Summer
I saw them shinin’ in their broken life. I breathed dawn air when I stepped into their house like it was the place new days were born.
There’s a willow at the end of Bobby’s yard growin’ tight to the picket fence so its limbs hang over the land behind. It was late in the night and I snuck out, sat beneath it and parted the tendrils.
They had nice things; I imagined they collected them from places I only read about in books. I saw their photographs on the side table by the front door: them on white beaches pullin’ faces; their wedding day. Some small chapel and hardly any guests ’cause Bobby didn’t have no family and wouldn’t want a show. I stare at that one like it ain’t real; a sepia dream of a life so pretty it could’ve been staged. Maybe that’s what God saw and maybe that’s why he stepped in, in case they forgot who was pullin’ strings. I wondered if complacency was a sin.
Bobby was watchin’ television in the den while Savannah sat in their library and read. Their lives side by side yet separate.
Bobby slept in Michael’s bedroom. I saw him by the window, lookin’ out but he couldn’t have seen me ’cause my eyes ain’t bright like Savannah’s.
I lay down in the grass and let the leaves fall back and I caught snatched glimpses of starlight through the cover.
When I woke it was cold. I heard a noise and got scared so I climbed to my feet. I saw her straight off. Savannah. She was wearin’ runnin’ pants but she didn’t run, just walked slow down Jackson Ranch Road.
I followed from a long way back, down the pretty streets where folks left porch lights burnin’ all night like they’d welcome callin’ strangers.
We weren’t supposed to be out after dark, none of the kids, that’s what our parents said.
When she got to the edge of town, and she crossed the last street and walked the last field I almost called out to her ’cause I reckoned she must’ve been lost. ’Cause with all the shit goin’ on, all that fear and that panic, why else would she walk into Hell’s Gate in the terror of night.
*
“You stay together. Your momma will come get you from school for the next couple weeks,” Daddy said.
We were watchin’ the television. Coralee Simmons had just gone missin’. Briar girl number four. Sheriff Ernie Redell was on the news again. He gave a quick statement where he said enough, but nothin’ we hadn’t heard before.
They cut to the reporter and his name was Chuck Cash and he wore a necktie and cowboy hat.
Chuck was standin’ in front of the Green Acres Baptist Church out on Route 84. There was a crowd behind and they had flashlights and Chuck said they was getting ready to head out, but he didn’t say where they was headed.
They flashed up a photograph of Coralee and she looked real young with braces on her teeth.
“Shit,” Daddy said, shakin’ his head.
“You goin’?” Momma said.
Daddy nodded. “I’ll call Tommy and we’ll head up there, see if we can help out. They need numbers, lot of nothin’ over by Gin Creek.”
The newspapers ran the Briar girls on the front page the next day. And then that sighting leaked, the boys playin’ soldier in Hell’s Gate who saw the monster with the girl draped over his shoulder. In a breath the whole area was hot with talk of the Bird. The kids at school drew cartoon birds and made jokes to cover the fact that they was sleepin’ with one eye open from then on. We didn’t go nowhere near Hell’s Gate, not even to the best sun spots along the Red ’cause that was close to the trees and we were worried about some monster coming out and draggin’ us away. Raine stayed home each night, lay in my bed with me, and we looked out the window and saw the tops of the oaks and we wondered what was goin’ on in those woods.
There was a couple boys at school who dressed in black each day, even painted their nails and faces. The other kids used to rip them. The day after the Coralee news broke those boys got beat bad and tied naked to a bench in the square. We all knew it was Danny Tremane and some of the other jocks but no one said shit. Handin’ out beatings in the name of Jesus, Danny glided down the halls from then on.
Abby Farley reckoned she heard screamin’ comin’ from the copse by her place, so her folks called Black and he went in with Milk but they didn’t find nothin’. Black was run ragged those weeks after Coralee was taken. He came to school and spoke to us again but this time there was somethin’ desperate about him. His hands were shakin’ and he locked us with a dead stare and told us it weren’t for jokin’, that there was somebody takin’ children away and doin’ God knows what with them. He pointed a finger out and told us to be scared ’cause that kept us sharp. And then he told us not to go to church no more, and that’s when the principal came over and they had words we couldn’t hear.
*
I believe that they do. I can’t prove that they do.
I heard that, on the television and the radio. I read that in every newspaper, local and national. That belief was its own kinda faith, they just never saw that.
The devil ran riot and righteous, and those two-bit pastors and those Lidocaine lies, those intelligence officers and those fuckin’ former satanic priests who suddenly saw the light (it weren’t the light of God, it was the light of television cameras), they all played their parts so perfect. They bathed in the Panic ’cause it gave them such purpose. Religion needs fear, that ain’t never been a secret.
We watched that episode of Geraldo where he talks about the boys who got killed in Arkansas, and he’s sayin’ those three did it ’cause it was part of a satanic ritual. He kept askin’ the parents to describe the marks on the body like they weren’t talkin’ about their own child just been murdered. We all knew about that case, we all followed it ’cause it felt like it weren’t smoke and mirrors no more.
It was real and it was comin’ for us.