The Buried Book (17 page)

“Be careful, Althea,” he said and then headed back up the hill.

“Wait!” I called after him. “What’s your name?” I don’t know why I wanted to know. It was something about the way he’d looked at me. No one had ever looked at me that carefully before. I felt like it was the first time anyone had ever really seen me at all. Until that moment, I didn’t really exist.

“Does it matter?” he asked. It was a fair question, considering we would probably never see each other again. But he was the first Indian I’d ever met.

“It matters to me,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows like he was surprised. Maybe I was the first white girl he’d ever met. “Motega. My name is Motega.”

“Thank you for your help, Motega. It was nice to meet you.” I gave him my most winning smile.

Motega didn’t smile back.

CHAPTER 31

Tell me about the night of the fire. How did it happen?

It was getting late. Uncle Leo would be back soon. He would have found out that Jasper had run away from Detroit and gotten on a bus without his father’s permission. There would be hell to pay.

Jasper tried to close the book but couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was clear that Motega was one of the organized criminals Miss Babcock had warned him about. But so was Big Bill and Mr. Hoyt and God only knew who else. And there was no denying it now. His mother was a criminal too.

Jasper turned the page.

August 31, 1928

I can’t stop thinking about that boy Motega. He was so nice to me. It’s been so long since anyone was nice to me. I asked Hoyt if I had to go back to the reservation for him anytime soon. I even tried to make it sound like I really didn’t want to go, so he might send me. He says he won’t have another large pickup for at least a month.

In the meantime, I’m still going to his barn three afternoons a week for small deliveries. It’s shocking to know how many neighbors keep moonshine hidden near their houses. Check the haylofts if you’re ever wondering. Half the Christians in the county are hiding Indian hooch, and no one else knows it but me and Mr. Hoyt.

It was funny at first, knowing everyone’s big secret. But secrets have a price. Every time I show up with those jugs from Mr. Hoyt’s barn, I can see the look in their eyes. They don’t trust me. They think I’m up to some no-good even worse than the no-good they’re all up to. They think there’s something wrong with me. They whisper about me as I leave. I can see the whispers in their eyes. They don’t like me.

The only person that seems to like me is Mr. Hoyt. Him and his greedy smile hover all around me, but if I drop a jug or forget a message from one of the customers, he slaps me hard enough to bring tears. He tells me I’m his favorite girl one day and then the next threatens to march me right over to my father’s house and announce to the whole family what a filthy girl I am.

He’s making me dirty. I can feel it every time he looks at me. He keeps inviting me up into the loft and trying to get me to drink from a jug with him. He watches me load up the cart. He stares at me so hard it’s like he’s grabbing me with his eyes. His eyes seem to whisper things about me too.

The memory of the bus driver crept up behind him as he flipped to the next page and then the next. His mother’s words bled together on the page until he couldn’t read any more.

Jasper slammed the book shut and threw it clear to the far wall. Tears burned his hay-dusted eyes.
What did that son of a bitch do?
He didn’t want to know. He really didn’t. He couldn’t take it. Wayne was right. He shouldn’t be reading any of it. His eyes followed the arc where he’d thrown the book despite himself.

He jumped to his feet to go after it and knocked one right into the lantern.

The glass broke with a crash, and kerosene splattered across the ground. The loose straw scattered about lit instantly. The flames spread faster than Jasper could follow until a fire taller than he was blazed all around him. He couldn’t even think to scream. It wasn’t until his pant leg started smoking that he managed to move. Jasper leapt from the flames and fell to the ground. He slammed his leg against the dirt until the embers went out. The straw fire had shrunk in height but was still burning. He searched his panicked head for a way to put it out. If he burned down the barn, his uncle would kill him.

Water.

Jasper scrambled to the nearest stall. Inside it the old cow was chewing away, oblivious to the danger raging behind her. “Move!” Jasper yelled in her ear and squeezed past her giant body to the full water trough on the ground. He could barely move it. Grunting, he dragged it inch by inch past the cow’s udder, splashing water on his arms with each tug. He finally managed to get the enormous tray past the gate.

