“I won’t hear this,” Mrs. McCloud said behind gritted teeth.
“I can’t be nobody’s child ever,” said Mary.
“You don’t know nothin’.” Mrs. McCloud pointed a crooked finger at Salt, ignoring Mary Marie. “You ain’t had to raise up your own self while taking care of everything and everybody else. I didn’t have no mother.” The old woman took a step and planted herself firmly. “Shannell wasn’t fit. And now Mary. And I just got myself. I wash my hands. Ain’t no good in nothing. The sin just keeps passing on.”
The radio crackled on Salt’s shoulder, a unit was being dispatched on some children found home alone. She shifted under the weight of her gun belt and vest. It seemed that her armor had never weighed so much. Salt pressed on, “What happened?”
Mary tucked her right hand under her arm and looked harder out the window. “I just left her. I left her.” She pushed away from the window, her voice broke apart; crying, she sank to the floor beside the sink. She put her hands over her face, muffling her words. “I had to go back on Mother’s Day. The next day.”
The grandmother stood rigid. Salt knelt next to the girl, flashlight banging against nightstick, keys clanking against handcuffs, radio transmitting, stiff in the bullet-resistant vest. “I’m sorry, Mary, but I need you to tell me how your mother was shot.”
“‘Stop it,’ I told her.” Mary jerked her hand from her face and again coiled the fingers of her right hand. “‘Stop it.’ Then she dropped the glass with those stupid flowers and slipped on spilled water. Couldn’t be still long enough for me to see her eyes.” Mary looked up from her squat on the floor. “There was a gun and beside it on the counter was a bunch of rolled-up baby diapers. I wondered was there a baby there, was she keeping a baby and not me? She screamed crazy when I grabbed a diaper. A gun fell out. I pulled at all the diapers. They all had guns in them. Why guns? My mother so scared of guns she always go after Big D with knives. I picked up one of the guns. She yelled, ‘You gone kill me. You gone kill me.’ And she ran like she was scared—of me! I went after her to tell her it was just the drugs making her think I would hurt her. But really I did want to scare her. To make her stop. Scare her like she scared Big D with knives. I yelled, ‘Where’s the baby?’”
With a moan the old woman dropped to one of the kitchen chairs.
Salt, cross-legged on the floor, reached out to uncurl Mary’s hidden fingers.
“She was yelling, bumping into the wall. I found her in the closet, hiding. I felt sick and ashamed. She looked silly, pitiful. She couldn’t do anything right. She was never going to be quiet and still and be my mother. She would always run away from me. I lifted the gun like a finger. It did make her be still. She was quiet. I could make her see me. ‘I found you, Mama.’ Then her eyes came wide open on mine and there wasn’t any of my mama there, just something that took my mama. My finger pulled twice.”
Salt was as still as Lot’s wife until the girl put her hands on the floor to stand. They stood together. The grandmother kept her head turned away. Salt placed two fingers on the underside of Mary’s wrist, as if taking her pulse, then keyed the radio mic, “Radio, hold me out en route to Homicide.” And to Mary, “You can come with me.”
“My mama wasn’t there.”
Salt walked out with her arm around Mary Marie.
* * *
• • •
Salt stood by Mary in every step of the process. She held her hand while the girl made a transcribed statement to Wills at Homicide. She rode with her in the back of the unmarked car while Wills drove to juvenile detention. And she stayed with her until she was taken to her cell. She’d probably never see the girl again. Department policy dictated law enforcement separation from arrestees prior to their trials. Salt and Wills did have friends at the district attorney’s office who they’d call on to ask that Mary not be tried as an adult. But it would be years before Mary would be out of some kind of institution.
Her last view of the girl was the back of her loosening braid.
* * *
• • •
“Hey, Homicide detective.” Wills was gently shaking her awake. They were in his unmarked, in the parking lot of the precinct.
“You snore.” He laughed.
“I was dreaming,” she said, her words heavy from sleep. She sat up. “I fell asleep.”
