“Oh, now you want me around, Sis? You were running from me a minute ago!”
“Ah, but the chase is the best part, George. You know that,” I said, laughing with her, my eyes on the disappointed sorrel. “The moment you turn away is the moment she’ll beg you to come back.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Georgia laughed. “But it’s my turn to play hard to get. Speaking of hard to get, you just missed Moses. He had a session tonight in Salt Lake. I think he was going to drop by and see you, actually. But you’re here. So that’s not going to work. You didn’t bring Millie?”
I winced. I didn’t mean to. But I couldn’t think about Millie. Not right now.
“Tag?” Georgia hadn’t missed the wince, and she studied me, a troubled groove between her eyes.
“Nah. I didn’t bring her. It was a spur of the moment trip. Moses called me, said he’d painted me into a picture last night, and I was curious. That’s all. Plus, I miss my God-baby. I want to hold her. Where is little Taglee?”
“My mom’s got her.” Georgia pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Moses didn’t tell me about the painting. Let’s go snoop, shall we?”
I didn’t really care about the painting—it was just the first thing that had popped into my mind—but I trailed after Georgia agreeably and kept a steady stream of bullshit coming so that she wouldn’t get too close.
It was David and Goliath, but lusty and lush, with bold colors and barely covered bodies, as if the biblical confrontation between a shepherd and a soldier had taken place in the Garden of Eden instead of on a battlefield.
Moses’s David was small and young. A boy really, ten or eleven, younger than I imagined he had actually been. And in the boyish face, I saw my own. The shaggy hair, the green eyes, the strong stance. I hadn’t looked like that at eleven. I’d been rounder, softer. And I’d been big for my age. My size had made me a target, the way physical difference always does.
Goliath was huge, towering over the boy like they belonged to two different species. His biceps and thighs bulged, his calves were unnaturally large, and his shoulders were as wide as the boy was tall. His head was thrown back, and his mouth was gaping, as if he roared like the beast he resembled. The fists clenched at his sides were bigger than the boys head, and young David stood stoically looking up at Goliath, his sling hanging from his hand, his eyes solemn. I leaned in closer, noting the detail, the lack of fear on the boy’s face. I looked at Goliath again, comparing and contrasting, and then my breath caught in my throat. I didn’t just see my face reflected in David. I saw myself in Goliath too.
David was me. And Goliath was me. They both had my face. I was the boy, and I was the giant. I stepped back, distancing myself from the suddenly disturbing image.
“Georgia? Am I seeing things, or did Moses put my face on David and Goliath?”
“Well I’ll be damned.” She was surprised. But she saw it too. It wasn’t just me.
“What do you think it means?” I pressed.
“Hell if I know, Tag. I don’t understand half of what Moses paints. He doesn’t understand it. It’s intuitive. You know that.”
“But it always means something.” And he’d seen Molly. Molly had inspired the painting.
“Maybe it means you are your own worst enemy,” Georgia said cheerfully and winked at me. I swallowed and looked back at the picture.
“So which one are you? David or Goliath?”
“Neither,” I said quietly, a memory resurfacing so swift and so sharp that it swept me away.
“Fight, fight, fight, fight!” The chant rose up around my head, the fact that they were children’s voices didn’t dull the roaring sound or the intimidating taunts. It didn’t ease the pressure I felt to swing my fist or give in to the curiosity to see what it would feel like. I’d never wanted to hit anyone so badly. “Fight, fight, fight, fight!”
“He’s a chicken! He’s a baby. You’re a baby, aren’t you baby Cammie?”
Cameron Keller huddled in a ball, his knees tucked into his chest. Cameron and I were friends. Cameron was small and sickly, where I was tall and heavy-set. Cameron was quiet, and I was the class clown. But we were both outcasts, teetering on the far edges of the spectrum, and normal and acceptable lay somewhere between us. I pushed my way into the circle, my size making it easier than it otherwise would have been. And people parted, more out of surprise than anything. I hadn’t ever gotten physical with anyone before.
