ELEVEN
“You don’t know what you’re asking, boy.”
“I do! I do know.”
“You don’t. You don’t have enough life behind you to know a thing like that. You’re thinking with your pecker, not your brain. The kinds of decisions a man makes when he does that are never good.”
Archer stared at Gram, feeling waves of frank disbelief wash over him in waves. Gram was a very old woman but there was nothing prim and proper about her, that was for damn sure. If anyone else had spoken to him the way she was doing now he would have done one of two things; walked out with disdain or delivered a swift punch.
But Gram? Gram was another matter entirely. When Gram said something, you listened, hands down, every time. It didn’t mean he agreed with her because he didn’t, but he also couldn’t just write her off. She was the leader of their family and she was going to have her say. Her having her say was the only way he was going to get what he was aiming for and that made the stakes too high to play around with.
Not getting what he was asking for was not an option, not this time. It wasn’t an option because for the first time in his life, Archer wasn’t making decisions based chiefly on his own wants, needs, and desires. He was playing for another person now and that knowledge changed things considerably.
It made him think about things differently, made him more cautious, something Gram caught onto easily. She made a noise of disgust and shook her head, disappointment and frustration so palpable they were almost physical things, things that Archer could have reached out and plucked from the atmosphere. When she looked at him, he saw fire in her eyes, the fire of a woman much younger and much more dangerous than what she currently appeared.
“You should never have gone to see her, boy. That was a mistake. I told you not to do it. When the devil are you going to start listening?”
“I’m not a boy,” he answered through clenched teeth. “I haven’t been a boy for some time now, Gram.”
“Then act like it!” she spat back, her body actually rocking forward with the force of her words. “Act like it, goddamnit! Because I don’t see a man standing in front of me here, nothing close to a man. I see a boy! I see a boy as afraid as he was when his parents left and didn’t come back! A boy as afraid as he was when I took on the role of playing parents and grandmama. That’s what I see when I look at you.”
Just as Gram had rocked forward with the force of the things she had to say, Archer rocked back on his heels as if he had been physically struck by the woman. Better that he had been, he thought to himself along with a flurry of other things so jumbled and angry he couldn’t begin to sift through them, better she’d struck him than to speak to him thus.
Archer thought this to himself and, as was the case for so many people that had only recently begun their adulthood, realized he might not be all the way grown, after all. Because if he was, if he was as much an adult as he was claiming to be, would Gram’s words have the power to hurt him so?
Even knowing something like it was coming, the vitriolic slew of words she unleashed on him made him feel so terribly small, the same kind of small he had felt when he had really understood that he was an orphan for the first time. She saw that smallness in him, too, saw it and smiled a smile without any happiness at all. She was proving a point, he realized, and she was doing it disarmingly well.
“I see. Well, good to know where things stand, I suppose. Good to know what I need to do next.”
“Next? You don’t need to do anything next, Archer. All you got to do is stay out of it and let things run their due course. That’s what they want to do. That’s what things always want to do, whether we like the course or not. It’s only our meddling that messes things up so badly.”
“Duly noted.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say to me? Because if it is, you’re not listening the right way. Do I need to tell you again?”
“No,” he answered in as calm a voice as he could manage, well aware that this was the first time he would ever openly and blatantly defy his grandmother. “I don’t. I understand now.”
“So, you’ll send her away, then. That’s good. That’s right, the right thing for you to do. It’s the right thing for the good of the family. That girl is different, different in her blood from us and not meant to live amongst us. Send her on back to her family. They may not be perfect but they’re what she’d got. And which one among us’s got perfect to hold to?”
Archer nodded in agreement. She was right about that much. Very few people were blessed with perfect anything, as far as he could tell. It was just sort of a fact of life that at one point or another, a person was going to have to make do with what they had, even if what they had was shitty. That being said, Archer knew that his grandmother was well aware of the sort of punishment Eloise could be facing if she returned home. Gram might not know the specifics but she knew it was going to be bad and she didn’t care.
It was a lack of empathy Archer was used to, but one he still found just a little bit astounding. As if she could read his thoughts (and who the hell knew, she could have been picking up on some of them, direct contact with his skin or not), she lifted her chin in defiance and looked at him with those strange, unreadable eyes.
“This isn’t a charity we’ve got here, is it, boy? We ain’t never been in the business of taking in strays who might bring the hammer down on our head.”
“No, I guess that’s true.”