The fire had gone from a solid mass to several hot spots scattered around the broken lantern. It was running out of straw but had begun to lick the wood framing of a stall. Jasper dragged the water dish the last few feet and tried to hoist it up to empty it out. But he couldn’t lift it. He pulled with all his might, but it wouldn’t budge. Desperate, he began bailing it out with his hands, splashing water as far as he could reach. The flames attacking the stall hissed with smoke, but others popped and scattered with each splash.
Shit.
He jumped up and stomped on the blazes with his boots, kicking up dirt and mud until they each went out one by one. Jasper coughed as he breathed their smoke in.

Before long, all he could see were a few glowing embers. He stamped the tiny red lights until they all had gone out. It was only when it was perfectly dark that he realized he was screaming. His throat burned with smoke. Dizziness took hold, and he sank down to the wet, charred ground. His pants and boots smoldered beneath him, and he stripped them off, tossing them all in the trough.

The cows were still chewing, not bothered by the fact they’d all almost died. Water seeped into Jasper’s underpants. He ran a hand down his legs and found what felt like a sunburn on his left shin and ankle. His other leg was sticky and wet. The shard nicked his finger when he ran his hand up his shin. A piece of broken glass had lodged in his right knee. It didn’t even hurt as he picked it out. That scared him.

A voice out on the driveway brought Jasper back to his senses. It was his uncle. “Christ Almighty! What the hell’s goin’ on in there?”

He was going to kill him. Jasper was certain of this. He’d broken a lamp and nearly burned down the barn. He pulled himself to his feet and headed deeper into the dark.

“Wayne? That you in there?” Uncle Leo roared from the doorway. “Answer me, boy!”

Jasper felt his way back to the hayloft ladder and silently began to climb.

Footsteps scraped across the dirt floor, and then the sound of metal tools clanked against the far wall. A second later, the rip of a match flooded the lower barn with light as Uncle Leo lit another lantern.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. The sound of broken glass clinked across the barn floor.

Up in the loft, Jasper crept away from the ladder to the stacks of hay and wedged himself behind a large pile.

“Whoa! What happened, Pop?” Wayne asked from the doorway.

“You tell me, boy.” There was murder in his uncle’s voice.

“I—I didn’t. I swear. Jasper was the last one in here. He must’ve h—”

Thwack!
Wayne grunted.

“Who told you it was alright to leave a nine-year-old nitwit in the barn with a lit lantern? Huh?”

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Jasper flinched with each lick.
It. Wasn’t. Wayne’s. Fault.
He wanted to leap down from the loft and take his punishment. But his body wouldn’t move. Hot tears just spilled down his face.

Thwack!

“Ah!” Wayne cried out over and over until the beating was done.

Uncle Leo didn’t say another word. All Jasper heard was the sound of something big being pulled from the wall with a metallic scrape.
Oh God. He’s going to kill him.
Jasper lurched to his feet ready to scream.

“I—I’m sorry, Pop,” Wayne managed in a strong voice.
He’s not allowed to cry.

“Here,” his father growled. “Clear the straw and dump some dirt on that. Them embers can start back up unless they’ve been properly smothered. Clean up that glass too.”

“Yes, sir.” The sound of a shovel scraping the ground immediately went to work. Jasper sank back down behind his hay bale and cried his eyes out for Wayne in silence since his cousin wasn’t allowed to cry for himself.
It’s all my fault. I’m no good. It’s all my fault.

“Where is he?” Uncle Leo demanded.

“I ain’t seen him since we finished haying the cows.”

“Jasper!” Uncle Leo’s voice boomed loud enough to make a cow join in.

Jasper didn’t move.

“You in here, boy? You can’t hide from this. You can’t hide from me. You hear me?” The sound of heavy footsteps mixed with the scrape of Wayne’s shovel as his uncle searched the barn. Cow stalls opened one by one.

“This good, Pop?” Wayne asked.

