A Place to Call Home

  I didn’t know it on my birthday, but we’d come just about as far as we were going to go.

  Our magic stopped working on a Saturday in early June. It was a steamy, turbulent day, with cottonball thunderheads riding the sky above Dunshinnog and the air as rich as soup. I remember the smell of plowed earth, and greenery, flowers, and wind. I remember anticipating the cold, red sugar of the first watermelon we would eat that summer, and the slow drone of bees, and the delicate whir of a hummingbird outside the back porch.

  I remember that day in endless, painful detail, how it started and how it ended.

  Mama and Grandma Dottie had taken Grandmother Elizabeth shopping in Atlanta. Daddy and Grandpa went to a luncheon for the poultry breeders’ association in Gainesville. Hop and Evan went bass fishing with Uncle Winston and his boys. Josh and Brady weren’t home from college yet.

  Roanie stayed home to tinker with the engine of an old Volkswagen that Grandpa acquired in some barter deal for farm equipment. Grandpa told him that if he got it running they’d sell it and split the profit. Roan regarded that ugly yellow Bug as if it were gold-plated.

  As for me, I was assigned to go to the beauty parlor with Great-Gran Alice. She had turned ninety-three, after all. She didn’t drive anywhere alone anymore. She shouldn’t have been driving at all. She needed help getting out of her boxy blue Chevy, plus she needed a lookout to yell when she swerved too close to any object that couldn’t run, like a tree. Riding with Great-Gran was a rite of passage—my brothers had survived until they got their learner’s permits, and I was expected to as well.

  Soap Falls Road curled through miles of hardwoods and laurel tangled on steep hills. Daddy and Grandpa always insisted that Great-Gran take Soap Falls into town, because there was practically no traffic on it and the hills hemmed her in on either side.

  So there we were, hurtling down the middle of the road like a bobsled down a chute, her white gloves lying neatly on the broad lap of her blue dress, the car filled with the scent of face powder and tearose perfume. I was dressed in overalls, a pink T-shirt, and tennis shoes. I clutched a Laura Ingalls Wilder book I’d brought to read while Great-Gran got her hair permed. I wished I could be on the prairie with Laura. At that moment I could have taught Laura a thing or two about plucky perseverance.

  A huge chicken truck came around a bend. The driver didn’t give—he felt lucky or else he couldn’t think fast enough to move tons of steel and chickens onto two feet of road shoulder backed by a slab-faced hill. “Watch out,” I yelled.

  Great-Gran said, “Wee, laudy,” under her breath and peeled off to the opposite side of the road. I crouched low in the seat, frozen inside my overalls, as we flashed by stacks of terrified-looking hens and a Kehoe Poultry Farm sign. The Chevy’s right headlight scraped half the real estate off a red-clay bank and we plowed to a stop. White clouds of steam rose from under the hood.

  The chicken truck and its driver disappeared around the next curve and didn’t come back. Either the driver didn’t realize what had happened or he was desperate to get all those shocked chickens to the processing plant before they fainted.

  For the next five minutes Great-Gran ranted about the near miss being all his fault. Then she took a nitroglycerin tablet from her purse and put it under her tongue and laid her head back on the seat. Her knobby, blue-veined hands trembled. I was shaking all over. “Great-Gran, you okay?”

  “I just need to rest my heart,” she said weakly.

  “I’ll get help!”

  I leaped out. I was just glad I still had legs. I looked back the way we’d come. Home? Yes. No—too far. I pivoted and stared at the curve ahead. The Hollow was close.

  The Hollow. Big Roan.

  I couldn’t waste time running home. I ran toward the Hollow.

  My mind was blank except for whatever concentration moved my feet. When I reached the driveway, I plowed to a stop by the lopsided mailbox, sucking in deep breaths, wishing an angel would swoop down and go the rest of the way with me, as the preacher at the Methodist tent revivals swore angels would do.

  I inched down the hill. I’d never been in Big Roan’s yard before, never been inside the awful trailer. His rusty truck was parked catty-cornered to the trailer’s wooden steps. I swallowed hard. My Adam’s apple felt as big as a softball.

  I stepped carefully among rotting bags of garbage, old tires, car axles, a rusty washing machine with the door torn off, and piles of slimy tin cans that seemed alive with maggots. Flies buzzed around me. I smelled the smell Roanie had lived with, the stink he’d carried with him in his clothes, and I tried not to gag.

