Makaila 21 to 30

 

21

 

“What do you know of the outside world?”

 Cat smiled. “What makes you think this isn’t the outside world? Maybe we could walk up the hill to a road and hitch a ride.”

“Could we?”

“I don’t know. Could we?”

“I know I’m on a farm in Ohio. I know I’m not really here!”

“So you say.”

“Stop that!”

“Come on.” Cat giggled. She took off her ball cap, ran her hand over her head and replaced the cap. “What is it you wish to know?”

“Should I go home?”

“I thought the farm was your home, more than any other place you’ve ever been in your life.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it!”

“Okay, you mean you want to know if it’s a good idea for you to go back to the world? You want me to be your spiritual advisor and read your Tarot cards or something?”

Makaila chewed her lip, looking for a better question. “Do you know if my brother’ll be okay?”

“Things will be as they should be, always.”

“Will he die?”

“We’re all going to die. Larry is no exception.”

Makaila took a deep breath. “Do you know if Larry will die within, say, the next year?”

Cat looked into the pines overhead. “No one really knows the future, but I’d say that’s doubtful.” She put a hand on Makaila’s arm. “I’ll tell you what Yoda told Luke in the movie. No matter what you think you have to do, you aren’t ready to go and shouldn’t.”

“It didn’t stop Luke.”

“Luke had good writers. If you go back now, you won’t live the year.”

Makaila let out a long sigh. “I know that.”

“See? All without Tarot cards. You gotta keep yourself centered and thinking and trust this.” Cat poked Makaila’s stomach. “Your gut. The world’s going to keep on spinning without you. People are going to live and people are going to die. People are going to love each other and hurt each other, all without you.”

“Stay alive and stay free.”

“Good advice. Wish I’d said it.”

Surprising Makaila, a girl skipped up to Cat from around the corner, putting a flower in Cat’s face. Cat sniffed and nodded. “This is Makaila, come to visit. Maybe she wants to smell the flower?” Cat looked toward Makaila. “This is Sharon, a friend of mine come to visit for a while.”

Makaila smelled the flower, glancing around. “I thought you were alone here.”

“There’s a bunch of us.” Sharon skipped off toward the lake.

Makaila shivered. “Is she okay? What a strange feeling.” She stared after her.

“Okay? Yes, she’s fine now.”

“How many of you are there?”

“There’s just one of me.”

“No. I mean here.”

Cat smiled warmly. “They are not like me.”

 

Doctor Zogg didn’t pick up. Makaila didn’t leave a message.

 

22

Joseph read: “They say you can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl. Our little city girl has taken well to farm life this summer. She is cooking, gardening and even driving a tractor.” He looked up at Makaila. “Harriet doesn’t name you or even give any great details.”

Makaila closed her eyes and thought aloud. “So, if they’re getting the newsletter and even reading it, Larry really has no idea that it’s me and I’m doing okay.” She looked at her untouched dinner. “Larry used to watch out for me.” She explained the Internet exchange. “He doesn’t sound good, but I thought we shouldn’t talk where someone might be able to get a hold of it.”

“I don’t understand that Internet stuff,” Joseph confessed. “But, I follow what you say.”

“I need to know and Chuck either isn’t home or not answering his phone.”

“Chuck?”

“Dr. Zogg.”

“How about that lawyer?” Marcy looked at Joseph.

“Yeah!” Makaila bounced on her chair. “Who’s he anyhow?”

Joseph leaned back in his chair. “Don’t know really.” He took off his cap and set it on the table, running his hand over his head. “Let’s give him a call.”

Marcy put a hand on Makaila’s arm. “After we eat. All things in their proper order.”

They ate dinner and washed the dishes.

 

With the telephone in the middle of the dining room table, Joseph eyed a piece of paper. He moved the rotary with each number and waited.

“Hello. This is Joseph Carleton calling. Could I please speak to Mr. Larry Elderage?” Joseph waited. “When could I reach him, then?”

Makaila had a sinking feeling. She leaned across the table, taking the telephone from Joseph. “I think I have a clue, Pops.” With her best direct voice, she said into the telephone: “Hello. This is Makaila Marie Carleton, to whom am I speaking?”

A moment of silence met her and then finally: “Sally.”

“It’s important I speak to Mister.” She looked at the paper. “Elderage.”

“As I said, he’s in a meeting.”

“Please tell him Makaila Marie Carleton is on the phone. He’ll take the call.”

“I don’t think so, but hang on. I’ll tell him anyway.”

The minutes stretched out before her, her hands moist. Finally, a voice came on. “Makaila! So nice to meet your voice. How’s life in the country?”

Makaila was taken aback. “Uh, fine. Who are you?”

“You can think of me as Moses, I guess. But really, is everything all right?”

“Well, no. Not really.”

The voice, serious now. “What kind of trouble are you in?”

“I’m not. It’s my brother.”

“Back up a bit. Firstly, is everything okay with you?”

“Yeah, things are dandy.”

“Wonderful.” Cheery again. “All else falls under that. What’s the problem with Larry?”

“Who are you?”

“That’s not important. Really. Just think of me as your lawyer.”

She wished she could see his face so she could read his subtle body, his voice had to do. “Okay.” She decided to worry about the details later. “Does Larry know I’m out?”

“He didn’t know you were in.”

“My parents?”

“The same.”

“Whoa! You back up now!”

“Listen up. This is a bit complex.”

Makaila nodded, not thinking he couldn’t see her.

“What they did concerning you wasn’t legal, which is how I got you out, but it wasn’t exactly illegal, either. Without giving you six years of legal education, what it really boils down to, is they slipped you through the cracks of the system. Your parents signed away their guardianship and no one picked it up.”

“Meaning?”

“Okay. The paperwork was never completed. Legally it must be, but it never was. What that amounts to is you lost all status as an individual. In the big picture, until the paperwork is completed and filed, you don’t exist.

“This created a crack in the system and with their physical control over you, as long as no one squawked about it, they could pretty much do anything they wanted with you.”

“Like stick me away.”

“In a place that doesn’t exist.”

“Doesn’t exist?”

“Doesn’t exist. You disappeared off the face of the planet.”

She put her hand over the receiver. “How did Aunt Harriet know to write about me in the newsletter?”

He looked toward the ceiling. “Don’t know.”

Back to the telephone: “How’d you know, if I disappeared off the face of the earth, to spring me?”

“I was made aware of the circumstances.”

“By?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“It would be meaningless to you and create more questions than answers.”

“No sense asking why you bothered to spring me then, huh?”

