The Crying Rocks Read online

  “What about you?” Joelle asks him.

  “Me?” He gazes at her.

  “Did you tell your parents that you know about Daniel yet?”

  “No,” he says in a defensive voice.

  “How about the skull? Did you tell your dad we found it?”

  “You don’t want to talk about that now,” he says, glancing around the gloomy room.

  A disturbance has broken out at the door. Some other latecomers are arriving, a group of tall, dark-skinned men with slicked-back, black hair. Though two ushers, perhaps alarmed by their looks, try to stop them for questioning, they break away and walk directly over to Vernon, who springs up to shake their hands.

  “Actually, I did tell my father about it,” Carlos says in Joelle’s ear. “He asked if I’d made it to the rocks, so we got on the subject.” He leans toward her. “I showed him how the skull fit in my hand. He said it might have been a child’s, because it was so small.”

  “So the Crying Rocks was the scene of a massacre,” Joelle says, keeping her eye on the dark men. She finds them familiar in a way she can’t identify.

  “We’d have to excavate more bones to be sure.”

  “Did you tell him about the cries we heard?”

  Carlos shakes his head. “He would think I was crazy.”

  “Do you think we were?” She turns to look at him.

  “No. We heard something. I keep thinking about that.”

  “I do too.” With a nod toward Vernon’s visitors, she adds, “Who are those guys?”

  Carlos examines them and shrugs. “I’ve never seen them before. They look like brothers.”

  There are five. Everyone is talking. One man leans forward and clasps Vernon around his shoulders. Others touch his arms and pat his back. Vernon’s head is down, accepting their expressions of sympathy as he has no one else’s. All of a sudden, he looks up and points his finger straight at Joelle, and the group turns to stare at her. She glances away fast.

  Beside her Carlos’s chair squeaks. “I wasn’t going to say this right now, because you must already be pretty upset about everything, but . . .”

  “What?”

  “It’s probably not a good time. . . .”

  “You can tell me. I’m fine!” Joelle exclaims.

  “Okay.” Carlos lowers his voice again. “My father told me why he was looking for bones underneath the rocks, by the swamp. There’s another, older story about the reason the rocks cry. It doesn’t have anything to do with the English or the massacre or mothers trying to save their children. It’s a Native American story.”

  “Tell!”

  “They left their babies there, the ones they didn’t want.”

  “What?”

  “Children who had some deformity or were born too sick to take care of. Indian women brought them there. That’s the legend that’s come down, my father said. Some stories say they threw them off the rocks into the swamp. There’s supposed to be this buildup of little skeletons below. My father was trying to find out if it was true.”

  “But that’s . . . that’s terrible!”

  “Life was hard back then, my father said. A tribe’s survival depended on the health of its members. There was no place for weakness. Remember what we read? The early settlers saw only perfect children.”

  Joelle stares at him. His words have caught her off guard. They’ve found a crack in a wall that has long been sealed. Now, a memory is attempting to snake its way through. Far off she hears noise—shouting, pounding, the shriek of a window being raised.

  She blocks it out.

  “That isn’t right,” she tells Carlos angrily. “The Narragansetts weren’t savages. They were civilized people with a special love of children. We read that, too.”

  “I know, but—”

  “The Pilgrims said they spoiled their children,” Joelle goes on. “There’s no way they could . . . I mean, how could they? How could anyone do that to . . .”

  She can’t speak anymore or she will cry. The tears are just inside, trying to burst out. She won’t let them. She will not. She shuts her eyes hard and makes her mind dark, impenetrable.

  Beside her she hears Carlos’s voice say, “Joelle? Are you okay? I knew it wasn’t a good time for this. Joelle?” But she can’t answer. After a long while, she feels a hand on her shoulder, and when she opens her eyes, a man is standing in front of her. It’s an usher who has come across the room to say that, regretfully, time is running short.

