Huey tells Shelton and Shelton tells Kim: “For most of us life seems short, too short. But can you imagine how long a minute must have seemed to that young woman?”
Both agree that this is the most evil act they’ve ever heard of and that surely God won’t allow such evil to continue. Both agree that so far God has spread a shield over the Swamp to protect them and their families and they are blessed to contend only with earthquakes and the threat of fire.
They thank Him; they thank each other.
***Lucy, with her mother’s sewing scissors, cuts her daddy’s hair first. She has brought a straight chair out of their cabin and set it up in their wind-torn front yard. Huey’s hair clings to his head and curls up around his cap line. When Lucy gets through cutting and combing, his hair still clings to his head but the curls have flown to the swamp, like seed-hair for a next or next generation of souls trying to maintain flesh.
It’s too windy for a fire, so the hair cuttings are part distraction from the cold and part necessity to keep what little dignity is left them. The surrounding woods and swamp are kindling waiting for a spark. They are so cold that their toes and fingers and noses are numb—have long been numb. Still, they prefer the outside to the inside of the close dim cabins, where their imaginations work overtime from the many windborne spooks apt to break in.
Only Adam has the energy to move about and warm up. So, they watch him, delighting in at least one of them being nourished enough to move without joints aching and teeth gritting against the cold.
They’ll be starving soon. And if they don’t die of starvation, they will die of thirst and if they don’t die of thirst they will freeze to death. Simply bracing against the cold is a labor.
Huey and Shelton have located another spring. “But it’s a trifling one,” Huey tells them.
Knowing all this makes them think about other places they might find where disaster hasn’t touched. Illusions of sunlit sand and blue skies tease and test their sanity.
They’ve only to look at the shrunken bodies of Sis’ Shirley and Jean to see their own fate in the flesh.
When it’s Shelton’s turn for a haircut, he sits in the chair with his knees spread and his boots laid over on the sides. “Not too short or I’ll freeze to death.” His face and hands showing from beneath his army-green blanket are grimy with smut from building fires and keeping them going. No water to spare for washing, so they all smell of smoke, look smoked.
Everybody except Laura is gathered around for the show. All laughing and joking in spite of the cold and the brown wind and their diminishing supplies. Adam, prancing about in his gray sweat-coat, has pink wind-chapped cheeks and bright eyes. Kim is so thin that she’s had to safety-pin pleats in the waistband of her jeans.
Seated in the chair for Lucy to blunt-cut her straight brown hair, Kim watches Adam with Baby Jesus playing with Dixie. His blond ringlets hang below his shoulders. It’s bad enough, Kim thinks, that she has to nurse him, at six years old, but to allow him to look like a little girl is a disgrace.
When Lucy is done, Kim calls Adam to her and tells him to sit in the chair. She drapes the blanket around his shoulders and says to Kim, “Cut.”
Everybody gets quiet, watching Kim, watching Adam, watching Lucy with her silver scissors in the air.
“You’re kidding, right?” Lucy says.
“You not gone cut that baby’s curls off,” Sis’ Shirley squeals. “Don’t let her, Shelton.”
Shelton nods. “Cut.”
“Yeah, I’d say he’s about due for a haircut,” says Huey.
Jean says, “Lucy, you used to have curly hair just like that.”
“Now it’s straight as a board.”
The first ringlet falls to the blanket and rolls to the cracked bare dirt and keeps rolling in the wind till it takes flight like a silver chrysalis. Kim longs to pick the next curl up but she doesn’t; she only stands watching while another and another ringlet falls and rolls and flies up toward the brown sky.
Lucy is on the last ringlet when Kim hears the distant roar of an automobile. “Somebody’s coming!” she shouts.
Huey cups one ear to listen, then heads for the house with Jean, Sis’ Shirley and Lucy following. Kim scoops Adam up from the chair before Shelton can reach him. He starts to cry and she shushes him. “No, baby. No, be quiet.” Then they run together toward Jean and Huey’s cabin, up on the porch and through the door. Kim’s face is bloodless from the exertion.
