Rust & Stardust Page 19

  She found herself holding her breath as she read, sometimes for several pages. It wasn’t until she started to see stars that she’d suck in a breath. Then she got to Chapter 33, and she didn’t breathe at all. The scene where the bad man attacked Francie and pressed his nakedness against her in the hallway of the tenement building made her heart beat so hard and fast she thought she might faint. “He had a beaked nose and his mouth was a thin crooked line…” She looked toward the trailer door. My God, my God, she thought. “Francie stared at the exposed part of his body in paralyzed horror.” Sally felt her skin growing hot with shame and rage. Then, as Francie tried to call out for her mother, Katie Nolan was there, holding a gun under her apron. And then, the explosion, and then, and then …

  “Nose stuck in a book again,” Mr. Warner said, stumbling into the trailer. “What are you, some sort of bookworm?”

  Sally was suddenly in two places at once. Here, now with Mr. Warner. And there, with Francie, as her mother shot the man so he couldn’t hurt her. “Francie thought the revolver looked like a grotesque beckoning finger, a finger that beckoned to death and made it come running.” There was a gun here in the trailer, too, though like Francie, Sally knew nothing about guns and certainly had never shot one before. Francie’s mother had used the gun to save her from that awful man. Mama, she thought. But her mother wasn’t here. There was a gun, but she was all alone. No Sister Mary Katherine to help her, no Lena.

  Only Ruth.

  SALLY

  “I ain’t supposed to leave the trailer park,” Sally said, feeling nervous.

  “It’s okay,” Ruth assured her. “It’s not far. And you’re with me. Your daddy trusts me.”

  It was a blistering late-summer afternoon. Only a week left until school started, but it was so hot, it could have been the middle of July still. The air was swimmy with the heat; both of them were perspiring as they rode on Ruth’s bicycle east on Commerce Street toward the Trinity River. The pool was being cleaned at the Good Luck, and so Ruth had told Sally they’d find another place to cool off. The river was close to the trailer court, and Ruth promised they’d be back long before Mr. Warner got home from work.

  Ruth pedaled the bike standing up, and Sally sat on the leather seat, gripping onto Ruth’s waist. She pressed her cheek against the cool cotton of Ruth’s dress and breathed in the sweet scent of her. Listened to her lungs inhaling and exhaling. Felt the hard certain rhythm of Ruth’s heart in her back.

  When they got to the edge of the woods, Ruth stopped the bike and they both got off. It was already about ten degrees cooler in the shade of the ash trees. It felt strange that only moments ago they’d been so close to the city, and now it felt like they’d stepped into a fairy tale. Everything was shady and green.

  “Follow me,” Ruth said, leading Sally by the hand through the woods along a limestone path. In the clearing, Sally gasped. The river was quiet and still as a pond, surrounded by high grasses. Yellow and green. Floating all along the water were lily pads. It was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen.

  “Well, you comin’ in?” Ruth asked, slipping her dress over her head. She was wearing a red-and-white polka-dot halter swimsuit underneath. Her skin was white as milk, a constellation of freckles across the smooth expanse of her back. Sally peeled off her own dress, slipped off her shoes.

  The water was blessedly cool. Ruth was a graceful swimmer, and she could hold her breath forever. She made Sally think of the Esther Williams movies she loved, the aqua-musicals with the women who were like mermaids. Sally swam in the cool water among the lily pads until her fingers pruned up. The water felt so good; she didn’t ever want to get out and go back to the trailer again.

  They sat on a blanket at the water’s edge, soaking up the sun, and ate the lunch that Ruth had made, and afterward, she felt sleepy, her limbs tired from the swim, her eyelids heavy.

  “Go ahead and take a nap if you want,” Ruth said. “We got all day until your daddy comes home.”

  Sally felt her body tense.

