Miami Noir (6 page)

“There was trouble.”

“With your mama?”

She looked up at the boy. “My mama’s dead. This trouble was with the law up in Duval County. They said Cal, my daddy, they said he stole. Said I was in on it. It was a lie, but we had to go anyway. I didn’t have no one else, so I went with him. I didn’t have a choice.”

“You could leave him.”

“He needs me, and I need him. You understand that, don’t you? Ain’t that why you’re out here in nowhere?”

“I could leave. I will someday.”

“But you haven’t yet.”

“It don’t seem right, though. You, a girl, out on the road.”

“Well, we’re not on the road now, are we? Come on inside. There’s something I want to show you.”

Marcy took Speck’s hand and led him inside over to the bed. She reached down and slid the battered suitcase from underneath. “This is my hope chest.” She untied the twine and lifted the lid. She took a carefully folded white cotton dress from the case and then a patchwork quilt, a pair of polished black leather shoes with hard buckles, something made of lace that she quickly hid beneath the quilt, the brush and mirror, and finally a photograph—Marcy when she was a fair-haired child wearing a long white dress—in a gold frame.

“This ain’t the hope chest itself, naturally. It’s what goes in one.” She arranged the few pieces on the bed. “These are my pretty things. I’d hate worse than anything to part with these.” She lifted from the suitcase a wad of newspaper and unwrapped a small glass globe.

“I thought it’d be broke,” she said. “It’s so delicate.”

She showed Speck. Beneath the little roof of glass there was a tiny city of white with steeples and onion-shaped domes, castles, and palaces. Blue lagoons and arched bridges connected the white streets. On the bottom of the globe there was gold printing:
Enter herein ye sons of men
.

“What is it?” Speck said.

“It’s the World’s Fair. In St. Louis a long time ago. This came from there. It was a keepsake. It’s for looking and dreaming. Watch.” She turned the globe upside down and hundreds of silvery flakes floated above the miniature city before settling silently back to the bottom. “Don’t they look just like stars?” Marcy said. “Don’t you wish you could be somewhere so pretty? It was handed down in my family from my mother’s side. Her daddy helped build it—the fair.”

“You saw it?”

“It was a long time ago. It ain’t there no more. They built up this great white city and people came from all over the world, and then when it was over they tore it all down like it never happened, like it was kind of a dream. Still, I want to see where it was someday.”

“I could take you there.”

“That would be nice. Maybe someday you’ll be there, and you’ll look up and I’ll be getting off a trolley car, just like that. It’s nice to think so.” She carefully rewrapped the globe and put it back in the suitcase in the folds of the quilts and dresses.

“Why can’t you just go back to where you came from?” Speck asked. “Back to your people. There must be someone.”

“I told you, they wouldn’t want me,” she said. “Not now.”

“But why? You deserve better than … than this.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad.” She cupped her hand on Speck’s smooth cheek. “Now you better go.” From within the woods came the sound of movement, and Marcy told Speck, “Go. Now.”

The boy ran for the door as Marcy hurried to put out the light.

Calvin made his way unsteadily toward the door and then stopped and pissed on the ground before going inside. Speck creeped around to the back of the shack and watched through the widow.

“What’s all this?” Calvin said. He grabbed the girl and threw her onto the bed. Marcy tried to scramble for the door, but Calvin caught her by the leg and dragged her back. He pulled his belt off in one quick motion and began to lash her legs. Marcy curled into a ball and covered herself with her hands, but then Calvin whipped the belt across her face. She whimpered and begged for him to stop. And then she lay still while he climbed on top of her.

The boy felt powerless to stop it. He told himself it was for the girl that he hesitated. That it would be worse for her if he interfered. But he knew he was afraid for himself. So he waited while the man’s grunts and moans subsided, watched as the girl turned her face into the mattress and waited for the whole thing to be over.

The next morning, Marcy moved like an awkward, tentative bird. She wore the old floppy men’s hat pulled down over her forehead. Calvin, meanwhile, emerged from the shack smiling his thin, menacing smile. “Breakfast ready?” he said as he passed by Speck on his way to the sawmill.

Marcy’s eyes were raw and the red edges beneath her right eye darkened to almost purple above her cheek. Before Speck could speak, she said, “I fell. Don’t ask no more.”

“He did this to you,” the boy replied.

