Wild Things Read online

  “I don’t.”

  “Poker?”

  “Not really.”

  “Gin?”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  Franklin pulled a deck of cards out of his left shirt pocket. “Dollar a point?” he said.

  Helen looked at me, then at Franklin. “You two are made for each other. A nickel a point. I’ll stake you, but later, okay?” She turned back to me. “Henry tells us you’re a writer.”

  “I’m writing my memoir, if that’s what you mean.” I cut my eyes to Henry, not sure I liked everybody knowing, but not sure I didn’t either.

  “Franklin writes fine novels,” she said. “Henry has them in his library.”

  “Well, I want to borrow them,” Bessie said. “I like a good story.”

  Franklin nodded his appreciation.

  “What do you write about?” I asked him.

  “This and that,” he said.

  I turned Franklin’s name over in my mind. It seemed familiar. “Did you write a kids’ book about a boy called Thaniel set after a nuclear war and he’s got a ferret and a three-legged dog and he was in school in England when the bombs went off and he’s trying to get home to Tennessee where his parents live?”

  “I did,” Franklin said, pleased.

  Everyone looked at me.

  “That was a good book!” I said.

  “A child genius,” Franklin said, “destined for great things.”

  “I liked the dog especially, though it was kinda sad how it ended with—”

  “Don’t tell how it ends! I want to read it!” Bessie said, as Fred called us to the kitchen table.

  Supper was glazed ham, mashed potatoes, string beans, angel biscuits, and apple cobbler. I was relieved not to have to say much while we ate. Helen and Bessie talked a blue streak about a show of Helen’s paintings at some museum, Bessie’s quilting, and Fred’s flower gardens. Helen talked about the similarity in the things they did. She said she’d never seen quilts like Bessie’s, with such extraordinary colors and “juxtapositions.” A quilt that Bessie had given her hung on the wall of her painting studio and inspired her every day. She wanted to organize a show for Bessie’s quilts in New York City. Bessie tut-tutted and said that quilting came as naturally to her as breathing. The designs came straight from her heart, a gift from her angels, and Helen ought to put her quilt on the bed where it belonged. Still, I could tell she was happy that Helen thought her quilt was more than a bedspread. Fred wouldn’t even entertain Helen’s suggestion that his flowers were high art. He insisted he did it because he loved Bessie, for that reason and no other.

  “We all have our different reasons,” Helen said. “Mine are probably entirely self-serving, but I’d die if I couldn’t paint.”

  “Die?” I said, curious. I wondered if I’d die if I couldn’t read or write in my journal.

  “I mean my spirit would die, everything good about me. I’m grossly unhappy and mean as a mongoose if I don’t get to paint in solitude every day.”

  While she was talking, Franklin had hung nine spoons from his face: four from his cheeks, two more from his eyebrows, and one each from his nose, mouth, and chin. He was working on ten when Helen finally noticed. She burst into a musical laugh, like tinkling glass, and as she did, the spoons fell to the table and clattered onto the floor. We all laughed. Everyone but Henry.

  He sat stiffly at one end of the table, frowning or fidgeting occasionally but not saying anything. Once or twice Helen glanced in his direction, then exchanged eye-rolls with Bessie. I tried to ignore him, glad we had company so I didn’t have to hear about bows and arrows and Hargrove Peters, though I knew I’d hear plenty about them later.

  After the dishes were cleared, Henry took Helen and Franklin out to his studio to show them his newest work. I excused myself and headed upstairs.

  As they walked out back, I heard Helen pleading my case. “Don’t punish her on Thanksgiving, Henry. For my sake? Please.” But their voices faded and I couldn’t hear what Henry told her. Weird thing was, I really wanted to know what he said.

  I stretched out on my bed, my room bright with moonlight. I stewed about the day and waited for Henry’s lecture. Soon I heard Fred and Bessie’s truck motor down the drive. Half an hour later, Franklin and Helen giggled like children as they climbed the stairs to Henry’s room. I sat up, ready to argue, explain, defend myself. But Henry’s welder started up out back, and he never came inside.

  The next day, humans were everywhere.

