by D. M. Pulley
Jasper startled awake as two men he didn’t recognize lifted him up into the back of a pickup. They laid him flat on his back next to a girl wrapped in a blanket. Her face was caked with dirt and dried blood, and her eyes were shut. He stared at her for several seconds, trying to see if she was breathing. “You okay?” he croaked.
She didn’t answer.
The truck lurched forward through the mud. The driver moved slowly over the lumpy ground, and each bump sent fire up his arm. The girl didn’t seem to notice. She had long dark hair, and for a dazed moment, Jasper wondered if she had brown eyes too. The black-and-white photograph on a folding table outside Calbry’s floated behind his eyes. Do you know who killed me?
Jasper turned his head away from her and gazed up at the stars. All signs of the storm had cleared from the night sky. He searched for constellations to keep himself from hyperventilating.
After a quick examination, the nurse at the Burtchville clinic removed the board from Jasper’s back. She determined that his shoulder was dislocated. What happened next happened too fast for anyone to argue. An orderly just held him down as still as she could.
The nurse barked, “One . . . two . . .”
Crunch.
Jasper screamed and thrashed against the poor woman.
“Shh! It’s over, honey. It’s over,” she whispered. She held him until he’d quieted down. It was several more minutes before his shaking body could manage to sit up. The nurse wrapped his arm in a sling and told him he’d need to wear it for at least a week. Then she handed him a set of clothes.
“These were donated by the good folks of Burtchville,” the nurse said in an apologetic voice as he unfolded a torn set of overalls. “I hope they fit well enough to get you home. Do you know where your folks are, hon?”
Jasper hesitated. From the look on the nurse’s face, he could tell he was too young to be released on his own. She would make him stay and wait with nothing to do but think the worst. He had to go find them. He wouldn’t let himself consider what would happen if he didn’t. “Yeah. They’re waiting outside.”
Thankfully, things were too frantic at the clinic for her to question his lie. She held the door for him and wished him well.
The hallway was filled with battered people wrapped in bedsheets and blankets. Some were bleeding into red rags. Some were just staring. The sheriff was there in his uniform, talking with one of the survivors. Jasper caught a few words as he walked past with his head down, hoping not to be noticed.
“. . . was the worst we’ve ever seen. State’s calling it a category five. We’ll be searching a thirty-mile radius for the next several days. You missin’ anybody?”
The man nodded his head, but his eyes looked blank. His hand covered half his face. His shoulders were shaking. From the look of him, they were all missing.
Jasper scanned the waiting room for Aunt Velma, Uncle Leo, and Wayne. There was no sign of them. He checked again before pushing through the door.
Outside, the sun was rising. The sky glowed golden shades of orange and red as if nothing terrible had happened at all. Jasper found himself hating the sun as it peeked over the edge of the world. It would go on burning, no matter what happened to him or his family or the poor man in the clinic. It simply didn’t care. By all rights, the damned thing should have fallen from the sky the day his mother disappeared.
Jasper sighted up and down Lakeshore Road. It was less than three miles up Route 25 to Harris Road. The blinding white pain in Jasper’s shoulder had cooled to a dull ache. He could walk it, he decided. He didn’t really have a choice.
Besides a few scattered tree branches, the shops and houses lining Lakeshore were untouched by the storm. Jasper wandered past them barefoot, wondering how a storm could tear apart his home and leave these unscathed. Were these families more loving, more devout, more deserving?
The sun rose higher in the sky, lighting the few scattered clouds in beautiful shades of silver and gold. If there was a God, he was toying with him, like Lucifer batting around an injured rat.
Jasper reached the top of the hill north of town, and the night’s carnage splayed out before him. Uprooted trees and tattered lumber littered the ground where houses had once stood. Pieces of tractors and trucks lay scattered. The foot of a giant had stepped down and crushed everything beneath it.
“My God,” Jasper breathed.
The wreckage grew more devastating as he approached his uncle’s farm. The younger trees had been ripped from the ground. The older ones stood naked, stripped of their leaves and lighter branches. A signpost that read “Harris Road” was sticking out of the trunk of an enormous tree on the other side of Route 25. He walked over to it and saw the four-by-four post had been driven into the side of the giant maple as though it were a tenpenny nail. Jasper gaped at it, not believing that wind could do that to a tree.
