Chapter 26
Chapter 26
“It held,” Hagar said in the kitchen the next morning when they told her. “Nothing can cross silver. This nonsense is done.”
Fern didn’t believe her, so that night she, Holly, and Zinnia sat in her bed, watching the trees. They turned off the overhead light and even the lava lamp so it wouldn’t give them away, then sat in the stuffy darkness for hours. Holly fell asleep first. They listened to her snore for a while before Fern asked, “Do you think the librarian would have taken her away? If I’d let her change me?”
They both looked at Holly, the unmarked side of her face curled on Fern’s pillow, mouth wide open, snoring so loud she sounded like a chain saw swinging on a rope.
“There would’ve been a trick,” Zinnia said. “That’s what always happens in the stories. You start fooling around with things like this and before you know it you’re turned into a mouse or something.”
There was no wind. Fern scanned the tops of the trees, looking for anything outlined against the night sky that wasn’t branches or leaves.
“How can we send her back?” Fern asked, her voice so low Zinnia could barely hear it over Holly’s snoring. “I didn’t know people did things like that. We can’t send her back to him.”
“We’ll find a way,” Zinnia said.
Zinnia nodded off next, so Fern sat up alone, waiting for the witches. She dozed a bit, slipping in and out of sleep, panicked whenever she woke up, then relieved when she saw that the trees were still empty.
Miss Parcae had been nice to her at first, and she was dying, and Fern’d let her down. Fern had made a promise to her, and broken it, but then again she wasn’t really Fern. Fern was an unwed mother, hiding in Florida. She was Neva who was in tenth grade, who’d been the star of the senior play, who had friends back in Huntsville, and a mom and a dad and Chip and Midge. She’d turned into Fern just for a little while, and soon she’d turn back into Neva again, like magic. All she had to do was have Charlie Brown.
The sky turned a lighter gray, and sunlight began to creep down the trees as birds started singing. The witches hadn’t come. In barely a week she’d be gone. It would be like this never happened.
***
Saturday came on hot. It was always hot on Laundry Day, but that Saturday morning the air felt heavy and close, like someone had wrapped thick sweaters around their heads and soaked them in boiling water. Their lungs felt humid and full. The light felt wrong—too harsh, sunlight picking everything out in too much detail. No one could force anything down at breakfast and no one wanted to get up and go outside.
Hagar came in the dining room and looked around the table in disgust.
“Finish your plates and get moving,” she snapped. “Y’all know what day it is.”
Fern was on two-week warning but she didn’t want to be alone, so she walked through the sweltering bedrooms showing the new girls what to do—Petunia, who’d arrived the day before to replace Flora, and Violet, who’d arrived two days ago to replace Daisy. She had them stuff everyone’s laundry bags full of their damp clothes and towels and washcloths and pull them to the top of the stairs and push them down. It was too hot to drag them and Mrs. Deckle was holed up in the air-conditioned office with the door closed again.
The girls dragged the bags out back and Fern joined the two-week-warning group (Clem and Ginger) in the Smoke Shack, where they watched the other girls work. Normally it was considered bad karma to watch, but it was too hot to be inside.
Miriam started the washers, which radiated heavy auras of humidity and brought out dark sweat stains on the girls’ dresses. The first washer buzzed and they began dragging baskets across the sun-cooked backyard, hanging up the heavy, waterlogged sheets. Everything felt like too much that morning: every mosquito was a helicopter, every fire ant was red-hot pliers twisting their skin, every cricket was a thrown baseball knocking them in the face.
Zinnia’s collar scratched her neck and gave her heat rash. Laurel’s socks chafed her ankles. Holly’s dress cut into her underarms and her stomach felt like it was cooking from the inside out. Violet pointed over at the girls, dimly seen, sitting in the Smoke Shack.
“If y’all’re so interested,” she called, “why don’t y’all come out and help?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Clem said, waving a hand dismissively and lighting another cigarette.
