Me & Emma (31 page)

I want to reach for her. I want her to pull me onto her lap and tell me we’re going home, it’s all been a bad dream. I want…

“Caroline, if there’s something you want to tell us, something you maybe need to git offa your chest, well, then,” a large man I recognize as being the one who tacked the sign up to our door—the sheriff!—has moved in front of Momma. His face looks sad, his eyes locked into mine, looking for an answer to this question they keep asking me over and over again. But looking back out at him is like looking through a lace curtain on a sunny day—I see the light there but I can’t quite make out the shapes. What happened, what happened, they keep saying—asking—those two words, and for the life of me I don’t know what they’re talking about.

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I look from the sheriff to Momma and back again for a hint to the answer.

Momma doesn’t let on as she knows so it’s up to me to come up with the answer. I look back at the sheriff. I don’t know, sir, I tell him with my eyes, since my mouth isn’t following orders from my brain. Truth to tell, I don’t know. The harder I think on it the less I remember.

Then, a flash of Mr. Wilson carrying something shiny. Mr. Wilson, who’s been so good to me. A man has to answer for the bad things he done.

“How long you been firing guns off, anyhow ?” Momma says, folding against the back of the chair—I guess leaning in toward me got too tiring. “A gun went and killed your own daddy…and you learning how to do the same from some crazy man out in the woods. No respect for her dead daddy, that’s what she’s got.”

“Mrs. Parker, please,” the sheriff says. “Let us take it from here.” She taps the pack of cigarettes so one comes out and she lights it and draws on it hard, blowing smoke up to the ceiling when it’s time to breathe out.

The sheriff’s voice is softer than Momma’s, calmer, like it’s floating across the air and petting me. “You want to tell me what happened ‘fore we got there?”

I close my eyes and see a flash of Richard, drinking beer at the

kitchen table.

“Carrie?”

Then another flash, this one with my heartbeat loud in my ears as

I run through the two rooms upstairs looking for something. “Caroline?”

Looking for someone.

“Let’s leave her be for a while,” he says.

ME & EMMA

Looking for…

“Oh, fine,” she says, from a place that might as well have been a

million miles away. Looking for… “Emma” is all I can say.

“What? What’d you say, honey?” Footsteps cross the room, coming closer to me. “Say again?”

I look as surprised to hear my own voice as they do. “Emma.” He looks at Momma, who looks like all the life’s been sucked out of her suddenly, her head drops down–clunk—like a rag doll’s.

Then it shakes slow-like from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. “You want to tell me about Emma?”

“I was looking for Emma.” I must be whispering ‘cause he’s leaning into me so close I can smell the tobacca on his breath.

“You were Iooking for Emma…” He wants me to keep going but that’s all I know.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Momma says, her voice as tired as her head.

“Wait!” The sheriff holds up a hand to quiet her. “Go on,” he says to me.

Momma, please, I’m thinking. Please help me. Make it better like Daddy always used to do. Please, Momma.

A flash again. Richard’s laugh cuts into my head. My head, pounding on either side of my eyes, trying to thump, thump, thump the picture out, then back in. A door swinging open. Richard’s smile turning upside down, his eyes wide. Thump, thump, thump. Heaviness in my

arms, in my hands. Thump, thump, thump.

“I couldn’t find Emma.”

Another flash: Mr. Wilson climbing the stairs to his house. Something shiny.

The man reaches across the corner of the tabletop to rest his hand

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quietly on top of mine, relaxing it for a spell, its lightness surprising ‘cause it’s so wide and knotted.

“He was carrying a gun back in the house/’

With my eyes I trace the winding veins on the back of his hand. Bumpy rivers.

“Who?” The sheriff is practically begging for the answer. “Who was carrying a gun into the house?”

I look at him and realize I have to tell him what I saw. I have to tell on my friend.

No. He couldn’t have done it. No.

I can hear my own voice telling Emma, It’s one thing to kill a can, it’s another altogether to kill a man, no matter how much he needs killing.

Mr. Wilson’d never hurt a fly. But then I can hear his voice in my head, clear as day: Back in my day a man had to answer for the things he done. He said it himself.

Maybe he wanted Richard dead after all. And he was carrying that shiny gun, too.

