by Ninie Hammon
“She’ll be a daddy’s girl in no time,” she said with a huge smile, and he was surprised at how much it meant to him that she was on his side.
The next morning, despite tension in the house thick enough to spread on toast—Sadie had dragged him proudly into the bathroom to show off her proficiency in the “big girl potty,” and when Piper left for the hospital in Charleston, he and the “girls” had spent a remarkably pleasant day together. Maggie had remained inside most of the day, reading the Bible and singing silly songs to his mother—and sometimes with his mother. The day had been a scorcher, the hottest since he got home, and Maggie had fanned Marian for hours to keep her cool with the Japanese fan Piper had brought home from Hawaii. Grayson had played outside with Sadie, pushed her in the tire swing and helped her pick a bouquet of wildflowers for her grandmother.
Piper had come home a wreck and wouldn’t talk about Zeke and how he’d taken the news about his paralysis. Then Carter had shown up about nine o’clock with a suitcase and announced he’d be staying until…Grayson hadn’t liked the look of—maybe not joy but relief?—he saw on Piper’s face when his brother walked into the house. As if now she had someone she could depend on through the difficult days ahead.
Grayson was biding his time before he confronted his brother about what he’d seen the day he arrived, the kiss Carter had forced on a not-altogether-reluctant Piper. Maybe they all three needed to talk about it, get it out in the open. But there’d be time for that later, after. Right now, they all needed to focus on his mother and make the most of her precious remaining time.
Ma had awakened this morning so weak she didn’t leave her bed. And so very pale.
When Sadie woke up to find Unka Cardur in the house—“You came back!”—she had abandoned her newfound attachment to Grayson like yesterday’s newspaper and followed Carter around like a puppy. But later in the day, she’d brought Grayson Are You My Mother? And begged him to read it to her “again-again.”
Maggie had awakened that morning with the look of a baby bird coming out of the shell. She didn’t have much to say and appeared to be distracted and preoccupied, as if she were considering the world around her afresh, with a new perspective. He caught her several times standing in the backyard, staring at the mountain behind the house, looking deeply frightened. Perhaps she’d finally remembered the family that had beaten her. Grayson refused to consider what it would mean—to her and to everyone else in the family—if she had.
Piper had barely slept at all. Grayson knew; he hadn’t either. Now, she seemed to be in shock, going through the motions of caring for her family but with her mind somewhere else entirely. As she was finishing up supper, he’d gone out to check the oil in the old Rambler because she’d said she wanted to return to Charleston Sunday to see Zeke.
“I hab Rasmus, Unka Cardur,” Sadie told his brother. She raced to her room and returned with the well-worn bear. “Play peek-a-boo wif Rasmus!”
Carter obliged and Piper looked on, smiling. Grayson didn’t think he’d ever felt quite so…unnecessary. So disenfranchised.
When supper was done, Maggie scooped up Sadie and got her ready for bed as he and Piper did the dishes, and Carter sat with his mother.
“Tell me about Zeke,” he began. “How did he take—?”
“No! I can’t. If I talk about it…I don’t want to break down in front of…” He squeezed her soapy hand, and she laid her head briefly on his shoulder in response.
Before Maggie put Sadie to bed, she carried the toddler around the room for the ritual “give night-night kisses.” When she got to Grayson, the toddler threw her arms around his neck and planted a wet kiss on his cheek. As Piper got Marian settled, Grayson got out the whetstone and began to sharpen his knife. When Piper came out of the old woman’s bedroom, she looked like she was about to cry, and Grayson tried to think of some safe subject to distract her.
“The car’s a quart low on oil,” he said. “You need to stop somewhere on your way—”
“You don’t need to stop,” Carter interrupted, almost eagerly. “I’m pretty sure there are a couple of cans of Valvoline in the storage building.” But then he made no move to go get it, so Piper turned and headed out the back door.
Finished with his knife, Grayson poured himself a cup of coffee and was sipping it at the kitchen table when Piper walked slowly back into the house. She wasn’t holding a quart of oil, though. She was holding Grayson’s hunting boots and pants.
