I took Lulu's words to heart. I envisioned the ghosts as visitors, not malicious boogies, and I began to look for them, though I'd not seen them outside my dreams since that time in the woods. I even started to wander the mountainside seeking them.
Occasionally I'd feel the eyes on me and I'd stop my play to look around. I might have invited them to come out to me if I'd known how. But no, the women kept their distance. I could have forgotten them altogether except for their passing smell of old clothes, drifting sometimes by. Mothballs and cedar. I felt nothing of them except ephemeral words of curiosity, and once of caution. Only one other time in my childhood did they raise their voices, and then they saved my life.
I was alone under the trees that day. It was the year I turned ten, or maybe eleven. The bottom and fringes of my jeans were wet. It had been raining for several days on the mountain, as it often does in early summer.
Bored to death with cabin fever, I'd watched eagerly as the clouds began to crack and steamy beams of light fell through. Then I grabbed my rubber shoes and dashed out of the house before Lulu or Dave could stop me. I took my bicycle and rode over to the neighborhood playground, which was old but in a good state of repair. If any of my friends had managed to escape their own houses, they'd surely join me soon.
I was disappointed but not surprised to find it deserted. The merry-go-round creaked forlornly when I shoved it, spraying water in a big, lazy circle that soaked my pant legs even more. The puddle at the bottom of the slide would have only done worse if I'd splashed through it, and the monkey bars were slick with dangling drops of dew. Sighing, I wiped the water off a swing and sat down to wait.
The scent of musty fabric wafted by. I raised my head. The odor returned, stronger in my nostrils. Scarves and sweaters too long in a drawer. Lingerie washed and neatly folded, put up in a chest.
"Hello? Are you there?"
Get away from here. You get yourself gone.
She was standing beside the spring-mounted animals that had handles on either sides of their cartoonish heads. She wrung her hands together as she spoke.
"Mmm . . . Mae?" I asked. I tightened my grip on the rusty chains that held the swing, but I did not jump or run.
Get away from here. He's coming for you.
"What are you talking about?"
He's coming for you!
"Who?"
She vanished. And behind the spot where she'd stood I saw a man. He wasn't much older than a boy—he might have been a teenager still. He was tall but hunkered over, and terrifically thin. He held his arms close to his torso, as if they were plastered there by his soaking wet shirt. He must have been outside a long time to be so wet. He must have been waiting for me.
His hands were tucked under his armpits and his feet were bound in soggy black boots with laces that trailed off into the grass. At first he held so immobile I thought he might have been another apparition, but when he spoke his voice was mortal enough.
"There you are."
I didn't move. We faced each other across the playground like it was the O.K. Corral. His eyes were partially obscured by his sloppy wet hair, but even at that twenty-yard distance I could see blue and madness in them. I did not know how or if I should reply.
I let him speak again.
"This will be hard. You're not what I expected." His hands began a slow release, creeping down the sides of his rib cage. "You're just a pretty little girl now. That old devil, though. He'll package anything up all pretty."
I tried to match his stare, moment for moment. All around me I could hear the women whispering their warnings, but this man kept me in something like a thrall. I didn't want to flee yet. I wanted to hear him talk some more, in his slow, strong drawl—southern twanged, but not so clipped as the way people in the valley spoke.
He took a small step forward.
"Oh yes, anything at all. Even that ugly ol' soul you've got behind those tiny little-girl ribs. That old devil, he's something else. He thinks if he hides Avery someplace sweet and pretty, that I might think I've made a mistake. He wants me to think you're just a precious innocent. But I know better. I know who you are. I know they brought you back, Avery. I know you'll keep coming back until I find that book, but I'm sworn to do what I can."
He took another muddy step and I found my voice when he said that bit about the book. "What are you talking about?"
He laughed. "Your baby-doll voice won't fool me. You've heard the three sisters too—I know you have. I've heard about it. You can't escape them, Avery. They're God's own furies, chasing you down. They've led me to you."
"Nuh-uh," I argued. "They warned me about you. They said you were coming to get me."
"Then . . . then it's because they're a portent of your death. They wish to witness your destruction."
"You're crazy." I said it deadpan, with a creeping hint of ice. "You're some crazy stranger, and I'm not supposed to talk to strangers. You go away before my friends get here."
No, my baby. I heard her, but I couldn't see her.