“You’re pretty quick for a kid.”

Her mind vaulted ahead. “I would have spent the rest of my life there?”

“Likely.”

She pushed back the tears, waving it all off. “My brother.”

“What about him?”

“I need to know if he’s okay. What do you know?”

“I’ll look into it and get back to you. Know this: you are your concern right now, not him.”

“What makes me so important?”

“You’re asking the wrong person. I don’t know.”

“Okay. Who is the right person?”

He laughed. “Don’t you know?”

In her frustration, she laughed back at him. “You talk like someone I know.”

“It’s good to hear your voice finally and it’s good to hear you laugh. There’s something else you need to know. Keep out of trouble. It’s a tricky legal thing, but you have no status and that paperwork’s sitting in a file somewhere. I’ve been trying to trace it backwards, with no luck. Whoever did this is good. Those papers can be signed and filed at anytime and you can still be, well, for lack of a better way to say it, sent away.”

I’ll die before I let that happen to me again.

“I understand.” Makaila took a serious tone. “I’ll watch where I stick my gum.” She thought, looking at the ceiling. “Emancipate me.”

“That’s tricky. I’ll look into it. It requires a court order and you have no status.”

“Won’t that work for me?”

He paused. “You’re right. Your parents signed away your status in a way that left you flapping in the wind. That’ll certainly demonstrate to the court it would serve your interest not to be under their control, which they handed away anyway, without looking back.

“Okay. I’ll get back to you tomorrow about your brother. Give me a week on the emancipation. I have to get back to my meeting. It’s been nice meeting your voice, anyway.”

“Cool deal – me too. And, thanks, Mr. Elderage!” Hanging up, she looked at Joseph. “Who was that masked man?”

 

After Makaila explained the guts of what Elderage told her, Joseph ran his hand over his head. “Nonsense and fiddlesticks!” He brought his hand down on the table. “How can your own blood treat you like that?”

She waved him off. “Don’t matter. It’s what they did. Yesterday’s in a grave, we deal with what’s to come.” She liked Elderage and decided to trust him, at least for the moment.

She reclined on the front porch to watch the stars come out and relax into a cup of coffee. The quiet surrounding her like a womb was deafening at first, now the subtle sounds sang vague and distance songs.

That explains why no one called.

She decided her father always hated her because she messed up his neat little life. Hate might be the wrong word, but the only word she had. Her mother, on the other hand, carried what seemed like fear. In the beginning, the feeling seemed like fear for her child, growing into something looking like fear of the child. She could see her father falling over the table to sign the paper, just to be rid of his daughter. Makaila knew they wouldn’t call. Well, maybe Mom because that’s the way moms are.

Now, Larry. She wondered why Larry didn’t call. It often crossed her mind to call the house, but she got so involved with her new life on the farm, she just never got around to it or took the time. The feelings stirring deep within her were unsettling – an understatement.

“You are right,” she said aloud, sipping her coffee. Cat was right. She wasn’t ready to return to the world and in the moment, asked the rising moon: “Will I ever be ready?”

“We get ready real quick when we have to.”

She hadn’t heard Joseph come out on the porch.

She took his hand and snuggled with her cheek. “I don’t ever want to leave here, Pops.”

“Then don’t.”

“There’s a thing here.” She put her other hand on her chest. “That tells me I have to.”

Joseph looked out into the darkness. “You could grow a bit older, fall in love and marry Timmy, I’ll will you the farm and you have lots of babies and never leave here, until the day you die.”

“It won’t be that way, but in this moment, I think I’ll dream it up like that.”

“The future will be how you choose it to be.”

She snuggled his hand more. “I know, Pops. I know. But, I know some choices are already made, and I know I’ve made them. It can’t be about me, just me.” She looked up at him. “Does that make sense?”

“When the time comes for you to go, know you always have a home here, always.”

“I guess that made sense, then.”

 

23

Larry Elderage worked in the dark, mostly. He trusted the instructions he received. When he learned what was done to the child, he was personally appalled. He and his people were good at gathering information, particularly information no one wished gathered. He was bright and intuitive, which made him a natural at putting puzzles together.

The official files on the child were vague, incomplete. If the report was on the original paper, whole blocks of text would be blacked out. The powers-that-be hid something and when Elderage first looked over the information they gathered, it was obvious. Locating the extended family had been a matter of four hours of computer work and a trip to city hall for another six hours of digging. The Family Newsletter made things easy from there.

Once Elderage found a relative who showed interest in taking the child in, it took calling in some legal markers and filing a bit of paperwork. He didn’t have to prove Makaila was in the institute. He only had to open the door. He knew the hierarchy of the house of cards didn’t want a keen eye looking their way, from the arrest right up to Makaila’s eighteen months in a shadow institution.

The only way Elderage was able to glean the big picture was connecting newspaper articles with official paperwork. On the surface, from the media reports, the first blush was the child should be in a place where she couldn’t harm others or herself. However, for all the narrative and speculation, between the official reports and media coverage, a lack of facts glared apparent. Holes existed in the overall picture he could stick his head through. He got the sense rumors were planted, appearing as facts in the media.

Once he connected this child’s systematic official kidnapping with the unidentified minor who was cited as the perpetrator of the crime of the decade locally, her illegal incarceration made left-handed sense. From all the files and information, Elderage could clearly see the powers-that-be couldn’t buy a conviction in the public eye with a closet full of money. People could be railroaded, but there has to be at least one car on the track.

He wondered what really happened at 309 Harrison Street on November 4, 1997.

Elderage sat alone at his desk, the desk lit by the small gooseneck lamp, all but the papers before him falling away into darkness. He stood back from the details of Larry Michael Carleton’s profile.

This is a pretty average kid.

The profile showed above average grades, no major problems with the law or school and average social life. He did the math, determining Larry would be seventeen years old and going into the 12th grade.

Larry took a turn, not abnormal for a teenager, Elderage closed his eyes and realized the obvious, in the winter of 1997. His grades dropped, he compiled one-expulsion and regular detentions. All the red flags of a teenager in trouble glared off the pages of the file.

Why didn’t someone, anyone, pick this up? Where were the parents?

He flipped open another file, running his finger down a list. He found one DUI, a half-dozen drunk and disorderly, three minor auto accidents and two suits, all in or before 1997. Glancing over a summary sheet, he also saw Ralph Carleton’s income doubled in 1998, a note in red indicating he had not changed jobs.

The picture became clear. Elderage made notes and composed the report to Makaila.