“We look out for our own because we’re the only ones who will. There’s all kinds of superstitions surrounding our kind, none of it good. We got to stay on the outside of that. We got to take what we can get and run with it and that’s what we been doing here.”
“At the carnival?” Archer scoffed, not able to keep the disdain out of his voice and not giving a damn. Gram’s face grew darker at the tone, but he found he didn’t care much about that, either. She was right, they hadn’t made a habit out of taking care of anyone but their own and he hadn’t ever given that much thought.
But now? Now he was ashamed for his lack of empathy. He was ashamed for the fact that he had lived thirty years without giving any thought at all to those around him, those who weren’t blood. And on top of that was the realization that believing being members of a traveling carnival, an organization that got no respect from nobody, was a good deal, was an outrage.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t glad for the food and work, but he wasn’t able to believe it was a good deal anymore. It was just getting by. Getting by was all he had done and now that he had experienced the bright light Eloise radiated he knew it. It was the kind of thing he couldn’t unknow, the kind of thing that could change a man permanently. All of this showed clearly to his grandmother and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
“You too good for this place now? That it? You too good for honest work and food in your belly?”
“Calling carnival work honest is a stretch, to say the least. And no, not too good. But I’m going, all the same.”
“Going? What does that mean, going? We’re having a conversation, boy. You don’t walk away from me when we’re talking.”
“No, I don’t mean I’m walking away from the conversation,” he answered gently, softened by the old woman’s misunderstanding of his true meaning, “I mean I’m going from here. I’ll be leaving this place, leaving the family.”
“The hell you will!”
“But I will. It’s what I have to do. If things really are the way you say they are, if that’s how they have to be, then going is my only choice. I’ll take her and we’ll go far away from here and you won’t have to worry about her family or her blood any longer.”
“You trying to force my hand? Is that what you’re aiming to do, Archer? Because if that’s so, it won’t work. I’ve been taking care of you since you were small. You weren’t ever able to manipulate me then and I’ll be damned if you’re able to do it now. It’s not just you I got to look out for and you know it. It’s the family. Remember them? The family?”
“I do, and I won’t keep her around if you’re so sure it’s bad for them, but I won’t send her away, either. We’ll go off on our own, make our own way. If the heat lets up, maybe we’ll find you guys again. Maybe we’ll do just that.”
Archer hadn’t realized how serious he was about what he was saying until his voice was silent again, until there was nothing left to say, but he knew it now. He turned without saying goodbye, determined not to let his Gram say anything else to reprimand him.
He wasn’t a child anymore, he wasn’t, and if she couldn’t see that he couldn’t make her do so, but he wasn’t a child and it was for him to decide who he would make a life with. He got exactly three steps from her before she called out to him again. All she said was his name, but it was enough to stop him and turn him around to face her again.
He didn’t recognize the tone of voice she was using now. It wasn’t angry exactly, but it was terribly serious, deadly serious, almost. The only time he could remember hearing anything close to this voice coming out of his grandmother was when she had talked to him about his parents and how they wouldn’t be around for him anymore, all those years ago.
“Archer. Stop it now, alright? You’re serious. I see that. You’re serious and that means we’ll have to talk about things a little bit differently.”
“What kind of differently? You don’t want her here and I won’t stay without her. Sounds pretty cut and dry to me.”
“Nothing’s ever cut and dry. You should know that as well as anyone.”
“Alright, I’m listening.”
And so, his grandmother talked. Gram, the tiny old woman who had been both of his parents as well as the pseudo parent to every member of the family talked and what she had to say left Archer stunned. He shouldn’t have been and he knew it, not after all the years of watching the way she operated. He forgot sometimes how much she loved him and how much he loved her in return.
It hadn’t been the easiest of lives, not for any of them, and it required a kind of hardening that made you forget how to feel the right way. But the love between them was real and because of that, Gram was willing to make concessions for him she wouldn’t have made for anyone else alive (or dead, for that matter). She asked him one more time if he would cut Eloise loose, asked him without the anger and with something very close to pleading in its place.
When Archer said no, he wouldn’t, she nodded wearily but without surprise. That was when she told him how things were going to be. She would allow Eloise to stay, but it wasn’t a decision she could make for the whole family on her own. Instead, they had held a family conference. This was something that hadn’t been done in years, not in an official capacity, and the energy of the meeting had been frenetic at best. Gram had laid the points out simply and with no fanfare before allowing things to come to a vote.