  I climbed the stairs, my steps leaden, opened the warped screen door, and knocked on a wooden one with a cracked peep window. After a minute I knocked again, louder. I heard slamming sounds inside, then uneven footsteps, and finally Big Roan flung the door open and glared down at me. His dark hair looked slimy, and there were wet stains down the front of his T-shirt. He had his metal leg on, thank God. And his pants. “Whatcha want?” he growled, swaying from side to side. A gust of his fetid breath washed over me.

  I want that darned angel to get here.

  “Could I use your phone, please, sir?”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Great-Gran had a car accident up the road. I need to call for help.”

  Roanie. Roanie’ll come get us.

  “Huh.” He rubbed his beard stubble. When his lips drew back in something like a smile, I saw the white scum on his teeth. His eyes were bloodshot, and there were patches of broken veins on his cheeks like the tiny, lacy fractures in an old plate.

  He staggered to one side and I edged past him. There wasn’t much more than a dog path between the crummy furniture. A table fan whirred in the nasty air. A baseball game was showing on a little black-and-white TV with bent antennae wrapped in aluminum foil. Beer cans and liquor bottles lay everywhere.

  “You scared of me?” Big Roan asked.

  “No, sir.” I bumped into the arm of a couch and dust motes puffed out. He lurched over to a sagging green recliner and plopped down on it. He didn’t say another word, just watched me with his legs spread and the fake one stretched out, straight and stiff, across my path. A dirty-looking black phone sat on a stack of magazines by his chair. There was a picture of a naked woman on the top magazine’s cover. I could see her from the waist down, sticking out from under the phone.

  I hopped over Big Roan’s leg with the speed of a goat.

  His slithery gaze stayed on me as I dialed the phone. I clamped the receiver in my hand. Ringing. Ringing. Roan was outdoors. He wouldn’t hear. Nobody else was home. I should have run toward home, not to the Hollow. Not to Big Roan’s glowering face, his frightening eyes, his disgust.

  “Hello?” Roanie answered. There were angels.

  “Come get us! We had a car accident! I’m at the Hollow! Great-Gran’s sittin’ in her car! I’m at the Hollow! Come get us!”

  “Claire, go back to the road,” he said immediately. His voice was low, steady, and I realized he was trying not to sound worried, which really scared me. “Go right now,” he added. “I’ll get Grandpa Maloney’s car and I’ll be there in five minutes. I swear to God. Just hang the phone up and walk back to the road.”

  “I will! Hurry!”

  I carefully set the receiver back on its berth. “Thank you, Mr. Sullivan.” My voice squeaked. “I’ll wait up at the road. Thanks.” I turned. Big Roan stared at me. Suddenly he raised his metal leg and propped the fake foot-shoe on the couch. As if his leg was one of those automatic arms that close off a railroad crossing when a train’s coming. He trapped me behind his side of the tracks.

  “That was my boy on the phone, wadn’t it?” he asked in a low monotone. “You squealin’ for him to come get you.”

  “I—well, I gotta go, Mr. Sullivan.”

  “No, you stay the hell put. I wanna talk to you.” I stared at the way his pants leg hung on the metal limb as if there were nothing but a skeleton’s leg under ther
e. “You better put your leg down, Mr. Sullivan.” I could barely breathe. “I don’t want to climb over it or something. I mean, I might bend it.”

  He snorted. “Shit.” After that, he didn’t budge. Neither did I. We gazed at each other for what seemed like forever, him scrutinizing me with hard eyes like wet marbles, me trying very hard to appear unconcerned. I heard the baseball game on TV. I heard the blood throbbing against my eardrums. I counted silently as several minutes ticked by on a clock atop the TV. Finally he leaned forward and whispered, “You turned my boy against me.”

  Ice in my veins. “No,” I whispered. “Nope. Sir. I don’t th-think so.”

  “What’s so special about you?” He flung an arm out and plucked at the sleeve of my T-shirt. I flinched. His fingers twisted tighter in the material. “Too good to talk to me, ain’t you?”

  “I’m talkin’. See? I’m talkin’. But I gotta go. Sir.”

