by Billie Letts
“She promised she wouldn’t say anything, but I couldn’t take the chance. Couldn’t let them take away my boy.
“I don’t remember picking up the knife. Honestly, I don’t. Don’t remember stabbing her. But when I got home, I had blood in my hair, on my clothes, on my hands. And on you.”
“On me?”
“I’d brought you home with me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I couldn’t leave you there. Not with her like that. Besides, I didn’t know how long before someone would find you. There could have been a fire, or . . .”
When Carrie stopped talking, Mark said, “You don’t have to go on with this if you don’t want to.”
“So there I was,” she said, “holding a terrified baby, both of us covered in your mother’s blood. I got in the shower with you in my arms. I couldn’t let Kippy see us like that.
“Then I remembered a story I’d read in the Enquirer about people in California, rich people who were willing to pay a lot of money to adopt children.
“I still had that magazine, so I called and got the number of the attorney in the story and I phoned his office, pretending to be Gaylene Harjo. Three days later I was on a plane with you, a plane to L.A.
“When I got back to DeClare, I found out Oliver had blamed the murder on Joe Dawson.” Carrie brushed away a tear with the back of her hand. “So I used the adoption money for Kippy’s heart surgery.”
“Did O Boy know you’d killed Gaylene?”
“Yeah. He knew. I kept you at our house until I took you to California. I didn’t tell him about the money until after Kippy’s operation, though, ’cause I knew Oliver would take it away from me.”
“Carrie, did O Boy kill Joe Dawson?”
“We never talked about it, but I think he did. He’s a mean bastard.”
“He beats you, doesn’t he.”
Carrie glanced at Mark, then looked away. “But not Kippy. Not once.”
“Why did you stay with him? Why did you take that kind of abuse?”
“Each time he’d say he was sorry, say he was gonna change. And I believed him, at least for the first few years. By then, I knew if I left, he’d kill me and put Kippy in a home. So I stayed.”
“But didn’t you ever think about—”
“Oliver had so much hurt in him. He had to deal with it somehow, I guess, and taking it out on me was the most easiest way.”
“What kind of hurt?”
“His mother. She was pure evil. You wouldn’t believe the things she did to Oliver and Arthur.”
When Carrie started to cry, Mark took her hand.
“I know this won’t mean anything to you,” she said, “but I’m sorry about Gaylene. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel bad about what I did to her. And to you. But I couldn’t never let them take Kippy away from me. I’d never let that happen.”
April 11, 1970
Diary,
Oscar Horsechief was killed yesterday in Vietnam.
Chapter Thirty-three
When Carrie left Mark on the bank of the pond, he was sitting with his knees raised, his arms wrapped around them, his hands locked in a death grip as if he were trying to hold his body together.
For a while he sought comfort in watching fat, dark clouds drifting overhead. But when he began to see disturbing shapes in them—a knife held by a delicate hand, blood splattered onto a windowpane, a girl’s face, her features twisted with fear—he closed his eyes, hoping for total blackness behind his lids as he fought the scenes beginning to play in his head.
For the past week, ever since he’d been to the newspaper office where he read accounts of the murder, read about the wounds on his mother’s body, he’d hidden the details. Zipped them up in a mental body bag he’d resolved never to open, never to look at what was held inside.
But now, with Carrie’s confession darting around in his mind, sharp images had pierced the body bag, its contents beginning to spill out.
He saw Gaylene running from the creek, cradling a wet, naked baby shivering in her arms.
When she reached the trailer, she dried, diapered and dressed him in soft blue pajamas with yellow ducks as she calmed him with a sweet, reassuring voice, telling him he was all right, safe now with her, because she would die before she let anything bad happen to him.
Then she carried him to the kitchen, where she put his bottle on to warm. While she waited, she kissed his head, his chubby hands, his face, as she rocked him gently from side to side.
She turned toward the door as Carrie, wild-eyed and panting, opened it and came inside, her voice quivering as she explained once again that Kippy had not meant to harm Nicky Jack, that he only wanted to bathe him in the creek.
