“I just know about it,” I said, deciding not to tell him how I’d found the paper in his box. “Were you sad about it?”
“It ain’t sad. I ain’t sad about it.”
“But your father killed himself, too.” I hoped the barb would stick.
“That’s where you got it wrong.” He scratched at his scalp. “That’s the story we told the deputy, but it ain’t what really happened.”
Just like I did when Daddy told a story, I waited for Eddie to go on. His eyes were far away, like he was thinking on something. I thought that maybe if he kept on talking, he’d forget all about me and I could make a run for it. All I needed was to make it up the ten steps.
“Don’t you wanna know what really happened?” he asked. “Ain’t you a little bit curious?”
“I guess so.”
“Well, my pa killed my mom. She said something to him. Can’t remember what it was. Whatever she said set him off. He jumped on top of her and beat her bloody. Then he strangled the life out of her.” He pulled another cigarette from his pocket. His hands shook when he brought it to his lips. “I don’t suppose you ever seen a man strangle somebody, have ya?”
I shook my head no.
“Awful thing to watch. It took her a terrible long time to die. And the sounds she made.” He closed his eyes and smoked in quiet. “I’d crawled under the bed. I was scared he’d come get me next. Never was so scared. Jimmy wasn’t scared, though. No, sir. Jimmy never was afraid of nothing. Something in him snapped, seeing our pa do that. After our pa got off Ma, he was wore out. It’s hard work, squeezing the life outta somebody. He fell back on the ground. Just then, Jimmy grabbed our pa’s pistol and pushed it right against my father’s head.”
Eddie made his finger look like a gun and put it up to the side of his own head.
“Pa lifted his hands like he was going to make for Jimmy’s throat. That’s when Jim shot him.” Eddie made a noise like a gun blast. “Just like that. Never have seen nothing like that since. What a mess.”
I rested my head against the wall behind me. It was cool, and I hoped it would soothe the pain that swelled in my skull. Shoving down the pity for him, I remembered the hand marks that were on Beanie’s neck for weeks. Marks Eddie’d made when he hurt her.
I wondered what had made him stop squeezing.
“When you tell me how you love them folks who pretend to be your family, it don’t mean nothing to me.” He looked at the dirt. “I never loved no one in my life. Family or otherwise. I don’t even know what it would be like.”
The world was full of awful people who did terrible and ugly things. Most of them were only awful because of the scars on their hearts.
I thought on Meemaw’s dream words.
God is the one who saves.
I really wanted to believe that was true.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I must have slept for hours, the way my neck ached and my legs tingled. I couldn’t tell if it was daytime or night. The strong stream of light that had come from the doors was dusky and dim. Eddie’s lantern had gone dark.
A blanket of dust covered all of me. When I opened my mouth to take in a deep breath, all I got was dirt.
“You slept through a duster,” Eddie said through the darkness.
Spitting the grit from my mouth, I felt a clenching in my chest. All a dust storm could do was bury us in that cellar, hiding us from Daddy until we ran out of air.
My eye throbbed, and I felt of it with my fingertips. My skin stretched tight over the swollen part. Was it ever tender. I wondered if it would feel better if a little of the fluid behind the skin could drain. What I wouldn’t have done for a cold washcloth just then.
On the other side of the cellar, a light flickered at the end of a match, then grew to a flame. The brightness of it stabbed clear through to the back of my head.
Eddie carried his old lantern to me, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. He poured me a cup of the dirty water.
“Drink this,” he said.
“Can I go home?” I asked, sipping the water. “I promise I’ll never tell.”
“I don’t believe you’ll be going home.” He took the cup from me, tilting the canteen. “More?”
I shook my head. It took all my strength not to panic. The only thing I wanted to do was go home and be back in my bed. My head pounding and stomach churning, I nearly let loose all my fear with a scream.
But Eddie DuPre wouldn’t see that part of me. I wouldn’t allow it. So I faked calm. Made believe. Played the part of the brave Indian princess.
God would save me. Meemaw promised. It built up my imagined courage.
“I’ll go home. You can’t stop me,” I said.
“And just how are you gonna do that?”
“I’m going to go home.” I turned my eyes away from him, watching the lantern light flicker on the old wood wall.
“Who you gonna go home to?” He gulped straight from the canteen, emptying it. “Tom and Mary ain’t your folks. Or did I knock your brain silly when I hit you.”
I refused to talk back to him. He pushed my shoulder with his fingers.
“Hey, I was talking to you,” he said. “Who you gonna go home to? Your pretend family?”
“Why’s it any of your business who my family is?” I turned to him and narrowed my eyes when I spoke to him. “Why do you care?”
“I’m warming up to that.” He shoved me again with those fingers of his. “I got my reasons. Believe you me, I’ve got a pretty good reason for caring.”
“I’m going home to the Spence family,” I said. “And they’ll be glad to see me. They’ll grab hold of me and hug me and kiss me all over my face.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they love me,” I said, more to silence any doubt that had stabbed its way into my mind. “They want me.”
