Chapter Fourteen Mini
FOURTEEN MINI
Mama came out at dawn, opened the front door, and looked down at the shattered plate, the ruined gifts strewn all over the yard.
Then she turned, saw the mark on the door—the red horse like something from a nightmare—and screamed.
It was more of a howl, which started low, then rose in volume and pitch until Mini was sure it was louder than the factory bell.
So loud she knew that people all over town would hear it, would know just what it meant.
Mini was still in the lilac bushes. She’d been curled up there for hours in the darkness and cold, eyes on the door, unable to move, barely able to keep breathing.
None of the stories she’d heard could have prepared her for this.
The feeling of the red horse watching her.
You, it seemed to say. Look what you’ve done.
The gold watch the knackerman had dropped was tucked into the pocket of her jeans.
She could feel it ticking there like a tiny bomb.
She shouldn’t have picked it up. She knew that, but it was too late now.
Seeing him was bad enough. Bad enough to get the mark.
But then she’d actually gone and taken something from the knackerman.
She wished, with all her might, that she could go back to last night and never leave her room, never sneak out and hide in the bushes.
Then she’d be waking up now just like it was any other day.
Mama fell to her knees, crying. Mini rose up, her legs asleep, all pins and needles as she staggered toward Mama. Mini was crying now too.
“Mama?” she managed.
Mama looked up, saw Mini there, filthy, covered in dead leaves, twigs in her hair, her hands red with cold, her brother’s sweater tenting over her skinny frame.
“It’s all my fault,” Mini cried. “I wanted to see. I didn’t believe. I thought I could hide, that he’d never see me, never know I was there.”
The words continued to trickle out, but evaporated around them like a drying-up stream.
Mini’s mouth was dry as dust and she was half frozen. All she wanted to do was go inside, have a drink of water, some hot tea maybe, crawl under her thick quilt, and forget the whole terrible night.
Mama looked at her then, face contorted with disbelief and fear. But she did not speak.
Mini was more scared now than she was seeing the knackerman even.
Papa exploded through the open front door, Finn right behind him.
Mama’s scream had woken them. They looked at the lawn and the broken plate with the spilled offerings scattered around it, at Mini in her jeans and sweater, Mama crouched on the ground crying and moaning and ripping up the grass with her pale hands.
Then they looked at the door. At the mark, the paint as red as fresh blood.
“No,” Finn wailed. “No! No! No!”
“What have you done?” Papa asked her, his voice as icy as it was when he got out the belt and spanked her good.
Mini opened her mouth to try to explain, but no words came. Only a strangled, choking sound.
“WHAT DO WE do now?” Mini asked hours later when they were all back in the house, the door shut tight and locked.
She was still in the filthy clothes she’d worn all night, Finn’s red sweater torn and full of tiny twigs and dried-up leaves.
It was a Monday morning, but there was no going to school today.
Papa and Finn should have gone in to work at the factory, but they didn’t.
The morning bell rang and they only closed their curtains.
“We wait,” Mama said. Mama hadn’t looked her in the eyes since they’d come inside. Her voice was icy and far away.
“Maybe we should run,” Mini suggested.
Mama shook her head. “There’s no running from the knackerman.”
Maybe Mini should go off on her own—after all, it was her he wanted, wasn’t it? If she left, her family might be safe. But where could she go? Everything she knew, everything she loved, was here.
Running wasn’t an option. Not really. She wouldn’t make it far. He’d find her. Hunt her down. Once you got the mark, it was over.
She knew the stories—everyone in town did.
People who’d disappeared in the night never to be seen again.
Whole families even. Her best friend, Bea, had an older cousin who’d defaced the knackerman’s grave years ago, before Bea and Mini were born.
He got the mark and two days later he was just gone—poof, like he’d never existed.
The next day, his family’s house burned down.
And Jamie Wells, who used to work in the town garage, he didn’t leave any gifts for the knackerman, even went around telling people he knew there was no knackerman, not really, any more than there was a Santa Claus.
