Chapter 2 #3
Now, when Hess and I harmonized, it was like walking in the woods again. Hess’s voice was lower and steadier, like something made in nature. It surrounded me with its wilderness and put solid ground under my feet.
When our music-making session was over, I’d leave Hess’s room, and the color and stuff of me would fade the farther I got from her, and I’d float like a spirit to my shed.
I could only hear myself, truly hear myself, when I was with Hess. I was only solid in her presence.
One afternoon, I noticed Hess side-eyeing me with this strange look, and after a while, I couldn’t let it go on.
“Hess, just spit it out.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you got something on your mind. Come on. Out with it.”
Her eyes widened. Though she never said anything, I could tell she was startled sometimes by my way of getting straight to the point. It was how I’d been raised. My family wasn’t afraid of being rough with each other, for better or worse.
“Lou, I—” She stopped, took a deep breath. “I was talking to Mrs. Haskins yesterday, and I mentioned you, and she, um, she said she didn’t have any cousins staying with her. She’d never heard of you.”
The floor dropped away, and my body lightened.
She’d found me out.
She would tell the police, and they would lock me up, and I would never make music with her again.
She took me by the shoulders. “Lou, I don’t know what your situation is, but I know it isn’t good. There’s an open room here, and Mom said you can have it.”
I hadn’t met Mom yet, but I imagined she might be singing a different tune if she saw me. “Hess, I don’t have any money.”
“I’ll help you out,” she said simply.
We never talked about it, but I knew Hess came from money.
I could tell in the way she talked and her nice clothes.
Though who she was, the Hess of her, was so much more than that.
She didn’t act like she was better than me, or make fun of me for being a hillbilly.
I could tell she was someone who had made herself rather than being made, which is how I thought of me.
But that didn’t mean I was going to take her money. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t need your charity. I can take care of myself.”
Hess leaned back from me. “So you’re going to keep suffering because you’re too proud?”
I didn’t respond. She couldn’t understand what it was like to have nothing. Taking whatever was offered had put me in this situation.
Hess lifted up my chin so my eyes met hers. “Lou, you’re my friend. Friends help each other when they’re in need. I’m sure you’ll do the same thing for me one day. It’s not about charity.”
The tree on my chest rustled and sprouted little white blooms at the sound of the word “friend.”
But we both knew I’d never be able to return the favor. I had nothing to give. I pulled my chin from her grasp and said, “I should go.” I headed for the door, my face burning in shame.
“No, Lou, you don’t have to go—”
But I was already moving through the house and walking out to the street. As I made my customary loop around the block to throw off the scent, I took the wet, salty shame and boiled it to fury, so by the time I got to the shed, I was steaming. I hurled a clay pot against the wall, shattering it.
What would I do now? Where would I go?
I resolved to leave the next morning and find another shelter, wherever that might be.
But as night descended, I began to shiver uncontrollably.
It wasn’t a particularly chilly night, so I was a bit confused as I stuffed more and more newspaper inside my makeshift sleeping bag.
My head got so hot that my eyeballs burned, and I choked up the remnants of my last Krystal burger into an old watering can.
I curled up on the ground and held myself tight until I passed into a feverish sleep.
I woke hours later with the desperate need for cold, fresh air. I wandered outside the shed and looked up at the stars. They were as bright and plentiful as they were at home.
Across the yard, shining in the starlight, was the tree like the shape of my birthmark. The same tree where my mother died.
And beneath it, like a wedge of fallen moon, was a white dog.
The dog came up and licked my hand, and I followed him to the tree, where he disappeared behind its trunk.
Then another figure emerged, this one a man in a white suit as luminous as the dog’s fur.
I couldn’t make out his face in the shadow cast by the light, but I could feel his gaze like a palm against my cheek.
The tree itself gave off a radiant, restorative energy, and I imagined how much better I would feel if I could just reach out and touch it—
The man caught my hand a few inches from the wood and held it there.
“Not yet, my dear.” His voice was like fork tines scraping against my teeth.
“But why—”
“It’s not your time.”
I tried to protest, but the feeling traveled down my spine, and I fell to the ground, shaking beneath the tree limbs spidering across the brilliant sky.
Then the man receded into the shadows, taking his light with him, and the darkness collapsed around me.