“That’ll do. Go get your mother and then get your ass to bed.”

“Yes, sir.” The sound of a shovel being hung up was followed by silence. Jasper barely breathed. Something small rustled in the hay not far from where he crouched.
A rat,
he thought.
A rat just like me.

“Jasper?” Uncle Leo’s voice boomed from the hayloft ladder. He was not ten feet from Jasper’s hiding place.

Something landed on the hay bale above him with a thump. He nearly yelped out loud. A bright light shined toward the noise. “Jasper? Is that you?”

Footsteps vibrated the wood boards beneath him. The light grew brighter as his uncle approached. He was going to be caught. Jasper squeezed his eyes shut as if it might make him disappear. Then he heard a yowl.

“Dammit, Lucifer!” His uncle sighed. “Go catch a rat.”

The thump bounced down to the ground then padded off into the hayloft.

“Leo?” his aunt’s voice called from the barn door.

“I’m coming,” he called back. The light quickly faded back down the ladder. Jasper released the breath he’d been holding.

“My goodness! What happened?”

“Looks like Jasper knocked over a lantern.”

“Is he alright?”

“Can’t seem to find him. He ran off again.”

“Oh, dear . . . He’s hurt. Look at these.” She must have been looking at his pants. The blood on his leg was drying. The sunburn on his left shin was starting to smart a bit.

“Stupid is what he is.”

“Oh, Leo. Don’t be unkind. The poor thing must be scared to death.”

“He should be.”

“Go easy on him, dear. He did manage to put out the fire, didn’t he? That couldn’t have been easy.”

“He had no business bein’ alone in here in the first place. Shouldn’t be here at all. Jesus, I don’t know what the hell she was thinkin’.”

“Well, he can’t help that . . . This could’ve been so much worse.”

He told himself it was true.
It could’ve been worse.
The whole barn could have gone up in flames just as easily. It didn’t make him feel any better.

Uncle Leo just grunted.

“What’d his father say?”

“Not a damn thing. I couldn’t reach him. The home line’s gone dead. I left a message for him with Mick at the plant.”

“Still no word from Althea?”

“Nope. Nobody’s heard a thing. Who the hell goes and leaves her kid? Huh? I ask you,” he growled. “Damn woman’s been nothin’ but trouble since the day she was born. Always stirring things up with her craziness. Burnin’ down the damn house, then running away . . . The old man couldn’t live with the torment. Jesus, she cost us
everything
! I swear if I ever see her again, I’ll wring her neck.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Uncle Leo didn’t answer.

Jasper squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his hands to his ears.
It wasn’t her fault,
he wanted to scream out in her defense. Something terrible had happened to her. Mr. Hoyt had done something terrible. Jasper’s eyes flew open.
The diary.
He’d thrown the diary to the far wall near the feed barrels. It was trapped somewhere down there, alone.

“There has to be a good reason for it.”

“Right. You go on ahead and get to bed. I’m gonna sleep a fire watch out here.”

“What do you want to do about Jasper?”

“He’ll either turn up or he won’t.”

“He’s wandering around in the freezing cold in nothin’ but his Skivvies. Aren’t you worried about him?” Aunt Velma obviously was worried. That just made Jasper feel worse.

“Even a stray dog’s got the sense to get out of the rain. He’ll find his way back. Shoot. He managed to find his way back sixty miles. He’ll be back.”

“He’s just a little boy.”

His uncle sighed. “Don’t coddle him, Velma. The sooner that boy grows up, the better.”

CHAPTER 32

Were you injured?

Coiled up in the dark between the bales of hay, Jasper thought of his grandmother’s house crumbling in the back field. His mother was to blame.
Maybe she’d knocked over a lantern too.
Even if it had been an accident, it was clear her brother Leo would never forgive her. He’d never forgive his no-good nephew either.

Down below the hayloft, his uncle set about making his bed. He could hear the cot for the county fair being pulled off the wall. Then the barn door swung shut. More footsteps scuffed across the ground.