“Who was carrying a gun into the house, Caroline?” the sheriff asks me again. Then again, right now I’m not even sure my name’s Caroline—I’m so tired and my head keeps on a’pounding under my hair.

“Mr. Wilson.”

“What?” He leans forward even closer to my face. “I didn’t hear ya, honey. What did you say?”

I slowly move my face up from looking down at my dirty hands with scratches on my palms from falling on the path. I look him

square in the eye, ready to say the name again. I’m sorry, Mr. Wilson. “Mr. Wilson.”

“Now, I don’t appreciate your playing games with me, Caroline,” the sheriff says, “but I know you’ve been through a lot these past

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twenty-four hours, so I’m gonna overlook that. Tell us who was carrying the gun into the house, honey.”

“I told you. Mr. Wilson. I saw him…”

The sheriff looks down at his own hands and shakes his head, thinking something to himself what, I don’t rightly know.

“I’m telling you what I saw—” I start to say but he cuts me off.

“Honey, you need to start leveling with us. Your momma and I

need to know what all happened back there at yet house.”

“Mr. Wilson—”

“Drum Wilson is a friend of mine,” he says, pointing his finger at my face, “and I happen to know for a fact that he wasn’t anywhere

near your house at the time the gun went off “

“But—”

“But nothing. He was with me and about half the town, down at Sonny Zebulon’s celebratin’ his birthday.” The sheriffturns to explain to Momma. “Sonny Zebulon’s the oldest living fella in town and yesterday was his ninety-fifth birthday. Man can still play like the calluses are flesh on his fingertips …. Anyhow, Drum Wilson was down there with the rest of us, playin’ out some tunes for Zeb’s ninety-fifth. Wilson even splurged and brought out the mother-o’-pearl mandolin his pappy used to play on …. “

While he’s carrying on about the party down at Zebulon’s I squinch

my eyes closed, trying to picture the form of Mr. Wilson, walking up his front steps, carrying…

“Thing’s worth more’n all of us put together…” the sheriff’s sayg.

Carrying something…

“It’s beautiful, shell inlay, shined up nice…”

Something shiny! His mandolin! The moonlight only hit the thing for a second, but now I realize that’s exactly what it was. It wasn’t no

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gun after all. I knew he couldn’t hurt a flea on Brownie’s back! I knew it.

“Anyhow—” the sheriff turns back to me “—that’s how come I know Drum Wilson ain’t the one who fired the gun. So who was it, little girl?”

“Momma, where’s Emma?”

Then I see something in my head. Something that almost feels like it could have been a dream.

“Git…out…now.” I can still hear the way she whispered it to me while she was laying out in a bloody mess.

I remember telling her, “I’m not leaving you, Momma.”

And I remember the sound of Richard coming in from the kitchen, yelling. I can even hear him slurring the words the way he does after a few drinks.

But then something comes to me that I didn’t remember until just

now.

He grabbed me by the back of my shirt on my way trying to slip out the back door to Mr. Wilson’s!

“Piece ofshit,” he said. But then he continued on hollering. I didn’t remember that from before.

“Let me go!” I can remember squirming to get free from his grip.

“You seen those prices in thar,” he says to me like I’d know what

he was talking about. “Place’s beggin’ to be robbed, y’ask me!” I can see myself biting the hand that’s got hold of my shirt. “What the hell… ?” he said.

“Where’s Emma?” I remember swinging around to face him. I can even hear my voice that didn’t even sound like my voice at the time, all screechy it was.

I can see the corners of Richard’s mouth curl up on either side of the round bottle he’s pulling beer from. He didn’t answer me.

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“Where is she?” I pushed past him into the kitchen.

“No need lookin’,” I remember he called out from the front room, from the ratty old chair that’s the only thing settin’ upright in the mess, his heel resting across his other knee. “She ain’t here.”

“Where is she?” I pushed back through the swinging door that separates the two rooms from each other. “Huh?”

“Don’t you ‘huh’ me,” he said, uncurling his first finger from

around the bottle he was holding so he could point at me with it. “Tell me where Emma is.”

“What if I told you a little secret?” he asked, simple, like he’s ordering up a cheese steak for supper. Only his mouth was in a smile. “What if I told you something I’s sworn not to tell?”

