Kind of Kin (23 page)

Tuesday | February 26, 2008 | 6:00
P.M.

Brown's farm | Cedar

T
he sight of the near-empty yard scared her. Where was everybody? All those vehicles camped out at her daddy's farm for two days, now all she could see was one lone Latimer County Sheriff's Department cruiser parked nose-to-tail next to a big six-wheeler up close to the house. Well, the weather, of course, Sweet realized. Sleet and freezing rain coming—nobody wanted to get caught out in that. See? she told herself. See! The Lord
will
provide. She doused her headlights as she came up the drive, steering away from the two empty vehicles and toward the barn. Probably the men had gone inside the house to warm up. She could see the lights on in her daddy's kitchen. Sweet eased her Taurus across the gloppy barnyard, didn't click her headlights back on until she was headed across the pasture, praying to God to not let those men look out the kitchen window and see her, and also to please not let her get stuck. She didn't dare drive with her lights off. Seeing where she was going was tough enough.

She leaned forward to rub the side of her fist against the windshield above the steering wheel, but the icy smears were not on the inside. The needlelike rain was starting to freeze. This is how it always starts, she thought—a little deceitful rain, the thermometer falling, a bit of ice on the windshield, then on the fences and power lines. Then the trees. Before you know it you're in the middle of an ice storm, power outages for days, tree branches crashing, people spinning out on the highways, dying—and there wasn't ever any
storm
to it, she thought. Just a nasty fretful spitting rain, turning mean.

Was all this really necessary? All this effort to keep them hidden? Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if . . . Once again she ran through the scenario as she'd done a dozen times since yesterday, seeing at the end of it Misty Dawn and Juanito in handcuffs in the glare of floodlights, and that little girl, terrified, wailing, clinging to her mama while a deputy's big old ugly paw tried to peel her off. Twenty years, Misty said. Juanito could get sent to prison for twenty years. Could that be true? Just for sneaking back across the border after you'd been deported? What was so terrible about that?

But in some ways it did seem terrible. Or stupid. Or, anyway, the law was the law. Oh, why hadn't they known any better than to do this! Why didn't Misty Dawn know, at least?

Well, but what would Sweet rather have them do? Never fall in love? Never have a baby or get married? Never meet? All that was
done.
So what, then? What could they have tried that would have been any better? Sweet had asked Misty one time, back before all this trouble even started, “Why doesn't Juanito go back to Mexico and get in line, do it legally.” “There's no freaking
line,
” Misty Dawn had snorted. “Not for Mexicans!”

“But you're married,” Sweet had said. Again the snort. The bitterness in her niece's voice was astonishingly cold. “That don't make any difference,” she said. “He'd have to wait in Mexico in that supposed
line
like ten years!”

This is what the immigration lawyer had told them. Or that's what he'd told them before Juanito got deported. Maybe after you'd been deported once, you couldn't even get in line. Either way, that little girl would grow up without her daddy. Sweet remembered watching them together yesterday: Juanito crouched on the mine floor in the lamplight, talking quietly, trying to explain what they were doing, Sweet thought. The child kept her face down, shaking her head, and then she'd looked up and said something to her daddy in Spanish, the complicated syllables floating into the yellowed darkness in her high-pitched child's voice, slow and soft.

That moment was in some ways more strange to Sweet, and more hurtful, than all the strange, hurtful moments that had gone before. This little girl, her own niece, who had never, so far as Sweet knew, spoken a word of English, could answer her father in perfect rippling Spanish. How was that possible? English ought to be in her blood, it ought to be born in her. Everybody in their family talked English, had done so ever since, well, the very beginning—how could this little girl not know her own language? Or if she knew it, why wouldn't she talk it? Sweet understood that it was unreasonable to be bothered by that, but she was bothered—wrenched, actually. The child looked like her mommy and daddy, yes, but she also, Sweet had realized in that moment, watching her in the smoking lamplight, looked very much like her grandmother, Gaylene. She is ours, Sweet thought. Concepción María de la Luz Perez Brown. My sister's granddaughter. One of our own.

