There’s shame in the question. Even though the answer is yes, I’m safe here, Daddy doesn’t do those things Juna said, the question still sticks to me, probably always will. It’s what Juna does. Ever so slightly, she turns folks in the direction of her liking. The voices save me from answering John Holleran.
They are men’s voices, several. They’re not hollering, just talking. Talking among themselves and getting louder and closer. Footsteps hit the front porch and the door swings open. Buell Fulkerson leans into the house. He’s Sheriff Irlene’s oldest and will likely be the next sheriff.
“Found him,” he says. “Found your boy. Your daddy says make a spot for him. He’ll be right along.”
? ? ?
ABRAHAM PACE IS the first man through the door. Abigail trails close behind. Traipsing through the hills all night isn’t a proper thing for a young lady, but she’ll have been with Abraham and so she’ll have been safe. It’s as if Abraham has told her to latch onto him so she won’t get herself taken like Dale, because as she had in Juna’s bedroom, Abigail clings to the tail of Abraham’s jacket with one hand.
The kitchen soon fills with other men, all of them tracking dirt. Their hemlines are heavy with mud, their shirts are left untucked, and their faces and hands are smudged with black. Their pants hang loose around their waists, some so loose they’ve been tied off with thin strips of leather or lengths of rope. They’ve been worn down, all of them, not so much by the search for Dale as by life. As the other men filter through the door, Abraham and Abigail are pushed to the back, though because Abraham is tallest, he isn’t lost. One of the men tells me to gather dry clothes, blankets, and the heaviest socks I can manage.
The room is so thick with the men and their wet clothes and their sour smells, I barely see Daddy when he walks through the door. The shuffling feet go still and the men stop midsentence to let Daddy pass. I can’t see anything of Dale, but I can tell by the way Daddy carries himself and the cadence of his footsteps that he is cradling Dale in his arms.
I push through the men to get to the back room. Inside, Juna is already out of the bed and standing in the far corner. She has brushed her hair and dressed herself in one of my dresses, which I can see straight off because it hangs down her shoulders and the neckline sags.
“I fixed it up,” she says of the bed.
And she has. She has pulled the sheets taut and folded the blue blanket twice over and draped it across the end of the bed. The lantern is lit, and the shutter over the window has been lowered and locked in place.
When Daddy steps into the bedroom and before the door has closed, the men in the kitchen get back to talking. The house still has that feeling of belonging to someone else. Someone, a stranger, is opening and closing the coffeepot. He doesn’t use a rag, and he shouts God damn, and the lid bounces off the counter and onto the ground. With the toe of a boot, I suppose, someone kicks closed a cupboard, and chairs scoot across my floor. Someone tosses more wood on the fire. Someone else dips up water for more coffee. A few engines fire up, and tailgates rattle as trucks pull away.
Standing with his feet planted wide and leaning back to brace himself for the weight in his arms, Daddy looks to me. I wave at the bed, tell him it’s fine, it’ll be best for Dale. He stares down on it, thinking, wondering if he should lay his boy there in the bed where Juna and I usually sleep. His hat has been knocked about and sits too low on the back of his head. His brow is white against his dark-red cheeks and nose. They’ll blister, both of them, in a few days’ time. He shuffles up to the bed, slides one foot in front of the other, lowers himself, and lets Dale slip from his arms.
I’ve always known Dale would turn out looking like Daddy. Even starting out as sweet as he has, as pink and soft and kind, I knew time would rub against those things until they wore off. Looking down on Dale sinking into the feather ticking same as Juna did, I see Daddy looking back at me. The soft round cheeks have caved, already, in such a short time, and the left side of his face is swollen and black with bruising. One eye is closed from the swelling, and his bottom lip is split, though it’s crusted over. He’s been beaten. And he’s wet, all of him, and he smells of the river, like the moss that grows up between the rocks and the thick black silt the floods left behind. His skin’s fresh pink color is gone, replaced by something pale, something waterlogged and nearly dead.