Around eleven, the girls in the yard took a break. They pressed themselves against the tiny strip of shadow on the side of the Barn and drank lemonade. It tasted bitter without any sugar, but at least it was cold.
“I don’t understand why they don’t let us into the Barn so we can stand in the air conditioning,” Violet complained.
“I don’t understand why they won’t give us sugar in our lemonade,” Willow complained.
“Salt restriction, sugar restriction, cigarette restriction, calorie restriction,” Violet complained. “Y’all sure are on a lot of restrictions around here.”
“It’s for your own good,” Zinnia said, as sour as the lemonade.
Fern wanted to do something to help, but she didn’t know what. Then, far off over the trees, she saw it. She left the Smoke Shack and went to Zinnia.
“Look,” she said, pointing.
The swimming-pool-blue sky was stained darker around the edges. Clouds.
Zinnia squinted.
“They’ll blow over,” she said.
They got back to work, and Fern went back to the Smoke Shack, but the girls slowed down as word spread. They kept checking the sky as dirty clouds piled up. For the first time all week, shoulders unclenched, and girls began to feel the knots in their necks come undone.
It was going to rain.
Fern watched the sky as girls dragged their baskets across the yard. She caught Zinnia’s eye as she went by and pointed up. Zinnia looked and now she couldn’t help it: she grinned. Holly turned her face to the sky and almost burst out laughing. Heavy clouds hovered over Wellwood House like fluffy UFOs.
A breeze came up. Warm air slashed swollen ankles and snapped the hems of dresses. Zinnia felt stronger and Holly lugged heavy baskets to the lines by herself, catching the flapping edges of dry sheets, struggling to fold them into squares and pack them away.
The sky darkened.
Hagar came out the kitchen door and she and Miriam held a consultation. As Hagar went back inside, she hollered at the girls, “Get on!”
The storm refused to break. It held out longer than seemed possible, the sky swollen and black, the wind more and more agitated. Something had to give.
Zinnia finished folding Iris’s corduroy smock and was helping Holly wrestle a blanket off the line when the first window broke.
The sound came bright and sharp. Everyone stopped and looked around, blinking. Fern thought someone must have dropped a glass, and then a single shard of windowpane peeled itself from a broken window on the second floor and semaphored sunlight as it tumbled to the grass.
Girls stared up at the broken window stupidly. Next to Zinnia, Willow reached up and ran a palm over her sweaty hair, then her legs turned to water and she dropped straight down. Zinnia thought she’d fainted and was about to call Miriam when she heard the hollow slap of raw meat dropped on a sidewalk from behind her and she turned and saw Tansy double over, clutching the top of her head with both hands. Between her fingers, Zinnia saw red.
Something gave the roof of the Barn a loud rap, then invisible knuckles drumrolled over the shingles of the Home. Things fell to the grass all over the backyard and bounced, and Zinnia felt dozens of small impacts through the soles of her sandals.
“Hail!” Iris shouted, and Miriam walked fast toward the lines of blowing sheets.
Hagar came out on the back step.
“Get that laundry in!” she shouted.
Used to following orders, the girls stepped toward the lines, arms reaching out to pull down sheets, not understanding why that new girl, Willow, was on the grass or why Tansy was slowly sitting down still clutching her head. Something stung Zinnia’s forearm as she reached for a pair of socks and a bead of blood welled up. She looked at it, not comprehending, then a white rock bounced into the grass and rolled to a stop, sparkling with zinc.
Another rock landed beside it, this one gray, maybe the size of a roller skate wheel, and now all around her girls reversed course, running away from the sheets, scattering in every direction. A second window shattered.
Rocks poured from the sky.
They punched the grass and slapped the laundry. Violet shrieked and girls ran, arms over their heads, bent over to protect their bellies. Glass shattered in the back windows of Wellwood House in an endless cascade.
Shards of chert, yellow gravel, jagged chunks of coquina, hissing into the grass around their feet, drumming the roof of Wellwood House, and bouncing off at crazed angles into the yard, zipping past their faces.
