Chapter Twenty
Twenty
TASHA WASHINGTON’S BODY ACHED AS if she hadn’t slept in days, a combination of interrupted sleep and her awkward position on the love seat, which was too small for satisfying rest. But once Johnny woke her on his way outside, her bladder compelled her to lace on her pink Danskin running shoes to go to the bathroom.
In addition to her sweatpants and sweatshirt, she’d slept in Mazelle’s furred robe and tube socks because the lodge embraced its cold surroundings, so she hadn’t felt quite warm despite the fireplace and the central heat.
By now, Imani’s fire had mostly burned out, the remaining logs glowing orange with the memory of flames.
She would still write her book about Mazelle Washington, but Johnny’s story about her abuse had dampened her admiration.
Never meet your heroes, as the saying went.
She wondered if he would agree to share the story for her book, which would celebrate Mazelle’s talents, but also be unflinching in revealing her Mommie Dearest side.
She wished Johnny had told her sooner so she wouldn’t have encouraged him to revisit his trauma before he was ready.
Now the whole family had shared his trauma here.
Even if the girls looked back on their wildlife scare as an adventure, they had seen Johnny lose his shit over a childhood nightmare.
She hoped Johnny would recover quickly once they were back at home, but her best friend, Johnita, had told her on her wedding day that marriage was a series of seesaws, one of them up when the other was down.
She had taken the emotional reins many times before, especially when he had setbacks at work.
Hollywood wasn’t good for Johnny’s mental health, just as it surely had not been good for Mazelle’s.
At least her pregnancy wasn’t a secret anymore.
Tasha hadn’t realized how much the secret was weighing on her, how close she’d been to resenting Johnny for fanning her doubts instead of soothing them.
Hell, she might not have had any doubts if he’d fixed a smile on his face from day one instead of treating her like a problem.
The anger was peeking out. But then it whiffed away, gone.
Johnny was doing his best. More than his best. She smiled as she remembered how self-assured he’d looked loading that rifle, an image of him she hadn’t even known she would relish.
And their family was entering a new phase.
Sharise would be going to college soon, so she wouldn’t be home often, but Imani would be a great big sister.
Their new baby would always have family even long after Tasha was gone.
And Johnny, who would be seventy when their new baby was only ten.
Thoughts of the years ahead that could vanish in a blink made queasiness lurch in Tasha’s stomach.
She left Mazelle’s regal master bathroom to go back to the kitchen.
She resisted the urge to clean up the mess on the floor—Johnny had hired a man who could do that—so instead she pulled the two-liter bottle of ginger ale out of the fridge, where she’d stashed it.
She took a few swallows straight from the bottle before she remembered that they had left a stack of red plastic cups on the dining room table.
Tasha was entering the dining room with its three-paneled picture window showcasing the cabins and the woods when she saw Johnny running to the lodge from the road, toward the front door.
She might not have known him if not for his olive-colored puffer jacket because his gait was so sprawling and uncoordinated, more like falling than running.
He nearly tripped as she watched, using the rifle butt to catch his balance like a walking stick.
“What now?” she murmured to herself, convinced—or maybe hoping—that Johnny had worked himself up over another old memory. She would insist that he return to therapy.
But a closer glimpse of Johnny’s face loosed Tasha’s fingers from the ginger ale bottle, which fell to the tabletop and spilled over. He was terrified. She raced to meet him at the front door as he burst inside with so much force that the door almost hit her.
Johnny moved her aside, not gently, and slammed the door closed behind him.
“What?” Tasha said.
Sharise and Imani, newly awakened, popped their heads up from the sofa bed. “What the fuck…?” Sharise murmured, half asleep. Tasha winced at her profanity, but instantly forgot it.
“Puh-put on your shoes,” Johnny said, his voice both unsteady and a roll of thunder. “We’re leaving—now.”
None of them moved, transfixed by his terror.
Johnny clutched Tasha’s shoulders to break her stupor.
His eyes danced with an unholy message before he whispered feverish breath into her ear.
He had to say it twice because he thought she hadn’t heard him—but she had.
She was just chewing over the words in search of their meaning.
