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The tattoo of approaching feet on packed dirt stole the denial from my lips. Fear spiked my chest as I turned, my arms wide to protect the girl. The canvas slapped as if caught in a wind, and Apollo came panting into the tent.
“Abel, Abel. Come quick!”
22
IN THE EARLY LIGHT OF DAWN I stared into a ditch stuffed with vines, rotten wood, and last fall’s leaves. A stocky, pale arm with a sturdy hand stuck out of the debris. Crumbs of earth skittered down the bank to the place where Apollo had dug away the leaves. The sting of bile rose in my throat, and I took a step back. I choked the bile down and it burned a hole in my gut.
On the way Apollo had told me how Minnie had woken up crying and insisted he come with her to this place. The distraught Minnie had been left in the care of Bertha and Willie. Moses had accompanied Apollo and me. “It’s bad,” Apollo had told me as we crashed through the riverbank woods. “Awful bad. You’ve got to tell me I’m wrong.”
“Bess,” I whispered now. I could barely hear myself over the rushing river.
“I thought so,” said Apollo, equally quiet.
Moses whimpered like a dog in distress.
“Do you think she drowned?” asked Apollo.
“Then picked herself up out of the water and buried herself in a ditch?” I answered. “I think not.”
For once, Moses had no opinion. He stared, white faced, at the rigid hand.
I forced back my nausea and climbed down the bank to dig her out. She wasn’t buried deep; simply a pile of dead leaves and moss had been scraped over her, and a branch from the cottonwood trees above laid down to keep everything in place. She lay naked, her clothes and necessary articles tossed on top. I managed to wrap her shift around her while I shielded her from the boys and tried, out of respect, not to look at her myself. When I pulled her out of the ditch, her head lolled back to reveal a black, clotted gash under her beard. It was a clean slice; the sort produced by a sharp butcher’s knife—or a razor.
“Someone done cut her throat,” said Moses, finding his voice.
Ceecee. Had he killed on Mink’s orders? I couldn’t prove that. Could a trained lawman? “Maybe we should go to the sheriff,” I said.
“The law don’t like us,” said Moses.
“But Dr. Mink will give him money, and the law will help us,” said Apollo.
Not good. Mink had been in town. Was the sheriff in his pocket? I rocked Bess. “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?”
“Ask Mr. Ginger,” said Moses. “He knows everything.”
Yes, I wasn’t alone. A burden fell from me.
I carried Bess back to our camp. Apollo and Moses followed. We made a solemn parade. I didn’t know whether to cry or rage, so I kept my silence clutched to me, but it burned like a pyre. Bess seemed smaller and lighter than when she had been full of wiry, rude life. Beneath her whiskers her face appeared younger than I remembered. Behind the course exterior that had protected her from the world, she had been a young woman with dreams of the future and an honest desire to collect what she deserved. She had been vilely cut down for that, I was sure.
The children ran from the wagons to meet us, and Mr. Bopp wriggled behind. My breast filled with dread.
“The kids say you found Bess,” Mr. Bopp said eagerly, and then he focused on what I cradled in my arms.
“Is she hurt?” he asked, panic rising in his eyes.
I shook my head, and he must have seen the truth on my face, for the words I could not find were not needed.
“My girl! My sweet puss!” he cried.
Another time this description of Bess would have made me laugh, but now it broke my heart. I knelt and placed her on the ground so he might touch her the best he could.
His cries alerted the others, and Miss Lightfoot came running. I stood to meet her. “Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! My poor little pudding!” she cried. “Oh, the sad little dear!” She yelped when she saw the wound, and pressed her palms to her scaly face.
Bertha gripped Minnie’s hand until the smaller girl winced and struggled, and Willie tried to hug Moses, but the frog boy pushed Willie away. Angry tears tracked his dusty cheeks.
Mr. Ginger wove through the tussocks of prairie grass with arms outstretched for balance, like a bad actor’s rendition of a blind man, and I knew his submerged idiot twin was wide awake. ?
?What is it? What is it?” he asked, no doubt unable to untangle the view from two sets of eyes, but Miss Lightfoot clutched her bodice, too busy wailing to pay him mind; the children were clustered around Apollo, speechless; and Gunther Bopp hunched, incoherent, in his sorrow.
