The Secret Sense of Wildflower (18 page)

Mama stops mid-stride, as if she’s just realized it’s been a year.

“There’s no use crying over spilt milk,” Mama says, the words rough as burlap.

Our breath races toward the moonlight. There is a frost tonight. A hoot owl cries out in the night.

Mama holds the lantern closer to my face, and I cover my eyes to avoid its glare.

“We need to go inside,” she says. “It’s cold out here.”

We walk back to the house in silence. I make the same slow shuffle as when we came out. It irritates me that I want to run and can barely walk. Yet what hurts me more than anything Johnny could do to me is Mama’s silence. Her judgment sinks into me like a heavy stone thrown into the river, its ripples extending out from me for maybe years. She blames me for getting hurt. If I had stayed at home that day and forgotten Daddy, just like her, nothing would have happened.

Silent as Daddy’s grave, she helps me back into bed.

“Try to get some sleep,” she says, pulling the blanket over me.

Before she turns out the light I get a full dose of the disappointment in her eyes. Besides beating me within an inch of my life, Johnny has stolen something from me that I might never get back: Mama’s respect.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The next morning Sheriff Thompson of Rocky Bluff knocks on the door. When he enters the room I determine that he is the biggest man I’ve ever seen. The gun strapped around his waist looks small in comparison to the rest of his body. Though he towers over everyone in the room, he stoops his shoulders as if trying not to be so big. In spite of his size he seems kind enough, replying “yes, ma’am” to Mama when she asks him if he wants iced tea. Iced tea runs as free as well water around here. Mama leaves the room to fill his request. Aunt Sadie arrives shortly afterwards with the news of the Sector’s new healthy baby boy. She sits on the bed next to me. I don’t care how old I am, having Sadie nearby always makes me feel braver.

“Your name is Louisa May McAllister?” the sheriff asks.

“Yes,” I answer.

My name had been Wildflower, but I don’t feel like Wildflower anymore, not wild or beautiful in any way. Johnny’s laughter echoes in my head.
Wildflower? People should call you weed . . . I think I’ll pull this weed.

Sheriff Thompson clumsily juggles a note pad and the glass of tea Mama hands him and places the glass on a quilt square on her dresser. “I need to know what happened between you and Mister Monroe,” he says.

I’ve never heard anybody call Johnny
Mister Monroe
. It sounds unnatural. Johnny hasn’t earned the “Mister” yet. As far as I'm concerned, he never will.

“He came up behind me at the graveyard,” I say, my words still coming out in mumbles.

“Graveyard?”

Aunt Sadie sits next to me like a rock, her only job to be solid. She wraps her warm hand around mine and encourages me to go on. I wonder how she and Mama could be so different.

“I was visiting somebody,” I say. “It was the anniversary.”

“Anniversary?”

I feel irritated. If the sheriff is just going to repeat everything I say this is going to take forever.

“Of when her father died,” Sadie says.

The sheriff taps the side of his note pad with his pencil like he is putting something together in his mind. “What time of day was it?” he asks, “when Mister Monroe came up behind you.”

“Early afternoon,” I say.

I don’t tell him that the secret sense told me I shouldn’t go and how I ignored it. I haven’t told Aunt Sadie, either. I don’t think I could bear her being disappointed in me, as well as Mama.

“And what exactly happened when Mister Monroe came across you in the graveyard?” he asks, his pencil poised to take down my answer.

With all this time in bed, I’ve had a lot of time to think. I figure I’ve grown up in these last few days. I can’t look at the world in the same way anymore. Truth is, things happen that you have no control over and sometimes people act in ways that make no sense. From now on I’ll be watching over my shoulder to see who might be coming.

“Like I said, Sheriff, Johnny came up behind me in the graveyard. And when I tried to get away he grabbed my wrist, and I couldn’t get free. Then I hit him really hard in the nose and made a run for it. I took the shortcut I found, because I thought that would get me home the fastest, and that maybe Johnny didn’t know that back way as good as me.”

