Annabel Lee Read online

  That thought made her angry all over again. A verse flashed through her mind: Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you . . . She sighed. She knew that the guilt she was feeling was undeserved, and she was grateful that God continued to console her in moments like this, but it was never easy, not anymore. Suddenly the anger she felt simmered down into its more normal state: persistent sadness, hidden away, but ever-present nonetheless.

  No root of bitterness, she prayed. Gonna need your help on that one, Jesus.

  Now, two years and some months after the divorce, she was halfway through her thirtieth year, single, childless, and still trapped in the cycle of Samuel Hill’s lies.

  Trudi pulled open the low drawer on her desk, then adeptly popped up the false bottom inside. She looked at the key and the note that still lay in there. Tokens from Truck, she was sure. Tokens that Samuel had disguised as a present for her and left in her safekeeping. Well, she’d kept them safe, all right, even from her beautiful, lying, irresistible, pig husband.

  She checked the clock.

  Any time now, Sam would open the collector’s edition of the Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. He’d gently pull away the thick end papers inside the back cover of the book, remove the thin cover to the false bottom hidden there, and peek inside for his little treasures hidden years ago. And when he looked into that tiny compartment, he’d realize that she also had found that hidden place, that she’d taken that precious key and half sheet of paper out of the book and secreted them away to somewhere else.

  Then he’d be back, and she didn’t know why that made her both happy and sad. So she just looked at it as cold, hard fact. He’d be back, and their little dance would go on once more.

  She sighed. She was in no mood to start real work yet, not with the knowledge that any minute now her ex-husband would fill her doorway once more. So, she spilled open the day’s Journal-Constitution and, as was her custom, looked first in the classifieds section of the paper.

  She scanned the personals until the familiar advertisement came into view. It was only one line, easy to miss. In fact, she almost did miss it this time, because whoever the anonymous ad buyer was, the message sent out to the world this day was just a little bit different. Just a little bit changed.

  Trudi forced herself to look at it a second time, unable to believe her eyes, unsure that it was the same one she’d read for so many months. But yes, there it was, written plainly in black and white for all the world to see. Only this time, for the first time, it read Unsafe.

  10

  Annabel

  Date Unknown

  When I close my eyes and listen hard to the world around me, sometimes that world explains itself to me in ways I can’t describe.

  Uncle Truck calls it a “gift of faith,” meaning it’s something he don’t understand but has learned to trust about me anyway. It’s not a thing I can make happen, or even control, but sometimes it works, and when it works it helps me figure out whatever is the problem I’m facing at that moment.

  Truck first caught me doing it when I was learning Creole, when he was quizzing me hard on phrases like “Ki jan lwen soti isit la Port-au-Prince?” I was only about six years old. I took a moment to close my eyes and think about it, and the words just kind of lined themselves up in my head, first a row in Creole, then rows in English, German, and Italian. So, with my eyes closed, I read ’em all back to Truck.

  “Ki jan lwen soti isit la Port-au-Prince?” I said. Then, “How far from here to Port-au-Prince? Wie weit von hier, um Port-au-Prince? Quanto dista da qui a Port-au-Prince?”

  When I opened my eyes, Uncle Truck was just staring at me with his mouth hung slightly open. “We’re done for today,” he said. Then he got up and left me chanting Creole nursery rhymes while I played with my dolls.

  After that, I heard him start telling folks I was some kind of supernatural at languages. I didn’t tell him that it wasn’t just languages that explained themselves to me sometimes. It was just the world itself that opened up for me, almost like a book telling secrets on itself. Anyway, Truck didn’t care. He was just stuck on learning me how to talk in different parts of the world. He was pretty smart with languages himself, and I guess he wanted me to be like him.

  Pretty soon, he insisted that twice a week, sometimes more, he and I would sit down and study some kind of foreign tongue. He said it’d come in handy someday, so I followed his lead and tried to learn. Actually, I enjoyed it. Truck was a good teacher, and I was a fast learner. It was a good combination.

