“Just do.” He shrugged. “You know what my daddy used to say when I’d cross him? ‘I brought you into this world and I can take you out just as easy.’ And ain’t that just like God? Like you’re at some old man’s mercy, someone who don’t even have his own life together?” Jude swallowed hard. “He told me my momma was up in heaven but I know better now. I knew it, that moment. The moment I kilt her. Inside her head, where my daddy told me the soul lives, there weren’t no soul. Jus . . . jus gray sponge, jus mess.” He set his jaw.
The air had turned black and heavy with Jude’s words. My lips could barely find air to breathe, but Jude seemed relieved. He sat back on his haunches and picked up his guitar. He strummed it absently.
“I’m never gonna learn to play now,” I whispered, and at once, the image of Constance came into my mind. I had to save her. I felt it in the thrum of my entire body, and even though I still walked crooked and my stumps felt like fire, I knew the time had come to rescue her.
“Jude, I been thinking—” I started.
“You won’t need hands,” he said at the same time. I closed my mouth to watch him fiddle with the strings. “Not when you got me to play you songs. I never forgot what you told me. I been starting to make my own, just simple ones. I wanna keep writing you songs forever.”
He picked the strings faster and faster until a quick harmony grew. He started singing.
“Once I had my own fine girl
Smile so wide and eyes like pearls
Filled my heart with peaceful sound
Said ain’t nothing gonna bring us down.
Ain’t nothing gonna bring us down.
“If evil comes with his evil plan
To touch our hearts to the muddy ground
Take us away and see us drowned
Tell him ain’t nothing gonna bring us down.
Ain’t nothing gonna bring us down.
“When I get out this far-eyed wood
Love you true like I said I would
I’ll build a house with my own two hands
Tell you ain’t nothing gonna bring us down.
Ain’t nothing gonna bring us down.
“When we’re old as the desert sand
I’ll sing my songs and sow my land
Pick daisies and make you a crown
Say ain’t nothing gonna bring us down
Ain’t nothing gonna bring us down.”
The song petered out and he put down his guitar.
“You like your song?” he asked.
I nodded, though a knot had formed in my chest that I couldn’t name.
“I been thinking,” I said again. “Thinking about going back to the Community.”
He looked up from his guitar strings. “What?”
“I’ve gotta get my sister, Jude. It’s been nagging me since I came here. The Prophet said if I ran away, he’d marry her instead. And I know he wasn’t bluffing. He announced it in front of everyone.”
“But, Minnow, they’ll kill you if you go back there. You know it.”
“She’s only a kid, younger than us the first time we met. Can you imagine letting a little girl get married off and doing nothing to stop it?”
“What makes you think she ain’t already married?”
“She might be. But, the courtship is usually longer, sometimes a month or two.”
“If they catch you, they won’t let you leave.”
“Then I won’t let them catch me. I’ve snuck out a thousand times, and I never once was caught.”
“Yeah, ’cept that one time. When they cut your hands off.”
“Well, they can’t cut them off twice.”
He shook his head slowly, eyes clenched. “I don’t unnerstand it, Minnow.”
No, you don’t understand, I thought. I was realizing how much he didn’t understand about me. He didn’t understand why I couldn’t let the Prophet touch my sister. He didn’t understand the desire to leave the wilderness that grew every day. He didn’t understand why singing me a song wasn’t ever going to replace me never being able to play music myself.
“At least I’ll be with you,” he said. “I’ll protect you.”
“No,” I said. “Stay here and I’ll meet you when we get back.”
“I’m not letting you go in there alone. And I meant what I said. If I get the chance to kill that old man who hurt you, I’ll take it,” he insisted. “I’m going with you.”
In the end, I agreed. Maybe if he saw what it looked like when people build up secluded lives for themselves in the wild, the stink of bodies living close together, tiny wooden rooms where they lock away what might hurt them, Jude would understand why the last thing I wanted was to live the rest of my life alone in the forest, whether he was there or not.
Chapter 51
All week, my mind flits on a loop between Jude’s broken-up face in the pear orchard and Wilson’s words the last time I saw him. You never planned on telling me the truth. Like one of the warden’s old movies, they pass over my mind, frame by frame. Except for reading class, I don’t move from my bed, lying on my side with my back to the Post-it on my affirmation wall, only getting up to relieve the periodic pang in my bladder. Angel sits above me, humming, not asking any questions. When she adjusts her body weight, the bed frame creaks.
“Special delivery.” Benny stands on the skyway, holding a white envelope in her hands.
“For me?” I ask, rising from the bed slowly.
“That’s what it says.” She shows me where my name is written in blue ink across the front.