“Someone steal your water, Myrtle?” his uncle asked. The sound of a water dish clunked to the ground and was followed by splashing as it was refilled. “You’re lucky you gave it up. Thanks for not kickin’ him, ol’ girl. But you got my permission to bite him next time you see ’im.”

There was a light patting sound and the creak of a stall door. “Stupid son of a bitch is gonna freeze out there, runnin’ around with no britches on,” his uncle muttered to himself. “Ain’t got the sense of a shithouse rat.”

Jasper frowned in the dim light that seeped up through the floorboards. Uncle Leo was right. He was stupid. He couldn’t hide in the hayloft forever. If he escaped to Detroit, his father would just send him back to the farm.
A boy his age needs a mother around . . .
But it wasn’t just that. He suspected if his father didn’t hate him already, he sure did now. He might just drag Jasper to some orphanage himself. The swelling around his eye had gone down, but it still felt funny when he blinked.

The sooner that boy grows up, the better.

A whisper came from below. “I’m trying, Mother. I’m trying real hard to take care of her like you asked, but she sure ain’t makin’ it easy, now is she? How you found the strength to still care after . . .” There was a long pause as Uncle Leo cleared his throat. “You always said it wasn’t her fault. I want to believe that, I do. Not for her, but for you. I pray for you . . . and Dad . . . may you both rest in peace tonight. Dear Lord, I pray for the strength to forgive the past. I pray for the wisdom to guide us through this storm. Amen.”

The light went out in the barn below.

Up in the loft, the darkness was so complete Jasper could no longer see his own hands in front of his face. His heart beat out the seconds as the minutes passed one by one.

I pray for my uncle’s forgiveness. I pray my father still loves me. I pray that my mother is safe out there somewhere. I pray that she comes back home.

An eternity went by before the sound of his uncle’s snores rumbled beneath him.

He’d never heard the man so angry before. He’d never heard Uncle Leo speak about his grandparents either. They’d both died long before Jasper was born, and his mother never said one word about them. He’d never even seen a picture. He puzzled over each of his uncle’s words.
The old man couldn’t live with the torment.

Tiny feet skittered across the floorboards not three feet away from where Jasper hid. A brisk thump fell next to them. Then a hiss. The screeching, thrashing sounds of hell followed as Lucifer battled with the rat. Within ten seconds, the racket of the fight died off into the wet, slimy sounds of teeth feasting. Jasper curled tighter into his ball with his hands over his ears, trying not to picture the rat’s guts splayed out in a ring.

I pray I don’t get eaten.

A few moments later, something soft and furry brushed against his leg. Jasper stopped breathing, certain that Lucifer had come to dine on him next. The cat brushed against him, nuzzling his head against the boy’s bare legs until he settled on a spot and curled up next to him. Too terrified to move, Jasper just lay there frozen while the beast beside him purred, occasionally licking its lips. The cat was falling asleep, he realized to his horror. Lucifer’s half-inch claws had left scars up and down Wayne’s arm. Jasper worked up the courage to gently nudge the animal with his knee. The old tomcat didn’t move.

His uncle snored and the cows chewed their cud while Jasper lay pinned by a cat, struggling to find a way out of his predicament. He had to talk to his uncle. There was no way around it. He would have to stop hiding.
It’s time to grow up.
He knew it was true but was too terrified to move. Every few minutes, Lucifer would twitch his tail.

As the hours passed with Jasper staring into the dark, he found the warmth of the cat against his bare legs more and more comforting. The burning in his left shin and the growing ache in his cut knee made it harder and harder to think of anything but the pain. Lucifer stretched out against him, and the brush of soft fur provided moments of relief. He didn’t want to risk petting the tomcat, uncertain now if he was more afraid of getting scratched or of it running away. At that moment, the ferocious animal was his only friend in the world.

There would be school tomorrow.
Will I even go?
he wondered, wishing more than ever that he hadn’t been such a coward.

I pray for the strength to face my punishment.