“There’s a body under the Jeep. I found somebody’s hand.”
Her imagination heard him say that somebody needed a hand doing bodywork on the Jeep.
She would have sworn to those words on a Bible.
But why did he look like he was on the verge of a heart attack?
The second time, as his grip on her shoulders pinched, horrid illumination slapped her.
He had found a severed hand under the Jeep.
“What’s going on?” Imani asked.
Thinking of the deer’s head made Tasha spit up a little, but with effort she swallowed back the bile. She didn’t have time to be sick. Whether it was the work of an animal or a psychopath, they were alone in a killing place.
“Hurry up!” she said. “Put your shoes on—and your jackets.”
Sharise moved toward her duffel bag sitting beside the sofa, but Johnny stopped her in her tracks with the new thunder in his voice. “No. Leave your things. No time.”
“Dad, what?” Sharise said. “I can’t leave my—”
“Get your shoes on!” Tasha said. She had never shouted at either of them that way, and their combined fierceness got Sharise scrambling to find her shoes.
Imani had put on her shoes right away and was already zipping up her jacket.
Tasha saw Imani slip her firestarter into her back pocket and wriggle into her backpack, throwing her duffel bag over her shoulder so quickly that no one had time to chide her.
Imani’s responses often lagged her sister’s in ordinary circumstances, but in crisis she apparently was as focused as a soldier.
“Over there!” Imani said, pointing, as Sharise struggled to find her second shoe.
As an afterthought, Tasha grabbed her purse from the table beside the love seat.
Her useless phone lay underneath it, plugged into a charger, so she grabbed that too.
She mourned the Duke Ellington sheet music and boxes of memorabilia she had planned to bring with her.
She spotted a framed black-and-white photo on the wall near the door that she’d missed—Mazelle, not much older than Sharise was now, in Hollywood glam, posing beside a smugly smiling Clark Gable on a studio lot where Mazelle’s was the only black skin in sight.
The photo made her heart leap even now, in flight.
Tasha snatched the photo from the wall, clutching it tight.
“Where’s your jacket?” Johnny asked her. Now that he had conveyed his urgency, his breathing wasn’t the strained, ragged pants that had worried her.
Tasha spotted her jacket folded across a chair that looked a mile from the door. “I’m fine in this robe,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She could see the RAV a few steps away through the window. They were just driving to Redding, she thought, then flying home. The caretaker could ship anything they had left behind. As long as they were safe, their belongings didn’t matter. Anything else could be replaced.
God, she thought, get us home and I will never again take my blessings for granted.
Tasha would remember this prayer, and this moment, for the rest of her life.
“Wait,” Johnny said.
Tasha and the girls were crowded behind him, ready to go to the RAV, but he stuck his head out first to appraise their surroundings with his rifle ready.
The iconic photo of Malcolm X posed with his M1 by his window came as a flash of memory that was strangely calming, guiding him through this dangerous terrain.
By any means necessary was more than a slogan, although its meaning had never fused so deeply to his bones.
The sky was brighter, so he had a clear view of the front of the property, the cabins, and the adjoining woods.
He leaned out a bit farther and could see the gate to the ski trail.
He searched for the tracks that had emerged near the generator and was glad when none were visible.
Even if last night’s tracks had been snowed over, the fox-thing hadn’t come back recently to circle the house, as he had feared.
He surveyed the treetops last, remembering the sound of it sliding down a trunk from above.
“Okay, let’s hustle,” he said.
“What’s going on?” Sharise asked in a childish whine.
Neither Johnny nor Tasha answered, silently urging the kids to move faster toward the waiting RAV.
The doors were unlocked, so they climbed in fast. Slam.
Slam. Slam. Slam. Their doors echoed against the tree trunks.
The rifle was awkward in such a small space, so Johnny had to rest the muzzle in Tasha’s floor well, clear of her toes if it fired, the butt pointed high between the front seats.
She steadied it, keeping her hand clear of the trigger.
It was a piss-poor way to transport a gun, but he would unload it and store it in the back when they got to town.
For now, he wanted the rifle close. He was glad the box of cartridges was still in his jacket pocket.
“No one touch the gun,” Johnny said.