Sadie's Mountain (29 page)

I close my eyes. Take one deep breath before I take a step toward the entrance. There are ghosts inside this place. Someone died in here. This is true. Maybe if I can calm her spirit, she’ll stop haunting me in my dreams. Maybe my flowers will bloom again.

But when I see him inside, I know something has changed. I see them in his hands. Light pink, stiff with old blood. My light pink panties. The ones he’d seen when he kissed me for the first time.

“Where were those?” I cry.

“Wrapped in this cloth and tucked into this spot right here,” he says, pointing to a spot in the corner. “These are yours,” he decides. Part of me wants to break to pieces. But I’m worried about Dillon. I’m not ready for him to know. “This is where you were. I was running around looking for you. And this is where you were. Right here. Right on my property.”

I can’t respond. I want to take the panties. Hide them. Bury them. Bury someone else’s crime.

“I came here. Called to you,” he says.

“He had a knife. It was up to my throat. He’d already cut me. When we heard you, he threatened to kill me, then kill you.”

“Oh, God!” he says. The look on his face will never leave me. I want to crawl away. Hide. I fall to my knees. Bury my head in my lap.

When I look up, I see the gas can. It’s in a haze that I watch Dillon douse this shed in the sharp scented liquid. I want to yell
stop
. But no words come. Nothing seems to make sense.

I see the flames. Feel the strong arms taking me away from them. But I have to watch. It really is hell. Flames lick upward like tongues as I take it in, watch it become an inferno. I smile at the crackling sound of the boards being robbed of their hold on me. My own personal hell. 
It’s gone!

Chapter Twenty-Three—The Link

The hell mouth. That’s what the shed reminds me of. The place where sinners’ bodies are devoured, consumed. But not this one. I can imagine the spirit rising above the flames. The spirit of me at fourteen. The one that wanders around in that shed in her dreams pleading for her life, for her virtue, for the last ten and a half years. She doesn’t have to do that anymore.

 For her, this feels like justice. I realize I’m on the ground when the wet grass leaks through the fabric of my jeans. I look around for the first time as the flames consume both the shed and my senses.

“Dillon!” I scream, and then cough. I can’t see him through the smoke. He’s pulled me all the way toward the property line where the trees grow untamed and rough. That’s when I hear him. He’s behind me in the trees. He’s pulling branches. Throwing things from the ground into the leaves and needles. I stand up, walk toward him.

“Dillon,” I say, reaching out to touch his back ever so carefully. I see my hand shaking uncontrollably as it makes contact with his white shirt.

He flips around, wild-eyed, nostrils flared, his mouth in a knotted scowl. His hands are in fists. His arms and neck look like they might burst. He’s breathing so heavily it makes quicken mine, too. He starts pacing.

He’s angry with me.
That’s what this feels like.

He’s blaming me for not yelling for him when he called my name.

The guilt comes back to me again, and I turn away from him. I feel so ashamed of myself. So dirty. So unworthy.

Just like Daddy blamed me. Just like Donnie blamed me.
Not Dillon, too.

That’s when I see them. The pink panties are lying on the grass near the shed. He must have dropped them in his ferocity to destroy it. They’re going to burn up.

It’s evidence.
DNA, both mine and Donnie’s. I’ve got to get them. I run as fast as I can toward the shed. Then they are in my hands. They feel like a combination of softness and death. Blood and silk. I feel like a lucky thief as Dillon pulls me up and away from the flames.

“What are you doing?” he screams. “Trying to get yourself killed?” I shake my head no. I hide the panties in my hands and clasp them to my chest as he pulls me toward him. He’s shaking, breathing fast and quick in my ear. “I’m...I’m so...,” he tries to say, between the rumble of adrenaline and the quick breaths.

“It’s not my fault!” I scream, and pull away from him. “How can you blame me for what he did to me?” I’m pointing at his house. I put my hand down quickly.