No, my baby. Don't you bother talking. He's as mad as the moon, and you'll only make him angry. You've got to run. You've got to start now. You have to outrun him.
One of his hands slid free of his side and in it I saw the black glint of metal. He'd been hiding a handgun, shiny and damp and heavy enough to make his wrist droop. Before he could lift it enough to aim, I finally followed the ghost's advice. I turned and dashed, parting the slender trees with my flailing arms.
Bang.
The first bullet blasted out of the barrel and split a tree trunk to my right.
Water dumped down from the shaken leaves to drench me, but it did not slow me. He was on my heels, but he was not so quick as I was. I knew my way through the ravines that crisscrossed the woods and scarred the hills. This was my world, and I was the wisest scout of all. Even my own friends—kids who knew the wooded gullies as well as I did—couldn't keep up when I started running.
Bang.
Another shot, even farther off base than the first.
Even in my breathless, choking fear I found myself calculating, aiming my flight through the densest clots of trees and down the sharpest, rockiest cuts of earth. I leaped across rain-flushed streams in one fast skip.
He tumbled behind me, gradually losing seconds from his clumsy pursuit. He didn't know which rocks were steady enough to jump from and which would tumble into the water at the slightest touch. He didn't know which piles of leaves masked solid ground and which concealed slime and sharp sticks. Not like I did.
Bang.
I was moving roughly in the direction of home. Going about it the long way, of course—no sense in bolting for the main road where he'd have an open shot at a straight-moving target. Home. It wasn't far. I could make it. I could make it with room to spare.
But what if I wasn't enough ahead of him? My lead was growing, but behind me he was still staggering doggedly through the forest. What if he caught up before Lulu had time to get a gun? What if he came inside? What if he hurt my Lulu? The thought nearly paralyzed me. I stumbled, but recovered. A new plan, then. One that wouldn't bring him so close to my aunt. I shifted my course.
My legs were tiring, but my resolve was fresh. I would draw him away from my beloved goddess. I would shake him on my own. I believed in Lulu, she was unstoppable and unbreakable, but if he caught her by surprise—and if he got off a bullet or two before she had time-to know what was happening . . . I couldn't stand the thought of it. So I kept running farther from her, away and up the mountain, farther from help.
I did this even though I didn't know the area farther up the mountain behind the house.
The rule of thumb in my neighborhood was always, "go down, not up." The playground was down; the safest woods were down. The convenience stores and gas stations were down. The roads that went up headed to either the government parks or to undeveloped real estate.
Naturally, childhood apocrypha had turned the hinterlands into a realm pocked with monsters and malevolent Civil War ghosts; but regardless of what the uncharted lands held in store, I was less afraid of those possibilities than of the skinny man with the gun who would certainly kill me if he caught me. And he might even kill Lulu if he caught her, too, so I had to keep my two-pronged goal in sight: I had to keep him away from home, and keep him away from me.
Bang.
Up and over. Into new territory. I was comforted to see that it didn't look much different from what I usually played in. Nothing but dripping wet trees too thick to let me see far ahead. I dived and weaved, wondering how much longer I could keep it up. Adults marvel at the energy of children, but though it is vast, it is not infinite. I didn't dare glance over my shoulder, lest I run into one of the innumerable trunks. I heard him thrashing and charging, but he was falling behind. I kept my eyes open for a good hiding place, but saw nothing except trees and big rocks in every direction. Maybe on the other side of that precipice . . .
Not that way!
Mae's warning was too late.
I reached for a handhold to throw myself across a rock about as big as I was. I grabbed it, and launched myself half over, half around it. I landed on a pile of leaves and sticks that gave way beneath my weight.
I fell, sliding heels over head down a sloping hole.
At the bottom I lay still, my wind knocked thoroughly out, and I stared up at the vaguely circular patch of sky maybe fifteen feet above. Damp dirt rained down after me. My shoulder hurt. When I lifted it up and looked crooked-necked at the back of my shirt, it was only to notice with encroaching panic that I was bleeding. I'd landed on something hard, sticking up out of the ground. I poked my fingers into the dirt around it and unearthed the head of a shovel. I had brief hopes that I might be able to dig it out and use it for a weapon, but the handle rotted away when I pulled it loose from the ground.
Somewhere above, the crashing feet of my pursuer slowed near the spot where I'd disappeared. I tried not to move, not even to breathe.
