Unspeakable Read online

  The Joseph family lived onNathan Street , a short tract of shabby single-story houses with peeling paint and balding front yards and porches crowded with broken chairs and discarded stoves and sodden rolls of old carpet. As Holly parked her five-year-old Tracker outside the Joseph house, a young woman in a soiled pink bathrobe came out onto the porch of the house next door, smoking.

  "Hell of a day," she said as Holly hurried across the yard.

  Holly pressed the doorbell. The screen door had been kicked in and the paintwork around the doorknob was surrounded by a pattern of black fingermarks.

  "That guy needs locking up," the young woman remarked. She had a face the color of unbaked pastry and straggly blond hair and she looked as if she hadn't eaten in a week, or had the appetite to.

  "Well," Holly replied, pressing the doorbell again, "we try to give him all the help we can."

  "Help? He doesn't need help. He needs locking up. He's a crazy person."

  There was still no answer from Mrs. Joseph, so Holly opened the broken screen door and knocked. "Mary? Mary? It's Holly Summers!"

  The girl blew smoke out of her nostrils. "Probably dead, from the noise that I heard last night."

  "What kind of noise?"

  "You know, noise. Banging, crashing, like somebody was throwing the furniture around and breaking all the dishes. Then screaming."

  Holly knocked at the door again. "Mary! Can you hear me? It's Holly Summers! Come on, Mary, open up!"

  "Probably dead," the girl repeated.

  Holly took out her cell phone and texted Doug at the office:

  "No reply at Joseph home. Neighbor reports domestic incident last nite."

  There was a moment's pause and then Doug texted back:

  "Check house then call in."

  Holly pulled up the hood of her raincoat and stepped down from the porch. The girl watched her incuriously as she walked around the side of the Joseph house. An old brown armchair stood under the parlor window. Holly climbed up on it, balanced on one of the arms, and tried to peer inside. The gutter just above her was broken and a cascade of cold water clattered onto her hood.

  All she could see inside the parlor was a half-open door, a rumpled green rug, and a tipped-over lamp with a fringed shade. There were broken plates, too, and a coffeepot without a handle. No sign of Mrs. Joseph or Daniel.

  She stepped down into the seat of the armchair and the springs collapsed, trapping her foot between the cushions and pulling her shoe off. The girl next door shook her head and smiled and blew out smoke. Holly extricated herself, tugged her shoe back on, and then made her way around the back of the house. There was just as much rubbish there as everywhere else: the rusty cab of an old International pickup, a homemade dog kennel, bottles and crates and kitchen chairs with no backs on them. Next door, a huge brindled mongrel suddenly came running across the yard, barking at her. It crashed against the wire-mesh fence, which stopped it, but it continued to bark at her and throw itself against the fence again and again as if it wouldn't stop until it had broken through and gone for her throat.

  She stepped up onto the rear patio, negotiating her way around a grease-encrusted K-mart barbecue and two orange-striped sunbeds that were spotted black with mold. The sliding glass doors that led into the kitchen were freckled with raindrops. She wiped them away with her hand and peered into the gloom.

  At first she couldn't see anything at all except for the stove with dirty pots on top of it, and the sink heaped with dishes. In the corner, next to the breakfast bench, lay a heap of coats and blankets.

  Then she saw movement and realized that somebody was hiding underneath the coats and blankets. She rapped on the glass and shouted, "Mary! Mary, can you hear me? It's Holly Summers! Mary, if you can hear me, come and open the door!"

  There was a long pause. She didn't knock again but waited, so that Mrs. Joseph could see her standing there and see that she had come alone. Whatever had happened there the night before, Mary Joseph was obviously too terrified to let anybody in.

  The rain continued to trickle down the window. Holly turned around and could see that the dog was still barking. At least its mouth was opening and closing, but as far as she was concerned it was barking in absolute silence.

  Eventually, very slowly, the coats and blankets were lifted and Mrs. Joseph came crawling out from under them. She was a small woman, not much more than five feet tall, with a slack stomach and swollen ankles. Her tufty black hair was decorated with colored beads. When she stood up, gripping the breakfast bar for support, Holly could see that her reddish-brown shift dress was ripped at the shoulder so that part of her grubby white brassiere was exposed. Normally it was obvious that she was of Native American extraction, but this morning it was almost impossible to tell if she was human at all, let alone what kind of human.

  Her face was swollen to twice its size, a Mardi Gras face painted in purples and crimsons and maroons. Her nose had been broken and her lips were split and encrusted with blood. She shuffled toward the window in one slipper and stood on the other side of the rain-spotted glass, trying to focus on Holly with eyes that were totally bloodshot.

  "Mary, you have to let me in . You need help!"

  Mrs. Joseph continued to stand and stare, occasionally lurching on one foot to balance herself, a parody of an Indian medicine dance.

  "Please, Mary, you have to open the door! Where's Daniel? Is Daniel okay? Come on, Mary, you have to open the door!"

  At that moment the girl in the pink bathrobe appeared around the back of the house, holding a newspaper over her head to protect herself from the rain. When she saw Mrs. Joseph she said, "Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. I told you that guy was a crazy person."

