Broken Branch (4 page)

“Who was that old man?” Rodney said as they walked hand in hand back toward the clearing.

“His name was G.L.,” she whispered. “He was very old.”

Rodney nodded. “I want to see the swamp.”

There was something about the way he said it—the matter-of-fact tone, the way his small, soft voice brooked no argument about the place's existence—that frightened Trudy a little. Frightened and also thrilled her.

“Me too,” she said and kissed his forehead.

By the time she returned to the clearing with Rodney, the crowd had already gathered behind the oak tree. For as long as she could remember, the area just behind the tree had been a massive tangle of underbrush and layered kudzu. It was so thick and dark that the task of removing it had always seemed too daunting, and the community had settled for just cutting it back when it seemed to encroach upon the clearing.

Now a crowd of people watched as G.L. tore the vines away by hand, ignoring the sharp briars that made his hands bleed. He was sweating heavily and swaying from side to side, clearly about to pass out. Yet no one moved to help him.

Trudy stood beside James. “What's happening?”

James shrugged. “Old coot says there's a swamp under that mess.”

“And we're going to stand by while he kills himself trying to get to it?”

“I've tried to speak reason to him, Trudy.” She craned her neck to see Otto standing on the other side of James. “He's clearly not well.”

“Clearly,” Trudy said. She stepped forward and put a hand on his back. “Mr. G.L.?”

He stopped and turned around. His mouth opened into a slack grin.

“Why don't you take a break?”

“No, ma'am. I don't have long. I want to see the swamp again before I go.”

Trudy couldn't say why—maybe it was because of the conversation she'd just had with Rodney, or maybe it was because the old man, in an odd way, reminded her of her son—but she felt the urge to help him.

So she did. She dug into the vines and pulled an armful away.

“Trudy,” Otto warned, “this is not the work of the Lord.”

Trudy ignored him and kept pulling vines. In fact, she increased her speed, working steadily until she too was sweating.

There were murmurs from the crowd, and Trudy knew her husband would be shaking his head. She thought again about leaving. What was she waiting on? Another storm? For them to see one of Rodney's attacks and claim that Satan was in him? She kept digging through the mess, promising that tonight, she'd sit down and figure it all out.

Eventually, they uncovered enough to see something under all the darkness. And what they saw surprised everyone. Later, folks would whisper about it, saying that it might have meant something. But no one ever dared speak it out loud.

Underneath all the brambles and vines lay a round door set in concrete.

The door turned out to be the hatch to a storm shelter. It was an ancient thing, though someone had spent great effort to reinforce it with concrete and steel, and a short iron ladder led into the belly of the shelter, which was much larger than Trudy would have guessed. Though she remembered thinking that it would need to be even larger to get the whole community inside. Half maybe. More than that would be tight. All twenty-five, counting the children, would be impossible.

Otto said little as the men took lanterns down and investigated. James, Ben, and Earl seemed to be waiting on his lead—which was what they always did—but for some reason, the passiveness bothered Trudy more this time. It was like they were afraid to have an opinion because it might run counter to Otto's.

Finally, as the day drew to a close and the men came out, Otto ordered it shut and asked Earl to stand guard over it. This was devastating to G.L., who clearly believed his swamp lay inside, but he could do nothing as Earl was bigger, stronger, and, most important, younger than the old man.

Otto and James stepped off into the woods to talk. Everyone else waited, unsure of what to say or do. When they returned a few moments later, Otto's face was grim.

He walked up to G.L. and stuck his finger in the old man's chest. “Get thee gone from this place, Satan!”

The old man stumbled back as if struck. Otto kept after him, his mouth clenched in a grimace. “Go back to where you came from.”

G.L. stopped backpedaling and, when he did, Otto punched him hard across the jaw. The old man dropped to the ground.

“Stop it!” Trudy shouted. “Leave him alone!”

Hands gripped her from behind, and she saw that it was Earl Talbot.

She watched as G.L. struggled to get back on his feet. He wavered, teetering like a tree in high winds before righting himself and heading toward the shelter again.

