White people in the city might not know or care about the hands, but Craver had always made sure that everybody in town knew what he had working for him in his store. I have no doubt the arrangement with Alvin is the same.
I hear Pea and Craver three aisles over, discussing nebulizers and spray attachments. I think of calling for her. I do think of it. But I lived ten years without her, and danger has surrounded me most of my life. Safety emasculates, I have discovered, far more than hazard, or pain. Safety makes me wonder where she goes for hours, even days at a time with no word. Safety makes me worry not for her, but for myself. Pea is my monster, big enough to scare off all the others. Most days, even the ones I invited myself.
“Alvin, come over here and make yourself useful, boy. The lady needs some sulfuric acid and one of the ten-pound compost bags from out back.”
Alvin jerks at the sound of Craver’s thin needle of a voice and pushes past me. I follow slowly. As soon as Pea sees me her expression flickers—a frown, lifted hopefully, mercilessly erased.
“A new assistant?” I ask Craver, once Alvin has thumped down the back steps.
He lifts his bony shoulders in a speaking shrug. “You know how it is, Davey. People in this town can be old-fashioned.”
Craver doesn’t even look at Pea. As if his reasons for cordially disliking her aren’t every bit as hidebound. Living in sin, he has called it in my hearing, but it is Pea who bears the weight of disapproval. Ever since Adam, Pea said one night. Woman, thy sin is beauty.
That’s not the line, is it?
She had kissed me gently. Course not. A man wrote it, now, didn’t he?
“There’s something strange about him,” I say.
“I’m disappointed to hear that from you, Davey.”
Pea leans against the shelf. “Now, why’s that, Mr. Craver?”
“It’s for Davey to tell you the story, not me, Miss Green.”
I sigh. “The boy told me he has saint’s hands.”
“And our neighbors don’t like that any more than they ever did.”
Pea glances at me. “Is he? What sort of saint?”
“I don’t”—Craver’s self-righteousness snaps like a matador’s cape in Pea’s direction—“see how it matters.”
Pea leans in. “Oh, the kid’s done something, hasn’t he?”
“His gift is a test from the Lord, one I’m ashamed to say most of the men—and women—in this town have failed to pass. If we have not sinned in the eyes of the Lord, we have nothing to fear from Alvin’s—”
An unexpected thud bucks the floorboards. A porcelain elephant topples from a high shelf. Pea catches it without looking. Craver doesn’t notice—the bag of compost has split in the fall, and Alvin stands like a conquistador above the mess and the stink. He looks too young to be so angry. Craver’s wattle trembles. “Boy, what the—”
But the boy only has eyes for me. “Your worst secret, that’s what I know.” He takes a step forward, then another, tracking old manure and death across the paths of my childhood. “Just one little touch and I can tell you. And her.”
My vision narrows to the boy’s hands, as dark as my father’s. Long, tapered fingers and bitten nails. Scars across his palms, ridged but neat and thin. Pea could tell me what kind of knife made those wounds, but I note the deliberation. He is going to touch me with those hands. He is going to know—everything—not even my father—
The smell of blood congealing with the dirt and the shit in the yard behind the goat pen. The sight of it, fresh spilled. A horror distilled through years of grief into something desirable, and so desired. The more I hated violence, the more its evidence attracted me. I killed Victor, and the memory of it makes me stiff and miserable at night in the bed I cannot share with Pea. I love her, even the parts I hate, especially those, and I have never told her. Even she couldn’t forgive that.
A decade ago I met a woman covered in someone else’s blood and she was my darkest fantasy come to life.
She steps in front of me, my beloved, now very far from fantasy. She pushes Alvin against the shelves.
He grunts. “I’ll touch you!”
“Go ahead, kiddo. But if you touch him I’ll break your hands.”
“Now look here, Miss Green, there’s no call to threaten the boy!”
Phyllis doesn’t even hear him. She leans closer to Alvin, who gasps for air and shakes. His hands hover above her bare arms.
“You understand? Dev is off-limits.”
He tries to spit in her face, but it just dribbles down his chin. Phyllis laughs, wipes it with the back of her hand. I should stop her. I am limp with relief. Alvin is as dangerous as Pea. Another monster.
There are tears tracking across the monster’s cheeks. He touches Pea and gasps.
“You—”
Pea takes a step back. “You got me, kiddo?”
He just nods.
“Miss Green, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises! I have promised this boy’s parents that I’ll protect him, and I’m honor bound to do it!”
Pea turns to me and tilts her head in a silent question. “And didn’t you promise Dev’s mother that you would protect him?”
“Davey is a grown man, Miss Green, and Alvin is an innocent child with an important gift.”
“We’re leaving,” she says to me softly. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Don’t hurt him.”
“It’s you I—” She stops herself.
Alvin squats in the spilled fertilizer like he’s forgotten how to stand. “Motherfucker,” he swears, staring at Pea. “Who the hell are you?”
“As dangerous as you wish you were.”
Even Craver has nothing to say. I follow