I sit straighter with Sadie’s help. My head has ached for days and all these questions are making it worse. Though the pain has lost its ragged edge, I am still reminded of what happened every time I move.

The sheriff takes a sip of tea and wipes the droplets off the dresser top with his sleeve. “Please go on,” he says, sounding more official than he looks. Dark hairs grow out of his nostrils and join up with his mustache. From this angle I also see that his socks don’t match, though his shoes are as shiny as Doc Lester’s hearse the day of Daddy’s funeral.

“Well, Johnny caught up with me,” I say. “I bit his hand pretty bad when he tried to cover my mouth.”

“Why did he cover your mouth?”

“Because I was screaming bloody murder!”

“Wouldn’t you?” Aunt Sadie says to the sheriff, putting a protective arm around me. He gives her a long look, clears his throat and looks at his notes.

“At what point did Mister Monroe leave?” he asks me.

I want the sheriff to quit calling Johnny
Mister
Monroe.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I passed out and when I woke up Johnny was gone. After that, I knew my family would be looking for me, so I started trying to get home.”

The screen door squeaks open, slams, and Daniel walks in. He and the sheriff greet one other. Then the sheriff turns his attention back to me.

“I suppose that wasn’t easy,” the sheriff says, “hurting as you were.”

“No sir, it wasn’t,” I say.

I can only imagine what the sheriff sees when he looks at me. A thirteen year old girl with two black eyes, a swollen jaw and bruises on her throat and arms that are deep shades of red and purple and yellow, like the fabric Preacher slung over the arms of the cross at church during Easter. I don’t see any reason for the sheriff to know everything, at least not now and maybe never, so I stop there.

“Is that all?” the sheriff asks.

I consider for about a half a second telling him about Johnny messing with me. That is the real crime. But with my family all around me, I don’t have the guts to say it. Not to mention that Sheriff Thompson is a stranger. Mountain people don’t trust strangers, even if they only live over the next hill. “That’s all,” I say.

“One more question, Louisa May. Do you know the direction Mister Monroe went in after he left you?” he asks.

I pause to remember any clues in those last seconds before Daddy came to get me. I can’t think of anything else so I shake my head, no.

“I don’t think he would have crossed over that bridge,” Daniel says. “I got a look at it the other day. A girl could cross it, but not a man. He must have backtracked to the graveyard or went higher up on the ridge. Those Monroes know these woods pretty good.”

“Were you the one who found her?” the sheriff asks Daniel.

“Yes. Me and Nell, Louisa May’s mother.”

Daniel looks over at me like he’s caught himself not using my real name. I don’t know how to tell him that it doesn’t matter anymore.

“When we found her she was pretty bad off,” Daniel adds.

“You’re lucky you found her,” the sheriff says. “We’ve had cases that don’t turn out that well.”

It is hard to imagine anything really bad happening around Rocky Bluff. Maybe a shoplifter gets caught at Woolworth’s or somebody accidentally shoots themselves in the foot while cleaning their shotgun.

Sheriff Thompson closes his note pad. “Well, we’ll get men out looking for him,” the sheriff says. “Don’t worry, Louisa May. If he’s still around, we’ll get him. But chances are he’s long gone.”

I like the thought of Johnny being long gone, but I doubt I could be that lucky. Johnny can hide out in the woods for years if he wants to and once he finds out that I told what happened, he’ll want revenge.

“So you don’t think he’ll come back here?” Mama asks.

“No ma’am. I don’t think he will,” the sheriff says.

“He wouldn’t be that stupid,” Daniel says.

But Johnny is that stupid
, I think.
He’ll come back to kill me just like he said he would.

Daniel leaves with the sheriff, and I hear them talking as they go down the hill. Aunt Sadie opens her cloth bag and puts a gooey yellow salve on my cuts and bruises that smells like beeswax. Her touch is gentle. Mama is in the kitchen again, clanging pots and pans, getting supper ready. Since the night before she’s hardly spoken to me. When Sadie finishes, I am sticky and fragrant and wouldn’t be surprised if a colony of bees came searching for me, their new queen.