This time he was met by Franklin Meyers, who punched him right in the mouth. Trudy screamed again, and Otto turned to her. “This is for your own good, Trudy. For your children's good. This man speaks of places that have no scriptural basis. He tries to show us a shelter. We don't need a shelter. God is our refuge!”

Once again, G.L. struggled to his feet. This time, he turned away from the shelter and began to walk slowly in the opposite direction. Only when he had disappeared into the trees did Earl let her go.

After that everyone went home in silence. Even the children seemed quiet, unable to make any sense out of what had just happened. Trudy sat outside on the porch for a long time after supper, watching the shelter, wondering how G.L. knew about it, what he was doing now, and dreaming of the swamp hidden in these woods.

She woke in the middle of the night and found she was alone in the bed. It wasn't uncommon, but when it happened, she always felt unnerved. She knew Otto called meetings with some of the men at odd times.

Unable to go back to sleep, she went out to the porch and sat down. She'd been there no more than a few moments when she became aware of a creaking sound coming from the next house.

Squinting in the darkness, she could just make out the shape of someone rocking in the chair on Ben and Eugenia's porch.

“Couldn't sleep neither?” The voice belonged to Ben. She felt a twinge of excitement upon hearing it.

“I think James must be at a meeting with Otto. I get cold without him in the bed.”

Ben nodded. “I'm the same way.”

She didn't ask why Eugenia wouldn't be in his bed, but she wondered nonetheless.

“Nice night,” he said after a few moments.

“It is.”

“You reckon James will be back soon?”

She blushed. “It's hard to say.”

“Otto don't ask me to those meetings, but I figure they're pretty serious and all.”

She nodded and then remembered the darkness and said, “Yes. James never speaks of them.”

“Shame about that man, G.L.”

“Yes. I thought that was cruel.”

“He wasn't right,” Ben said, “but that don't mean he was wrong necessarily. You follow me?”

She did. “I think he was harmless.”

“How do you reckon he knew about that shelter?”

“Well, he said he'd lived here before.”

Ben was quiet. “See, that's the thing I keep trying to figure. When we found this place, it didn't look like anybody had ever been here before. But that shelter. . . . Did you get a look at it? There was concrete and iron. Now, who would have brought that way out here?”

“I don't know.”

“Me neither. But I been thinking on it real hard.”

“Maybe,” she said, after a long silence had passed, “it belonged to some other race, some ancient people that lived here a very long time ago.”

He laughed. “Sounds like foolishness to me. You better not let Otto hear you talking like that. Or your husband.” He whistled. “They wouldn't like it one bit.”

“What are they going to do? Punch me?”

Ben laughed. “You know why I like you, Trudy?”

“Why?”

“You got more balls than any man in Broken Branch.”

She grinned, thankful now for the darkness, so he couldn't see how much this pleased her.

“I'll bid you good night now,” she said.

“Aw, I didn't mean to insult you, Trudy . . . I just—”

“Good night,” she said and went inside, still smiling.

James shook her awake gently. She rolled over, pretending to be asleep. He wouldn't be wanting her body, so why else would he wake her? She found that she didn't really want to know.

He shook her again. “That boy run off,” he said.

She sat up. “Boy?”

“Yeah, Simpson. He's gone. Otto found his bed empty. He left a note. Said he was leaving because he thought another storm was coming and didn't want to die with the rest of us.”

“That doesn't sound like Simpson,” she said and instantly regretted it.

“What do you know what Simpson sounds like?” he said quickly. “He was a sinner. Probably better for us all with him gone. Sometimes the real strength comes when you get rid of the chaff,” he said, but Trudy was barely listening. Instead, she was thinking a single thought over and over again:
Good for Simpson.

Trudy had expected a gathering the next morning, but there was none. Her only glimpse of Otto was brief, and the man seemed focused solely on getting the others out to the meadow to continue work on the church.

She waited for someone to speak of Simpson, but no one said a word.

