Carter Clay (40 page)

Dusk falls early and fast in this city ringed by mountains. Boom. M.B. marks the change by chucking the rotten food in the refrigerator. Locating the switches for the “swamp cooler,” and setting the thing to blowing its bit of damp air through the house. While she brews herself a second cup of tea, she carries the bottles of liquor out to the trash can that already holds the dead duck. Then, failing to find a deck of cards anywhere at all, she takes a seat on the living room couch with a copy of
Rethinking the Evolution of Birds.

When the book was first published, Kitty gave M.B. a copy. M.B.'s experience of trying to read
Rethinking the Evolution of Birds
was very much like Carter's; not only did she find the book difficult, she did not see the point of it. This evening, however, the book makes M.B.'s heart twist in her chest. Though she still does not understand the contents of the thing, its sheer weight in her lap—all of those words, page after page!—the black-and-white plates of fossils; well, she feels how they make up something like the house in which she now sits, a testament of a life.

So reads the book's dedication.

“Oh, Lorne!” M.B. cries but finds only her own spooky reflection on the floor-to-ceiling windows, and she rises from the couch and—heavyhearted—goes for her purse so she can look up her new voice mail number and call for any possible messages that may have come in at #335.

Golden, enchanted—that is how the Alitz/Milhause living room appears from the backyard, but Finis Pruitt knows that if he were inside, the light would become common, sullied with life's ordinary mess. (He has already witnessed M.B. Milhause's dragging of a piece of cardboard into the living room, her loony bandaging of the cardboard to the broken window with the same roll of duct tape that he earlier used to remove the prickly pear stickers from his hand.) No, Finis does not care too much about the fact that he is outside. Really, he is quite comfortable on the chaise cushion he has dragged behind a hedge of boxwood, and amused by the sight of the grandmother framed in the enormous drape-free windows. Clearly, she assumes that it is her imagination that makes her feel watched, and—ho!—it gives Finis a kick to see her jump and twitch when he throws the occasional twig at a window screen or up on the roof.

Perhaps Finis trains M.B. to not trust her senses in that house?

However it happens, that night, when M.B. wakes in the big bed her daughter used to share with Joe Alitz, and M.B. hears over the little storm of the swamp cooler a noise like the starting of a car, she assumes that this is just one more instance of the unfamiliar sounds the house of her daughter is capable of generating, and she rolls over and goes back to sleep.

On the morning of the day that M.B. arrives in Seca, Carter carries Jersey out to the chicken coop and shows her what he has been working on for most of the two days since they have been at the cabin: parallel bars, built from lumber donated from Neff Morgan's remodeling piles.

“They're real sturdy,” he says. In demonstration, he bumps his hip up against one side of the bars. “And I sanded them smooth.”

“Take me to a doctor. Then I'll try them.”

Carter stares over the top of the girl's head at the windowless back of the chicken coop, the row of empty nesting boxes. Always an awkward thing: to talk to the girl when he carries her in his arms. He can feel how she stiffens her neck and back to keep from touching any more of him than is necessary.

“But you can
try
walking now,” he says.

“I need to see a doctor. I need my chair.” She is so close to him he can hear her breath whistle from her nose.

Lighthearted, but not mean; that is the tone Carter strives for, but what comes out is just sad, tired. “You think God don't know more than doctors, Jersey? If you ask God to help you walk, He might just do for you the next great thing He's going to show the doctors!”

A little shudder passes through the girl, and she says in a quaking voice, “Please, don't make me try, Mr. Clay. I've already got a sore. If I fall again—”

He would give her a hug but he fears it might scare rather than reassure her, and so instead he says, “You know I wouldn't do anything to hurt you, don't you? You're not afraid of me, are you?”

When she does not answer, he feels bitter, and, quick, he carries her back to the cabin and sets her on the battered little couch in the main room.

“Why do you keep us here like prisoners?” she asks.

Carter slams out the back door without answering, but the question disconcerts him. Partly because he is certain he has heard it before. In a movie, he thinks. Some quaking woman asks some crazed lunatic,
Why do you keep us here like prisoners
? Some nut who could not have explained his actions even if he wanted to.

But Carter is not a nut. As he passes by the window at the side of the house, he can see the girl crying on the couch, and he feels sorry, and he thinks, hard, of the words he needs to use to justify himself to God.
Dear God, I am heartily sorry for what I done. Please, God, make Jersey walk. If you make her walk, then it will be as if the accident never happened.

Almost.

Or, really, it will be almost better, God. Because then she'll have faith in you. She'll be a Christian. And I want to bring her and Katherine to you, Lord, because you forgave what I done. But if her and Katherine find out about me, that may screw up their believing in you, so please don't let them find out. And, please, forgive me, Lord, for being afraid maybe you don't forgive me or that you won't cure Jersey.

He finds Katherine sitting on the cabin's front steps, and fits himself next to her. He squeezes his hands together tight. Forget about the possibility that Finis is out there. Now that Carter has put his faith in God curing the girl, he can't take her to the doctors, right? He can't act as if he don't believe God has the power to do it, right?

He sighs, then says to Katherine, “You think about old Abraham”—lately he often finds himself talking to her almost as he would talk to himself—“when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham had to show he was willing to do it before God would say, ‘Hold it.' And Jesus—Jesus said you could ask for anything. All you have to do is believe.”

