Kind of Kin (13 page)

They both began to call his name again, louder now, retracing their steps. Carl Albert got out of the truck and joined them, his face red and swollen. He tagged after his daddy, stayed right at his heels. Sweet stopped in front of the open barn door. “Maybe we should call the sheriff.”

“No!” Terry stood near the truck with Carl Albert. “We'll find him, honey. He's just playing a joke on us. Right, son?” He had his hand on Carl's shoulder. The boy nodded, his face puckered in the fading light. Sweet flipped open her phone. “What are you doing?” Her husband's voice was wary.

“Calling the sheriff.”

“Don't do that!” Terry started toward her. “You can't trust that s.o.b! Son of a gun was supposed to round up Mexicans! Period!” Abruptly Terry stopped.

“Round up Mexicans,” Sweet said. “When? What are you talking about?” At once her father's words in the break room rushed back to her.
Ask him.
But Sweet did not need to ask. She stared at her husband standing with his head tucked in the graying light, his old burgundy Farm Bureau cap tugged down over his hair. The puffy pale thumbs under his eyes. The fear in them. Of course. She'd known all along, she just hadn't known that she knew: her husband was the one who'd turned her daddy in.

Thursday | February 21, 2008 | 1:30
P.M.

State Capitol Building | Oklahoma City

T
he confluence was perfect. Monica couldn't have scripted it better if she'd conjured it herself. Her bill sailed through committee, of course, as she'd known it would, but she was particularly brilliant in her presentation, she thought—passionate, with a touch of quiet outrage—and the tribal members standing around the edges of the committee room lent an air of drama to the thing. It required the greatest delicacy, the most nuanced wording possible, for her to clarify that this new bill, HB 1906, had absolutely nothing to do with oppressing any minority but only with preserving Oklahoma's heritage and saving taxpayers money. Charlie had warned her about the rumblings among the state's powerful tribes over the English Only provision, so when the committee chair stopped her in the hall to inform her that the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Creek Nations had all sent representatives, she'd merely smiled. “You know and I know that Oklahomans want this bill, Fred. They want these enhancements. I don't anticipate any problems.”

And indeed there'd been none. Gazing placidly at the unsmiling brown faces ranged across the back of the room, she had managed to glide smoothly past the “official state language” provision with only a brief mention of the positive fiscal impact of eliminating costs for bilingual services, segueing seamlessly to asset seizure: “It's no different than properties used in drug crimes,” she told the committee, although her senses were acutely tuned to the varied audience members crowding the room. “House Bill 1906 will authorize local law enforcement to seize properties used in violation of HB 1830. Clearly this will also provide a positive fiscal impact for the counties because the properties can then be sold to help offset the costs of enforcement.”

Then she moved on quickly to the provision requiring school administrators to report the numbers of undocumented students in their districts. When Representative Jemison, expressing tribal concerns about the English Only provision, moved to strike title, Monica acquiesced graciously: “We certainly have no objection to framing the measure in such a way as to emphasize that there's no intention here of impinging upon the use of Native American languages—absolutely not. Our concern is solely for the Oklahoma taxpayer. We simply want to eliminate the burden of bilingual services and translator costs, but I'll be pleased to work with you on developing appropriate language, Representative Jemison. By all means.” She couldn't tell if this mollified any of the Indians, but the members of the judiciary committee seemed pleased, and the bill passed out of committee without objection.

But the great fun, the marvelous convergence, was the fact that at the very moment she was procuring unanimous passage out of committee of House Bill 1906, affectionately known as “Son of 1830” for how it built on her previous anti-illegal immigration measures—at that precise moment, the Latimer County D.A. was giving his own curt little presentation in Wilburton. Florid-faced Tom Waters read a statement in a deadly dull monotone from the courthouse steps: Felony charges had been filed against two Oklahoma citizens arrested under the provisions of the Oklahoma Tax Payers Protection Act, otherwise known as House Bill 1830, the preliminary hearing was set for the next available court docket on March sixth, he would not be taking questions, and then he'd turned and walked quickly back inside the courthouse—all of which Monica had been privileged to witness on the majority floor leader's new iPhone as they made their way toward the Fourth Floor Rotunda.

Today's lunch was being provided by FFA students from all over the state, and Monica was so in the zone she barely groaned when she saw they were having barbecued brisket—again. She smiled warmly at the pimply Future Farmer heaping coleslaw and baked beans on her plate, took the barbecue-slathered bun and made her way toward a crowded table, where she received warm commendations from members of both sides of the aisle. The toughest part, really, was having to drag herself away from all the accolades for the HouseTV interview.