“They don’t love you.” Eddie rolled his eyes. “They feel sorry for you.”
“That’s a lie.”
“No, it’s true. They found you when you was a little baby, left by a mother who never loved you enough to even feed you.” He smirked. “The sheriff and his little wife never would have told you the truth. They felt sorry for you then, and they feel sorry for you now.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Pity ain’t love.”
Eddie paced across the cellar. Watching him made me realize how stiff my legs were from sitting on the dirt floor for so long. I pulled my knees up, bending them so I could hug my arms around my shins.
I wondered if he’d let me leave the cellar if I told him I had to use the restroom. I hadn’t had enough water to make me have to go, but it might be worth the try.
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
“There’s a jar in the corner,” he said, stopping in the middle of the floor and looking at me. “You’ll use that.”
“But you’ll see me.”
“I won’t look.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ll turn my back.”
“Never mind.”
He climbed up the steps and peeked out between the doors. Light filled the room for just a moment, and I had to blink to keep it from hurting my head.
“Where is she?” he murmured, turning and sitting on the steps. He held his head in his hands.
If he fell asleep, I could get out. But not if he drifted off on those steps. I’d need to get him to move. He needed to keep talking long enough for me to draw him off those steps.
All I had to do was stay awake longer than he did.
“You ever kill anybody?” I asked.
“What?” He lifted his head.
“Have you ever killed anybody?”
“Why do you wanna know a thing like that?” he asked.
“Just wondering.” I shrugged.
“Well have you ever killed anybody, Pearl?”
“Not yet.”
Setting my face hard, I stared him down. I never could have killed him, not even as mad as I was at him. But he didn�
��t have to know about that.
“It ain’t something a man brags about.” He put his head back down. “Killing ain’t something to have pride in.”
“Jimmy DuPre killed lots of people.”
“So what?”
“My daddy said he bragged about them plenty. I bet he killed more men that you ever could.”
“I killed plenty,” he mumbled. “And he never killed more than me. He wasn’t so tough as everybody thought. Just a lucky shot is all. It’s not like he was in the war or nothing.”
The thought of his brother got him off the steps and pacing again. Just what I wanted.
“I shot down plenty of Krauts in the war.” He snarled. “Never meant nothing to me to shoot them. They come rushing at me. All I could do was keep shooting.”
“Did it make you feel bad?”
“They didn’t look like people.” He scratched his cheek. “They were more animal than human. It was them or me. That’s all war is. Them or me.”
He grabbed the canteen and shook it. Just a few drops rattled against the tin sides. He spiked it back to the ground.
“A couple of the guys would mess themselves in the fox holes, they was so scared. They’d cry for their mamas.” He curled his lip. “Not me. I never did have a mama to call out to, anyhow.”
“You weren’t scared?”
“Nah. I never was. I wasn’t never afraid to die. Didn’t make much difference to me,” he said. “Living is more a risk than dying, anyhow.”
“You tried to kill my sister.”
Turning toward me, he shoved his hands in his pockets. “What makes you say that?”
“You choked her.”
Closing his eyes, he tipped his head back. “I couldn’t finish her like that. It was too much …”
Too much like how his mother died.
“I don’t wanna talk about it no more,” he said, climbing up the steps again, checking for something out the door.
“What are you looking for?”
He didn’t hear me or at least pretended not to.
“It won’t be nothing to kill the sheriff. It won’t bother me one bit,” Eddie said. “That girl didn’t do nothing wrong. The sheriff, that’s another thing.”
I clenched the sides of my nightgown with my hands, so hard it hurt my knuckles.
“You don’t have to kill him,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “There’s got to be some way else to get revenge. He could get you money.”
“I don’t want no money.”
“What do you want?”
“I got me a score to settle,” he said. “Lord, I did hate Jimmy. He was hardly a human, all the bad stuff he done. He beat me more times than I can count. But a man’s got to get revenge sometimes.”
“Jimmy hurt people.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Eddie shook his head. “He was a bad son-of-a-gun. I’m sure he had it coming to him. Still I’ve got to do my duty by him.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“War never does.”
Eddie checked the cellar doors every minute or two, never leaving the steps. He blocked my only way to freedom, and I was out of ideas of how to get him to make way for me.
“Why ain’t she here yet?” he’d mutter about every time he looked.
“Who are you waiting on?” I asked.
He roared his frustration, storming down the steps and toward me, his face sharp and terrifying. I thought he was going to kill me right then.
Drawing back his fist, he threw punches, one after another. His hand slammed against the wall over my head, sending dust falling all over me. I crawled away from him, thinking I might be able to make it to the steps. My numb legs dragged on the dirt floor, slowing me down. Needles of pain jabbed through the bottoms of my feet. I forced myself to keep moving even though every part of me hurt so bad.
My only hope was that he would break his hand. I prayed for just that to happen.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he hollered at me.
I shook my head and sunk close to the floor, trying to make myself a smaller target.
But he didn’t hit me. It seemed he hardly saw me.
