This Tender Land (27 page)

“I got a telegram from Corman. If you want to go national, he’s offering a big auditorium in Saint Louie. They’ll broadcast straight from there to millions of Americans every Sunday.”

“Millions?”

“Millions, baby. You’ll go national.”

“When?”

“We do Des Moines but cancel the Kansas stop and head straight to Saint Louis.”

The other room was quiet. I looked at Emmy and she looked at me.

“That’s where the kids are going, Sid. We’re taking them with us. When we get there, I’ll help them find their family, and then they’ll be out of your hair. Deal?”

Another long quiet. “Deal,” Sid finally said.

I’d been told lies all my life, and I knew one when I heard it.

LUCIFER STUDIED ME.
I studied Lucifer. He had me at an advantage because he never blinked. The other snakes generally seemed lethargic and docile in the glass cages, but Lucifer was always ready to strike. He repulsed and fascinated me at the same time.

After Whisker showed me the rattlesnake, I’d begun sneaking into Sister Eve’s tent, just to look at that sinuous reptile and to make certain that he was still imprisoned behind that glass. Lucifer had slithered his way into my dreams at night, sometimes chasing me, sometimes springing up to strike at me with terrifying suddenness. Sometimes he and the murdered one-eyed Jack leapt at me from the dark of a nightmare together, and I’d wake and couldn’t go back to sleep. Emmy would assure me dreamily, “Everything’s okay, Odie.”

But she was wrong, and I knew it.

All that might have been good in my life had been destroyed by the Tornado God. Though I recalled my early years only vaguely, I remembered them with a sense of happiness. Then the Tornado God had taken my mother. After that, despite being on the road constantly, my father and Albert and I had found ways to be a family and to be happy. Then the Tornado God had lodged three bullets in my father’s back. The Lincoln Indian Training School might not have been such a bad place, all things considered, but I knew in my heart that the Tornado God had put the Brickmans in charge just to make it hell. For a brief moment, I’d hoped that my life might be saved by Cora Frost, but the Tornado God had snatched her away, too.

So I didn’t trust that everything would be okay. The Tornado God was watching, always watching, and I was sure he had something diabolical and destructive up his sleeve. This time, however, I thought I
was a step ahead. I knew the source of the ill wind that was sure to blow in. It would come from Sid.

We all have secrets. With them, we’re like squirrels with nuts. We hide them away, and bitter though they may be, we feed on them. If you’re careful, you can follow a squirrel to his cache. The same was true for Sid, I thought. So I became his shadow.

In the morning, he would breakfast with Sister Eve and Emmy and me, then drive off in the red DeSoto and be gone until noon. What he did in that time was something he kept secret.

I asked Whisker about it, and he shrugged and said, “Always goes off like that somewhere. Never thought to ask where. His business.”

I meant to make it mine.

We’d been with the Sword of Gideon Healing Crusade—Whisker told me Sid had given it that name because it sounded “kinda manly and holy and promising and comforting all in one big appetizing helping”—for well over a week when, on a morning we were all free of chores, a bunch of the men, young and old, put together a baseball game in the meadow near the tents. Whisker joined in, and I was surprised to see that even with his spindly arms, he swung a pretty mean bat. They put me in the outfield because they figured I couldn’t do much damage there, which was all right by me.

There was some argument in the beginning over which side would get Mose. By then, everyone in the show had seen the grace in Mose’s every movement. He was a young lion, sinuous and powerful, an otter in his easygoing playfulness. Everyone liked Mose and everyone wanted him on their team. Albert was another matter. My brother could be dark and brooding sometimes, and although he worked magic with engines and such and could jerry-rig any kind of contraption, he claimed a disinterest in athletics. I figured sitting on the bench at Lincoln School had soured him on the risks associated with taking part in organized sports. He declined at first to be a part of the game that day. But the sides were uneven without him, and cajoled mostly by Mose, he finally gave in. Like me, he was exiled to the outfield.

