Tin Lily

by Joann Swanson

  I hear a click-snap behind me. It’s not like Mom’s camera. It’s not a click-snap that says I’m loved. It’s a click-snap that says Hank’s got his gun pointed at my back. “You stay right there, Beans. This isn’t how it’s gonna be.”

  I decide Hank’s right. This isn’t how it’s going to be. I launch myself into the air, commence the running and the rolling and the face-planting.

  Five

  I’m making such a ruckus sliding down this hill. The rocks spinning up around me sound like big hailstones on the tin roof of some random shed. Now I’m the Tasmanian Devil. I add a laugh to my rock hail. Right out loud, I laugh. It's not flat, not odd. It's normal—tinkling, even. Alive.

  Thanks to the moon lighting things up now and then, I catch glimpses of the landscape around me—the rock embankment I’m sliding down, the massive fields with their crops of whatever, the black forest we passed out of awhile back. I don’t see a single light. There are no houses out here, not even a farm.

  My body is scratched, beaten, tired. The soul I thought was gone, the heart I thought had disappeared, they’re with me. They’re aching to stay alive, to see my spastic four-legged star, to see Nick, Margie, Sam and Dr. Pratchett again. I’m filled right up the brim with wanting to live.

  I land on my back at the bottom of the hill and look up at the sky. I make a promise to the stars and the moon that I’ll live a whole new life if I get through this. I’ll stay away from the quiet place. I’ll let the people I love in. I’ll find a way to fit and I won’t let the emptiness come again. I’ll face it all.

  In my mind, Mom’s words come and tell me what she meant, what she knew for sure.

  It’s important you listen to me now.

  Pretend I’m with you.

  Hear my voice.

  You are the best person I’ve ever known.

  I wish so much I could hold a mirror up and show you what I see.

  You are brave.

  She is my courage.

  I stay frozen at the bottom of the hill, listening closely. The wind sneaks under my T-shirt and tries to make it billow out. It bends whatever’s out in the field, rustles the far-off trees of the black forest.

  I lay there, thinking of Nick, feeling his necklace under my shirt, against my beating heart. Once sand, uncountable. Now glass, shattered grains. Fragments held together. Strengthening.

  Rocks dig into my back, my butt, my legs. So many bruises, so much pain. But I feel it, fully feel it. There’s no numb or buzzing or hollow—just pure, unfiltered pain.

  I wait and it’s a little like that night all over again. I listen for Hank’s drunk rage, but it’s silence out here. There’s no vacuum, though. I’m fully alive, every nerve ending singing, every heartbeat felt, every scrape and bruise alive with their own complaining.

  “Lily, don’t do this. We’ll be with your mother again. Don’t you miss her?”

  Oh god, how I miss her. The missing has been my whole life since that night. But she doesn’t want me dead. Mom wants me alive and fighting.

  I can’t trust my ears with my heart pounding this loud. His soft whisper might be a scream or it might mean he’s just above me. I know he’s close when the rocks he’s knocking down the embankment smack up against my legs. There’s a loud clang, another shower of rocks and then he’s hollering, “No!” and “Where is it?”

  I don’t wait to find out what he’s mad about (besides me just kicking his ass). I grab a fist-sized rock nearby and scoot into the field, hoping for a good place to hide. It’s wheat, I think. The only way I’m staying out of sight is to keep on my belly. I flatten myself down, close my fist tight around my rock and wiggle my way farther in.

  “This isn’t how it’s going to be, Beans.” I have no idea where he is until I see a flashlight beam a few feet to my right. He’s come prepared.

  I wiggle farther to my left, watching Hank’s flashlight bob fast toward something in the opposite direction. He must’ve heard a sound. Birds in the field or something. I take a chance and sit up, praying the rock I’m holding is sharp enough. I don’t look down at what I’m doing, can’t take my eyes off Hank’s sweeping flashlight beam.

  With my numb, fat fingers, I use the rock to stab at the tape squeezing my wrists together, then nearly scream when I get my arm instead. I make myself look down then and use the moonlight to find a good spot. I do and make a hole big enough to tear the tape and pull my hands apart. I’m flexing my fingers when I see Hank’s flashlight bobbing this way again.

