“What do you already know?” he asked, looking between Marie and Moa, asking them both.
“Nothing,” they said together.
Marie continued, “You disappeared after Kilby. Our lawyer couldn’t track down any records of where you went.”
“Probably for the best. Visiting wasn’t allowed in our camp, and those lost papers were what set me loose.” Wilson kept his hand on his head, then he reached down for his cup of coffee, sipping at it delicately. “Ah. Missed that taste, sure enough.” He kept the mug near his mouth and talked over the steam. “Intake was fast, there at Kilby. They’re supposed to do this thorough study, they said, taking down our history and poking into our brains and getting at our deep thoughts, but for me, they just asked what it was I’d been doing for work, and then they said mining made the most sense. ‘Flat Top’s in need of men right now,’ the fellow said. ‘It’ll keep you out of prison, keep you fit.’
“They shipped me out the next day. I got trained quick to be part of the crew that came in right after the first blast.” Wilson set his mug down and set to rubbing his head again. “Suppose that’s about it. I worked down in the tunnels until this happened”—he raised the stump of his left arm—“and then I spent time in the infirmary, and then they sent me home.”
Moa had her hands on his shoulders while he talked, and Marie watched her fingers knead the muscle there. Their children flanked her. “That’s enough,” she said. She leaned down and kissed him on the head. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Marie was frustrated with Moa’s shushing. She wanted to know everything about Wilson’s time in those tunnels. She needed the specifics — the sounds and textures and tastes, coal-dusted air and explosion-shattered rock, the damp floors and kerosene lanterns, the black-edged sky and housing and meals. “Wilson, what was it like?”
“He’s said enough,” Moa warned.
Their children stared at Marie, their eyes lit by Moa’s same protection. He’s ours, their faces said, their lips held firm, their eyes open wide. You and yours have taken enough.
Marie agreed.
Wilson set his mug down and looked over at Marie. “It was awful, Miss Marie. If you need more than that, you’ll have to give me time.”
Marie nodded, ashamed. “Of course.”
Moa leaned her head down close to Wilson’s ear and said gently, “Let’s go on back to our place, dear.”
Marie watched Jenny and Charles and Henry swarm their father, lifting him from his chair, floating him into standing. They moved as a unit, gliding across Marie’s floor with the ease of birds — a flock of them, or a wing; they were like plovers moving over the sand, their steps smooth and fluid. They drifted out the door and out across the grass, disappearing from Marie’s sight around the corner of the house. She imagined them taking flight just then, tucking their quick feet up against their soft stomachs, stretching their wings — Wilson’s left would be back, a broad, feathered limb to replace that half-held arm — arching their necks to the clouds. They would fly over the hot-hearted power lines and the thick stand of longleaf pines and holly, glancing out at the fields, the patched grid of their land, and then they would slow their speed, dropping down to the small meadow outside their small house — everything small — and they would gather together in their clutch, moving as one toward the door.
Marie thought about her son, that small boy born into so much blood and wreckage, his own swaddling blanket more for mopping than for warmth. There he was, sticky with blood, passed over to Roscoe while the doctor focused on Marie, and Marie turned inward, a quiet taking over the room she shared with her husband. The quiet had been like fog, she remembered, creeping in at the edges of her hearing, muting it; the baby’s crying was buffered and blanketed by flannel and cotton, thick sounds settling over everything — the doctor’s hurried words, desperate and pleading, the metal-on-metal ringing of his instruments, the nurse he employed, her shoes on the floor, moving and clacking — all of it quieted down to a slow-drumming pulse, the like of river currents or tides, a rumbling, deeply tied rhythm.
She’d awoken days later in a Birmingham hospital room. Roscoe was there, but not the baby.
“Did we lose him?” she’d asked, reaching for her husband’s hand.
“No, no. He’s fine. Nettie’s caring for him while you heal.”
Marie had looked down her body then, the flattening of her waist. She felt the deep aching of her stomach, and her fingers went to the skin, tiptoeing their way under blanket and gown to spread over the great bandages there.
“What’s happened?”
Roscoe had looked pained, a clotted hurt hanging on to his cheeks. “I’ll get the doctor,” he’d said, and though she’d argued, reaching for him, calling him back, he’d left her. He’d passed the burden of that news to someone else, and she’d taken the abandonment deep inside her, a crackly burden like the plants of peanuts or stalks of corn left alone to dry and harden in the absence of their fruit. She could still feel that place, dusty and brittle. It had never refilled.
Marie remembered the doctor’s sallow complexion and tawny hair, his amber eyes and yellowed teeth. He was troubling to look at, and Marie had found her eyes roving far from his face — to the ceiling and then to the window, back to his white coat, a glance to his chin, and then away again.
“Mrs. Martin, your local doctor did great work. You were lucky to be in such qualified hands.”
She’d looked at his chin, the bristles of his sun-dried beard.
“You’re healing wonderfully.”
“From what?”
He’d put a sickly hand on her forearm. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Martin, but there were complications with your son’s birth — damage done to your uterus.” His fingers squeezed her. “We had to remove it.”
Marie felt the pressure of his touch, but couldn’t register his words. Roscoe’s desertion fluttered in her stomach, cornstalks in a breeze, the crisped, itchy dance of dried leaves. It grew wider, more furrows, a great stretch of field.
“What?”
He pressed down, then took his hand away completely. “You won’t be able to have any more children. I’m very sorry. Would you like me to send your husband back in?”
Marie had trained her eyes on the window, the bright sky bleached nearly to white by the sun. “No,” she’d whispered.
The loss of their future children had set them apart, moved them into their respective corners, far from each other’s touch. They couldn’t move together as Wilson’s family did, even if they had tried. The brief years of ease when Roscoe had run his illegal electricity had been false. She had to have known they’d crumble in some way, their future torn from them again. She’d known, and she held this knowledge alongside her own part in it. Unlike Moa and Wilson, she was not innocent. They had taken pieces of each other — Marie and Roscoe — but now they had taken a piece of Wilson. They had taken a part of his family.
Sitting in the silence of her empty kitchen, Marie wanted to talk to Roscoe. She wanted to show him all they owed — to the Grices, to the land, to each other, to their son.
Here, she wanted to say to him, tell me how we repay this.
CHAPTER 20 / ROSCOE
I’m pacing the yard when the sirens start blazing, and I know to run to the pens. Taylor is there, and Stevens, and a fellow named Michaels.
“Those two,” Taylor says, pointing to the far cage. Jack and Jesper.