His eyes went from the boots to her face, and he saw instantly that something was terribly wrong.
“Piper, what—”
“Where were you Thursday?” she demanded, her voice cold and hard. “Where did you go hunting?”
Grayson was confused by the question and the tone of her voice.
“Well, I went up to the church first, and then…actually, I don’t really know where I went. I wasn’t looking for squirrels, just wandered around—”
“Until you got to Blood Creek. And you sure enough weren’t hunting for squirrels there!”
“Blood Creek? No, I couldn’t possibly have gone that far because—”
“Oh, yes, you did.” She thrust his boots at him, bottom side up. “The proof’s right here!”
He looked at the soles of the boots. Dried red mud was caked in the treads. He was stunned. He must have gone to Blood Creek. It was the only place in the county with red mud. But how on earth…?
“Well, I guess…looks like I must have gone to Blood Creek. I don’t remember…but what difference—?”
“And here!” She pointed to mud on the right knee of his pants. “Here’s where you kneeled down to take aim!”
Piper’s face was bright red; her eyes spit fire.
“No, I must have tripped, fallen down or something, because I didn’t shoot a single squirrel all day.”
“Oh, you weren’t aiming at squirrels. You were aiming at my little brother. And you shot him in the back!”
Grayson was so dumfounded, he stared at her, gaping. Carter had gotten up from the couch during the exchange and now stood next to Piper, the same look of accusation on his face.
“What? I didn’t shoot Zeke! Why would you think I did?”
“I don’t think. I know.” Piper launched the boots and pants at him and burst into hysterical sobs. Carter gathered her into his arms and snarled at Grayson over the top of her head.
“Zeke was at Blood Creek when he was shot—when he was ambushed.”
Grayson leaped to his feet.
“What possible reason would I have to shoot Zeke? I haven’t even laid eyes on the kid in…what? Seven, eight years. That’s ridiculous.”
“For the same reason you went off on Maggie the first time you laid eyes on the child,” Carter hissed the words at him in a growling whisper, keeping his voice down so Marian and the girls wouldn’t hear. “You groped her, pawed her, told her she couldn’t be here, that she was dead.”
Piper pulled back out of Carter’s arms, and spit words at Grayson. “You pointed your rifle at the sheriff and me!” Her eyes instantly opened wide in realization. “You’d have shot us that day, wouldn’t you! But Sheriff Cliff pulled a gun on you.”
“Zeke didn’t have a gun, though,” Carter took up where Piper left off. “He couldn’t have defended himself even if he’d had one because you sneaked up on him and put a bullet in his back.”
Grayson felt like one of those shiny silver balls in the machine when the pinball flappers bat it clanging from one post to another.
“You’re both crazy!” he stammered.
“No, Grayson, you’re crazy!” Carter stepped away from Piper and poked his finger in the air inches from Grayson’s chest. “Something happened to you over there in that jungle. All your buddies getting dead and you walking away without a scratch—”
Grayson lunged at Carter, grabbed fistfuls of his shirt in both hands and shoved him backward until he slammed into the refrigerator, knocking the casserole dish on top of it to the floor, w
here it shattered in an explosion of broken glass that flew like shrapnel across the kitchen and out into the parlor.
“Don’t you dare talk about a war you didn’t fight or about soldiers you’re not fit to—”
Carter swung, a ranging roundhouse that would have decked any man it connected with, but Grayson easily dodged the blow, spun around and grabbed Carter’s arm, bending it backward at the elbow until Carter grunted in pain and went down on one knee, gasping.
“Piper,” Marian called from the bedroom. “Did you drop somethin’ and b-b-break it? You be careful; don’t you cut yourself c-c-cleaning up that glass.”
They all three went rigid, stopped breathing.
And into the bizarre wax museum walked Maggie, a pale, ghostly apparition in Piper’s short white nightie, so long on her it dragged in the floor like a train behind her. She took the measured steps of a sleepwalker, her skin so chalky, the spray of red freckles on her nose looked like drops of blood. Her eyes were unfocused; her face set. She didn’t appear to notice that Carter was on one knee with Grayson twisting his arm or that Piper’s face was a mask of conflicting emotions.