Later in the afternoon Amy comes to sit with me so Aunt Sadie can go back and check on June Sector. This is the first time since Amy’s odd behavior the day before that I’ve had a chance to talk with her. She leans against the back of the bed next to me, a pile of fabric in front of her. Of all my sisters, Amy and I are the most distant. I wouldn’t dream of telling her my secrets because she’s never told me hers. She also hasn’t once mentioned Daddy since he died. It’s like her feelings are all sewed up inside her, without an inch of give in the fabric.

I wonder how to get her to open up when she speaks first. “I was in the same year as Johnny in school,” she says.

“Yeah, I remember,” I say.

She sews a few stitches while I wait for her to go on. When she doesn’t continue, I think I’ll go crazy from the waiting.

“He used to say mean things to me,” she says finally. “At least until Nathan came along.”

It never occurred to me that Johnny might have spread his meanness around to Amy before it landed on me.

She keeps sewing like she hasn’t said a thing, and I feel the gate she’s just opened starting to close. But I am not willing to let it. I prop myself straighter in bed so I can be eye-level with her. “Amy, what did Johnny say to you?”

She pauses, as if she’s remembering every single word. “Things I wouldn’t want to repeat,” she says softly. She stops sewing but doesn’t take her eyes from the fabric. “Once he pushed me down on the ground while nobody was looking. You have to understand, Louisa May, I thought it was just me,” she adds. A tear falls into the folds of the fabric.

“Why didn’t you tell anybody?” I ask, sounding too much like Mama.

She returns to her sewing, making quick, jabbing strokes. “I did tell somebody,” she says. “I told Nathan, because Nathan and I were friends. After we started courting he told Johnny if he ever said anything else to me he would kill him. Johnny left me alone after that. It never occurred to me that he would--”

Amy puts her head in her hands and bursts into tears. Since I’ve only seen her cry once, right after Daddy died, her tears feel like something wild and dangerous that might swallow her up.

“It’s okay, Amy,” I say. I touch her hand, wanting to release her from whatever she is holding against herself.

“Maybe if I’d said something this wouldn’t have happened to you,” Amy says, still sobbing. She looks miserable.

“Even if you’d told the whole world it doesn’t mean Johnny would have done anything different,” I say.

Her gratitude shows in her face. “I’m so sorry, Louisa May.” Amy blows her nose on her handkerchief.

“What about Jo and Meg? Do you think he said anything to them?” I ask her.

“I think he left Jo alone. She’s older than him, and you know Jo. She’s so beautiful. I don’t think he had the nerve. But I don’t know about Meg.”

“Meg told me once to stay away from him,” I say. “That he was a no-good. But I didn’t ask her what she meant.”

For the first time since she arrived, Amy puts down her sewing and looks at me. She looks like Mama, but younger, and without looking cross. “I’m really sorry this happened to you,” she says, her eyes red from the tears.

“It’s not your fault,” I say.

“But it is,” she says. “Johnny started saying those things to me right after Daddy passed. I should have told Mama.”

“But you didn’t want to worry her,” I say. “I didn’t tell her what Johnny was saying to me on the road because I was afraid she’d think I did something wrong.”

“I guess you do understand,” Amy says.

“Somehow Daddy dying gave Johnny open season on us McAllister girls,” I say.

Amy looks thoughtful. “I think you’re right, Louisa May. “He never bothered me before that.” She continues her sewing and I am struck by the fact that this is the most we’ve ever confided in each other.

Later that evening, with Mama and Meg in the kitchen, I quit fighting the memories and let them come. I open my nightgown and study my wounds. The bruises on my body are evidence not only of a beating but that Johnny messed with me, too. The bruises on my inner thighs and breasts look like hand prints. Doc Lester must have seen them when he bandaged me, as well as Mama. Maybe even Jo saw them. But nobody is talking about it.