The kid running the camera started to shoot her with nothing but a blank wall for backdrop, and she had to reposition herself so that she was framed by the busy rotunda, but then, unfortunately, she happened to glance over her shoulder and realized that the Indians were standing in the food line behind her, looking just entirely too dignified and offended. Later, when she reviewed the footage on her office computer, she decided that this was what accounted for the slight note of defensiveness in her tone. Well,
defensive
was too strong a word, but she did detect a whiff of self-protectiveness in the way she answered the anticipated arguments before they'd ever been stated: “For too long,” she said briskly, “the federal government has shirked its duty by failing to pass laws acknowledging English as the official language of this country. Oklahoma taxpayers have been forced to pay for bilingual drivers' tests and other services. This measure is in support of English, not in opposition to any group!”

And she'd been smiling too sincerely. Charlie was going to nail her on it. Never apologize, never explain.

Well, never mind. She'd been brilliant in committee—he
could
have come down and watched her do that—and she would be even more brilliant on the floor next week when 1906 came up for a vote. She'd have plenty of opportunity to eradicate any lingering taint of defensiveness. Besides, who watched www.HouseTV.gov anyway? Only political junkies and fanatics. It was the public media that mattered, and that little campaign had just barely begun.

Today was Thursday, sadly, a less than optimum news day, but at least it wasn't a Friday—what a waste that would have been. And tonight's reception was being hosted by ConocoPhillips at the Petroleum Club, now, how good a timing was
that
? Ordinarily most legislators would be rushing home for the weekend, but no one wanted to miss such a powerful opportunity for hobnobbing. Virtually every member of both the House and Senate would be there—not to mention all the state's biggest movers and shakers.

True, illegal immigration was perhaps not on the top of the oil bigwigs' to-do lists, but she knew the media glow would still be upon her. She was going to have lots of opportunity for networking tonight!

C
harlie came into the bedroom with her iced chai and a plate of cheese as she was reapplying her makeup. She would have preferred a good stiff Tom Collins, but she couldn't take a chance on anyone at the reception smelling liquor on her breath. Lips pursed at the mirror, Monica nodded toward the two outfits laid out on the bed, a dress and a suit in her signature colors. The nod said to her husband: you pick.

When she first came to the capitol she'd worn a lot of red and black, until she happened to look down from the gallery one morning and realized that every middle-aged female on the House floor, all nine of them, wore some version of red and black. The next day she'd switched to the aquamarine-turquoise-sapphire-seagreen motif she'd been wearing ever since, and really, the colors were perfect; they showed off her eyes, highlighted her hair. Charlie stabbed a thumb at the suit rather than the cocktail dress, and of course he was right. In fact, why had she ever bought that scoop-necked just-this-side-of-revealing slinky thing? Well, because it looked damned good on her—but where could she ever wear it? Certainly nowhere professional, and as Charlie so often said, there was nowhere a legislator went that
wasn't
professional. Well, no matter, it wasn't designer anyway; she'd drop it off, tags and all, at the Goodwill drive-through in McAlester this weekend, take the deduction on next year's taxes.

“Did you see Waters's little press conference this morning?” Charlie settled back on the mound of pillows, grabbed the remote off her side table.

“I did,” she said.

“What did I tell you?”

“You said he'd be falling all over himself.”

“And was he?”

“He was. Which pair?” She held up a set of turquoise-and-silver earrings and a set of plain silver. He nodded at the turquoise. She returned her gaze to the mirror, holding herself in check. Why bother pointing out that it had been her own little jewel of a press conference that had forced the D.A.'s hand? Charlie would only say, Well, of course, babe, what did I tell you? She heard him chuckling behind her. “What?” she said, turning. Charlie wagged the remote at the TV.

“That right there is why Waters is going to want to move the trial to McAlester. You watch.” On the screen a stocky man in a brown jacket and tan Stetson stood on the same courthouse steps where Waters had given his terse little announcement. Good grief, Monica thought, can't anybody in this state be even the least bit more creative than to hold every damn press conference on courthouse steps? “That's the sheriff who conducted the raid,” Charlie said. “Waters is
not
going to want him holding forth to the media every day, believe me. He's a braggart and a blusterer, you'd never get him to shut up. The media would eat him up with a spoon. If Waters is going forward with this thing, he damn sure wants a conviction, and that fool right there could blow the whole deal.”

“Turn it up.”

“ . . . tracking dogs coming in from Stigler and Talihina,” the sheriff said. “Probably thirty or forty volunteers, we're confident we'll find him. But yes, ma'am, you could say it's a challenge. That's rough country down in there.”

“What's he talking about? Oh my God, did those men escape?”

“Hush. Hush!”