“We have to go,” she said, her voice hollow and flat. Like a recording. “Now. We have to go now. The black monster is coming after us.”
Piper went to the child and put her hands on Maggie’s shoulders. Grayson released his hold on Carter, and Carter sat back on his heels and rubbed his arm with his other hand.
“Honey, what are you saying?” Piper asked. “Maggie—”
At the sound of her name, Maggie’s head snapped back like somebody’d slapped her. Life and color and animation returned to her face.
“Oh, Miss Piper, we have to get away! Right now. We have to get up high.”
She didn’t wait for Piper to respond but turned and ran the few steps to where Carter was still kneeling, got right in his face.
“Mr. Carter, you go get Nan Marian. Be easy with her because she’s in fearsome pain.” She turned to Grayson, who stood now beside the refrigerator. “I’ll get Sadie up and dressed while you start the car.” Back to Piper she ran, like a little magpie. “Hurry, we have to hurry.” That’s when Grayson saw it. He took two quick steps and lifted the little girl up into his arms.
Piper reached out to stop him as Carter jumped up, both obviously intent on “protecting” Maggie from the madman, but Grayson halted them with a single word.
“Look!” he said and nodded toward the floor. Bloody footprints made a trail on the shiny hardwood where Maggie had cut her feet on the broken glass of the casserole dish and never even noticed! Then everyone started talking at once.
“Piper, you get something to—” Carter said.
“Grayson, put her down on the table and I’ll—” Piper said even as Grayson did exactly that.
“Have you got tweezers?” Grayson asked. “We need—”
In the midst of the babble, Maggie continued to plead with them to leave, that a huge black monster was coming to get them. In the next few minutes, the grownups grabbed hold of their emotions and held them rigidly in check while Maggie became more and more hysterical. They quickly discovered that there were only two small cuts on her left heel and a hole in her right big toe—lots of blood but little damage. The child didn’t wear shoes—she had none—and the bottoms of her feet were as tough as leather. While Grayson picked out the glass and applied Band-Aids, Carter swept up the broken glass and reassured Marian, who had heard the ruckus from her bedroom. Piper went to soothe Sadie, whose wailing gratefully appeared more whiny-sleepy than upset.
Grayson could hear Carter telling his mother that Maggie “had a bad dream, that’s all. Must have been a doozy of a nightmare.”
Indeed, it must have been because instead of calming down as reality blew away the cobwebs and vapors of imagination, the child was getting more agitated by the minute. She continued to babble even after Piper returned and tried to reassure her. Finally, Grayson took her by the shoulders as she sat with bandaged feet dangling off the edge of the kitchen table, got right in her face, and said forcefully, “Maggie, stop it!”
Piper stepped forward to protest, but Carter caught her arm. Tears streamed down the child’s face, but she appeared to be “back” from wherever it was she’d gone. Now, she just sounded like a frightened little girl.
“Please Miss Piper, you have to. Mr. Carter, please! Believe me. The black mon—”
“Nothing’s going to get us!” Piper said.
Grayson could see that Piper was on the edge. He reached down and gathered the little girl in his arms.
“Come on, honey. You’re going back to bed—right now,” he said.
She made one more attempt to plead with him as he carried her down the hallway, but he silenced her with a finger to his lips as he tiptoed into Sadie’s room and settled Maggie on her pallet on the floor. Her eyes begged him…but he planted a kiss on her forehead, surprised at the swell of tender affection he felt for her, and slipped back out of the room.
When he stepped into the parlor, it was clear Piper and Carter had been talking. It was equally clear that he was the odd man out.
Carter started to speak, but Piper touched his arm—Grayson hated the intimacy of the gesture—and said to him, “Could you please give us a minute.”
Carter shot an angry look Grayson’s way, then turned and went out the front door and down the walk to his car. Grayson could see the flame of his lighter as he lit a cigarette and leaned against the hood.