  Some days he’d read me a fairy tale in Arabic and then ask me what happened. And sometimes, just by listening to the rhythm and inflection of the words, I could tell him at least part of it.

  In my mind’s eye, I’d see a sheik or a jinn or a beautiful, sand-skinned maiden having an adventure out somewhere in a desertlike place, so I’d tell him what I was imagining inside my head. He liked it when I could tell him what he was saying, even when I didn’t actually speak that language.

  Then he’d crack down and make me learn lists of boring things like verbs and nouns and tenses and such. Some days he’d speak to me only in Creole, or only in Arabic, and expect me to figure out what he was saying. Most times I’d get it by the end of the day, even if I was slow at it in the morning.

  The week of my eleventh birthday he spoke nothing but German to me for seven whole days. Just started jabbering at me first thing in the morning, with no warning whatsoever. When he finally came back to English on the eighth day, it was actually hard for me to transition back. I’d spent so long speaking German that I’d started to think in German. I had to translate backward for a day or so before it came natural to me again.

  I learned a lot about languages from Truck, I know, but it was always easier for me to understand a language than it was to speak one. And growing up in southern Alabama ruined me for English anyway. Truck said it was because I was surrounded by ignorant farmhands who spoke nothing but redneck. I guess that means sometimes I talk redneck when talking American, but the foreign words I say right ’cause I learned ’em right. Whatever.

  Even with the foreign stuff it was easy for me to forget those lists of verbs and nouns when they didn’t seem important. Really, growing up on a farm in Alabama, when does it seem important to remember a list of common Haitian kitchen nouns?

  But sitting in this hotbox of a bunker during my second awake time, I was wishing I’d paid better attention to all those times Truck drilled me on German verbs. I was wishing I could remember something more than just how to tell that dog to be still or sit down. I was wishing I could make that dog talk to me—in any language—just so I could hear another voice besides the scared little one in my head.

  “Why’s it so hot in here?” I said to the dog again. And once more, it just stared at me without moving away from its post by the front door.

  Truck must’ve been heatstroked when he told me to bring a coat down here, I thought.

  I was tempted to strip down right to my skivvies, it was so hot, but somehow that seemed disrespectful to my uncle, so instead I just took off my shoes and socks. I tossed them, along with that useless coat, on the top bunk of one of the sets of beds. That felt better. The floor was actually cool to the touch, which was helpful.

  I splashed some water out of the dog’s drinking bucket on my face and hands and looked around. I kept thinking I should clean up that vomit spot by the door, but that dog didn’t look like it’d be happy about moving, not just yet. I decided to let it go, as now I was actually used to the smell enough not to notice it. It was pretty faint by this time anyway.

  I looked hard around the room but couldn’t find any kind of temperature control anywhere. Truck must’ve figured it wouldn’t be necessary, socked down here in the earth like I was. But something had to be warming up the room, and I needed to figure out what it was.

  I put my hand on the wall behind the bunk beds. Warm, but not blazing. I climbed up on the top bunk and
felt the temperature rise in the air around me. I put my hand on the ceiling.

  Hot. Not enough to burn my hand, but definitely hotter than the wall and floor below.

  I closed my eyes.

  At first, nothing happened. Then I imagined I was seeing heat waves like little squiggly lines in the air. It seemed like they were dropping, fire-red and burning, from the ceiling like snowflakes, or whatever the opposite of snowflakes would be. As they dropped through the air, they’d cool a bit and change until they met little blue, cold squigglies floating slowly up from the floor.

  I opened my eyes. I couldn’t be sure, but my best guess was that something upground, something on the surface above me, was sending those red squigglies shooting through the earth and toward this room.

  That couldn’t be good.

  I started imagining what it might be like if that ceiling above me broke under the weight of all those red squigglies, if it collapsed right on top of my head. The thought of it almost panicked me again. I felt myself chopping at breaths. That’s a good way to pass out, Annie-girl, I thought to myself. I tried to concentrate on taking in air like a normal person. I wasn’t perfect at it, but at least I wasn’t chopping oxygen no more.