“ . . . no reason to expect foul play. The kid's probably just run off to get attention. The boy's aunt says this isn't the first time.”

A female reporter's voice: “There are rumors the boy had been beaten. Can you confirm a beating?”

“No, I don't think that's true, ma'am. I know the boy's family, they're good people.”

“Good people, hah!” a voice catcalled from somewhere off camera. “Beaner smugglers, you mean!”

A different reporter, a man's voice this time: “Sheriff, what's the correlation between the grandfather's arrest and the boy's disappearance?”

“Well, now, I don't know as I'd use the word
disappear
. He's probably just hiding out someplace. He'll get hungry and come in.”

“Sheriff, why did you wait fourteen hours before issuing an Amber Alert?”

The sheriff held up a hand. “All right, folks, nice talking to you. I got to get back to work.” He started down the steps, parting the half-dozen reporters like parting the waters; they scrambled aside, calling out questions: “Can you confirm that the boy was suspended from school?” “The boy's uncle has been deported, isn't that right?” “What about the family, do they have any idea who might want to harm him?” The camera followed the sheriff to his cruiser, and then the screen was filled with the exotic features of KFOR reporter Shoshone Ballenger signing off live from Wilburton, Oklahoma. Charlie hit the mute button. After a long, silent moment Monica said, “Shit, Charlie. What does this mean?”

He shook his head. “I don't know.”

A chill rushed over her. Her husband never, ever, said he didn't know.

Part Two

Gone Astray

Sunday |
February 24, 2008 | 10:40
A.M.

Sweet's house | Cedar

S
weet sat
on the divan in her bathrobe reading her
Baptist
Messenger.
From what she could tell reading the article, the
all-Christian prison hadn't been built yet—it was just a proposal somebody
wanted to put before the state legislature—but the idea gave her hope. Maybe
they would have a women's wing, she thought. Then she could go to prison right
along with her father and hang out with the Christians after she'd murdered her
husband. She threw the
Baptist Messenger
on the
floor. Leaning forward over the coffee table, Sweet cupped her forehead in one
hand in a prayerful attitude. She wasn't praying. She was trying to make herself
get up and go get ready for church.

She'd already skipped Sunday School—the thought of
sitting around the long table with the six women in her Dorcas Adult Women's
class was just more than she could handle this morning—but she really had to go
to eleven o'clock Worship. What would it say about her and her family if she
didn't go? Every able-bodied man in town was out searching day and night for
Dustin, and the women of the church had been feeding them, and the preacher had
been running interference like a lineman for seventy-two hours straight. He'd
promised not to let news cameras in the sanctuary, but what if there were
reporters waiting outside the church? The ugliness she would have to run through
to get up the front steps! She looked at the clock. Twenty till eleven. Brother
Oren would be in the Pastor's Study getting ready for his sermon; she shouldn't
bother him. Anyway, what was the point of calling to find out if there were
reporters waiting? Whether there were or there weren't, she still had to go.

Sweet reached across the coffee table and drew the
Bible over, but she didn't open it. The house was so quiet. When she'd kicked
her husband out last Thursday, she hadn't necessarily meant to kick her son out
as well, but Carl Albert needed to be away from all this. He'd had a complete
meltdown when they discovered his mountain bike missing, flinging himself down
in the carport, flailing his legs and wailing—with that bunch of reporters
filming it from right out there in the yard! She didn't have a big enough
family, that was the problem. If she only had some kind of a decent living
sister, or an aunt and uncle, or even just a few in-laws, somebody her son could
go stay with and be away from this mess. She'd had no choice but to let Carl
Albert go stay at the motel in Poteau with Terry. So far, at least, no reporters
had tracked them down there.

Terry. God. She didn't want to even think about
him. She knew what the Bible said, Thou shalt not kill, and what Jesus said,
that to look on somebody to lust after them was to commit adultery in your
heart. Probably this meant that if you looked at your husband and truly wanted
to kill him, you'd committed murder in your heart. She had done just exactly
that, from the very minute she realized he was the one who'd turned Daddy in.
“You son of a lowdown skunk,” she'd spat. “I ought to wring your neck!” She had
turned and stomped back inside the barn, and Terry had followed, hollering like
it was somehow
her
fault: “How the hell did
I
know it was going to turn out to be such a big deal!
I figured he'd pay a piddly fine, learn a lesson, we'd get rid of a few
wetbacks! I had to do
something
, they're spreading
like these damn fire ants swarming up from Texas!” When she found Dustin's empty
Spider-Man backpack, unzipped and filthy and stuffed down behind an old feed
bin, that's when Sweet had become truly terrified. She'd immediately punched in
the sheriff's number, with Terry shouting behind her, “Don't do that, don't do
that, what the hell'd you do that for?”

