I nodded and nodded, but that could’ve been the tremble that had hijacked my muscles.
“And lastly . . . lastly I’ll wish the death of the man who did this to you. I’ll do it. I’ll make sure he never breathes one more breath in this world, or the next.”
? ? ?
I woke up the next day throwing a mass of acid up from my stomach onto the packed dirt floor. I let it drip from my mouth, because I couldn’t lift my leaden arms to wipe my lips. I turned my head slowly back onto the couch cushion. The skin on my arms was white until it reached the stumps where it became swollen with purpleness. A thick ridge of stitches ran across each one.
“You look like death,” a voice said.
I turned my head slowly. Waylon was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table. I saw for the first time the inside of the cabin, roughly furnished, every item made by hand. Made by Waylon, I guessed.
“I feel like it,” I said.
“He never told me about you,” he said. “Not even once.”
“I never told my family about him, either.”
“Why not? Children shouldn’t keep things secret from their parents.”
I remembered all the times Jude had come to me with bruises and gashes marking his skin, scarring it. All the times he’d seemed scarred worse on the inside. Maybe you should ask yourself why Jude felt like he couldn’t tell you, I thought.
Jude walked in the back door with an armful of wood. He walked to the fireplace and stuffed the wood in, stoking it so none of the winter air beyond the walls penetrated the cabin.
Waylon stood and walked out the back door.
Jude sat beside me on the couch. His eyes were dry now and there was something different about them. His jaw had taken on a harder set. Angrier.
“What’s wrong, Jude?”
“Nothin’.”
“No, really. What?”
He sighed, touched his forefinger to the dark half circle under his eye. “I jus cain’t . . . cain’t figure it out.”
“What?”
“How someone could do this.”
“My father’s the Prophet’s man. I’ve known that mosta my life.”
“Your father did this to you?”
“He was on orders, Jude.” I said this with trepidation because in the air between us was the knowledge of what he’d done on someone’s orders, what he’d done for faith.
“But, all those people, they musta known you was in there. Bein’ . . . bein’ hurt.”
“Yeah.”
“None of ’em did anything. They let it happen. How? How?”
Something strong was pouring from his eyes now, scarier than tears.
“They’re crazy, Jude. That’s all. Crazy people do crazy things.”
He opened his mouth then, and his words were so quiet and low I could barely make them out. “I’m gonna kill him.”
“The Prophet?”
Jude nodded. “He’ll be dead someday anyway, so it cain’t be a sin. I want it. I want it on my hands.” He held his hands before him, fingers curved. “I want him to look in my eyes and realize all he’s done.”
This was the second time he’d said this, and I knew now that he meant it. To Jude, violence still held meaning. He truly believed enough of it could make the Prophet realize his errors and repent.
In those moments, I wish I could’ve articulated how unremarkable brutality is. How common. Till the moment he saw me without hands, Jude hadn’t known how capable we all are of violence. But I was so comfortable with it, I didn’t hesitate for a second to commit some when I had the chance, when Philip lay prone on the snow-packed earth.
Brutality was done to me. Why not spill a little into the world, too? Just to touch it. Just to know I could.
Chapter 46
After lights-out, Angel and I sit hip-to-hip on my bed near the weak desk lamp soldered to the frame of the bunk, me shouldering my way through a fantasy novel, Angel reading about neuroscience. Every other minute, I let the book fall closed and sigh, casting my eyes out to the darkened hull of the jail. Similar pockets of light shine where other girls are up late reading or writing letters home.
Angel grunts when I sigh again. “You’re thinking about Jude.”
“Sorry.”
“I never had anyone who could do that to me.”
“Do what?”
“Interrupt my thoughts when he wasn’t even in the room,” she says. “Except Carl Sagan, but that doesn’t really count.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re stuck in jail. What can you do?”
“When I get out, find him. Walk into the woods and never look back.”
She’s silent beside me, running her fingers along the edge of the thick tome. “They don’t have books in the wilderness,” she says.
I nod. Would it mean anything, losing the things that I’ve gained here, as long as I had Jude? I know a year ago, it wouldn’t have even been a question. But now?
“You wanna hear something cool?” she asks.
I shrug.
“I just read that the brain is the fattiest organ. Contains up to sixty percent fat.”
“Your brain must be really fat,” I say.