He’s probably given them all names.”

  “Me? Why do I have to do it?”

  “Because the need for it derives from fish with overactive libidos. Ergo, your territory.”

  “Someday you’ll have to explain this division of labor to me.”

  “It’s simple: I handle anything requiring sober reflection or poetry, you handle all things related to making whoopee.”

  “Making whoopee?”

  “Why not? It sounds better than ichthyologic orgies.”

  “You’re certifiable . . .”

  “Like I said,” Maddie squeezed her hand, “constant and steady.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Roma Jean decided to stop by Charlie’s house on her way home. She knew she couldn’t stay very late, but she’d been worried about how Charlie was dealing with the sudden reappearance of her father, and she just wanted to check on her.

  She’d felt bad about having to tell Charlie about her run-in with him on the bookmobile after he and the two Bone Gap women had shown up. But she knew she had to. Manfred Davis had seemed so different during that encounter. Emboldened, maybe. She’d been a little afraid of him and his undisguised anger about the nature of her relationship with Charlie.

  That Mrs. Black didn’t help, either.

  Charlie said Mrs. Black had been partly responsible for the awful way the girl, Jimmie’s, parents had shipped her off to live with some crazy snake-handlers in Kentucky. And all because Jimmie and Charlie had discovered they liked each other.

  Okay. Maybe they more than liked each other . . . But that didn’t justify what had been done to Jimmie, or what Manfred did to Charlie. Nothing could ever make that kind of reaction all right.

  Buddy had covered the back window of her Caprice with heavy plastic and secured it with car tape, just until she could get it back out to Junior’s to get it fixed. Again. The plastic was so thick, Roma Jean couldn’t see through it to back up, so she had to park on the street, instead of pulling into Charlie’s driveway. Not many people out here ever parked along this road because it was kind of narrow, but Roma Jean felt better about it when she saw a beat-up white van pulled off on the shoulder, just past Charlie’s house.

  This time, she decided not to wait outside. She got out her key to unlock the door, but was surprised when it just pushed open. That was strange. It wasn’t like Charlie to leave her door unlocked.

  Oh, well. Maybe she was running late this morning and forgot? Roma Jean forgot stuff like that all the time. Four times out of five, she’d get all the way to the library only to realize she’d left the bookmobile keys at home on the kitchen counter beside the door.

  Roma Jean went inside to sit down and wait for Charlie to get home. She hoped it wouldn’t be too long. Her mother was making two kinds of pasta salad for the market tonight, and she needed Roma Jean to help her weigh it up and put it into plastic containers.

  “I might’ve known you’d show up here.”

  The voice scared her half to death. She knew she jumped about a foot into the air. When she dared to take a tentative look into Charlie’s living room, Manfred Davis was sitting there, holding a pile of papers.

  “I come here tonight to see my girl, and pray for her delivery from the evil influence of you and your kind.” He threw down the paperwork he’d been holding. It looked like mail . . . bills and store fliers. He’s been going through Charlie’s mail, she thought.

  “Does Charlie know you’re here?” She tried to stop herself from shaking.

  “I’m not bound to tell you anything, Jezebel.” He got up and advanced toward her.

  Roma Jean instinctively backed toward the kitchen.

  “I don’t know what you want, but you have no reason to accuse me. I just stopped by to see her.”

  “Is that so? Does Charlene give out keys to anybody who wants to just stop by?”

  “I know she told you to leave us alone. You need to listen to her, Mr. Davis.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me what I need to do where my own blood is concerned. You’re nothin’ but a two-bit whore, and what you’re leadin’ my girl into will make her burn in hell for all eternity.”

  He stepped closer. Roma Jean could see the rage simmering behind his eyes. There was no one who could help her now. She knew that. Her only hope was to hold him off long enough to make her escape. She backed up again, and pulled out a metal kitchen chair to place between them.

  “Coming here like this isn’t going to help you reach her, Mr. Davis. It’ll just push her further away.”

  “Maybe I don’t care so much about what she thinks,” he sneered. “Not when the two of you are carryin’ on like a couple of filthy Sodomite dogs. There’s only one kind of teachin’ your kind can understand—and it ain’t got nothin’ to do with prayer.”

  He reached for the chair, but Roma Jean shoved it at him with all her might. It got tangled up with his legs and she heard him cursing as she ran out the door.

  She ran as fast as she could, but he overtook her. She cried out when he grabbed her by the hair from behind and brought her to her knees.

  “Let go of me!” she screamed. The pain was excruciating as he half dragged her toward the house.

  “You’d best be tellin’ them perverted demons to let go of you, girl.” He yanked her to her feet.

  Roma Jean kicked him in the shin and tried to run again, but he tripped her.

  “Get up, you whore.” He grabbed her by the arm. “We got business to take care of inside.”

  “Manfred!” A woman’s voice shrieked. “Stop it! You’re hurting her.”

  Roma Jean was dimly aware that a woman was approaching from behind the white van.

  “You stay outta this, Glenadine,” Manfred warned the woman off. “Me’n this harlot got some things to take care of. You get back in the van and leave me to the Lord’s work.”

  “That ain’t the Lord’s work.” Glenadine approached him. Roma Jean saw she was holding a cell phone. “You’re actin’ crazy. You need to let this gal go.”

  “Goddamn it, woman.” Manfred approached Glenadine and gave her a shove. “You get back in the fucking van, like I told you.”

  “Don’t you curse at me.” Gle
nadine grabbed his arm and tried to pry him away from Roma Jean. “You got to stop this craziness, right now.”

  “Get off me, woman!” Manfred backhanded Glenadine across the face. The blow sent her staggering and she crumpled to the pavement.

  Roma Jean broke free from him and ran to help Glenadine. The woman had blood oozing from a cut on her lip. She was shaking so hard, Roma Jean could barely hang on to her.

  “You stay away from me, Manfred Davis,” Glenadine sobbed. “I don’t never wanna see you near me or my babies again.”

  He scoffed and started toward them, but the sound of a siren stopped him dead in his tracks.

  “What’d you do?” he hissed at Glenadine. She didn’t answer him. “What’d you fucking do, woman?” He spat his question at her again. “Answer me when I ask you a damn question.”

  “I did what any decent, God-fearin’ person would do when a mad dog was loose. I called the sheriff.”

  He gave her a murderous look.

  “Give me the fucking keys.”

  Glenadine ignored his order. “You’d best be on your way, Manfred. Them sirens is gettin’ closer.”

  Roma Jean saw him struggle with whether he most wanted to kill them—or to run for his life.

  In the end, he chose self-preservation. He didn’t get very far. Two sheriff’s cars roared in from opposite directions and cut off his escape route. She saw Bryon get out of one. Charlie’s father tried to run, but Byron was able to grab him and slam him against the side of his car before putting him in handcuffs.

  “Are you okay, young lady?”

  It was the woman, Glenadine.

  Roma Jean looked down at her. Her bloody lip had already swollen to nearly twice its normal size.