  “What time?” Joelle asks. Turning her head, she’s surprised to see that Aunt Mary Louise’s casket is being removed from the room. The usher nods apologetically. The funereal urn will be ready to be picked up tomorrow. If they would be so kind . . . another service scheduled . . . a busy season . . . so very sorry.

  “You better go,” Carlos says.

  “Not yet! That story your father told you . . .”

  “We can talk about it later.”

  “When?”

  “Listen, Joelle. You need to rest after all this.”

  “Rest! You must be kidding! I’ve been resting. All week. I can’t stand resting anymore.”

  Carlos is gazing at her uneasily. This is not how someone acts who has just lost the most-loved person in her life, he is probably thinking. She is supposed to be sniffling, not arguing about early Indian tribal practices. Her heart is supposed to be broken. Nothing is broken inside Joelle. Her anger has returned full-force. She is dry-eyed and furious.

  “Come on,” she says, “let’s finish this somewhere else.”

  “I can’t. My mother dropped me off. She’s coming back to get me in a few minutes, then we’re going to meet my father.”

  Joelle glares at him. “Okay then, tonight. After dinner. I’ll meet you at the park. I’d ask you to my house, but . . .” She glances in the direction of Vernon, who is now standing by the door, waiting for her. His tall, dark visitors are gone, and he is glowering at everyone again.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t,” Carlos says.

  “Why not?”

  “We’re driving to Boston for the weekend.” He looks at her unhappily, then admits: “It’s my mother’s birthday, I’m really sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?”

  “Well, because it’s a bad time for my mother to have a birthday, just when your mother, I mean your aunt . . . Anyway, I know you’re sad and probably want to—”

  “No, I don’t!” Joelle shouts.

  “I’ll call you when we get back.”

  “Forget it.”

  “That will give you some time to—”

  “Listen, will you stop talking to me that way? I can’t stand that kind of nice talk right now. It makes me sick, in fact. And don’t tell me what’s better for me because you don’t know.”

  “You’re right, I don’t,” Carlos agrees. “I’m really—”

  “And if you say you’re sorry one more time, I’ll strangle you!” Joelle screams at him.

  Before he can bleat out another word of sympathy, she jumps up and runs to join Vernon at the door.

  * * *

  “Who were those men who came in at the end?” she asks after they arrive home that afternoon.

  Vernon doesn’t answer at first. He’s got the refrigerator open and is staring inside, as if he’s looking for something but can’t remember what. He closes the door and stands in front of it, empty-handed. His face is stubbly and tired-looking.

  “Friends,” he mutters. “Old friends.”

  “From where?”

  “The railroad, when I worked there.”

  “I never saw them before.”

  “They live in different places now.”

  “That was nice of them to come. I guess you haven’t seen them lately?”

  “We get together sometimes. You want to go out to eat?”

  “I’m not that hungry yet,” Joelle says.

  “Later, then.” Vernon heads for the back door and is almost outside when he stops and turns around. Joelle can guess why�
�he forgot to tell her where he’s going. It’s something new he’s started, keeping her informed of his movements. Before, with Aunt Mary Louise, he went wherever he went without a word of explanation. She could never be sure of his plans. Joelle doesn’t know if he’s changed as a kindness to her or if he just wants to reassure himself that she’ll be there when he comes back.

  “I’ve got chicks hatching soon. I’m going out to check the shed,” he says to her now. “I’ll be a half hour or so. Then maybe we’ll be hungry.”

  “Okay.”

  But still he doesn’t leave. He hesitates at the door, staring into the yard. When he turns around to look at her again, she knows he has something to get off his chest.

  “They’re Indians, Narragansetts,” he says. “Could you see that?”

  “I guess I could,” Joelle finds herself answering.

  “I’ll tell you about them sometime.”

  “Okay.”

  “They’re good people.”

  “They looked good,” Joelle says. “Tall.”

  “We used to go to the ball games together, up in Pawtucket. Sometimes up to Boston. I loved Mary Louise, though. For all that, I loved her.”

  Joelle nods. “I know.”