Everywhere, stones fell like rain.
Zinnia looked for Holly but the lines of blowing laundry felt like a maze, then someone had her hand, pulling her toward the Home and the endless shower of shattering glass waterfalling from its windows. Fern had her by one hand, the other held over the top of her stomach.
Rocks ricocheted off planks on the back wall of the Home and hit the girls around them with meaty smacks. Zinnia grabbed Laurel as they went by, and she caught a flash of Hagar herding Petunia and Holly through the kitchen door. Rocks smashed the wood with solid bangs, then hollow booms, then wore the boards to splinters as they rained mercilessly down.
Clem stood in the door of the Smoke Shack, screen door held wide, waving her arm in a big circle, shouting, “In here!”
A rock hit Fern in the back of the neck, and it felt like she’d been pecked by an enormous bird. She tasted blood in her throat, then Clem pulled her and Zinnia inside and they got shoved to the center by all the girls crowding in behind.
Rocks smashed the tin roof of the Smoke Shack in an endless drum solo that kept getting louder and more frantic as rocks sliced through the screens, leaving them swinging like limp curtains. Rocks cracked against the concrete floor and shot off in all directions, catching girls in the shins and the tips of their exposed toes.
Someone screamed high and clear at the edge of the Smoke Shack, cutting through the relentless thunder of stones on the tin roof, and they turned and saw Ginger pointing and screaming at Willow, still in the yard, down on her knees, trying to get up, gravel coming down hard on her back. Zinnia took a step toward the door then Miriam was by Willow, holding an open umbrella over her head, lifting Willow by one arm, and Hagar was beside them with an umbrella, too, and they picked Willow up and she was trying to move her feet as they dragged her to the Barn. By the time they reached Iris, cowering on its front step, the fabric of their umbrellas had been slashed to tatters. They crowded Iris inside the Barn and dragged Willow in after, leaving their ruined umbrellas behind them on the ground.
Rocks thundered onto the roof of the Smoke Shack, making it too loud to talk, and glass shattered above them. The tin roof sounded like someone was pouring a never-ending dump-truck load of rubble on it from the top of a cliff, and the metallic roar made everyone’s ears ring. A rock nipped Fern’s ankle and the stones kept coming, shredding sheets on the lines, smashing windows, slashing screens.
“I’M SORRY!” Fern screamed. “I’M SORRY!”
She leaned over, eyes squeezed shut, hands over her ears, and her brain wasn’t working anymore, and she screamed over and over again, “PLEASE! I’M SORRY! I’M SORRY! I’M SORRY! PLEASE! STOPPPP!!!”
It stopped.
Silence, then a lone pebble pinged off the Smoke Shack roof. Through the ringing in Fern’s ears she became aware of girls around her weeping and sniffling, and she heard someone groan in pain. Everything sounded so quiet after the fury of the stones.
***
Mrs. Deckle and Diane ferried girls to the hospital all afternoon. They went whimpering and crying, hands pressed to their skulls, arms wrapped around their bellies, and they came back with bandages and stitches. Laurel didn’t come back at all.
Nurse Kent treated girls with simple cuts and bruises in the Barn, which still had most of its glass intact. Zinnia and Fern waited while Holly got iodine dabbed onto the scratches covering her arms, then they gathered in the Cong with the other girls, whispering. It was the only room in the house not full of broken glass.
Slowly, as time passed, their voices got louder and they began to describe the events that morning as a heroic story, telling and retelling what they’d seen, turning themselves into clear-thinking heroines who’d done the right thing. They talked about who they’d saved and what they’d done in a crisis.
The talk turned from the sheer, mind-snapping impossibility of a shower of stones to ways it made sense. Violet said her great-uncle had seen a rain of stones when he was a little boy, and Willow said her grandmother had once seen a rain of fish. Ginger said it was waterspouts. Jasmine said it had rained stones in New Zealand not too long ago, she’d read it in the paper, and Petunia said God made it hail in Egypt in the Book of Exodus. Some of them wondered, in quieter voices, if Laurel’s baby had gotten hurt.