  “It’s okay,” Ruth reassured her, and motioned for Sally to put her head on her lap, where she stroked her hair. It was hypnotic, and Sally felt herself falling asleep, sucked under as though sleep were an undertow. She fell into a deep slumber—a Technicolor water ballet playing out around her. Everything bright and shimmering.

  * * *

  “Wake up, hon,” Ruth whispered. “Somebody’s here.”

  Sally bolted up, squinting against the bright sunshine. She could hear the sounds of voices nearby, the crushing of branches. Had Mr. Warner somehow tracked them here? Her body grew rigid.

  “Shh…,” Ruth said, pointing downstream.

  Two boys Sally recognized from the trailer park were doing something at the water’s edge. She sighed in relief. When her eyes had adjusted to the light, she could see they had a turtle in their hands. A big snapping turtle. Sally had seen a couple of turtles at the Good Luck, figured they must have wandered away from the river. She always hoped they wouldn’t find themselves on Commerce Street having to navigate in the traffic.

  “What are they doing?” Sally whispered.

  Ruth shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  The older boy, who must have been about fourteen, reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled something out. He fiddled with it for a minute, and then a flame leapt from his fingers. It startled Sally. Maybe they were going to smoke a cigarette?

  But then she watched as the younger boy set the turtle down on its back, and the older one leaned over, the flame burning bright in his hand.

  Ruth was on her feet and running along the water’s edge, before it registered with Sally that they were going to set the snapping turtle on fire.

  “Stop!” Ruth said. “Y’all put that fire out and leave that poor turtle alone.”

  Sally watched as the boys looked up at Ruth in her swimsuit barreling toward them. Before either one of them could react, she had a handful of the older boy’s hair and she was pulling him away from the turtle that lay helpless on the ground, aflame. She then quickly scooped up the snapping turtle, smoke coming off its shell, and submerged it in the water. The boys stood, stunned, at the river’s edge.

  After a couple of moments, the younger boy backed away, and Ruth turned to them, her hands on her hips. “What’s the matter with you? That’s a living creature, a helpless living thing. What would your mama say?”

  At this the boys took off, their legs pinwheeling as they ran through the high grass.

  Ruth returned to the water. Sally got up and ran quickly to where she was now squatting at the river’s edge.

  “Is it okay?” Sally asked, kneeling down next to her.

  Ruth shook her head. Tears streamed down her face, and Sally felt her heart heave.

  “Goddamn little bastards,” she said. “Helpless creature like that.”

  “Is it going to be okay?” Sally asked again, looking at the blackened turtle, lying still under the water.

  Ruth stood up, shaking her head. “I was too late, Sally. I couldn’t save it.” Her chest lurched. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t get to the poor thing in time.”

  AL

  “Detective Vail? This is Al Panaro again. Listen, it’s been two months since we got any sort of update on Sally. I don’t mean to keep bothering you, but—”

  “Mr. Panaro, I’m sorry to interrupt. But are you aware of the situation in Cramer Hill?”

  “No?” Al said, confused. Cramer Hill was a neighborhood in Camden, over on the other side of the river. Was it possible Sally was back in Camden? How? When? No matter. His heart started to pound with the possibility that Sally was home again. Safe.

  “You haven’t read the papers today?”

  “No—”

  “Guy named Unruh shot up his whole neighborhood.” Vail cleared his throat. “Killed thirteen people. Three of ’em were kids.”

  “Oh my God,” Al said.

  “The local departments are pretty focused o
n this right now. We’ve got a community that’s just wrecked.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Al said, stunned. “But Sally—”

  “What I mean to tell you, sir, is that Mrs. Horner isn’t the only one grieving a lost baby right now.”

  * * *

  Grief blanketed the city like an early snow that September. Al knew that if Sally were still there, if she’d never left on that bus with Frank La Salle, Ella might have held her a little more closely that night, clinging in the way that parents do when tragedy strikes. When there is that knock, knock on someone else’s door reminding you that all of this, every last thing is precarious, perilous.