  I ain’t much of a praying girl, leastways not enough to be on a first-name basis with any fine deity out there. I mostly think of myself the way Truck describes himself, agnostic. I ain’t convinced that there is a God, but I ain’t willing to bet much that he don’t exist neither. Still, whenever I get into a fix that I can’t worry through, I almost always feel the urge to ask Somebody out there for a little help. I figure that’s something I’m going to have to deal with sooner or later. I think later.

  I caught my breath and let it out, unaware that I’d been holding it in so long. And I let that breath be a prayer, one without words, ’cause I didn’t know who to talk to or what to ask exactly anyway. Nothing happened, except that I started to breathe more normal, at least for now.

  I splashed more water on my face, but by now the bucket was so lukewarm it hardly made a difference. I thought about dropping the bucket back in the well to get fresh water. That’d be colder, right? But the heat and the weight of the red squiggles was weighing down on me something fierce. It felt like something that was just sapping all my energy, all my strength, right outta my bones. I sat on the bottom bunk of one of the beds. I wanted to cry, but there was no tears available to spill outta me. I licked my lips and felt dryness forming at the back of my throat.

  Before I could notice what was happening, that dog was standing beside me.

  I jumped up and succeeded in bumping my head on the bunk above me. I started breathing funny again, but the dog just stood there. It wasn’t snarling, wasn’t growling, wasn’t showing me his teeth.

  “What you want, Dog?” I asked.

  The dog took a quick step toward me and nudged me with his nose. I seen it was careful to keep its jaw locked near my hanging hand. The dog nudged me again.

  German shepherds, I heard once, got their name from what they did, shepherding sheep all over the German countryside. Maybe the way they shepherded them sheep was by growling and snarling . . . and nudging strays from the herd with a big black nose.

  I followed the nudge, took a step to the right. The dog seemed happy about that. It jumped onto the bottom bunk behind me and nudged again, this time on my shoulder, pushing downward on me with the bottom of its chin. I couldn’t think of anything better to do, so I squatted down to my knees. It nudged my shoulder again, so I leaned in lower, and when I did, I felt coolness a-comin’ off the floor underneath the bed.

  “You want I should get down under here?” I said.

  The dog jumped off the bunk and now pushed its side against me, pushing harder like it was trying to cram me under the bunk, like I was dirty laundry it was trying to hide. I ducked my head and rolled down under until my back touched the wall. The wall down here was gratefully cool, and the floor still gave off a mild chilly air as well.

  “I get it,” I said to the dog, who was now sniffing its nose at me under the bunk. “Cool air is getting trapped down here, low to the ground and covered up by the bottom bunk.” I laid flat on the floor and welcomed the relief it brought. It wasn’t quite like sitting in front of a window air conditioner, but it was certainly better than standing in that invisible oven out in the middle of the room.

  The dog let out a sigh and placed its body down on the floor beside the bunk. At first that panicked me a little. Then I realized the animal was taking the hot spot, using its body to block red squigglies from following me under this bed.

  “I guess you’s a pretty smart dog after all,” I whispered. Or maybe some God out there answered my prayer. I didn’t dare say that last part out loud, ’cause I didn’t know what I’d do if it was true.

  My stomach growled, and my body felt dehydrated. I’d have to eat something soon. I guess I’d have to feed that dog something too. But for now, I was just gonna lay here and let the world cool off just a little bit before I did anything else.

  I closed my eyes. A wash of vertigo passed over me, so I closed my eyes tighter.

  I got no idea how long I slept after that.

  11

  The Mute

  Sunday, September 6

  Some people hated Denny’s restaurants.

  They said they were generic and tasteless and a perfect example of everything that’s wrong with America’s cookie-cutter corporate mentality. But The Mute liked these places. Liked the basic, starchy food. Liked the antiquated atmosphere that tried so hard to be modern. Liked watching average American families swallow down plate loads of pancakes and Lumberjack Slams and burgers and country fried steaks and milk shakes and whatever else was bad for you that they found on the menu.