  I drop to my belly and start wiggling fast toward the forest. It’s a long way to go on my belly, but I don’t have a choice now. Hank’s bullet for me is gigantic. I wriggle, feeling the scrapes and scratches from the hard ground through my thin T-shirt. I stop after a bit so I can listen to the night and try to figure out where Hank’s gone. I flip on my back and lift my head above the wheat just enough.

  “Olly olly oxen free!” he hollers as his flashlight beam gets bigger. He’s figured out I’m not on the other side, that I’m not birds spooked by his crazy searching.

  I send out hope the wheat field will hide me and get on my hands and knees to make better time. I hear Hank behind me. His flashlight beam switches direction, lands a few inches in front of me. “There you are,” he says. “You stay right there, Beans.”

  I don’t stay right there. I get to my feet and run, pump my legs like I’ve been a track star my whole life. Right through the wheat field I run, trampling stalks some farmer took a lot of time to plant. I’m stuck in this one motion—running—and everything else gets pushed out. It’s my whole life, running through this wheat field.

  I’m halfway across when light surrounds me—Hank’s unsteady flashlight beam, bopping up and down in time to his own running. I know the brighter the beam gets, the closer he is. I steal a glance back just in time to see him trip, see him fall on his face in the dust and wheat.

  “Son of a bitch!” he says.

  I can’t help myself—I laugh. I laugh because the big bad boogeyman who’s been hunting me all over Seattle just face-planted. I run and I laugh. However this ends, I am free now.

  “Beans! Don’t you laugh at me!” His beam has found me again and is busy lighting my path right to the forest. When I feel something hit my back, I know Hank’s lost his gun. He wouldn’t bother with rocks if he still had bullets. “Get back here! You don’t get to make the decisions!” Hank throwing rocks. It’s what he does best.

  His flashlight beam swings wildly as he starts running again. The moon lights the rest of my way to the jagged wall of trees, to a forest I hope will hide me better than this wheat did.

  All the adrenaline I felt getting away from Hank starts to leak out when I make it into the forest. My body is slowing and my head is pounding. I feel where Hank hit me, feel the blood, sticky inside my tangled hair. My side is on fire. I’m not used to running so far so fast.

  I collapse behind a massive tree with roots bigger than me and start pulling the still-tight tape from my wrists. Sensation is coming back to my fingers and they’re less sausagey now.

  I see Hank’s flashlight beam before I hear him muttering and swearing to himself. I can’t move. My lungs are fiery tracks inside my chest—cars racing up, down, crashing, burning. I think maybe I’m going to throw up. Puke down the front of me, sure enough. Better, though. I can breathe again. Hank thinks I’m still running, so he does too. His flashlight shows me he’s up ahead now, searching deeper in the forest.

  I look down at my fat fingers, but I can’t see a thing. The dark is thick in this forest. I think about Grandpa Henry’s car sitting back there on the side of the road, about trying for it, wishing I’d thought to drive off when I had half a chance. My body tries to throw up again thinking about going back—dry heaves that make my side wrench. Stabbing, throbbing pain in my head wants me to lie down where I am. Trying for the car is out of the question.

  Hank’s flashlight bobs off to my right—up-down, up-down, swing left, swing right, back to ce
nter, up-down, up-down. Dizziness comes. I close my eyes, let my stomach settle, let the pain in my side have its say for a minute or two.

  Hank’s coming back this way. When I get to my feet, I don’t like how shaky everything feels, how weak my body is. I put a hand to my head and probe where he hit me with the gun. It’s sticky, a little mushy and sends a zing of pain all the way to my toes. I stumble forward, moving toward where Hank’s already done his searching, hoping he won’t go over the same ground, wondering if he can track me with all that booze making his brain swim.

  Hank’s flashlight lands a few feet to my right. He's going over the same ground after all, getting closer. The beam shines up a cluster of trees and a bunch of brambly looking overgrowth. Lit up for just that second, I see a hollow spot in the middle of it all, a little den I hope doesn’t hold a family of foxes or groundhogs. I lurch forward, drop to my knees, stick my hand in and feel around. Empty. The entry is small, but inside feels bigger. I know I can fit. I know like I knew Mom and I would get the vanity through my bedroom door. A lifetime ago. I suck in my stomach and commence to wiggling my way in.