That process had taken almost two hours and by the end of it Archer had felt like he’d been hit by a train. His entire body had been slick with sweat and reeking of the dank tension coursing through his body. He’d had a right to that tension, too. The verdict was not at all unanimous and was also not quick in coming. There were several moments in which Archer was sure he would be taking Eloise off on his own after all.
In the end, however, it was decided. Eloise would be offered safe harbor. There was an unspoken understanding amongst them all that safe harbor was exactly the kind of thing their kind was likely to need and unlikely to get and that was part of it, or at least Archer liked to think it was part of it. What was spoken aloud and more likely to be the reason for why they agreed to let Eloise tag along was that they didn’t want Archer to go.
He was the only remaining direct heir to Gram’s line and therefore the next in line to lead the family of wolves. They needed him there and if keeping Eloise around was part of the deal, there was nothing they could do about it, at least not that they could think of, not yet. And so Archer had nodded and expressed his thanks before turning quickly on his heel and walking away from the family who began to argue amongst themselves in hushed, strained tones the minute the formal meeting had been called to a close.
Archer understood it. He didn’t like it, but he understood it. He had asked for, and gotten, a lot, and it was not without extreme inconvenience for the others. Now they would not only be leaving the outskirts of New Orleans, they would be leaving the carnival altogether. Their steady work and guarantee of full bellies had come to an abrupt and unceremonious close and it was all because of the monumental favor Archer had asked.
This was not lost on him and it did not sit well in his heart but it didn’t hurt him enough to change his course of action. He had derailed the path of his entire tribe and still he could not choose to do differently. All he could do was walk more quickly to his airline stream trailer where Eloise was waiting anxiously.
He could smell it, her anxiety, even before he opened the door and it made him want to rearrange the whole world just to make her feel safe. That was what he was doing now, part of himself realized inside of the dim, shadowy parts of his mind that he didn’t like to visit more than he had to; he was trying to rearrange her world and make it one she could live in with less fear and her first real freedom.
He had zero understanding as to why he would do this for a girl he did not know at all, a girl who was so at odds with his family and his life, but he was doing it all the same and he had no intention of backing down. Even if he had, catching sight of Eloise curled up on the trailer’s little excuse for a bed with her knees folded under her chin and her arms wrapped around her legs would have driven those intentions out of him for good. She was so beautiful, so beautiful it made him ache, and he knew he could never again give her up without first putting up a fight.
“I thought you might not come back.”
“And where would I go?” he laughed, sitting beside her with his hands clasped loosely in his lap and his eyes only looking at her through sideways glances. He was feeling shy. He had forced his family to let him bring her along with him and now he was feeling so shy he could hardly look at her.
Sensing this perhaps, or maybe just compelled by whatever strange force was also making him feel like he couldn’t let her go, Eloise unfolded herself, rested her head on his shoulder, and slipped her hand into one of his. He felt a hint of that same electricity from the barn at her touch and did his best to ignore it. There would be plenty of time for more of that, but this was not it. Now was the time to get moving, now that he had taken on such grave responsibilities, and in order to do that he needed to make Eloise understand what she was getting herself in for.
“I don’t know,” she sighed, “nowhere. I suppose what I really thought is that you would come back and send me on my way again. Is that what you’ve come to do? Did your grandmother tell you to send me on my way?”
“She was going to, but I told her I would go right along with you. The family has decided to let you come with us. If that’s what you want.”
“More than anything!” she cried, bouncing up and clapping her hands together in excitement. Archer smiled at that, couldn’t help but smile, but he still felt the heavy weariness in his chest. Was he really going to take this girl away in his little camper and expect her to be happy? Was it even possible for a girl who had lived a life like hers to adapt to a life on the road? His smile faltered at the thought and Eloise frowned in return.
“What is it? Do you not want me to come? Because I’ll go, if that’s the case. I don’t want to be some place where I’m not wanted.”
“No! No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just...are you sure? Are you sure you want to give up your nice, pretty life for this? Because it’s not easy, Eloise. You’ll have your freedom but it’ll come at a price.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it, Archer, none of the ‘pretty’ life in my parents’ home. All I want is this. All I want is for you to take me away from this place and never bring me back again.”
He kissed her then, and that was how the matter was settled. The deal was sealed with a kiss as so many had been before and would be in the future. Eloise left the trailer to help Archer pack up his meager belongings and within the hour they were on the road.