Huey is standing off to the side of the window facing the main road, with his rifle pointed down at the floor.
The others stand still along the north wall.
“Dixie,” Shelton says, pale and breathing hard. “Where’s Dixie?”
Kim sways Adam, pressing a hand on back of his head and smothering his crying with her shoulder. They can now hear what sounds like a truck, coming nearer, almost into the main part of the park.
Shelton steps out from the group along the wall and quickly crosses the room to the other side of the window from Huey.
Jean whispers, “Where’s Laura? Oh, my God! I thought she was in here.”
“I saw her earlier walking out near the picnic area,” Lucy says.
They can see the picnic area from where they are standing.
“Maybe she’s out in the woods,” says Sis’ Shirley, pulling her blanket close at the throat.
Dixie starts barking from the front yard where the hair cuttings had taken place, then her barking moves out, circling the cabin.
“Uh oh,” says Shelton. “Too late to get her in.”
Huey sees the truck first and steadies his rifle. “It’s a blue pickup with two guys in it.”
He and Shelton lean into the wall by the window to keep from being seen.
Kim watches through the window as the truck passes the cabin, slowing, with Dixie trotting behind, continuing to bark.
Within seconds, out of sight, both truck doors open and ease shut.
Shelton peeps left out of the window. “They’re out of the truck. In the front yard.”
Dixie yelps, quits barking, and they hear her hop up on the porch and settle whimpering by the door.
Adam lifts his head from Kim’s shoulder, eyes squeezing tears, crying low. She eases over to the cot near the kitchen area and sits and unbuttons her shirt and pulls him to her breast. His hair is gapped and feels prickly.
The side door of the van slides open with a squeaky, grating sound. “They’re in the van,” Huey says and lifts his rifle higher but still pointed down.
“Huey, no,” Jean whispers, her long skinny neck stretched. “You don’t know what kind of weapons they have.”
“She’s right,” Shelton says. “We probably should stay put and hope they’ll get what they want and go.”
“They must have kicked Dixie,” Lucy says. She is leaning against the wall, listening, staring down with one filthy tennis shoe propped on the wall behind her. She lifts her head, green eyes pale in her freckled face. “What will they do with Laura if they see her?”
Nobody answers. Their smoke smell fills the room. At first they feel warmer inside but the warmth fades to a kind of growing cold glow.
They can hear the two men talking in the van and bumbling about, sliding things and slamming them down.
“We can’t afford to lose any supplies.” Huey stares up at the nail-pricked tin. At the sound of the wind blowing twigs onto the roof and flailing a loose sheet of tin on one of the other cabin roofs.
Kim thinks about how they’ve been spared so far, about the earthquake and the dry woods that haven’t yet caught fire. If there is a God it would stand to reason that He wouldn’t bring them through all that only to have them robbed and killed.
Adam is dozing, sucking, but Kim knows it won’t last.
Jean is praying, head bowed, whispering to herself.
Sis’ Shirley has turned, facing the wall with her blanket over her head. She is wearing white knee socks and black clogs with t
he backs walked down. Her ankles are like sticks.
They hear the two men talking outside the van, and in a few minutes they hear them drop something over the side of the truck into the bed.
Dixie barks a couple of times and then goes silent, pressing on the door with her body as she settles in again.
“Can you see them, Shelton?” Huey whispers.
“Not yet.” His head is just shy of the window glass, pressed sideways into the frame.
One truck door opens and then the other and both slam shut at the same time. Or was it only one?
“Any sign of Laura?” Jean crosses her arms. She has keen features, keener for being sick. Her small brown eyes are sunken.
“No,” Shelton whispers. “Okay, they’re cranking up. Backing out. Turning around. Don’t move, everybody.”
Adam sits up in Kim’s lap, gazing around at each of them with his blue eyes blared, wondering. Poor little boy. Kim pats down his shingled hair. How can they expect him to not be alarmed, to not hear? He’s not an oblivious baby anymore.