An inch at a time his wet head peered over the edge of the hole. "You cannot," he puffed the words laboriously, "outrun justice. You can't. God has promised it." His hand reached over and pointed the gun down at my head. I desperately rolled myself towards what I thought was the edge of the hole.
Bang.
I didn't stop against a wall of dirt. I kept on rolling, down a little farther. My turn took me beyond the friendly skylight and all was dark. I felt wildly around for anything substantial, grasping at dangling tree roots and squeezing handfuls of mud. I dragged my knees up off the spongy ground and forced them to ratchet me into an upright position.
I was more than a little surprised to learn that I could stand without impediment, and finally I wandered a couple of steps farther to lean on a thick square timber. I pressed my wounded back against it and tried not to wonder how much blood I might be leaking.
Overhead I heard the scrambling scuffle that signaled I was still being pursued. The boy yelped when his legs surrendered their balance and he tumbled down after me, landing exactly where I had.
He was wheezing. "There's nowhere for you to go now. You can't stay in this . . . well, or cistern, or whatever, forever . . . it won't hide you long."
It's a mine shaft. Hold your ground. He's blind. Let him pass you.
I dug my back hard into the tunnel wall. Small, squirming things wriggled wetly against me. I jammed my eyes shut, which made almost no difference in the underground dark. Something with many slight legs worked its way up my neck. I pressed my lips together and willed my ears shut too. The bug worked its way up my cheek and-across my scrunched eyelid before heading on past my forehead and over my hair.
The boy tread into the blackness with halting legs. "Give yourself up. I'll do it quick."
He stopped no more than a foot in front of me. I could smell his breath, stinky with corn chips, ranch dip, and cola. I felt the swish of air parting for his waving arms, groping ahead. I unsealed my lips and exhaled as quietly as I could, then slowly sucked in more moldy air through my wide open mouth.
Breathe in. Mustn't make a sound. Breathe out.
He kept moving, another step. Than another. Deeper back, farther from me.
Push the beam, child.
I didn't understand. She said it again.
Push on that beam. Shove your good shoulder against it.
Still afraid to move too much, I leaned a little weight on it and heard a creak.
He heard it too. His footsteps stopped.
No, do it hard. All at once. Then get out of the way. Go back the way you came.
No time to argue. He was turning, his shoes squishing an about-face in the muck.
I lunged, heaving with all my might. The timber groaned and cracked, then collapsed. I darted past it and back towards the patch of sunlight just in time to hear the walls falling in. My pursuer called out but his cries were stifled by the falling wood and mud. Hand over aching hand, knee over scraped knee, I crawled up out of the hole and left him there.
Back topside the rain was falling again, or maybe it was only the wind bothering the trees. It was lovely.
I tumbled back down the side of the mountain until I reached the road to my house, gripping my stinging shoulder as hard as I could, almost crying with relief.
Lulu, keeper of the hearth, was waiting at the door.
They made me go to court.
Lulu was wearing a fitted blue dress that stopped at her knees, and a pair of high heels that made her calves discreetly convex. Dave wore a black T-shirt and jeans. I was trussed up in a green skirt and blouse with cuffs that clenched at my wrists. Since we weren't regular churchgoing folks, it wasn't every day I was forced to present myself in such a manner. The clothes made me uncomfortable even more than the dozens of appraising eyes, all of which were pointed at me.
"And then he what?" the lawyer pressed.
My eyes lurched around the room and caught Dave, who flashed me a wink and a lopsided grin of sympathy. I sat up straighter. "Then he lifted up the gun and he started shooting at me."
"What did you do?"
"Well, mister—I ran like the devil knew my name."
The defense attorney also asked me a round of questions about my early "episodes" in school, trying to convince the jury that I might have provoked the assault, or even imagined it. But my family's lawyer had bullets dug out of trees and rocks waiting in a sealed plastic bag, and the other guy couldn't much argue with those.
I indignantly related the rest of my testimony while the defendant, Malachi Dufresne, sat dourly silent with his hands twisted into a pair of knobby fists. He never looked at me once. He never raised his eyes, not even when his great-aunt took the stand to tell the courtroom what a nice boy he was.
She said it in a mellow accent that sounded like his.