Lyle Coulson leaned over Cameron’s shaking form and gathering the spit in his mouth, let it hang from his lips, dribbling in a long, phlegm-thickened strand, before it landed in Cameron’s hair.
With a roar, I shoved Lyle Coulson to the ground and pressed his sneering face into the dirt.
Someone pushed at my back, toppling me off to the side before Lyle was up, swinging and cursing. Someone else grabbed at my arms, trying to prevent me from slugging Lyle before Lyle could punch me. There was a roaring in my ears. Maybe it was my heart working overtime, maybe it was adrenaline dulling my senses, but whatever it was, I liked it. The roaring in my ears made the rage echo in my belly. It was the sound of finally fighting back. I took a hard punch in the back, or was that a kick? I turned, swinging wildly, arms pumping like pistons, landing a few, taking a few more, until suddenly kids were running away, scattering like wildebeest on the African savannah—just like the show on the National Geographic channel that I had watched with Molly on Sunday. This time, I was the lion. I was the predator. But Cameron didn’t run. Cameron stayed huddled like the wounded calf he’d always been.
“Cameron?” I knelt beside my friend. “You okay, buddy?”
Cameron peeked out from beneath the arm that covered his head. “Tag? Are they gone?”
“Yeah, buddy. They all ran away.” My chest filled with pride. I looked at my hands in amazement. I’d used my fists. One knuckle was bloody and torn and the pain was sweet.
“You made them run, Tag?” Cameron was as surprised as I was. I had never fought back. I was a fat kid who tried to make everyone laugh. I didn’t fight.
“Yeah, Cam. I did. I beat the shit out of ‘em.”
My first fist fight. It had probably looked more like a squirming wrestling match between fat puppies, but I had come out the victor for the first time ever. I had been David then. And I had been Goliath too, I supposed. The boy who fought back, and the giant who made everyone run in fear. Now? Now I didn’t know if David still existed or if Goliath ever had, and the picture troubled me. It had obviously troubled Moses too, or he wouldn’t have called.
“Is everything okay, Tag?” Georgia asked softly. I turned away from the painting and met her serious gaze.
I nodded once, just a brief jerk of my head, and Georgia pressed harder.
“Are you going to tell me about Millie? Moses seems to think she’s special. Is she?”
“She’s special.”
“Is she special enough to tame the wild man?” Georgia was teasing me, trying to shake me out of the mood she obviously sensed I was in. Or maybe she was just a girl digging for romantic gossip. My sisters were like that too, or they used to be, when I knew them.
I slung my arm around her shoulders and turned us both away from the biblical standoff.
“Some things are born to be wild. Some horses can’t be broken,” I said in my best Clint Eastwood.
“All right. Well then I guess the question should be, are you special enough to let a blind girl break you?”
“It’s already happened. I just don’t want to break her.” My voice caught, and I pulled my arm from Georgia’s shoulders and shoved them into my pockets, striding away so she wouldn’t see the trembling around my mouth and the panic that I could feel oozing out of my pores. I was so glad Moses wasn’t here. I don’t know what I’d been thinking trying to find him. I wasn’t ready for Moses yet.
“I gotta go, George. Give Taglee a kiss for me. Give Moses a kiss too. He loves my kisses.” Georgia laughed, but the laughter didn’t lift the worry from
her voice. I was acting a little strange, and I knew she was wondering what the hell was up.
“Don’t be a stranger, Tag. We’ve missed you.” Georgia called behind me as I strode to my truck.
“I’ll miss you too, George. Every damn day.”
MAYBE IT WAS Moses talking about Molly, but I found myself pulling off the freeway fifteen minutes after I left Levan, exiting at the truck stop in Nephi near the spot where they found my sister’s remains. The dogs found my sister’s body. The dogs found her when I could not. I’d looked. I’d looked so hard and so desperately that I’d almost convinced myself she couldn’t be found. If she couldn’t be found then I hadn’t failed. Not exactly.