Everyone said he got the mark and the next day, he was found floating facedown in the widest part of the river down by the old waterwheel.
Then there was what happened to Sad Willy’s wife. That was the worst story of all; one so bad Mini couldn’t bear to imagine it.
What would he do to Mini?
And it wasn’t just her, was it? She knew that her whole family would suffer for what she’d done.
Finn had gone up to his room. Papa sat smoking by the fire, rolling one cigarette after another, his eyes on the flames. Mama did not make breakfast, only brewed coffee, which she carried over to Papa, but his cup went untouched.
“I’m sorry, Papa,” Mini said for the hundredth time, but her father didn’t answer her, just spat into the fire.
He hadn’t spanked her. She almost wished he would—that was usually the way things went when she’d done something she shouldn’t have: Papa would bring out the belt, then send her to her room.
This punishment, what was coming, was so much worse than that.
It felt thick and heavy around them, like the air just before a bad storm.
Tick, tick, tick went the watch in her pocket.
Tears ran down Mini’s face. She made a strangled gulping sound.
She realized that, in some way, she was already dead to her parents.
She slipped up the stairs to her room, moving like a ghost through her own house, no one seeming to notice her anymore.
She found Shiloh there, purring on her bed.
He looked up at her with his green eyes as if to say, Where have you been?
At least she wasn’t a ghost to him. He slept on top of her each night, and here he was, still waiting, wondering why she’d never come to bed last night.
He was a big orange tabby cat, old and missing a few teeth.
Mini threw herself onto the bed, pushing her face against Shiloh’s soft fur and crying.
“I’ve done a terrible thing,” she told him.
He purred on. She sobbed harder, thinking about poor Shiloh, what would happen to him if the knackerman came and took her.
Who would feed him his special tuna-and-anchovy treats?
Whose chest would he curl up on each night?
One by one, as word spread, people from town came to look.
They walked slowly by on the road, eyes on the mark, pulling coats around them tighter, faces serious, full of fear.
No one came to the door. No one waved when they saw Mini in the window, peeking out between her bedroom curtains, not even Bea, who walked by on her way to school with her father and brother.
Mini always braided Bea’s hair at school, but with Mini gone, she’d have to ask some other girl.
Bea held her father’s hand and looked away when she saw Mini, like just meeting her eyes would mark her in some way too.
Mini walked away from the window, opened the drawer of her nightstand, took out the old wooden top wound with string.
The top was one of her greatest treasures: it had been Papa’s when he was a boy, made right here at the Stoddard Factory, a gift from his own daddy, who worked the lathe there.
Mini sat down on the floor and pulled the string, watched the top spin.
Normally this calmed her. When she’d had a bad day at school, she’d run up to her room and make the top spin over and over, watching it do a dance across her old floorboards until she felt calm again.
But today it just made her feel worse. The old red top wobbled drunkenly, spinning like a hurricane on its dull metal tip.
It made too much noise, hit the leg of the bed, and fell over.
She was sure they could hear it downstairs, that at any second Mama would come hurrying up, bang on the door, and say, “Are you playing with toys? Now? After what you’ve done? ”
Mini put the top away.
The factory bell rang again at noon, marking the time just like any other normal day.
But nothing was normal about this day. Mini floated back downstairs and took up her post by the front window, Shiloh at her feet.
Papa was still by the fire. Mama sat alone on the couch, smoking one of Papa’s cigarettes even though she had given up smoking years ago. Finn hadn’t left his room.
Mama didn’t make lunch or even start supper. The refrigerator stayed closed, quietly humming.
Mini’s stomach grumbled, but she said nothing.
More families shuffled by in the late afternoon, casting wary glances at the door. People Mini had known all her life—her teacher, Miss Clement; Pops, who ran the general store; even old drunk Sad Willy staggered by, stopping long enough to urinate on the lilac bushes that lined the yard.
“How long do we wait?” Mini finally asked.
“Not long,” Mama said, her voice barely there, as if her windpipe were being crushed. “He’ll come for us soon.”