  “How’d you win him over, fluffy?” He fingered the hem of my sleeve between his thumb and forefinger. “You little pink-faced, redheaded busybody. You think you’re a pretty little thing, don’t you?”

  Politeness wasn’t working. My head reeled from the closeness, the stink, the heat, the terror. I tried sternness. “You let go of my shirt. You put your leg down. Right now. Or I’ll … I’ll tell my daddy and he’ll come over here and knock the tar out of you.”

  I was reduced to Daddy threats. But anybody with more sense than a stump knew better than to mess with Holt Maloney’s kids.

  Big Roan’s eyes gleamed. He didn’t have gray eyes like Roan’s; his eyes were some washed-out color, hooded under puffy eyelids, like the eyes of an alligator submerged in muddy water. He jerked hard on my sleeve. “You ain’t no Daddy’s girl. You’re a little wet-tailed, ass-waggin’ bitch.” He raised his hand toward my hair.

  I punched him in the face.

  He bellowed in surprise and grabbed me with both hands. I screamed, kicking wildly, punching in every direction. Grunting and cursing, he dragged me across his thighs. I hit him in the face again, and he slapped me, hard, not just on the face but on the whole side of my head. I slammed into something. There were crashing sounds. I couldn’t see anything but stars for a second, I couldn’t think, I didn’t know where I was.

  Then he had me by one arm and I was facedown on the cluttered floor, wedged between the furniture, with him on top of me, mashing the breath out of my lungs. I squirmed furiously, listening to my own high-pitched shrieks. He twisted one of my arms behind me and something tore, something inside my shoulder, and the pain flooded me like a black wave. He jerked the wide straps of my overalls down my arms, he held me down, he pulled my overalls to my ankles. He grabbed me between the legs.

  All I knew was that I had been snatched up in the jaws of a nightmare, that the monsters who lived under children’s beds and in their closets were real, and that nothing, nothing in my entire life, would ever be the same.

  Then there were sounds, there was shouting, Roanie’s voice, guttural and wild, like a dog’s furious snarls. I don’t know what happened exactly. Thudding noises, violence, chaos. I was free, pulled free of the weight, Big Roan grunting, yelling, cursing, Roan’s hands on me, dragging me across the dirty floor.

  I heard Big Roan bellow, “Goddamn shit, you raise a hand against me and I’ll—”

  And then the gunshot.

  It cleared my mind; it shocked the darkness out of my eyes. Moaning, crying, I rolled over and stared. Dear Jesus, dear Jesus, dear Jesus.

  I had never seen a person with his brains blown out before.

  Roan crawled to me on his hands and knees. I hurt all over. I passed out for a little while. When I came to, we were outside. Roan was hunched on his knees, bending over me. He held one of my hands. He was crying. “Claire,” he said. “Claire.”

  That was the scene that God and Jesus and all the angels—none of whom were dependable, I decided then—looked down on: a nearly grown boy and a half-grown girl with bloody faces, huddled together in the lowest, darkest place in the world, scared and hurt.

  Everything else was so quiet.

  • • •

  What happened during the rest of that day was mostly vague and distant to me—the effect of shock, I suppose—like watching a horror movie with one eye shut and my hands over my face. I had never seen Mama and Grandma Dottie in hysterics before. I had never seen Daddy cry from sheer rage. Hop and Evan had never been tearfully sweet to me before, either.

  Roanie and I were taken to see Uncle Mallory. Our busted lips, my black eye, my sprained shoulder—I was numb to all the prodding and fixing until Mama and Grandma got me undressed down to my panties and it sank in that Uncle Mallory wanted to look between my legs for some reason. Then I burst into convulsive sobs and had to lie on his table wearing nothing but a paper sheet while Mama cried and held my good hand and he pried around where nobody but me had any right to pry.

  When I was dressed again, doped up on some kind of medicine that made me feel fuzzy and limp, my right arm in a sling and my cut lip smeared with yellow antiseptic, Daddy carried me into the waiting room and there was Roanie, his eyes haunted and intense as he stared at me, his lower lip and scraped chin tinged with yellow, too. All I could manage to do was paw my good hand at him, desperately trying to reach him, but when he raised a hand toward mine, Daddy turned away. “Is she all right?” Roanie asked hoarsely.

