I kept my eyes on Dean and spoke as evenly as I could. “He said his dad wasn’t a good guy. Beat up his mother.”
Dean walked purposefully over to Pia; looked up and met her eye. “Tall woman,” he signed. He cupped one hand to his ear, the sign for “listen.” His hands carved the air around us: “Mother shot father. He die. I watch. After, she cut my tongue.” He opened his mouth wide and again made the sign for “cut.” Pia struggled to keep the terror off her face. He turned to show me, so I forced myself to look inside his mouth. The remainder of his tongue, an eggplant--colored stump of flesh, protruded from the back of his mouth, just under drop-shaped tonsils and surrounded by blackened and missing teeth. The stench of his breath nearly overwhelmed me.
I translated. Pia made a strangled sound.
“Oh, dear God,” Sandra said.
Dean closed his mouth and looked at me, as if for my thoughts on the matter.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
He signed that it didn’t.
“How old are you?” I asked, signed.
“Twenty-three summer,” he signed without hesitation.
“How long have you lived here, in the forest?”
“Eighteen summer.”
“Where were you born?”
His face lit up. He pointed to the trees swaying in the wind above us. “Sky.”
“The sky?”
“Mom says sky. Sun, stars, moon. I am present for her from sky.”
“Before the forest,” I signed slowly, “where did you live?”
“I live with bad people. Mom says all bad people in town. Mom says, bad Dean in town. Scared of town.”
“Ask him if he knows the way out of here,” Rachel said.
“You can ask him,” I said. “He’s not deaf.”
She gave me a look, as much as she could with her one good eye. “Dean, can you take us to a town? Do you know the way, besides the river, I mean?”
“No,” he signed.
“That’s hard to believe.” Rachel snorted. “That the kid’s never been out of here.”
“Why?” Sandra said. She crouched over the pointillist grave, admiring its exquisite detail. It occurred to me just how young Dean was, close to the same age we’d been when we met—Sandra untouched by cancer and a nightmare marriage, Pia before her Wonder Woman years, Rachel when she was falling-down drunk every weekend, back when we still thought that was funny.
“He was five when he came to this place, sounds like,” Sandra said as she got to her feet. “Who remembers when they’re five? I don’t. Not much, anyway.”
Dean had stopped paying attention to us. Squirreling around in a greasy leather satchel, he withdrew an envelope fashioned from a beaten piece of plastic. He peeled back layer after layer, revealing a half-inch-thick stack of photographs.
“Secret,” he signed to me.
He shyly handed me the photos. Pia, Sandra, and Rachel crowded around me as we scrutinized each one. The photos had wide white frames, the kind produced by instant cameras popular ten or fifteen years ago. Most of the pictures were so badly water-and mud-stained that only pieces of the images were clear. A laughing young woman in a print dress held a baby, while a grim-faced older woman trussed in black stood nearby, clutching her purse high up under her armpit. A red tractor loomed behind them; beyond it a modest-looking farmhouse and rolling green hills. Other photos: children cannonballed off a dock into a shimmering lake as a chubby girl in a flowered bikini watched from the shore. A man with a rifle slung over his shoulder stood next to an enormous dead bear. The last few were old postcards: the Statue of Liberty raising her light above the New York harbor; a grinning cartoon lobster and the words Welcome to Boothbay Harbor! superimposed over a photo of a shoreline.
“Who are these people?” I said and signed.
“Mom says fairy tales.”
“They’re real people,” I said. “Or they were.”
“Do you know the nice people?” He pointed to the woman in the photograph, the smiling baby.
“No, but there are lots of people I don’t know.”
“Do they live in town? All the people?”
“Most people live in towns.”
A branch snapped in the forest. We jumped toward each other, a force four strong facing out, while Dean spun around and leapt in front of us, bow and arrow drawn. He turned, scanning the boundless green. Long moments later he relaxed, replaced the arrow in the quiver at his back. He gathered the photos, wrapped them with care, and tucked them in his sack.
“She said kill you this morning,” he signed. “Then come home.” He gazed up at the sky, at the long afternoon shadows the trees cast across us. “So now she comes for me. And you.”
35
Follow me,” Dean signed. “Another secret.”
I translated. Rachel took a step toward him. Assumed a wide stance, slightly pigeon-toed, arms crossed hard. “No more secrets, Dean. This is bullshit. This is not working. We need to get out of here.”
Pia grabbed Rachel by the arm. She glared down at Pia’s hand, said, “Excuse me?”
“You need to chill out,” Pia hissed. “This kid is helping us.”