It may have been the only thing a half-person like me could ever manage to put together by himself—I had to do all the work inside my mind. But I knew, I absolutely knew, that if I used the half of me that worked I could get it done.
I never questioned how I knew this.
couldn’t walk, but I could always get around. And I was so smart the teachers didn’t know what to do with me. None of that made me safe. The Beast could unbalance my whole world just by tipping over my wheelchair.
He did that a lot, especially when he was drunk. Which was most of the time. But he did it when he was sober, too. He liked doing things like that. Liked showing you who was holding the whip hand. His favorite thing in life was raising fear in others.
ory-boy might have been slow in the head, but he was fast on his feet. Soon as he could crawl, he would always try to scramble away when he heard the Beast coming. But there was no place to hide inside that miserable little shack, and he got hit on plenty.
Whenever the Beast went into one of his rages, Tory-boy would run to me. He never ran to Rory-Anne. He learned real quick that she wouldn’t do anything. But even though I was only a child, and crippled to boot, Tory-boy developed the belief that I could protect him.
Maybe that was because, lots of times, I actually did. I knew that all I had to do was say the right words to the Beast and he’d forget about beating on Tory-boy and go right after me.
And I knew he’d stop a lot quicker if I didn’t cry or scream. When he whipped Rory-Anne, the more she’d scream the longer he’d keep at it.
I think that’s when I stopped feeling the hurt he put on me. After a while, I could see him doing it but it was like I was hovering above it all.
Every time he was finished with me, I would go find Tory-boy. I’d cuddle him on my lap, rub his chest, and whisper soft until he stopped being afraid.
Years before he could understand words, I promised him that, one day, I’d make it stop. All of it.
For good and forever, I’d make it stop.
I chanted it like I was calling up a spell.
I didn’t try praying. I had already figured out that God wasn’t listening.
But once my little brother came, if I could have sold my soul to the Devil to make things right, I would have done it on the spot. And spit in the face of Jesus to seal the bargain.
ory-boy believed anything I told him. He always did. And that was only right, because I never once lied to him.
Tory-boy had faith in me. True faith. I knew even the truest faith couldn’t save people. They’d scream out in church how they’d been saved, but their lives would stay the same misery they’d always been. Nothing would change, yet their faith would persist. Like the people who tore up their lottery tickets and walked away chanting, “Maybe next time.”
I’d had faith, once. The Bible was right about the Beast; I knew that was the truth even before I could read. So maybe God just didn’t think me and Tory-boy were worth saving. But if He created us, how could that be? Why bother to plant rocks?
That was a puzzle I couldn’t solve, so I put my trust where it belonged. Once I accepted Tory-boy’s pure faith in me, it was up to me. Me, alone. My balance wasn’t enough, not then. Even though I was building it, working on it constantly, I knew it would take time for me to get it perfect.
I didn’t have that time. The only person I knew whose world was in balance was the Beast himself. I couldn’t hope to match his balance. Only if I could find a way to disrupt it would he be vulnerable. Only then.
I watched him like he was under a microscope. I not only had to recognize the opportunity to disrupt his balance, I knew I’d only get the one chance to try it. If I failed, I wouldn’t get a second one. The Beast would take me outside, crush my skull with a rock, and tell the Law I must’ve fallen out of my wheelchair.
It wasn’t that I would have minded dying so much. But then Tory-boy would be left without protection. Not from the Beast, not from Rory-Anne, not from anyone at all.
I could not chance that. My plan had to be perfect. It had to throw the Beast’s balance off so bad that he’d never get it back.
Somehow, I knew that that could be done, and that I could be the one to do it. I was always searching for a soft spot. I was … Ah, there’s no truth in nice words. I needed to kill him. But I couldn’t see how to do that, no matter how hard I looked.
It’s a good thing I never needed much sleep—the only dreams I ever had were worse than being awake.
kept studying. After a while, I learned about certain things that would poison a man to death. Plants I could find for myself, right out in the woods. Only, I also learned that it would take a long time—not hours, not days, weeks—for that kind of poison to work. I could cook, but it wasn’t like the Beast was around to be fed every day.
It would only take a few seconds to blind him. I knew what I’d have to mix together to do that, and the Beast slept deep when he was drunk. But it was still too risky—even the smell of my fear might wake him up in time.
And, inside that shack, the Beast could find me and Tory-boy even if he was stone-blind—he’d done that in pitch-tar-black nights often enough.
I daydreamed about getting a pistol. I knew just the place to keep one hid. But I’d never used one, and I’d never get to practice shooting without drawing attention.
By then, I had one thing truly my own. My faith. Not the faith that makes you believe in things you’ll never see, the faith you have in yourself.
By then, I knew all I needed was patience.
And I surely knew I had that by the ton. Patience may be a virtue, but I didn’t need to be virtuous. I had such patience not because I was blessed with it, but because I learned it. When you’re born under a curse, you
iss Webb was almost enough to make me believe there were angels on earth. She was the library lady, just out of the community college, not even twenty years old. Probably the only woman the County Library could find for the money it could pay.
It wasn’t much of a library, and it was a few miles from where we lived, too. At first, I couldn’t get over there but every once in a while. Then the school-bus driver started dropping me off at the library in the morning instead of taking me the rest of the way to school.
I realized that couldn’t have been good luck—I knew there was no such thing, not for someone like me. And, sure enough, I found out later that Miss Webb had talked to him. There wasn’t any point sending me to school when I was way smarter than the teachers. Besides that, some of the kids at school were as cruel as torture itself, and I couldn’t waste any of my mind-time on fixing them—I had to devote every second to coming up with a way to kill the Beast.
I’d read and study at the library every day. All the books I ever asked for were science books—could be anything from physics to botany. Miss Webb never could have guessed what I was trying the hardest to learn from all that work.
The bus driver would pick me up in the afternoon and take me to where we lived. I think he must have been sweet on Miss Webb. It was for damn sure that nobody was paying him to carry me and my chair all the way to the door, both ways, like he did all during the week.
I wished I had a way to show my appreciation for that, besides just thanking him each time—that was nothing but common politeness.
I think the driver maybe even knew that. Because, when I asked him if I could know his whole name, he just said, “Charles Trammel, son. I mostly go by ‘Charley,’ but that there’s my proper Christian name.” I don’t think he would have said all that if he couldn’t tell that I felt bound to repay his kindness in some way.
Everybody at the school knew all about me spending my days at the library. But nobody ever said a thing
