Kind of Kin (5 page)

“They're closed.” A large girl with several shades of spiky brown hair stood smoking a cigarette outside Kayla's Klip'n'Kurl next door.

“When did they start closing on Mondays?”

“No, like,
closed
closed.” The girl tossed her cigarette toward the street. “They hadn't been open since Friday. My boyfriend says all the Mexicans are leaving Oklahoma. I guess that includes Diego and them.”

“But—” Surely this didn't mean the folks from Abuelita's? They'd been here for years, those efficient dark young men who showed you to your seat and motioned somebody to bring the chips and salsa and took your money at the register without ever glancing at a ticket or making a mistake, all the shy silent busboys, the deft young women who took your order and smiled and spoke better English than half of Latimer County. They couldn't be illegal; they were fixtures—they belonged here as much as, well, as much as Indians or somebody. Why would they just up and leave?

“On account of that law,” the girl said, as if answering Sweet's thoughts. “Larry says they aim to run every Mexican in this state back to Texas.”

“Texas?”

“Well, yeah, or wherever. Won't be a place fit to eat in this town.” The girl turned and went back inside the shop.

Monday | February 18, 2008 | Evening

Brown's farm | Cedar

T
he truck gears grind, scream out a bad sound, going up and up the side of the mountain, and then down, rocking side to side, swaying, the diesel motor roaring, too fast around the curves, his bones bumping the hard floor; there is not enough air, the space is too hot, too dark, why do the exhaust fumes come inside but not the air?
Bang!
A wounded sound,
thup thup thup thup thup thup
. Slower, slower, slower, until they are still, waiting for the door to open, waiting for air, waiting to hear the sound of iron tools, waiting, waiting, but there is only the soft swish of traffic far off.
Bang!

Luis jerks alert, his senses trembling. He holds his breath, listening, remembering where he is—not in the dark closed truck on the journey but inside the dark closed bin inside the barn. He has arrived in the North, yes, but still he is hiding.
Bang!
Carefully Luis raises his head to see between the slats. The light is dim on the barn floor.
Bang!
A splintering, chopping sound. A choked voice. Not the man. The little boy. The english words are harsh and thick. Then there is a quick scuttle of running feet, and sudden murky light bursts in as the boy lifts the bin lid. Luis cannot prevent the startled yip that snaps from his mouth, but the boy does not cry out. His eyes within their bruised circles are red and swollen. He holds the heavy box lid with both hands. He seems to be looking past Luis, or beneath him. With a grunt the child hoists the wooden lid completely open; it falls back against the wall. He says something to Luis, an accusation. An angry question.

Pardon me
, Luis says.
I dont understand.

¿You dont speak english
? the boy says.

Luis shakes his head no. But the boy speaks spanish. How good. Luis reaches for the lip of the bin, pulls himself to a sitting position, his body stiff from being so long without moving.

¿Where is—where is the—how do you say?
The boy makes the motion of digging, both hands furiously spading the air.

¿The shovel?
Luis says.

Yes. Shovel.
The boy talks english then, spitting out the short sharp words between his small teeth. He turns and walks away very fast, but then he stops in the barn doorway as if the space outside will not let him go forward. His small figure is outlined in the square of lavender light. His shoulders are shaking. The smell comes to Luis then, a familiar smell, sickening, a little sweet. Stiffly he climbs out of the box and goes to where the boy stands. On the ground outside is the dead animal, a dog, yes, the carcass still holding that shape although the black coat is coming off in clumps. Luis can see the trail of black hair all the way from the fence line, where the boy has dragged it. The dog has been dead a long while; its eyes are gone, the skull almost naked, the teeth bared. The smell is bad but not so bad as a thing dead only a few days. Clamped on one of the hind legs is a steel trap; the spike on the end of the chain is crusted with dried clay. Above the exposed bones and matted hair, the black tail is perfect, a sleek dark whip, tipped with white hairs at the end. The lavender sky is turning purple.

We will bury him
, Luis says.

The boy looks up. He swipes an arm across his eyes, wipes his nose on his sleeve. It is clear he does not understand. Luis makes the motion of digging.
We will bury him,
he says again.

The boy nods, his jaw trembling. He is shaking with sobs, but also with cold.
The shovel,
the boy says.

Yes.
Luis looks inside the barn. In the dimness he can see the big metal toolbox upside down near the horse stall, the tools flung everywhere, a claw hammer, a sledge, many screwdrivers, a pry bar, a hand saw, other tools he does not know the name of or what they are for. The blade of a small chopping axe is stuck in the wood of the horse stall. There are many chop marks in the wood. On the floor nearby, a hoe and a yard rake with a broken tine. He picks up the hoe, walks outside to the fading light.
Show me where to dig.
The boy looks up, his eyes cloudy. He does not understand the words. Luis steps over the dead dog and walks out beside the fence and begins to chop the hard winter ground. The boy comes to stand beside him. Again the choked words come from the boy's throat.

