The cops had left the barn a mess. Crime-scene tape hung from the stalls and across the door. Evidence markers littered the dirt. And no one had filled in the hole where the bones of that woman had been found.
Owen Brandt stared and grunted.
They could at least have done that. Filled in the damn hole. Who wanted to look into an open grave? Who wanted an open grave on their property, like death was just waiting for them?
“I’m cold,” Margi said. “Why can’t we go back to the house?”
“Shut up. I’m thinking,” Brandt said without looking at her.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Me and that,” he said, pointing to the hole.
“What do you care about some dead black woman?” Margi asked. “What does she have to do with you?”
Brandt moved away from her, closer to the hole.
What do those nigger bones have to do with me? The question was eating at him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted even to think about this. He hadn’t thought about it since he was thirteen, hadn’t thought about it for one second since that day Geneva had said it.
You know, we got colored blood in us, Owen. Ma told me once our great-great-great-grandma was colored.
That ain’t true.
Is too.
Is not. I’m no nigger.
He didn’t believe her, didn’t want to believe her, because Geneva was always making up stuff to get him mad. But it had stayed there in his head nevertheless.
“Come on,” Brandt said. “We’re taking a walk.”
He went out the barn door and headed north, across the cornfield. Margi trailed along behind him.
He hadn’t been out to the cemetery since he was a kid, but he could still remember where it was. His old man had always made a big deal about coming out here when the lilac bushes were in bloom so they could lay some flowers on the graves of his own father and mother, Calvin and Muriel.
No lilacs this year. It had been too damn cold.
Brandt stopped on a hill and looked behind him to the south. Through the bare trees, he could just make out the faded red of the old barn.
Margi trudged up behind him, breathless and shivering. “Why are we here?” she asked.
“Because I need to know where I come from,” Brandt said.
He walked toward the creek, to the small clearing where the cluster of old headstones lay half buried in the earth. He remembered where his old man and his mother were, and he went there first. It was a simple gray marker:
JONAH BRANDT
VERNA BRANDT
D: 1967
D: 1957
“That your parents?” Margi asked.
He didn’t turn to look at her, didn’t bother to answer. He trudged to the first row of old headstones and knelt to clear away the weeds. He had to use a stick to scrape the dirt and moss from the etching. Calvin and Muriel. On the stone next to it, only the name of Samuel was visible.
He scraped away at the next headstone until it revealed a name he had never heard before: Lizbeth. He guessed she was Samuel’s wife and moved on. The next headstone in the row belonged to Charles, followed by two people named Amos and Phoebe. They must’ve been the ones to start this farm, since the dates on their stones appeared to be the oldest.
He had vague memories of his grandfather Calvin, but he had never paid any attention to the rest of these people. Never cared before today. Was it those nigger bones in the barn that had driven him here or something else?
“Wow, your family has been here a long time,” Margi said, staring at Amos Brandt’s stone.
“Yeah,” he said.
Brandt pushed to his feet and started walking, kicking at the weeds to see if there were other headstones hidden. At the edge of the clearing, the toe of his shoe hit something hard, and he bent to see what it was. Just a broken piece of granite, inscribed with one name: ISABEL.
Who was this, and why was her stone so far away from the others?
Mama told me once our great-great-great-grandma was colored.
That ain’t true.
Is too.
Brandt brought his heel down hard on the stone. Bits of the edge crumbled away. Three more tries, but he couldn’t smash it. Finally, he picked it up and started to throw it into the trees. But then he looked toward Lethe Creek. He carried the piece of granite down to the bank and heaved it into the water.
“Why did you do that?” Margi asked.
“’Cause it don’t belong here.”
“Why not?”
“Come on,” he said, grabbing Margi’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
He didn’t like going up to the attic, but today he had no choice. That’s where the Bible was. He had seen it up there once, seen Crazy Verna holding it against her chest and praying on it. Like God could actually free her of her demons.
She had shown him the Bible once, shown him where all the names of the Brandt family were written. He hadn’t paid any attention then, but he wanted to see it now, wanted to know if what Geneva had told him was true.
He pulled himself up onto the plywood that covered the beams and looked around. The place was a mess here, too. Boxes everywhere, old books and pictures strewn around like someone had been searching through them for something. Probably that stupid girl looking for a picture of her slut mother, but he had burned them all years ago.
He pushed at cobwebs as he walked to the far corner of the attic. He ducked under the same beam Crazy Verna had hung herself from and knelt next to an old chest. This is where she had kept it, he remembered. But there was nothing but old clothes in the chest now.
He tore through the boxes, throwing the contents aside. But there was no Bible. He stood, panting, his eyes traveling around the attic. There was an old wooden crate wedged under the eave in the corner. He pulled it out. It was nailed shut, and he had to hunt up a hammer to pry it open. He lifted the lid.
Fuck. No photos or books in here, but there was one thing, a thing he had forgotten about. He reached in and pulled out the knife.
It was the one he had used on Jean that night in the kitchen.
