Out of Darkness (33 page)

Naomi held out a hand to Beto, but he did not take it.

 

BETO
Beto lay down beside Cari on the ground. He picked up her hand. Her fingers were cramped together as if to hold a pencil.
I will not play truant ... I will not play ... I will not ... I will ... I...I...

The lines they had written, apart. The lines they should have written side by side. The lines she had died writing.

Two men came with a sheet. One was very tall and the other was very short. Their dark suits were gray with dust and smeared with stains. They took off their hats and talked to Naomi. And then she was kneeling beside Beto, trying to pry his fingers free of Cari's hand. He held on tighter, shaking his head. Trembling.

He did not let go. He didn't because he couldn't. He couldn't because he knew they would never let him hold her hand again. He wanted to check Cari's pocket just in case he had forgotten, but he knew. He hadn't given her anything for luck today. Everything would have been different if he had.

“Look,” the tall one said to Naomi. “You can carry her home for now. The funeral parlors are already full. It's gonna be a while before we get to everybody.” His face loomed over Beto. “Don't worry, we'll take good care of your sister when it's her turn.”

Beto held on to Cari's cold fingers.

 

NAOMI
Naomi could not make Beto let go of Cari, so Wash carried them both to the back of a truck on a blanket. She limped after them in her mother's tiny shoes. Everywhere children were laid out on the ground and covered with shirts and jackets and pieces of notebook paper stained red in places.

Naomi tried to put her thoughts in order. Go to the house. Put Beto to bed. Call for Henry. Clean Cari. Do not think, Cari is dead. Do not think, it's my fault.

She was skimming the surface of the world again, but now that surface was shattered, littered with debris. A dark undertow threatened to pull her under, down to the horrible truth.

She heard a high voice call her name. She looked up. There, in a second story window of the school, Tommie's bloody face was framed by broken glass.

◊ ◊ ◊

By the time the men got Tommie down, she had begun to wail. Wash stayed with Beto while Naomi ran to her and held her hand. The men on ladders passed Dwayne's body through the jagged remains of the windowpanes. It was too late to worry about cuts.

Tommie sobbed into Naomi's shoulder, her chest heaving. “He was right there across the table from me, and then he was on the other side of the room.” Tommie pulled back, suddenly silent. Her mouth hung open. Snot trailed through the dust on her face. She moved her mouth again. “He wanted to skip this afternoon, did you know that? Wanted to go down to the river, but I wouldn't—I was mad—if I'd listened—if I'd only listened—”

“Hush now,” Naomi said. She coaxed as much gentleness into her voice as she could manage. “Come on, let's get you seen to.”

 

HENRY
Henry was squatting elbow to elbow with a couple of oil hands at a new drilling site when a Diamond T company truck barreled into the clearing. It stopped just a foot from them, kicking up dust all around.

The window of the truck rolled down, and Ken Martin stuck his head out. His face was red and beaded with sweat. “Boss said to send everyone to New London.”

Henry felt something clench in him. He lifted his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. “A well fire? Can't he get somebody who's closer? It's a good forty-minute drive from here.”

Ken was already shaking his head. “It's not a well, it's the school. The school, man. They're talking dynamite, maybe a bomb. Nobody knows for sure.”

◊ ◊ ◊

Henry pushed the truck as fast as it could go down the dusty back roads. A couple of miles from the school, the traffic slowed. And then it wasn't moving at all.

He slammed on the brakes and got out. “You drive it, Gary,” he said to the worker beside him in the cab. “My kids are there.”

He ran hard along the gravel shoulder of the oil-top road, racing against the knowledge that if anything had happened to his kids or to Naomi, he'd be to blame.

Once he reached the school grounds, he had to navigate the rings of vehicles parked on the lawn. He saw reporters and gawkers pointing at what was left of the school.

And he saw the dead. Rows and rows of them.

Parents filed between them with handkerchiefs pressed to their mouths. Looking for their children.

He pushed into the chaos. “Carrie and Robbie Smith! Carrie and Robbie Smith!” he meant to bellow it, but it came out a breathless wheeze. His next words, “And Naomi,” were sucked back into his own mouth as he gasped for air.