In response, Gaylene had offered reassurance, promised again never to speak of what had happened.
Then Carrie, obviously relieved, had reached for the baby, but Gaylene stepped back, tightened her hold on her child, a protective move that Carrie interpreted as an ominous act.
As Gaylene turned and took the baby’s bottle from the pan warming on the stove, she didn’t see Carrie pick up the paring knife from the kitchen counter, didn’t see the first thrust, but felt the pain as the sharp blade pierced her shoulder.
She let the bottle slip from her hand, heard it smash on the floor, saw her blood splatter against the kitchen window and spray the door of the refrigerator.
At first, she couldn’t comprehend what was happening. She’d seen enough movies to know that people got stabbed at night as a storm raged. She knew what was about to take place when a gust of wind blew the flame from candles or when a room was illuminated by a flash of lightning. And she was well aware that when a frightened woman crept down dark basement stairs, the music would swell as the camera moved in for a close-up of a man in the shadows waiting at the bottom.
But such a thing could not happen on a clear, sunny day, not with Momma Dog barking outside at a treed squirrel or with the faint whistle of a freight train passing through town. And certainly nothing dire could take place in the kitchen of her trailer with her baby boy in her arms.
When she saw Carrie lift the knife again, she put out her hand to shield the baby, causing the steel blade to cut away the tip of her little finger. But Carrie’s next lunge came too hard and too fast for Gaylene to deflect it, the wound too deep in the side of her neck for her to fight off another blow.
Knowing then that she was going to the floor, she sank to her knees, then slipped forward, making sure to keep the baby beneath her as the final strike of the knife buried the blade in her back, just beneath her ribs.
Mark opened his eyes then but made no effort to hold back his tears. He simply allowed himself to cry, knowing it was finally time to weep for his mother, the girl who had wanted to be an artist.
He had come to this place in Oklahoma to find the mother who had let him go, the mother who had not loved him enough to keep him.
Instead, he’d found the girl who had given up her dreams, but not her baby.
Chapter Thirty-four
Later that day, when Mark arrived back at Teeve’s, he started to pack his things in a cardboard box he’d found in the garage. When he put his box in the rental car, he noticed both the front and back floorboards were littered with empty Twinkies packages and bottles of Chocolate Soldier. The big surprise for him was that he didn’t even care, a sign that Ivy was rubbing off on him. In more ways than one.
“Honey,” Teeve said, “are you sure I can’t fix you something to eat? At least make you a sack lunch to take with you on the plane?”
“No, Teeve. They’ll feed me, but thanks anyway.”
“Any laundry you want done?”
“No, I guess I’m all set to go. I’ll have to stop at the motel, grab what I left there and settle my bill, then I’m out of here.”
“We’re going to miss you.”
“I’ll miss you. And Ivy. Do you
know where she is?”
“In the backyard, I think.”
“Then I’ll catch her back there.” He embraced Teeve, kissed her cheek. “You take care of yourself. Ivy, too.”
“I will, honey. I promise.”
After Mark loaded his box into the trunk of his car, he went around the side of the house to the patio, where he found Ivy. She was staring off into the distance as she rocked in an old aluminum glider splotched with rust. As he watched her, he was reminded of something Kyle had asked him. Do you know what it’s like to love a woman so much that just watching her breathe stops time?
When she looked up, saw him standing there, she brushed away tears.
“Aren’t you going to see me off?” he said as he scooted in beside her.
“No. I don’t want you to go, so I’m going to sit out here and pout until the sun goes down or it’s time to eat. Whichever comes first.”
Ivy tilted her head back, blinking rapidly, trying to keep the tears from falling.
“Ivy?”
“I just don’t think you’re ready to go back yet.”
“Why? Are we having chicken fried steak and gravy? If we are, I’ll have to miss my flight.”
“You know what I mean.”