Our side was up to bat when I noticed Sid watching the game. He was usually gone in the mornings, so this was unusual. But his red DeSoto was parked near the tents, and I figured that at some point he’d take off on his mysterious business. The game was going hot and heavy, and Mose came to the plate. The women who helped with the crusade looked on and cheered, and Mose gave them a big grin in reply. Then he pointed toward left field, indicating that was where he intended to hit the pitch, and he signed,
Home run.
Just like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, I thought.

Dimitri, the big Greek cook, was pitching for the other side. He had arms like rhino thighs and hurled the ball so fast and hard that Tsuboi, who was catching, gave a little cry each time it hit the thin pocket of his old glove. Dimitri threw twice, and Mose let both pitches fly by without a swing. On the third pitch, Mose split the air with his bat, and the crack of it against the horsehide was like a gunshot and the ball went sailing, a diminishing white dot in the blue sky above left field. Sid, like everyone else, was mesmerized—by the hit itself, by the endless flight of the ball, and by the sight of Mose running the bases with all the power and grace of a colt in the Kentucky Derby. This was my chance.

I slipped away and slid into the red DeSoto, onto the floor in back, drew the folded blanket off the seat, and lay it over me. It was stifling hot, but I didn’t have to wait long before I heard Sid open the driver’s side door. He settled himself behind the wheel and we took off. He drove, I reckoned, for more than half an hour before pulling to a stop. He killed the engine and got out. As soon as his door closed, I sat up and peeked through the window. We were in a city, parked alongside a curb in front of a line of buildings, storefronts and offices. The nearest city I knew of was Mankato. I watched Sid stroll down the sidewalk, a brown leather satchel in his hand. He paused, set the satchel down, lit a cigarette, then continued on.

I left the DeSoto and followed at a safe distance. He disappeared around a corner. I ran up and carefully peered around the building.
He’d stopped halfway down the block in front of a café, where he took a final drag off his cigarette, tossed what was left onto the street, and went inside. I crept to the café window.

Inside, Sid sat in a booth talking to some people. At first, I couldn’t see them because Sid’s body blocked my view. He pointed south, as if giving directions of some kind. He opened his satchel, took out an envelope, and handed it over. He stood up, said a few more words, then turned to leave. That’s when I saw who was in the booth, and I knew that Albert had spoken the truth. Sister Eve was too good to be true.

BACK IN NEW
Bremen, Sid parked in front of the Morrow House, grabbed his satchel, and went inside. I slid from the back and followed after him. He went directly to Sister Eve’s suite. I waited a few minutes, then went in myself. They sat at the table where Sister Eve usually had breakfast delivered. She looked up and, when she saw me, seemed relieved.

“There you are, Odie. We thought we’d lost you.”

“I was just bumming around town,” I said.

She studied me closely. “Are you all right?”

I wasn’t. I was so full of anger I wanted to spit. I wanted to explode at her, at them both. But I kept the lid on.

“I’m fine,” I said. “But I think I’d like to lie down for a while.”

I went to the bedroom I shared with Emmy and shut the door, but not all the way. I left it open a crack and stood beside it, listening.

“I told them to meet us in Des Moines,” Sid said, keeping his voice low.

“We don’t have to do this, Sid.”

“You’ve listened to me this far, Evie. And haven’t I got you places?”

“All right,” she said, giving in, but not happily.

“And here are the papers to sign for Corman.”

I peeked through the crack and saw him pull a document from his satchel, which he laid before Sister Eve.

“Should I read this?”

“Just sign, baby. Everything will be set in Saint Louis when we arrive.”

After she’d done as he’d asked, he took the papers, put them back in his satchel, and set it on the floor next to his chair. There was a knock at the door to the suite.

“Come in,” Sister Eve called.

The door opened and I heard Whisker’s voice. “Got some trouble down at the tent, Sid.”

“What is it?”

“Cops looking for somebody. Say they have a warrant.”

“For who?”

“Guy name of Pappas. I think it might be Dimitri.”

“I’m coming.”

“I’m going with you,” Sister Eve said.

I was still peeking through the crack in the door, and I saw her get up and start toward the room where I stood. I hurried to the bed and lay down. She tapped lightly.

“Yeah?” I answered, trying to sound a little groggy.

She nudged the door open. “Sid and I are going down to the tent, Odie. I’d like you to stay here until we come back, all right? Don’t go out until we return, promise?”