Two men he did not recognize jogged over to him. “Easy, friend, easy,” one of them said. “Catch your breath.”

“Shit, shit, shit.” Henry was trembling. He shook the men off. “I got to find my kids.”

He scanned the bodies for clothing he recognized, for children the right size.

He saw a mangled form inside a dress like one of Cari's, but it was not her. The girl's face looked like a rubber doll someone had left in the sun. Twisted. Melted. Not the twins, Henry prayed. Tell me you spared mine.

“Henry!” Bud called to him from across the crowd. His overalls were soiled; his hands were cut and bruised.

“Bud,” Henry shouted, jogging toward him. “Have you seen the kids? Naomi?”

“Naomi wasn't in the building. Beto was, but somebody got him out before the collapse.”

“Carrie's still in there, then? I've got to get to her.”

Bud shook his head. “They found her, too.”

“Found her?” Henry's heart lifted. Then he saw Bud's face.

“I'm sorry.” Bud braced Henry's shoulders with both hands and pulled him close. “I'm so sorry.”

Henry felt an inexplicable desire to laugh. He twisted out of his friend's embrace. “You're wrong, Bud. I checked.” He gestured at the patchwork of broken children across the grounds. “She's not there. She'd be there, if she was dead. She'd be there, wouldn't she?”

Henry turned away from Bud. He grabbed the sleeve of a man nearby. “Are there others? Where are they?”

Someone else answered him. “All over—Kilgore, Tyler, Henderson, Overton, even Marshall.” The voice came from behind him. “Anywhere there's doctors and...”

“And what?” Henry demanded, turning wild eyes on the man who'd spoken. He was a short, stooped man with an underbite.

“Undertakers.” The man intoned the words softly.

For a moment, Henry and Bud were swept along with a group of parents pressing toward a telephone pole. Some reporter had rigged up a connection to the line.

“Can't you call Tyler and ask who they've got over there? How do we find our kids when we don't know where they got took?” someone asked.

The man pressed the receiver to his chest. “It'll take time, folks.”

“I don't have time!” a woman shouted, her voice shrill. “I've got to find my Johnny.”

“Telephone circuits are jammed up. Everybody's doing their best. Lists of the dead and the living and the missing are going out on the radio. Give your messages to him.” He jerked his chin toward a pale man with watery blue eyes who crouched over a radio microphone. “The best would be to head home and listen so you know where to go.”

“You want us to wait? Would you sit on your hands if it were your child?” shouted a man with a patchy blond beard.

One woman was muttering, “Eddy, Eddy, Eddy....Please, sweet Jesus, please.” So Henry wasn't the only one trying to make a deal with God. He wanted to slap her. The more prayers, the worse his odds.

Then Dalton Tatum was in front of them. Henry knew him from his drinking days at Big T's. Dalton had a mole that looked like a horsefly on his cheek. His hair was slicked back, the comb marks still visible. “I sure wouldn't a let no nigger touch my daughter's body.”

“Take it easy, Dalt,” Bud said. “You can't be picky when folks are rescuing your kids, now.” He steered Henry toward the path that cut through the woods to the Humble camp. When they were at the tree line, Bud hugged Henry. “Go see about your kids. And then, if you want, come back. Work'll hold off the hurt for a while.”

 

HENRY
Henry took a long time to walk to the house. When he got there, he couldn't go in. He pulled off his work boots. They were crusted with mud.

He thought, when did they get so bad?

He thought, I could clean them now.

He thought, if I don't go in, it can't be true.

But he knew. And not just by what Bud had told him. He felt it in his own hesitation. He felt it in the stillness of the house.

The screen door opened. Naomi came out, barefoot. Her blue dress was filthy with dust and dried blood. She had not washed the dirt and tears from her face.

“Henry,” she said.

There was no warmth in it, only a truth as hard as anything he'd ever faced. He thought back to Estella and the phone call after she lost the second baby. The long silence. The miles of distance in her voice.

Here was another disaster laid before him.

He shook his head, pulled off his hat, and crumpled it in his hands. “Jesus Christ.” His shoulders began to shake. “Please don't say it. Just don't say it—”

“You already heard.” It wasn't a question.