 

24

Makaila put on a few pounds as promised, appearing the picture of health unlike the girl who arrived on the farm. From depression and anxiety back in the world and eighteen months in Hell, she might have looked good as an avant-garde runway model but certainly didn’t pass for a rosy-cheeked farm girl.

On the wave of first light, in her white tee shirt and bib-coveralls, with her bare feet aching from the dew, she skipped toward the barn to feed the chickens. The world beyond, like the rolling hills and fields, were hidden in darkness as if nonexistent. Seemingly sentient, some of the chickens met her halfway and followed on the run back to the barn. Makaila towered over the fowl, casting handfuls of feed.

“By my hand, you do receive that which you need,” Makaila said aloud. She knew their birth and she knew their death. To them, she figured, she must be God and often, in the early morning light, felt just like that.

As she gathered eggs, a group of chickens followed under her feet. Sometimes she’d walk backwards around the barnyard watching the troupe. “Silly little chickens!”

 

Throughout the day, Makaila resisted the urge to rush over Timmy’s to check mail. She’d been invited to dinner and accepted. Besides, she wanted to see what Elderage had to say first. She stayed close to the house. Toward late afternoon, a small white car kicked gravel up on the lane.

Makaila hurried to the front yard, arriving just in time to meet the young man as he stepped from his car, looking much like the ambulance driver. “Ms. Carleton,” he snapped efficiently. “This is for you.” He passed an envelope. Giving her the up-down, he made a note on a pad. “Have a nice day.”

Makaila waved with the envelope. “Thank you!” The package was Elderage’s report.

“That must have cost a few bucks.” Joseph commented from behind as they watched the car shrink in the distance.

“Who is this guy?” Makaila fanned the eight-page report. “Look!” She held the last page up. “He even signed this copy!”

“Poor kid must have driven all night. That cost more than a few bucks.”

She took the report in quickly, and then sat on the front steps to read each page more carefully. Joseph dropped beside her with an arm over her shoulder.

“This is really good news.”

“He’s okay?”

She laughed, displaying the bright-white paper, now smudged. “I didn’t even think about the dirt. You’ve ruined me!”

“Good.” He tightened his hold. “What about your brother?”

She put the report aside, resting her elbows on her knees. “First, I gotta decide if I can trust this guy.”

“Do you have a reason not to?”

“A handful, but that’s more paranoia than reason.” The report was candid and straightforward, which swayed Makaila to believe the account accurate. As with reading anything, she found she could read the author’s intent almost as well as reading someone’s face and subtle body.

On the first page of the report, handwritten in ink, was a note: Makaila – keep in mind that we are talking about a teenage boy living in an urban environment – with all the adjustment problems this environment manifests.

The report was a summary of all the official records, referenced, and followed by conclusions and speculation. She let out a long sigh. “Pops, Larry’s okay. There’s indications he’s at risk, but no more than anyone else.”

“I don’t follow. What should we do?”

“We? Nothing. Me? I’ll see if he emailed today and give him a pep talk. He just needs to know someone cares. He’s pushed himself into isolation and boy, do I know what that can do to someone.”

“We. We have another bedroom. He’s welcome to it.”

“Cool deal. Great to have options.” She hugged him around the neck. “Thanks.”

“Why don’t you take the truck to dinner?”

“Sure. That way no one’s gotta be a taxi driver.”

 

Makaila decided to wear a dress. She chose the knee-length denim dress with button-front and empire waist Marcy picked out. Looking in the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door, she was surprised. Somewhere in time without her knowing it, she slipped from girlhood to young-womanhood.

She longed for the trappings and accessories she left back in the world: her good hairbrush, blow dryer and rollers, her makeup, earrings, necklaces, pumps. The list went on. Before her life got derailed almost two years before, she was in the process of uncovering what womanhood should mean and look like. Before the mirror, everything came back around.

She hurried down the stair and found Marcy and Joseph reading quietly in the living room.

“I need a bra.”

Without moving his head, Joseph brought his eyes up from his book. “I think that’s my cue to find something to do.” He left the room.

With all else around Makaila’s life, Marcy overlooked Makaila was still a girl-becoming-a-woman just like any other female. With visions and voices, hallucinations, dysfunctionality and a system robbing her of her freedom and a chance for a normal childhood, the subjects of menstruation and breasts, hormones and body changes paled.

Looking up at Makaila, she knew what motherhood would feel like. She braided Makaila’s hair and told stories. From her reading, Makaila knew the changes she was going through. She thought it would never happen to her. With the full rush of puberty upon her and a rich, healthy diet, her body rounded out overnight.

Marcy, even without children of her own, was fully aware of the importance of female bonding. She knew she needed to spend less time in the books in the evening and more time quilting and canning, just the two of them. Marcy knew only from quality time with a woman could Makaila know what it was to be a woman. Moreover, she knew, what they actually did with their hands didn’t matter. What passed between them was important.

Marcy tried subtle earth tones on Makaila’s eyes and light rouge. Neither was sure about the look. Makaila was sure about the feeling and washed her face. “Makes my face feel itchy and dirty.”

Marcy silently agreed. She rarely wore makeup. “Do I need to talk to you about sex now?”

“You think I’d be knocking knees with Timmy tonight?”

“Uh no, but –”

“Ma. I’ve had enough sex for a lifetime.” She paused. “In the institution.”

Marcy, taken by surprise, couldn’t hold the tears back, throwing her arms around Makaila.

“Ma, sorry. It’s okay. Really. I wasn’t there. It happened to my body not to me, if you can understand that.”

Marcy gulped air and sat, hyperventilating. Makaila wanted to take her words back.

“Come on, Ma. Breathe for me. That’s all then and not now. Really. Put it out of your mind.”

Marcy, with tearful eyes, looked up at the young woman and put a hand to her cheek. “My God, child. The pain you carry! The strength you have!”

“Just getting by the best I can. If you’re going to be okay, I’m going to dinner.”

Marcy’s lower lip quivered, her eyes painful, sad. “With all you carry, you think about me.” She stood, embracing Makaila. “You’re a saint.”

If I’m a saint, God’s got a crooked sense of humor.

“Only because you and Pops bring it out in me.”

As natural as a farm girl, she left for dinner next door, two miles up the road. Her heart jumped when the sheriff pulled in behind her. She wished she had a gun. She calculated her chances of cutting across and around the field, back to the farm, but the sheriff knew the truck and knew her. Visions of a shoot out paraded in her head.

With a deep breath, she decided to dance and see if she couldn’t call Elderage before he took her away in handcuffs.

