Three Rivers Read online

  “But you love music,” Chris said. “You’re so talented.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Will you think about it? Pray on it?”

  “You are wasting your time.”

  “God has a plan for you, Melody. I’m not giving up on you. God won’t give up on you, either.”

  She slipped inside and shut the door on him. It was rude. She should have invited him in and offered him a pork chop, but she couldn’t stand the thought of exposing him to the spectacle of Daddy dying in the living room, of Bobby’s unpredictable behavior. She didn’t want to share awful truths of her life.

  “Who was that?” Daddy asked.

  “No one,” Melody said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  In the kitchen, Bobby and Maurice were cleaning their plates. “Sorry,” Maurice said. “We waited for a while.”

  “Who was at the door?” Bobby sounded as if he were accusing her of something.

  “Just someone I used to know. No one important.”

  “I heard a man’s voice.”

  “Who wants cobbler? We’ve got ice cream.”

  Maurice stood and took his plate to the sink. “You eat. We’ll take care of dessert. We’ll get some of these plates cleared away.”

  The beans were cold but good. Melody ate a few bites and broke off a hunk of cornbread. She sliced into the pork, but the smell of it turned her stomach, and the gray flesh made her think of death. She scraped the food into the trash, her appetite gone. She looked out the kitchen window. It was nearly dark. Everything as far as she could see was colorless and flat.

  “This cobbler is perfect.” Maurice dipped a spoon into the bubbling dish. The batter rose up around the berries, which generated a thick, sweet syrup. It was dark and crunchy on top, golden and tender in the middle. How reassuring to know she could dump a bunch of ordinary ingredients into a dish and, in just an hour, transform it into something wonderful.

  “I want lots of ice cream.” Bobby pulled the carton from the freezer. “I wonder what that man and little boy are going to eat tonight.”

  Melody pulled the ice cream scoop from a drawer. “What man? What little boy?”

  “The ones camped out by the creek.”

  “Our creek?” She took the carton from Bobby, pried off the top. It wasn’t the first time vagrants had squatted on their land. Daddy always handled it, approaching the men with his shotgun at his side. Most of them were running from something, wives or girlfriends or someone they owed money or the sheriff. They moved on without argument, not wanting more trouble. Daddy was in no shape to handle it now, of course. “A little boy? How little?”

  “Really little,” Bobby said. “Tiny.” He drew the word out until it had four syllables rather than two.

  “About how old?”

  Bobby held his hand about three feet high. “This old.”

  “Are you sure, Bobby?” Maurice touched Bobby’s arm. Bobby smiled and nodded. “I watched them today. They put up a tent. I hope they don’t get wet.”

  The land was a funhouse of rusty equipment, expired chemicals, sharp bits of metal, and half-empty jugs of poison. If some man decided to trespass and got hurt, that was one thing, Melody thought, but a little boy was another matter. She peered out the kitchen window toward the far edges of the land. The nightfall masked any movement or shadow.

  “Well, they can’t stay here,” she said. “This is no place for a child. Never has been.” She knew from her own childhood that danger lurked around every bush, behind every tree. It was a miracle that she and Bobby had survived. There were plenty of close calls: the nest of cottonmouths Bobby almost stepped on after a bad flood, a rusty nail that punctured Melody’s foot, a fishhook that dug deep into Bobby’s palm, numerous bouts of poison oak. They came of age in a flurry of tetanus shots, ACE bandages, and Mama’s odd-smelling salves. They knew what was out there. A strange child would not know of the dangers hiding beneath the overgrown weeds.

  “I don’t see anything.” Maurice said. “How much of this land is yours?”

  “We have about five hundred acres,” Melody said.

  Maurice let out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of land.”

  “More trouble than it’s worth.” Melody quoted Old Granddaddy. “Land is only useful if you plant it or build on it.”

  Maurice stirred melting ice cream into his cobbler. “I’ll go out there and look around tomorrow when the light is better.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Melody said. “It’s not your job.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Bobby sat at the table and shoveled gobs of cobbler and ice cream into his mouth. Blackberry juice stained his chin. His hands were sticky with ice cream. He seemed to have lost interest in the squatters. “How did the boy look?” Melody asked. “Did he seem scared?”