He walked around me to the bottom step and plopped down. Turning his hand, he checked the damage to his knuckles. Blood covered them, but he bent his fingers anyhow. They weren’t broken.
“What are you looking at?” he growled.
“Nothing.” I went back to my spot and leaned my back against the wall.
Quiet pushed its way into the cellar once more. After a bit, Eddie looked out the doors again.
My stomach rumbled. Eddie turned toward me and rolled his eyes.
“I’m hungry,” I said.
“Tough.” He wrapped a bandana around his knuckles.
Time came and went without anything to mark it but the dim light that came through the doors. I tried to imagine the tic-tocking of Mama’s clock. Counting the seconds, I passed the time. It didn’t help me figure out how long I’d been in there, though.
Tic-tock. I tried to figure out how to get out of that cellar.
Tic-tock. If I could get to the steps, I’d be free.
Tic-tock. Every second I stayed made it harder and harder to get out.
I tried to ask Eddie questions about when he was a child, or what the war was like, or where he had lived before coming to Red River. He acted like he didn’t even know I was down there with him anymore. He didn’t answer a single one of my questions.
So I decided to ask myself. I answered silently, just inside my head.
When I was a child, I was happy. I had a family that loved me and took good care of me. I’d never lived anywhere other than Red River, Oklahoma. I never wanted to live any place else, either. I knew nothing of war, and I was glad for it.
Except for the war Eddie fixed to wage.
Closing my eyes, I tried to think of a way to beat Eddie at his own battle.
So wrapped up was I in my plans, I almost didn’t hear the squeaking of the cellar door or notice the downpour of sunlight that bathed us.
All I could see was that someone was walking down the steps. More of a shadow than anything, really. And I could see that she had on a skirt. That was all.
“I’ve been waiting for you.” Eddie stood from his seat on the stairs.
“I got the message you sent.” She stepped on the dirt floor and turned toward Eddie.
“Anybody follow you?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Eddie, what is going on?”
“Winnie, I gotta show you something.”
That Woman. I wondered what she was doing there. I hoped that she was going to get me out.
“Why are you down here?” She looked at her feet. “Are you living down here?”
“I got something for you.” Eddie climbed up the steps and pulled the cellar door down with a slam.
“Are you hiding down here?” She stepped away from him when he took the final stair to the floor. “Folks in town are looking for you, you know that, right?”
“I figured they would.”
She lowered her voice. “What’ve you done?”
“You’re so stupid.” He put his hands on his hips. “That’s why I’m down here. Because you’re stupid.”
“Don’t call me stupid.”
“I’ll call you whatever I wanna.” He took her by the elbow and turned her. “I got a surprise for you.”
She pushed his hand off her and faced him again. “Eddie, I thought we agreed that you was skipping town. I gave you money.”
The way Eddie pulled at her, she moved into the stream of light. It glowed on her hair, making it look like gold.
“I had a little business of my own to take care of first.”
She sighed and stepped out of the beam.
“Don’t you got a light or something? I can’t hardly see nothing.”
Eddie stooped and picked up the lantern, carrying it over to me. Winnie turned an
d saw me for the first time.
“Oh, Eddie,” she gasped. “What have you done? Did you do that to her face?”
She touched the fingertips of both hands to her mouth, and her eyes grew round.
Eddie squatted next to me.
“Pearl and me have had us a little talk.” He knocked into me with his elbow. “Ain’t that right, Pearl.”
I kept my eyes on Winnie.
“We’ve been talking about how Tom and Mary ain’t her real folks.” He frowned. “Problem is she don’t believe me.”
Winnie lowered her hands to her sides. Her purse fell to her wrist, swinging against her hip.
“Pearl, you see Winnie there?” he asked.
I didn’t answer him.
“She’s the proof that what I’m saying is true.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Pearl, I want you to meet your ma. Your real ma.” Eddie laughed. “Come on, Winnie. Don’t you got a kiss for your baby girl?”
Winnie didn’t move, and I didn’t either. Her blond hair and mine. Her small nose that sloped just so and mine. The way her eyebrows curved the same way mine did.
I realized that Eddie might have been telling the truth for the first time in his life.
“I said come on and give her a kiss,” Eddie growled.
Winnie obeyed, rushing toward me, but she didn’t kiss me. I was glad she didn’t.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, stopping just a few inches from me.
“She’s got to know.” He stood. “Don’t you think it’s best? The truth will set us all free. Ain’t that what the Good Book says?”
Her standing in front of me with a tear rolling down her cheek, I wondered why I hadn’t ever realized it before. Probably because I wasn’t looking then.
“It don’t make no difference if I’m her ma or not,” she said. “I never done a single useful thing for her.”
“You told me you wanted her.” Eddie stepped forward, puffing his chest out. “Ain’t that why you wrote me that letter? You even sent me her picture. Or did you forget about writing me?”
“No. I never forgot.”
“You wanted me to come here to help you get her.”
“I changed my mind.” She lowered to my level. “I’m sorry. I done everything wrong.”
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