He touched the boy’s face with his hand. His hair had gotten longer and knotted, and Pete couldn’t pull his hand through it. He tugged on the kid’s ear.
“Pete?”
“Yeah?”
“Are they gonna kill me?”
“Of course not. You’re in a hospital. They’re taking care of you.”
“They gonna kill Papa?”
“No. They’re just scared he’s gonna hurt somebody. That’s all. We’re gonna try and keep that from happening.”
“He never hurt anybody.”
“Not on purpose, I know.”
“No. Never. He never hurt anybody.”
“He hurt you a little, didn’t he? Didn’t take very good care of you. And your brothers and sisters . . .”
Ben sat back against the pillows. Pete took the glass that he still had between his legs and set it on the table. Then he put himself on the edge of the bed. What thoughts roiled in the boy’s head.
“That was Mama.”
“What was Mama?”
The boy looked askance at Pete and pulled a pillow to his chest. He gathered the covers over his folded knees. He said he didn’t mean it, it was his fault. He let the poison in. Pete asked him what he was talking about, but the boy didn’t say anything, and for a long time Pete waited, as if the thing he wanted to draw out of the child was something frozen in ice and it would only be a matter of time as the room temperature did its slow work.
Pete leaned out over his knees and regarded the tile and the cop reading outside, and when he sat back again, he said for the boy to please tell him what happened, one thing after another, just plain.
At last Benjamin began to speak. He didn’t move as he did so except to occasionally scratch where the intravenous needle was taped to his arm.
HE SAID IT WAS because of TV, of likenesses. The Cloninger boy alone in the den and Ben using the bathroom real quick and when he comes out the TV draws him in. The dwarves hi-ho, hi-ho-ing and now he’s sitting on the rug in the blue glow of the cartoon. He drools he’s so enraptured.
Then by his ear his mama has him. She drags him into the yard yelping like a kicked dog. She swats him a couple times and sets him on the fence. How his ear burns. He’s too old to cry about it, but he knows he did bad.
His father’s in the barn butchering two deer. Ben can see him pulling the skin from the carcass where it hangs from the rafters. He looks curiously at his son sitting on the fence, scowls, gets back to work.
From the fence Ben can also see into Cloninger’s garage, where his mother and siblings work on the freezer. Ruth and Esther stand inside it with butter knives, chipping at the buildup of ice, little flakes of white flashing with their silverware. It’s full of ice and they need to make room for the deer meat Cloninger’s letting them keep here. His brother and sisters are making snow cones with Mama, putting handfuls of the new shavings into paper funnels from Cloninger’s tool bench and flavoring them with Kool-Aid packets from Mrs. Cloninger’s kitchen. No, Ben can’t have any. Don’t even ask. He sulks on the fence, he’s been bad, shouldn’t of been watching the likenesses no matter how funny, how colorful, he shouldn’t of been in there.
At bedtime, Mama tells him he’s done a grave thing. That he’s put their souls at hazard. That you let some poison into your eyes and it can spread to your heart and to those you love. That evil is contagious. That every single thing you do matters, and matters forever.
Baby Ethan falls sick first. Fever, crying, then not crying.
Then all his brothers and sisters are sick. Mama too. High high fevers. Chills. Slipping around the house like it’s a ward.
Nobody wants to play.
They pray. Smear mentholated ointments, pastes that Mama pestles in the middle of her own fever. Saying that this might be it, this might be how Satan comes at the last. With poisons and toxicants. What won’t they do, these forces arrayed against them. Entrapment, fiat currency, lawyers. Now this. Sickening the family.
Except for Ben and Papa. They don’t get sick.
“Because of the ice,” Pete thought aloud.
“What?” Benjamin asked.
“The ice, there was something in it.”
Benjamin shook his head.
“No, it was the cartoon. The likenesses!”
Pete looked over at the cop, still enraptured by Billy Graham’s book.
“Okay, sure. No yelling. Just go on.”
The boy gathered some blanket about him, and Pete asked him to please keep telling what happened. That it was okay. Everything was okay.
