“You could leave him.”
“He needs me, and I need him. You understand that, don’t you? Ain’t that why you’re out here in nowhere?”
“I could leave. I will someday.”
“But you haven’t yet.”
“It don’t seem right, though. You, a girl, out on the road.”
“Well, we’re not on the road now, are we? Come on inside. There’s something I want to show you.”
Marcy took Speck’s hand and led him inside over to the bed. She reached down and slid the battered suitcase from underneath. “This is my hope chest.” She untied the twine and lifted the lid. She took a carefully folded white cotton dress from the case and then a patchwork quilt, a pair of polished black leather shoes with hard buckles, something made of lace that she quickly hid beneath the quilt, the brush and mirror, and finally a photograph — Marcy when she was a fair-haired child wearing a long white dress — in a gold frame.
“This ain’t the hope chest itself, naturally. It’s what goes in one.” She arranged the few pieces on the bed. “These are my pretty things. I’d hate worse than anything to part with these.” She lifted from the suitcase a wad of newspaper and unwrapped a small glass globe.
“I thought it’d be broke,” she said. “It’s so delicate.”
She showed Speck. Beneath the little roof of glass there was a tiny city of white with steeples and onion-shaped domes, castles, and palaces. Blue lagoons and arched bridges connected the white streets. On the bottom of the globe there was gold printing: Enter herein ye sons of men.
“What is it?” Speck said.
“It’s the World’s Fair. In St. Louis a long time ago. This came from there. It was a keepsake. It’s for looking and dreaming. Watch.” She turned the globe upside down and hundreds of silvery flakes floated above the miniature city before settling silently back to the bottom. “Don’t they look just like stars?” Marcy said. “Don’t you wish you could be somewhere so pretty? It was handed down in my family from my mother’s side. Her daddy helped build it — the fair.”
“You saw it?”
“It was a long time ago. It ain’t there no more. They built up this great white city and people came from all over the world, and then when it was over they tore it all down like it never happened, like it was kind of a dream. Still, I want to see where it was someday.”
“I could take you there.”
“That would be nice. Maybe someday you’ll be there, and you’ll look up and I’ll be getting off a trolley car, just like that. It’s nice to think so.” She carefully rewrapped the globe and put it back in the suitcase in the folds of the quilts and dresses.
“Why can’t you just go back to where you came from?” Speck asked. “Back to your people. There must be someone.”
“I told you, they wouldn’t want me,” she said. “Not now.”
“But why? You deserve better than... than this.”
“Oh, it’s not so bad.” She cupped her hand on Speck’s smooth cheek. “Now you better go.” From within the woods came the sound of movement, and Marcy told Speck, “Go. Now.”
The boy ran for the door as Marcy hurried to put out the light.
Calvin made his way unsteadily toward the door and then stopped and pissed on the ground before going inside. Speck creeped around to the back of the shack and watched through the widow.
“What’s all this?” Calvin said. He grabbed the girl and threw her onto the bed. Marcy tried to scramble for the door, but Calvin caught her by the leg and dragged her back. He pulled his belt off in one quick motion and began to lash her legs. Marcy curled into a ball and covered herself with her hands, but then Calvin whipped the belt across her face. She whimpered and begged for him to stop. And then she lay still while he climbed on top of her.
The boy felt powerless to stop it. He told himself it was for the girl that he hesitated. That it would be worse for her if he interfered. But he knew he was afraid for himself. So he waited while the man’s grunts and moans subsided, watched as the girl turned her face into the mattress and waited for the whole thing to be over.
The next morning, Marcy moved like an awkward, tentative bird. She wore the old floppy men’s hat pulled down over her forehead. Calvin, meanwhile, emerged from the shack smiling his thin, menacing smile. “Breakfast ready?” he said as he passed by Speck on his way to the sawmill.
Marcy’s eyes were raw and the red edges beneath her right eye darkened to almost purple above her cheek. Before Speck could speak, she said, “I fell. Don’t ask no more.”
“He did this to you,” the boy replied.
“I just fell,” she said, looking over the boy’s shoulder. “Leave it alone. You’ll be better off. I have to get the cooking started.”
“This ain’t right. You can’t... Your own daddy... Something’s got to be done.”
“Not now, and not by you,” she said. And she pulled the broad brim of the hat lower over her eyes and started off for the main shack.
Speck hurried to catch up with her. “I want to help you,” he said.
She stopped abruptly. “Then leave me alone. I appreciate you wanting to help. But this here, this little mark on my eye, it’s a pimple, a scratch. If you want to help, leave it alone.”
Speck reached his arm as if he meant to wrap it around her, but she backed away. “What are doing? Didn’t you hear a word I said?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“You should be,” she said. “Go on. I’ll find what I need.”
Calvin sat at the table in the middle of the yard smoking and gazing absently into the clear blue morning sky. He turned abruptly and grinned slowly at the boy until Speck turned away.
“Where you been?” John Talley asked, coming out of the sawyer’s shack. “If you’re running off like that without any notice, I got no use for you. You’d be better off gone.”
“I’m here to apologize,” Calvin said. “I know it was sudden. But it couldn’t be helped. I had business, a personal matter. I hope you can appreciate that.”
“What I’d appreciate is if we could cut some lumber,” the sawyer said.
That morning they hauled and cut more timber than Speck and his father had for the previous two days. The boy had to race to keep up with the older men. The two of them winched the pine logs onto the sawmill carriage, and then while John Talley kept an eye on the big blade Speck and Calvin would move around to the other end to buck the cut timber as it came off the saw.
“We keep this up, we’ll strip these woods bare in no time,” John Talley said to Calvin. “Glad you come back.”
“Ask and ye shall receive,” Calvin said. “I do believe in that.”
Calvin and Speck hustled another log down onto the carriage. “How ’bout you, boy, what do you ask for when you say your prayers at night?” Calvin said.
“Nothing,” Speck said.
“I don’t believe that,” Calvin said. “Young, healthy boy like you must want a lot of things. I know I did when I was your age. Still do.” He stopped to wipe the sweat from his face with his shirtsleeve, watching Speck from behind the crook of his elbow.
“I doubt I want what you want,” Speck said.
The saw screamed and sent up a cloud of sawdust that settled down on Speck and Calvin, who had moved to the opposite end of the mill to catch the ripped lumber.
“How ’bout it, boy,” Calvin said, effortlessly swinging a ten-foot pine plank down off the mill. “You think the man above sent us here?”
The boy was sweating, trying to keep pace with the older man. “I thought it was the fella from the collection yard,” Speck said, and he loaded the plank onto the wagon bed.