Shadowed Summer (20 page)

Inside, my body stopped. Daddy knew about Old Mrs. Landry and the fights I got in with Collette, but as far as he knew, I got the sunburn playing outside. My heart didn’t beat, and I didn’t draw a breath. Betrayal stole my voice away.

Uncle Lee had told on me.

I thought I could trust him, but he’d tattled everything to Daddy. I swore to myself I’d never trust him again.

Pressing my teeth together until I felt pressure behind my eyes, I stared at the priest. “People get in fights all the time.”

Father Rey sighed, the very picture of tried patience. As interesting as he was to look at, I decided right then I didn’t like him. He tried too hard to be friendly.

“God gives us signs every day to tell us if we’re on the right path, Iris, and I’m afraid you’re not.”

“Well, I’m done with it, anyway.” Lifting my chin, I made as if to stand up, meaning to sound bored. I think it came out whiny, but I didn’t care. “Are we done?”

Father Rey stood up slowly, then waited for me to join him. Putting a hand on my shoulder, he walked me toward the door. “I want you to think about our talk in earnest. Pray about it and examine yourself. I think with enough reflection, you’ll realize what God’s been trying to tell you all along.”

I just nodded and slipped to the back of the church to light a candle for Mama.

I could admit I was crazy, but I’d prove to them I’d been listening to Elijah all along. I just didn’t know how yet.

After I changed out of my church clothes, I went downstairs and told Daddy I was leaving. Almost businesslike, I stood at his chair to give him my schedule. He had other ideas.

He rubbed his hands against the back of his jeans. “Windows don’t grow on trees, and you’ve got a lot of work to do to pay for a new one.”

It didn’t get much plainer than that. I stomped upstairs to change into my work jeans, the ones spattered with paint and permanently grass-stained at the knees.

I kicked my bed on purpose and bumped my elbows against the walls as I stormed downstairs again. He could make me a slave all he wanted, but he couldn’t make me work hard or cheerfully.

Parking me in the vegetable patch, Daddy handed me a spade and set me to weeding while he pulled out clippers to prune back our bushes.

I took my time getting down in the dirt. Then I plucked weeds one at a time, as slow as I could. The sun beat down on my back, soaking into my dark blue T-shirt and drawing an instant sweat to my skin. I figured I’d die of heatstroke in Daddy’s prison camp; when I asked if I could get a drink of water, he just shot me an ugly look.

My hands sank into the garden. I dug in deep to yank out a weed with broad, fuzzy leaves and little thorns on the stem. Cool and hard beneath a bed of earth, the roots felt like bones, and I shuddered as I worked between them to yank them out.

I planted my knees hard on the ground and pulled, sort of convinced I’d pull out a skeleton or a plant that went all the way to China. Something snapped and I ended up flat on my back, a spray of dirt raining on my face.

A cool shadow fell on me, and when I opened my eyes, I saw someone standing over me. It was Ben, I was sure of it, until I heard his voice.

“Where y’at, Iris?”

I heaved myself to my feet. Elijah’s shadow was already gone, but his voice lingered. My heart pounded, beating my ribs so hard my chest ached. I turned to try to catch a glimpse of him. I saw nothing but my yard and my daddy working in it.

Tossing the pricker bush aside, I delved into the vegetable patch again. Just when I’d settled down, I felt a warm breath against my ear.

I didn’t dare move, though I did manage a whisper. “Quit messing with me, Elijah.”

A cold touch swept up the back of my neck. “You found me where I’m sleeping,” Elijah said, his voice low.

It happened again: that feeling like I’d been invaded. Unwelcome hands clasped my shoulders. Flinging off the sensation, I crossed myself and yelled to Daddy I was getting a drink whether he wanted me to or not, then ran into the house. I don’t know if it was the crossing or the door slamming, but once I was inside, I felt alone again, and I said a little prayer of thanks for that.

chapter fourteen

D
addy had an awful surprise for me when he went back to work. Leaving me to fill his thermos while he answered the door, he let Mrs. Thacker in and folded a thin stack of bills in her worn hand. Telling her that I’d been acting up, he warned her to check on me after I went to bed. I couldn’t go out; nobody could come in, either.

As soon as Daddy left, Mrs. Thacker turned on the television and smiled at me with her yellow, craggy teeth. “Did you miss me?”

I tugged my T-shirt over my knees and stared at the TV, offering up a noise that could have been yes or no, depending on how generous her hearing was that night.

“Tell me about your summer,” she said.

Curling my toes into the couch, I refused to look over. “It’s been all right.”

“Oh, but didn’t the police come?” Mrs. Thacker tried to make it sound innocent, like maybe she wasn’t sure if it had been my house or some other house on the street, but I knew better. She ate gossip like candy; she probably knew exactly how many rocks we’d found in my room and how many Old Mrs. Landry claimed I’d thrown at her windows.