Listening to the truck fading out up the road, they all begin talking, letting out their held breath. Then they hear it stop again, near the last row of cabins.
“They’ve spotted the Land Rover,” Shelton says, heading for the facing window overlooking the block of cabins.
Huey follows him with the rifle, boots thundering across the room.
“Lordy me! Won’t they ever be gone and leave us be?” Sis’ Shirley backs to the wall with her brown face tilted up, her sparkly glasses tilted up.
It’s a while before Kim realizes that she’s tilting her face that way to keep her glasses in place.
Very quiet, very still, Adam presses his head to Kim’s chest as if listening for her heartbeat. She’s sad thinking about him having to live with such dread and fear, but then she thinks about those children in Australia forced to watch their mother being repeatedly raped by her own father, their father.
Lucy opens the door quickly to let Dixie slide inside. She switches her tailless backside and goes down the line along the wall, licking a greeting. Her ribs show beneath her fur, which is beginning to bare and look like hide. She stops when she gets to Kim and Adam and drops at their feet with a sigh.
The men at the window overlooking the cabins whisper, mumble, while the women and Adam wait for a report.
“What Shelton?” Jean asks.
“We can’t see them. We can’t see the Land Rover, so maybe they can’t.”
“They’re out on the road, I guess.” Huey adds. “But what are they doing?”
“I’m going to peep out the back door,” Shelton says. “Everybody stay put.”
He creeps to the back door, cracks it open and stands peeping out. The wind tries to push it shut. Only seconds before he closes it again. He turns. “Give me the gun, Huey.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Just take care of the women, will you.”
“You’ve got two shots, that’s it. Be careful.” Huey hands the rifle to Shelton, acknowledging that the women are to be shielded from whatever is going on out there.
After Shelton slips through the front door, the women stare at one another. Finally, Jean asks Huey, “What do you think this is about?”
He steps to the back door, starts to open it then stops with his back to them. “I think we all know Shelton well enough to trust his judgment. If it’s something we’re better off not knowing, let’s keep it like that.”
Lucy nods, staring away at the front door.
The others stare at each other.
Kim imagines it has something to do with Laura, but what? If she is about to be kidnapped, or raped, or killed Shelton will need Huey’s help to save her. But why don’t they hear her screaming, calling for help, trying to get away?
All is quiet except for the wind blowing twigs and that lonesome sheet of tin banging on one of the cabin roofs.
They are all shaking now, breathing into their hands to warm them. Jean’s kneecaps quiver.
“I hope they didn’t find that canned ham you’ve been saving, Mama.” Pitifully thin, still standing along the wall, Lucy bends forward and holds her thighs.
“Me too, Sweetie.” Jean’s long drawn face is a picture of suffering. She had told them before about the ham saved for a special occasion, but nobody could ever determine when that occasion would arrive or what it would be. It was just something to look forward to, and once the ham was eaten they would have nothing else to dangle beneath their noses to keep them moving ahead.
And yet the ham had become a test of their honesty and trust of each other. On their hungriest days, they thought about it obsessively and even talked about it—not a ham but the ham.
At Lucy’s mention of the word ham Kim’s mouth started watering. She turns Adam on her lap, facing out. She is glad that at least one of them is full and healthy. But she knows her milk can’t last long; she is too weak and drained. Her chest feels hollow, her breasts slack.
Huey is back at the window facing the road and the picnic area. The moss in the big oaks has taken over the leafless branches, dry moss in clots with dead brown streamers blowing in the wind. Long wooden tables and benches almost covered in fallen limbs and dead leaves. But the wind has blown all the paper trash Kim and Shelton found when they first got here off into the Swamp, leaving a void of color.
“Can you see anything from there?” Sis’ Shirley says to Huey, then ambles over to the other cot and sits.
“No, nothing. They’re too far up the road.”
“What would they be doing to stay here so long?”
Nobody answers. Nobody knows.
“Come sit here, Jean.” Kim scoots over on the cot for her to sit.