  Bobby spoke with his mouth full. “He looked normal, like a normal boy.”

  “Maybe I should call the sheriff,” she said. “What if the boy was snatched?”

  Bobby helped himself to more cobbler. “Father. He seemed like a father.”

  “I think we should check it out before we call anyone,” Maurice said. “They might just be camping. No need to cause trouble for them.”

  “I guess it can wait until tomorrow.” She ate a few bites of the cobbler, was pleased to find that it tasted just as good as it looked.

  “You did all the cooking,” Maurice said. “Why don’t you let Bobby and me clean up?”

  “That’s okay.” Melody turned on the hot water to fill the sink. “Just check on Daddy before you leave.”

  Maurice insisted on cleaning. He told Melody to relax, that he’d take care of her father and the kitchen. After protesting halfheartedly, she left him and Bobby with the dirty dishes. She was so tired. It was hard to believe she’d left Memphis just that morning. In the living room, she sat beside her father’s bed. “Daddy?” she whispered. His eyes fluttered open and he blinked at her. “How are you feeling? Can I bring you anything?”

  “That boy at the door,” he said.

  “Chris?”

  “He likes you.”

  “No.” She picked a bit of lint from the blanket across his chest, an old, thin bit of cotton. “Are you warm enough?”

  “Does he have money?”

  “Who?”

  “The boy.”

  “Chris?”

  “That’s who we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t have any idea if he has money, Daddy.” Melody’s voice rose. “What difference does it make?”

  Her father grinned, a wicked grin that exposed his soft, gray teeth. “Because it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one. It’s a hell of a lot smarter to marry the rich one.” He laughed. It was something he’d said to her many times, as if Melody had a steady stream of men knocking at her door.

  “I’m not falling in love with anyone, Daddy. I’m not getting married.”

  “You’re not getting any younger.”

  Melody chewed on the cuticle of her thumb until it was loose enough to rip off. Blood pooled around the nail, and she sucked it clean. “None of us is getting any younger, Daddy. None of us.”

  “You’re right about that, little girl. Just remember, when I’m gone, you’ll be on your own. Someone is going to have to care for your brother. He sure can’t take care of himself.”

  She pressed her bloody thumb inside her palm. She didn’t know what she’d be doing in the future, but she damn sure wouldn’t be doing it here. “Mama will take care of Bobby.”

  “Little girl, she ain’t here.”

  “She’ll be back. She always comes back.” Whether we want her to or not, Melody thought.

  “I took care of you, didn’t I? Didn’t I do my best for you, little girl?”

  He reached for her hand. She held him with a loose grip, afraid the slightest pressure would crush his fragile bones.

  “I taught you everything I knew, didn’t I?”

  * * *


  That was true. Melody’s father taught her lots of useful things and plenty of useless ones, too. She knew how to work a rod and reel, and could shoot as good as anyone. She knew if you were going to hunt with a flask of whiskey, you should wrap it in electrical tape to keep the shine from spooking the deer. He took her hunting when she was just nine years old, told her to sit still on the wooden stand and wait. She sat in the cold morning air while her father sipped from his tape-wrapped flask. She couldn’t stand it anymore; she pulled a Nancy Drew mystery from the front pocket of her overalls, cracked it open so carefully she couldn’t have made a sound. Even so, he snatched the book and flung it through the woods. “Let’s go.” He climbed down the ladder and started packing up the truck. He was angry, but so was Melody. “I hate you,” she said. Nancy Drew’s father never blamed her when things went wrong. He bought her clothes and a blue convertible, and Nancy didn’t even have to deal with having a mother. The injustice was too much for young Melody. She dumped her orange vest on the ground and ran through the woods. She zigged and zagged through the trees, hopped over dense underbrush. She ran until her legs turned to pudding and then slumped against a tree. Her head simmered beneath her forest green hunting cap. She pulled it off, wiped her runny nose on her sleeve. Then there was a loud crack. Bark and dirt rained down. She screamed. Her father broke through the trees. It was like being in a dream. Her father’s eyes were crazed, his face flushed. He lifted her off the ground with one arm and ran a rough hand across her head and chest. His lips moved, but Melody couldn’t understand him over the rushing fear in her ears. Another man appeared, dropped down from the trees. The man was pale and shaking, and couldn’t stand. He kept falling to his knees. Her father set her down, turned, and punched the man hard in the face. His nose spurted blood. They left the man there, bleeding and alone. She rode out of the woods in her father’s arms, drinking in his smoky, sour scent. For years, she would tell the story of how a man mistook her for a deer in the woods and how Daddy came to her rescue. “Thank God that man was no kind of shot,” her father would say. “You’d have been terrible eating.”