Well, it was a horrible fight, both of them ranting
and stamping and throwing things around the barn, with Carl Albert trailing
after them wailing and blubbering. They were still yelling and cussing when
Holloway's cruiser pulled up. After that, it was all out of her hands.

But it had always been out of her hands, Sweet
thought. She had tried all week to hold things together, and every day things
had fallen further apart. What things? she wondered. Hell, everything! Her life!
Or her life as she'd known it for the seventeen and a half years she'd been
married. And here she sat, uncombed and cussing to herself on a Sunday morning.
Unable to pray no matter how badly she wanted to. Skipping Sunday School on
purpose. Late for church. Murdering her husband in her heart. Sweet glanced
again at the wall clock. Then she got up and went to the bedroom to put on some
clothes.

S
he
had promised herself she wouldn't scuttle, and she didn't. She did, however,
walk very fast. The Call to Worship had already started; she could hear the
singing as she strode past the KTUL-TV Channel 8 News van and directly in
through First Baptist's front doors. Grabbing a bulletin from the basket in the
foyer, Sweet kept her same swift pace into the sanctuary. Everybody was
standing, singing, and she felt heads turning as she made a beeline for her
regular pew three-quarters of the way down on the left, where, thank goodness,
she could see empty space on the end where she and Terry and Carl Albert usually
sat next to Mr. Bledsoe's wheelchair in the aisle. She'd never seen the church
so packed, folding chairs lining the wall on both sides of the sanctuary. If you
didn't know better, a person could think a mighty bunch of folks in Latimer
County had just suddenly got religion.

Sweet reached for the hymnal in the pew-back holder
in front of her, tried to somehow spread out and fill the pew so that the
absence of her husband and son wouldn't seem so obvious, though the empty aisle
space at the end seemed to gape like a wound. She flipped through the hymnal,
kept her eyes on the page even though she knew the words to “His Name Is
Wonderful” backward and forward, and she sang as loud as she could. She wouldn't
allow herself to look around. She didn't want to know what people's faces were
saying. Numbly she went through the motions, standing for prayer, sitting when
it was time to sit again, listening to the song leader Lon Jones make the
announcements—potluck dinner in Fellowship Hall after the service, all were
welcome, the relief search party would head out from the Senior Citizens Center
parking lot at two o'clock, the list of new prayer requests, Dusty's name, Mr.
Bledsoe's, “the whole of the Brown and Kirkendall families”—but it all seemed so
unreal, like a script somebody wrote.

During the
greet-one-another-in-Christian-fellowship portion, Sweet remained in her pew and
let others come shake her hand, firm grip, limp grip, sweaty grip,
we're praying for y'all, don't worry, they'll find
him
. The ushers started from the rear of the sanctuary passing the
plates, and Sweet plucked one of the little Special Offering envelopes out of
the pew back and took her checkbook out of her purse. Last Sunday had been her
and Terry's tithe Sunday—they tithed once a month, on the first Sunday after he
got paid, making sure to write the check to God before their balance got too
low—but she'd missed both services last week and her Sunday School class this
morning, where she normally turned it in. She was going to have to put it in the
offering plate if she aimed to get it in today. Sweet licked the envelope,
slashed through the words
Special Offering,
signed
her name in bold letters. She was not going to quit tithing. That was one thing
she could still do.

The song leader dismissed the kids for Children's
Church, and that almost got to her, the sight of all those little ones running
toward the door to the classrooms where they would color cut-out Bible pictures
and learn about Jesus and the Fishes and drink Kool-Aid and eat cheap
store-bought cookies and spoil their dinners as her own son had done for years
when he was still young enough for Children's Church. Don't! she told herself.
Don't go there. She pawed through her purse looking for some chewing gum. If she
let herself get weepy now, no telling when she would quit.

So she made it through that part okay, but then
here came the Special Music, young Amber Ann Fields standing beside the pulpit
with the cordless mike in her hand, nodding to the kid on the CD player in the
back, and over the speakers came the rippling sound of harps and violins like an
orchestra, and Sweet's heart contracted—oh, wouldn't you know, wouldn't you just
know. “I Believe.” They couldn't have picked a worse song. Amber Ann's clear,
high, country voice rang through the sound system. How many times had Sweet told
people that was the song she wanted sung at her funeral? Because it said
everything, all she'd ever known of faith—and, yes, there was Jesus, of course
there was Jesus, but there was this, too, believing the Lord sends a flower for
every drop of rain, a light in every darkness. She didn't have that kind of
faith anymore, or if she did, it was crammed so low and deep she couldn't touch
it; she couldn't even remember what it felt like.
I believe
for every one who goes astray, someone will come, to show the way.
Probably the people nearby thought she was weeping because of her nephew
being lost, but it wasn't for Dustin, it was for her. She couldn't really be
lost, of course—she'd been saved since she was a kid—but somehow it was only her
head that knew that. Her heart didn't know. Her heart felt like she was sinking
into a black wilderness and she might be there forever. Her soul felt cold and
empty, like there just might not be any point in anything. Her throat felt like
it could burst wide open. “I be-lieve, ” Amber sang. “I—I be-lieve.”