Jean walks over, her roomy brown pants not even touching her flesh, and sits beside her. She smells of the menthol ointment she rubs on her chest when the pain in her bones gets too great. More for distraction than healing; there’s nothing to be done for her.
Lucy slides down the wall to the floor and sits with her bony knees up.
***The waiting is exhausting and they have to eat soon. Adam is asleep on the cot behind Kim, and Dixie is asleep on the floor at her feet. Kim just wants water; her tongue feels thick and dry, her throat parched.
Then they hear the truck start, a heavy ratcheting sound moving up the road slowly and leveling out to a purr.
Huey leans into the window with both hands propped on the frame. “Here he comes,” he says. “He’s got Laura with him.”
They all gather behind him, peering around his thick, solid body to see Shelton in his black leather jacket, cowboy boots and jeans, rifle barrel pointed down and the strap of a black canvass tote slung over one shoulder. Laura, in a long black coat, walking a little behind, is carrying before her swollen belly a cardboard box, the wind twisting and wrapping her long blond hair.
“I can’t wait to see what she has to say for herself,” Sis’ Shirley mumbles, saying exactly what Kim is thinking.
Puzzled faces turn on Sis’ Shirley, as if she has spoken some truth and they are waiting for more. Yes, how did Laura get into this and how did she get out of it? What was it?
One following the other going to the door and stepping out to the porch, they wait for Shelton to speak, for Laura to speak.
They just stand there, out in the yard, staring back at everybody on the porch.
Shelton steps forward and hands the rifle to Huey. “Thanks, old buddy.”
Laura steps around him and places the box of canned food on the edge of the porch. Shelton takes the strap of the black tote from his shoulder and passes it to Laura, who receives it with a sneer and a glance of those cold green eyes. Then she walks up the doorsteps onto the porch and goes inside.
As she shoved past Kim, nearest the doorway, she smelled food, salt, something meaty and spicy.
***Later, when they are alone in their cabin, sitting on the edge of their cot and holding each other beneath a shared
blanket for warmth, Shelton tells Kim that the thieves were women, rather than men, and Laura had met them up the road and offered them food in exchange for taking her with them. She sent them after her clothes and told them where the ham was hidden in the van, along with the other cans of food. When they came back with Jean’s ham and insisted on eating it at once, she had been unable to stop them so shared it with them.
“They were filthy, freezing, starving,” he says, kissing her on her cold nose. “Like everybody else, out looking for food. Trying to survive.”
“So you gave them some of Jean’s canned food and sent them on their way?”
“That’s the gist of it, yes. You should have seen them, babe, chomping down on chunks of ham torn by hand from the can. The saddest thing you’ve ever seen. Said they hadn’t eaten in over a week.”
“But Laura... Laura’s been eating what we eat; we’ve never cheated her.”
He shakes his head then rubs his scarce black beard. “Laura’s a lost cause: greedy, selfish, out for herself and to hell with everybody else.”
“Poor Jean and Huey.” Kim moves closer, pulling him closer with an arm around his waist. “Poor Lucy.”
“Yep, how’d you like to bring somebody like that into the world and have to put up with her?”
“So you’re not going to tell them about what she did, about the ham?”
“No. I don’t have the heart for it. They should have guessed by now that she sent the girls after her stuff. Let them figure it out about the ham. It won’t take long, not and us so low on supplies.”
“I still don’t see why those girls weren’t afraid if Laura told them we were here and her daddy has a gun.”
They are never warm till they huddle close and touch skin. It feels so good and Adam is sleeping with Sis’ Shirley under a mound of blankets and quilts. Shelton and Kim feel less guilty to be alone, touching and warm, for having sacrificed all blankets but one.
“We don’t know what she told them, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she convinced them that we would hide. That we are beaten down and harmless.”
“She should be made to leave, Shelton. You should have let her to go with them.”
“I thought about that, Kim. But she’d have just come back with them and we’d have more trouble on our hands. More mouths to feed.” He wipes his face down as if to wipe away what he’s thinking. “Let’s just keep our trouble in the camp where we at least have some hope of managing it.”