I used a towel to wipe down everything I’d touched.
“Poured you some coffee,” Adeline said as I went into the kitchen. The same red mug, steaming now, stood at one end of the Formica table. At the other end, Luz and Button, now in identical worn corduroy pants, ate from already half-empty bowls of beef and vegetable stew. Adeline patted at her apron, utterly unconscious of the gesture. Asthma medication.
I sipped. “Tastes good.” Luz looked up and studied me for a moment, then turned her attention back to her lunch.
“That’s a big truck you’ve got there,” Adeline Carpenter said.
“Only thing big enough to pull my trailer, a fifth-wheel. I’d planned to vacation up around Petit Jean, or maybe Lake Maumelle.”
“Awful late for a vacation.” Suspicion seemed to be winning again.
I touched my throat, just enough to show the healing gash, and then my waistband, which hung more loosely than it had. “I’ve… I spent some time this summer in the hospital.” Poor pitiful Aud Thomas, probably has the cancer, yet she still takes time to play Good Samaritan to those in need.
The children finished their stew. Button wiggled in his chair, but Luz, although she looked down at a chip in the Formica as though it fascinated her, was listening to our conversation.
“Luz, take Button out back.”
“Yes, Aba.”
Aba. Some weird fundamentalist title? “Great kids,” I said.
“Jud and I had Button late in life. He’s… he’s not quite right, but he’s a blessing from the Lord.”
“His sister, too.”
Adeline Carpenter smiled. “She’s as good as gold with that boy.” She sounded proud, as if she really cared. If I hadn’t known how she was being paid to train this girl, I might have believed her. Her smile disappeared suddenly as she remembered she was talking to a stranger. She drummed her fingers on the table, blushed when she caught me watching. Maybe that was something good Christian ladies weren’t supposed to do. “Well, Miz Thomas, I don’t know what’s keeping my husband, but if you want to take your coffee outside and sit in the sun, I’ll go see if I can find him.”
I left by the front door, but walked around to the back. It must have been nearly sixty degrees outside, and the sunshine was a little bolder. The cabin in the clearing would be lit by sun, too, but probably fifteen or twenty degrees cooler. Be present. Pay attention. I breathed deeply, exhaled, breathed in: Arkansas soil; the thin, crumbly smell of mold formed on hay stalks that have been sodden but are now dry; and, faint in the still air, the pine scent of the woods. Luz and Button were nowhere in sight.
The barn was big and old and the right-hand side was cluttered with farm machinery: half modern, half the broken, rusting remains of seventy years of automated progress. Sunlight streamed in through the open door and through chinks in the eaves. A child’s steady voice, and another, interrupting, came from behind a truck of forties vintage. I moved closer. The truck had no wheels, and was filthy with rust and dirt and rodent droppings, but its headlights were intact, round and clean and shining. Luz spoke in Spanish.
“—y por eso la Virgen María fue una reina que vivía en una catedral. Ella fue la reina de cielo, y ella fue linda, con una vestimenta azul junto con diamantes en el dobladillo—”
And so the Virgin Mary was a queen who lived in a cathedral. She was the queen of heaven, and she was pretty, with a blue dress that had diamonds on the hem.
I moved quietly until I could see Button sitting with legs splayed before him, playing with something on the floor. The words meant nothing to him; perhaps he found the rhythm soothing. Luz’s eyes seemed far away, but every now and again she glanced at the boy to make sure he was close by.
“It’s a horse!” Button said, holding up what looked like an ancient threaded bolt.
“Yes,” Luz said in English, and patted him on the head. He went back to playing. She resumed her tale. “Y la virgen reina escucha en caso que rezas. Y cuando mueras vas a su palacio en cielo, que tiene tantos colores lindas y lo huele a… a flores. Y cirios se quemarsen en grutes, y huelen bien también.”
And the virgin queen listens if you pray. And when you die you go to her palace in heaven, which is such pretty colors, and smells like flowers. And there are candles in grottoes, and they smell good too.
It was a six- or seven-year-old’s vocabulary, apart from grotto. Her native tongue. I couldn’t understand how she had retained so much. Adeline Carpenter would not approve of the Virgin Mary being called the queen of heaven, nor of any talk of cathedrals and incense and diamonds.
“El palacio es—Button, put that down.” She sounded so much older speaking English. Button had found something on the floor he liked. He stood up and carried it into the closest column of sunlight. It glittered. “That’s very pretty. Let me see.” She held out her hand. He handed it over reluctantly. A piece of old bottle glass. She sighed, just like Adeline. “Glass, Button. Glass. What did Aba tell you about glass? It might hurt you. If you see it on the floor, don’t pick it up.”
“Glass,” he muttered, unconvinced, but then something else caught his eye, and Luz sighed again.
“Fue un relato agradable,” I said—it was a nice story—and her head whipped round. “You don’t need to be afraid.”
“I don’t understand you,” she said in English.
“Yes you do,” I said, still in Spanish. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise. Not even Aba.”
She opened her mouth, then thought better of it and shut it again. Her eyes narrowed. I’d seen that look on a hundred suspects’ faces: I would get nothing from her.
She was still studying me. “You talk different when no one else is around.”
Careless again. The child was smart; pointless trying to lie to her now. “So do you.”
“Why?”
“Why do you?”
I watched her work out that we both had things to hide. She decided she wanted to keep it that way. “Button!” she called. “How about we go indoors for some milk?”
“Milk?”
“Milk,” she said firmly, with a look at me. I was briefly tempted to wring her neck.
“But I want to stay out here!” His face began to crumple. “Want to stay here!”
The next step would be a full-blown tantrum. I knew when I was beaten; there were other ways to get the information.
Jud and Adeline found me sitting on the front step. I stood, drained the last of the coffee, and handed the mug to Adeline. It would be washed and free of fingerprints in minutes. “Perfect timing,” I said. I put my gloves back on.
“Thank you again,” she said. “The gas station’s just two miles north on 10, then it’ll be a four-, five-mile drive back to the truck.”
Jud said nothing at all.
“Shall we?” I gestured at the truck. He nodded.
He sat as before, though this time his hands rested on dark blue denim, and his shoes were sturdy work boots. Perhaps it was my imagination but he seemed a little less stiff.
At the gas station, the attendant seemed to know who Jud was and filled a cheap plastic gas can without comment. I went in and bought myself coffee in a go cup. Jud settled his bill in cash. He counted his change so carefully that I felt guilty about the ten dollars’ worth of gas I’d siphoned off earlier. I shook my head as we walked separately back to the truck. These people were profiting from the abuse of a young child. I wasn’t here to feel sorry for them.
We drove to the stranded pickup without exchanging a word. He climbed out, then leaned forward to speak through the open window. “Wife tells me you’ve been sick.”
“Yes.”