"He's such a good boy. Always has been. Ever since he was a small thing and his parents used to leave him at my home for the summers. He was always so kind to the horses. He's nothing but gentle. I'm sure there's some good reason he came after that child, or at least he thought he had a good reason. My poor nephew needs a doctor, not a prison. If y'all would just let me have him I could get him the best money can buy."
Dave leaned over and whispered in Lulu's ear, mimicking the old woman's scratchy southern voice. "I'm filthy rich. Don't you dare send him to jail."
Lulu nudged him in the ribs and whispered angrily, or maybe fearfully, back. "You stop that. She's got money enough to see it done." And she was right. When the end finally came a few weeks later, the man in charge of jurors' row announced that Malachi should go to a hospital to be evaluated.
Dave shot to his feet, nearly jerking my arm off as he rose. "That's not enough!"
The judge clapped his gavel down and pointed it at Dave's head. "Contain yourself, sir. It is my ruling that Malachi Dufresne be remanded to the Moccasin Bend mental health facility for psychological evaluation, and then he will be returned to court for sentencing in sixty days' time." He dropped the gavel again and stood.
The rest of us rose too, and people began to mill about the courtroom, draining gradually through the exits like a congregation slipping out of church after services. A bailiff came to escort my assailant back into state custody. Lulu put an arm around my shoulder and guided me towards the aisle. "They'll keep him," she told me, squeezing me quickly. "They won't let him go for a long time. Don't worry."
Just then the white-topped aunt came thrusting her elbows forward through the crowd. She knocked aside a middle-aged man talking to a boy about my age and did not even turn to acknowledge them. Instead she turned sideways to pass us by, glowering over her shoulder with chilly blue eyes. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but Lulu cut her off.
"Keep on walking, Tatie."
"I was just going to say—"
"I said, keep on walking, Tatie Eliza. You will leave this child alone."
The crone could not disregard the giantess Lulu, but she was not afraid of her. "Blood will tell," she said, her voice reeking with contempt. "That's all I was going to say."
"And now you've said it, so you keep on moving."
But the little old lady blocked our escape. She dropped her gaze from Lulu to me. Lulu tried to push me back behind her, but I wouldn't go. I wanted to look at this ancient matriarch who refused to stand aside.
She wanted to look at me too. "They haven't told you, have they girl? Not half the truth, I bet they haven't."
I shifted to dislodge myself from Lulu's sheltering grasp, but she wouldn't have it, so I stayed put whether I liked it or not. I craned my neck around her waist and inquired across the aisle. "What . . . what are you—stop it, Lulu, I want to—"
A small head was in the way. It was the boy she'd pushed apart from the man I supposed was his father. The boy stared at me, or through me, as if he could see something inside that I wanted to keep hidden. I tried to lean around him, but his sharp nose demanded my attention. I reached for him to push him away, but his father grabbed him first—like he didn't want me to touch his kid. He drew the child away from me as if I was contaminated.
I glared at them both and he continued to stare blankly over his shoulder, his eyes not leaving mine and his expression not changing. They left through the main doors and I was glad to see them gone.
"Hey, old lady," I said once they were out of the way. I think I was almost loud enough to embarrass Lulu.
"Go on, now, Tatie," she said over my head. "You and I can talk later if you want, but you leave her be." I couldn't believe it. Lulu was actually pleading with the dwarfish, crooked woman in expensive makeup.
Tatie fired her question at me again. "Do you know who I am, girl?"
"You're the crazy guy's aunt."
"And you know who else?" she prompted, shimmying closer.
"Some screwy old lady?"
All the wrinkles in her face sank down to the brim of her nose. She looked positively wicked. She was Snow White's stepmother in a designer dress. "You come here, you mixed-breed brat."
"You leave her alone!" Lulu almost shouted it, forcing me towards Dave.
One of the bailiffs raised an eyebrow and exchanged a glance with the judge, who hesitated at his bench but made no move to intervene. Lulu rotated me a full one hundred and eighty degrees, trying to force me out the other way. But I turned my head and shook it, answering Eliza well enough.
"I," she raised a gnarled finger and repeated the pronoun, "I am your aunt! Hers too—that hussy who'd close your ears if she could. How you like that, girl? An' how do you like that, hussy?"
Lulu was behind me then, pushing me with her knees along the pewlike bench and shoving me towards the door. "Devil take you, Eliza. You and your maniac boy both."
