And then he told me, mijo, and I’ll never forget the look in his eyes as he spoke, he told me that if he ever had real reason to suspect I’d been with another man, and that one of my children wasn’t his, he would find out about it. And then he would kill me with his own two hands. And then he would kill the child.
In the dead silence and the dead darkness of the room, Mom raised the glass of wine to her lips and drank until the glass was empty and then set the glass on the nightstand beside the jug. She lay breathing and holding my hand. Why are you telling me this? I asked. I was begging her to make sense of it for me, because my own brain was all but petrified from all I had heard, and because even with a clear head I doubted I could piece it together by myself.
I know I said some shocking things just now. That was so you would understand me better and know where I’m coming from, and what I’ve been dealing with all these years. Your father wasn’t the man you thought he was. He wasn’t even who I thought he was either. The woman who called this afternoon, who gave us the terrible news, that woman was his wife, mijo. His first wife.
Alarm bells and papal condemnations rang in my ears. Dad was divorced?
She drew her lips inside her mouth and shook her head. No, Anthony. He was still married to that woman, the same as he was to me, and he had three other wives on top of that. Your father was an arrogant sinner, like pharaoh in Egypt, or the pagan emperors of Rome. He died with five wives, five farms, and so many children I’m still trying to find out the exact number. You have brothers and sisters you’ve never met. Some of them have light skin and blond hair. You even have a sister who’s named after your father. Elliot. How is that a girl’s name?
Neither one of us tried to answer the question, it was just one of so many that seemed to hold no answer and could only vex us with its infernal mystery. I took the wine jug up by the handle and filled Mom’s glass to the brim. She took a drink and looked down at me from the vantage point of where she lay. I didn’t have to ask permission. She pressed the glass to my lips and tilted a small drink down my throat. I didn’t care for the flavor, but I did feel a bit calmer.
What do you need from me? What can I do to help?
She slid down into the covers so that we were facing each other eye to eye underneath the candlelight. Pray with me, mijo, she said. Pray for our souls, and for the souls of all your brothers and sisters. Including the ones you haven’t met.
I shook my head. I don’t know them, I said. They might not even be Catholic.
It doesn’t matter. Their mothers are all like me tonight, depressed and weeping over their glasses of wine. I’m sure of it. So will you pray for us? Can you do that, please?
Yes. I can do that.
We bent our heads over the wine-stained sheets and began to whisper silently in the dark. I don’t know when the last of the candle burnt out, but by the time we opened our eyes again, it was like passing from one darkness into another, from the uncertainty within to the one without, with only her reassuring voice to make me believe it could all somehow be overcome.
I walk through a field of earth, unsure of my own footing. Slogging through layers of compost sown into the dry topsoil. Summer sun on my forehead, horse-flies on the wing. They go for the ears, nostrils, mouth, dark places always, loving the darkness, like the sun’s own excrement, clinging to the crevices where intruders are most unwelcome. The priest said we are all excrement but for divine grace, the body a temple of mud and dung, the soul encased inside like a saintly relic, too fragile to be touched. What carpenter or mason could build such a flawed structure and call it his own? I am alive in the heat, unstoppable. Forgive me for being invigorated by unclean things. Forgive the rifle strap, forgive the kill. No hunting to be done, only killing, performed with the sort of pathetic ecstasy I should have outgrown long ago. Ground squirrels dashing from burrow to burrow, massacred in a puff of dust. Sparrows exploding in brown fragments across a bone-blue sky. A Sunday afternoon. God forgive me. Empty five rounds and masturbate in the brush behind an irrigation pump. Jizz and excrement, two parts of a depraved whole. Only sweat for lubricant. Do not look at me.
Ellie’s bruises were no joke. Four finger-sized marks all around the sides of her neck. It was two days before the swelling went down and she could talk like a normal person again. While she was recuperating, I liked to sit down with her at the kitchen table and watch her eat the chicken tortilla soup Katie had made special for her. She would scoop a bit of sour cream onto the end of the spoon and stir it slowly into the hot orange broth. Then she would raise the spoon to her lips and blow on it and slurp the broth into her mouth without giving any thought to proper table manners. No one was going to scold her for that now. By the third day she was feeling well enough to try out a peanut butter sandwich. She tore it into small pieces and consumed it bit by bit like a European on TV snacking on bread and olive oil. Grape jelly clung to her fingers, lending them a purple hue like the ones imprinted on her throat.
You don’t have to talk if you’re not up to it, I said. But you know I’ve been waiting all week to talk about it, and sooner or later we’re going to have to talk about it.
You don’t have to tell me, she said. Her voice was so hoarse it made my heart ache, remembering what happened to her on the porch steps. I’ve been wracking my brains in silence, she said, trying to figure out what I would say when the time came to decide on a plan.