Climbing from his cruiser, the jolly middle-aged man waved. “Hello, Makaila! How’s our little butcher been?” He came around the car and got between her and the house. And, the telephone.

She felt confused, almost dizzy. What she was thinking and what she saw were so far askew, she thought she might be hallucinating. She listened to his tone and read his facial muscles and subtle body.

He’s glad to see me?

Jumping down from the truck, she ignored what she thought and went with what she saw. “Hi, Sheriff Powers!”

He took her hands and leaned back. “My! You look good enough to eat!”

She blushed.

“I was passing by and saw you pulling in here and haven’t seen you since the baling. How’s the family? Everything dandy?”

“Couldn’t be better. How’s by you, sir?”

“Got a call to get a cat out of a tree. Other than that, all’s quiet on the Western Front.”

“You didn’t shoot it to get it down, did you?”

They laughed.

“I know you’re a city girl and all, and are used to real excitement and such, but you coming to the fair next week?”

“You asking me on a date?”

“I would but the Mrs. would shoot me, skin me and hang my hide out on the barn as a warning for her next husband!”

“Yeah, I’ll be there. The idea this city girl finds it boring out here is a myth. They should build a wall around all the cities, about twenty-feet high, and fill it in with concrete, make an airport out of it.”

Sheriff Powers stayed long enough to drink iced-tea, sitting on the porch with Mr. Wilson. After a quick greeting, and compliments on her appearance from Timmy, Lisa, Timmy’s eight-year-old sister dragged Makaila into the kitchen. Makaila was given the task of peeling and mashing.

As with her new home at Joseph’s, the Wilson’s dinner wasn’t something to get out of the way but more an event unto itself. Back in the world, dinner came in boxes from the freezer, transferred from tin or cardboard onto plates and carelessly placed on the table. Makaila’s father demanded silence and at the same time, demanded Makaila and Larry at the table.

As Makaila quickly learned at Joseph’s, she felt challenged in the kitchen. The first time she saw a double-yoker, she was excited breathless.

“Oh, we see them all the time,” Marcy told her. Makaila didn’t guess about anything, feeling comfortable with her ignorance.

“How would you like me to do this, Mrs. Wilson?” she asked, pulling a potato from the boiling water. “I’m a city girl, you know.” She discovered any ignorance was forgiven simply by stating she was a city girl.

Mrs. Wilson stared with wide-eyes and mouth open. She grabbed Makaila’s hand and held it under cold running water. “Dear, you’ll burn yourself!”

In the haste to slip seamlessly into the flow of things, she forgot most people would be burned pulling a potato from boiling water. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. The hand’s fine. Thanks.” She hoped Mrs. Wilson would accept the apology and just move on. Makaila had much experience with pain of one sort or another and learned a way of simply not experiencing it, or have it affect her body. Cat suggested she cycles the pain and damage, thus the healing, quickly. Makaila didn’t know. She didn’t understand.

Mrs. Wilson looked at the hand. “Well, dear, please do some thinking all the time.”

Kicking a step stool to the counter, Lisa offered: “I’ll show you how it’s done.”

If Makaila were back in the world, she’d think Timmy was hitting on her, heavy on the flirting. He was just being nice, being Timmy. Flirting was his way of bonding. He flirted, in a way, with his mother and younger sister. Timmy approached his father with a big helping of respect, almost awe.

 

“You finding the stuff you want on the ‘net, sir?” Makaila asked as they ate.

“I need another lesson, young lady. Timmy tried, but it seems your fingers were moving too quick.”

“Mom found some great recipes,” Lisa said.

Mr. Wilson leaned back with narrowed eyes. “Oh, she did, did she?”

“Yeah, but couldn’t figure out how to print them.”

Seriously. “It’s really simple, all of it.” Makaila rolled her eyes. “It’s like anything else, like feeding chickens or planting corn or baling hay, or peeling and mashing. It’s a process and you just gotta follow the steps if you want it to come out right.”

“Easy when you know how.” Lisa watched Makaila.

“Exactly.” She pointed at her plate with her fork. “This is great. The printer’s not set up right. I’ll fix it.”

Makaila decided Lisa was the most computer-friendly. “I’ll run it all down for Lisa and she’ll be able to help you all find what you’re looking for.” To her surprise, nods bobbed around the table.

 

25

After dinner, feeling like one of the family, Makaila joined clearing the table, washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen. She didn’t take the time she wanted with Lisa and the computer, hurrying through the first lesson with an eye on the email icon. She set up the printer and to Lisa’s disappointment, Lisa anxious to bring her new knowledge to bear on the Internet, sent Lisa away with a promise to show her more another time.

“I’ll leave too, if you want.” Timmy nodded.

“No, you can stay. I really don’t have any secrets. It’s just there’s lots of stuff I haven’t said.”

The letter from Larry was not long, certainly more than a note. Timmy read it three times. “He sounds suicidal.”

Disconnected from the fact her brother wrote the letter, Makaila looked up at her friend. “It’s all melodrama. He’s exaggerating. I’d guess he’s taken my place as the family victim, using my arrest and disappearance as the root event to blame his feelings on.”

“Say what?”

“He feels sorry for himself and wants me to feel sorry for him, too.”

“I think I follow you.” Timmy scratched his head. “He’s sad because you’re gone and wants to make everyone else feel sad, too.”

Great way to put it. “Yeah.”

She turned to the computer, her fingers racing over the keys.

 

Life sucks...sometimes. We gotta always take what’s handed to us because that’s the way it is. We gotta look at what’s handed to us and see how we can make a better life out of it. Getting stuck in it is just going to make it worse. We gotta decide what’s important...we gotta look at what’s handed to us...we gotta do what we can to make it better...Staying alive as long as we can is what’s most important. Staying free is next. Helping those we care about do this too, is just as important but never at the personal cost to ourself.

Know that I love you big brother. You have cared for me when no one else has. The past two years has taken you away from me and me from you...but never in my head...you have never been far away and know that I am never really, really that far from you.

Hang in there. Stay alive and stay free. I have decided that I am coming home. I just don’t know when yet. Put a candle in the window so I can find my way. When I get some stuff worked out...I’ll be with you again.

M.

 

“When I’m in trouble, I want you on my side. Great letter.”

Hitting send with conviction, Makaila smiled. “Should do the trick. Sometimes we only need to know someone cares.”

It’s all I really needed.

 

26

Larry worked his way quickly in the moonlight, stepping over brush and around trees. Long before he reached the clearing, he heard the sounds of a gathering. He slipped mostly unnoticed into the small crowd of about thirty. “Hey, Brother. Great to see you,” someone called.