"Maybe he will," she called back. "But I said it already—blood will tell. And that girl will follow him soon enough. You hear me, girl? You'll join him soon, like your mother before you. They'll take you off to Pine Breeze too!"
And we were clear.
Lulu dragged me down the steps and out into the parking lot before I could hear more. My dress shoes clacked and scraped on the asphalt as I hurried to match her long strides towards the car.
"Is that right?" I demanded, squirming my arm free and nearly sprinting by her side. "Is she our aunt?"
When we got to the car, Dave unlocked the door and hustled us into the front seat. "Yeah, is she?" he asked. Together we ganged up to stare down a sullen Lulu. I was surprised by the alliance, and by the fact that there was something about me and Lulu that he didn't know.
My aunt drew her shoulders back, pretending that the seat belt chafed. Without looking over at either of us, she grumbled her unhappy response. "Yes. She's distant kin. Don't make more of it than needs to be said."
"Wow," Dave said.
"Wow," I echoed. Out the back window I saw two policemen guiding my cousin, Malachi Dufresne, into a van with iron mesh bars on the windows. He paused and scanned the crowd, one foot poised midair.
One of the cops pushed him forward, and he disappeared into the vehicle.
Later that night I cornered Lulu in the kitchen. You corner Lulu and you're taking your chances, but I was feeling brave after what I saw as my victory in the courtroom. I sidled up alongside her at the sink and broached the subject I knew she least wanted to see brought up. "So what is that place, what Aunt Eliza said?"
"Don't call her that."
"What was it you called her? Tatie? What's that mean? It's not like 'Katie,' is it? It's not like a name or something?"
"Just call her Eliza. She never needs to hear more than that from you."
I hopped up on the counter and picked at a foil bag of potato chips. "All right." I stuffed a crispy potato shingle into my mouth and talked around my chewing, so I could pretend that Lulu had misheard something in case I needed an excuse to backtrack.
"So it's Pine Breeze, huh—not the Pine Trees like I used to think. And it's for real; I didn't make it up. I really heard it someplace. Are you going to tell me what it is, or not?"
"No, I'm not going to tell you, not yet. And don't ask again. I'll bring it up when I think you're old enough to hear about it."
That wasn't what I wanted to hear, but it wasn't as harsh a reaction as I'd nearly expected.
I grunted, still gnawing on that salty chip. "Maybe I'll ask again, and maybe I won't."
"Well," she said, taking the bag away from me, "you'd better not."
I missed two weeks of school during the trial, and when I returned I was something of a celebrity. Chattanooga isn't a big city, and anyone's business is everyone's business, especially if that business makes the news. Lu mostly kept me clear of the television during those weeks, though I don't think she did me any favors. Not surprisingly, the media had gotten wind that my case was related to an older, equally perplexing one. Soon everyone in town knew more about Leslie than I did.
Leslie. She was my mother.
Her picture had been plastered across the screens almost as often as mine. I don't know which one they used for either of us. My fourth-grade portrait was a likely candidate for me . . . but for my mother? I couldn't even swear I would recognize a photo if I saw one. The only one I knew of was grainy and distant, of the three sisters linked by a tangle of arms thrown over shoulders. Lu couldn't have seriously thought she could keep me from hearing something the entire valley considered old news. She must have known that someone, somewhere would bring it up.
Within a few hours of my return to the classroom, someone did.
There was a new girl in my class. Her name was April, and she was from up North. Not up North like over the river, or up North like Nashville or Louisville, but farther away—Chicago, she said, and you knew it was true. You could hear it in her vowels, and in her almost audible sneer. She believed that the more snow you got for winter the smarter you were; and consequently, the hotter your summers the more likely it was you'd marry a cousin. By the time I met her, she was the most hated member of my class. This is not to say she had no friends; on the contrary, she was quite popular with the richer kids, for they envied her cosmopolitan air and her bizarre clothes, which she insisted were the veritable height of fashion. But make no mistake, they hated her too. They hated her for the reason we all did: she thought she was better than us, and we were afraid she was right.
On my second day back we took a field trip to the train station, the Chattanooga Choo Choo. My apathy knew no bounds. Everyone knew it hadn't been a real station for years, and it had since been converted to a Holiday Inn. After all the excitement of my last month, a mere hotel was not going to engage me. I might have complained aloud, but at least I wasn't stuck in a classroom pretending to pay attention to the goings-on at a chalkboard. Any field trip—even a field trip down the mountain and into the ghetto—was better than a day of diagramming sentences.