“I just fell,” she said, looking over the boy’s shoulder. “Leave it alone. You’ll be better off. I have to get the cooking started.”

“This ain’t right. You can’t … Your own daddy … Something’s got to be done.”

“Not now, and not by you,” she said. And she pulled the broad brim of the hat lower over her eyes and started off for the main shack.

Speck hurried to catch up with her. “I want to help you,” he said.

She stopped abruptly. “Then leave me alone. I appreciate you wanting to help. But this here, this little mark on my eye, it’s a pimple, a scratch. If you want to help, leave it alone.”

Speck reached his arm as if he meant to wrap it around her, but she backed away. “What are doing? Didn’t you hear a word I said?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“You should be,” she said. “Go on. I’ll find what I need.”

Calvin sat at the table in the middle of the yard smoking and gazing absently into the clear blue morning sky. He turned abruptly and grinned slowly at the boy until Speck turned away.

“Where you been?” John Talley asked, coming out of the sawyer’s shack. “If you’re running off like that without any notice, I got no use for you. You’d be better off gone.”

“I’m here to apologize,” Calvin said. “I know it was sudden. But it couldn’t be helped. I had business, a personal matter. I hope you can appreciate that.”

“What I’d appreciate is if we could cut some lumber,” the sawyer said.

That morning they hauled and cut more timber than Speck and his father had for the previous two days. The boy had to race to keep up with the older men. The two of them winched the pine logs onto the sawmill carriage, and then while John Talley kept an eye on the big blade Speck and Calvin would move around to the other end to buck the cut timber as it came off the saw.

“We keep this up, we’ll strip these woods bare in no time,” John Talley said to Calvin. “Glad you come back.”

“Ask and ye shall receive,” Calvin said. “I do believe in that.”

Calvin and Speck hustled another log down onto the carriage. “How ’bout you, boy, what do you ask for when you say your prayers at night?” Calvin said.

“Nothing,” Speck said.

“I don’t believe that,” Calvin said. “Young, healthy boy like you must want a lot of things. I know I did when I was your age. Still do.” He stopped to wipe the sweat from his face with his shirtsleeve, watching Speck from behind the crook of his elbow.

“I doubt I want what you want,” Speck said.

The saw screamed and sent up a cloud of sawdust that settled down on Speck and Calvin, who had moved to the opposite end of the mill to catch the ripped lumber.

“How ’bout it, boy,” Calvin said, effortlessly swinging a ten-foot pine plank down off the mill. “You think the man above sent us here?”

The boy was sweating, trying to keep pace with the older man. “I thought it was the fella from the collection yard,” Speck said, and he loaded the plank onto the wagon bed.

“Maybe you get that smart mouth from your mama too,” Calvin said.

Just then the saw made a terrible screech as its teeth bit deep into the hard heart of the log. The blade stopped, but the tractor engine kept growling. Speck grabbed a piece of scrap board and reached in to push it against the log.

John Talley came running from around the far end of the saw, waving his arms. “Cut it off!” he screamed.

Calvin ran to the tractor and pushed in the throttle.

The sawyer grabbed Speck by both shoulders. “Don’t ever reach in to that machinery,” he said. “You know better. That old mill’s touchy. Any trouble, that’s it. You shut it down. You hear?”

Speck tossed the scrap aside, and the sawyer and Calvin rocked the log until they inched it away from the blade. Across the yard, Marcy called from the doorway of the main shack.

“Dinner’s ready,” John Talley said.

The men and Speck sat outside at the rough table and waited for the girl to carry the plates to them. She was flushed when she finally sat down. Calvin attacked his food while John Talley said grace. The girl wiped her forehead with the back of her arm. A strand of brown hair stuck out from under her hat and was matted across her pale brow.

“This is real good,” the sawyer told Marcy, his mouth full of cornbread. “You ain’t eating?”

“Not hungry,” Marcy said. “I just need to sit awhile.”

“And I need some pepper,” Calvin said.

She stood and began to make her way back to the shack, but halfway across the yard she slumped to her knees. Speck stood, but he didn’t move when he saw how Calvin looked at him.

John Talley waited for the hired man too, but Calvin continued to eat. “You think you might better see to your daughter?” the sawyer said.

“She’s all right,” Calvin answered, and he leaned over his plate and spooned in another mound of beans.