At lunch, James ate in silence, and Trudy was fine with that.

That evening, another storm blew through the woods. It was violent but brief. James stood from the dinner table and said he and Otto would be heading over to make sure the church was okay.

Trudy said nothing, but she was secretly thankful to see him go.

“Momma?”

She turned and saw Rodney standing in his nightshirt.

“Yes, baby?”

“Why doesn't Daddy love me?”

Jesus,
Trudy thought.
Where is this coming from?

“He loves you fine,” she said.

“Then why do you keep me a secret?”

“I don't keep you a secret, Rodney. That doesn't even make sense.” But she was lying. She saw exactly what he was trying to say, and it broke her heart.

“I think maybe I got a demon in me.”

She reached for him and pulled him close. “Now, who told you such a thing?”

He shrugged. “I figured it out. Folks say when the storms come it's because of sin. I can't think of no sin to explain what happens to me, so maybe I'm just a demon.”

She squeezed him tighter. “Ssh, I don't want you to talk like this, Rodney. It's foolishness. You are a little boy, not a demon.”

He nodded and buried his head in the crook of her neck.

“What if Momma told you we were going to leave this place, baby? What if I said you and me and Mary were going to go someplace nicer, someplace where there wasn't no storms?”

He shook his head violently.

“No.”

“Why not, Rodney?”

“I don't want to die. Otto says the Lord will take vengeance upon those that abandon this place.”

Trudy was stunned. She had no idea Rodney had been absorbing all of this. It shouldn't have surprised her, because his perception was uncanny sometimes, but it had never crossed her mind to consider how all the talk about God's wrath might be affecting her son.

“Promise me we'll never leave, Momma.”

“Rodney, I can't promise that. We . . .”

He squirmed out of her arms, and she was surprised by his strength. He sat back and glared at her. “Promise me or I'll scream.”

Trudy was aghast. He hadn't done this in years. When he was much younger, he used to make her do things with these sorts of threats. She had hated giving in to them, but he could scream in such a terrible, soul-killing way that she often did anyway.

“You will not,” she said, trying to be in control.

But she was wrong because he did, and it was awful, so awful she grabbed him and shook him hard, probably too hard, but he wouldn't stop.

“Okay,” she said. “I promise. I promise we won't leave.”

He stopped immediately and fell into her arms.

But she had lied to him. If anything, her desire to leave grew stronger. She spent her days imaging how it would go, waking up in the middle of the night, going to the children's room and shaking them awake. She'd lie to them and say that they were going outside to see the stars or the moon. Once outside, she'd get them moving with some promise or another. They'd make the road within an hour or two, and by then, Rodney might have realized what was happening, but they'd be too far gone for anyone to hear his screams.

Sometimes she fantasized about going over to Ben's place and asking him to come with them. She knew it was foolish because she didn't really love him. She
couldn't
love him, she knew, as long as he bought into what was happening here, but if he rejected it too, if he agreed to come with her, she thought that might change things. Still, he had his own family to think about. She shook her head, dismissing such ideas.

She decided they would leave in one week. That would give her some time to pack a bag, to plan, and though she didn't want to admit it to herself, a week would also give her plenty of time to talk herself out of it.

It was hard to say exactly what changed over the next week. There were no storms. In fact, the days were sunny and the nights warm, yet people stopped speaking to her, and when they saw Trudy coming near, they often exchanged looks and an awkward silence would ensue. She tried not to let it bother her. She tried to remind herself that she was leaving soon.

Except she had some doubts about that too.

Somehow the fact that nobody mentioned Simpson at all made his sudden departure seem even more ominous. It was almost like he hadn't existed. When the others had left, it was hard to go anywhere in Broken Branch without hearing someone saying how they'd made a mistake to leave, how times were hard and God might not be as merciful as they assumed.

She tried to bring him up a few times, but folks either ignored her or, in some cases, walked away as if she wasn't there at all.

It doesn't matter,
she thought.
A few more days and they can forget about me too.