“I know. Happens to me all the time when I’ve been involved in a case and I finally get the bad guy. They say you can always tell the guilty perps ’cause they’re the ones who fall asleep in the interview room. The hunter and the hunted, exhausted after the chase.” He turned toward her, propped his arm on the steering wheel. “I know you’re tired, but give me the short version. What led you to Mary, to think she might have killed her mother?”
“Flowers.” She inhaled, pushing up from her knees. “But I kept hoping she’d only witnessed Shannell’s death.”
“Flowers?”
“The wisteria in the photos, the fragrance beneath the stench of the apartment. Sister Connelly across the street said Shannell would pick flowers to give Mary. And then when we arrested Stone he taunted Lil D by saying Mary had been at her mother’s the day she was murdered.”
“Which meant Stone had been there, seen Mary, and that probably he’d gone in after Mary and gotten the guns.”
Salt lowered her face to her hands.
“Sarah.” Wills’s hand was on her shoulder. “We’ll do the best we can for Mary, whatever help, therapy, treatment the state can provide.”
Salt covered his hand with hers.
Wills gently pushed her upright. “She would have had a hard row to hoe no matter. I think she stands a chance now.”
Salt tried to stretch out her legs, her mouth sticky. “I am really tired. I must look like hell.”
“You solved my homicide. I wouldn’t care if you looked like Gardner. I’d still want to kiss you.” He turned toward her.
“Oh, no.” She put up her hand, covering her mouth. “First, if you’re into kissing Gardner for solving your homicides I’m not sure we’re on the same page.”
He laughed. “I kiss Gardner all the time. He doesn’t take it personal.”
“You’re ruining the image of homicide detectives.” Now she did grin. “But second, my mouth feels like I’ve been licking sheep.”
“Well, that lets you off the hook,” Wills said, moving as close to his door as he could, laughing. “But not for long. It’s high time for you and Wonder to meet Pansy and Violet.”
She faced him. Over his shoulder she could see the shift pulling in for the night, the line of cars forming for the next shift. “When?” she asked Wills.
“When?” he repeated. “I’m making sure I heard you.”
“When? You’ve made your case. I watched the way you tried to soften everything for Mary.”
“Saturday,” he said, then leaned over and kissed her woolly mouth anyway.
39.
HOMECOMING
Salt watched from the front window as Wills’s shiny truck, pulling a tail of red dust, turned off the highway into the drive. She looked around the living room at the sparse furniture. Plenty of breathing room. Wonder would have felt crowded otherwise; fewer tables and chairs for him to skid into. She’d felt guilty that she’d enjoyed the absence of her mother and brother after they’d left. She’d come home from college, torn the boards off the windows and doors, moved back in, and put in her application at the PD. Like Mary Marie, she’d slipped and slid down the hall in her sock feet. She let the curtain fall, took a breath, walked to the back of the house and out to greet Wills.
As she came out Wills was parking under the great oak. The late afternoon sun was shining and there was a definite hint of winter in the air. The windows of the truck were rolled up; Wills’s voice was muted as he sang along with the radio and gathered bags from the seat. Salt stood at the driver’s doo
r, waiting with Wonder at her side. When Wills turned, window still up, his mouth opened in an O of exclamation. Recovering, he opened the door. “Startled me.”
“Maybe I ought to call you by something other than your last name, Wills.” Salt reached in to help with a thermal bag.
“How ’bout ‘Handsome.’” He shifted the bags. “Hello, dog.” Wonder came nudging and nuzzling his way under Wills’s outstretched hand. He ruffled the dog’s ears, sunshine warmth still on the dog’s fur from a nap in the sun.
“I hear lambs.” He turned toward the paddock and orchard. “How are the new sheep?”
“Why don’t you come on in? Something smells good.” She lifted one of the bags to her nose. Wonder followed, yelping and snapping, herding them on their way toward the back porch.
A chill wind picked up and blew some of the bright yellow leaves from the pecan trees. Wonder stepped carefully beside them as they walked, keeping them together.