“She’s hurt,” Speck said. “You did this.”

Calvin’s fist, still holding the spoon, pounded the table as sudden and sharp as a thunderclap. “What do you know about it? If I say she’s fine, she’s fine. You can just stay the hell out of it.”

“I won’t,” the boy said. “This ain’t right. You’re a goddamn criminal.”

The sawyer straightened his spine. “That’s enough,” he said. “You, boy, hold your tongue.” He turned on Calvin. “And you had best remember why it is you’re here. I need help with this timber, but you can just keep on going down the line if you mean trouble.” And he went to help the girl back to the table.

Speck could see the storm pass from Calvin, at least for the time being. His smile showed his stained teeth and pieces of his dinner.

“She’s overcome by the heat,” the sawyer said. Then he looked at Calvin. “What happened to that eye?”

“She fell out of the bed,” Calvin said. “She ain’t used to sleeping in a bed. She was turning in her sleep and fell out. Them things happen.” And then he continued to eat beans like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“You’re a goddamn liar,” Speck muttered.

“I told you, that’s enough,” John Talley said. “We’ve got work to do. But she’s got to get that eye seen to. Speck, I want you to take Marcy to the doctor.”

“She don’t need no doctor,” Calvin said.

“I don’t understand you, mister,” the sawyer said. “Your girl is hurt. If you don’t care no more for her than that, then maybe you should be on your way. Maybe we’d all be better off. Right now, though, she’s going to the doctor.”

“Go on, then,” Calvin said, and waved them off.

Marcy said she didn’t want to go to town. She was feeling better. But the sawyer made her get in the truck with the boy.

As they pulled onto the main road toward Perrine, Marcy told the boy again not to take her the doctor. “I’m fine,” she said. “Really.”

“If you don’t go,” the boy said, “I’m taking you to the sheriff. I may go myself anyway.”

“You can’t do that, Speck. You don’t understand.”

“What I don’t understand is why you put up with him.”

“I tried to tell you, I’m his daughter,” she said. “I don’t have anyplace else to go. And he ain’t a bad man, really. He’s just rough.”

“Only an evil man could do such a thing. Especially if he’s your father. Where did you come from? Don’t you have people who could help?”

“The kind of trouble I was in, they wouldn’t want no part of. I can’t tell you, Speck, what it was. Can you just not ask me to tell?”

“But you’re not in trouble now. You don’t owe him. You could tell him to leave. You could stay here.”

“With you? How would your daddy like that? You think he’d welcome me just moving in with you?”

“You heard what he said. He wouldn’t turn you out.”

“And I’m supposed to just tell my own daddy that he’s going and I’m staying? He’s not the type that’d just leave. And say you and I did go away—it ain’t that easy. He wouldn’t rest till he found me. And nothing and no one would stand in his way.”

“Maybe I could, I don’t know … do something.”

“Speck.”

“He hurts you.”

“He’ll hurt you worse.”

“We could run him off, my dad and me.”

“Your daddy’d have done that long ago if he cared about such things.”

“There must be something.”

Marcy touched the boy’s face. “Don’t say no more,” she said. They were nearing the town. Marcy leaned over and almost in a whisper said to the boy, “If you could find us something to drink, maybe we could find us a peaceful spot and just talk like friends.”

It didn’t take much liquor for the boy to get drunk. Marcy didn’t try to stop him when he kissed her, and she helped him when he fumbled with his pants. It took him only a couple of seconds, and even then he didn’t know at first when it was finished.

“That was real nice,” Marcy told him.

It was getting late, and they still had to go to the grocer’s to pick up supplies. The boy was too far gone, so Marcy drove to the store and parked the truck on the street a few buildings away. They both got out, and Marcy went on into the store with the sawyer’s list while Speck lingered outside. On the window of the grocer’s someone had pasted a single piece of white paper. The black type said:

Missing Girl—Mary Whitt, 14
If you have seen or know of a young girl with brown hair and green eyes unfamiliar in these parts, please contact Mr. C.W. Whitt R.R. #1, Big Fork, Ark. Or your Sheriff
Reward Offered

Identical handbills had been pasted on the windows of nearly every shop and office she passed on the street. Speck rested his head against the glass of the front door. Suddenly, he doubled over and vomited into the street. He stood up and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.