He nodded, working hard to contain his excitement. At the call of his cult name, attention fell on Larry.

This was family. They shared a bond, reflecting their social nature. They were called incorrigibles, outcasts, delinquents and even criminals. Happily, as a group, they were always called Freaks. The common denominator was somewhere in all their short lives, they each set themselves against the social culture and in turn, the social culture was set against them. Battle lines were drawn in all the hierarchy of social dynamics from the family structure to the government.

They were dysfunctional, heretics, disruptors and proud of it. As a group and as individuals, they acted out and acted against, walking the thin line between freethinking and criminal behavior. They were against everything, even themselves at times. The threat of mass suicide was ever-present, the ultimate act of rebellion and protest. Anticipation of something powerful coming, something meaningful in the temporal burned inside. Hope loomed just out of sight, just as the trees loomed in the darkness beyond the small bonfire.

They never denied being a cult. Just the word cult inflamed and offended the sensitivities of the average person. The group would be dangerous, maybe even a force of social evolution, but for one great lacking.

They had no cohesive leadership.

Born in the chaos of thinly layered social norms, they were chaos itself, which led them like the smell of water in the desert heat. Larry Michael Carleton was the closest thing they had to a leader. He didn’t know which direction to set his next footfall. He chose chaos. If his mother said: “I have your favorite ice cream,” he’d hate that ice cream. If his father said: “Don’t mow the lawn – it’s raining,” he’d mow the lawn.

His leadership led away.

The only prerequisite for membership was to show up and hate life. Larry looked over the group and laughed until the tears came, which brought everyone into a circle around him and the fire, anticipating.

“What is it, Brother?” someone asked.

They called him Brother, not an endearing way to greet a member of the group. He was her brother. Her, the one like God, whose name is never spoken. Larry was the brother of the one who brought all the misfits together, linked in the base of all things. She, who is like God, taken into death by society, giving the Freaks a bond beyond society and beyond any bond blood could make. She stood so far above the society she was born to, the society had to murder her. In this act, the society raised her above all others, sealing the Freaks together as if in concrete.

“What is it? What is it?” Larry addressed everyone. “I have news!”

“Speak to us, Brother!”

His tears came again. “How can I say what’s not to be believed?” He grabbed the nearest person and shook her. “She’s coming back! She’s coming back!”

Silence rested over the awestruck group.

“She’s coming back! She’s coming back! I have it by her own hand!”

One by one, they sat quietly by the fire, leaving only Larry standing.

“Tell us.”

“What are her instructions?” Mutters and nods around the fire followed, with anxious eyes looking to Larry.

For the first time since anyone said Freaks, the Freaks sat as one, listened as one and were of one mind.

The moment took Larry. He raised his hands to the stars above the trees, stars fighting to be seen over the fire’s light. “She told me that it is true life sucks. She told me we should hang in here, stay free and stay alive, no matter what it takes. She told me that we have to do what we have to do to make sure the Freaks stay alive and stay free. If we do all this, she will return.”

A fourteen-year-old girl, whose hair hadn’t been washed in weeks, stood. She held a pack of cigarettes over her head and looked up into the night sky. “I hear you!” She threw the cigarettes into the fire. “Take this from me, oh, you like God!” Pack after pack of cigarettes followed the first.

“Yeah!” A boy of thirteen jumped to his feet. “I hear you!” He screamed to the trees, emptying a bottle of beer on the ground. “Take this from me, oh, you who is like God!” The ritual repeated around the fire. “Oh, you like God! I want to be clear in my head when I first see your glorious face returned from the death they sent you to!”

In tears, a girl of sixteen knelt near the fire and showed her mutilated wrists to Larry. “Oh, Brother! I didn’t know! I didn’t know! Forgive me! Forgive me!”

Larry dropped to his knees, taking her wrists, watching her eyes. “By my relationship and in her name: I forgive you!”

“Brother!” someone else called out. “I’ve been refusing to eat! Forgive me!”

Larry put a hand on the other’s head. “By my relationship and in her name: I forgive you!” In a solemn frenzy, each Freak knelt in front of Larry and after reflection, confessed any harmful act, asking for forgiveness. Laughing and crying, Larry grabbed head after head, screaming the rite. “By my relationship and in her name: I forgive you!”

When no one else came forward, only sobs and the crackling fire intruded on the night. They held their collective breath as if Makaila would appear in a vision.

“She says that she is with you now!” Larry rose. “Put a candle in your window so she can easily find you!”

“Like a real candle?”

Larry didn’t hesitate. “No, one of those Christmas candle-lights is fine, better, else we might start a fire and she doesn’t want us to do ourselves any harm!”

“She is dead,” a seventeen-year-old girl said standing to face Larry. “She is dead!”

“But, she’s coming back, soon.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She opened her purse and forced a handful of money into Larry’s hands. “When she returns to the flesh, she’s going to need some stuff!”

Every pocket emptied onto a blanket. “Oh, you who is like God! Accept our gifts!” one person said, the chant repeating many times. “Brother! Accept this in her name!”

Larry nodded, his arms across his chest. His eyes glistened in the fire’s dancing light. By fate or happenstance, somewhere in the woods, somewhere in the dark of night and somewhere in those quickening moments, the First Apostle of she-who-is-like-God was born. He held his right hand out in the sign of the up-side-down M. “May she be with you all, always.”

The group returned the sign. “And, with you.”

“Life sucks – sometimes.” He began his sermon in the woods. “But, it will not always be this way. We know she’s coming back. We have to stop whining about what we suffer. She has suffered more greatly than any of us ever could.

“We have to accept our lot, what’s been handed us. Instead of pushing it away, we have to do what we can to make it better. In this, she will love us and be proud of us. What we do from this moment on is a reflection of our love for her.

“What sucks? How can we make it better? How can we stay alive? This is number one: to live as long as we can because as long as we have life, we can love her. Staying free is number two. Only if we’re free can we serve her will and act for her. We have to do whatever we have to do to make sure we all stay alive and stay free. This is her direct request. A threat to our lives or our freedom is a direct attack on her. To protect each other is to protect she-who-is-like-God.

“These words are her words.”

Young Terri at Larry’s feet, a notebook open on her lap, scribbled as fast as she could.

Amens followed.

 

27

The wall of silence was finally down. Larry often sat alone pondering the night his sister appeared in his room to melt into darkness and then disappear altogether with the slam of the front door. In his memory, he sees himself pounding his fists on a large oak door until blood ran hot and rich down his arms, calling: “Makaila! Makaila!”