“That’s what men don’t understand about women. You say ‘you know what I mean’ when we don’t have any idea what you mean.”
“You’ve been through a lot here. You found out about your mother. How she lived. How she died. That can’t have been easy. Then, you discovered more than you wanted to know about your father and you saw—”
“Ivy, Arthur McFadden caused a baby. That doesn’t make him a father. Think about this. You take a ceramics class, you make a . . . I don’t know. A bowl. A little bowl. Now that doesn’t make you an artist, does it? Or, let’s say you’re a kid—nine, ten years old. Your uncle is driving, puts you on his lap and lets you steer the car for a few hundred yards. Now, are you a driver? No.
“Was Arthur McFadden a father? No. He caused a baby. Simply contributed an ingredient. When it was finished, it was a baby. He caused it, but it wasn’t his. He was just the causer.
“Now, Gaylene had a baby. She carried it for nine months, nurtured it, gave it birth. She got up with it at night, nursed it back to health when it was sick. She read to it, sang to it, cried with it, laughed with it, kissed it. Loved it. Was she a mother? Yes. Hell, yes! And she was my mother.”
Mark looked away, but Ivy could see the muscles working in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. In anger or sadness, she couldn’t tell.
“See, this is what I’m talking about. You’ve got a lot of stuff in your head and you’re going to have to deal with it. Work through it.”
“And I will,” he said.
“How? Who are you going to talk to in California?”
“You, for one. Believe it or not, we have phones way out west, all the way to California.”
“Seriously, who’s going to help you out there?”
“We have therapists and phones. What do you think of that? Psychologists, psychiatrists, stress managers. Why, Ivy, it’s Hollywood. We’ve got bizarros who can make you remember being in the womb. I had a lady once with a poodle she couldn’t house-train. She paid five thousand dollars to some weirdo who claimed the dog peed in the house because when he was in the womb, the bitch carrying him had been bitten by a snake in the backyard.”
“You just made that up, didn’t you.”
“Yeah, but it’s a good story, isn’t it? I mean, it illustrates my point.”
“You know, when you need to talk, the best person is the listener sitting across the table from you, someone you know, someone you trust. Someone you have a history with who’ll hold your hand. Someone you care about.”
“Someone who has a belly that looks like a giant water balloon?”
She smacked him on the shoulder, then put her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. “I just don’t want you to go.”
“I have to, Ivy. I’ve got a clinic back there. And it’s in trouble right now.”
“And you’ve got a Jaguar and a house on the beach and a grand piano.”
“Right. But somehow none of that seems as important to me as it used to. As it did before I came here.”
“Are you really coming back here?”
“Sure. That doctor who’s going to deliver your baby might need my help.”
“Your help?”
“Hey, I’ve delivered Rottweilers, wolfhounds, Saint Bernards and Great Danes. A baby? Piece of cake.”
“I’m scared.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just tired of being pregnant.”
“I’m scared of having this baby. It’s going to hurt, and I’m not good with pain.”
“Hey, you want to know about pain, let me tell you about my kidney stone. Having a baby is nothing compared to what I went through. Women go on about how it hurts to have a baby, but—”
“Smart-ass.”
“I’d better go, Ivy. I’ve got to stop by the motel and get to Tulsa. My flight’s at eight.”
“Okay, go on, then,” she said. “See if I care.”
“I hope you do.”
“You just wait and see. You’re going to miss me.”
“I already do.”
“Me too.”
They stood, kissed, then walked to the gate, where they kissed again. Not a “hi, cuz, how you doing” kind of kiss; not a “haven’t seen you in ages” kind of kiss. This was a passionate kiss between a woman and a man.
When they parted, Mark said, “Ivy, I hope you’ll think long and hard about your decision when this baby is born. You’d make a terrific mother.”
“Mark, commitment isn’t my strong suit.”
“I know.”
“Well, you’re one to talk.”
“But I think I can change.”
“You’d better go or you’ll miss your flight.”
