Keep Mama Dead Read online

  She extended a white-gloved hand. The sleeve of her dress covered her slender arm down to her wrist. She spoke to Thomas, articulating each word with precision, like it was arithmetic and there was only one right way to say something. And she meant to get it right.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Thomas. I’m Sadie.”

  What girl introduced herself like that, offering her first name with such familiarity?

  “Thomas,” Papa said. “Meet Mr. Milne's guest, Miss Sadie.”

  Thomas lifted his hand to shake hers, rather wishing she would remove her glove so he could feel her skin, but stopped short when he noticed the dirt on his hands.

  “I’d hate to get your glove dirty.”

  She cocked her head to one side, furrowed her brow, removed the glove, and extended the hand again. She had fine hands. Long fingers. Smooth skin. Probably hadn’t seen a day of work. Ever. How nice would those hands feel in his? Soft and pleasant.

  “Pleased to meet you, Thomas,” Miss Sadie said.

  "Can't catch a break,” Papa said. “Ever since I failed to get the blessing of persuasion, ain't nothing gone right."

  She raised her eyebrows and extended her hand a little further. He wanted to take it and shake it. And never let go. But he would probably get the frilly cuff of her sleeve dirty.

  What did he look like to her, wearing his faded dungarees and a gray shirt he hadn’t washed in more than a month? And ankle-high boots made of beaten leather, with holes near the big toes. And no socks. How long since he’d had a hair cut? For that matter, when was the last time he’d put a comb through his hair? Or taken a bath? Did his wide-brimmed hat hide any of that?

  "Just look at these here overalls,” Papa said. "Been wearing them for nigh ten years.” Mama had sewn patches over the patches that covered the holes created by his rubbing. He lifted up his boots to show the hole-riddled soles. "And look at these. A man can't work in shoes like that."

  “You wouldn’t work even if you had the right shoes,” Thomas said. He didn’t take his eyes off of Miss Sadie. Heavens, he wanted to touch that hand. How soft would it be? How warm? “It might tax your weakened body.”

  “Now, don’t be rude,” Miss Sadie said. She took a half a step forward and nearly thrust her extended fingers into Thomas’s chest.

  “It’s true,” Papa said. "He's right. Since I didn't get my blessing, I get sick easy. Like I'm on the verge of a deathbed. Can't even work to get up a proper sweat.”

  “Thomas,” Miss Sadie said. She raised her eyebrows again. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Her unyielding gaze seemed to reach up through his own eyes, grab his brain, and squeeze.

  It felt nice. Real nice.

  She moved her hand forward one more time, and actually touched his chest with the tips of her fingers. It felt more like a solid punch from a large man. A faint floral scent emanated from her.

  Thomas couldn’t resist any further, so reached to take her hand.

  Livingstone never returned from Africa, but Stanley did, keeping knowledge of the rites to himself for fear of how the civilized world would react. Yet he couldn’t discount or forget them, and in 1874 returned to Africa to learn more. Would to the good Lord that he’d died there.

  Chapter 2: Dead soon

  Even through the dirt and calluses on Thomas’s hand, Miss Sadie’s skin felt smooth. Soft. He remembered as a child touching Franky’s cheek when he was a baby, and marveling at the softness. He’d thought there could never be anything as smooth as that. But here, Miss Sadie’s hand proved him wrong.

  “Too much work would kill me,” Papa said. A porch board groaned beneath the rock of his chair. “My body tires and I get sick. I try my best to do my work and the part that God gave me in this world, but my body can't take it."

  “The pleasure’s mine,” Thomas said.

  She smiled at him again, her lips closed and her head tilted as if she wanted to view him from a different angle. She probably found him a foolish country bumpkin.

  The thought made him release her hand and tuck both of his into his pockets. Sure enough, he’d gotten dirt on the cuff of her dress, although she didn’t seem to notice. She still held her hand out where he’d released it and just looked at him, like how Franky considered a large fish just below the surface of the water.

  Heat rose in his cheeks, but he didn’t look away. She might be high class and superior, but he wouldn’t show her he felt low class and inferior. He wouldn't show that she'd impressed him.