  He didn’t even mind the mildly racist reputation that dogged the restaurant chain and was (mostly) undeserved. Sure, sometimes here in the South, an older waitress might frown at the sight of his coffee skin, might let his eggs get cold before dropping them at his table. That stuff happened everywhere, and it was nothing compared to what his mama had faced growing up during the age of segregation, or what his great-grampy had lived before, during, and after the Civil War. And besides, Denny’s really did make the best grits anywhere in the nation besides Mama’s kitchen. As far as The Mute was concerned, a good helping of steaming, Southern-style grits covered over a multitude of sins.

  That’s why he didn’t find it an awful chore to come into the Denny’s on Daniel Payne Drive in Birmingham four days in a row. The only thing that really bothered him was that, for the fourth day in a row, no one had shown up to meet him.

  Truck’s instructions had been the same for years. When Fade thirteen had to go into Plan B, The Mute was to send out the “unsafe” notice, go to Birmingham, and wait for the meeting. At Denny’s. Sergeant Truck had thrown that in as a favor to The Mute. And so, every day since last Thursday, The Mute had entered Denny’s at 9:00 a.m. He’d sat at the same table, ordered the same steak, eggs, grits, and black coffee, and waited a full hour for someone to arrive. He didn’t know who it would be or even whether the person would be male or female. He just knew that Truck had said someone would come. So he waited.

  “Table for one again, honey?” the hostess said when he entered the restaurant. She was one of the nice ones, though familiarity had made her a little flirty. The Mute nodded. “Well,” she said with a grin, “I’m off tomorrow, so maybe I’ll come in at nine and get us a table for two then.”

  She laughed at her own proposition and let a hand stray down his left bicep. He smiled appreciatively but didn’t give any other encouragement. He hoped that was enough.

  “This way, sugar,” she said cheerily, leading him to the booth by the window he’d now claimed as his own. “Delores will be your waitress this morning, and she’ll be right over with the coffee.”

  The Mute pretended to study the menu when he was actually checking out the clientele this Sunday morning. A few families at tables
in the back. A young guy by the counter, hugging his coffee cup and looking just a little hung over. A middle-aged woman reading the newspaper and eating by herself. No, check that. A middle-aged couple, evidenced when a man, recently out of the bathroom, slipped in across from her in the booth and reached for the sports page. And that was it.

  The Mute peeled off his jeans jacket and laid it on the seat beside him. Today he was dressed to blend in. T-shirt touting some world tour of a now-nostalgic 1980s band. A light blue overshirt, unbuttoned and untucked. Denim jeans. The only thing some might find out of the ordinary were the army boots tucked under the pant legs of his Levi’s 501 blues, but this was Alabama. Even white kids from farm country wore army boots like tennis shoes in this part of the world.

  “The usual today?” Delores asked, turning over his coffee cup and filling it with black, steaming liquid. She didn’t bother to ask whether he wanted cream or sugar. The Mute nodded, and Delores said, “Have it for you in a jiffy.”

  The Mute sipped the bitter brew Delores had left behind and gazed at the door. Without really thinking about it, he tapped the ring on the middle finger of his left hand against the warm cup in his right hand. He glanced down at the insignia etched into the heavy silver band and felt a familiar flush of pride. It was two silver arrows, crossed with a silver dagger, and laid upon an encircling black ribbon. Written on the ribbon were the words De Oppresso Liber, and together they made up the emblem and motto of the Army’s 1st Special Forces Regiment.

  De Oppresso Liber, he thought. To liberate the oppressed. He hoped that was what he was still doing. But in order to do that, someone had to show up at Denny’s. Soon.

  He cursed to himself.

  At 9:15 a.m., Delores dropped off his steak and eggs and grits—still warm from the kitchen—and left a bottle of ketchup nearby out of habit. The Mute picked up a fork and, just for a moment, let the food feed both his soul and his body.