Penumbra (23 page)

D
otty held the paddle in the water, steering the boat as the boy had told her. Down the long miles of the rain-swollen river, she’d become adept at using the paddle as a rudder. Paddling wasn’t necessary; the current was swift, and she’d learned to search for and avoid eddies that could grasp the boat and suck it down to the bottom.

The rain had lessened, but the boy still used his hands to bail the boat, which either had a leak or was filling with rain. The woman was curled in a fetal position in the bottom of the boat, her face opalescent in the occasional flashes of lightning. The boy had covered her with the curtain, and Dotty didn’t know if she was alive or not. Dotty could do nothing for the woman one way or the other. She had to focus on holding the paddle like a rudder, even though her hands were blistered and cracked. Just before they’d made it to the river, her left foot had slipped on a root and now her little toe dangled precariously, held on by a hunk of flesh. She’d almost severed it. Once she got back to town, Dantzler Archey was going to suffer. She turned her face into the rain as her thoughts curled hot and angry. She would live because she wanted to make sure he paid for all he’d done. Whenever she felt ready to drop the paddle and quit, when her shoulders burned with exertion and her foot throbbed with pain, she visualized Archey, naked and staked to the ground as she poured honey over his penis and waited for the ants to find him.

“Go left,” the boy said in his strange voice.

She might not have understood him except she saw him waving in a burst of lightning. She repositioned the boat paddle and felt the small wooden craft swing toward the left bank. She’d given up trying to imagine where they might be on the river. It shifted and curved, and she’d lost all sense of direction and only hoped they were still on the Chickasawhay. The boy had told her there was a small community on the river, a place called Merrill. The river was running swift and fast with the rainwater, a virtual flood.

“Slow down!” the boy cried.

She used the paddle in backward arcs, frantically trying to halt the swift progress of the boat. If they overshot the landing there would be no paddling against the current and they might end up, starved to death, in the Mississippi Sound.

“Look!” The boy was trying to stand up in the boat, making it rock from side to side.

“Sit your ass down!” she cried, swinging the boat in a half circle. She saw it then, the white arms extended, the back floating gently on the current. Naked and beautiful, the slender spine disappeared into the dark waters. It was a child’s body.

She maneuvered the boat so that she was beside it. She could hear the skull knocking gently into the side of the boat just as the rain stopped. She knew she should reach out and catch the fan of dark hair that floated like silk on the water, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch it.

“Grab it,” the boy said. He was hunkered down in the bow, ready to crawl toward her and help.

She shook her head. “No,” she said.

“Get it,” the boy demanded.

She couldn’t force herself to touch the body. She shook her head, even though the boy couldn’t see her.

She felt the boat rock again and knew he was coming to the stern. She didn’t protest but held the paddle in the water so the boat stayed beside the body.

The boy crept to the side, his hand snaking fast and clutching the hair. Grunting from the exertion, he began to pull the body into the boat. Dotty grabbed an arm and then a leg and helped him haul the cold, dead thing into the bottom of the boat, where it fell beside the boy’s mother. Dotty felt nothing at all. It was the body of a small person, a child, but in the darkness she couldn’t tell the sex. She didn’t want to know. She waited for the boy to get back into position in the bow, and then she steered the boat back into the current.

“Shouldn’t be far now,” the boy said, and he spoke quietly, because the rain had stopped and silence had fallen over the river. “We’re in the forks,” he said. “Take us left.”

The boat seemed to glide on the still water. The current was swift, but without the noise of the rain, it seemed they moved across glass. The clouds were shifting in the sky, and an occasional glint of moonlight illuminated the water like a silver pathway before the clouds thickened again.

“More to the left,” the boy said, urgency in his voice.

She adjusted their course so that they were only fifteen feet from the overhanging limbs of the bank. A strong wind had picked up, a wind from the south, blowing against them, slowing their progress to a lazy crawl. The clouds slipped away from the moon, and suddenly the river shimmered in the lunar glow. She looked down at the child in the bottom of the boat. Suzanna Bramlett rested beside the boy’s mother. The crazy woman had taken the curtain that was her only protection and draped it over the child’s body.