What he actually did was sit in his room crying as the police took his sister away. The dark outline of his sister’s face was the last memory of her. In the month to follow being asked to make a promise, he met a wall of silence in his house so heavy he couldn’t breathe.

“Is this her?” He screamed at his mother and father, slamming a newspaper down on the table. His father stared beyond him, his mother cried. No answer was the answer. In the days to follow, quelling his anger into deep pain, he’d ask: “What’s the word? What’s happening?” There, the wall of silence, darkness sucking the oxygen from his lungs.

In the month following the last vision he had of his sister, he died a thousand deaths.

If only I didn’t go to the library. If only I didn’t have that assignment. It’s the teacher’s fault for giving it to me.

He held an image in his mind: rushing into the hallway from his bedroom, that night, swinging his baseball bat, murdering the police and his parents, too.

In the month following the last vision he had of his sister, not knowing was the killer, the murderer of the spirit and his soul. Finally, in early December after days stretched upon days pushing Larry to the edge of sanity, he got home from school to find his mother and father sitting at the dining room table in their bathrobes, giggling like children.

“Makaila? She’s coming home?”

His father brought his face to bear on Larry. “No. Your sister’s gone.”

Larry had a memory of his father’s face becoming large and distorted, like a caricature, laughing wildly. His mother giggled into her hand.

Knowing was worse than not knowing.

In the fleeting moment, watching his father’s face in disbelief, Larry came close to committing murder. Nothing on the television news or in the newspapers confirmed what his father said, but Larry had no reason to believe his sister wasn’t dead, murdered.

 

The subcultures in school were varied, with more shades of gray than hard-drawn lines. The preps were by far the largest in number, students involved in school, in their education, with a focus on the future. Life unfolded with bright promise and excitement. Other than sideways looks for having a nutty sister, a pariah casting a dark pall over Larry, Larry was considered and without much thought placed himself in this group.

Not unlike the preps were the mods, the fashion police, those who defined normal in the social culture. Contrary to the preps, the mods’ focus was on the promise of here and now. They laid out the blueprint for how to dress, how to act, what jargon to use, music to listen to and generally what was popular. To them, Makaila had been an icon and example of what not to be.

Then, there came the heads. Principal John Lightmont, a child and product of the sixties, commented: “Take a hippie, take away the compassion, love, caring and social responsibility, that’s what the heads are all about.” This group, from an individual point of view, was in no way malevolent; however, from a social perspective they were viewed as decay, rotting the foundation of society. This was the drug subculture.

Known by their leather jackets, beer parties, clean-cut appearance, flashy cars and predilection to get into brawls at football games, came the flash. “Fonzie wanna-a-be’s, pale imitations of a 50’s teen idol and rebels without a clue,” Principal Lightmont observed. “Without the ideal purity and morality of the TV world.”

People thinking in a similar way gravitate toward each other, but not by design or intent. God’s children was the only subculture with a school charter as a club. Their common bond and interest was they were Christians. Somehow, in their youth, they managed to do something many adults couldn’t do. To them, it didn’t matter what kind of Christian someone was. From fundie to what-would-Jesus-do, if someone were Christian, he or she was in. They often argued behind closed doors, but never in public.

Antithesis to the heads, came the agers. “Now,” Principal Lightmont stated. “These are the hippies without the antisocial attitude and drug use.” The agers were considered a fringe group because of their non-traditional views. Within the group, they saw themselves as the future, the precursor to the dawning new age. They were nonviolent, earth loving and people loving. They often found themselves in argument with God’s children. “God isn’t coming back. God is here, now.” This group was the least xenophobic of the subcultures.

The second-most ostracized subculture was the homosexual. Even the rumor of being gay could get a child cast out, made fun of and violence directed toward him or her. Those actually gay and struggling with this aspect of their personalities, generally kept their heads down and their mouths shut. They were too misunderstood and too small in number to protect themselves.

A small group of children who bore the brunt of many jokes, teasing, misdirected anger, acting out and hostility were the mentally challenged children. A twist of the gene pool, troubled pregnancy, chemical addiction of the mother or any other factor beyond their control cast them low on the intelligence curve. The mainstream didn’t make the flow in the current a smooth one.

The most ostracized, mostly because they asked for it in every breath, were the Freaks. They were bound in a circle of self-hate projected outward and brought back home. They weren’t considered a group until the winter of 1997, when a star rose in the dark sky of despair, giving them something to look at, to point toward and talk about. In the vast sea of rejection, they found something they could agree upon.

A teacher, a symbol of the society that rejected them, in a neighboring school was murdered in the most gruesome manner. Her deed was so great, raising her to that greatness, the news media couldn’t even bring itself to use her name. Nevertheless, everyone knew who she was.

 

In late November 1997 a fourteen-year-old Freak girl laid a carnation on the floor and knelt before her locker before class. Within thirty minutes, six other students, strangers to the child, knelt with her.

Larry watched from the distance of twenty feet and the depth of his despair.

The seven children were suspended for three days, the door and contents of the locker removed and the announcement made in homeroom the next day, anyone loitering around the locker would be dealt with. Larry shaved his head and soon after that, brutally released his anger and frustration on a teacher’s aide. The Freaks nodded silently to him in the hallway. Some would stop and touch him. The empty locker was filled with flowers every morning until, by the time December 5, 1997 came around, though emptied every day, the flowers spilled onto the hallway floor.

On the morning of December 5, 1997, Larry taped a note over the locker. In red marker, it read: She’s Dead. Larry stood vigil beside the locker and with his eyes, defied anyone to take the note down. Perplexed, the principal called the police. The two-dozen crying students were removed from the hallway by nine o’clock.

No charges were filed, a list was made and parents were called. Suspensions were dealt out. No actions mattered. The Freaks were too devastated to do anything but gather in the cold air of a coming winter and speak of their loss and what the loss meant. If not for the other children throwing their arms around him, crying, searing his soul with their pain, Larry would have followed his sister into death. Only in her pain and his loss did he find a reason to live.

In time, everything fell on the small shoulders of their fallen martyr. They would gather in the woods as a group and speak of the acts of her, implying a greater meaning to everything they could remember about her, all painted from casting back the deep meaning of her Greatest Act, which led to her persecution and death at the hands of a corrupt authority.

Over time, she was glorified and dubbed she-who-is-like-God. No one argued about her nature. The stories were never challenged or questioned. Everything in myth and madness was accepted as told, in the way the story was meant. Life, which had not been bearable, was now bearable because they found their own reasons and justifications for their antisocial and dysfunctional behavior. They acted against a social structure that murdered God.