  Now she held his hand, cupped as if it were still cradling her head all those years ago. “You taught me plenty, Daddy,” she said, though he was sleeping. “You taught me plenty.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  MONDAY

  Obi was antsy, and couldn’t sleep. He knew, just knew, someone was going to come along and threaten them soon. Even the air smelled ominous, hot and metallic. Fat drops of rain fell on and off through the night. A big storm was coming, but Obi did not fear the weather. He feared the person who snuck around and went through their things. He feared the people in the house who didn’t have the good sense to grow food on all this land. More than anything, he feared the consequences of his own actions. The law would come for him, and then Social Services would take Liam. He could lose his son because of what happened with that boy by the river. If he lost Liam, he lost everything.

  Liam slept beside him now, hands folded beneath his cheek. Obi laid one hand on Liam’s head and the other on his rifle, which he’d kept close as a lover all night long. The boy didn’t stir. Dawn would break soon. Obi crawled outside the tent, pulled on his boots, and stared up at the sky. Clouds muted the moonlight and blocked the stars. He stood still in the quiet morning air until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The rifle rested in his left hand, barrel down. His memory called up a wooden cane he’d carried around as a child. The cane was his grandfather’s, carved from one long piece of knotty pine, twisted but balanced. It was stained and polished a pale green-gold, the color of grass in the fall. He wondered what became of that cane. He’d like to give it to Liam as a talisman.

  He picked out shapes in the darkness. A smoky scent from last night’s fire lingered on his clothes. Liam would sleep for a while longer and would not be afraid if he woke to find Obi gone. Obi often hunted or gathered wood in the early morning while Liam slept. Liam knew Obi would always return before the sun was high in the sky.

  Obi headed toward the house. He could be there in minutes if he walked briskly in a straight line, but he crept slowly in the darkness, on the unfamiliar land. The land was littered with hazards, but Obi was sure-footed. He lacked his mother’s gifts of healing and seeing, but he could read the land. He reached the back porch as the gray mist of dawn began to rise.

  Obi climbed the rotting porch steps. He could fix this porch. All he needed was a bit of lumber and some time. He peered through a window, confident no one would be awake and staring back at him at this hour. Someone had left a light on over the kitchen sink. A pile of dishes dried on a rack. A sturdy white-and-blue wrought-iron table and matching chairs sat in the center of the kitchen; a refrigerator and freezer stood against a wall. The countertop was lined with small appliances: a coffeemaker, a toaster, an electric mixer, a blender, a ceramic spoon rest. Dull, ordinary things. Obi moved on.

  He looked into another window and saw the dining room with its long, polished oak table and chairs. A tall cabinet made from the same oak as the dining table stood against the wall. The cabinet was lit up on the inside, each shelf with a spotlight like a cabinet at a museum. The light shone off stacks of blue-and-white plates, teacups, and saucers. Obi knew nothing about china, but it looked like a valuable collection.

  He moved around to the side of the house where the windows were smaller. The rooms were dark, and there wasn’t much to see anyhow—a laundry room, a half bath, some sort of storage room, a den filled with books.

  By the time Obi got around to the front porch, a gray and muted light shone through the clouds of the eastern sky. Curtains covered the large front windows, but the heavy drapes didn’t quite meet in the middle. Obi shielded his eyes with his hand and squinted into the small space. The room was large and shadowy. He could barely make out one piece of furniture from another. He turned away from the window and scanned the front yard. Nothing but weeds and dead grass in the raised beds bordered by rotting logs. What a waste.

