“Unlock this door, Ed,” John shouts at Daddy.
A piece of wood in the box stove falls, and the fire crackles and sparks. Another scream. The front door opens, and the damp night air bursts into the room. The flame in each lantern wavers. Abraham Pace ducks under the threshold. In three steps, he crosses the room. There’s another scream, higher in pitch this time and it lingers, and before it can fade altogether, another scream. And another. John Holleran yanks on the latch, starts beating at it with the butt of his shotgun, but Abraham wrenches it away from him before the latch breaks loose. Maybe he yanks at it because it’s a damn fool thing to do with a loaded gun, or maybe because he wants Daddy to make Joseph Carl scream.
“You stop in there,” Sheriff Irlene shouts and then calls out the door to her deputies.
“Make him say it, Daddy.”
We turn, all of us, at the sound of Juna’s voice. She has stood from her seat at the small desk. The blanket is crumpled at her feet. She stands in her white gown, her matted hair hanging down the sides of her face, her lips bleeding where they’ve cracked. She takes a step toward the door, and as another scream rises up, she screams out too.
“Make him say it. Make him say it, Daddy.”
She squeezes her hands into fists. Her arms are rigid. She tips forward as if leaning into the wind. Her black eyes are stretched wide.
“Make him say he done it. Make him, Daddy. Make him.”
I grab for the blanket, try to wrap it around her, but she slaps at me and screams into my face.
“He done it. He took Dale. He done it.”
Sheriff Irlene and Abraham stare at Juna, both of them backing away. The deputies, three or four of them, huddle in the doorway but won’t step inside. I try again with the blanket, this time wrapping it from behind. I hold it around her shoulders. Her body is stiff and small. Joseph Carl keeps screaming, and I try not to think about what Daddy could be doing to him. With one arm still wrapped around Juna’s shoulder, I slide to the side of her. She turns toward me. Ever so slightly, she’s smiling.
? ? ?
THREE BAINES ARE the first to arrive. They must know the silence is a bad thing because their footsteps are quick up the stairs, across the porch, and through the door. Ellis walks first inside. He pulls the hat from his head, and I’m close enough to see the dent it’s left. Air rushes in and out through his nose. His jaw is covered over by a dark shadow, his having not shaved since morning. Two brothers stand behind him. They’re scrawnier, hairier versions of Ellis, and meaner too.
The door at the back of the sheriff’s office is open now, and beyond it, Joseph Carl is locked behind a set of bars. He sits on a narrow bench, elbows resting on his knees, head hung down. A tray loaded up with his supper sits untouched on the floor near his feet. Mrs. Brashear will have brought it for him, and Abigail likely helped. Sheriff Irlene did the cooking for the men who found themselves behind those bars before her husband died, but once he passed and Irlene became sheriff, Mrs. Brashear took over the cooking. It was fried ham tonight, and cornbread and snapped beans.
“Suppose you can let the boy out now,” Ellis says without looking at Sheriff Irlene. Instead, he keeps his eyes on that open door and the little bit of Joseph Carl he can see from where he’s standing.
“Afraid I can’t do that, Ellis,” Sheriff Irlene says. “Best place for that boy is right where he sits.”
“We kept Joseph Carl safe bringing him here,” I say. “The sheriff did. Didn’t let Daddy take a gun or a knife to Joseph Carl. Made sure he was fed. We kept him safe.”
John Holleran steps into the middle of the room. “He admitted to it,” he says. “Heard it myself. But won’t tell us what he done with the boy.”
“Damn right he admitted to it.”
It’s Daddy. His dark shirt has pulled free and hangs loose about his waist. He still wears his hat, though it’s pushed high on his forehead. Drawing a kerchief from his back pocket, he wipes the sweat from his face. He looks small, scrawny even, compared to John and Abraham, but Joseph Carl is smaller still. When John Holleran finally broke through the door, Sheriff Irlene rushing in behind him, he had hauled Daddy off Joseph Carl with one hand.
“God only knows what he done to my boy,” Daddy says.
“Daddy’s going to make him tell.”
Again, we all look to Juna. The lids over her black eyes are swollen, and dark patches have settled under each. It’s from her not sleeping and not drinking and not eating. She holds the blanket around herself like a shawl, baring her white shoulders.
“Make him tell what he done to me too, Daddy.”
It’s no more than a whisper. Clutching her blanket with both hands, she is looking at the ground at Daddy’s feet and not into his eyes.