I sat sourly in the bus on the ride down the mountain, taking an entire seat to myself so I could spread out, lean my back against the window, and let my head knock against it during rough patches of road. We parked, unloaded, and then all us fourth and fifth graders milled about together while our teachers made arrangements with guides. I stood in the parking lot with my peers and stared up. And up. And up. At what was really quite a grand building.
Yes, it was grand—even despite the nasty urban rot surrounding it. Across the street was a series of restaurants and lesser hotels that hadn't seen a customer in fifty years, boarded and blackened with pollution and mildew. Down the road both ways I saw only more of the same, and except for the large parking garage next to the station, it seemed that everything for blocks around was decrepit and deserted.
But the station. I was grudgingly impressed.
Our teachers ushered us into the lobby. By then my neck was aching, but I couldn't stop myself. An enormous domed ceiling in gold-and-red glass loomed above us, and even the most cynical of students gaped at the glittering glass-and-iron chandeliers. I finally dropped my head and saw my own reflection in the polished marble floor.
The guide started talking in a squeaky old-man voice that matched his appearance in every way. "In 1840," he began, and my mind was already wandering. God, to have stood so long, to have seen and survived so much, only to be turned into a cheesy hotel. It was positively criminal.
With increasing irritation, I sensed someone pressing close to me in the crowd. For once I was actually listening to the lesson and enjoying it, and I didn't want anyone interrupting. I shuffled forward a foot or two towards the front, but April followed me. I knew it was her. I could smell her expensive cherry lip balm even before I saw her, and everyone else knew enough to leave me alone.
I tried to ignore her, but when she whispered into my ear there was little I could do to pretend she wasn't there.
"So it's you, huh? You're the one everyone was talking about."
I nodded, acknowledging that I'd heard her without admitting guilt. I kept my eyes forward, still dutifully watching our guide. "Maybe."
"It is you. I knew it was."
"Then why'd you ask?" I muttered over my shoulder, still refusing to face her.
"Why didn't you just say yes?"
I didn't answer, hoping without real hope that she might go away.
"Why did your cousin try to kill you?" she asked bluntly.
The question startled me so much I evaded an answer without even meaning to. "How did you know he was my cousin?" I hadn't even known it until the trial was over, and I'd found out in the privacy of my kitchen. What did this girl know, anyway?
"Everybody knows. They said it on the news. And they said your mother was in a crazy hospital when she had you. They said she was only a teenager and she died and you don't even know who your father is. They said your cousin thought you were a wicked witch and that's why he did it."
Warm color crept up my neck, but thankfully my shirt collar hid it for the most part. "You can't believe everything you hear on TV," I admonished, but I couldn't help but wonder. Suddenly I wished I watched more television, and it began to dawn on me that there might be a reason Lu had gotten our cable turned off. "Why do you keep asking questions if you already think you know the answers?"
"Because I keep hearing these really stupid things about what happened to you and I can't believe they're true—even down here."
I gritted my teeth. "Which things?" I almost growled.
She lifted her nose in the air and sniffed like a small, greedy animal. "All of them."
"What do you know, anyway? You weren't there." My voice was rising, but I couldn't really stop it. I wanted to smack her, and it was only out of respect for my surroundings that I did not do so.
"I didn't have to be there. Everyone heard about it. Everyone knows." She folded her arms, challenging me as surely as if she'd offered me pistols at sunrise. I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't even know if the allegations were false—and if they were true, whether or not I should be upset or ashamed. I stood there confused, wanting to either retreat in disdain or defend myself, but not knowing which course of action was appropriate.
From pure desperation, I opted to misdirect. "Shut up, I'm trying to listen. You're going to get us in trouble. We're not supposed to be talking."
She went on anyway, her voice just low enough to keep our teacher's head from turning. "I mean, it's not like it matters. You don't have to say anything. I know it's true, and I'm going to go home and tell my dad and stepmom that I got to meet you. I'll tell them it's all true, just like they heard on the TV, and that I'm stuck having class with that witch. They'll love that. Maybe they'll love it so much they'll take me out of this stupid redneck school."