 

One day, while copying and pasting, shamelessly plagiarizing a report for school, the world changed when Larry took a break to delete all the unwanted advertisements from his email.

She’s coming back!

Larry held a vision of a bright, white light opening the sky and Makaila in virginal glory descending from Heaven. She would raise her soft, pure, beautiful arms and smile the rare smile that could melt hearts and cast Hell-fire in all directions, incinerating the unrighteous.

For the first time in almost two years, Larry smiled when in the same room with his parents. For almost two years, they were carrying on like newlyweds. His father stopped drinking, smiling all the time. His mother hummed to herself. They made him sick. He had as little to do with them as he could. He imagined Nero playing his fiddle and partying, unaware of the fire consuming the world around him, soon to burn the flesh off his bones.

Larry’s eyes flashed with dark delight. “You’re screwed for what you’ve done.” He turned to his mother. “And you, too!” His lips twisted in a cruel smile. In his father’s drinking days, Larry knew he’d get knocked off the chair. Now, he knew his father was too busy playing the fiddle.

“Just what do you mean by that?”

Larry laughed with disdain. “You’ll see and I’ll be here to see it.” Larry thought of decapitating them, putting their heads in the freezer and presenting the gifts to Makaila upon her return. He wasn’t sure exactly what she-who-is-like-God had in mind.

Ralph Carleton took a deep breath and waved his son off, putting a hand on his wife’s leg with a wiggle of the eyebrows. “Let’s watch some TV, Cass.”

Catherine looked hard at Larry, trying to read his mind. “I want to know. What are you saying?”

Larry couldn’t help himself. “She’s coming back.”

“Who?”

Larry laughed.

Ralph grabbed Larry by the arm. “Who?”

Larry pulled himself free, looking down his nose. “You know who. As Epictetus said: Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die, and if he were sitting here, that’s what he’d tell you.”

“It can’t be.” Ralph called to Larry’s back and repeated the phrase to his wife. “Let’s make some calls.”

After hours on the telephone, they found no information on their daughter, whatsoever. She had disappeared, vanished completely.

 

28

“I want to know how this happened, and I want all the options!” Jordan Harshaw yelled at the two much younger men, slamming a file down on his desk. “And, I want all those options in twenty-four hours!”

When the flags sent up by the parent’s inquiries hit the radar, Harshaw thought they were seeking her release. He looked over his notes. I didn’t miss a thing, from confession to signed release, it’s all perfect. There’s no paper trail at all.

An hour before, he appeared in Ralph Carleton’s office. “Why do you ask?”

Taken by surprise: “I heard – uh, was told – just wanted to make sure. Is she still in?”

Stupid people. “What’s done is done. For the good of everyone, leave it alone.” He disappeared out the door.

But, it wasn’t done.

“And, I want to know who!”

He looked over the files again. The firewalls are perfect, the holes are closed, she’s as if she never was. No one could get her out but God Himself, and at that, not easily.

Bixby and Marks, Harshaw wasn’t sure which was which half the time even with one older than the other, were the brightest, best and the most loyal he could recruit out of the Service.

Moreover, like Harshaw and his office, they didn’t exist. He was a troubleshooter and a fixer. If a problem couldn’t be solved, the paperwork found its way to his desk.

“Okay, gentlemen.” He found some composure. “We’re talking about file eight-three-zero-four-alpha. This was a Total Blink. It got unblinked.”

“Are you sure, sir?” Bixby, the older of the two, asked.

“No, I’m not. Start there. I want you to drive down to F-36 and look in every bed. While you’re there, I want you to purge the files – Total Blink – identify anyone that might be a risk, open a file and run it down.”

“What level?”

“Uh, right. Level One risk only. Hearsay won’t hurt the Event Horizon. Good rumor is better than misinformation anyway.” He turned to Marks. “Until Bixby reports otherwise, we assume an unblink.” He waved his hand at the man’s expression. The unraveling of an Event Horizon on an alpha project once set was unheard of. “Find the slug. Identify everyone she’s had contact with. Find out who’s behind her getting out. I want his head.”

Jordan Harshaw found his feet, turning to the thirteenth-floor window, a floor in the building someone could find only if he knew where to look. “Gentlemen, I want to know if there was an unblink ASAP. I want you to act quickly, but thoroughly. The safety of the nation rests on our shoulders.” Harshaw was a chess player, good at the game. His gut burned when he lost.

He never lost.

 

29

Josephine McCarthy, sometime between the vague ideals of youth and the trudge of a real world, slipped into classical depression. She became confused over the years. The tragedy of six missing children pressed hard on her, forcing her deeper into the darkness of thought. The tragedies were bad, weighed heavier by her sense of personal failure.

Reaching for straws.

She flipped through her follow-up notebook. She made a few phone calls, crossed off more dead leads, made more follow-up notes and finally found a note from almost two years before. She tried to recall whether she followed up. Details were vague. The note was not crossed off.

“Makaila Marie Carleton.” She searched the windows in her permanent files. “Sure.” She opened the file drawer, removing a thick file of reports, newspaper clipping and notes. “The murderette.” She opened the folder with the pirated official police files and punched numbers on the telephone.

“November 1997.” She read the file number to the clerk. “I just wanted to see what the disposition was.” Five minutes later, she was asked to repeat the file number and did. In another five minutes, she was told no such file existed.

“I’m looking right at it.”

She called the investigating officer who signed the report. “I wanted to talk to the child concerning a missing children investigation.”

“Sure, I remember the case. Special Crimes Commission took that off our hands.”

“The clerk doesn’t show that.” The file number would follow the case, no matter who handled it.

“Can’t help that. When they say hand it off, I hand it off.”

“Do you remember the disposition?”

A pause followed. “You really have to talk to Special Crimes.”

She sipped her bourbon. “They’ll be able to tell me if you remember or not?”

“Hey! Who is this again?”

She gave him her full name and badge number.

Eight telephone calls later, she still couldn’t find anyone who heard of the Special Crimes Commission, or the case, or the file, number or no number or Makaila Marie Carleton. She searched the public court records with her private access and found nothing.

She sat back, surprised. “November 4, 1997. Twelve-year-old. Female. Makaila Marie Carleton. I have another missing child.” She unclasped the child’s picture from the file and tacked it to the board behind her computer.

Now, there were seven.

Josephine punched more numbers. “George McCarthy, please. Jo McCarthy calling. I’ll wait.”

“Finally caught you, did they? How are you, Jo?”

