Crooked Hallelujah

by Kelli Jo Ford

  He woke to the rattle of a car over the rutted road. The ground was still cool after the soaking Marni had given it, and he had fallen into a deeper sleep than any he’d had since his mama passed. He lay still, listening to the purr of the cat that was curled up in the crook between his shoulder and neck. It took him a minute to know where he was. When he sat up, he was confused by the taillights that bounced their way up the hillside.

  The lights made long, red rectangles that didn’t belong to Marni’s Jeep or Stevie’s Ford. It was an old car; that much he could tell. The car got closer to the top of the hill; another second and the brake lights came on. Then the lights were killed, and in the still night, Mose could hear a car door being pressed shut so as to not make any sound.

  Mose bolted upright, and before he had time to think what to do or who it might be that was creeping up the hillside in the dark, his feet were dragging him as fast as they could up the road. He heard a scream just as he crested the hill and the Airstream came into view. The door hung open, and a light was flipped on in the bedroom. A beat-up gold-colored car sat out front.

  Mose’s breath caught in his throat. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, not tonight after the light and the earth they had toiled over. In two leaps, he was on the tiny steps and in the door.

  Marni ran into the kitchen. Eyes wide, mouth agape, she wasn’t making any sound.

  Mose glanced into the corner where the new shotgun was supposed to be. It wasn’t there. Just the golf club. In an instant, a man dragged Marni down from behind, and Mose had the club in hand. Then he froze.

  “You got no business here,” the man said to Mose as he slammed his skinny knees into Marni’s arms and hovered over her. Though greasy blond hair covered the man’s eyes, Mose recognized him. One of the men asking for gas money.

  “My purse is on the counter. There’s a checkbook and cash. Take it. Truck keys are in there too.” Marni said.

  “Saw you and that other one in town,” the man said. He leaned his face to hers and swept his hair back with a snap of his head.

  Marni bucked and jerked away. Then she seemed to almost relax. She breathed deep and looked hard at Mose. “Go get help,” she whispered, the words breaking in two as the man punched her in the mouth.

  Mose caught the man’s cheekbone with the club. The man stayed down long enough for Marni to roll to her side and push herself halfway up.

  There was a quick commotion and a shout from the back, and then another man burst from the bedroom dragging Stevie by the wrist. He had her shotgun in his other hand, but Stevie didn’t look afraid so much as angry. The man raised the shotgun but relaxed his grip on Stevie to steady the barrel.

  Marni screamed as Mose leapt forward. Mose saw the gun steady just as Stevie took up a claw hammer from the little kitchen bar and swung. He heard the blast only after he was already knocked back, bleeding into the rug. And then everything went away. No lights, nothing.

  Mose saw his cat first. Something he couldn’t see had him pinned to the floor, and his cat was kneading dough in the cool wet that was his chest. He felt like the cold earth he’d slept on had seeped into him, except he wasn’t in the garden anymore. He couldn’t move his right arm. When he tried to tell the cat to stop, he couldn’t get the words out. He realized without looking that his arm was broken just below the shoulder and his bicep was mangled. He moved his left hand along his chest but didn’t feel any big holes. The bulk of the birdshot had hit him in the arm and spattered the wall behind him.

  Past his feet, he saw the red tangle of Marni’s hair. He blinked, tried to swallow. To his left, the door gaped open in the dark. He tried to push himself upright but could not. As he reached for the golf club as a brace, he heard Stevie’s voice.

  “Come on, Mose,” she said. “Come back to us.”

  Stevie slouched against the bar cabinets, legs splayed. He hadn’t seen her before, but it was her lap that Marni’s head rested upon. The shotgun rested next to Stevie. The man who’d had the shotgun lay in a halo of blood, a tea towel over his head. The other man seemed to be gone. Mose wanted to check on Marni.

  “Where are you shot, Mose?”

  Mose worked hard to steady his breath as he closed his eyes and leaned his good arm into the golf club. He thought he heard a faint moan, but when he looked up, Stevie seemed just the same. He still hadn’t seen Marni’s face.

  “Is Marni okay?” Mose asked. “Stevie, is she going to be okay?”