Monday | February 18, 2008 | 5:30
P.M.

Brown's farm | Cedar

I
cussed and cussed Mr. Herrington, but it didn't help. I know it's a sin to cuss somebody, but it's a sin to kill somebody's dog, too! Just set a stupid trap in the woods where any animal could get in it, and for what? A blamed coyote? Look how she died! I can't stand to think of how long she suffered, barking and whining in the woods with her leg broke, gnawing at it, starving—I wish we'd shot her! I wish my grandpa had just shot her that day they killed the rooster, it would've been better than dying like that! Why didn't Grandpa hear? I bet she barked for days. I bet she barked and whined and cried for me to come get her, I was supposed to take care of her, she trusted me to take care of her, and instead I was stupid in town fighting with my stupid cousin over his stupid Gameboy while Tipper was starving and hurt and crying for me to come get her and I didn't know it. I didn't hear. I'd like to kill him! If I had my grandpa's .22, I thought, I'd go right to his stupid damn house! And I just kept cussing Mr. Herrington like that the whole time the man dug a hole big enough to put Tipper in.

He was older than the other Mexicans, maybe almost as old as my grandpa, but he was strong. He cut the ground with the hoe like an axe chopping pond ice, and pretty soon the hole was big enough. He asked me something, but my Spanish ain't that good. Then he went inside the barn and came back with an armful of old hay and an empty feedsack. He spread the hay all inside the grave, then he went and scooted Tipper onto the sack and picked her up, I mean picked her right up in his arms no matter how bad she stank, and he carried her over and laid her in the grave. The man said some more words, bowed his head and mumbled the Spanish words really fast. I couldn't stop crying. When he was done, he crossed himself, and then he held the hoe out to me like he wanted me to take it. He made the motion for me to scrape the dirt and grass back over her, so I started but then I was crying too hard and the man took the hoe and finished. He motioned me to the yard hydrant and turned it on, oh, that water was freezing, but we both washed because Tipper was so nasty. That's another thing that made me so mad. She'd laid there and rotted since Christmas! Crows and buzzards won't hardly eat a dead dog—my grandpa told me that a long time ago—but she was almost all gone anyhow, even cold as it's been.

“Tienes hambre?” the man said. I shook my head. I'd felt hungry before I found Tipper, but I wasn't hungry no more. “Hace frío,” the man said, and I nodded because he was sure right about it being cold. He motioned me to come with him, and we went inside the barn. I followed him to the feed bin in the back, and he reached inside and got an old smelly coat and handed it to me. Then he shut the bin lid and we sat on it while outside got even darker, even colder. How am I going to get to the cemetery now? I thought. Uncle Tee took the bridle. I was watching from the woods when he found it and carried it back to his truck, so then I set out walking. That's how I found Tipper. It was the smell first that stopped me, and then I seen the white tip of her tail on the ground under the cedar thicket on the far side of Mr. Herrington's land.

“El hombre,” the man said. “Es tu padre?”

“Hombre?” I thought he meant Grandpa. He motioned outside where Uncle Terry parked his Silverado. “Oh. Mi tío,” I said. The man said a bunch of words then but I couldn't understand them except
tu tío
. He touched under his own eye, nodded at my face. It was pretty dark in there but I could see his hand and his head move, and I knew he was asking if it was my uncle who gave me the shiners. “No,” I said. “Mi . . . mi . . .” But I didn't know the word for
cousin.
“Un muchacho,” I said finally. The man said nothing. We just sat. I started thinking about my mother.

Everybody believes I don't remember her, but I do. I can't tell sometimes if what I remember is from pictures or from really seeing her, but I know I remember how good she smelled and what it felt like going to sleep with her hand rubbing my back really soft. I know I remember that. We lived in Tulsa then. Me and Misty Dawn and my mom. I was a real little kid. Of course, I didn't know it was Tulsa, I only know that now because Grandpa told me. He's the only one that ever talks to me about her, and he don't really like to, except sometimes when he's in a mood, so there's a lot I still got to find out. But here's what I know already: her name was Gaylene Carlotta Brown and she had long straight black hair almost down to her butt. I think she was part Indian. Well, I'm not sure if I heard that or if I made that up, but if you ever saw a picture of her, you'd think she was Indian. She was beautiful, too. She died in California but I don't know what town. My sister, Misty Dawn, might know. I was already living with Grandpa then. That was the first time everything went from bad to worse. Some people might not think it was worse but they would only be people whose mother didn't die when they were little.