I closed my eyes, concentrating on the old man, who went on speaking in his dreary drone about things I would have found fascinating under different circumstances. He gestured at the ceiling and said something pithy and rehearsed about the glass, and then he pointed back out at the restaurant and revealed another historical nugget.
It all sailed past me.
My rage was positively palpable. I wasn't too offended by the R word; heaven knows I threw it around plenty myself. Even so, I wanted to slug April more surely than I wanted to wake up the next morning. My fingers wrung themselves into a white-knuckled frenzy, but I clutched them at my sides, paralyzed by indecision.
"What's the matter, witch? Can't think of a good spell? Are you going to turn me into a frog?"
One after another I measured my breaths, deep and slow. "I wish I could. We eat frogs around here." Well, I'd never eaten any personally and I didn't know anyone who had, but I'd heard that it was something that rednecks did.
She laughed out loud. "Jesus," she blasphemed happily. "Nothing you people do would surprise me. Shit, I want out of here so bad."
"Then go home. Or one of these days I'm gonna send you home airmail," I threatened, fists beginning to shake.
"I believe it, too. My dad says you guys are the worst kind of southerners."
I couldn't stop myself. I had to ask, even though it meant asking a question when I already knew the answer. I just wanted to hear her say it. I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but that's the story of my life.
"What do you mean, you guys?"
"I mean," and she drew her mouth up to my ear once more. I hadn't yet faced her and she wanted to make sure she still commanded my attention. I believe she would've crawled inside my head if she could have, to make sure I heard her. "You guys who aren't all white and aren't all black. You're not anything except the worst mix of a bad lot, and it don't surprise my dad at all that a family like yours would have something crazy like this going on."
"Thank you," I said quietly.
"For what?"
"For making this really easy."
Later she called it a sucker punch, but she knew it was coming. She practically begged me for it. Right beneath the ribs. My knotty little knuckles slammed into her stomach and then, as she fell, my other hand came up and caught her square in the face. Blood spurted from her nose, surprising me but not stopping me. She reached out and tried to grab my hair but I knocked her hand away and shoved her backwards. Back she went, onto a couch in the lobby and then over it.
Her head must have hit something somewhere along the way, for she did not get up again. Instead she lay there moaning, wiping at her face until scarlet streaked her cheeks and the sleeve of her shirt, even smearing the lovely marble floor.
It was only then, when I stood there panting, fists balled and feet parted, that I realized the old man had quit talking. Silence filled the lobby, despite the crowd gathering in a cautious circle around the scene. Our teacher ran to April's side and lifted her to a sitting position, where she cried and snuffled.
Our other chaperon, Mr. Wicks, found his way to me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me harder than he needed to. "What did you do?" he asked, his runny gray eyes mere inches from my face. "What did you do to her?"
"She—she was, she said—"
"You don't just hit people like that!" He squeezed and I grunted.
I was frightened by his grip, and by the nearness of his breath. I couldn't stand him being so close. I lashed out, mirroring his self-righteous tone and hoping to push him back with my words. "Then why did you ask? Why does everyone keep asking me questions when they already know the answers, or else they don't care?"
He clapped my face in his beefy hand and held my chin so high I had to stand on tiptoe to keep from hurting. "If there was a problem, you should have taken it to me or to your teacher. Now quiet down right now, and unless you want to get kicked out of school the second we get back, you stay quiet!"
We stood that way for several seconds, me with lifted neck and him with menacing veins bulging at his temples. Our nostrils flared a complementary tempo until he released my jaw and we each stepped back.
Inch by inch, the muffled veil that had dropped over the place lifted and small daily noises once again echoed off the glass, brass, and stone. With it came hushed, feverish discussion amongst my schoolmates. I caught quick phrases, nothing I wanted to hear or repeat, as I slumped down on the lobby sofa over which April had stumbled. There I stayed while the tour continued without me, and without April, who was taken back to the school nurse by a chaperon who'd brought her own car. Mr. Wicks sat on the couch opposite me and glared, not speaking.
In order to avoid his laser gaze, I stared at the walls, and into the bar, and out through the glass at the gardens where the train tracks had once run. I strained to hear the rest of the tour guide's speech, but no matter how hard I listened it was lost to me. I gave up, closed my eyes and tried to pretend like I didn't feel like crying.