I was wondering what sort of plan you would come up with.
I didn’t. That’s the problem. I’ve worked it over in my head a thousand times, and any way you look at it, we’re screwed. We’re holding a mad dog by the scruff of the neck, and the only thing dumber than holding on to it might be letting it go.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it looks like my mom and the others are sitting this one out. After what happened with Jennifer, it seems they’re putting all their faith in us now. We’re the ones who will have to decide what to do next.
You think I don’t know it? Jesus, Dawn still hasn’t recovered from walking in on Mama in the bathroom, and Katie’s been so depressed I wonder if I shouldn’t be keeping an eye on her as well. Even Will and Logan are more anxious than usual. None of them know what to do.
I don’t see how they can leave such a huge responsibility to us alone.
Whether we knew it or not, we were taking on that responsibility the minute we decided to confront him ourselves. We’re in the mess we’re in now because we failed to meet the challenge head-on. That can never happen again. We can’t let it.
I think we handled ourselves pretty well all things considered.
No. We let him get into our heads and provoke us. We both did. And now we’re paying for it. Big time.
He’s the one who should be paying for it. For what he did to you. For what he was trying to do to the family.
I know where you’re going with this, and I’m only going to tell you once—put it out of your mind completely. Your moment to play the white knight was over after you knocked him off of me. Anything more and you’d just be jerking off your own ego. And it’s already pretty well jerked.
Ellie smiled and looked down at the remains of her sandwich. She had stripped away all the bread contained within the crust, and now she decided to break the crust up into square sections and arrange the sections around the edge of the plate like some sort of fancy finger food and then take them up one by one and finish off each one with a few quick bites. The way she teased and talked down to me, it was a wonder I ever missed talking to her at all. For a while there, when I was still getting used to having her around, I thought there must be something wrong with her, that she was disturbed like her mother, or maybe even a little autistic, to where she couldn’t control the things she said. It took me a while to realize, though, that she was fully aware of how she came across, and that she could even see herself as others saw her, and that she just didn’t care. Bossy and obnoxious, sarcastic and blunt. Adjectives didn’t mean anything to her, or at least not enou
gh to make her hide her light. She was so bright she could shine right through you and reveal the words written in lemon juice across your paper soul. And while most people, in their selfishness, would have tried to exploit the gift for their own benefit, she was always comforting and listening to other people, and even looked down on those like me whose noble gestures were sometimes guided by a desire to prove our own worth. I often wondered what plan God had in store for her, and why he would bestow so much insight on a non-believer.
Is this what having responsibility means? That I’m powerless to do anything?
She smiled again. Not exactly, she said. There’s still one thing you can do.
What’s that?
Sandwich.
What about it?
Make one. With lots of peanut butter.
You’re feeling better now. Make your own.
Not for me. For him.
Him? Make a sandwich for him?
Sure. When was the last time he ate?
Last night. Mom gave me some of the leftover chili to feed him.
He has to eat again eventually.
Is that what we are now? His room service?
No. We’re his captors, and even prisoners are entitled to three square meals a day. Especially when they’re being held illegally. We need to keep him comfortable until we figure out what to do with him in the long run.
He’s a drunk. He doesn’t give a crap about food.
Then we need to show him that we care about his health even if he doesn’t.
I don’t care about his health. He could curl up and die as far as I’m concerned.
Don’t think about him, then. Think about the family and what it means for us to defuse this situation.
You still think we can persuade him to give up his claim?
I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. All I know is there’s something wrong with him. I saw it in his eyes when he was on top of me. He’s torn up inside, just like the rest of us. And if he’s just like the rest of us, then there’s still a chance he might deal.
You’re giving him too much credit. You heard the way he talks. He’s not like us. He’s an arrogant sinner from the big city. When he looks at us all he sees are beaners and rednecks, fresh meat for him to sink his teeth into.
Ellie moved her head slowly from side to side. I noticed her wince as the still-swollen muscles in her neck grew taut. You might be right, she said. For now, though, give him something else to sink his teeth into. Make him a sandwich, and hurry it up.
I pushed my chair out from the table. I started to stand but froze halfway and looked back across the table to where she sat. One of these days, I said, I’m gonna figure out why I let you tell me what to do so often.
She laughed. Isn’t it obvious? You love having a woman tell you what to do. You’d be a complete mess without it.