Down Harris Road, he found a man dragging the trunk of a huge oak out of the road with his tractor. He stopped when he saw Jasper coming. “You alright, son?”
“Yes, sir.” Jasper put his head down and tried to skirt around the man and his questions.
“I wouldn’t head that way if I was you,” the man warned. “There’s not much left. Where’s your family?”
I don’t know, Jasper wanted to scream. “They’re—um—down there already. I should go help.” With that, he scuttled by the tractor and down the road before the man could stop him. A few seconds later, the motor started up again.
Huge tree branches lay strewn across the dirt roadbed like a child’s Lincoln Logs. Jasper climbed over and under them as best he could with his bad arm, inching his way back toward the cabin. They’re fine, he told himself. Uncle Leo’s probably mad I haven’t shown up yet.
He imagined his uncle chiding him. Just decided to leave all the work for us, that it?
As he approached Mr. Sheldon’s farm, his imaginary conversation with Leo stopped short. Not a single building was left standing. A tractor stood half buried in the mud, its six-foot tires missing, its one-inch steel bolts sheared clean off. Mr. Sheldon and his wife were nowhere to be found.
Uncle Leo’s farm was just three hundred more yards down the road.
Jasper raced past Sheldon’s wreckage all the way to his uncle’s two-track driveway, yelling, “Aunt Velma? Uncle Leo? Wayne? Are you there?”
They didn’t answer. The stand of trees that shielded the house in winter had been stripped bare. The cabin was flattened. The roof was nowhere to be seen. The logs that made up the walls lay scattered. Jasper’s feet slowed halfway down the drive. “Aunt Velma?”
By some miracle, most of the barn was still standing. Jasper trotted toward it. “Uncle Leo?”
The roof of the barn was half torn off, and the entire structure was listing to the east. As he approached it, he could hear a cow groan. Loose hay covered the ground. The hayloft at the top of the barn had exploded all around him. Jasper ran to the door and tried to pull it open, but it was so badly wracked, it wouldn’t budge.
“Uncle Leo?” he shouted through the jammed doorway.
A cow answered. She sounded hurt.
“I’ll get you out, girl!” he called back to her. Jasper ran around to the collapsed end of the barn. The end wall that had housed all his uncle’s tools had been blown apart. None of the pitchforks or shovels had survived, and Jasper shuddered, thinking of them flying through the air like missiles, landing God knows where. The barn walls leaned over far enough to make him feel dizzy. One stiff wind and the whole place would collapse. Some of the cattle stalls had been sucked open while others were wedged shut. Over half the cows were still in their pens. Jasper didn’t want to think about the rest of them.
His family was nowhere to be found.
The barn creaked as a breeze blew by. It was a warning. He had to get the livestock out of there. He ran to the far end where the goats were penned. Several planks of wood had fallen down into the stall. None of the goats could be seen.
“Timmy? Timmy, you in
there?” Jasper shouted, lifting one of the boards with his good arm. He kicked it aside along with three more. Under them he found a huddled lump of gray and black hair. Lying on top, a goat’s head was smashed with its eyes fixed open. It was Timmy’s nanny. He grabbed her by the collar and pulled her off the top of the pile. The other nanny lay under her with her tongue hanging limp. Jasper collapsed to his knees. Timmy wasn’t even six months old.
A muffled noise like a child crying made him lift his head. The dead goat was moving. Jasper stumbled back. Its fur was fluttering. Another high-pitched wail came from under it.
“Timmy?” he whispered, not daring to hope it was anything more than his imagination. The sound came again. He grabbed the other dead nag by the neck and lifted her up. Out from under the carcass, a baby goat came scrambling. Jasper pulled the kid loose and wrapped his free arm around his neck. “Timmy! Is that you?”
The baby goat staggered two uneven steps before lying back down. Jasper could see his back leg was broken. He wiped a tear and laughed, showing Timmy his sling. “Aren’t we a pair, huh?” He hugged him again and helped him out of the barn.