In the headlights the old trash dump emerged out of the darkness. She gave it a careful berth, steering past the end of the ditch toward the broken fence. The bottom of the Taurus scraped as she thumped down the bumpy track. Lord, do not let me get stuck. At least the water had receded—she could see the rock bed of the old bridge just ahead. She eased down on to it, was halfway across, going slow, when she heard the first gunshot.

In a heartbeat she realized it came from the mine. Three more shots in rapid succession, a little pause, then a fifth and final shot echoing against the ridge. Oh my God. Sweet gunned the Taurus up the far bank, immediately spun out in the mud. Her car stalled, wedged sideways in the narrow track. Please. No. Please, no, please no please no please no. Gradually she accelerated, but the more gas she gave it, the more the tires spun. She tried rocking, shifting from low to reverse, low to reverse, but she was afraid she'd strip the rebuilt transmission entirely—or worse, that the tires would suddenly find purchase in reverse and she'd go roaring back down into the creek. She paused, listening again, in her mind, to what she'd just heard. The shots weren't light and popping enough for a pistol, but they were too light and there were too many of them to have come from a shotgun. It was exactly what she'd first thought: her daddy's .22 rifle—the one she'd pulled out of the garbage bag and handed Juanito yesterday. For protection, she'd said nonchalantly, thinking of the timber rattler Daddy had killed one time near the mine, though she hadn't used the word
snake—
the kids were nervous enough. But snakes don't go crawling in this weather anyway
.
Dear Lord, dear Lord, please don't tell me somebody came snooping around the mine and Juanito shot them!

Sweet jerked the steering wheel hard to one side, slammed the car in low, gave it the gas. Her front tires spun, spat mud on the windshield so that her worthless wipers could smear the glass into a worse icy mess. She smelled burning tire rubber, smoking oil from the stressed engine. There was no way she was going to get out of this without help. Probably the deputy and whoever was at the house had heard the shots, too. Probably they would come out to investigate. Probably they would be here in no time. Sweet opened the car door and jumped out into the pricking rain.

She scrambled up the clay bank, slipping and sliding until she was down on all fours crawling, the sickening feel of cold clay against her palms, her boots slick against the mud, her denimed knees cold with muck and wet. Against her neck and hands, the freezing rain felt like needles. The slope leveled off and she knew she'd reached the top but she couldn't see anything; the night was black, black, pitch-black, like being inside the old coal mine itself. She stood up and tried to run, but she stumbled into an invisible thicket, her jacket caught on the briars, and she had to use her numb hands to untangle herself. She felt her way along with her arms out in front of her, tripping over old brush stobs, staggering into shrubs; she moved forward and made no progress, like in a bad dream. Maybe it was a bad dream, a nightmare, she told herself—and she could almost believe that, except for the needles pinging her face, how her chest burned.

Headlights were coming toward her! Not from behind but in front, double headlights, high off the ground and spaced wide. Juanito's truck. Oh, thank you, God. Thank you. The lights were like two blessed eyes in the darkness, and Sweet rushed toward them; she could see now how to avoid the thickets, and even in the ticking, clicking rain she could hear the comforting sound of the big motor. She ran toward the headlights, waving her arms. The truck was coming at her very fast. He wasn't slowing down at all! Sweet waved her arms more wildly. At almost the last minute she jumped to the side, shrieking in the rain, screaming as loudly as she could, “STOP! STOP! MISTY DAWN, MAKE HIM STOP!”

The truck was already past her when it came to a squealing, sliding halt. Sweet stumbled around to the passenger side, opened the door to the sound of her niece and great-niece both wailing. “Where
were
you!” Misty cried. “Why didn't you
come
!”

“Scoot over!” Sweet reached for a handhold to climb up. “Hush now. Calm down! What was that shooting about?” But the girl couldn't stop sobbing. “Juanito, what happened?” He'd already started driving again. “Misty Dawn, quit that now and tell me what happened! Who fired the gun?”

“Juan—Juan—Juanito!”

“Was somebody trying to get in or what? He didn't shoot anybody! Please tell me he didn't do that.”

Misty Dawn shook her head. She still couldn't talk. All Sweet could make out in the dim dash light was the outline of Juanito's profile, his arms wrapped over the steering wheel as he leaned forward in concentration. Misty Dawn was still shudder-breathing beside her, holding tight to the baby, bracing herself against the dash with her free hand as the truck lurched and swayed. Juanito steered fast between the clumps of scrub brush, hurling them across the pasture toward the creek.