SEVERAL DAYS OF THIS, these fevers, and Papa says they should think maybe of going to the doctor, but the temperatures stop climbing. Maybe because a person can’t get any hotter.
Mama says any day now, they’ll begin to mend up properly.
The Lord is strong in them, Mama says. He shan’t let them perish, not now.
Mama says to remember that these bodies they inhabit are thin things compared to the stuff of their souls.
A night they wake to sneezing. Paula, she can’t stop, not for three hours, the little girl is crying until she just passes out, hot as a skillet. They don’t know should they wake her or allow her the relief. Not that she can come full around anyway, her fever is so high.
Papa says he’s going for a doctor now.
Mama makes him promise not to. Would he make it easy for them to just finish us off, right there in the hospital. Just let a doctor come and assassinate them with a needle. Put them down like a vet would an old dog.
Papa says he’s not just gonna sit there and watch them suffer.
She waves him off, says she’ll pray, she’ll have a vision, she always does.
She’s running hot as a teakettle herself, but she totes the baby outside with her in the cool spring night and she prays under the stars in the meadow. Come dawn she’s in the meadow yet, talking in tongues in the mist, clutching the baby.
Papa says for Ben to do his chores. He fetches the eggs. He sweeps the porch. He cooks the eggs because Mama’s still in the meadow. He doesn’t know how to cook very well. There are shells.
When he brings him his eggs, Papa says the baby hasn’t made a sound in hours. Says she won’t let him come down to her—I get within thirty yards of her and she says “Benjamin Pearl you take one more step and so help me God . . .” Like the Lord put eyes in the back of her head.
What else can he do, he says.
Benjamin doesn’t know what to tell him.
I wish—
You wish what.
I wish I was sick too, Papa.
It’s quiet in the house. Jacob’s muttering sometimes and Esther tells him to shut up, even though it’s not nice to say. No one comes to eat, not even Papa, he just paces the porch.
The flies get all on the eggs and Ben shoos them into a cloud, and they knock around and descend onto the eggs and the apples he cut. The flies in like poison. Like the poison you let in here. It’s because of the likenesses they’re all sick. You did put them at hazard.
Mama dances up to the house. Joy, she says, joy. It’s all joy. The glory, she says, you can see His glory on everything like new snow.
But the children, Pearl says. They’re laid out. That isn’t glory, Sarah.
They just need to anoint them with oil. She says God said to anoint them. They are as kings and queens each one. She says for Benjamin to go get oil from the Cloningers.
He looks at Papa.
She cuffs him suddenly, weakly, her arm has no power. Shouts, I said to go!
Papa waves helplessly for him to do it.
He returns with a Tupperware of olive oil, Ruth can’t walk right, can’t even hold a pencil, it slides out of her hand and she bawls, she wants to say something and she can’t and she can’t write either. So Mama anoints her first, pours oil into her hair and kisses her head, and Papa carries her to bed and sits with her and ministers to her. She just wants to say something.
Benjamin helps Mama anoint the others. Bab
y Ethan whose eyes only open, just. Mama carries the little sleeper to Jacob’s bed, she won’t let anyone have the baby, and Benjamin bears the oil.
Jacob isn’t himself. He can’t stop laughing. The joy, Mama says, you have the glory and the joy. He laughs and they wet his head with oil.
Esther won’t let them anoint her. She bows up like a tomcat, and then dashes through the house and tucks herself behind the stove, which has gone cold because everyone is boiled with fever. She hisses at them. She spits.
She’s just grumpy, Mama says, laughing, rocking the baby on the floor so her dress hikes up and bare red legs show, she’s never shown her legs before, how come they are so red. Esther’s just grumpy, Mama says, the oldest carries the most burden, you see.
Jacob cackles from his bed.
Paula sneezes again.
Ruth comes for a glass of water and she can’t grip the cup. She can’t walk right.
