and again and turned her over. You want to tell me where the money is? The money he gave you? Oh, you do? Oh, you do now? Where? He ripped the tape away. She couldn’t talk, then she gasped out, My car.
He would have killed her then, I think so, but the baby moved. The baby cried out and blinked, looked into his eyes without understanding. Ah, he said, well isn’t that. Isn’t that.
Don’t talk no more. I don’t want to hear it, he said to Mayla. You are still money in the bank, he said to the baby. I am taking you back with me . . . unless you, dirt. He rose and kicked me and went over and kicked her so hard she wheezed. Then he bent over and looked into my face. He said to me, I’m sorry. I might be having an episode. I’m not really a bad person. I didn’t hurt you, did I? He picked up the baby and said to the baby in a baby voice, I don’t know what to do with the evidence. Silly me. Maybe I should burn the evidence. You know, they’re just evidence. He put her down gently. He uncapped the gas can. While he had his back turned and was pouring the gas on Mayla, I grabbed his pants and put them between my legs and I urinated on them, that’s what I did. I did! Because I’d seen him light his cigarette and put the matches back into his pocket. I was surprised that he didn’t notice that the pants were wet with urine, but he was absorbed in what he meant to do. Shaking too. He was saying, Oh no, oh no. He poured more gasoline over her and splashed gas on me, too, but not the baby. Then, then, when he couldn’t start the fire with the matches from his pants pocket he turned and gave the baby a heavy look. She began to cry and we—Mayla and I—lay perfectly still as he went to comfort the baby. He said, Sshhh, sshhh. I have another book of matches, a lighter even, down the hill. And you, he shook me and said into my face, you, if you move an inch I will kill this baby and if you move an inch I will kill Mayla. You are going to die but if you say one word even one word up in heaven after you are dead I will kill them both.
I poured myself a bowl of cornflakes and a glass of milk. I put half the milk on the cereal, sprinkled sugar on the cereal, and ate it. I filled the bowl with cereal a second time and drank the sweet milk from the bottom of the bowl and finished off the glass. I dipped a wide-mouth jar into the bag of dog food in the entry, filled Pearl’s bowl, and gave her fresh water. Pearl stood by me as I spray-soaked the garden and the flower beds. Then I got on my bike and went to work. I saw my father before I left. He had stayed in the bedroom with my mother. He’d sat up next to her all night. I asked him about the file, and he told me that my mother wouldn’t talk about it. She needed to know the baby was safe. Mayla was safe.
What do you think’s in that file? I asked.
Something to work with.
And Mayla Wolfskin? What about her?
She went to school down in South Dakota, said my father. And she’s related to your mother’s friend LaRose. Maybe that’s why your mother won’t see LaRose—she’s afraid of breaking down, of saying something.
That’s not what I meant. What about Mayla Wolfskin, Dad? Is she alive?
That’s the question.
What do you think?
I think not, he said softly, looking down at the floor.
I looked down at the floor, too, at the swirls of cream in the gray of the linoleum. And the darker gray and the small black spots a vertigo surprise once you noticed. I perused that floor, memorizing the randomness.
Why would he kill her? Dad?
He put his head to the side, shook his head, stepped forward, and put his arms around me. He held me there, not speaking. Then he let me go and walked away.
When I got to Whitey and Sonja’s station I parked my bike beside the door, where I could see it, then I started my chores. Whitey had a short-wave receiver that picked up