  She turned her attention to Papa, lowering her hand and raising her chin as she looked up at him.

  "You can't work? Injury?”

  Thomas hadn't noticed it, but at some point Stanley had emerged from the house and stood at the top of the steps. He tilted his head at Miss Sadie as if she'd spoken to him.

  “You might say that," Papa said. "Ever since I went to Zion’s Canyon in 1890 and petitioned for the blessing of persuasion—so I could be a politician—I can't work. My petition done failed, and sucked most of my second-life days out of me, and now I'm weak. Can't hardly lift nothing.”

  "I've never heard of a failed petition doing that."

  Thomas rolled his eyes. “Oh, but it happened. Just look at him. He don't have the strength to work. Why, if he starts to sweat, it’s like he was Jesus, sweating blood in that garden.”

  “Thomas!” Papa said. “Don’t blaspheme.”

  Miss Sadie looked back and forth between them, her eyes calculating. They finally stopped on Thomas, and went to his hat.

  “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a boy wear that color.”

  He blushed again and looked away.

  “Mama gave it to me.”

  When your mother gave you an object, it meant something—even if over the years the red had faded to nearly pink. She’d given the cloth to him when he was two or three, and she always wanted him to have it with him. She would tie it around his waist or have him wear it as an ascot when going to church. Soon he felt incomplete without it. So as he grew, he wrapped it around the base of his straw hat's crown.

  “I’m sorry,” Sadie said, “to hear that she’s...sick.”

  “Fading,” Thomas said. “She won’t live out the day.”

  “Quit your talking like that,” Papa said. “She’ll live. A man’s got to get a break sooner or later, and she’s going to live. I can feel it. Besides, Doc’s coming. Be here by lunch.”

  Thomas rolled his eyes, kept his back to Papa.

  "She done used up her second-life days," he said. "She’s started the fading. Want to see her before she dies?”

  Miss Sadie nodded, so he led her around the side of the house to the back. He looked at his hand, thought of how soft her skin had felt. How her fingers had closed around his palm. Stanley loped alongside them. Thomas could've sworn the dog leered up at Miss Sadie, admiring how her hips moved as she walked, swaying back and forth, leading her way.

  They rounded the side of the house, and the entire western field came into view. It stretched up the ridge’s slope, which turned steeper than in the front of the house, but not so steep as to disallow farming. A narrow lane extended out from the house, separating the south and north portions of the field, which in all spread three hundred yards wide. In both halves, the sun brightened the crests of the furrows and cast shadows into the depressions, so that for two hundred yards, all the way to the line of bushes and cacti at the top of the ridge, stripes of red soil and black shadow covered the land. All except for where the shadow of the house stretched up the hill, elongated and narrowing further up the slope. The size of the shadow made the Baker home appear much grander than it was.

  As they stepped into the coolness of that shadow behind the house, Miss Sadie’s eyes widened. She didn’t seem to notice Mama and Clara May and Mr. Milne standing behind the house. She just gestured at the fields.

  "Do you work all that land?" she said.

  "Yes. Me and Mama."

  Her mouth hung open a bit. "Look at t
hose mountains."

  He nodded, pleased that she’d noticed them, realizing that he almost felt like he owned those peaks. Like they was his mountains. He likely loved them as much as any person, took as much pleasure from them as anyone else.

  "In the early morning,” he said, “ain't nothing like them. How the sun strikes them."

  Beyond the crest of the ridge, past the irrigation ditch, hills of red dirt and rock, spotted by patches of green bushes and sage brush, rose up over each other for a mile, distinct and bright in the sunlight. Further on, the land turned into mountains with steep cliffs and jagged peaks. Some of them still bore snow. A wisp of cloud stretched along the azure horizon.

  Miss Sadie nodded in appreciation.

  “The land is beautiful.”

  “Makes getting up early worth it.”

  In fact, it made just about everything worth the hassle. The land and the farming. Those were parts of life to enjoy. Aspects that gave life spark.