It’s the cartoon. The Seven Dwarfs. Ben says to Mama, Ethan is Sleepy and Paula is Sneezy and Ruth is Dopey and Jacob is Happy and Esther is Grumpy. He says, This is my fault, God is punishing me. He’s turned them into likenesses of cartoons, which are likenesses of people, it’s all inside out now, it’s all hell now.
Ben knows that this is his doing.
But what to do.
Papa wants the baby but she won’t let him. He says the baby Ethan is not alive. His open eyes are still and his arm won’t remain where Mama places it, it keeps spilling out and she keeps tucking it back.
They argue.
She scratches Papa with her free hand when he reaches.
They scream at one another and Ben covers his ears and faces the wall.
Jacob laughs.
Ruth cries. She cries for Papa, and Papa goes.
Now Mama hisses to him, Ben come here. He does and she tells him to go remove the battery from the truck.
He says he doesn’t know how.
She says to come here closer.
He’s afraid.
Come on, damnit, you’re afire.
He says, Mama I’m okay, and she says, get over here, so help me. He slips over to her and she slaps out the fire only she sees and says he’ll be okay. She straightens his shirt. Kisses his cheek. Her face is like a hot coal, like passing too near the stove.
She squints at him now, Why are you on fire?
Papa has the keys to the truck. At the sound of them dimly jangling she says to not do it, and she crawls toward him on one arm, the other with the baby tucked to her, but he just steps around her and jogs out to the truck.
He guns the engine, rattles down through the trees.
Mama leans against the cold black stove. She sets the baby by like a piece of firewood, sits there with her palms open in her lap. Head thrown back. Exhausted. It’s quiet. There’s peace.
Then she moves to her knees, pulls herself up, stands on knocking legs. She takes a rifle from the wall. The barrel swings down, pounds the floor like it weighs a hundred pounds. It takes all her strength to bear it.
Ben watches through the unfinished walls, through the two-by-fours, as she staggers to Esther’s bed. She coaxes her to sit up. Esther’s shivering as they head out together and Mama stumbles back for a blanket. Esther is working her jaw around something that she might say, but she doesn’t. Ben calls her name. Mama looks over, says, Shut up, Benjamin Pearl. Just shut the hell up.
Mama puts the blanket over her and together they go out.
She explains that they are already dead and she can’t let them fall into the hands of . . . she gestures down the mountain. Them, she says. Does he understand.
He says I let in the poison.
Yes yes you did.
The first time, the rifle spins her around and she lands on it like a crutch. Jacob is led out by the wrist, takes the steps like a baby colt. Jacob’s bare feet stepping in place in the moonlight. A hoot owl after Mama kills him. When it’s Ruth’s and Paula’s turn, they clasp hands. The afghan spread over Esther. Shells spill out of Mama’s pockets and she has trouble closing the bolt. She says for Ben to sit down next to the others.
She says, Waitaminute no. You’re chosen out. Go inside.
There’s one more shot and then no more shots.
What film played behind the boy’s eyes, Pete could not guess. But his eyes ranged across the bed and the walls as though he were witnessing everything afresh.
“What happened when your father came back with a doctor?”
It seemed it took a moment for the boy to even hear the question.
“He didn’t bring a doctor. He come back up to the house when he was stopped at the highway. Heard the rifle all the way down there. Didn’t make it back in time.” The boy’s eyes were tethered to some section of the blanket, that far-off night. “He went up and looked. And then come back and sat on the ground with me.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t think we said nothing.”
“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how scary that was.”
“Naw. She did what God said to. Papa was wrong to go to the doctor. She’d put it in God’s hands and he and I’s what made her have to do it. It’s why we were chose out.”
“No.”
“Yes. We were chose out.”
“The ice,” Pete said.
“What?”
“The ice from the freezer. You didn’t have any. Neither did your father.”
He left the Libby hospital and drove to see Pinkerton. To explain. But because of the shooting, the headquarters was a slew of flashing squad cars, paramedics, and every stripe of law enforcement taking pictures and making notes or just standing around fuming. An officer in front of the command centered regarded Pete angrily. Glass spangled and crunched underfoot, and he could just make out a long brown bloodstain on the tile inside.
