When the girl touched him, Squires had yanked his hand away, drawing it back to slap Tula, but something stopped him.
“Just shut your damn mouth-” he said, biting off the sentence. “Don’t you say another word to me. Understand? Not another damn word or you’ll be sorry!”
Squires found the girl’s calm demeanor infuriating, and he almost did slap her when she replied, “There is no sin so terrible that God won’t forgive you. Two nights ago, when I watched you at the lake, I knew what was in the bag that you put into the water. I knew it was the body of a dead person. But, even so, I prayed for you.”
Squires could barely speak, he was so incredulous, but managed to ask, “You admit that you saw me?”
“Of course,” Tula replied, and then repeated a familiar phrase: “I would rather die than to do something I know to be a sin. I will never lie to you. It’s an oath I have made to… to someone important. On the radio, the man said the bones they found were probably from a woman’s hand. Because of the ring she wore. Why would you murder a young woman?”
Squires couldn’t believe what he was hearing. She would rather die than tell a lie? Jesus Christ, the girl was begging for it.
“I didn’t kill her!” Squires yelled, leaning toward Tula. “You hear me? I didn’t goddamn kill her! All I did was get rid of the body! So why did you have to be there, snooping around?”
Tula said to him calmly, “Why do you use such terrible words-taking God’s name in vain? That’s a sin. I won’t listen to you anymore if you use profanity.”
Squires pushed his face toward the girl, his eyes glassy as he bellowed, “Kiss my goddamn ass! Do you realize what this means, you idiot? Why’d you have to be there watching? Now I got no goddamn choice! Do you even understand what I’m telling you?”
As Tula began to answer, the man drew his hand back again to slap her and roared, “I’m warning you for the last time! Shut your mouth!”
Tula could see that Squires was crazy with anger, and she sensed that he was on the brink of an emotional explosion. The man appeared near tears.
When she tried to comfort Squires, though, by patting his knee, it only caused him to moan in frustration, then swear at her, using a word Tula had never heard before but she assumed was profane.
By then, they were at the gate.
Now Squires was wrestling the truck over a rutted trail that tracked for a half mile through pine flats, cypress and myrtle to where an RV and his steroid cookshack were anchored with hurricane stakes, the building hidden beneath trees near a cypress pond that looked cool and inviting to Tula.
Focusing on the cypress trees helped keep Tula from weeping- that’s how badly she felt for the man. She was also beginning to feel frightened for herself. During the hours since they had left the trailer park, the Maiden had not come into Tula’s head to speak with her or to calm her.
Tula knew that the Maiden would not abandon her. There was no possibility of that. But where was the Girl of Lorraine now when Tula sensed so much danger?
I must find a tree, Tula thought. If I can sit peacefully in a tree and breathe into my belly, the Maiden will return and tell me what I should do.
Tula could think of only one reason why the Maiden would order her to travel with this giant, angry man who might also be a murderer. It was the Maiden’s way of providing Tula with a vehicle and a driver to go in search of her mother. Tula had became convinced of this when she saw the sign that read IMMOKALEE 22 MILES. But how could she make Squires understand that the Maiden wanted him to help with the search?
Yes, Tula needed guidance. It seemed unlikely that the man would react kindly if she asked to be left alone in a tree. Not until he calmed down a little-then, perhaps, Tula could reason with him, and possibly even win him over as a friend.
So instead of asking to be allowed to walk into the cypress grove, Tula said, “Why have we come here? You should eat some food, it’s no wonder your body is trembling. We haven’t eaten all morning. And I have to use the bathroom.”
Squires had pulled into the shade of a tree near a medium-sized trailer, white with green trim, its paint fading. Unlike the trailers at Red Citrus, this trailer was also a motor vehicle, with tires jacked off the ground on blocks and a windshield covered with shiny aluminum material. There were also a couple of wooden structures that looked homemade, one of them with locked shutters and a heavy door.
Squires switched off the engine and said to Tula, “Get out of the truck and shut up. I don’t want to hear nothing else out of you. Just do what I tell you to do. We’re going for a walk.”
There was something strange about the man’s voice now. It was a flat monotone, all of the emotion gone out of it. Tula could smell the alcohol on his breath, but his eyes looked dead, not drunken.
“Walk where?” she asked, trying to be conversational. “It’s very pretty here. There are trees down by the water that look good for climbing. And lots of birds-egrets with white feathers, I think. Do you see them up there?”
The man’s face colored, but he got himself under control before saying, “I’m going to tell you one more time and I want you to listen. No more talking. You’ve got nothing to say that I want to hear, so shut up and follow me. That’s exactly where we’re going, to look at all the pretty birds.”
“But I need a bathroom,” Tula insisted as she watched Squires lift the driver’s seat and then open what appeared to be a hatch in the floor. He removed a canvas bag that was heavy, judging from the way he handled it.
Squires turned and began walking toward the cypress pond where Tula could see white birds suspended like flowers among the gray limbs, some on nests in the high branches.
“Get moving,” he said without looking at the girl. “And I’m warning you-I don’t want to hear another goddamn word out of you.”
Tula got out of the truck and realized that her legs were shaking. Staying calm when the man was angry had not been easy, but this different voice, so flat and dead, was scaring her. She walked around the back of the truck, wondering if she should risk telling the man that her bladder was so full that she feared wetting herself. But Tula stopped after only a few words when her voice broke, afraid that she would start crying.
The Maiden had never cried, even when tortured by her tormentors. Even as flames had consumed her, the brave saint had not wept, but, instead, had called out the name of her Savior.
“Jesus,” Tula whispered now, her right hand clutching her amulets, as she followed Squires toward the trees. “Please protect and keep me, Jesus,” she said in Mayan, and continued repeating the phrase as they walked along the edge of a pond that was cooled by cypress shadows and moss. The giant kept walking, far into the tree shadows, so far that Tula’s abdomen began to cramp because of the pressure in her bladder.
Finally, Squires stopped beside a tree at the edge of the pond, where water black as oil was flecked with leaves, white-feather down and long-legged insects that skated on the surface beneath cooing birds. For a time, the man stood with his back to her, and Tula realized that he was taking something from the canvas bag.
“Turn around and look at the water,” Squires said to her in the same flat dead voice. “Do it now.”
“Can I please go to the bathroom first?” Tula asked the man, frightened but also angry at herself because tears had begun streaming down her face.
Squires was looking over his shoulder at her. “No. Just do what I tell you to do. This won’t take long. Turn your back to me and look at the water. Hurry up.”
Tula could see that Squires had something in his hand. She got a look at it when she pivoted toward the pond.
It was a large gun, silver with chrome.
Tula had seen many guns during the fighting in the mountains, but she had never seen a gun so shiny before. The metal was hypnotic, it was so bright, which scared her.