I shot her an evil look on my way to the kitchen. The bread was still out and I pulled two thin slices from the paper wrapper and slapped them both down on the counter. Sometime when I was in grade school, the local supermarkets stopped carrying the sweetened, factory-made peanut butter that came in plastic jars, and from then on all we could get was a gooey domestic brand with a layer of oil that rose to the top each time it started to settle. I stuck a knife in the glass jar and stirred the oil and butter into a more or less consistent paste and spread the paste over the top of each slice of bread. There was something about that type of peanut butter that felt indecent to me, like we were never meant to disturb its natural condition. I shook the grape jelly from its congealed state and watched it ooze forth and settle in a large glob in the center of one of the slices. I stuck the other slice on top and pressed it under the palm of my hand until jelly burst through the seams of the crust. Wrapping the finished PB&J in a dish towel, I turned and headed down the hall to the back bedroom. There were plenty of clean towels in the drawer, but I opted instead for the soiled one hanging on the refrigerator door.
The room at the far back of the house was barely big enough to fit a twin bed. In our earliest days on the farm, when everyone and his sister was fighting for living space, Dawn had volunteered to sleep out on the living room sofa, but Mom and Sandra convinced her to take the little room at the back, which was practically an over-sized closet, and too secluded for any of the kids to be trusted with. Now, with Jennifer gone, Dawn had taken up the spare bedroom in the house across the way, leaving her former room to serve as a makeshift holding cell for our hostage. I listened at the door before opening it. Nothing. Not even a rustling of bed sheets. I turned the knob and looked inside and saw him sitting up on the bed in the same shirt and pants he’d been wearing when he arrived in our driveway. The sheets and blankets were still tucked in under the corners of the mattress, which meant he’d either slept on top of the covers or not slept at all. The chain was wrapped three times around his ankle. There was a padlock to hold one end to his foot and another to secure the opposite end to the brass head-rail. In the hours before he regained consciousness, I’d combed the property from east to west trying to scrounge up something to ensure he couldn’t escape. It was between this and an old iron crate that had been left behind by a previous tenant. It looked like it had once been used to transport pigs and other livestock, and as far as I was concerned, it was still an option.
I unfolded the towel and set the sandwich on top of the covers. Made you something to eat, I said. He didn’t answer, and he didn’t look at me. He had picked out a spot on the plaster wall that he liked to stare at, and he wasn’t taking his eyes away anytime soon from looks of it. The peanut butter’s pretty thick, I said. You want a glass of milk?
He kept his back to me as he shook his head. Vodka, he said.
We don’t have any vodka in the house. It’s milk or water, take your pick.
Vodka.
Fine. Have it your way.
I was about to turn and head back into the hall when I noticed the bumps on the back of his head. He’d gotten it worse than Ellie, my rifle butt had made sure of that. But now that I saw him sitting as he was, with two purple notches rising up out of the mesh of his unwashed hair, I started to worry about how we would handle a corpse on the property if it ever came down to it. From what I’d heard about people with concussions, it was maybe a good thing he hadn’t slept the past two nights.
We’re not trying to make your life miserable, I said. We’re just trying to protect ourselves from whatever evil you’re trying to bring down on us. What would you do if you were in our position? Would you let yourself go and trust that it would all turn out okay?
I waited to hear what he had to say, because, to be honest, I was really curious to know. When he finally spoke, there was no sarcasm in his voice as far as I could tell. If I were you, he said, I would walk out into the orchard on a clear day and put a bullet in my head. That’s about the best fate you or any of your illiterate family could hope for.
He turned to look at me, probably hoping to take some small pleasure in whatever expression he expected me to have on my face. But as his captor, I wouldn’t allow him the satisfaction. I tried keeping as calm as possible, and shook my head like an adult humoring a child’s disobedience.
Then I suppose by your logic, I said, the same fate would be best for you. You are family, after all.
He looked at me through the dark circles that bordered his eyes. The front of his head had gotten it even worse than the back, with his broken nose setting badly and swelling up so that he couldn’t breath without emitting a faint whistle. He turned again and went back to staring at the wall.
That’s your logic, not mine, he said. If it helps you, though, to think of me as a brother, then by all means, go ahead. I suppose you need something to take pride in, if not yourself.
You’re wrong, I said. Having you as a brother doesn’t make me feel proud at all. If anything, the way you’ve behaved around here, threatening women and hurting young girls, it only gives me reason to be ashamed. What do you think about that?
He shrugged. You’re Catholic, he said. You’re bound to find some reason to feel shame.
I twisted the dish towel in my hands until the little bit of remaining moisture had been wrung out. All right, I said. Try this one, then. If anyone in this family is at risk of getting his head blown off, it’s you. I’ve got the rifle, the aim, and the will to do it. The only thing stopping me is the moral conundrum it puts me in. Thou shalt not kill means something to me even if it doesn’t for you. But you keep pressing me and I might just find myself overcome by temptation. I don’t want that, though, and I imagine you don’t want it either. So how about you try to meet me halfway and work on being civil toward me while you’re here? You think you can do that? Does that sound reasonable?
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