Break the Skin (32 page)

“What were you afraid of, Miss Volk?”

“Like I said, we had that plot. Who would’ve believed us if we said we tried to stop it? We did our best to get back to where we were before we cooked it all up.”

“But you were guilty, weren’t you? You were guilty of plotting Rose MacAdow’s murder. You did that, didn’t you, Miss Volk?”

I couldn’t answer. I could only think of everyone I’d lost. Tweet and Rose were dead, and their baby. Delilah and Lester and I were going to prison. At one time or another, I’d loved them all—still did, truth be told.

“Miss Volk,” the State’s Attorney said, “did you conspire with Delilah Dade and Lester Stipp to murder Rose MacAdow?”

It was true. Nothing I could do would change that. It would haunt me forever. I’d never be able to forget everything I’d done or hadn’t done that might have kept Delilah from killing Rose and Tweet. If that hadn’t happened, I might have lived a pleasant life. What good did it do to wonder? Still I’d never be able to stop daydreaming what the years might have been like for me if I hadn’t loved Delilah so much that I burned that black candle and let her believe that Rose had placed a hex on us.

“I’m waiting, Miss Volk.”

The word I knew I had to say would be both true and not true, but in a court of law only the truth would count. I looked out at my mother and Poke and Lester. I looked at everyone sitting in that courtroom—some of them were people from New Hope who’d known me since I was
a little girl. Then I stared a good while at the woman from Texas who’d taken Lester in. I wanted her to know I didn’t blame her. I wanted to tell her I was thankful that she’d given him a place to be and loved the same things about him that I’d remember and treasure the rest of my days. I don’t know if it got through, but I hoped she could read it on my face.

Then I said it. “Yes,” I said. I couldn’t turn away from the fact. “Yes,” I said again, my voice as steady as I could make it. “Yes, I did.”

MISS BABY

September 2010
DENTON, TEXAS

W
hen she looked at me in that courtroom, her stare went all the way to my heart, and I felt what we shared: a desire to be loved. Like her, I knew that anyone’s life could change in an instant. I was guilty, too.

Once upon a time, I saw a man on a street corner in Denton, and before I even knew I was going to do it, I told him he was mine.

Lester Stipp. I’ll never forget him. He’s lost to me now, but I can’t say I’m sorry for any of it. Lordy Magordy.

I had to testify at his trial. I said everything as plain as I could even though it embarrassed me to admit how I manufactured a story for the two of us, how I named him Donnie and came to love him, how I never knew a thing about the life he’d lived in Illinois.

“He was Donnie,” I said, and that was the truth. He was Donnie, and all I knew about him was what I invented.

Then I saw his picture on CNN, and I listened to the story, the real one, and just like that, everything I’d so carefully made began to tear and come apart. The most painful thing of all was what I saw about myself. Once I heard Laney Volk say what she did on the witness stand, I was convinced she knew it, too. It’s a sin to want too much—my
mami
had and so had Pablo. I was no different, nor was Laney or Delilah or Lester. I suspect the same held true for Poke and Rose and Tweet—all these people who now fill me with something I don’t even have a name for, as
I go about my days back in Texas. I still run my shop. I drive to Huntsville on Sundays to visit Pablo in prison. Sometimes Carolyn rides along, or Emma Hart. “Lands, ain’t it strange?” Emma said the first time she had to pass through security into the visiting area. “It is,” I said, and then somewhere along the line, it stops feeling weird, and it’s just what it is. It’s your life, and there’s nothing you can do to change it.

“I never meant for anyone to get hurt,” Laney said that day in the courtroom.

The stories started to come out, stories of how she’d never had a boyfriend until Lester. I heard the people talking in the hallway during recesses. They weren’t buying for a minute that nonsense about him forgetting who he was and running away. He knew what he was doing when he went to Texas. He played that Mexican gal for a fool. Well, he’ll have a good long while in prison to remember exactly who he is. That Laney Volk, too. And Delilah Dade? Look what happens when a woman gets pissed off at a man who did her wrong.

Bernard Goad, still wearing his mailman’s light blue shirt, watched the deputies lead Laney back into the courtroom one day. He shook his head. “Women,” he said, disgusted.

That wasn’t it, I wanted to say. Not at all. Just like a man, I thought, to imagine that it all came down to a broken heart and revenge.

It was more than that. Much more. When Laney looked at me from the witness stand, I tried to set my face in a way that I hoped would let her know I understood exactly how it happened. It was all about wanting to matter to someone, wanting it so badly that you did things you never could have imagined, and you swore they were right, all for the sake of love.

