Bent Road - Lori Roy [44]
Holding his breath, Daniel thinks he hears something. It sounds like metal clanking against metal, like a chain tangled up with itself. He crouches down, pressing both palms on the ground. The back door doesn’t seem so far away now. He could run to it, reach it in a dozen steps, but he can’t move. Yes, that is the sound of a tangled-up chain, broken handcuffs. He hears breathing—heavy, hot, long breaths—and footsteps crushing dry dead grass, footsteps kicking up gravel.
Hoping to see that Aunt Ruth and Mama are watching him through the screened door, he glances at the porch, but sees no one. Aunt Ruth’s stomach is beginning to swell but she covers it with aprons and Elaine’s skirts that she cinches up at the waist with safety pins. “You’re in charge,” Dad had said to Daniel before leaving. Mama had smiled and brushed the hair from his eyes. For a moment, Daniel imagines Julianne is sneaking around the side of the house. He could be the one to find her. He’d be a hero and kids would like him without even caring how good of a shot he is. Daniel drops his head again, knowing the breathing and chains and footsteps are closer even though his heartbeat has filled his ears. He decides it can’t be Julianne because she wouldn’t be wrapped in chains. He inhales, raises his eyes first and next his chin. Still crouched, his palms pressed to the ground, he cries out and falls backward.
“God damn,” he says. “Good God damn already.”
Standing at the corner of the house, her head inside the yellow cone of light, Olivia the cow looks down on Daniel. She seems to nod at him, and then she drops her snout to nuzzle the cold, hard ground. Her lead dangles from the red leather neck strap, the buckle and bolt-snap rattling like loose chain. Dad will be angry if he sees someone forgot to take it off.
“Good God damn.”
Chapter 12
Over and over in her head and a few times aloud, Celia says, “It’s the wind. Nothing but the wind.” But she isn’t sure. In Detroit, she feared firebombs, tanks and the Negro boys who called Elaine, none of which banged up against the side of her house. Being so new to Kansas, she isn’t sure what she should be afraid of, but whatever it is, it is walking through her yard. Shivering because she is wearing only a thin cotton dress and no stockings on her feet, she leans forward. On the other side of the screened door, across the driveway, Daniel sidesteps around the house. If he goes much farther, she’ll lose him in the dark. Behind her, Ruth and Evie huddle together inside the back door that Celia made them lock. She cups her hands together and blows hot breath inside them to warm herself.
“Can you see him?” Evie calls from inside. Through the frosty pane of glass, her voice is muted. She has wrapped both arms around Ruth’s waist and must be standing on her tiptoes to see out the window.
Celia reaches to open the screened door, but Evie cries out and presses her face into Ruth’s side.
“Okay, okay,” Celia says, letting go of the cold handle and leaning forward until she feels the imprint of the mesh screen against her right cheek. “There he is. I see him.” Exhaling a deep breath and motioning for Ruth to open the back door, she says, “It’s Olivia. Olivia got out again.”
Ruth flips the deadbolt lock, and Evie skips across the cold wooden floor and lands at Celia’s side. Celia wraps one arm around her and opens the screened door so they can both see. A cold breeze slaps them in the