  He regarded the view for a moment, his appreciation renewed and amplified by Miss Sadie’s admiration, then turned back to the people behind the house.

  Mama leaned over the wash basin, which stood against the house, to the left of the open back door. She rubbed a shirt on the washboard, but the basin contained only a hint of water and no suds. Usually, the sound of her scrubbing clothes on the washboard came with the sloshing of water and the rhythm of knuckles rubbing up and down, up and down over the metal. But now she moved so slow that she made no sound audible over the clucking and chattering of hens in their coop. Wasn't no shirt in the world that could get clean with such scrubbing. Thomas had never seen her move like that.

  Mr. Milne stared at her with a flat expression. "She's faded further than I feared."

  He stood behind Mama, frowning, his back toward the fields. He always looked serious because of the pock-mark scars covering his cheeks, but now his eyes held no mirth like usual. They burned hard and cold. Fearful.

  On the right side of the back door, half a dozen feet from Mama, Clara May sat on a little stool in front of the chicken coops. A pair of baskets sat at her feet. She spoke so softly that Thomas almost didn't hear her over the hens clucking and chattering in their wood-and-wire homes.

  “Mama’s just fine. Just doing the wash. She’ll be good by the time Doc gets here. Maybe I'll go deliver my eggs. The Millers’ll need those eggs. No doubt.”

  With Miss Sadie nearby, Thomas felt bad for his sister. Her colorless dress hung on her as if on a hanger, showing no shape of her body like Miss Sadie's dress. And Clara May's hair, brown like the rest of the family's, pulled back like Mama's, seemed drab next to Miss Sadie's blond. Clara May's face, so thin, looked like a naked skull.

  Mr. Milne grunted. “Like as not, she’ll die by lunch.”

  “I said as much," Thomas said. "But I just got dirty looks and reprimands for my observation.”

  Mr. Milne didn’t take his gaze off of Mama. In one hand he still held that gun, and in the other a fine black leather hat with a black band around the base. It matched the rest of his woolen suit and trousers—all black but covered in road dust. He was a tailor down in St. George, and had the blessing of fine dexterity.

  Thomas suspected that he’d helped support the family ever since Franky’s birth, because he was Franky's Papa. At least, so Thomas believed, although he'd never voiced his suspicion. But why else would Mr. Milne come around so much, and give them money? It made sense for one of the fathers of the family's children to do something for his offspring.

  “She'll die,” Mr. Milne said. “Nothing we can do.”

  Clara May’s eyes began to water. She reached out as if to touch the hem of Mama's dress, though she sat half a dozen feet away.

  “Don’t listen to them, Mama. Doc’s coming. He’ll fix you right up. Give you a tonic. Or cast a spell.”

  Miss Sadie squatted next to Clara May, not seeming to worry over soiling her dress on the hard-packed dirt. She took one of Clara May’s hands in her gloved fingers, and spoke so that Thomas almost didn’t hear it over the hens.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, miss.”

  Clara May shook her head and pulled her hand free. “I need to gather the eggs and deliver them to the folks who live on the road between here and Hurricane. They’ll miss my eggs if I don’t. They’ll miss them. Specially Eli Miller.”

  But she didn’t stand. She just sat there, looking at Mama and shaking her head so hard and fast that a few tears flipped out of her eyes to the sides. Some landed on Miss Sadie’s dress, tapping like rain on a canvas.

  “William!” Mr. Milne called. “William, get back here! We need to talk about the spell.”

  Thomas stiffened. The spell. The resurrection spell.

  “I’m coming,” Papa said.

  In a moment, Papa began to shuffle through the house. Boards creaked. Shoes slid across the wooden floor. It grew louder until Papa arrived in the back doorway. He didn't exit, but looked toward Mama with a dead expression. His gut seemed to reach further out than his gaze.

  “We'll need to resurrect her,” Mr. Milne said.

  Papa nodded. “She used her second-life days on spells to help us all. Probably used the last of them last year, sometime. Because of her love for us, to serve us."

  "More like to compensate for others' inaction," Thomas said. "Or to make life easier on Charles."