On the day they sentenced Lester, I waited outside the courthouse along with the others, who for whatever reason couldn’t bring themselves to leave even though the story was done. Laney’s
mami
was there. Laney had been sentenced first, and her
mami
was stony faced as the sheriff’s deputies led Lester down the steps. Curtis Hambrick was there
as well—I’d made the acquaintance of all these folks as the trials had gone on—and Poke, who crumpled up against his grandfather and cried in the courtroom when the judge read Laney’s sentence; like Lester, she’d spend seven years in the Illinois Department of Corrections. And there were relatives of Rose and Tweet, broken-down country folks who showed nothing on their faces, saving their rage for Delilah Dade, whose trial was yet to come. It wouldn’t take long, when it finally did, for the jury to find her guilty of first-degree murder. Laney would testify, as would Lester, and the whole story would come out of how she went to Rose and Tweet’s with that .38, how she shot Rose in the face while she was trying to hide under the bed, how Tweet got a hold of Delilah’s arm and tried to get the gun away from her. They came out into the hallway, Lester said, and before he could try to help Tweet get that gun, the .38 went off. The bullet struck Tweet in the chest and sent him backward into the bathroom, where he slumped to his knees and fell across the tub. Yes, Laney said, that’s where he was when she found him, and yes, Rose was on the floor of the bedroom.

So it was over for Laney and Lester—I’d watched with as much jealousy as I felt I had a right to when the two of them caught each other’s eyes in the courtroom and I could see plain as day that they still loved each other. Good for them, I finally told myself. Good for whatever it is that keeps people’s hearts in sync even when trouble comes.

As for Lester and me, there was just this one moment, the one I’ll remember forever. The deputies had him in handcuffs, and they were holding him by the arms as they came down those courthouse steps. I couldn’t help myself. I called his name, and for just the briefest instant he looked at me, and I could tell he remembered all those months in Texas. This light came into his eyes, and his face went soft, and I saw the person who hadn’t lived through any of this mess in Illinois. Just that one moment before the deputies put him in the car when I could tell that whatever we’d had was real.

That was enough, that ache I got when Lester looked at me. I knew
I’d carry it the rest of my days, a reminder of what might have been, starting the next day when I was heading west, gone from that place, plenty of time ahead of me to think about everything I’d lived through, everything I’d heard about Lester, Laney, and Delilah.

Poke and Curtis Hambrick. Ida Henline. Jess and Libby Raymond, and Bernard Goad. Luther Gibson. Rayanne Fines. Oh, I met all those folks from New Hope. They took me into their homes. They held my hand. They said,
Now, listen
, and then they told me their stories.

If I could talk to Rose and Tweet, I have no doubt they’d do the same. They’d tell a story that’d leave me tingling inside my skin, their words like needles set against my heart—piercing, pulsing, marking me as deep as that. A story of love, no matter how roughed up and ugly and stained. A story I’ll call my own. Tomorrow and for always. The truest story I know.

Acknowledgments

I’M GRATEFUL TO
John Glusman, Kate Kennedy, Rachel Rokicki, and all the folks at Crown who have worked so hard to bring this book into the world. Thanks, too, to Sarah Knight, who guided this novel through its early draft. As always, I’m indebted to Phyllis Wender and her assistants, Allison Cohen and Susan Cohen, for all they do on my behalf. A special thanks to my colleague, Manny Martinez, for his assistance with the Spanish that some of my characters use. I knew just enough of the language to make me dangerous, and Manny was there to save me. I’m also indebted to The Ohio State University for the support that granted me the time to finish this book. Joe Oestreich and the excellent band, Watershed, were kind enough to allow me to use lyrics from their songs and to give them a cameo in the novel. Many thanks, guys! Keep rockin’! Thanks, too, to Mary McGlasson and Kevin Ryden for all that they generously shared with me.

Finally, I can’t say thank you enough to Shaye Areheart for her friendship and her wise readings. Her good sense and sharp eye made every page, every sentence, better.

About the Author

LEE MARTIN
is the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist
The Bright Forever;
the novels,
Quakertown
and
River of Heaven;
a story collection,
The Least You Need to Know;
and two memoirs,
From Our House
and
Turning Bones
. He has won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, a Lawrence Foundation Award, and the Glenna Luschei Award. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches in the creative writing program at The Ohio State University.