When I didn’t answer, Mrs. Thacker patted the arm of the chair with her dry hand. Leaning her head back, she sighed. “If your daddy had any sense, he’d take a new wife.”

“He don’t need a wife,” I said sullenly.

“It’s my opinion,” Mrs. Thacker said, working into a full chorus of croaks, “that a man can’t handle a child on his own. They turn out funny without a mother’s touch.”

I burrowed into the couch; I wanted to stick cotton in my ears and drown her out. “In my opinion, we turn out just fine.”

“Look at poor Lee, living in sin with that man in Baton Rouge.” Mrs. Thacker ignored me, her finger bobbing like a metronome. “He wouldn’t be like that if your granny had lived.”

My mouth burned. I wanted to shout at her,
Shut up, shut up, shut up!

I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I had to mind. I had to be good enough to get rid of her, for good. Reaching for the remote, I said, “I can’t hear the TV.”

Not that Mrs. Thacker cared. She found a special frequency that went right into my brain. No matter how hard I tried to ignore her, her voice came through. She went on about my daddy and about what a shame it was my mama had died so young, on and on until I was sick with it. My eyes dried out as I watched the clock, blue digital numbers creeping upward somehow slower than a minute at a time.

“. . . got laid up at the hospital. Of course, with that mama of his, he coulda had a whole boxful of reasons for doing something so foolish.”

I peeked around my arm at her, trying to decide if I wanted her to repeat that or not. It sounded like she was talking about Elijah, but she could have been talking about her Henry and his bullfighting days for all I knew. Forcing myself to sound disinterested, I leaned back in the couch. “What’d he go for, anyway?”

“Now you’re interested,” Mrs. Thacker said with a snide smile. “Nobody likes a gossip, Iris.”

She should know,
I thought.

Mrs. Thacker thumped my arm waving her hand in a little circle between us, binding us to a secret. “Delinda Potts used to come in twice a week to clean because Babette always was too precious to do it herself. According to her, that boy swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin and had to have his stomach pumped.”

I stared at her. “Why’d he do something like that?”

“Haven’t you been listening? Love! It’s either love or money, and he wasn’t old enough to worry about money.” Mrs. Thacker dropped back in the recliner, cackling again. “It’s a good thing you look like your daddy, or we would have wondered.”

I knew she wanted me to ask more, but I’d heard everything I wanted to. Pulling my legs out of my shirt, I peeled myself off the couch with a fake yawn. “I better go to bed.”

With a frown, Mrs. Thacker turned to watch me go, raising her voice to call after me, “Don’t you lock your door; I’m going to be checking on you.”

As soon as I got the phone from Daddy’s room, I locked myself up tight anyway and shoved a book under the door just to make sure she couldn’t walk in unannounced. I had a notion to pour my box of marbles in the hallway as a guarantee, but a quick, vivid image of Mrs. Thacker lying at the bottom of the stairs, her head twisted the wrong way, turned me off that. I didn’t like her, but I didn’t want to kill her.

Beneath a stack of covers, I made myself small as I picked up the phone and dialed. After Collette got done hassling me for missing our date at the cemetery, she settled in to listen. She made soft, surprised sounds as I talked, and I could practically hear her nod over the line. I kept my latest Elijah sightings to myself, though. I wanted to work out his riddle on my own.

“You ought to tell your daddy what she said about your family.” For some reason, Collette had jumped back all the way to the beginning instead of saying anything about my new evidence. “That woman’s mean as a scorpion.”

It felt good to have her on my side again, and I nodded. “She is. And she’s got a nasty mouth for an old lady.”

“They ought to lock her and Old Mrs. Landry in a cage together. They could sting each other to death.”

“You think she’s lying, though? About Elijah, I mean. I know she was lying about my mama.” I popped my arm out of the covers, trying to make a little hole for fresh air.

“I don’t know.” Collette hummed softly, then added, “Swallowing pills doesn’t sound like something a boy would do. A boy would want a gun, I’d think.”

I rolled Collette’s point over in my head. It sounded right, and I couldn’t argue it, but then I remembered something. “Miss Nan said he wasn’t allowed to go hunting, though. If he didn’t have a gun, he might take pills.”

“Well, Miss Nan said he wasn’t allowed to have a girlfriend, but there she was,” Collette said.

Annoyed, I frowned. “You can sneak and have a girlfriend. How do you sneak and have a gun? I think Mrs. Thacker’s right.”

Another hum crackled over the line. “We should ask Ben; he’d know.”

Throwing the covers off my head, I swabbed the sweat from my face and let loose on her. “He wouldn’t know any better than you would, and I asked you. You can think just fine without running to Ben to ask if it’s all right, you know.”