“I still smell new paint.” He put his things on the kitchen table.
She pulled the food from the bags. “Cold ham, potato salad, cucumber. Where did you get these late tomatoes?” She laid the dishes on the counter and began taking the covers off.
The screen door rattled. The setting sun sent rays straight up off the horizon so Mr. Gooden stood there in an orange aura. “Hello, hello,” he called.
“Why, Mr. Gooden.”
“I don’t want to intrude but I saw the truck pull in. I thought you could use some flowers. He handed Salt a bouquet of lavender chrysanthemums and went over to shake hands with Wills. “Don’t get up. I’m Wayne Gooden, from next door.”
“Bernard Wills. People just call me Wills.” The two men shook hands.
“I’m proud of this girl.” Mr. Gooden reached his arm around Salt’s shoulders. He was as tall as her father.
“They’re beautiful, thank you.” She held the blooms close.
“We’re all proud of her,” Wills said. “But she keeps us on our toes.”
“I’m sure she tries not to worry you.” Mr. Gooden was headed for the door, smiling, winking at Salt, like they shared a private joke. “Good to meet you, now. Have a good visit.” He was out the door, long legs halfway across the yard.
* * *
• • •
The table was covered with half-empty plates and serving bowls.
“Bernard?” She grinned.
“Why did you move back here? Yes, I’m changing the subject. I’d never live it down if I was known as Bernard.”
“It’s home.”
They were silent for a few minutes. The dog looked up. It was time and time was passing.
“I heard your dad was a good cop until he got sick.”
She took a bite of Wills’s cold ham. Her teeth sank in. The mustard in the potato salad was strong and good.
“Are you sure your head’s all right?”
Salt swallowed and took a breath. “I’m too nervous not to get this right out. Let me give you the tour.”
Wills held his hands out, palms up, ready.
“I need to tell you about my dad, so it won’t be something hanging, some big secret or taboo thing. Come on. Upstairs.” She took his hand and led him down the hall.
Twice a year she gathered all the necessary cleaning supplies. She would carry a boom box to the far end of the upstairs hall. The music was always the same, always gospel, the Blind Boys of Alabama, the Staple Singers, blues gospel that transported her to the baptizing banks of a river. While she cleaned and washed the walls and floors of the scene of her nightmares she sang along with the voices of sanctification and salvation.
They stopped at the top of the stairs. “The rooms are mostly bare. My mother took a lot of the furniture with her.” Crystals from the small chandelier overhead cast tiny darts of yellow, pink, and green light along the walls and patched boards of the repaired floor. “You all did good work.” She opened each of the doors on the right. “My old room.” They peeked in from the doorway, then on to the sunporch: “My escape hatch,” and on to the guest room. And then to the closed door of her parents’ bedroom. She put her hand on the brass knob, tarnished to black. When she was ten years old it had been level with her chest. She heard the familiar click as she turned the knob to the left.
Wills covered her hand with his own and opened the door for her.
The old flowered rug was the only thing left in the room. When Salt was Sarah and five years old she had misheard Red rover, red rover as Red roses, red roses.
Red roses, red roses
Let flowers grow over.
She’d sing while she walked a secret path in the floral pattern on the rug, pretend it was an enchanted garden where her father was the king, and the language he spoke a magical one.
Salt walked part of the secret path from the door of the room. “I used to sit on the bed while he took off his uniform. He’d tell me funny stories about things that happened on the job.” Standing at the windows on the other side of the room from the door, she turned to the closet. “He kept his uniform cap and his gun on the top shelf.
“I think I tried to stay close to him with the job, like it was just me and him, our mission. More recently”—she looked out to the orchard—“I’ve come to realize that it’s not the job. I have memories.”
* * *
• • •
Salt dreamed that she left her mother in the house and that she and her father walked arm in arm from the back porch, Wonder at their side. The sheep acknowledged their coming with baas or bleats, rustled a little, then settled back against one another in the paddock. The rising moon, a smooth yellow scimitar, was large against the trees, a nursery rhyme moon. A cow sat with her legs crossed over the crescent.
