* * *
That night, everything went wrong. Cello watched the flicker of Joanie’s pale jeans dip and turn through the night-dark leaves and rolling-silver tall grass. She didn’t turn around to speak or to look at him, but Cello knew what she was thinking because he was thinking the same: hurry.
Cello tucked the pilfered cuttings from the Vine down the front of his shirt while Joanie’s baby mewled and clutched the folds of his blanket in the wooden crate.
Joanie drew her sign of protection across the box’s splintery side. “We’ll come back. I don’t want any of the Lees to see him. Anyway, we’ll be faster just us two,” she said, her voice dull, her gaze unfocused like a sleepwalker’s. It pinched Cello when she said it; everything about Joanie seemed suddenly so uneven. He tucked the crate into a divot between two blackberry bushes, camouflaging the dreaming baby beneath the stems drooping heavy with fruit.
Their race through the meadow beyond the garden felt endless—they didn’t stop once. The scent of the garden receded as they ran through the ragged plots, and past Sil’s creaking tractor shed, fragrant with diesel. Joanie had arranged the meeting with Franklin Lees, calling him from Letta’s trailer earlier that day—Letta was elsewhere, occupied over one of her fiery concoctions. Cello could hear Joanie’s jolt of satisfaction, even through her panic. Cello hadn’t asked what would happen once the man paid Joanie.
Joanie’s speed was meticulous—consuming. He could hear it in the rhythm of her breath. Every step away from the farm built something else, maybe something safer, something that was theirs. They would be fast; it was only three miles to the Leeses’ farm. Their fast, though, wasn’t fast enough.
Sil found them almost right away. He scooped them up in his truck on an access road off Route 9. He was rough but quiet, almost as if he’d known exactly where they’d be. “Where’s the baby?” he asked, his face grim and hard.
“Over where the creek meets the road,” Cello said softly.
The drive back was so quick it was like they’d barely left. Joanie didn’t seem to care about the inevitable punishment—her feelings were elsewhere. Even the baby’s stirring and fussing couldn’t pull her back into the truck. Cello saw it in the radiant anger of her gaze when Sil pulled her down out of the truck bed. Sil had ruined everything, and she was furious. He pushed Joanie toward the light of the trailer, but held Cello back by the arm. “We’ll let Letta have her turn with the princess here.” Joanie slipped up and away, into the glow of Sil and Letta’s trailer, and Cello buzzed with worry.
Letta knew how to hurt people, but not in the way that Sil did. Sil used his arms and legs, branches and belts. But none of that was as bad as the harm done by Letta. She could wrangle the darkest thoughts into a person’s head and make them believe, believe, that they deserved nothing, or worse, that they deserved everything. People who walked away from a conversation with Letta were always a little bit worse than they’d been before. Cello worried far more about Joanie inside the trailer with Letta than he worried about himself outside with Sil.
Cello understood that he and Joanie could expect the most harm that both of their foster parents could give. He only hoped that Letta and Sil were the only ones who knew what they had done.
“Where’s that worthless grub?” Letta growled out into the darkness.
Sil poked between Cello’s shoulder blades, hard, but it wouldn’t leave a mark. Saving his strength for the real thing, Cello thought. Letta stood in a pool of light streaming from the trailer’s open door. She wore a long, blue dress, and a gold barrette clipped at her temple. “Betrayal in our own home,” she said. “I didn’t believe it—wouldn’t believe what the Vine showed my own eyes and ears. How could you two?” She tossed her head in an exaggerated shake. “Give it back,” she said, terribly quiet.
Cello reached for the bundle of cuttings that scratched against his chest and set it on the ground. Letta lifted it into her arms quickly, holding it like a swaddled infant. “Well, Sil, you found them so quick I think as a reward you should decide what’s next for our Cello.” Letta glared down from a full, glittery face of makeup. “What do you want to do with this ungrateful, skinny shit?”
“We could kennel him for the rest of the night.” Sil swung an arm around Cello’s narrow shoulders.
Letta nodded and smiled so that Cello could see the gilded fronts of her overlarge teeth. “I don’t think that’s quite enough. You know what you need to do, Sil. Just remember, the boy has to work tomorrow.”
“If that’s what you want,” said Sil.
It began out in the still-hot grass beyond the trailer. Maybe there was blood; definitely there would be bruises. Sil finished up with the face, but only a few knocks—again, being practical, Sil aimed for Cello’s cheeks and chin, leaving the boy’s cranium alone.
Cello could feel Sil slowing down, could tell where he was trying to take a break, where his older body was beginning to argue with the exercise. When Cello fell against the grass for the last time, he breathed in the smell of earth and sun, still holding on to that feeling of being alone with Joanie, away from everyone.
“Now Joanie,” Letta said, lighting a fresh cigarette.
“You sure?” Sil called. He didn’t usually hit the girls, and never because it was his idea. Sil was sweating hard—Cello could smell it on him.
“I’m sure, honey,” she said. The smoke fell to the ground around her in a gust of wind. “Come on now, Joanie,” she said. “Your turn.” Letta pointed to where Cello had collapsed, struggling to breathe evenly. Sil had knocked the wind out of him, and now his lungs pushed and pulled and stuck.
“Maybe tomorrow, Letta,” Sil panted. “I wore myself out on this one already.” He gave Cello one more smack on the back as he said it.
“No. It has to be tonight. Now.” Letta pushed Joanie forward into the dim wash of light coming from the other trailers’ windows.
“I don’t know, sweet pea,” Sil called. “She’s too old.”
“You’re never too old to be put in your place,” Letta said. “You—” she pointed at Cello’s curled, exposed back “—move.”
Cello shuffled to the side, but watched Joanie walk toward Sil. The waist of her jeans had slipped down low onto her hips, and the skin Cello saw there—smooth and moonlit—made him shiver.
Joanie stood in front of Sil and pulled her shirt over her head. Cello watched where it fell on the ground. “Go ahead,” she said.
Sil turned his eyes up and away from her body, like he thought it shouldn’t have been out in the dark like that. They all knew that Sil didn’t think it was decent. Letta knew, but it was Sil’s job to keep them at the garden—to keep the garden safe—and he needed his punishment, too.