  “We need help, Mose. Can you walk?”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Can you walk?”

  “I don’t know!” Mose shouted.

  “The other guy had a gun, too, Mose. He took off in the truck. We need you to go get help.”

  Mose finally took a good look at Stevie. Her face was pale. She held Marni tightly with one hand. The other she had pressed into a red bloom in her own calf. Marni’s chest was softly rising and falling.

  “I don’t know if I can run, Mose. I don’t want to leave her.”

  Mose wanted to kiss Stevie’s hand and try to get Marni to wake up, but he was scared to bend down. He patted Stevie on the head.

  “She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Be just fine,” Mose said. “Promise.” He didn’t know where the words came from, but they came, low and soft. He could not take them back, so he wobbled onto the steps. The sound of oil being brought up from the ground clanged around him.

  He checked the ignition of the beat-up old car for keys, but it was empty. The cat stood in the road looking back, waiting. Stepping into the dust, he began to walk. Then he began to trot, slowly at first, keeping ragged time with the pumping units. A fire burned in his shoulder. One arm hung limp, cradled by the good one. The cat stayed a pace ahead, stopping to wait every few yards.

  Near the bottom of the hill, gravity yanked at him, and he tumbled heels over elbows, dust coating blood. Gravel stuck to his forehead and cheek. Mose rolled onto his back. The night sky shimmered, in and out of focus. The cool earth soothed him, and he did not have the courage to fight such a force.

  The cat appeared again, purring. Just above her, Mose saw that Orion was finally making his appearance low in the summer sky. His belt pointed higher into the heavens, and his bow was drawn, ready to fend off creatures Mose couldn’t make out.

  Mose tracked the cat over his shoulder. She skittered over the steps until she sat on the porch of his house. The wind blew over him, moving the insulation that hung from the hole Mose still hadn’t patched in the house that was empty, all corners and rectangles. He looked back up into the sky, where everything looped into being, never beginning, never ending.

  Mose imagined his mama up there, stars for eyes, healthy, and smiling like she was in the picture that hung in the hallway, the one that showed her caught somewhere between woman and girl, squatting before a tiny snowman in a yard that showed the patches of dirt where she’d rolled the snow away. He imagined Marni, ringlets of fire for hair, moving beside his mama, talking with her, on and on forever, looping back around when they went out of sight, always coming back.

  Mose sobbed into the ground and cursed himself for being a weak man. He fought himself onto his hands and knees and almost fell back down. His arm was done. He let his head hang between his shoulders and closed his eyes against the dizzy sick feeling pulling at him. Pushing himself upright, he faced east and began to move down the road past home, where the horizon was beginning to glow and Orion was already fading.

  He moved in unsteady, chugging steps that scattered gravel. Morning birds stirred on the fence posts and called out to one another. The stars were growing dim, but he knew they were still there up above, watching. He kept moving. Mose swung his head to fight the darkness and gravity. Ahead, a bobcat and two lanky kittens ran halfway across the road and paused to watch him approach before gliding into the weeds.

  He picked up speed. Forces began to move inside him that he now knew he’d saved up. In their rise and fall, his legs fel
t hollow, grew lighter than air. Where his heels had been, wings seemed to sprout. Dust plumed behind him, and the sounds of the birds and the oil field that had always been his home faded. All he had to do was lift one leg at a time, and the glow on the horizon got closer, burned brighter. At the end of the road was another dirt road, and down that one, a highway where just on the edge of town lived Justine Barnes in a house with a phone. This time, Mose knew he could make it.

  You’ll Be Honest, You’ll Be Brave

  Justine pulled into Lula’s as the morning sun began to glow behind the hills. She sat in her truck trying to massage the feeling back into her legs after the long drive, as sleepy birds chirped from the power line on the far side of the gravel road. After being on the Cherokee Nation’s list for so long that she forgot she was on it, Lula had finally gotten her dream house in the country. The small three-bedroom rancher with green shutters overlooked Little Locust Creek, where a cloud of fog wafted into the humid air, leaving a dreamy haze over everything. Under different circumstances it would be a peaceful place to come home to.