“This is a crime scene now,” the officer said. “You can’t stand here.”
Through a plywood gap Pete could see ATF agents giving interviews to FBI agents. A spot of hair on the floor that Pete only in his waiting realized must be part of someone’s skull.
“I need to see Agent Pinkerton.”
“You gotta clear out.”
“Look, I have information about Jeremiah Pearl.”
“Go to the police station, give your statement there.” The officer shoved Pete off the curb and took his position back in front of the building. Pete loitered, but then word got around that the shooter was holed up in a barn and the place cleared out in a mass. If Pinkerton left with them, Pete didn’t see him go.
He went back to the hospital, but visiting hours were over. He dozed in the lobby and paced and smoked outside and in the morning, the cop with the Billy Graham book was gone. And so was Benjamin.
THIRTY-FIVE
The standoff at the barn failed to occur. If the shooter had been there at all, he slipped away just as quickly as they’d cornered him. The collective wisdom around the bar at the Ten High was that Pearl would never be caught either. It was surmised he’d left the boy and lit out for Canada or an unreachable remove deep in the Yaak, which was more like a rain forest, a jungle really, only partially known even to locals. He was long gone.
That the feds should leave was just as plain. They were licked and nothing good would come of staying, billeted in the town like an occupying army. Locals getting pulled over at checkpoints. Made a person want to have done something to deserve it. That’s why the dynamite and the riot and now the shooting at their headquarters. And whatever was next.
Pete was two days trying to find out where Benjamin Pearl had been taken. He wasn’t in the Tenmile jail, so there was no telling in what vague lawyerless custody he was secreted. It was only when Pete trolled the motels looking for vehicles bearing federal plates that he finally sussed the boy’s whereabouts. He noticed a television on the patio in back of one of the ten cabins of the Sandman Motel. A man with a chest holster and service revolver answered his knock.
“Where’s Pinkerton?” Pete asked.
/> “The hell are you?”
“The boy’s social worker.”
The agent moved his gum to the other side of his jaw and resumed chewing.
“What boy?”
“Tell Pinkerton that Pearl didn’t kill his kids.” Pete pointed over his shoulder. “See that Monte Carlo? I’ll be waiting right there.”
A few hours later Pinkerton pulled in and walked into the motel room from his car. Pete watched him tug aside the curtain and look out, and then come alone, hunched into his thin windbreaker against the mist and new slivers of rain.
“Jesus, it’s freezing. Can you turn on the heat?”
“This is nothing,” Pete said. “Where you from?”
“Virginia. What do you want?”
“To put Ben in a foster home.”
Pinkerton fingered the upholstery.
“New car?”
“Loaner. Since you have mine. You can’t just keep him in a hotel. He’s still just a kid for fucksake.”
Pinkerton’s finger stopped. “Pearl didn’t shoot that PO,” he said. “Did he?”
“He did.”
“Forensics, Pete. We have the kid’s rifle.”
“They must’ve swapped at some—”
“You know the kid did it. You were there.”
Pete’s skin hummed. Wondered how much trouble the boy was in. “Look, the boy tried to protect me. Wes had his pistol aimed at me—”
“I were you, I’d shut up. You’re gonna need a lawyer before we have this conversation.” Pinkerton blew on his hands. “Turn on the fucking car.”
Pete started the engine, turned up the heat, which blew cold, then lukewarm.
“Maybe Pearl will cop to shooting a parole officer when we catch him,” Pinkerton said. “Then your . . . version of events will hold up. More than likely, he’ll get himself killed. And again, your version will stand.” Pinkerton cupped his palms over the air vents. “But as far as I’m concerned, that kid’s just as dangerous as his old man.”
“He’s not like that. His—”
“He sits in that motel room and doesn’t say a word. He’s been trained, Pete.”
“He’s terrified! He’s stuck in a motel with armed federal agents. The only adults he trusts are me and his father—”
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