But I did feel like crying. I was desperately angry and hurt. I wanted my aunt but I didn't want to look like a baby asking for her. Besides, the odds were better than fair she'd get a call as soon as we returned, and I didn't want to face her wrath after yet another principal's message. Probably she wouldn't be angry. Probably she would understand . . . but she might not. Sometimes it was hard to judge.
And my hand ached. I'd never hit anyone before, and it seemed I'd bruised a knuckle or two. Did anyone care? No, of course not. I absently rubbed my wounded hand with my unharmed fingers.
A second teacher appeared to join Mr. Wicks. "Is everyone behaving here?" she asked, eyes boring hatefully into me. Again, I was hurt. She was the advanced reading group teacher and I liked her. I'd thought she liked me too, but she must not have, or she wouldn't have looked at me like that.
"Yes, and it had better stay that way. She'd better be sitting there thinking about what she did."
"Oh, I am," I mumbled with meaning.
"What was that?" they asked in perfect unison.
As if to assert himself, Mr. Wicks leaned forward. His forehead crumpled with disgust and his upper lip lifted at the edge to flash one of his nicotine-stained teeth. "What did you just say?"
"Nothing."
"What?"
"Nothing. I didn't say anything."
The reading teacher folded her arms and lurked behind Mr. Wicks. "You're in plenty enough trouble here, Eden. Don't get smart on us. I just don't understand this sort of behavior from you. I mean, I know you've had . . . some family trouble recently . . ."
I could have sworn I saw one corner of her mouth twitch, as if she'd made a little joke. Mr. Wicks's similar dull grin confirmed my suspicions. With sudden, glaring clarity it became perfectly apparent that they were making fun of me. I clenched both hands again, even the sore one, and dug them into the tops of my legs.
The reading teacher shook her head, trying to cast the smile away. It half worked. She went on. "But if you were having problems with another student you should have called it to our attention. You never take matters into your own hands like that."
I rummaged around in the steaming pile of anger in my chest and found my voice. I lifted it up and offered it out. "And what would you have done?" It came as a whisper, not a very steady one.
The teachers looked at each other, and Mr. Wicks answered for them both. "That depends on the circumstances. We could have sat down and talked things through, and if she was being rude or unkind—then we would have taken action."
"Like what?"
"That depends. But you have to leave that up to us. We're the ones who make the decisions around here."
I sat silent for another moment, growing calmer before looking at either of them. A lesson was coming together, and I sensed it was important. Behind me a pair of high heels clattered on the shiny floor, and phones rang at the check-in desk. Oh yes, it was a hotel now. I looked over my shoulder and out the front windows beside the doors. Across the road the sad, sagging ruins of other hotels and restaurants forlornly decayed to uniform shades of gray.
I raised my eyes. "Can I ask you something?"
They nodded, once again in full accord aligned against me.
"Why is this still here? I mean, people take care of it and keep it pretty. It's not like the rest of everything out here that looks like it's going to fall down any second. Didn't you guys see when we were driving here? The Choo Choo isn't like everything around it. It's different, but people protect it and love it, they don't abandon it or tear it down. This whole part of town looks like it got sick and died. Why does this place still look alive?"
After a few seconds of blank stares from them both, the reading teacher shrugged and softened a little. "I guess because, well, just because it was able to evolve. When it couldn't be one thing anymore, it became something else and kept on living that way . . . and it did it with style."
"But it's not the same."
"But it's still here," she restated my point without contributing anything new. "In the end it outlasted everything else."
So that was it—the lesson unintended.
Yes, it was important indeed. I learned more on that field trip than-my school had ever expected, though it wasn't from the teachers. I-learned volumes more than I might have gleaned from a blackboard, and I learned it from a big brick hotel that patiently wore a tacky neon sign like a plastic crown—not because it looked good but because it had become a necessity.
I closed my eyes again, wanting to remember the beauty of the place instead of my violence there. I listened for the churning engines of long-rusted trains, straining to hear them dragging themselves along the tracks and puffing to a laborious stop. I did not see them on that visit, but in the rear of the hotel, dozens of retired passenger cars were permanently parked on the remaining tracks. Gradually they were being renovated and restored, eventually to become luxury hotel rooms. All the ghosts in the old Pullman and Cincinnati cars cried out the rueful truth in voices like whistles, steam, and crackling lumps of burning coal.
Now you know, now you know. It is not enough to simply survive and to be victorious . . . it must be done with grace.