“Haven’t terrorized any ice cream kids lately. I’m good. I need your help.”

“With?”

“Capital case. November ninety-seven. Alvin Percy was murdered. Remember it?”

“Sure. It was all over the news.”

“What was the disposition?”

“Funny. Don’t remember. Why don’t you look it up?”

“I have the file number right here. I can’t find it. I called everyone from the arresting officer to the courthouse. Everyone’s saying it doesn’t exist. There’s no follow up in the newspaper or other media archives, either.”

“That’s ridiculous. What’s this all about anyway?”

“There was a child involved.”

“So the scuttlebutt was true?”

“I have the report in front of me. Absolutely.”

“Hmm. This is odd. Tell me exactly what you’re looking for. Maybe I can help.”

She explained the details.

“So it looks like, no matter what the reports say, I have a missing child here.”

“People don’t go missing from the system. It just doesn’t happen.”

“In an ideal world, children just don’t go missing from the street, either. Ever hear of the Special Crimes Commission?”

“It’s a fed thing, I think.”

“I can’t find anything on them, either.”

“Let me see what my friends over the courthouse have to say. Sit tight. I’ll get back to you.”

Josephine returned to the files, entering Makaila’s information in her profile file. She decided to follow up at the Carleton house that evening. Meanwhile, she went over the data again, looking for connections and waiting for Uncle George to call back.

In less than two hours, the lawyer returned Josephine’s call. “Listen, and this is off the record.”

“Okay.”

“Josephine McCarthy, I mean it. This is off the record. I never said it because it was never said to me.”

“I got you.”

“Forget it. Leave it alone.”

“Does that come from you?”

“No. That’s a quote.

“From?”

“You never heard this. Judge James Bosch.”

Josephine McCarthy heard clearly. She made a note.

 

“Hello, Mrs. Carleton.” Josephine held up her badge. “Detective Jo McCarthy.” This time, it wasn’t a lie. “I’m doing background on missing children.”

Catherine blinked twice.

“Where’s your daughter?”

Catherine blinked twice more and then called over her shoulder. “Ruddy?”

“Hello, Mr. Carleton –”

Ralph appeared unnerved. “In a place where she won’t be a danger to herself or others.”

“Where.”

“Go away.”

With that, Josephine watched the door slam shut.

 

30

Larry looked in the window of the old house sitting on a hill, back from the road, partially hidden by years of neglected yard work. “It’s perfect.”

Arianna glanced up at Larry and shivered, not from the cold. “It looks like a ghost house.”

“Yeah. Don’t you love it?”

Arianna overheard her mother talking on the telephone about the property to a client. For back taxes, a fee and escrow, the house could be bought cheaply. Arianna and Larry spent the afternoon in the bank talking about the details.

The house came under a city program to improve the neighborhood. The taxes and the fee, around $3000.00, ten per cent of what was due, wasn’t a problem. They had that. The escrow was another matter. The city required money be placed into an account to guarantee the repairs. The list of required repairs was long with a $24,000 price tag.

Larry knelt down to peek through a basement window. “That’s lots of money to raise.”

The sun cast long shadows. “It will come.” Arianna looked off into the distance.

Larry looked up. The sun sat low, behind Arianna’s soft face and draped, curly hair. The image reminded Larry of the last time he saw his sister. He knew he heard a shadow of things to come, what would be.

 

Earlier at the bank, with the help of the bank’s title clerk, Larry and Arianna filled out eight pages of paperwork. “He was goofing on us,” Larry commented as they were leaving. “He knows we won’t get the property.”

Arianna tilted her head. “He doesn’t know who we are.” She showed Larry the up-side-down M. Larry, being seventeen, couldn’t enter into legal contracts. Arianna was of age, barely. “We gave him the filing fee. He has to enter the application in the system. It’s a big system.”

“Yeah, he did say all we needed was the escrow and it’d be approved.”

“Sure. That’s all we need and there’s enough of us to make it happen.”

Spending time with Arianna reminded Larry how much he missed Makaila, not that Arianna looked like Makaila. They were the same height but the hair, eyes and facial features were different.

It might be the general sense of innocence and wonder with the world around her.

 Deep inside, Larry was drawn to protect and watch over Arianna as he was called from within to protect his sister, something he failed to do.

 

Caught up in his thoughts watching Arianna’s car pull away from the curb, he didn’t see Josephine as he turned, walking into her. Larry had grown so much and filled out in the two years, Josephine didn’t recognize him.

“You should switch to vodka. That way people will only think you’re a drunk.” He remembered her. He knew she was a cop. He knew she was the enemy.

“I’m not a drunk!”

“Of course, you’re not. You just drink a lot.”

She waved him off and composed herself. With the standard introduction and the show of the badge, she asked: “Where’s your sister?”

Knowing he stumbled on her hot button, Larry’s lip quivered. “If you’d been sober that day, you might’ve found her. As it is, you couldn’t find your way out of a phone booth if the door was open.”

Gulping deep, she swallowed her anger. “Where’s your sister?”

He leaned in close, almost nose-to-nose, putting a finger to her chest. “She’s dead! If it’s not your fault, you’re part of the fault and soon, yes, soon you’re going to pay!” His anger rose like fire across a drought-suffered forest. He wanted to hit her.

Stay free.

He stepped back. “Go have a drink and feel sorry for yourself.” Larry knew, from years of watching his father drink everyday and his time helping some of the Freaks recover, just where to hit her.

Taking a deep breath, she pulled back tears. Josephine took his arm. She processed what he said and focused in, ignoring all that didn’t matter in the moment. “She’s dead? How?”

“You people murdered her. I can’t believe they don’t let you in on what everyone else knows.”

“You people?” She shook her head, narrowing her eyes. Black people? Women? You people? “What do you mean?”

Larry’s mind raced. Here, before him, was a detective and a policewoman. She was one of them. She was one of them, who murdered she-who-is-like-God. He couldn’t accept one of them didn’t know the entire conspiracy. She wanted something else. She was after something else.

They must know she’s coming back and they must be after information. The plot fell clear to him. They were coming for those who followed she-who-is-like-God. He bit his lip, knowing he said too much already. He scrambled to do some damage control. I’ll bet she’s not drunk at all, just acting that way.

“My sister died in jail.” His tone, unemotional. He kept eye contact.

She held his stare, painfully. If that were true, there was a cover-up the magnitude making the idea impossible for anyone but the avid conspiracy buff. “Where’s she buried?”

“Don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Dead is dead.” Larry left Josephine alone on the sidewalk with her thoughts.

 

 

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