He stood up and stared through the screen door. A sheet was draped over the kitchen table. Under it, Henry knew, was the daughter he had not loved enough. And so she had been taken from him.

“I only just got Beto to sleep. He wouldn't leave her.”

Only then did Henry see the boy curled under the kitchen table, a quilt laid over him.

He could feel the grief rising again and he wanted her body against his, any bit of comfort. “Oh God, Naomi,” he whispered and pulled her to him.

She didn't scold him, but she stood stiffly in the circle of his arms until he let go.

“Who brought you home?” he asked.

“Mr. Wright from down the street.”

“Did he ... was he the one to get her out of the school?”

Naomi hesitated. “Wash brought her out. Got Beto, too.”

It was like a slap. Henry's jaw tightened.

“It should've been me,” he said. “That damn boy, he's always where I ought to be. How the hell is that?” He stared at the line of pines across the oil-top road. Between the trees, a pumpjack humped the oil up out of the ground. Like nothing had changed.

A long silence lay between them.

Her voice was gentle when she spoke again. “He got Beto out. Then he went back for Cari. Brought her out just before the roof fell in.”

“But what was that nigger doing at your school in the first place?” he asked. So much horror hung in the air, everything scattered by the explosion. He could choose which shattered fragment he would claim as his own. He still had that.

“He risked his life. We should be grateful.”

“Don't make me angry, now,” he said. “You hear me?” Henry felt a tightening in his throat. He punched the shape back into his hat. “I'm going back,” he said without looking at her.

“What about Beto?”

“Robbie?” Henry shrugged, swallowed. He forced words past the lump in his throat. “He'll be here when I get back, won't he?” He put on his hat and pulled on his boots. He didn't bother to tie them before he walked away.

 

WASH
On the kitchen table. That was where Wash had laid Cari. When he put her down, he tried to keep the jacket over her, but she was broken in so many places.

Hurt bloomed and faded, bloomed and faded on Naomi's face.

And Beto. Lost without his twin.

Wash wanted to hold them both close. Tuck Beto safe between him and Naomi. Wrap Naomi in his arms and lay her head on his shoulder. Join what could be joined. But the white man was with them. Wash could not even show his friendship.

Then he was in the back of the truck headed again to the school. But his heart was in the tree with Naomi. He would go. When the work was done, he would find a way to her. Give her what wholeness he could. No telling if it would be enough.

At the school, someone gave him a basket, and he worked. The collapsed school looked like a shattered skeleton rising up out of the earth. A lake of loss. He picked his way across the surface along with the other men. He put whole children onto stretchers. Bricks into wheelbarrows. Body parts into baskets. He sorted without thinking. Move it, boy. Find the live ones. When he looked up, he recognized the same sun above him as before. But then there would be a small hand. A toe. So many pieces.

He was pushing a wheelbarrow when he saw Mr. Crane. Glasses cracked. Suit sleeves ripped and dangling. Elbows scraped and flecked with concrete. Bloody hands.

“Kids in there,” Mr. Crane said, stumbling forward. “Beau!” he called. “Garrett!” He clawed at the rubble. His glasses fell.

Wash found the glasses and pressed them into Mr. Crane's hand. When the older man stumbled, Wash took his elbow.

Mr. Crane fitted the glasses back onto his face. His gray hair hung limp over his forehead. “They wanted to go early, all but begged me. I said, how would it look, the superintendent's boy playing hooky?” Mr. Crane walked on, studying the ground. “Have to find them. Have to find them all. They're in there.”

“You need to rest, sir,” Wash said. “Why don't we get you some water? We'll keep looking.”

Mr. Crane turned an unfocused gaze on him. “Water,” he repeated.

The path through the wreckage to the Red Cross tents was narrow, and then it was gone. Blocked by a wheelbarrow. Boots. Denim.

Wash looked up. The man had a wrestler's neck and the shoulders of a chainman. His jaw worked a wad of tobacco. He stared hard at Wash.

“Excuse us, sir,” Wash said. The words tasted oily. Sharecropper, bootlicker, shoeshine boy. His father's voice in him. The voice of his own fear.