  How sad it was that grief had a shelf life, he thought. It’s only fresh and raw for so long before it begins to spoil. And soon enough, it would be replaced by a newer, brighter heartache—the old one discarded and eventually forgotten.

  Just over a year ago, it seemed to Al the horror of Sally’s abduction had resonated with every mother, every child. Women in Camden clung to their prepubescent daughters, seeing them not through their own eyes but the eyes of a fiend. What would that monster see as he gazed at their rosy-cheeked girls? They must have comforted themselves with the differences: Sally had curly light-brown hair. Their daughters were blond or redheaded. Sally was plump, but their daughters were skinny. Besides, he hadn’t just snatched her up; Ella had practically handed her over. (Put her on a bus with that fellow, what was she thinking? And that girl, that poor fatherless girl. Hadn’t her father been the one they found dead on the train tracks several years ago? The drunkard who was always stumbling out of Daly’s Café? Al had heard the whispers.) She was not like their girls. What happened to her would not happen to their bright-eyed daughters.

  But a year later, it was clear that Sally had already begun to slip from their collective memory. Women clung just a little less tightly to their children. Not every man sitting alone at a lunch counter was a possible kidnapper. And now the next monster had arrived, stalking the streets. There wasn’t enough room on the shelf for this old, tired sorrow. Maybe we can only suffer so much, Al thought; communal capacity was a shallow well.

  Al thought of those innocent children, the ones gunned down by that madman. One of them, he later heard, had gone to school with Sally before her family moved across the river. Little blond girl named Irene. He wondered if Irene’s mother had also once taken comfort in the differences between her daughter and Sally, and if she cursed herself now for her smug complacency, for her false sense of security.

  SUSAN

  Autumn came again, bringing with it the first bitter winds and icy frosts that would destroy the plants and gardens the greenhouse’s customers had so lovingly tended to all summer. Susan and Al’s own garden would suffer from the crystalline blanket, which snapped stalks and anesthetized the nightshades. Only the root vegetables would survive.

  Susan woke up that September morning and felt a distinct chill run like ice water down her back. Her first waking thought was of Sally. This is how she’d woken every morning for over a year now. Not with the soft ascent from the depths of a dream but with the sharp bite, that cold blade of the truth. This is the cruelty of grief. The way it gathers strength in the night, blooming again and again and again. There was nothing she could do to combat it other than allow its icy fingers to dig in and then to move on. Normally, she would tick off a list of things she needed to do for the day: work-related items, domestic chores, all those maternal obligations. Dee’s first birthday had come and gone, and now she was walking. It was her intention to go through the house today and safeguard it against the curiosity and clumsiness of a toddler. She also needed to consider the distinct possibility that Ella might need to move in with them soon. Ella hadn’t asked, would never ask, but Susan knew that she was getting worse, not better, and that every day that Sally was gone seemed to cripple her more.

  Susan bolted upright and shook Al from his own slumber.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She shook her head, unable to articulate the ominous feeling she had. Outside the wind rattled the windows in their frames. She shuddered involuntarily.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it the baby?” he asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

  “No,” she said. “Something else is wrong.”

  ELLA

  Ella herself woke that morning to the lacelike patterns of frost on her windows and for one brief and horrifying moment thought that she had somehow slept through an entire season. That autumn had come and gone while she slumbered. But then she wondered if, perhaps, that might not be such a terrible thing.

  She’d taken a Sominex the night before to help her sleep, and when she woke in the morning, staring at the icy filaments spread across her windowpane, she first felt etherized, numb and oblivious in her bed. When she tried to move her arms, her legs, at first there was no sensation at all. Nothing. If she hadn’t felt her heart beating in her chest like a drum, she would have thought she was dead.

  She was able to move her head; the rheumatism, thankfully, had not yet crept into her neck and spine. She saw then that the window was cracked open; when she’d opened the window to cool the hot flashes that made an inferno of her body, she’d forgotten to close it and the chill had crept in. Slowly, her limbs started to prickle and sting, and she pushed herself up to sitting.

