Nobody looked for me in the meadow. Not Donal, who wasn’t old enough to walk. Not Mama, who was sleeping while Donal cried. Not Liam, who had business to take care of.
Nobody looked for me until the Giant came at sunset.
I was walking back to the farmhouse to feed Donal, when a headlight bobbed up the road. I ran to where the meadow touched the road and stepped out to watch the motorcycle roar past. The Giant turned his head to look at me and his hair fluttered like starling wings. Gravel spit out of the wheels and then the motorcycle skidded and fell. The Giant tumbled off and the bike slid into the meadow, still rumbling, its tires spinning.
When I got to him, the Giant was lying in the road with his arms and legs spread out. I don’t know why I wasn’t afraid. Maybe because he was so big. Bigger than everyone who made me feel small. Maybe because the sky was purple-blue-red-orange and the moon was a tiny sliver of fingernail. I squatted beside him and touched his shoulder, where his black T-shirt was dusty. Three long scratches ran down his left arm and dripped blood on the road.
He opened his eyes and whispered, “Sweet Jesus. Are you real?”
I nodded. It was safer than talking. Words were complicated and you had to open your mouth. Things could get in you that way, too.
The Giant sat up. He cupped a hand under his elbow and winced.
“Where did you come from?” he said.
I pointed toward the farmhouse.
“You’re not an angel?”
I shook my head.
He had to let go of his elbow to get up on his knees. Air hissed out between his teeth and his arm hung down limp. The Giant needed me, the way Donal did. That made me brave enough not to run away when he laid his hand on my head.
“You got leaves in your hair,” he said.
He picked them out with his big, shaky hand. When he looked at me, I looked back. His eyes were so soft, I was sure he wouldn’t get inside me like an infection. Not like Liam and his hard blue eyes.
Silly to think I could help a giant, but I put my arm around him, and he leaned on me. Quick, so he wouldn’t catch me, I breathed him in. His oily hair smelled of mint and dirt and blood. Then he got on his feet, and I put my face close to his T-shirt to fill my nose with the rest of him. Sweat and gasoline and something delicious: bacon. Together, we shuffled toward the bike, because his ankle was hurt, too.
“Can you turn it off, get the key out?” the Giant said.
On the end of the key chain swung a little silver skull. He didn’t have a hand to take it, so I tucked it into his jeans pocket. His belt buckle was big and silver with three cloudy-red stones. Like Orion’s belt.
With his hand on my shoulder, we walked up the road to the house. He talked the whole way. Grandma talked too much, afraid of quiet, but he wasn’t. The talking was for me, to make me feel safe.
The Giant told me about the bike. A Panhead. Seventy-four cubic inches. Custom paint job. Probably fucked all to shit. He said I surprised him, standing in the meadow with my hair blowing. Like a fairy, he said.
When I touched the big tattoo on his arm, he told me about it. Horseshoe, lucky clover.
“I tell you, I’m not feeling like a lucky motherfucker today,” he said.
He asked me if I’d seen foxes in the meadow, but asking was only to leave a quiet space for me to say something if I wanted. At the stone steps that went up from the road to the house, he sat down, holding his arm tight and breathing hard.
“Can you go call somebody for me?” he said.
The phone was on the kitchen wall. I knew how it worked, but I never used it. You can’t smell people on the other end of phones. And ears are openings for things to get in you.
Blood ran out of the Giant’s head and his T-shirt drank it up. Something white that I thought was a bone poked out of his arm. I nodded. He told me the numbers. Then he wrote them out with his finger on my arm in streaks of blood.
“Do you know your numbers?” He thought I couldn’t read, because I was small.
To show him I understood, I put my hand up to my ear to make a pretend phone. Then I thought of a problem.
“You?” I said.
“I’m Kellen. Jesse Joe Kellen.”
I started to go, but he said, “Wait. What’s your name?”
I’d never said it before. I tried it once without sound to see how it felt in my mouth. Then with breath: “Wavonna.”
“You go call for me, Way-vonna. Tell ’em what happened.”
I ran up to the house and dialed with a shaky finger, turning the little circle and waiting for it to chatter back around after each number. Ring, ring, then click and someone breathing.
“Who is this?” Liam said. A cold shiver went all over me. Liam not to be trusted. “Who the fuck is this?”
My throat felt so tight, I didn’t know how the words would get out. I swallowed them down, over and over, until they finally came out.
“His bike wrecked. Kellen.” Saying his name, I knew the Giant was worth the danger of Liam talking in my ear.
“Vonnie? Is that you? Where the fuck is Val?”
“Sleeping. Kellen wrecked. On his bike.” The words hurt my throat, like a cracker going down the wrong way.
“Goddamn, I’m coming. I’ll send someone.”
“Fast. He’s bleeding.”
I hung up, grabbed the dish towel, and ran back to the Giant. Kellen. The sun had gone down while I was inside, so he was a shadow and my dress flashed white in the moonlight.
“You called?” he said.
I nodded. As gentle as I could be, I wrapped the towel around his arm. Blood soaked through the towel and dribbled into my hand. I crouched in front of him, watching his eyes go far away. He was getting lost.
“Kellen.” I put my hand on his cheek and brought him back to me. When I pointed up to the North, he turned his head to look. “Cassiopeia. Andromeda. Perseus. Cepheus. Cygnus. Ursa Minor.”
With the sun gone, we could see all the stars, and the planets, too. Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, like stairs from the moon down to the meadow. I kept naming them until I heard a car coming up the road.
After Liam and Butch took Kellen away, I thought about how he left spaces for me when he talked. If I saw him again, I decided I might put words in those spaces.
5
KELLEN
August–October 1977
I woulda gone the next day to see the girl in the meadow, but the bike wreck about turned me into hamburger. I ended up with a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, three busted ribs, a twisted ankle, and my arm broken in two places with the bone poking out. After I spent a week in the hospital, it was another two months before I could do any work for Liam. Two months cooling my heels at Cutcheon’s Small Engine. The old man was decent to me and I liked the work. You spend the day putting engines together, you go home feeling like you done something worthwhile.
Once I was healed up enough to be any use in a fight, I did a few runs for Liam. Me and Butch took this slicked up Monte Carlo to Des Moines, trunk full of meth. Good money.
The summer was near gone before I made it back up to the farmhouse. Nobody answered when I knocked, but the door was unlocked. Soon as I walked in, the stink of dirty dishes hit me. The kitchen sink was full of them, with flies buzzing on rotten food. All these bowls and glasses with mold growing in the bottoms.