When had he put it in here?
That night?
Hell, he’d been so drunk it was possible. He barely remembered cleaning up the kitchen.
He held the knife up to the thin light. It had been his favorite knife, the one he used to skin deer. He had bought it special out of a catalogue, not minding that it cost forty dollars, because when a man was standing out in the freezing cold trying to gut a deer, he didn’t need his hand slipping down the grip.
And that night, when the tip of the blade had broken off in Jean’s belly, it was like she’d taken the one good thing he had left.
Brandt stared at the broken tip, still crusted with her blood.
“Owen? What are you doing up here?”
He turned. Only Margi’s head was visible above the opening. The shadows played across her thin face, and for a second, she looked a little like his mother.
“Leave me alone,” he said.
“What’s wrong with you, anyway? You’re acting crazy.”
You’re acting crazy.
That was one of the last things Jean had said to him. He looked at Margi again. She had crawled up onto the plywood. Verna was there in her lopsided mouth and bony features. Jean was there, too, in her wide, frightened eyes.
“You see this?” he asked, holding up the broken knife.
Margi crawled closer. “You ain’t supposed to have no weapons, are you?” she asked.
“No, I ain’t supposed to have no weapons,” he said, mocking her tone.
“Owen, that has blood on it.”
“It’s her blood,” he said, picking at the crust.
When Margi didn’t reply, he looked up. She had moved away into the shadows and was watching him. Again, it was weird just how much like Jean she was. Weak and scared all the time but still willing to climb into his bed at night and do what she could to make him happy.
“You ever think about leaving me, baby?” he asked.
“No, Owen. Never.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
Brandt beckoned her closer. Margi hesitated, then crawled across the plywood to him. He grabbed the back of her neck and crushed her mouth with his. Margi’s hands instinctively came up against his chest until she realized what he was doing.
He jerked her head back and placed the broken blade against her throat. Her hands flew to his wrists, gripping.
“Owen, don’t.”
“Tell me the truth. Do you ever think about leaving me?”
“No, I love you. I love you.”
He stared at her. Fear colored her eyes a navy blue. Funny, the same fear had turned Jean’s brown eyes black.
“Owen, please,” she whimpered. “I won’t leave you. I’m not her. I’m Margi.”
He shoved her away. Still, the stupid bitch did not make any attempt to leave the attic. She huddled in the corner, holding her throat. For a long time, he just sat there, staring at the knife.
“She was going to leave me,” he whispered.
“Is that why you killed her?” Margi asked.
He looked to her, surprised that she would ask that — or even speak.
“It’s okay if you did,” Margi said. “I understand why you had to. I still love you.”
He held the knife to the sunlight. Still loved him? He didn’t care if she loved him. But he had never told anyone what had happened that night, never given it voice. Maybe that was why he couldn’t find Jean. Maybe if he talked about it, it would make things more real, make her more real.
“I think I killed her,” he said.
“You think?”
“I stabbed her with this,” he said. “Must’ve been a hundred fucking times. In the kitchen.”
Margi was quiet, but he could hear her fast, frightened breathing.
“When the knife busted, I went to the barn to get the axe,” he said. “When I got back, Jean was gone. And there was this long smear of blood on the floor, like she had drug herself out the back door.”
“She got away?”
Brandt rose and walked to the tiny window that overlooked the cornfield. There was no rain today and no mud, but he remembered how it looked that night. Everything a dark, wet blur, making it impossible to see a trail or to find someone who couldn’t have been but a few feet away.
Where had she gone to that night? Where was she now?
“Owen?” Margi whispered.
He didn’t look back at her. This place, these memories and everything else were loosening his mouth, but just as he couldn’t stop thinking about her, he couldn’t seem to stop talking about her either.
“The next day,” he said, “I searched the whole fucking farm for her, but I never found her. For a long time, I figured she made it somewhere and got help.”
He turned away from the window. “I can’t help thinking that she might be alive and living somewhere with another man,” he said, “fucking another man and laughing at me for what I tried to do to her.”
“She’s gotta be dead, Owen.”
“Then where the fuck is she?” he shouted. “You tell me that, god damn it. Where the fuck is she?”
Margi lowered her head. “I don’t know, Owen,” she said. “But you can’t let it eat at you like this. You don’t need to be thinking about her, anyway. You got me now. Ain’t I enough?”
He looked down at the knife blade. He could still see Jean’s face as it was that night when she lay on the floor. Her eyes electrified with horror, the color draining from her cheeks as her heart pumped the blood from her chest.
He stuck the knife into his belt and walked across the plywood to the hole. As he started to climb down the ladder, Margi reached for his arm. He shrugged her off.
“Owen, where are you going?” she asked.
“To walk the farm again.”
“To look for a dead woman?”
He started toward her, but Margi scrambled into the corner. He stopped, let his fist fall. His eyes moved away from Margi, away to the small window that looked out over the fields.
“She ain’t dead,” Brandt said. “She’s out there somewhere, and I’m going to find her.”