When the music finished, the amens were many and
loud, and so was the clapping, which never failed to aggravate Sweet. You
weren't supposed to clap for somebody singing in church, she'd been taught
better than that. It was like applauding a sermon, like you were giving credit
to the human person instead of the Lord. In her opinion there were entirely too
many new Christians who hadn't been taught proper Baptist etiquette. She blew
her nose, opened her Bible to where Brother Oren told everybody to turn. Matthew
18:12–14. “When you find it, say amen,” the preacher said. Several scattered
amens stuttered through the sanctuary. “Let's all stand for the reading of God's
Word.” Some of the strangers in the folding chairs glanced around, confused, but
then they stood up along with the congregation.

“ ‘How think ye?' ” Brother Oren read. “ ‘If a man
have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the
ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone
astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more
of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so it is
not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones
should perish.' Let's go to the Lord in prayer: Heavenly Father, we come to You
here this morning with burdened hearts. You know our sorrows, Lord. You know the
sorrows of this family. We'd just ask, Father, that You'd be with us here in
this service this morning, guide us in the seeking of Your Word. Be with the
ones who are out searching now, the ones who'll go out later this evening. Guide
and direct them, Lord, that Your will might be done. We know that not a little
sparrow falls but that Your eye is upon it. We know it's not Your will that one
of these little ones should be lost. Continue to guide and direct our lives,
Lord, and we'll be careful to give Thee the praise. These things we ask in
Jesus' name. Amen.”

“Amen,” Sweet murmured, along with many others.
Brother Oren was, to be honest, a better pray-er than he was a preacher. That
was one of Terry's biggest gripes. “He talks like a blamed Presbyterian, he
don't
preach
!” By which Tee meant there was
insufficient hellfire and damnation in Brother Oren's sermons. Sweet had to
admit that this was true. His voice was just too quiet. And monotonous. And he
always had to pause to go back to the pulpit and read his notes. He was a young
old man, or an old young man, with lank sandy hair and a faint little potbelly
showing under his tie. The pulpit committee had found him in some tiny country
church way down around Idabel; she couldn't think how they'd even run across him
down there. He'd been here five years, and in that time the church hadn't
exactly grown, but it hadn't shrunk much, either. Brother Oren might not be a
great preacher, Sweet thought, but he's a good pastor, a good shepherd. She
couldn't imagine how she would have managed without him this past week. Out of
respect she kept her eyes on his face, trying to act like she was listening,
though her mind, as usual, began to drift.

Goeth into the
mountains
. Well, yes, they were doing that. She'd heard that Holloway
was getting up a search party to go down into the Winding Stair. They'd already
searched every inch of the farm, searched miles out in the valley in every
direction, and the boy was not here. “Vanished into thin air,” the sheriff kept
saying in his many news conferences. After that bad rain Friday night, he'd
called in a diving team to search the strip pits north of town. That made no
sense to Sweet. Why would Dustin pedal five miles north when the backpack was
found at the farm three miles south? Holloway just wanted to make it look like
something was happening. But, then, why would Dustin go south into the
mountains, either? Why would he go anywhere . . .
And if so be that he find.
If so be. Meaning sometimes
it could be that He
doesn't
find the lost sheep. No.
Not possible. Not in this case. She wouldn't let herself think it. Sweet must be
among the ninety and nine, because she had surely been left behind, because the
Shepherd was definitely someplace else—except the ninety and nine went not
astray, that's what the verse said, and she
had
gone
astray. Somehow. Some way. Astray. A stray. Like Dustin. The little stray
orphan. Again the knot swelled in her throat, and she was working it, swallowing
hard, trying not to resume bawling, when she heard a faint sound to her left, a
tiny, hollow, mechanical
click
. Brother Oren's
droning voice stopped. “Who did that!” he said, very loud. Everybody looked
around. Sweet was still trying to come to herself when Brother Oren did
something she'd never seen him do before. Right in the middle of the sermon, he
switched texts. “Would y'all turn with me in your Bibles to the Book of John!
Chapter two, verses fifteen and sixteen!”