“No,” he says. His eyes are wide again like under the windowsill. He’s reaching out to me. “Baby, no. Not. Your. Fault!” he pants. “Mine. I let you get hurt. Me.” He’s pointing at his chest. Pounds his breast with is fist.

I’m petrified as he comes toward me. He must know I’m scared because he forces his fists to become hands again. Taking a cleansing breath he comes toward me—warily this time like I’m a wounded animal. “I’m sorry,” he croons. “I’m sorry, baby,” he says, wrapping his arms around me and rubbing my back. He smells like gasoline, smoke, and evergreen trees.

I look up at the house. Dot and Renae are on the wrap-around porch. Dot’s holding a phone up to her ear. I look at the driveway. Donnie’s white cruiser isn’t parked there. He must be out on his shift. I slide the panties into the right front pocket of my jeans

 “It’s my fault,” he says, taking my face between his two shivering hands. Pain is right on the surface of his face. “I was right here as you were. And he was. With the knife.” He shakes his head back and forth. His eyes, vacant.

“Dillon,” I try to reason with him.

“Tell me who he is!” he cries.

“No. Look at what you’ve done. You’re so reckless. You just burned down this shed. The kids are inside. Your mom.” I’m pointing at them. He looks up and sees his family on the porch peering out into the darkness as the shed falls onto itself. Fire and smoke bloom, overtaking the hell mouth.

It makes me smile for a moment.
It’s really gone.
But then I look to Dillon. The pain visible in the wrinkles on his forehead. The bruises on his face. The black eye. He’s running himself into the ground.

“You won’t be able to control yourself when you find out,” I say. Not in anger. Just in truth.

He pinches the little V that forms between his eyes. Shakes his head no. “I can’t live like this. Not knowing who. Worrying he’ll come back. Thinking about the years we lost.—No, were stolen from us. Seeing all the pain you’re in every day.”

“I know, Dillon. I’m going to make you a promise,” I say, as his eyebrows shoot up. “After my momma’s wake, I’m going to tell you who it was. I’ll tell you everything. But I can’t do it now. There’re things I need to take care of before then. Do you understand?”

“What are you going to do? Is it dangerous?”

“I can’t tell you,” I say, thinking of the evidence in my pocket. “It’s not dangerous.”

“Sadie!”

“No, Dillon. You won’t be able to help me if you know. Look what you’ve done,” I say, staring into the flames. I’ve got to get this tested. I’ve got to build up the evidence before he can get to me. It has to be a surprise attack. Dillon would try and give them to Donnie thinking that he could get them tested for us.

Dillon probably thinks that the panties just fell there inside the shed and were never found until now. But I remember. Donnie put them in his pocket after he raped me. He’d touched them with his hands drenched in my blood, probably his own semen, too.  He kept them in the shed like a prize. Like a trophy. He probably thought no one would ever find them. But I have them now.

We’re sitting inside Dillon’s childhood home with the lights from the fire truck waving around through the window. Renae and Dot wouldn’t take no for an answer. They stuck a mug of hot tea in my hand and covered me in a blanket. Dillon stands. Then sits. Rubs his hands together and then stands again. He begins to pace.

“Luckily it didn’t spread to the grass or nothin’ else,” says Dot. “What happened, son?”

“I did it. I burned it down, Momma. That was where...” His breath hitches. He must have a lump there, too. He’s rubbing his throat. Puts his hands on his head. 

“Where, what, son?” she asks, nervously.

“Sadie was...” He can’t finish his thought, pushes his fist into the palm of his hand. His chest looks tight. His white shirt is dotted black from the smoke outside. Dot looks at me puzzled. I realize I’m rubbing my teal scarf right above my scars so I stop. She must understand then what her one good son can’t verbalize, because she puts her head down and covers her eyes with her hand.

It’s where I was raped by your evil son!
I want to scream. It takes her a while, but she gets up and sits next to me. She puts her hand on my back and covers her mouth with her other hand. Renae comes out from the hallway with the baby on her hip. There’s a new look on her face. Kind of like when you accidentally catch yourself in the mirror in a store and weren’t expecting it. That’s how she looks.

