The lamp shed a dim glow onto Ellis’s few belongings. I never go into his room, but now I saw the few things he has on his simple dresser: a framed photo of me, Beezie, and Mama, a book I gave him that he never read, a bracelet I wove for him out of straw once. These were the things he and Lyla Pearl had been looking at. I was taking it all in when I heard the sound. At first, sickened, I thought it was footsteps—Mama catching us. But it was too fast and light. The sound was strange and exotic but also achingly familiar. Ellis and I looked at each other in confusion.
I stepped to the door and squinted into the darkness outside and let out a cry.
I’ve been sitting here thinking how to write about it. Words keep flitting in and out of my mind, none of them right or enough.
We were outside before we could catch our breaths again, standing with our hands up. Then it made sense, the darkness of the night, the absence of the moon: clouds had blotted out the light. We stood there with our faces up to them, mystified and amazed; if they’d been dragons we wouldn’t have been any less in awe of them. We opened our mouths to catch the rain.
It came down harder and harder, and all I could think was, Don’t stop. The ground at our feet swallowed the moisture like a sponge.
Static crackled along the fence. Thunder rumbled loudly, and lightning flared somewhere in the distance. Ellis and I ducked back inside, slid to the wall beside the door. His hand on my elbow was shaking, and I wondered why.
“Stop shaking,” I said nonsensically. Ellis laughed as if it were the most ludicrous request in the world, which it was.
“I’m nervous,” he said.
It was only lightning, I thought. But his hands had moved to the bottom of my rib cage. His fingers sparked against the fabric of my clothes.
I’ll try to record it as clearly as I can, because God knows I’ve relived the moment a hundred times in my mind already: Ellis was lightly brushing the edges of his hands along the tops of my arms. Even then I thought I was misunderstanding, as silly as that seems. The room seemed to get smaller, and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know for sure until his lips were against me—first the side of my cheek and then quickly after, my lips.
“Sorry, kid,” he said, which made no sense because he kissed me again.
He leaned back. We stood there for a moment close together, and I looked everywhere but at him, until a noise came from the direction of the house, a kind of whoop! Ellis cocked his head and whispered, “We better go.” He reached for my hand and tugged me gently outside into the rain. A light had gone on upstairs, and a moment later Beezie and Mama appeared on the porch. Beezie launched into furious circles around the yard, screaming with glee as she got drenched. Mama hurried to my side, hugged me around my neck, her face lit up like a little girl’s—happier than I’d ever seen her.
“Rain!” she whispered.
It wasn’t long before the drops began to flag. We held out our hands to prove it wasn’t true, but the rain was slowing down. And then, only a few minutes after it had begun, it stopped altogether.
Still, we couldn’t stop smiling, though I was shaking from what had happened.
“See?” Mama said. “We just have to believe. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
We waited a while longer for it to come back until, reluctantly, Mama and Beezie and I headed toward the house and Ellis toward the bunkhouse. I couldn’t bring myself to look back.
I’ve just woken up, and every single cloud was gone from the sky. Three thoughts circled around my mind all night and wouldn’t let me sleep:
Did he mean it?
Does he regret it?
Will it happen again?
JUNE 30, 1934
I was heading down the stairs this morning, just after I last wrote, when I heard a scream in the front yard. It was a kind of wailing. I thought it was an animal at first.
I rushed outside in confusion to find Beezie in the front yard, staring at the ground, with Mama kneeling beside her.
Sheepie lay on the dirt at her knees, dead.
Mama was doing something strange that I couldn’t make sense of. She had a knife at Sheepie’s chest.
“Don’t do that! Don’t do that!” Beezie pleaded, but Mama, her face dark and sad and determined, ignored her.
I stepped up and covered Beezie’s eyes, suddenly understanding. I knew why, horrifying as it was to see our beloved Sheepie like that, it needed to be done.
We needed to know for sure what she’d died of.
But of course we all knew before Mama was even finished, before all the dark muck poured out of the slit in her skin Mama had made.
Her lungs were full of mud.
All this time, she’s been slowly suffocating.
A moment later, Ellis emerged from the bunkhouse in a daze, and as we exchanged a look, Beezie ripped out of my arms and ran to the edge of the mud pond, where Galapagos stood craning her neck to watch us. Beezie started throwing rocks at her. “I wish it was you,” she yelled, as Galapagos hissed and ducked into her shell. I picked her up and carried her inside, kicking and screaming and coughing the whole way.
JULY 2, 1934
It’s been two days since Sheepie died, and the house has been dark and sad. Beezie won’t come out of her room and has dressed herself all in black, her pale, grieving face peeking out from under Mama’s black church hat. Not that we all aren’t mourning Sheepie, but seeing Beezie mourn him hurts worse.
I have been thinking about the Ragbag fair. I’ve been trying to accept what entered my mind the moment I saw Sheepie dead, and what it means I need to do.
Ellis and I weren’t alone until this morning. I’d found a quiet spot in the barn to sit and hide, and he came walking up beside me.
I didn’t look at him. He sat down next to me, folded his hands between his knees.
Despite what had happened, the moment was comfortable between us, I guess because Ellis has always been a good listener to my silences. I never feel like I have to say something to him to be heard, and it’s been like that since we were kids. But after a while, I needed to ask him.
“Do you think Beezie’s lungs look like that inside?”
“No.” He shook his head.
I studied his face. I didn’t have to say that I knew he was lying. After a while, he looked up at me gravely.
“I made a mistake, kissing you,” he said. “I think I was just so happy about the rain.”
I nodded vigorously and falsely. “I know,” I said. “Me too.”
“You’re like a sister to me.”
“I know. Me too,” I lied. I didn’t want him to feel guilty. I didn’t want to look like a fool.
He seemed to be trying to read my face. He rose onto his knees to get up, and I looked at my hands and tried to swallow the sting of it.
“I told myself I’d be brave about it and tell you the truth.”
“Yes.” I nodded, withering up.
He hesitated, started to move away, but stopped himself. Then again he was doing things I couldn’t make sense of. He put one hand on either side of me in a way that was not brotherly, leaned over top of me and looked at me uncertainly, hopefully, and then kissed me again. Then he said something that made my heart pound more.
“I’ve loved you so much, Cathy,” he whispered, as his hands raced up the sides of my rib cage. “For so long. That’s the truth.”
I’d gone watchful and still without meaning to, a statue like Mama. Ellis sank back and looked at me miserably. “You don’t feel the same way about me,” he said softly.
I slowly put my hands on his chest then on his shoulders, getting a feel for it, for being allowed.