“You can't get across,” Sweet tried to tell him. In the headlights she could see the ice already crusting the shrubs and tall grasses. They were going too fast, they were liable to skid headlong down the bank right into her car! “We can't get across, my car's in the way, tell him, Misty!” Misty Dawn rattled off some Spanish, but Juanito did not slow down. “Tell him to stop!” They were bouncing almost to the bank, with Misty jibber-jabbering and the baby wailing and Sweet yelling, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” when Juanito finally jammed on the brakes and the truck slid sideways to a stop. He turned his face toward her, and Sweet could see then in the grim dash lights that he wasn't just concentrated—he was furious. At her.

He said something, and Misty Dawn took up the tune: “Why didn't you
come
? I
told
him you'd come, I promised! I kept promising! He said maybe you're lying, maybe you're just tricking us like the others, you're going to bring
la migra
, I said no, you're my
aunt,
you mean to
help
us, but you didn't come! And that stinking lantern went out! And we couldn't find the matches!” Misty Dawn was rising again toward hysteria, her voice hitched with sobs. “And that thing started to come in, we didn't know what it was! We couldn't see, we could just hear it, and smell it, it was so big, and the damn flashlight was dead, and it was making this horrible sound, I never heard anything like it, it was horrible, horrible! It was like screaming or something! It came right in the cave with us! He shot it, he had to keep shooting and shooting, my God, you never heard such a horrible sound! It was
huge
!”

“What? What!”

“A big old damn coon! We didn't know
what
it was, I thought it was a panther or something, oh my God, it was so mean, you should have
heard
it, it was like screaming. Like meowing and screaming, like snarling, after he hit it, he didn't know he hit it, he just had to keep shooting. We couldn't
see
!”

“All right, all right, hush. Look you're making the baby worse.” Sweet tried to reach for her, but Lucha scrambled over onto her father's lap. “Okay,” Sweet said. “It's all right now, it's done. I'm here now. Listen, my car's stuck, see it down there?” She pointed to the dark hump just visible in the truck's headlights below the edge of the slope. “Juanito, you're going to have to get out and help me. I'll get behind the wheel and rock it. You can push from outside. Tell him, Misty.”

And her niece made the translation while the baby settled back against Juanito's chest, cutting her eyes sideways to glare at her great-aunt Sweet. The ice pinged on the windshield,
ticktickticked
on the top of the cab and the truck's hood. The freezing rain was turning to sleet. And we're going to drive to Fort Smith in this mess? No, Sweet told herself. Not
we
.
They.
The Ram had four-wheel drive, after all. She'd give them what little money she had for gas, they were just going have to make it on their own; there was no way she could drive her car to Arkansas on this ice. Nothing can drive on ice, her good sense told her. Not safely. Not even a four-wheel-drive truck. And no gas stations would be open anyway, not in the middle of an ice storm. Sweet looked at the child sitting in her daddy's lap, her two fingers in her mouth again, her little face frowning in the glow from the dash lights. Okay. She would figure it out. She would figure something. What they had to do right now was get her Taurus out of the way. “Come on, Juanito,” she said, reaching for the door handle just as Lucha popped her fingers out of her mouth. “
Mira, Papa!
” the child said, and pointed.

There, through the winter bare trees, on the far side of the creek, at the top of the track, red and blue lights stuttering side to side, coming slowly toward them—the white cruiser. Oh, wouldn't you know. Wouldn't you just know. “Listen, Misty,” Sweet said, “do not move from this seat. Do not move this truck. Tell him to turn off the headlights—no, wait. That'll look too suspicious. I need them to see by, anyway. Y'all stay here and don't do anything!” She leaned forward to peer around her niece. “I want you to understand something, mister,” she said. “I did not bring the law. You did. By firing that gun. At a stupid dadgum coon. Now, I'm going to go talk to these people, I'll figure out something to get them to leave, but I want you to know that I do not appreciate your attitude. Not one bit. Tell him, Misty. Every blessed word I just said.” Sweet jerked open the door handle and climbed down into the spitting sleet.