The door slams open.

I bristle, hold the cup tight like I wish it were a gun.

His boots stomp into the living room. When he sees me, there’s a realization in his eyes that shows he knows he’d better be careful. Is he caught? That’s what he wants to know. “What happened?” he asks, looking at Dillon. He looks like he’s on that ice again. The kind that’s too thin to hold him up any longer.

“When was the last time you were in that shed, Donnie?”

“Why?”

“‘Cause, whoever raped Sadie stashed ‘em in there all these years. They were stuck behind the feed in a crevice between the floor and the wall slats.”

“I don’t know what yer talkin’ about, boy,” Donnie bellows.

Dillon paces again. He’s not going to tell Donnie what he found.
Is he accusing him? Trying to catch him?

“Look, Sadie’s told me as much as she knows. As far as I can tell, the guy’s skipped town,” Donnie says.

“What about the fingerprints at the Spark’s house?” Dillon asks.

“Came back with nothin’,” Donnie says.

“Sadie, do you know what happened to the... To what I found?”

“I didn’t see them again. You must have dropped them in the fire,” I say.
I hate lying to him.

Why is he hiding this from Donnie?
I think he knows.
I think he’s just waiting for the proof. Denial is a hard state of mind, a tall thick wall to break down. But it has to come down to reveal the truth walled in behind it.

I get up, tossing the blanket on the couch and make my way toward the restroom. I remember where it is. After I wash my hands and open the door, Renae is standing in the hallway. The baby is asleep on her shoulder. She’s wearing a long beige robe. “I need ta talk to you, Sadie,” she says, in a dark whisper. But then the harsh boots begin to stomp toward the hallway and she retreats into a bedroom across from me into the shadows.

I bristle again and try to stand my ground as he ushers me back into the dark bathroom. “What did you tell him?” he asks. His bear paw around my wrist feels like worms crawling under my skin. He closes the door. We are alone in the bathroom. Another closed space. I start to make some guttural sound I don’t recognize.

 “Don’t scream. I ain’t gonna hurt you.” I can’t breathe. I’m stuck to the ground.
He’s not going to do anything. He’s not going to do anything.

“I didn’t tell him. He figured it out,” I say, unforgiving and swift.

“What does he know?” he asks as he comes closer. I think he’s leaning down, smelling my hair but it’s completely dark and I can’t see. I’m helpless in this moment. I don’t know what he’s doing, so near me in the dark.

As I press my back into the wall, I can only hear his breathing—the sound reminds me of a deep pummeling rhythm. I can only smell his scent, the very one that I’d never liked, that reminds me of pain, of a knife blade pinching.  I can only feel the vibrations of his body being far, far too close to me. I feel the bile rise in my throat, but the fear keeps everything down.

“He doesn’t know anything. He found the panties. But he threw them down and they probably burned up,” I say, quickly.
Get this over with.
“Let go of me right now or I swear to God...,” I say, like a little dog trying to bark deep.

He lets go of my wrist. But I know by his scent, by his vibrations that he’s too close, pinning me with his proximity. I move to the left toward the door handle and run straight into his arm. He’s pinning me in place with his arms like a cage. Our breaths are loud; they echo together in the stiff air like ghosts.

“Why did you keep them?” I taunt.

“When I touch ‘em, I feel you again. Smell you,” he says, taking a deep breath of me.

“You’re disgusting.”

 “Nothin’ you do will ever break tha link we have, Sadie,” he says into my ear. I press that side of my face into the wall. I didn’t know his face was so close to mine. “You might keep me away, but you won’t break it,” he whispers into my other ear. I push his chest away from me. It feels like guilt. Like bodies under the dirt.

“Maybe not,” I challenge, “unless you are dead,” I snap. Pulling open the door like a saving grace, I run back out to the living room. Dillon is standing next to the window. He’s looking out to where the shed must still be smoldering. I run out the front door leaving it wide open. I have to run, I need to get somewhere safe.