“Emma!” I hollered up from the foot of the stairs. “Emma! Where you at?”

“I told you, she ain’t here.”

I remember looking back over at him.

“And here it is—she’s dead!”

There was a rushing sound against my eardrums and I reckon it was the blood flooding my head.

“In fact, I kilt her,” he said, swigging his beer, uncrossing his legs.

I remember taking the stairs two at a time and running into his room, then into mine. Nothing.

“No more Emma.” I can still hear his voice. And that laugh. That laugh is what told me he wasn’t lying.

“He laughed.” I open my eyes and tell the sheriff. “He laughed when he told me…” I can’t say the words.

“When he told you…” His voice melts into the air. “When he told

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you…” He tries again. I look at him and look away, remembering what Richard told me about my sister.

“He told me…” I gulp. “He told me…he told me he kilt her.” I look at him to make sure I said the words out loud instead of just plain thought them, ‘cause sometimes I do that, think I say something when it’s really just something batting around inside my head.

He’s silent. I cain’t look at Momma. In case she doesn’t yet know

Richard kilt her baby. I cain’t look at her.

“He told you he killed Emma?”

I nod, keeping the tears inside my eyes.

The man looks over his shoulder at Momma and moves his hand up from mine. I feel Momma move in close to me.

“Mrs. Parker, hold on,” he says, putting his hand into a stop sign in front of her. “Let her go on. What else do you remember, honey?”

I close my eyes and once again, scenes come back to me and I don’t know whether they’re real or in a dream.

Jumping over rocks. A path up from the blacktop. I remember it being dark, so dark I was relying on my feet to show me the way I’d gone so many times before. I remember seeing Mr. Wilson going in the front door. Waiting. Then… wait…I think I went around back. Did I? I think so.

I remember feeling my way along to the gun shack. Oh, Lord. I think I did. I remember waiting a spell and opening my eyes wider than they’ve ever been so they’d adjust to the pitch blackness of the inside of the shed.

You know what happens next, Emma said. I remember hearing her words ping-ponging from one side of my brain to the other. We’re gonna kill Richard.

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“Where’s Emma?” I ask Momma and the sheriff.

“Keep going, honey,” he says. “Keep trying to remember what happened next.”

“Momma? Where’s Emma?” But she looks away from me when

she fits the cigarette into her swollen mouth and pulls smoke from it. So I close my eyes and take myself back there.

We got to kill him, Carrie, she said. I remember it like it was five minutes ago. We got to kill him.

I remember picking it up and popping open the chamber to see if I had to hunt for bullets. I felt along one, two, three, four, five open holes. On the sixth my finger runs right over and I knew there was one in there. One bullet. One man in need of killing.

“He killed her,” I say. Their faces look scary, unexpected. “He told me he killed her,” I cry. “Momma?”

But she won’t look at me. I think that’s another reason why it’s so easy to close my eyes. I hate seeing her turn away from me, looking the way she does.

“I got the gun,” I tell them in between gulps for air. Her head snaps back to me all the sudden. “I had to get the gun.” I cry harder.

“It’s okay, honey.” The sheriff’s saying all the things Momma would if she were good with tears. “You can tell us. We’ll make it all okay. Just tell us what happened next.”

When I squeeze my eyes back closed again, the lids wring out the tears like a wet dish towel after cleaning.

I remember the gun slowed me a bit but not much. The blacktop was easier to run along than the path leading down from Mr. Wil-

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son’s, but scarier, too, ‘cause at any minute a car or truck could’v happened along. I remember going faster. And faster still. The pa.th up to our house was steep, the sandy, rocky ground tripping me up but never catching me altogether. I remember seeing the light i.n the kitchen poking through the pine trees. Catching my breath, I flt the metal of the gun handle when I wiped my hand against my fore:head.

I can still see the house getting closer. Closer still. At the foot .of the front steps I grabbed hold of the gun with two hands, locking rny elbows like I saw him teach Emma to do. I remember counting th steps up, knowing I couldn’t look down at them, my feet steadily carrying me inside on their own. I tried to breathe in and out slow through my nose like Mr. Wilson told me to before I take a shot. I think I di,d that for a second but then I think I panted through my mouth.