Her grave was just a hole in the earth, marked by tumbleweeds and ringed by sagebrush. Almost two years we’d looked, and she’d been waiting in a litter-strewn field near an obscure overpass outside a little town everyone mispronounced. A town that meant nothing to the girl who was forced to make it her final resting place. Nephi. NEE FIGH. When I had first heard it pronounced I’d thought of the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, yelling from his castle in the heavens, “FEE, FI, FO, FUM, I smell the blood of an Englishman.” FEE FI rhymes with NEPHI.
NEE PHI FO FUM, I smell the blood of your missing ones.
The dogs could smell her. But there was no blood. Not then. When they found her only bones and bits of fabric and several long blonde hairs remained. Some drug paraphernalia was buried with her, labeling her an addict, deserving of her fate. Suddenly she was no longer missing. But she was still gone. And for years we didn’t know who took her.
NEE PHI FO FUM, I smell the blood of your missing ones.
They say that most murders are committed by the family members. By the loved ones. But the man who killed my sister didn’t know her at all. And he didn’t love her. It turned out, he’d killed lots of girls. So many girls over so many years. All of them missing. All of them gone.
NEE PHI FO FUM, ready or not, here I come. And come he had. I’d put a bullet in the man’s head, avenging the blood of the missing ones, all the missing ones.
NEE PHI FO FUM, pull the trigger, now you’re done.
NEE PHI FO FUM, pull the trigger, now you’re done.
Oh, God. I didn’t want to be done. I sat in my truck and thought of Molly, staring into the field where they found her body. And I talked to her for a while. I asked her what the hell I was supposed to do. And I wondered if she was coming through to Moses because my time was up, if she was suddenly hanging around because she was waiting on me. If my time was up, I could deal. The truth of that settled on me. It surprised me. But I could deal. I could handle it. Moses had told me once that you can’t escape yourself. I’d wanted to once. Not anymore. I had come to terms with myself. I liked myself. I liked my life. Hell, I loved my life.
But I wasn’t going to spend whatever time I had left being sick.
I’d never been good at in-betweens. All or nothing. That’s who I was. All or nothing, dead or alive. Not dying. Not sick. Dead or alive, all or nothing.
Having made my decision, I called the doctor. I actually heard relief in his voice when I told him I was ready to go ahead with what came next, and his relief terrified me. He cleared his schedule and just like that, the craniotomy was set for the following day.
I pulled back onto the highway and left my sister’s shadow in the rearview mirror. I headed back home, back to Millie, suddenly desperate to see her.
MILLIE OPENED THE door to greet me, a smile on her lips, my name on her tongue, but I didn’t wait for her to release it. I wanted her to keep it, savor it, and never let it go. I needed my name to stay inside her so that I wouldn’t float away like a word that’s already been spoken. So I pressed my lips to hers and swung her up in my arms like a man in a movie, and my name became a cry that only I heard.
I felt slightly crazed, and my kiss was frantic as I barreled up the stairs with Millie in my arms. My legs didn’t shake and my mind was clear, as if in its health my body was rebelling too. I wanted to roar and hit my chest. I wanted to shake my fists at the heavens, but more than anything I wanted Millie. I didn’t want to waste another second with Millie.
Then we were in her room, the white comforter pristine and smooth, like Millie’s skin in the moonlight, and I laid her across it, falling down beside her. I was anxious. Needy. I wanted the safety of her skin, the absolution of her flesh, and the promise that came with it. I wanted to take. I wanted to cement myself in her memory and leave my mark. I needed that. I needed her. She matched my fervor like she understood. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t. But she didn’t slow me down or beg me for reassurance.
My hands were in her hair and tracing her eyes, fingering her mouth, pausing in the hollow of her throat. I wanted to touch every single part of her. But even as I lost myself in the silk of her skin and the sway of her movements against me, I felt the horror rise up inside of me and shimmer beneath my skin. It wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t be enough, and I knew it, even as I closed my eyes and tried to make it be enough. I couldn’t breathe and my heart raced, and for a moment I thought I would tell her everything.