“Piper, please, listen to—”
“Don’t!” Her rage gave the word an edge of pure hatred. “You listen to me. I’m going to make a pallet and sleep on the floor in your mother’s room. What happened here tonight, what was said—none of us will speak another word about it as long as your mother…” Her voice broke. He could tell the sudden emotion surprised her and instinctively reached out to her. She slapped his hand away like it was a spider that had crawled up on her arm.
She leaned toward him, her voice a ragged, guttural growl that didn’t sound like anyone he’d ever met, certainly not the wife he’d fought desperately to stay alive to come home to.
“But after…I’m done! That’s it, we’re through!”
“Piper, I didn’t do anything!”
“Save your lies for Sheriff Cliff. I want you out of my life—and
Sadie’s. It’s over between us, Grayson.”
And just starting between you and Carter.
He didn’t say that out loud, of course. Before he could say anything at all, Piper went into his mother’s bedroom and closed the door softly behind her.
***
A scream tore open the silence, made a sound like fabric ripping. Grayson sat up, disoriented. Then he heard Piper’s voice wailing his name. He leaped out of the bed and raced down the hall, where he found Piper standing in the middle of the Sadie’s room, turning slowly around in a circle.
When she saw him, she fell into his arms.
“Grayson, they’re gone! Sadie and Maggie are gone!”
His mind registered the horror and desperation in her voice at the same time it registered the feel of her against his chest and the fact that she’d instinctively called out to him and not Carter.
Carter spoke from the doorway.
“Did you check—?”
“Everywhere! At first, I thought Maggie had…” It appeared Piper realized where she was because she stepped back out of Grayson’s embrace. She didn’t let go of his arm, though, and dug her fingers into it. “But their things are gone.” She gestured vaguely. Grayson didn’t know what specifically she was referring to, but he got the point. “Maggie’s run away, and she’s taken Sadie with her.”
“Piper!” Marian cried out from her room. Her voice had an airy, hitching sound that suggested she’d been calling before but nobody heard her. They all hurried to her room, where they found her sitting on the side of her bed, trying to rise. “What was you screamin’ about, child? What’s wrong?”
�
��It’s nothing for you to worry about, now—“ Piper began.
“Stop treatin’ me like I’m lame, halt and addled!” Marian snapped and shocked them all into silence. She saw their surprise. “I ain’t got time for nice. I been busy dying, ain’t paid attention maybe like I ought. But I know there’s all kinda stuff going on in my very own home, and I want to know what it is right now!”
Grayson steered the conversation to the safest, most immediate concern.
“Maggie’s run off with Sadie.”
Though clearly upset by the news, Marian didn’t look particularly surprised.
“All day yesterday that child wasn’t right,” she said.
“The sun hasn’t cleared the mountain yet,” Carter said. “How far could they have got?”
Marian reached over and tugged open the drawer on the bedside table. Other than a pair of spectacles and some tissues, it was empty.
“The flashlight Piper got me ’cause the lamp don’t give ’nough light to read my Bible—it’s gone,” she said.
“With a flashlight for the shadows under the trees—no telling how long they’ve been gone,” Carter said.
Piper uttered a little peep of a cry, and Grayson saw Carter start to reach out to her and then draw back.
“What are we standing around talking for?” Piper said. “We have to find them!” She turned to run out of the room, but Grayson put his hand on her arm.
“If they’ve gone more than half a mile, Maggie’s likely carrying Sadie by now,” he said. “They won’t get another fifty yards in the time it takes us to think this through.”
“Gray’s right,” Carter said. “They could be anywhere. We need to try to narrow down the search area if we can.”
“But…” Piper looked from one to the other pleadingly, then settled back, pursed her lips in concentration. “Okay, Sadie’s coveralls and a pink shirt are gone—and her shoes. Maggie’s barefoot!” She looked at the jumble of Maggie’s pallet. “She’s wearing her blue shorts, a T-shirt…and Maggie took Sadie’s blankie, maybe wrapped the other stuff in it, made a sack.”