  “That’s about it,” Vernon says. “I’ll check the eggs now.”

  “See you later.”

  After he’s gone, Joelle reviews this weird conversation and comes to the conclusion that Vernon was confessing to her something he never told Aunt Mary Louise. What it could be, she can’t guess, though a strange idea now lurks at the edge of her mind. She thinks back to the Indian men at the funeral parlor, long-legged and handsome, enclosing Vernon in a sympathetic ring of dark suits. She watches again as their heads, following Vernon’s finger, swing eagerly around to find her.

  13

  A DULLNESS SETTLES OVER JOELLE in the weeks after the funeral. Her anger drains away, and for a while it seems possible to imagine that Aunt Mary Louise is only temporarily out of sight. School absorbs the better part of her waking hours with its daily rigor of classes and labs, assignments and tests. Outside the weather is wintry. December arrives, Christmas vacation comes and goes. Temperatures hover in the teens and twenties; ice and snow are controlling principles.

  Under the circumstances, there seems no point in discussing hikes in the forest or old Native American folklore. Carlos, after a few attempts at conversation in the hall, now passes her without comment. She’s made it clear she doesn’t want to talk to him. Her beaded headband has been retired, and she’s stopped braiding her hair. (Michiko and the Secret Princesses have followed suit.)

  The early Narragansetts are far away in the seventeenth century, taking cover from their own winter in forested valleys that no longer exist, making hunting forays along trails now sealed with asphalt. They are speaking to one another in a lost language about a way of life that will shortly be erased and, soon after that, forgotten. Or worse, Joelle thinks, it will be dug up, misunderstood, and falsely reconstructed by descendants of their white conquerors. For this is certainly what has happened with the murderous story Carlos’s father told him about the Crying Rocks. How could such a story be true? Joelle thinks about the small skull she unearthed at the swamp. She thinks about the crack in its forehead. No, she won’t believe that such things ever happened.

  When the natives bury their dead, she reads one afternoon at home, inadvertently, in an overdue library book about Narragansett Indian life, they sew up the corpse in a mat and so put it in the earth. If the party be a sachem, they cover him with many curious mats and bury all his riches with him. If it be a child, the father will also put his own most special jewels and ornaments in the earth with it. If it be the man or woman of the house, they will pull down the mats and leave the house frame standing, and bury them in or near the same, and wither remove their dwelling or give over housekeeping. —EDWARD WINSLOW, 1623

  This passage comes closer to echoing her own feelings about Aunt Mary Louise’s death than anything else Joelle has heard or read. Briefly, she considers asking Vernon if they can “remove their dwelling” too, to another house where Aunt Mary Louise is not always about to enter the kitchen. But, of course, this is not practical. For one thing, Vernon’s chick business is booming.

  The first batch of chicks hatched and sold at a good price a couple of days after Aunt Mary Louise’s funeral. By the beginning of January the second batch is ready, and this one, too, finds an interested buyer. The big chicken farms are thriving. Steak has been associated with heart disease and clogged arteries. Chicken is the healthy meat of choice. But raising chicks from the egg is a time-consuming business, one better farmed out to independent suppliers like Vernon.

  “I’m doing okay with this,” he tells Joelle one night at dinner, amazement in his voice. Somehow it’s March now. “I’m onto my fourth batch of chicks with no problems,” he declares. “No problems at all! I keep waiting for what’s going to go wrong.”

  “Why would anything go wrong?” Joelle asks.

  “Because it usually does,” Vernon answers in a resigned voice. “The only thing I ever did good was marry your Aunt Mary Louise, and look what happened to that.”

  Joelle lowers her head and keeps eating. They don’t talk about her much, but Aunt Mary Louise is always on their minds.

  “She was the one brought me luck,” Vernon goes on.

  “You didn’t look that happy about your luck when she was here,” says Joelle, remembering their fights.

  “Just in the last year or so, I was worrying, that’s why,” Vernon says. “After she had to quit work, I was trying to think of how to make it so she wouldn’t ever have to go back. Finally, I hit on it, and see what happens? It’s too late for her.”