She must have mistaken my fear for hesitation, the cessation of my breath for something else, because she cradled my face in her hands and pressed her forehead to mine. And then she whispered my name.
“David, David, David.” It sounded like a song when she said it. And she kissed my lips softly.
“David, David, David.” She chanted my name, like she couldn’t believe it was true, like she liked the way it felt in her mouth.
“I love the way you call me David,” I said, and remembered the line from my silly song, the line that had no rhyme.
“I love that you are mine,” she breathed, and the fear left me for a time. It tiptoed away and love took its place, love and belonging and time that can’t be stolen. Millie said she had to feel to see, and she saw all of me. Her fingers traced the contours of my back like she was reading a map, following a river to the sea across a long expanse, over valleys and hills. She was thorough and attentive, her lips and cheeks following her fingers, her tongue testing the textures that needed more attention. When Millie made love she actually made love. She created it, drew it, coaxed it into being. I’d always hated that term and preferred a little baser description, maybe because it felt more honest. But with Millie, nothing else fit. And she didn’t just make love, she made me love. She made me listen. She made me feel. She made me pay attention. I didn’t hurry or take. I didn’t rush or push. I closed my eyes and loved the same way she did, with the tips of my fingers and the palms of my hands, and I saw her so clearly that my eyes burned behind my closed lids.
She was confident in a way she shouldn’t have been, confident in a way that is born from knowing you are loved, and I reveled in that. She wasn’t the girl in sexy lingerie, wondering if she should pose her body this way or that. She was a woman deeply in love and completely lost in the experience. She didn’t ask me what I liked or what I wanted. She didn’t hesitate or hold back. She didn’t plead for pretty words or reassurance.
But I gave them anyway.
I gave them because they fell from my mouth, and I pressed them to her ears, needing her to know how much I loved her, how perfect I found her, how precious the moment was. And she whispered back, matching each expression with affection, gifting words with caresses, until the effort to speak became too great and the words felt inadequate. When she reached the peak she pulled me over the edge with her, and I wished we could just keep on falling and never stop. Falling would feel like flying if you never hit the ground. But the landing was soft and our breathing slowed, and I pulled her in tight as the world righted itself. Or wronged me. I wasn’t sure which. Millie was pliant and sleepy in my arms, and I felt her drifting off.
“I love you, Millie. Do you know that?” I said.
“Yes.” She said the word on a long, satisfied sigh, as if the knowledge was wonderful.
“You have your favorite
sounds, and now, so do I. I love it when my back is turned, and I hear you coming. I love the sound your stick makes. When I hear it, it makes me smile. I love your voice and the way you laugh from your chest. It’s one of the first things I noticed about you. That laugh.” I felt her smile, her lips moving softly against my throat.
“I love that little breath, the little gasp in your throat when I touch you here.” I pressed my hand to her lower back and pulled her tightly against me. Her breath hitched on cue. “That’s it. That’s the sound.”
Millie kissed my chest but didn’t speak. I counted to sixty slowly, and then I continued, whispering so softly and so unhurriedly she was sure to fall asleep.
“And you hum. You hum when you’re happy. You hum when you run your fingers through my hair and when you’re falling asleep. You are almost humming now.”
There was silence in the room, and I knew she’d slid under the downy blanket of slumber. It was what I’d intended. I’d waited until she was gone.
“I want to hear that sound every night of my life.” I felt the panic rise up in my throat, not knowing how many nights I would have and not wanting to think about that when I was holding her. With the panic came tears, and they leaked out the corners of my eyes and dripped into my ears.
“I love you, Millie. And it’s the most amazing feeling, the most incredible thing I’ve ever felt. I can’t hold it in my chest, that feeling. So it spills out of me whenever you’re around. It spills out of my mouth and my eyes and my ears. It spills out of my fingertips and makes me walk faster and talk louder and feel more alive. Do you feel like that, Millie? Do I make you feel more alive?”
Her deep, soft breaths were my only response, and I kissed the top of her head.