“Sure,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing to worry about. Just stay here.”

I heard them leave, and as soon as they were gone, I crept from the bedroom. Sid’s leather satchel still sat on the floor next to the chair where he’d put it. I grabbed the satchel, set it on the table, and opened it. It was stuffed with papers and documents, with handbills for the show, and with envelopes like the one I’d seen him give the people in the café in Mankato. I opened one of the envelopes and found that it held three ten-dollar bills. Each of the other envelopes, five in all, held varying amounts—two more with thirty, two with fifty, and one with a hundred—all in the same ten-dollar denomination.
In a side pocket of the satchel, I found a small, silver-plated revolver. In another pocket was a large brown snap case. I released the snap and lifted the lid. Inside lay a syringe and several vials of clear liquid.

When Albert and I had traveled with our father as he made his rounds delivering bootlegged liquor, we’d routinely visited a man who ran a speakeasy in Cape Girardeau. On our last visit, my father had trouble rousing him, pounding at the door for a long time before the man finally opened up. He looked disheveled and disoriented and stood swaying in the doorway. In one hand he held a syringe, in the other a vial of clear liquid. When my father saw this, he hustled me and Albert back to our truck and drove away immediately. When I asked him what was wrong with the man and why we hadn’t completed the delivery, my father said angrily, “I don’t service dope fiends.”

Dope, I thought, looking at the snap case in my hand. Sid was a dope fiend. Which didn’t surprise me in the least.

I thought about taking one or even all of the envelopes. But I could hear Albert’s voice in my head, giving me hell for stealing. So I left the money. But I did take the snap case with its syringe and vials of dope. I could at least deprive Sid of that illicit pleasure.

I left the hotel and went down to the meadow where the Sword of Gideon Healing Crusade had set up shop. I saw Sid’s red DeSoto next to a couple of police cruisers parked near the big tent, and I kept well away, lurking among the cottonwoods along the railroad tracks above the river. After a while, I saw the cops troop out, Dimitri in handcuffs between two of them. Sister Eve and Sid followed behind. Dimitri went into the back of one of the patrol cars, and Sid and Sister Eve spent a moment talking with the officers, then the cops pulled away. Sid returned to the big tent immediately, but Sister Eve stood alone for a while, staring in the direction Dimitri had been taken. She looked like a shepherdess who’d lost a lamb to the wolves. Then she followed where Sid had gone and disappeared into the tent.

I thought about tracking down Albert and Mose and Emmy and telling them what I’d seen in Mankato, telling them that we had to
leave, leave now. Instead, I stomped my way down to the sand spit where we’d camped and where I’d first heard Sister Eve’s beautiful, siren voice calling and where she’d shared with me a little of the history of her scar. Everything about the day was oppressive—the heat, the humidity, the sense of betrayal, of another dream dying. In a copse of birch trees across the river, crows had gathered in a rookery, and their constant calling fell on my ears like harsh taunting, and in them, too, I heard the echo of Albert’s words warning me:
One by one
.

I hated Sister Eve. I’d believed her. About God, about her healing, about the beautiful life that might be ahead of us with the crusade, about everything. Now I could see that she was a fake and none of it was true. How stupid could I be? How many times did my heart have to be broken before I wised up? I sat in the shade of a cottonwood and watched the brown water sweep past, and before I knew it, I was crying. They were hot, angry tears, and I was ashamed to be shedding them so openly and glad that I was alone.

But I wasn’t alone for long.

“Odie!”

I heard Emmy’s cry and looked up to see her and Albert and Mose making their way down the riverbank, coming from the direction of the meadow and the tent village. Emmy ran toward me and threw her arms around me as if I’d been lost to her forever.

“Oh, Odie, I was so afraid.”

I saw that she was crying, too.

“I’m okay,” I told her, trying to wipe away my tears before Albert and Mose saw them.

“Where were you?” Albert demanded as he approached. “You just disappeared from the ball game. We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“We have to leave,” I told him without prelude. “We have to get out of here.”

Mose signed,
Why?

My voice was so choked with anger that I could barely speak, and I signed back,
Because I hate Sister Eve.