Dotty burst into tears. Her wail of despair echoed off the river-banks and the wooden pier that rose out of the shadows of the bank like a whisper of hope.

Jade timed her jump, and when Junior walked close to the sideboard, she leapt upon his back with an inhuman shriek. She held the knife aloft and drove it with all her force into his neck. The blade struck his collarbone and glanced off with a jolt that numbed her arm to her elbow.

Junior gave a roar of pain and rage and began to whirl. He bumped into the table and ricocheted to the sideboard, where his weight caught Jade’s lower leg and ankle with such a burst of pain that she almost loosened her grip around his throat. He shook like a bull, and it took all of her strength to hold on to him, her arm around his throat and her knees gripping his hips. She raised the knife again, just as he lurched into the wall. The blade sliced his cheek, opening a gash from the corner of his eye to his lip.

“I’m gonna kill you,” he raged, and ran full tilt across the room, aiming to smash her into the fireplace.

Jade stabbed again, this time hitting his right eye. She felt him stagger. He took two more steps and dropped to his knees. She brought the knife down into his back as she slipped off him. He fell to the floor and began to crawl.

Panting, Jade started to retch. She heard someone calling her name and she staggered away from Junior. She couldn’t kill him. She couldn’t. Now that he no longer threatened her or Marlena, she could not finish him off, though it shamed her to realize it.

“Jade!” Frank burst into the dining room from the kitchen. The storm had ceased and moonlight flitted through the window, illuminating her as she stood, hunkered over and gasping, the taste of vomit bitter in her mouth.

“Jade!” Frank was beside her, pulling her against him as she sobbed.

On the floor, Junior moaned.

“He’s still alive,” Jade said. “He’s still alive.” She started to cry. “I can’t kill him.”

Frank helped her into the kitchen. He pulled out a chair and eased her into it. His hands on her shoulders were strong and warm. Kneeling beside her, he stroked her back and murmured in a tone that comforted her.

In the dining room, Junior thrashed into a chair. It fell to the hardwood floor, the sound echoing in the still night. “Help me,” Junior cried in a voice that shook.

Jade could no longer check her sobs. Frank’s arms circled her and shifted her so that she leaned against his chest.

“Go on and cry,” he said softly. “That’s the best thing now. Just cry it out.”

While Junior struggled in the dining room, knocking furniture over, Frank stroked her back and hair as she cried. His strong hands softened the horror of the past hour. Junior Clements had meant to kill her and Marlena. She’d stabbed him several times. Even now, he writhed across the floor of the Kimble house, slowly dying. Jade clung to Frank as she sobbed.

When the worst of it was over, Frank touched her face. “Is Marlena okay?”

“She’s in the pantry,” Jade said.

Frank rose and walked across the room. Jade watched as he opened the pantry door and saw what looked like a sheet-covered chair. He uncovered Marlena’s sleeping face, touched her cheek to discern if she was still alive. He tried to wake her, but without success. He returned to Jade. “You have to get Marlena to the hospital,” he said.

“You take us.” Jade knew she sounded weak and frightened, “Junior’s still alive. I can hear him whimpering.”

“You have to take Marlena. Now.” He grasped her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “I have something to do.”

Something glass crashed to the floor in the dining room. Junior was moving again.

“What are you going to do?” Jade asked.

Frank touched her cheek. “You don’t need to worry. Not ever again. Now let’s get Marlena in the car and you go. When you get to the hospital, call Sheriff Huey. Find him wherever he is and get him over there.” He kissed her cheek. “And find your daddy. He’s worried sick.”

Dotty felt hands lifting her from the boat, and she had no energy left to fight against them. Her foot bumped the pier, and she cried out.

“Holy shit,” a man’s voice said.

“Get the other woman. Is she alive?”

“I can’t tell. The girl is dead. Been dead a while.”

Dotty let the man carry her across the creaking boards of the pier. The sound of his footsteps stopped in the sand, and she leaned her head against his chest and let go of the last tenuous threads of consciousness.

She came to again in the backseat of a car, the driver a silhouette in the front seat. Beside him and looking back at her was a woman.

“She’s awake,” the woman said, punching the man on the shoulder.

“Who are you?” Dotty asked.