It took the better part of an hour to get the rest of the animals out and into the yard. Jasper had to wrestle and kick at the wedged stall doors, but he managed to get them all open. He was drenched in sweat by the time he was finished.
The cows were grazing on the grass, stepping between the fallen branches as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Timmy was curled up under a tree that had been stripped of every last leaf. Jasper knelt down next to him and took a breath. In the branches overhead, a bird started singing. Jasper stared up at it for a moment in wonder, realizing he hadn’t heard a single bird since the storm had blown in.
Her voice returns to him in the songs of the birds . . .
A cow bellowed across the yard. Udders were hanging like sandbags, and the old girls were starting to complain. He could hear his aunt warning him, These cows need milking soon or they’ll get mastitis.
Jasper went back to the barn and gathered all the rope and buckets he could find, pushing Dr. Whitebird’s riddles out of his head. The bird kept singing while he set up a stool and bucket and started in, roping each cow and milking it dry. After filling two storage containers, Jasper grabbed a spare water dish and filled it up with milk for Timmy.
The road stayed dead quiet the whole while. He gazed up the driveway every few minutes, hoping to see Aunt Velma or Uncle Leo trudging down all banged up. Maybe they were all at some clinic somewhere getting broken bones set. He tried not to think of the girl who had been lying so still next to him on the bed of the truck. He had no idea what had happened to her.
When the milking was done, Jasper stepped back into the empty barn to take stock. His uncle’s toolbox had spilled out onto the ground. His father would say, Good tools don’t come cheap. If the barn fell over, his uncle would have a hell of a time getting them out.
He plopped himself down and pulled the box back upright. The upper and center trays toppled out, sending screwdrivers and wrenches spilling to the ground in a metallic avalanche.
“Shit!” he hissed, knowing his uncle would be furious at the sound of his tools hitting the dirt. But it was for the best. He couldn’t lift the full toolbox with only one arm anyway. He’d have to carry it out a few pieces at a time. He lifted the trays and tools one by one and carried them over to where Timmy was sleeping all alone under the tree.
Poor Timmy. He patted the kid on the head and told him, “It’ll be alright. I’ll take care of you. I’m not much of a nag, but—” He knew nothing he said would help.
Jasper gazed up the driveway again at the empty road, then headed back into the barn. As he went to close the lid of his uncle’s giant steel toolbox, something at the bottom of it caught his eye. Under his uncle’s pipe and tobacco was a small leather-bound book. Jasper reached down and picked it up, not quite believing it was really there. He opened the cover.
Inside, written in a girlish hand, was the name Althea.
CHAPTER 48
Why wasn’t the murder reported?
Jasper sank down onto the floor of the creaking barn with her diary, not believing it had been right under his nose all those months. Her troubled life tumbled out all over again. Hating the farm, getting caught by Hoyt, running giggle water to Big Bill, driving an empty cart up Door of Faith Road. He hesitated to read the final entries for fear he might throw the book again and lose it for good.
He pressed the diary to his heart, steeling himself, then turned the page.
October 1, 1928
There were no deliveries today. Hoyt had me watch his bull and his new heifer Clementine in the breeding pen instead. “You come and get me when he’s finished with her,” he said.
I didn’t know what he meant by finished. He had this sly smile on his face like he wanted me to ask, so I didn’t.
Clementine was such a pretty girl, just two years old and tawny brown. Hoyt’s bull Pluto is a monster twice her size. I’d never seen what goes on in a breeding pen before, so part of me was curious. The wicked part of me, I guess. Papa always brings our heifers to Mr. Hoyt. After a few days, they come back, but they’re not heifers anymore. A year later they’re cows.
Mr. Hoyt had tethered sweet Clementine to one of the fence posts. She could take a few steps side to side, but she couldn’t turn around. He let Pluto in the pen and then went up to the house, leaving me there to watch.
But I couldn’t watch. Not after a minute. Not after I saw what was happening to poor Clementine. I crouched down into a ball, covering my eyes and ears, but I could still hear her crying. It sounded like he was killing her. I can’t stop hearing it. My ears are ruined.
