“You think you can just leave me here to wait for you? You can think again because I—”
Mama looked surprised when Liam smacked her mouth, but that always happened. While she was crying, he crept down on her, with his hand on the back of her neck, and said soft things.
Then he left, and Mama took off her pretty dress and lay in bed all day. Sad Mama didn’t care when Donal cried, and he cried a lot.
“I’m so alone,” she said.
Donal and I didn’t count.
4
WAVY
July 1977
The first day at the farmhouse, while Liam and Mama screamed at each other, Donal and I hid in the attic. The second day, when Butch came to bring Mama pills, Donal and I hid in the cellar. The third day, I walked across the meadow to see the windmill. I thought that day was my birthday, but I didn’t know, because the calendar at the farmhouse was from 1964.
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.”