“Thank you,” I signed and said. “Delicious.”
Pia got to her feet and approached Dean. He shrank back a bit, maybe because of her size—she had a good five inches on him. She chose a piece of meat and, watching me, tore off a few shreds and ate it. “Thank you,” she said. “This is very good. We haven’t eaten since the last time you gave us food.”
Dean nodded. The tension in his face seemed to ease. He held out some meat to Rachel, who shook her head, then Sandra, who accepted his offering. She took a tentative bite, nodded, and thanked him.
He seemed fascinated with Sandra. He couldn’t stop staring at her. Like a man looks at a woman but more with wonder than lust. With feral grace, he jumped down into our warren of hoary stones and approached her. She leaned backward as he reached down and touched her hair. We all froze. Sandra struggled to swallow the meat.
“Pretty,” he signed.
I translated. We all breathed.
He made the sign for “eyes,” then “leaf.”
“Leaf eyes?” I signed.
“Eyes shape like leaf,” he signed. “Pretty girl.”
I translated the best I could.
“Sick fuck better stay away from her,” Rachel said.
Dean recoiled, took a step back. His face darkened, and he looked to me, questioning. I noticed the glint of a knife under his belt.
“Good one,” I said under my breath.
“But he’s—” Rachel started.
“He’s getting to know us,” Pia said, injecting her voice with syrupy calm.
I said, “Apologize to him, Rache.”
“I didn’t—”
“Do it.”
She cleared her throat, sniffed, adjusted her pitiful glasses on her face. “Sorry, Dean.”
He ignored her and glared at me. “Why don’t they sign?” His hands flew. “What is wrong with them?”
“They never learned,” I signed and said. “I know how because my brother signed.”
“Where is your brother?”
“He’s dead.”
“Who killed him?” Dean gestured at the women.
“No one. It was an accident.”
“What is ‘accident’?” he signed, making the sign for the word several times—a turning of the hand near the face, pinkie and thumb out—seemingly anxious to learn it.
I felt my wound opening. Sick at heart. “It’s like a mistake,” I said. “When a really bad thing happens, but it’s nobody’s fault.”
Dean looked down at the earth, then back at each of us. Our filthy, scratched, and bloodied faces. “All of you,” he signed. “Come with me.”
34
We had slept longer than I realized. It felt hours past noon. The worst of the day’s heat had come and gone, and the earth beneath us seemed to exhale, cooling our sweating bodies. For a good half mile we followed Dean, tramping through a pathless forest that possessed a logic known only to him. I began to panic that he was leading us back to Simone, but in my gut I didn’t quite buy my own theory. Pia and the others trudged along in silence, too frightened to say a word. Finally, we found ourselves in a small clearing.
A roughly square plot had been cleared of brush and trees. An intricate mosaic of gray, green, and white pebble-size river stones described the shape and size of a man lying on the ground. Black stones defined eyes, eyebrows, and hair, his lips a grim line across his face.
Dean squatted at the head of the grave, rocking back and forth on his tire-wrapped feet. He brought the thumb and fingers of his right hand together and touched them to his forehead, then dropped his hand to his waist, as if removing an imaginary cap. The sign for “man.” He made the sign again and again, seemingly lost in his memories.
“What man is here?” I said, signed.
He tapped his forehead with an open hand. The sign for “father.”
“I’m sorry.”
“How did he die?” Pia asked. Good lord. The directness of her. At least she said it softly.
Dean cast her an agonized glance. Agitated, he jumped to his feet and paced the perimeter of the grave, arrows rattling in his hard leather quiver. After two trips around, he signed to me, “Father bad. Bad man.” He pulled at his hair, slapped his own face once, twice, took another turn around the stone man. Then he stood trembling, as if listening to a voice none of us could hear. I thought of Marcus and those dark days when I couldn’t reach him.
“What happened to him?” I signed.
“He hit my mother. She blood. I saw.”
“What did he say?” Pia said.