  The strange man and woman had stayed the night, upstairs. The helper and his mate drove up after sunrise only to drive off and come back with the gimpy old man from the steepled house down the road. The racket they made echoed in the crawlspace. They stomped and rushed around overhead, dragging and rattling things, laughing and carrying on. The cat moved to the porch. But out they came: for firewood, to roam the yard, to traipse in and out of the man’s shop.

  The cat fled to the yard, crossed the streambed to nap under a rhododendron. But soon one of them lumbered there, planted his wide backside on a boulder, and blew clouds of smoke that made the cat wheeze. Humans were spreading at a staggering rate, planting their fat haunches everywhere.

  He went farther into the woods. But there, midafternoon, the tantalizing smell found him. It curled under his nose, wrapped around his neck like an invisible collar, knotted under his chin, and led him back to the house on a succulent leash.

  It was definitely poultry, but no ordinary kind. This was wild bird, roasted and mouthwatering. The scent drew him to the yard, the house, the porch, to the plate of steaming meat. He dove in, wolfing down every juicy shred until his stomach was tight, his walk a waddle. He blessed the girl and all humankind.

  A sudden hacking cough drew his attention to the drive, to a car parked some distance from the house. Smoke curled from a window. Were they all on fire? The car door creaked, then opened full, freeing a great cloud of smoke. The visitor stepped out of it, hesitant, eyeing the cat’s empty dish.

  Hey kitty, he said.

  The girl came out then, laughing at the cat’s plate licked clean.

  Fred thought I gave you too much, she said to the cat. No puking now, you hear?

  The car door slammed. The girl looked up, saw the visitor, and froze. He straightened and then slumped, nervy and timid both.

  The girl growled, What are you doing here?

  13

  Harlan Jeffers. Eeyore in the flesh. Last person on earth I ever thought I’d see again.

  He shivered and fisted the neck of his coat in one hand, hugging himself with the other. His eyes begged, but his pitiful act wasn’t fooling me.

  “I said, what are you doing here?”

  He lowered his eyes. “I’m cold,” he said.

  “You’re pathetic,” I told him.

  “That’s the God’s truth. I am.”

  “If it’s money you want, you can just crawl back in your hole. Go on. Nothing for you here.”

  He shifted from one foot to another, looked around, his gaze settling on Mr. C’mere’s plate. “That cat ate better than I did today. Or yesterday. All week, come to think.”

  I took him in. He was skinny. As skinny as I’d ever seen him. He looked about a hundred years old. My anger slackened, but only a little.

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Article in the paper.”

  “What paper?”

  He pulled a crumpled newspaper clipping from his pocket and held it out to me. Mr. C scooted under the porch.

  “Farmville Times,” Harlan said. “Front page.”

  I took it and read: AROUND THE STATE. Noted Sculptor Adopts Niece. Internationally recognized American sculptor and former cardiothoracic surgeon Henry Royster has petitioned the court for legal guardianship of his niece, Zoë Sophia Royster. Miss Royster is the daughter of the late Mary Elizabeth Cantrell, of Farmville, and Dr. Royster’s half-brother, the late Jude Owen Royster, struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver on North Highway outsid
e Sugar Hill. Dr. Royster and his niece reside at the Royster family home in Sugar Hill.

  “So?” I said, wondering if all Mama’s deadbeat friends would show up now. I shoved the paper back at Harlan, but he wouldn’t take it. I let it fall to the ground.

  “Sorry I bothered you,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”

  As he turned to go, the front door opened and Uncle Henry came out, the others right behind him. “May I help you?” Henry said. “Who is this man, Zoë?”

  “Harlan Jeffers. Another one of Mama’s friends wanting money.”

  “I’m not,” Harlan said.

  “What can we do for you, Mr. Jeffers?” Henry asked.

  “Not a thing,” said Harlan quickly, already halfway to his car. He waved over his shoulder. “Sorry I interrupted your dinner. I’ll be going now.”

  “Henry!” Bessie called from the door in a loud whisper. “That man’s hungry. Don’t any of you have eyes?”

  “Now, Bessie,” Fred warned quietly. “We don’t know this man.”

  Bessie shot him a disapproving look. “Mr. Jeffers,” she called out, “won’t you warm yourself by our fire, let us set you a place at the table? We’d be thankful if you would. Isn’t that right, Zoë?”

  She frowned in my direction and I nodded reluctantly. “I guess. Come on, Harlan,” I told him.