  Obi left the porch and circled around to the back of the house again. The bedrooms would be upstairs, he knew, and he considered climbing a live oak that would give him a clear view into one of the upstairs rooms. He wanted to see what these people looked like, to take their measure. He gave up the idea as too risky when he realized he wouldn’t be able to climb and keep his rifle at the ready.

  He walked back toward camp. After he’d taken about a hundred long strides, he turned around to look at the house once more. He saw movement in one of the upstairs windows, and a light was on that hadn’t been before. A man with dark hair stared down at him. Obi had the feeling this man was watching him all along. A hard kernel of fear settled beneath his breastbone. He hugged the rifle closer. A fat drop of rain came down on Obi’s shoulder, then another on his forehead. He hurried back to the tent, back to Liam.

  Liam, still groggy, walked out into the wet morning and relieved himself against a pine tree. From the car, Obi retrieved the tin of spice cookies his mother had given them and two leftover biscuits from the night before, plus the jerky and a container of mixed nuts. Liam ate and they listened to the rain. It was going to be a dark, dreary day. Obi wondered if the nearby creek contained any fish worth catching in the rain. He decided against it, mostly because he doubted he’d be able to get a fire going if he did catch anything. They would make do with the cans of deviled ham and Vienna sausages, peanut butter and crackers Obi kept with him for days like this one. Neither Obi nor Liam minded a bit of rain. It kept things cool and, on the river at least, the fishing was always best after a hard rain. No one ever died from getting wet.

  The hardest thing about a rainy day was how it seemed to slow down time. On a sunny day, Liam would dig holes in the dirt and help Obi fetch water and they would build a fire for cooking or for warmth. They would fish or Obi would hunt for squirrel or turkey, often with Liam by his side. On a dry, sunny day, hours passed without effort, and Obi and Liam would be exhausted and ready for sleep
come nightfall. Even if there was a good, soaking rain in the afternoon—and often there was—it was just an excuse to rest for an hour or so. When the rain started like this, though, first thing in the morning, it would continue for hours or even days. He hoped the tent wouldn’t flood. If so, they’d have to sleep in the car.

  Liam finished eating and stretched out on his back. He rested his head on his hands, and Obi could see how the boy was going to look as a man. “Did I ever tell you about my grandfather?” Obi asked Liam. “About your great-grandfather?”

  Liam shook his head and Obi smiled. The story came to him fully formed, though he had no clear memory of being told the story himself. It must have been the memory of his grandfather’s cane that brought it back to him. As soon as he began to speak, he could hear his mother whispering the story into his ear, and Obi knew she must have done so when he was no bigger than Liam.

  “Your great-grandfather was a white dog. He looked like a man when the sun shone, but at night he became a large white dog with silver eyes and a soft, pure coat. White animals are rare and powerful.” Obi glanced at Liam to make sure he was listening. The boy’s green eyes were bright with interest. “White animals are hunted for their skins. A woman married in the skin of a white deer will have nothing but luck and prosperity with her husband, and she’ll have children who are strong and smart and bring her happiness. The tail of a white fox provides protection. A feather plucked from an all-white rooster brings wisdom. Men who become animals are even more rare, and men who become white animals are the most powerful men of all.

  “Your great-grandfather was a white dog. He was a great hunter because he could sniff out prey where other hunters had to rely on their eyes. He was loyal and kind, but also fierce when he needed to be. When he was young, he learned to read and write, even though plenty of boys did not learn such things at the time. He went hunting with his father. His mother taught him which plants he could eat and which would make him sick. At night, he roamed for miles and miles. He scavenged through the woods and made friends with the wolves who lived there. The wolves hunted at night, and your great-grandfather helped them find food. He knew how to get into the barns of his neighbors and where the chickens roosted. The wolves ate well every night, and every morning, the people in the houses with the barns and the chickens would be angry about the stolen livestock. The men put heavy doors on the barns to keep out predators, but still their animals disappeared. Some nights, all the men would agree to keep a lookout and to kill any predators who trespassed onto their land. On those nights, your great-grandfather warned his wolf friends and they stayed far away from the men with the guns.