In the darkness, his worst fears came calling one by one. Blood spurted from his mother’s black curls onto the apartment wall. The girl with dark eyes banged on his door crying,
Do you know who killed me?
Detective Russo came crawling through the hay to drag him off to an orphanage where his family would never find him. The surly bus driver crept up behind him with Uncle Leo’s castration knife and a dirty gleam in his eye. Mr. Hoyt hovered over his mother, making her scream and scream and scream . . .

Stop.

And then the terrors would start again.

Sometime before dawn, he heard the crow of the rooster down in the yard. He sat up with a start, sending Lucifer scampering away to a far corner. The hayloft was still pitch-black, but his uncle would be up soon. He had to make it right, one way or another, because he couldn’t take another minute alone with his nightmares.

Jasper pulled himself to his feet and nearly fell when he tried to put weight on his cut leg. It was hot and swollen like it had been pumped full of poison. He forced himself to walk on it, wincing with the pain. He deserved it. He deserved whatever he got. He inched his way around the hay bale toward the ladder, straining to see through the dark.
Don’t fall through the chute. Please don’t let me fall through the chute.

He slid his feet slowly along the boards, feeling for the edge of the hole in the floor where the ladder ended. His mother’s voice haunted each step.
You be good for Uncle Leo. Make Mommy proud.
His uncle’s snores were growing louder and less even. The hay beneath his feet brushed against the wood, telling him where he was. The pain in his cut leg took his breath away with each step. Finally, his toe found the ladder.

He almost cried out in agony as he crouched to find the first rung, but he didn’t stop. The cool air of the barn below struck his bare haunches as he made his way down the ladder one rung at a time. Pale light leaked through the wood siding. The cows were waking. He could hear their restless hooves moving in their stalls. Their udders had grown heavy and painful overnight. Jasper vowed he would do all the milking that day and all the rest of the days it took to make it up to his uncle.

“I see you made it back.”

Jasper’s heart contracted. He turned to face the shadow of his uncle sitting up on the cot. He opened his mouth to say how sorry he was and how he’d never do anything bad ever again but thought better of it. The man wouldn’t believe him. He was no good, just like his mother. Instead, Jasper limped over to the far wall and pulled the riding crop from its hook. He limped back and handed it to his uncle. It didn’t matter if he beat him, not even if he beat him to death. He probably deserved to die, if that’s what it took to beat the bad out of him.

Uncle Leo took the crop and set it down next to him. “Get me a match, boy.”

“Yes, sir.” Jasper nodded and limped over to the side of the barn door where the wood matches were kept. His knee was on fire now. Each step made his eyes lose focus, but he kept walking and handed his uncle the match.

Uncle Leo struck it against the side of the lantern and the barn filled with light. “Let me take a look at ya.”

He leaned down and examined the boy’s legs. Jasper startled as he looked at them himself for the first time. His right leg was caked brown with dried blood. His left shin was blistered purple where the fire had got him. Both legs were covered in dirt and flecks of hay. His shirt was charred black at the edges, so were his hands.

His uncle let out a low whistle. “You really did it to yourself but good, didn’t ya?” His voice was hard, but as he glared at him, Jasper could see a twinge of sympathy in his eyes.

“Yes, sir.” He felt a tear fall down his cheek and brushed it away. He wouldn’t cry. No matter what happened, he wouldn’t cry. He looked down at the crop and then back to his uncle expectantly. He deserved everything Wayne got and then some.

His uncle followed his gaze. “Don’t you mind that. That there’s to make a lesson stick. Nothin’ more. Looks like you took care of that one yourself. Come ’ere. We got to get you cleaned up.” His uncle stood and scooped the boy up into his arms. The gesture filled Jasper with such a tidal wave of relief and humiliation he nearly started bawling.
I won’t cry.

“I—I can walk,” Jasper whimpered and struggled to get down.

“Like hell.” His uncle pushed the barn door open with his shoulder. “Save your strength, boy. I promise you, when we’re done saltin’ those wounds, you’re gonna wish I’d whupped you instead.”