They walked through the orchard, the first leaves off the trees crackling, oval nuts rolling under their feet. The branches and dry grasses gave up the sharp peppery odor of sticky green pecan shells and sweet sheep dung.
“Smells different when the moon is out,” her father said.
“You’ve got a fine nose there, Pop.”
“I’ve learned to appreciate what I’ve got left.”
She drew apart from him, turned to face him, to find out what he meant. She could see nothing but two moons reflecting out of his blue, blind eyes. Salt turned away and looked off past the end of the tree line. Wonder had run ahead to the edge of the field and was sitting, nose pointed up, silhouetted by moonlight. “I wish you could see him out there. He looks like the classic canine, wolf dog.” She swallowed hard.
“It’s almost enough to hear you describe him.”
“Wonder’s a great dog. I’m so sorry, Pop.” She was trying very hard not to cry.
“Sorry? Sarah, my head was cleared when I shot out the demons. I may be blind but the clouds were blown away that day. Should have shot myself sooner.” He smiled into the night.
She tried to swallow, shivered, then took her father’s arm again, this time leaning a little bit on him. He felt warm. She rubbed her cheek on his flannel shirt and somewhere in her chest there was a small release. They walked on a little longer in the crisp night with the moonlit dog keeping them company.
* * *
• • •
Wonder, curled in a ball at the foot of her bed, moved his quivering ears back and forth. His eyes were open but he, like she, stayed curled up. Since they were almost always past midnight going to bed, the sunrise felt a little early. They heard kitchen noises.
Salt called the dog to her pillow. She thought he pretended to like his head on a pillow the way he saw hers. She opened one of his ears and whispered, “Heeeee’s uuuuup.”
The dog waved his ears, stood up on the bed, and shook out the night fur. Salt pulled on her jeans under her nightshirt and padded, barefoot, into the kitchen, letting the dog out the back door.
Wills was standing
at the sink, staring out the window. He had thrown an old quilt over his bare shoulders.
“Mornin’.”
He opened his arms as she came to him. She tucked her head to his chest and breathed in his scent as he wrapped the quilt over her shoulders. She turned her back to him and he encircled her in his arms and put his hands in her jeans pockets, pulling her close. “Know what you get when you work your fingers to the bone?”
“What?” she said, knowing the answer to the old joke.
“Bony fingers.”
She tugged at the quilt and went over to the glass-front cabinet to get a cup. The day was already bright, trees in the orchard giving off their crisp fragrance, the leaf dust peppering the air. A jay screeched and on the highway an eighteen-wheeler changed gears. The muscles of her legs began to tense and she wiped her hands on her jeans.
The tick, tick of canine nails sounded at the porch door. Wills let Wonder into the kitchen, the dog making his sound like a low train whistle, “Woo, woo,” a signal for someone to do something for him. He slid his head into Salt’s lap. The grace of his simple affection made Salt’s chest hurt. Blinking her eyes she looked up to see the trim on the kitchen door, patched by her friends. She smelled Wills’s ham on the counter, on a grass-green platter. She heard a solo baa from her surviving sheep, then a chorus of bleats from the four new members of the flock. The clouds outside reminded her of Pepper’s pajamas. Little salvations, like the air around love. She drew in a long breath of it and put her hand on a frayed flowered square of the quilt Wills was wearing, her mother’s quilt. “Let me show you the new lambs.” Salt took Wills by the hand and pulled him up, the quilt sliding off his thick shoulders.
“Come on,” she repeated, feeling as eager as a kid.
Wonder followed and when he saw they were headed for the sheep, he ran past to the pen, eager to work, his snout inches from the ground, eyes unblinking, focused, his shoulders and head lowered. Salt led Wills to a section of the fence that was catching the first few rays of sun. The sheep protested Wonder’s intensity and bunched into a corner of the paddock. She hated to disappoint the dog but led him back to the porch anyway. He dropped to the floor when she closed the screen door.
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