Zinnia, Holly, and Fern didn’t talk. They knew what had happened. They knew why. They needed to talk to Hagar, but they couldn’t find her. Miriam was sweeping up broken glass in the kitchen and she wouldn’t tell them where Hagar had gone.
Then everybody stopped talking because the sound of a familiar car engine came from outside. They looked at each other wide-eyed, then staggered as fast as they could to the front windows as Miss Wellwood’s wood-paneled station wagon pulled up downstairs. Its engine cut off and Hagar got out of the driver’s seat. A second later, the passenger door opened and Miss Wellwood stepped out, dressed neatly in a khaki skirt and blouse, her purse over one wrist. She looked thinner, and Fern thought her skin looked pale. Hagar put a guiding hand on her elbow to help her up the stairs.
As they reached the top step, three police cars emerged from the tunnel of trees. They drove around the live oak and parked all over the front yard. Big men in uniforms got out, putting on their cowboy hats, slamming their doors, calling to each other, trying not to stare at the Home.
A big-bellied man with a gray buzz cut wearing a khaki sports coat strode to the bottom step and he and Miss Wellwood talked, gesturing up at the Home, then he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The cops started drifting into the backyard.
“Come on,” Hagar snapped from the door of the Cong. “Sister and I’ve got brooms and dustpans. Y’all need to sweep all that broken glass up out of your rooms.”
The girls all wanted to be in the back of the house, anyway. They’d never seen this many men at the Home before, and it terrified them and excited them and they couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next.
Mostly the policemen walked around the backyard picking up rocks, bending their heads over them, then dropping them back in the grass. They walked to the tree line, then beat a retreat as blackflies swarmed. They formed clusters and shared cigarettes, mopping sweat off their faces, chatting like Sunday social hour.
Buzz Cut hollered and waved with both arms, and the police made a ragged line facing the trees and took out their nightsticks. They tied handkerchiefs and bandannas over their faces for the blackflies, then marched into the forest, swinging their clubs at the brush. The girls watched them filter into the trees until they disappeared, then started sweeping up the glass.
Fern and Zinnia were just dumping glass off Fern’s bed when they heard raised voices outside. The rocks had torn their screen completely off, so they stuck their heads out and saw an angry Miss Wellwood pointing up over the kitchen door, Mrs. Deckle at her side. Hagar stood in front of her, shaking her head, trying to talk, but Miss Wellwood rolled right over her.
Finally, Miss Wellwood stormed inside and Hagar followed. A moment later, Hagar and Miriam came out with a kitchen chair, and Hagar got up on it and pried the horseshoe off from over the kitchen door. Then they came around to the side door and when they walked back they had that horseshoe in their hands, too.
“They can’t,” Fern breathed. “What’re we going to do?”
Immediately, Mrs. Deckle’s bell started ringing downstairs and girls emerged from their rooms, crowding around the banister, seeing Mrs. Deckle standing at the base of the Pepto-Bismol waterfall, clanging away.
“Assembly in the classroom,” she bellowed. “Immediately!”
The girls jostled down the stairs and squeezed themselves into their desks. Laurel still wasn’t back. Tansy had a bright white square of tape on her forehead. Willow had a bandage wrapped around her entire skull like she’d been in a war. Everyone was speckled with Band-Aids and had patches of skin stained orange by iodine. Miss Wellwood walked to the front of the room. She looked drawn, like standing took all her strength. She didn’t move, and the conversation trickled to a halt.
“This morning,” she finally said, “Wellwood House was attacked by stone-throwing hooligans. As we speak, our local police are searching for the perpetrators. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. Laurel is staying overnight at the hospital for observation but there is no cause for alarm.”
“Miss Wellwood,” Ginger asked, waving her hand in the air.