  “I’d be grateful,” he said. “I won’t stay long.”

  I rolled my eyes. “We’ll never get rid of him,” I muttered as Bessie escorted him inside.

  I walked out to Harlan’s beat-up Ford and tried to peer in. The windows were glazed over with dirt or condensation or both, so I opened a rear door. The smell of stale cigarette smoke and ripe human being about made me faint. I drew back, fanning the foul air with my hand. The seats were piled with clothes, stuff in plastic bags, garbage, papers, and I didn’t want to know what else.

  “He’s been living in this car,” I said to Mr. C, who had followed me. “Harlan. As if there weren’t enough going on. Lord.”

  Mr. C’mere heard them first. His ears pricked to the excited barking of dogs in the woods. He clambered quick as he could onto the pile of clothes and junk on Harlan’s back seat. Voices called sharply in the trees, and I made out two or three men chasing something in our direction. I slammed the car door shut and squinted. A white blur raced through the near trees. A second later the white deer sped wild-eyed across the yard, the drive, the field, and into the woods on the far side toward the graveyard, a gun-toting horde not far behind.

  The men’s shouting grew louder, the dogs’ barking too. A car thundered up the drive, throwing gravel from its tires, heading straight for the house. The sheriff’s cruiser screamed up behind it, the lights on its rooftop flashing. The first car veered off the drive and bumped across the field, and the squad car followed, gunning its engine, trying to pass it. Both skidded and spun out in the mud. At the same time three men carrying shotguns ran into the yard behind two barking yellow dogs with a shotgun-wielding Maud Booker bringing up the rear, everybody panting and shouting and running as fast as they could across the drive and into the field. Everybody, that is, but the dogs, who heard Mr. C yowling inside Harlan’s car and swerved off to bark and scratch at the windows and doors.

  Everyone inside the house poured out the front door like panicking ants from an anthill. I took the shortest route across the field, easily beating out the overweight hunters and speeding past the stopped cars. Henry and Fred and the sheriff were all shouting my name, but I wasn’t stopping for anything or anybody. I got to the field’s edge first and took off down the bank on my butt, scrambling toward the graveyard where the white deer thrashed bright as day inside the graveyard fence, too panicky to figure her way out.

  As I got halfway down the bank, I saw somebody in there with her, trying to hold her, calm her, and work the latch on the gate all at the same time. Whoever it was must have circled around behind the house and come up behind the graveyard just as she ran inside.

  “Hold on to her,” I hollered as I ran. “Don’t let her run!”

  The person stopped fooling with the gate, threw down something that had been slung over his shoulder, and grabbed hold of the deer with both arms, exposing his broad back to the first hunter, who was just gaining the bank. I ran to the two of them as fast as my legs would go, and found myself staring into the face of wildness itself.

  The stranger was tall and skinny and streaked brown as a sparrow’s back with a combination of sun and dirt. His black hair hung down his back in matted hanks, tied off at the nape of his neck with a piece of leather. He wore boots scuffed up with rough work, a moth-eaten brown sweater, and a pair of loose-fitting green coveralls dirtier than Henry on his filthiest day. A worn canvas bag lay on the ground where he’d thrown it so he could get a better hold on the deer. Something peeked out of the top. It looked like the upper part of a strung bow, though I couldn’t be sure.

  As I stared into his face I saw a double dose of anxiety and fear, and other feelings so jumbled they made my head hurt. And that’s when I knew he was the one I’d sensed in the woods whenever I saw the white deer. Not an animal at all, but a boy. A teenaged boy.

  He was staring over my shoulder. I whirled back around to see the first hunter pointing his gun at all three of us, calling to his friends to hurry up and come. I glanced back at the boy and saw his expression change from scared to furious. He struggled mightily to keep the little deer’s body covered with his own. She had cut herself on one of the fence spikes as she tried to jump out, and a patch of bright blood was spreading on the inside of a pink haunch. She was frantic with fear, pulling the boy this way and that, desperate to get away, though he gripped her firm. The hunter steadied his aim, not caring if anything stood in his way. He was smiling, salivating over his prize.

  “Get out of the way!” he called to us as his hunter friends joined him.

  “No!” the boy shouted, his voice angry and deep, like a lion’s roar.