Grandpa rode a train to California to get my mom after she died. That's one of the things he told me. He had to drive to Fort Worth to take the train, and when they got back, he hired some people in a truck to haul the coffin up here from Texas so she could be buried at Brown's Prairie with the rest of our kin. Aunt Sweet's mom is buried there, too. She was Grandpa's first wife. She died when Aunt Sweet was just little. I guess that's something me and her have in common. I don't know where my mom's mother is buried, or if she's even dead. Grandpa don't talk about her at all. He's the one takes me out to the cemetery to visit. If I sit next to my mom's grave, she talks to me. My grandpa don't know that. Anyway, it's not like she talks in words or anything, just feelings, but I really needed to listen, I needed to hear her, because I felt like things were going from bad to worse again.

But it was dark out already. I'd stayed too long in the woods beside Tipper. I couldn't get the trap off her leg and it took forever to dig the stake loose from the ground, but I wasn't about to leave her rotting under the cedar trees like that. Ten miles is a ways to walk, I told myself, but I'm going to have to do it. Not tonight, though, I thought. It's too late and too cold. I didn't even want to walk back to town.

So I was glad, sort of, when I heard Aunt Sweet's car coming. You can't miss that old turquoise Taurus since the transmission got rebuilt. Me and the Mexican man both heard it the same minute, and we sat looking hard at each other in the dark. I couldn't see his face, only feel what he was saying: Por favor.

“Quick!” I said and jumped up to open the bin. He got to his feet as fast as he could, which wasn't all that fast, but still we had time for him to climb in and lay down and me to close the lid and go stand outside the barn door before Aunt Sweet's headlights cut the yard. She got out of the car and came at me in such a rush I put my head down and braced myself. She grabbed me in both arms and hugged me till she practically squeezed the breath out of me. I tried to wriggle out but she just kept squeezing. “What the
hell
did you think you were doing?” she said, her chin knobby on the top of my head. “I got half a mind to beat the living daylights out of you!” So I knew then she wasn't going to whip me. I got in the car and didn't say nothing all the way back to town, till just right before we turned onto the highway toward Sweet's house. Then I remembered I still had on the old guy's coat. So I guess that's basically when I started lying.

Telling lies is one sin my grandpa will get really worked up about, so I can't even act like I didn't know it was wrong. But I started talking about Tipper, and the two parts that were lies were, one, I wasn't really crying, I was just making the sound. I was done crying by then but I pretended because I figured if I could get Aunt Sweet to feeling sorry about Tipper before we got inside the house where the light is, most likely she wouldn't pay much attention to that coat. And, two, I didn't say
we
buried her, I said
I
buried her. Well, I am one of the ones that buried her, I told myself. But you can't get nothing past Carl Albert. The minute me and Aunt Sweet came in the kitchen he looked up from licking his sandwich and said, “Where'd you get that ugly coat?”

I said, “You ain't never seen Grandpa wear this coat?” I glanced up at Aunt Sweet, but I could tell she wasn't really listening. She was staring at me the same way Grandpa stared the day the dogs killed the rooster, like she was seeing me and not seeing me, like she was there in the room and also someplace else.

“Pee-
yew
!” Carl Albert said, holding his nose. “You stink like cow pies!”

“Can I make a sandwich?” I said, never moving my eyes off Aunt Sweet's face.

“Go wash up. Here, give me that.” And she took the coat off me and held it away from her while she carried it out to the carport. I looked dead-on at Carl Albert when I started for the bathroom because I knew if I didn't, he'd know. He might not know what, but he'd know something. I cut a wide path across the room by the pantry so he couldn't reach out and pop me, but I never flinched my eyes from him once.

So it wasn't till real late in the night, when I was laying on the air mattress listening to Carl snore with his adenoids, that I understood why my grandpa says there's no such thing as a white lie or a little sin. He says one sin leads to the next on the road to perdition, and I could see for the first time how it's really true. Because I'd started out with cussing and went from there to lying, plus stealing, and I thought, No telling where it's fixing to lead me next. Because when Carl Albert pinched my arm while we were brushing our teeth in the bathroom and whispered, “What'd you do with my knife, Dusthole?” I didn't say,
Hey that knife's not yours, it's Brother Oren's and I'm going to give it back to him,
the way I'd meant to
.
I spat toothpaste in the sink and looked my cousin straight in the face and said, “I don't know what you're talking about.” He jumped me then, got me down on the floor really bad, till Aunt Sweet came in and pulled him off me, but I still didn't tell.

I thought about that a long time while I waited for the house to get completely dark, completely silent, till I felt sure nobody was going to wake up, so nobody would see me take the Swiss Army knife out of my sneaker where I'd hid it and carry it out to the carport to put it with the Mexican man's coat. Aunt Sweet had laid the coat on top of the old washer she uses for Uncle Tee's greasy work clothes. I stuffed that smelly coat down behind the washing machine where nobody would find it. I told myself I could always get Brother Oren a new one later, if I could ever get a job for some money, and if I could find out where they sell knives like that, which I didn't know where, someplace in Fort Smith maybe. My grandpa would know.