  Mr. Milne nodded, not seeming to care about when she’d last used magic. Everyone who sought the blessing of a second life—which was about everyone in the country of Sanctuary, just south of the state of Utah—received the promise of a resurrection. Then, when they died, they stayed dead for three days before coming back to life.

  During those three days, they had Life Visions. Every detail of their lives passed before their spirits. They saw all the things they'd done wrong and needed to change. And when it ended, they came back to life. Preachers said it was so people could repent and become worthy of heaven.

  But before dying the first time, people could shorten their second lives by burning their days, using them as fuel for magic. Someone who consumed all those second-life days eventually faded, and didn't resurrect. Not naturally, anyway. With a spell, someone else could give some of their second-life days and resurrect such a person.

  That's what they wanted to do with Mama.

  Well, Thomas wouldn’t have it. He wouldn’t let Mama be brought back to a life of servitude to a worthless husband.

  In fact, though she had her back to him, he seemed to hear her voice in the back of his head. Thomas, don’t you dare allow them to resurrect me. You make sure that I stay dead. You understand? That’s your job. You do it.

  “Why would we resurrect her?” he said. “She’s done her part in life. We got no reason to bring her back.”

  “She's our mama,” Clara May said. “We want her back.”

  “Now, I certainly understand that. But that’s for us, not for her. Why would she want to come back? She’s just our slave.”

  “She’s a good Christian,” Papa said. “She’s worked hard and served us all her days. The good Lord would want her brought back to our bosoms, for us to cherish her.”

  “Sure,” Thomas said. “About like he'd want her on a cross.”

  “We’re her family,” Clara May said. “She loves us.”

  Thomas clenched his fists. “Look at her. She don’t want to be resurrected.”

  She still leaned against the stone basin, moving her hands up and down on that washboard, just staring at the shirt like she didn't see it.

  Papa pointed at Thomas. “She used up all of her second-life days taking care of her family—taking care of you. Don’t you love your Mama, you lazy boy? You always was selfish.”

  “Right—I’m lazy and selfish. I do the farming and care for the house while you sit there never doing a thing. And Charles just runs off with Lightning. And Franky just goes fishing. I’m the selfish one, all right.”

  “I tend to the chickens,” Clara May said.r />
  “Sometimes I wonder if God don’t hate me," Papa said. "Giving me a son like you. Willful and rebellious. Ungrateful for those who brought him into this world.”

  “Oh, I’m grateful for the one that brought me into this world—and I say we let her rest. We don’t bring her back.”

  “Thomas,” Mr. Milne said. It wasn’t a hard tone, just one to get his attention.

  “You have no say here, Mr. Milne. You’re not family.”

  Mr. Milne’s face remained calm. “Thomas, we have to resurrect her. You don’t understand—.”

  “You can’t give me any good reason to do that. It’s illegal, anyhow. You’ll turn us all into Moabites.”

  The Moabites worshiped in Arches and Monument Valley. Like those who lived in Sanctuary, they used magic, but they didn't give their own second-life days to bring people back for a limited time—they just trapped their kin's souls inside their bodies, animating them indefinitely, turning them into zombies in a mockery of the natural resurrection and second life.

  Sanctuary had outlawed the unnatural resurrection of any person—even by gifting second-life days—to avoid the temptation to raise zombies.

  Mr. Milne shook his head. “We won’t make Caroline a zombie. We’ll resurrect her the right way.”

  “It’s illegal,” Thomas said.

  “We’ll ask the mayor to make an exception. I assure you, he’ll oblige.”

  "That's right," Papa said, as if the argument had ended.

  But it hadn't for Thomas. He just didn’t know how to stop them. And it would only get harder when Charles got back from his usual morning ride because he would side with them.

  “I’ve got eggs to deliver,” Clara May said.

  “We’ll need the ingredients for the spell,” Mr. Milne said. “William, are you familiar with the spell?”

  Papa shook his head. “I don't have the second-life days for it. Although, it might do someone some good to show some appreciation to their ma."

  Thomas wanted to spit in his face. “I’m not giving any second-life days to bring her back to a life she don’t want.”