  The brambly mass is prickly, painful. It scratches and pulls at my bare arms. I think it must be made up of more thorns than foresty overgrowth. I hold one hand over where Hank smashed me in the head and shove through. The entry is smaller than it looked, but the space inside is big enough so I can stretch out on my side if I want to. I can’t sit up, but it doesn’t matter. I need to watch for Hank’s flashlight beam anyway. I move to the very back and feel the trunk of a giant tree against my bare skin. It’s cool, comforting. I’m Brer Rabbit in my briar patch. I hope.

  Hank’s flashlight beam plays around outside my brambly front door. If he drops to his knees, if he shines his flashlight in, I’m done. There’s no backdoor in my makeshift cave. There’s only one way out and he’s blocking it. Blocking it with his bright flashlight, his insanity.

  “Beans! Where are you?” He’s using his cajoling voice, the “I’m being nice” tone just before he says something horrible. It’s not his words I’m worried about now, though.

  “Come on out, kiddo. I promise, I just want to talk some more. We don’t have to see your mother just yet. Maybe we can make it work with Margie. The important thing is that we’re together, Lilybeans.”

  If I didn’t think it would hurt, I’d roll my eyes. I lay my head on the ground and press one hand to my mushy head, hoping he hasn’t done any permanent damage up there.

  I can’t keep my eyes open. So sleepy. It’s not like the buzzing. The buzzing’s gone, for good now that I’ve answered. Just plain exhaustion. I try not to drift off, remind myself people who’ve had their heads smacked don’t have any business sleeping.

  Then staying awake isn’t so hard when I hear Hank a few feet away. He’s off to my right and, by the crunching of leaves, it sounds like he’s settling in. I hear beeping and realize he’s using a cell phone.

  “You’re going to want to listen to me, Marjorie,” he says after a few seconds of silence. I can’t hear Margie from here, but his voice carries in the stillness.

  Hank laughs. “She’s dead.” He waits for a long time and I know Margie’s screaming her head off. I can’t hear her, but I know.

  “Now, Marjorie, yelling and name-calling won’t bring Lily back.” His voice is sure, soft, sympathetic. His words don’t slur at all. Even though I know he’s insane, it’s hard to understand how good he is at this, how convincing. If I didn’t feel my heart beating, my stomach rising and falling with each painful breath, I might believe him too.

  Leaves crunch underfoot as Hank starts moving again. My mind wants to take me back to that night, to remember the glass from Mom’s pictures under his work boots. Not the time. I rub my eyes to help me focus.

  Hank walks closer to my briar patch. I hear Margie now, tinny through the cell phone. “Lily! Please, sweetheart! Tell me you’re okay! Lily! Lily!”

  I put both hands over my mouth and let my tears out instead of my words. Margie’s voice is so full of grief and terror that he’s telling the truth. “Lily! Sweetheart, please! Oh god! Lily!” Hank walks away and I only hear Margie’s sobbing now, the grief tearing at her heart, at her soul.

  Hank laughs, then says, “See, Marjorie? Dead.”

  Margie screams, “No!” and it is the worst sound I've ever heard outside the craaaack of Mom's bullet.

  I take my hands away from my mouth, my whole body shaking with the power of my silent sobs. Margie’s terror, Mom’s death, me changed—all of it because of him.

  I hear a snap—Hank closing the phone, I think. I do the same with my mouth and make my body stop shaking. I listen through the pounding of my heart. I wait. The silence is strange again, abrupt.

  Hank doesn’t move for a long time. He’s listening. I know he’s listening. My phone starts playing its upbeat tune and pretty soon there’s a rustling of leaves and his work boots coming down, smashing the phone mid-melody.

  “I can wait,” he says. By the softness in his voice, I know he means it.

  Six

  The morning is dim inside my bramble cave. When I look toward the opening, though, I see massive trees and a leaf-littered forest floor right outside. The sunlight shines through the canopy, sending down beams Mom would’ve loved playing in. Dust motes, her favorite. “Dust faeries” she called them. Dancing and playing in a stream of sunlight.

  I wiggle a few inches toward the opening and freeze. I’ve stiffened up in the night. This pain makes yesterday’s feel like a skinned knee. I slept the whole night through and my body tells me that probably wasn’t the best idea. My swimming head tells me I’m lucky I woke up at all.