“I’m Bill Fairly,” the man said, slowing so he could glance back at her. “This is my wife, Emmy. We’re taking you to the hospital in Drexel.”

“Where’s the boy and the woman?” Dotty tried to sit up, but the woman in the front seat put a hand on her chest and pushed her back down.

“Stay still ‘til we get you to the hospital,” she said.

“Where are they?” Dotty felt a surge of panic.

“They’re right behind us,” the woman said. “They’re in another car.” She turned so that Dotty could see her profile, the sharp nose and the makeup-free face that was brown and wrinkled from the sun. “Who’s the dead girl?” the woman asked.

“Suzanna Bramlett,” Dotty said. “Lucas Bramlett’s daughter. We found her floating in the river.”

“That’s the little girl’s been missing.” She stated a fact. “I knew she was dead.”

“Who’s the woman and boy?” the man asked, his voice less sympathetic.

“I don’t know their names,” Dotty said. “They helped me escape.”

“Escape?” the woman asked, casting a glance at her husband that clearly questioned Dotty’s sanity. “Somebody been holding you prisoner?”

Dotty leaned back against the seat, the motion of the car lulling, even though she didn’t want to give in to it. She didn’t know these people, couldn’t be sure if she could trust them or not. But she was too tired to fight any longer. Too tired to protect herself or the boy. She closed her eyes and slept.

The way Jonah figured it, he had two advantages. He knew the house from attic to crawlspace, and he wanted to live. The rain had stopped, and the silence that settled over the house seemed magnified. As soon as he turned off the flashlight, he moved to the right, easing into the front bedroom that Jade had converted into a sewing room. He hugged the walls, knowing that the boards in the center of the room would creak with his weight.

“Dupree,” Pet said, “you might as well come on out. I ain’t leavin’ until I find out where that gal has gone. You can tell me and make it easy, or it can go hard. Either way, I got to know where she is.”

Jonah didn’t utter a sound. He shifted down the wall, moving around the sewing machine and then the chifforobe.

“I ain’t got all night,” Pet said. “Somebody’s waitin’ on me.”

That would be Junior, Jonah thought. Pet didn’t have the initiative to do anything on his own. He was working at Junior’s behest.

“The storm’s gone by and they’ll have the power on soon enough,” Pet said. There was a whine in his voice. “Just tell me where Jade went and I’ll be gone.”

Jonah gripped the flashlight. He’d made it through the front bedroom and was halfway through Jade’s. The house was built in a circle, with one room leading into the next. He slipped into the bathroom, and then the kitchen.

“Listen here, nigger. You best tell me what I want to know or you’ll be more than sorry.”

Jonah prayed that he would keep talking. In the darkness, that was the only way he could locate Pet. He hadn’t moved. He was still in the front room, probably still in the rocking chair. Pet was not a ball of fire at any job, not even intimidation.

Jonah stepped wide over an old plank in the kitchen that moaned and complained whenever anyone trod on it. He’d avoided it most of his life, especially when he was trying to slip home after a late evening. He eased through the dining room and stood in the doorway to the parlor. Since the storm had stopped, the night was so quiet he could hear the frogs down at the pond, which was over a mile away. He listened for the creak of the rocker. He heard one soft movement of the chair.

He didn’t hesitate. He lifted the flashlight as he ran into the room. He brought it down in a vicious swing that connected with flesh and bone. Something wet and solid hit the floor. Pet Wilkinson made a sound like a sigh, a soft exhalation, and then he fell to the floor. Jonah stood in the darkness, his breath ragged and his heart hammering. When he could finally move, he bent to the body. There was no pulse, no sign of life. He felt along the body until he came to the head, which was split open and sticky with blood. He’d caught Pet right at the temple. He couldn’t have hit him more perfectly had he aimed.

Jonah stood up, wiped his hand on his pants, and hurried out the door. Jade might be at the hospital, and Junior Clements was looking for her.

As he drove to town, he thought about Lucille’s car. Well now, if she wanted to have him arrested, they could add a charge of murder to his sins. He hadn’t intended to kill Pet, but he had. He had no regrets. Pet had come to hurt Jade, had probably hurt Marlena. Now he would never hurt anyone again.