Mark kissed her on the cheek, then patted her belly. “I’ll see both of you in the delivery room,” he said.
“You mean it?”
“Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t, ma’am. I never lie. Not to my horses, my cows or my women.”
“Oh, God,” Ivy said, laughing and crying at the same time. “You’re beginning to sound like a damn Okie.”
“So long, Ivy.”
“Bye, Nicky Jack.”
Epilogue
The christening was held on the back lawn of Hap and Matthew’s home on the first Saturday of April, a glorious, sunny day when Lorraine Leann Harjo was nearly six months old. Gaylene’s middle name had been Lorraine, and Leann was Teeve’s middle name, so the decision to name the baby was an easy one.
Ivy had wanted to have the ceremony in the spring, her favorite season. And for one of the few times in her life, she had insisted on perfection.
Swanson’s Funeral Home, which had provided the tent where the DeClare Ladies’ Auxiliary had served those who searched for little Nicky Jack Harjo almost thirty years ago, now provided the chairs arranged in a semicircle on the lawn.
The tall camellia- and magnolia-scented candles came from Making Scents, a new venture by the Ladies’ Auxiliary, who used the profits to help operate a shelter for abused women.
The Young Democrats, who had bought yellow ribbons to tie to trees back in 1972, now provided white ribbons for the pines, oaks and elms surrounding the lawn.
The DAR, still in competition with the Auxiliary, set up a table covered with an Irish linen cloth, on which they placed vases of fragrant violets and candytufts as well as a magnificent silver tea service. And, at Martha Bernard Duchamp’s insistence, they added a lovely antique bowl, which she filled with a punch heavy with Everclear, a drink both potent and aromatic with the familiar and overpowering aroma of Christmas trees.
Patti Frazier contributed the music to the affair, her accompanist one of Joe Dawson’s daughters, who played piano at the Abundant Life Temple. The p
iano was moved and delivered to the patio free of charge by four of the younger and stronger deacons at the AME Church.
Hap and Matthew were the hosts, of course. Hap met the guests at the front door, then escorted them through the house and onto the back lawn. Matthew spent all his time in the kitchen, wearing a white apron and chef’s hat. Despite the misgivings of everyone who’d tasted Matthew’s food before, Ivy had picked him as caterer. And he’d surprised them all, outdoing himself with luscious bacon-wrapped broiled mushrooms, cheese puffs, almond-and-cream-cheese canapés, tiny lobster croquettes and spiced nuts. For desserts he prepared hazelnut tortes, cranberry crepes flambé and poppyseed cake.
Three tables were set up on the patio: one for coffee, tea and punch; one for Matthew’s culinary creations; and one for presents for Lorraine, most gift-wrapped except for a large rocking horse carved by Jackson and Johnny Standingdeer, a project they’d been working on for more than three months.
The crowd was large, even more Harjos and their friends than had gathered for the family’s last funeral, that of Enid’s husband, Ben.
Lantana Mitchell showed up, looking younger and more glamorous than many thought she had a right to, but certainly not her plastic surgeon and, for sure, not her agent, who had sold her book for six figures, the title Back to Life: The Story of Nick Harjo.
Lantana was wearing a lemon-colored silk suit by Yves Saint Laurent and a diamond paid for by the proceeds of her book. She was accompanied by her new husband, Harold Madrid, responsible for the DNA testing proving that Arthur McFadden was Mark’s father.
Three of the domino boys were there, two actually in dress clothes—polyester leisure suits. Lonnie Cruddup had died of pneumonia the previous winter. And Ron John O’Reily, who often didn’t know where he was or why he was there, was wearing one of his old uniforms from American Pesticides, the company he’d retired from several years earlier. His dementia had progressed until the last thing he had to hold on to—the game of Shoot the Moon—had evaporated a few months earlier.
Johnny and Jackson Standingdeer had tried for a time to resurrect the game with some younger players but finally gave up. The game was not the same without Lonnie and Ron John.