  Sheila already had her purse on her arm when Justine stepped stiffly inside. Sheila’s eyes looked tired, but her bun, teased and sprayed at the back of her head, didn’t betray a single stray hair. She gave Justine a long hug.

  “Sorry I have to get to work, Teeny,” Sheila said. “I wish I could stay with you.”

  “Don’t know what we’d do without you,” Justine said. She looked toward the closed bedroom door. No matter how Justine tried to square things in her mind or heart, coming home broke her open. She was not accustomed to being unable to contain what spilled out. “How is she?”

  “Sleeping now,” Sheila said, leading Justine into the kitchen. “She hasn’t had a spell since right after I got here yesterday.” Sheila opened the fridge and pulled out a big mason jar of brown liquid. “I made her some bone broth. That might perk her up some.”

  Justine hugged Sheila again and began to cry. She could rest her head on Sheila’s, so she did.

  Sheila, tiny and full of movement even at rest, always made Justine think of Reney. Sheila had gone back to the church—and Samuel—after Justine and Reney moved back to Texas that last time. With baby crow’s-feet in the corners of her eyes, Sheila could have been nearly any one of the women Justine grew up with, perpetually on the verge of middle age and capable of anything from banging out a hymn on the piano to tying up her skirt and tacking a shingle back in place to making a pot of beans for sick neighbors with a baby on her hip.

  Reney, meanwhile, was aging in reverse, it seemed. After she’d left that prick, she traversed the country picking up work as banquet waitstaff wherever she decided to pass time. Now she was a college student in Portland, Oregon, of all places. Finding herself.

  “We’ve got to trust the Lord,” Sheila said. “All we can do.”

  “Y’all go to the doctor now, don’t you?” Justine said. “Can’t you talk to Mama?” She eased herself into a chair at the same kitchen table she’d eaten at as a girl, picked up a packet of syrup from a bowl, and began to fiddle with it.

  “She’s old-time Holiness like Daddy. Plus . . .” Sheila said with shrug, “she’s too ornery.” She smiled. “She’ll be happy to see you. She talks about you, Josie, and Dee all the time.”

  “I don’t know why she won’t go to Tennessee and live with them. There’s Holiness churches out there. Beautiful country. Two daughters who love her.”

  “Whoa, sufficient unto the day!” Sheila said, smiling and waving her hands to show she wanted no part of that argument. “Samuel went and got her car. Amazingly, it’s not much worse for the wear. Muddy mainly, a couple of scrapes, but fine.”

  “That’s about right,” Justine said.

  “I know, isn’t that something!” Sheila laughed and shook her head in wonder. “God is good.” She gathered her keys and headed toward the door. “Samuel will bring the car over later today.”

  “Wish he wouldn’t.”

  “I’m not brave enough to fight that battle either,” Sheila said as she closed the front door and left them alone.

  Justine stood in Lula’s doorway a long time before going in and sitting on the edge of the bed. When Lula woke up, she smiled.

  “Miss my baby.” Lula ran her tongue around her dry lips. “I suppose they told you I had a spell?” She looked toward the wall. “Sheila said my car isn’t here?”

  “No, Mama,” Justine said. “Your car isn’t here.”

  Lula patted Justine’s hand, closed her eyes, and said, “We will get it tomorrow.”

  When Justine had gotten the call from Dee, her oldest sister, she’d been on the phone with Reney, putting another new zip code in her address book so she could send the old photos Reney’d been asking for. Justine clicked over, and before she could get out a hello, Dee’s voice cut in.

  Lula had the seizure while she was out on one of her countryside drives, taking in scenery she’d seen a million times—probably on her way home from McDonald’s. Thankfully, she’d only run through somebody’s barbed wire fence. No one was hurt, though she was still having the seizure when a man stopped and called 911. Lula came to in the back of the ambulance and demanded to be brought home.

  “When can you get up there?” Dee asked.

  Justine closed her address book, put fifty dollars in Reney’s card, and sealed it shut.

  “Teeny?”

  “This is why I wish she’d come out there with y’all,” Justine started in. “Or at the very least, let them take her to the hospital. At least we’d have time to figure out a couple things.”