  The boy and the deer were behind one of the gravestones, which shielded them from the knees down. I planted myself between that hunter and the boy’s exposed back, then raised my arms and waved them frantically over my head to make the biggest possible target.

  “Zoë! What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” Henry thundered from above.

  Henry was half running and half falling down the slope toward us. The others were lining up on the rise behind him: a panting Maud Booker, her shotgun trained on the hunter pointing his gun at us; the sheriff and his deputy; then Fred, Franklin, and Helen, with Bessie and the Padre slowly bringing up the rear, both of them leaning heavily on Harlan, who shouted, “That’s my Zoë! You give ’em what-for, darlin’!”

  I’d never been so scared in my life. Ray had shown me that hunters thought they owned the outdoors and everything in it, but I hadn’t truly believed it till I was staring down the double barrel of a shotgun. That hunter stood his ground, looking straight at us through his sights, but as the witnesses multiplied, his sureness faltered. He glanced nervously at Maud and her gun, then at his hunter buddies, who’d stepped back and off to one side, then at the sheriff, who unsnapped the top of his gun holster, fingered the pistol butt, and yelled loud and clear, “Everybody stop right where they are!”

  And everyone did. Everyone but Henry.

  He kept barreling down the hill like a charging bear. The deer’s panic escalated behind me, the boy having to work harder as Henry came.

  “Stop, Uncle Henry, please!” I shrieked.

  To Henry’s everlasting credit, he did. But he looked mad enough to breathe fire.

  “Zoë,” he said loudly, as grim-faced as I’d ever seen him. “I want you to come here. Now.”

  “I can’t, Uncle Henry.”

  “This is not a discussion,” Henry said firmly.

  “I’m sorry, Uncle Henry,” I hollered. “You can send me back to that hospital or wherever they send bad kids, I don’t care. But I’m not moving.”

  Fre
d shook his head and muttered some exasperation I couldn’t hear, but Henry just stood there staring at me, like I’d pushed him way past exasperation or even fury. Finally a resigned look passed over his face, and he did something that will impress me for the rest of my days. He walked sidelong down the hill, very slowly, till he was maybe ten feet in front of me, and put himself directly between me and that hunter’s gun.

  He turned to face me then, his back to the hunter. He looked steadily at me. Not angry, not upset. Dead serious, though. Then he turned around so we faced that hunter—together.

  For the longest minute of my life, the hunter stood sighting us down the barrel of his gun, Henry still as death and staring back at him. I glanced behind me. The deer was pop-eyed with fear and wanting to bolt from hunters and barking dogs—all of us. The boy, too. Everybody kept still, watching me and Henry and the hunter. Time slowed, and even the birds seemed to hold their breath.

  The hunter’s shoulders finally slumped. He lowered his gun and dropped his eyes. Sheriff Bean walked over and took the gun without any fuss.

  Then the sheriff turned to everybody. “My Thanksgiving dinner is at this moment growing ice-cold on Mrs. Bean’s much-fussed-over dining room table.” Then he turned to the hunter. “Curtis, you and your friends are going to give all your firearms to my deputy. Provided each one of you can produce a valid hunting license, you may pick up your firearms at the sheriff’s department first thing in the morning. Everyone not invited to dinner at Dr. Royster’s will now go home to enjoy Thanksgiving Day with your friends and relations.”

  “That woman chased us with a gun!” one of the hunters shouted. “We weren’t even on her land. We were up by Lenter’s Creek—”

  “Putting you on my posted land,” Fred cut in.

  “Not Lenter’s Creek,” barked another hunter. “Big Woods.”

  “Church property,” called the Padre.

  “The mayor’ll hear about this,” Curtis said, pointing at me. “That girl shot at the mayor’s son. I’m claiming the reward right here and now.”

  The sheriff sighed. “When you call His Honor, you tell him that I’m beginning a thorough investigation into everything that’s happened here, and that I will no longer be taking the tender ages and clean records of those involved into consideration. So everybody here better get their stories straight and tell the mayor, his boy, and his boy’s cousin to do the same. I’m taking statements at the first of the week, and this time, anybody determined to be lying or withholding facts will be looking at a charge of obstruction. And that goes for any eleven-year-old spitfires who’ve been keeping entirely too much information to themselves,” he said, aiming that last part directly at me.