When it finally stopped, I just stayed there, crouched in my ball for Lord knows how long. Next thing I knew, Old Hoyt was tapping the top of my head. “I told you to come and get me.” He chuckled. When I looked up at him, he seemed real pleased. He was happy I was crying.
Jasper quickly turned the page and scanned the next entry. It was frighteningly brief.
November 7, 1928
Papa’s taking Blue Bell to Mr. Hoyt’s bull tomorrow. I begged him not to do it. I cried. He called me a silly little girl. Heifers have to become cows or else they get eaten.
“It’s better to be eaten,” I shouted.
If I had the nerve, I’d kill her myself. My God I wish I did.
I gave her Hoyt’s giggle water instead, and I told her not to cry. Only little girls cry and giggle, and we’re not little girls anymore, Blue Bell. She didn’t want to drink it. I’m so sorry, sweet girl. The burning water will make you feel nothing. Like you’re not there at all. Like it’s happening to somebody else.
Anybody but you.
The words wove together in loose and uneven ink as though the hand that had written them was half asleep. Or drunk. Jasper flipped to the next page and the next, but they were all empty. A sickness crept into his gut. He slammed the book closed and threw it back into the toolbox. He squeezed his eyes shut and was back in his nightmare, lying on the floor in his grandmother’s old house. He could see his mother, pinned down to a filthy bed by a hulking man—
Jasper ground his fists into his eyes to pulverize the image, but he could still hear her crying. He could feel the sweaty breath of the bus driver on his neck. He jerked away from it and covered his ears.
That no-good, filthy, son of a bitch. What did he do, Mom? What did he do to you? Why d—
“Jas—per!”
It was a woman’s voice. He stopped breathing and listened, convinced he’d imagined it. That damn bird was still chirping in the yard. A fly buzzed by his ear.
“Jasper?” the voice called again from the driveway. It was his aunt Velma.
“I’m here!” he whispered, then shook himself out of his stupor. He glanced at the diary in the bottom of the toolbox, then trotted out of the open end of the barn to the driveway, calling, “I’m here!”
“Oh, thank Go
d in heaven! There you are!” Aunt Velma ran down the drive and swooped him up into her arms. Pain shot through his shoulder as she squeezed him, but he didn’t care. “My sweet Jasper. Let me look at you.” She set him back down and took stock of every bump and scrape and the sling wrapped around his arm.
“I’m okay.” He tried to smile, but tears came up instead. “Really, I’m alright. Are you okay?”
“Oh, honey. I’m just fine now.” Aunt Velma was dressed in a torn yellow dress he’d never seen before. There was a bloodstained bandage on her cheek, and the entire left side of her face was purple. The white of her left eye was red.
“Where are Uncle Leo and Wayne?”
“Out lookin’ for you. They’re a bit banged up . . . but that’s all.” She cupped his hands around his face. “The good Lord was watching over us.”
Jasper gazed past her at Timmy lying alone under his tree but said nothing about his thoughts on the good Lord.
Uncle Leo and Wayne got back to the wreckage of the cabin less than an hour later. Their ill-fitting clothes were splattered in blood. His uncle grinned widely. “Hey, look who’s decided to join us, Wayne!”
“Jas! You made it!” Wayne trotted up to him and tugged at his sling. “Some ride, huh? What’d ya do? Break it?”
“Dislocated. What, uh . . .” Jasper gaped at his cousin’s crusted red hands. “What happened to you?”
“Oh, this ain’t me. Me and Pop had to help a few folks break down cows. So where’d you land?”
“I—I’m not sure.”
“I ended up on the other side of Jeddo Road. That twister threw me almost a mile. Ain’t that somethin’?” Wayne was doing his best to brag about it, but tears had left tracks in the mud on his face.
Aunt Velma dug the washbasin out from under a pile of fallen timbers and filled it up at the hand pump. The two men stripped down and rinsed the blood off, while she busied herself taking stock of what was left of the kitchen. The woodstove had been thrown clear across the yard.
“Wayne, these flies are going to chew your ass to bits. Go see what you can find to wear.” Uncle Leo picked a tattered curtain up off the ground and wrapped it around his waist. It was covered in pink flowers and would have been real funny if it hadn’t been for the purple bruises running the length of his body.