Katherine does not give Carter any indication that she hears or does not hear, but he continues, “It's hard to know if you believe enough, unless God tells you so. I guess if God come down and said you didn't believe enough—well, you'd believe enough after that!” He laughs, then taps on Katherine's knee and she turns his way. “I just want to show God I'm faithful, you know? Believing Jersey can get well—that's a way to show I'm faithful.” He puts his head in his hands. He stares at the creases in the toes of his boots. “Or maybe I just want God to show Jersey what He can do. Like Jesus turning the stones into bread, you know?”

Katherine gives him a quick sideways glance, as if he is a stranger who has taken a seat beside her on a park bench, then says, “He din't do tha', though.”

“What?”

“Stone in'o brea-
d
.”

“Sure, he did. It's even in that Willie Nelson song.”

Katherine shrugs a shoulder, and stands. “He wrong. Jesus top the De-vil, no. ‘Ma' shall no-
t
live by brea-d 'lone.' 'Member?”

Carter is so unnerved by this string of words from Katherine that he has failed to answer her question by the time that she rises and moves off around the side of the house, but when he is alone on the steps, he pleads,
God, tell me what do.

No answer comes, and when the light rain that has fallen off and on all day finally turns into a genuine downpour, Carter gives up on his solitary vigil and steps back inside the cabin.

Mother and daughter sit on the little couch. Neither looks up to take notice of his soggy presence. Is this good? Bad? Should he go for dry clothes, or make a statement out of his wetness? Undecided, he stands by the double-hung window, staring out. The rain makes a sweet frying-pan sizzle that he remembers from
high school camp-outs with Neff. “Breathe,” say the electric-green leaves and grass and the dark brown of the tree trunks. Though Carter does not realize that such sights restore him to himself, he does eventually recognize his toes in his boots, the cool tip of his nose, and then he turns to face the inhabitants of the room once again. Jersey. Katherine. He makes three cups of instant cocoa and sets them down on the floor in front of the couch.

“What's going on, guys?” he asks.

“She draw me maze,” Katherine says.

“Can I see?”

Jersey tilts the pad of paper in her hand his way.

Instantly sweaty, almost nauseated, Carter asks, “Why'd you write
FINIS
in the middle, there, Jersey?”

“
Finis
—it means ‘the end,'” she says, without looking up. “I put it where the end of the maze is.”

“The end'?” Carter shakes his head. “I never heard that before.”

“It's Latin.”

Latin? Why would she know Latin? Then again, why would she lie? He, after all, is the liar. But suppose she lies because she knows Carter lies. Suppose Finis got to her somehow and told her and now she has her own game running? God on Carter's side, the Devil on hers?

To calm himself, Carter goes to the picnic table and sits and consults the list of readings in the front of his Bible: “HELP IN TIME OF NEED.” Shall he turn to selections pertaining to “The Way of Salvation” (Acts 16:31 or Romans 10:9)? “Comfort in Time of Loneliness”? “Strength in Time of Temptation”?

He supposes it does not matter which one he reads. Everything applies.

The rest of that rainy day, and then on into the night, guided by the bright moth of flame that flies inside the lantern on the picnic table, Jersey watches Carter Clay out of the corner of her eye.

Unnerving: her sense that he watches her in like manner.

HELP
—
THIS IS NO JOKE
!
I AM BEING HELD IN A CABIN ABOUT HALF A MILE BEYOND THE BOULDERS CAMPGROUND
.
I NEED A DOCTOR
!
DON
'
T KNOW PRECISE LOCATION BUT THERE
'
S A HUGE ROCK IN FRONT YARD
!
PLEASE CALL POLICE AND MY GRANDMOTHER
,
MARY
-
BELLE MILHAUSE IN BRADENTON
,
FLORIDA
, 1–941–794–1111.

So read the underside of the paper plate that Jersey persuaded Katherine to put outside that morning. (“Here, Mom, give the birds the rest of my bread.”) The entire time that Carter Clay sat out on the porch, Jersey was terrified that he might come upon the plate.

An unnecessary worry. The plate had immediately blown across the yard and tucked itself under an edge of that big boulder Jersey hoped might serve to mark the spot for her rescuers. In the rain, the plate is already turning to pulp; the words on the back are indecipherable. But Jersey continues to imagine the thing blowing against one of Carter Clay's big boots. He picks it up and reads her words and knows she views him not as just some poor substitute for her real father but as a threat to her existence.

That night, however, after he has set her down in her sleeping bag beside Katherine, Carter Clay stands and begins to whistle “Down Yonder Green Valley,” and, for a moment, he becomes actually Joe, her
dad
, and her dad says—or maybe it is the rain falling outside, through the trees and on the thin roof of the cabin—
The guy may mean well, Jersey, but if you have to kill him to save your life, you do it. You hear me?

Dad?

Near tears, she wants to call out to the figure to come closer, let her see his face, but she understands somehow that this is not allowed, and so she only whispers, “I hear you,” and when the figure takes a step forward and into the light coming through the window, it is Carter Clay, his shaved head a blue moon, who asks, “One of you say something?”

“Jers,” Katherine says.

Jersey makes no reply. She waits to hear more from Joe, but all that comes is the hiss of the rain, then Carter's low whistling
and the sound of his footfalls as he crosses the wooden floor to the main room.

Such a different sound comes from the wooden floors of the cabin than from the concrete floors with which Jersey grew up! The crawl space beneath the cabin forms an echo chamber, while in the Seca house, with its heavy plaster walls and concrete floors, a person in socks or bare feet might appear behind you without your ever having heard anyone enter the room.