  Vernon shakes his head and gets up from the table. “That’s bad luck,” he tells Joelle from the kitchen. “So I’m waiting for what’s next.”

  “I think that’s a stupid way to look at things,” Joelle tells him. “If you believe something’s going to go wrong, it probably will just from you setting yourself up for it. Besides, I thought you had backers. Wouldn’t they help out if you got into trouble?”

  Vernon’s large form appears in the kitchen door. “How’d you know that?”

  “What?”

  “About my backers?”

  “I heard you talking.”

  “When? To who?”

  “To Aunt Mary Louise.” She looks at him. “You were talking in the night, and I woke up.”

  “That was none of your business,” he says roughly.

  “I heard some other things, too,” Joelle goes on, staring straight at him. “I heard you had secrets you kept from her, and she knew you were lying to her and felt bad.”

  Vernon turns on his heel after this and does some washing up at the sink. There’s a lot of dish clanking and the sound of the fridge opening and slamming shut about five times. Joelle stays where she is at the table. Even on good evenings, she and Vernon don’t fit in the kitchen together. They get in each other’s way. With Aunt Mary Louise, it was different. She and Joelle knew each other’s moves, how to kind of dance around each other. The work was done fast and well, with a lot of joking and nobody’s feelings being stepped on.

  Joelle leans over the table and lays her head on her arms. It’s funny how you miss people, she thinks, how remembering a little thing like moves in the kitchen can bring back the whole person and make you ache to be with them. You begin to want them so much that sometimes you see them or hear them, walking ahead along the street, talking in a nearby room. It’s your imagination, of course, but in that second, you catch your breath and wonder if . . .

  Vernon appears in the doorway. “I’m going out.”

  “Okay.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  “Of course. What do you expect?”

  “I’ve got some folks to see. I’ll be back late. You go on to bed.”

  “I’ll go when I’m ready.”

  Vernon puts on his coat and g
azes at her. “Should I tell you where I’ll be?” he asks.

  “Why?” says Joelle. “You’re coming back, aren’t you?”

  He lowers his head and walks out the door.

  * * *

  One Saturday evening not long after, Joelle calls Carlos at home. She’s not particularly eager to talk to him, but dinner is long over. Vernon has gone off again. He’s been out every night all week, meeting friends, he says, leaving her alone in the house. Suddenly, she doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

  “Want to come out for a while?” she asks when Carlos answers the phone.

  “Right now? It’s eleven o’clock!”

  “No, next week,” Joelle snaps. Then, hearing him draw an irritated breath, she makes amends. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  “Where were you thinking of going?” he inquires cautiously. They haven’t really talked for months, just a distant “hello” or snipped-off “hi” when their paths cross between classes. It’s strange because, better than anyone else at school, they know each other’s thoughts. Joelle knows that Carlos has the guilty weight of Daniel’s cries on his conscience and still cannot tell his parents. Carlos knows that Joelle is struggling to go on without Aunt Mary Louise, though she rejects all offers of sympathy with disdain.

  “How about the park?” Joelle suggests. “It’s a really clear night. We could look for constellations. Did you read that part about the Narragansetts? Even the youngest children could name the stars. They didn’t have the same names the English had, but they knew their patterns and how they moved. Maybe it was like TV back then. You’d settle down in some dark field and watch after dinner.”

  “High drama,” Carlos says sarcastically.

  “It might be fun.”

  March is well along by now. The last snow has melted, though the weather is still chilly. A faint scent of spring fills the crisp morning air during Joelle’s walks with Michiko to school. In yards along their way the first crocuses’ purple and yellow beaks have pushed through the grass. By afternoon, temperatures are warm enough for the Secret Princess Club to be out and about again, though lately, their awe over Joelle’s royal status seems to have diminished. Not content to just follow, they’ve taken to yelling at her, under Penny Perrino’s direction.