“What is it, Ginger?” Miss Wellwood replied, in a tone that suggested extraordinary patience.
“Why do you think people threw stones?” Ginger asked. “Those rocks came straight down.”
Girls looked from Ginger to Miss Wellwood.
“I know exactly where those rocks came from,” Miss Wellwood said, and went silent.
The long silence grew. Ginger looked like she was going to say something else, but then, through the windows behind Miss Wellwood, Fern saw the policemen emerge from the trees. Miss Wellwood saw the girls’ faces and turned.
“That is all,” she said, and left the classroom.
Fern and Zinnia just about ran to the kitchen.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Hagar said when they came in the door. “It all had to come down. She counted her silver and found those pieces missing, so we’ll have to dig them up and return that, too. She won’t tolerate root work.”
“But—” Fern began.
“Don’t ‘but’ me,” Hagar said, exhausted. “I’ll think of something. Sister and I always think of something.”
At dinner, Miss Wellwood stood at the head of the table and waited until each girl was at her place, but instead of bowing her head, she looked from one to the other.
“This Home was built by my grandfather,” she began. “And my father used it to help fallen women like yourselves. They were men of substance and character. I have been gone for barely ten days and you have run their reputation into the ground.”
Everyone listened, not sure what they’d done, but they all understood that something bad was about to happen.
“The St. Johns Sheriff’s Department has found evidence of an encampment behind this Home where hippie-class individuals have been gathering and consuming narcotics. The sheriff has received reports of youths engaged in illegal activity all summer but has not, until now, been able to locate their source. The fact that it is near my Home is embarrassment enough.
“However, to make matters even more humiliating, there is evidence that some of you have been sneaking out after curfew to associate with them. I am gone for not even two weeks, for medical reasons, and I return to find that you have dragged my father’s life’s work into the muck. Do you find that amusing, Jasmine?”
Jasmine wiped the smile off her face.
“No, ma’am,” she said.
“I keep a Christian home,” Miss Wellwood said. “I give you a refuge from the world and you stuff it to the rafters with diabolism and superstition. Tonight, your bill has come due. Eat your dinner while I scour this house of your filth. Where evil has been found once, you may always root out more.”
Miss Wellwood left the room and went upstairs. Hagar slammed plates down in front of them. Holly stared into hers, head hung so low her hair trailed in her spaghetti tuna melt. Only Willow ate, unconcerned.
“This is great chow,” she said to no one in particular.
Overhead, feet tromped through their rooms, rooted out their DS, ferreted through their hiding places, exposed their secrets. They finished eating and sat in front of their empty plates and still the search continued. Finally, Miss Wellwood came down with Mrs. Deckle and Miriam behind her, each one carrying a cardboard box. Rose’s lava lamp stuck up from the box in Mrs. Deckle’s arms.
Miss Wellwood lined up the fruits of her search at the end of the table: packets of sugar and salt from McDonald’s, Laurel’s copy of Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs , Jasmine’s garnet necklace, a paperback of Naked Came the Stranger , playing cards, Willow’s Capricorn T-shirt, a clutch of 100 Grand bars, two small bags of Pan Am peanuts, and Rose’s lava lamp.
“Disgusting,” she said. “And disappointing.”
Girls had their privileges taken away. Girls were told their parents would be called. Girls were given extra chores. There was bargaining, and complaining, and whining, but ultimately everything went in the back of Miss Wellwood’s station wagon to be taken to the dump.
Fern didn’t care about the DS, or the books, or even Rose’s lava lamp. After dinner she found Hagar and Miriam in the kitchen, polishing the silver they’d dug up, rinsing it clean of dirt.
“What are we going to do?” she asked, feeling desperate.
The sun had dropped to the treetops and the shadows were long across the backyard. It was already getting dark.
“I don’t know,” Hagar said. “Get out of here and let me breathe.”
“But—” Fern started.
“I don’t know,” Hagar repeated.