  She began to shake, a shiver that emanated from her gut and moved outward. The chill gripped her limbs, shaking her like a leaf-bare tree in a bitter wind.

  But it wasn’t sadness that gripped her this morning. It was terror, a fear more profound, more chilling, than any she’d experienced before. More horrifying even than when the policeman knocked on her door to tell her they’d found Russell’s watch, his hat at the tracks.

  And she thought five simple words:

  Something is wrong with Sally.

  RUTH

  “Mama!”

  Ruth bolted up out of bed. It was 3:00 A.M., and the trailer court seemed to reverberate with the child’s cry. Ruth had been dreaming of carrying a baby in her arms. Her own nameless, faceless baby. When the cry rang out, the dream baby opened its mouth, which became a beak, and the wings beat against her as the bird took flight.

  Ruth quickly put on her clothes, an old housedress and her robe. It was sticky, humid still. Septembers were brutal in Texas. The heat relentless. Even at 3:00 A.M.

  She made her way from her trailer across the dirt lot to the LaPlantes’ trailer. She was terrified of what she might be interrupting, but her conscience took over where her own will faltered. She remembered the turtle at the river.

  But just as she was about to knock, the door hurled open and Frank poked his head out. He didn’t appear startled to see her. Instead, he seemed grateful that she was there, that she was awake.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said. “We need to get her to a hospital.”

  Ruth felt faint as she wondered what he could have done to her, what horrific things he might have done to her, that sent him barreling out of that tin can looking for help.

  “Where is she?” Ruth asked.

  “In the back. I’ll get the truck started, and maybe you can help me get her in.”

  It was dark in the trailer, and smelled of motor oil and liquor and smoke. What kind of place was this for a child?

  “Mama, Mama!” she cried out again, and Ruth quickened her step. She felt her way through the darkness to the back of the trailer where the beds were.

  Florence was on the floor, curled up into a ball, clutching her belly.

  Ruth dropped to her knees and put her arm around her. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s me, Ruth. Your daddy and I are going to get you to the hospital.

  “My mama…,” Florence said, her voice just a thin river of breath. “She don’t know where I am.”

  “What?” Ruth said.

  “You gotta tell them that.”

  “Who?” she said. “Florence. Tell who? You said your mama was dead.”


  “Please,” she said, and she gripped Ruth’s hand. “Tell her I’m sorry. And I just wanna go home.”

  Frank came back into the trailer. Ruth’s heart was beating so hard, she was sure he’d be able to hear it.

  “I think it’s her appendix,” Frank said. “Can she get up?”

  Ruth recoiled as he put his hand on her back.

  “Mama!” Florence cried.

  Together they helped her stand up, and she clung to them both as they made their way out of the trailer and into the cab of Frank’s truck.

  “I’ll come with you,” Ruth said to Frank. “Let me go tell Hank.”

  “No. We’re fine,” Frank said, reaching across Florence and slamming the passenger door shut.

  Florence pressed her face against the glass, her palm splayed there. Ruth reached out her hand and touched the window as Frank backed up.

  When the truck was gone, Ruth went to the trailer. She knew that there were answers inside, answers to questions it made her sick to ponder, and so she reached for the door handle. Locked. She yanked hard at the handle, shook the door until it felt like her arm might fall off.

  Bastard.

  SALLY

  For two days, Sally slipped in and out of sleep. The pale green walls and the buzzing fluorescent lights above her made her feel like she was at the bottom of the swimming pool. The sheets were cool, the pillow soft. Medicine dripped down a long tube into the back of her hand, and it made her feel sleepy, but not the groggy sort of feeling of the Lix-a-Col Mr. Warner gave her. Peaceful. And no one bothered her save for the nurses who came in to take her temperature, to change the bandages. The sounds of the hospital at night were so strange. There was a rhythm to them, as though the walls were breathing. As if the building itself had a heart that was steadily beating. She dreamed of mermaids.