  “You know we can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do,” Dee said.

  “The bank’s going to come get my truck if I don’t get their check mailed,” Justine said. She could hear Dee tapping on computer keys.

  “I’m looking for tickets for me and Josie, but I don’t know when we can get there.”

  “I don’t know how long I can stay,” Justine said, but when she got off the phone, she set about doing all the things she needed to do: leaving a message for her boss, shoving Reney’s pictures and card into a box to mail later, writing Pitch a list he’d ignore, grabbing the bills that most desperately needed to be paid, running deodorant across her armpits because she just got off work and didn’t have time to shower, slinging shit into a bag, running by the Smokehouse to grab some brisket and beans since Lula ran the roads too much to stock a cupboard, and, finally, driving through the night.

  Now here Justine sat, back in Beulah Springs, propped up on a pillow next to Lula, reading her the Gospel of John as she dozed. After Samuel dropped off the car, she had hidden the keys behind a dusty can of commodity orange juice in a kitchen cabinet. By evening, Lula was up, pouring herself Mountain Dew and wanting to ride to McDonald’s. Justine microwaved her a plate of brisket and beans and told her to be thankful she wasn’t wrapped around a telephone pole. Feeling bad for that one, she’d then taken her for a drive to watch the sun set over Tenkiller.

  Justine was sitting in the living room flipping though a Reader’s Digest when Dee and Josie showed up late that night. They came in dragging suitcases and bag after bag of crap. They’d already stopped by Walmart and bought the store. Josie carried in a television with a built-in DVD player.

  “You know Mama’s going to lose her mind when she sees that thing,” Justine said.

  “I told her.” Dee dropped her purse beside the couch and plopped next to Justine.

  “I’m not showing it to her, are you?” whispered Josie, as she heaved the box into the other bedroom and closed the door.

  “How is she?” Dee asked. “The car doesn’t look so bad.”

  “You know,” Justine said. “Still slow and groggy but getting back right.” She tossed the Reader’s Digest aside. “Whatever that is.”

  Dee ran her fingers through the short hair she kept dyed strawberry blonde. Bracelets on her wrist jangled. “Bless her heart,” she said finally. “And yours. She drivin
g you crazy yet?”

  “Asking for her keys,” Justine said. “That’s all she’s really worried about. She knows she shouldn’t be driving.”

  “Can’t nobody tell that woman what to do,” Josie said, forgetting to whisper as she walked into the kitchen. She had already dressed in her satin pajamas and had a sleep mask propped on her forehead. “About like somebody else I know, huh, Teeny?”

  Justine and Dee shushed her at the same time.

  “I’m just saying, the woman’s hardheaded. She’s going to do what she’s going to do, whether it’s run the roads or flush her meds.” Josie had come back into the living room with a plate of cold brisket. “I don’t know how we lasted sixteen or eighteen or however many years with her.” She sat on the other side of Dee and sawed on the meat with the side of her fork.

  “You both left my ass as quick as you could,” Justine said. She was trying to make a joke, but it didn’t come out right.

  Dee put an arm around her and pulled her closer.

  “Mama did the best she could,” Justine said. “But the way we were raised up . . . it’s kept us from . . .” She had that feeling again. She wanted to get in her truck, point it south, and turn the radio up so loud she could not think. She could point it west for all she cared, as long as she got gone.

  “At least Granny was here,” she said, finally. “For my sake and Mama’s.” She was crying again, and now so were her sisters. “I’d handle being beaten every day better than what went on inside my head.” She wiped her face.

  “Mama tried that too,” Josie said.

  Dee whacked her with a pillow.

  “Hell,” Justine said. “I don’t even know what goes on inside my head.”

  By Sunday, Lula was back to herself, or so the sisters thought. She threw them a curve and skipped Sunday school. After exchanging a round of looks and whispers, they took her to McDonald’s for her beloved flapjacks and then piled back in the car and drove her to Brushy Mountain. Lula didn’t say much unless she was pointing out a bird or a rock formation she probably could have mapped. Dee and Josie oohed and aahed, pretending the scrub hills were as majestic as Lula thought. Justine did her best to keep quiet.