  I watch outside for a little while, stretching slowly to work out the kinks, trying to get a sense of what’s happening, of whether Hank is still around. It’s too quiet. I inchworm my way until I can poke my head out. The forest is lighter than I thought. It’s thick trees, ancient pine needles and dead leaves as far as I can see. I think I hear a little rushing, maybe a stream or a river, but it might just be my ears. I look all around for Hank, see my cell phone, broken to bits now, scattered on the ground about ten feet away.

  This is a huge forest, I see now. I could’ve run almost anywhere and hidden fine. A lot of the trees have those huge roots like I found last night. Like giants live in this forest, everything massive. I feel tiny in my bramble cave, safe, secure. I’m glad I fit.

  There’s no sign of Hank, but I move by millimeters anyway. The little bit of crunching under my hands is deafening in this forest of silence.

  I take my time wriggling out and stay on my hands and knees just in case I have to wriggle back in. Nothing. No sound, no sign. My legs shake when I try to stand and my head throbs, reminding me that Hank came with his gun after all.

  Everywhere my skin is bare is covered in long, beaded scratches. Blood has re-colored the new pink dragonfly T-shirt Margie bought me to brown and red. Bruises are just starting to show up, the darkest ones left by Hank’s punches. I touch my hair, feel it standing on end, matted with dirt and dried blood.

  I lurch toward the field we ran through last night, glad now I’m not too far into the forest. The wheat is my only point of reference. The forest is too dense, too disorienting, too big. I’ll have to walk the tree line or go through the wheat field to get back to the road.

  I stand in the thinning trees at the edge of safety and look at the open field. The wheat, golden and waving in the beautiful morning, reaches nearly to my waist and looks like a fluttery, welcoming road back to Margie, to Nick, to Binka, to Sam, to a life I want to be a part of now. I see the places where we trampled it with our running, with Hank’s chasing. With my eyes I follow the feathery stalks all the way down our crushed path, up the embankment and back toward the road. I can’t see Grandpa Henry’s SUV because Hank parked it on the other side, but I have no doubt it’s still there. Hank wouldn’t leave without finishing what he started. Pretty soon a couple of people cross the street and loo
k over the grooved and steep embankment. Men in light gray and dark gray uniforms. Cops.

  I move slowly along the tree line, watching the men on the road to make sure Hank’s not with them. He’s got nothing to lose now and there’s only one thing he wants. I make myself move by inches, deliberately, staying in the trees until I can’t anymore.

  I’m at the place where I’ll have to climb up the embankment to get to the road or start heading through the field. The embankment on this side isn’t as steep as the one last night, but it might as well be Mount Everest with the way my body aches and my legs shake. I wait for a minute, leaning against a big tree right there at the edge. I reach inside my T-shirt to hold Nick’s necklace and look down at the shattered pieces of glass connected by little rivulets of metal, turning it this way and that. It’s amazing to me—Nick bought me a necklace that says everything I am. Broken bits and strong bits forged together to make something whole.

  “There she is,” Hank says from behind me. I turn too quick and yelp when pain stabs at my head. He’s walking through the forest, grinning, raising his hand. No rocks this time. Hank’s found his gun. His eyes are all lit up, bright onyx that tells me he’s happy he can finish his business now. “I had bigger plans, but this’ll have to do,” he says just before I see the gun's giant, round hole come up level with my head. “I hope this makes him happy enough to leave me alone. I hope this is good enough.”

  My body wants to stay frozen, to give in, to just lie down and let him finish. It’s tired and in more pain than I thought a person could feel and still stay alive. But my mind tells me I have a chance. There are people here now. I’m not alone. I have to try. For Margie, Nick, Binka and Sam. For Mom, I have to try.

  I push away from the tree and stumble-jog into the wheat field. I wave my hands over my head, screaming as loud as I can. I scream my pain, fear, hope, love, wholeness. I scream my life.

  I hear Hank fire, feel a sting along my arm, keep my eyes on the wheat field, on the path back to Margie. The cops are all lined up along the side of the road, four of them now, getting bigger as I get closer. They have their guns out, pointing at Hank behind me. Puffs of gray float in slow motion, little ribbons of smoke from their guns.