  “Yeah,” Daddy answered, but it was a tight word, not what Roan deserved. Daddy’s anger stuck in my drugged thoughts.

  I was taken home and put to bed in Mama and Daddy’s room. Great-Gran had already been put in her bed. Grandmother Elizabeth sat with her and they drank peach brandy. Grandmother held Great-Gran’s hand.

  Mr. Tobbler came to the house. “Damn white-trash Sullivan,” he told my folks, and he cried. Renfrew didn’t cry. She took over the kitchen and began to cook for the crowd.

  Every relative within reach came as soon as they heard. And Cousin Vince showed up before long, and his deputies came, and other men in uniforms, men I didn’t know, and they took Roanie into the living room and shut the doors.

  I kept trying to ask about him, but my tongue wouldn’t work. I sank into helpless, woozy, half-conscious sleep. “My little girl, my hurt little girl,” I heard Mama sobbing. “Everybody was right, Holt. Look what it’s come to.”

  “She’s a trooper,” Daddy answered. “At least she wasn’t … Big Roan didn’t …” Daddy’s voice trailed off.

  “He would have,” Mama said. “That must have been what he had in mind. Oh, my God.”

  “But Roanie saved me, and he didn’t do anything wrong,” I mumbled over and over to everyone, until finally Grandpa, who had taken charge as calmly as anybody could, came upstairs and, realizing what terrified me, whispered, “Don’t worry, sweet pea, Roanie’s not going to jail. He did the right thing.”

  Okay. Then we would just forget Big Roan, we’d get well and go on. Of course. I fell asleep.

  “Where’s Roanie?” That was what I wanted to know when I woke up. It was after dark.

  “He’s in his room,” Mama told me, smoothing my hair and looking as if she might start crying again at any second. “Hop and Evan are with him.”

  “I want to go see him. I have to see him.”

  “Not right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Vince wants to talk to you,” Daddy said gruffly. “If you think you can do it. You don’t have to.”

  “I don’t mind. Why are you mad at Roanie?”

  “I—I’m just mad in general, honey. Because my little girl got hurt.”

  “But Roanie didn’t do anything wrong! He came to help me. It was my fault.”

  “Oh, honey, it wasn’t your fault at all. Don’t worry about Roanie right now.”

  “When can I worry about him?” I was still fuzzy.

  “Not ever again, if I can help it,” Mama said.

  I thought that sounded promising.

  Mama helped me put on a nightgo
wn and my pink terry-cloth robe. She gave me a pill. I didn’t hurt at all. I felt quite happy, actually. Daddy carried me downstairs. All my aunts and uncles were there and some of my grown cousins. I remember the tearful faces, the strained, angry faces, the sympathetic faces. “Hi. I’m fine,” I announced with gauzy determination as we passed through the crowd in the hall. “Roanie’s fine, too. We’re fine.”

  “Look at her eye,” Aunt Lucille moaned. “And her mouth. Oh, God.”

  “There’s the result of associating with lowlifes,” Aunt Arnetta said loudly. “I told everybody nothing good would come of this. But oh, no, would anybody in this house listen to me?”

  “Nobody’s arguing with you now,” Uncle Eldon growled.

  I would have. But we went into the living room, and I couldn’t think fast enough.

  I knew things were bad when I saw Uncle Ralph. If Uncle Ralph had come from Atlanta, we needed lawyer advice. He sat beside us on the couch and told me I was one brave cutie.

  Daddy held me on his lap. I clutched Mama’s hand. Sheriff Vince sat across from us. He smiled at me and asked me to tell him exactly what had happened. I told him once. I told him again. He made notes.

  “Roanie cried,” I blurted out desperately. “He cried because he had to shoot his daddy. I know he was sorry.”

  “Now think hard,” Vince said. “What did you hear Big Roan yell before you heard the pistol go off?”

  I had already repeated, “ ‘Goddamn shit, you raise a hand against me and I’ll—’ ” twice.

  But it dawned on me what he was getting at and what I had to do for Roanie. I stared into space. I pretended to be in deep thought. Then, giving a large and dramatic gasp, I looked Vince straight in the eye. “Mr. Sullivan yelled, ‘Goddamn shit, if you turn on me I’ll kill you.’ ”

  Two words. That was all I had to make up. Vince looked relieved. “You sure about that last part, Claire?”