  "Call 911," said Holly. "Tell them what's happened. Here-phone this number too. That's my boss, Doug Yeats."

  "We don't have a phone. Well, we did, but Ricky lost his job and everything."

  "Well, here, take mine. Please, do it now."

  "Okay. Okay. Jesus, look at the state of her. I mean I don't evenlikethe woman, but, shit "

  Mrs. Joseph slowly lifted her hands toward the catch on the sliding glass doors. Her fingers were just as swollen as her face, so that she looked as if she were wearing thick purple gloves. She managed to nudge the lever upward a little and push the door back by an eighth of an inch, but then her hands dropped down to her sides and she stood looking at Holly helplessly, unable to find the strength to do any more.

  Holly picked up a rusted spatula from the barbecue and slid it into the crack beneath the catch. She tugged it up once, twice, and then the catch clicked upward and the door slid open. She stepped into the kitchen just in time to catch Mrs. Joseph as she fell sideways toward the floor.

  Daniel and the Devil

  She laid her down on the heap of blankets. "Mary, can you hear me? Where's Daniel? I need to know where Daniel is."

  Mrs. Joseph pointed with her broken left hand toward the living room. "Beating, beating, wouldn't stop."

  Holly folded one of the coats to make a pillow and then she covered Mrs. Joseph with a blanket. "Try to keep still. The paramedics are coming; they won't be long. Where is your husband now? Where is he? Is he still in the house?"

  Mrs. Joseph clutched at Holly's sleeve and she pulled Holly closer. Her breath was sour with bile. "He said he said that Daniel had a devil. He said that he had to beat him, to beat the devil out. He beat him and beat him, and when I tried to stop him he beat me too."

  "Where is he now?"

  "He left, I think. I didn't see." She started coughing and she couldn't stop.

  "Okay, Mary. Keep as still as you can. The paramedics are coming and the police are coming and you're going to be fine. I'm just going to look for Daniel."

  Holly left Mrs. Joseph in the kitchen and walked through to the living room. The house was cold and gloomy and her shoes crackled on broken glass and fragments of china. Mrs. Joseph must have been serving a meal when her husband attacked her, because there was a broken ovenproof di
sh outside the living room door and trampled lumps of brown stew all over the carpet.

  She wasn't an educated woman, Mary Joseph. She could read and write no better than a seven-year-old and she found it difficult to feed her family and keep her house clean, especially since her husband drank most of his welfare check. But her son Daniel was a gentle and bright little boy, inquisitive and sensitive. Holly had always believed that she had a good chance of saving him from the curse that afflicted so many Native American families inPortland : the curse of hopelessness and all the evils that went with it.

  And there he was, lying on his back in the living room, where the curtains had been half torn down, and the couch tipped over, and most of Mrs. Joseph's precious china ornaments smashed. His blue-striped T-shirt had been pulled up around his neck and his short khaki pants had been pulled below his knees. One of his sandals was missing and his short white socks were spattered with blood.

  Holly cleared away the broken china so that she could kneel down beside him. His eyes were closed and he felt very cold. He could have been sleeping: a moon-faced five-year-old with a flat Nez Percé nose, a little overweight, and very sallow, as if he were hardly ever allowed to play outside. There were no bruises on his cheeks but his shiny black hair was clogged at the top with dried blood, like a crusty beanie.

  His body was even worse. His stomach was a mass of purple swellings, and there were livid diagonal lines across his chest, his upper thighs, and his genitals, scores of them, as if he had been furiously beaten with a cane or whipped with an electrical cord. Holly pressed her finger to the soft inside of his wrist, trying to feel for a pulse, but she couldn't. She laid one hand on his chest, wondering if she ought to start CPR, but she felt the crunching of broken ribs and was scared that she might do even more damage if she tried.

  She bent over him as close as she could. She couldn't hear if he was breathing but might be able to sense his breath against her cheek.

  "Please don't be dead," she whispered. "Daniel, can you hear me? Please don't be dead."

  It was then that she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was a nudge at first, but then a shake, and another shake, even rougher. She turned around and looked up and there was Elliot Joseph, wearing jeans and a studded denim jacket, a black bandanna tied around his fraying gray hair, his eyes glistening with rage and drink.

  "What the fuck are you doing here, you deaf bitch?"

  Rule 33 (a)

  Rule 33 (a) of thePortland Children's Welfare Department manual on dealing with belligerent parents. Stand up, making no sudden moves. Look the belligerent parent directly in the eye but not in a confrontational manner. Keep your hands by your sides. Speak soothingly and repetitively and try to appeal to the belligerent parent's sense of responsibility and self-esteem. For instance, do not say "What kind of a parent do you think you are?" Rather say, "I know you're a very good parent and I'm sure that you want the best for your child."

  "Mr. Joseph, you're a very good parent," said Holly.

  Elliot Joseph stared at her, blinking in amazement. "I'm a what? I'm a fuckingwhat?I'm a fuckingoutstandingparent. You tell me-youtellme-what father would do for his boy what I did?"

  "I'm not sure, Mr. Joseph."

  "Oh, no? I'll tell you what any other father would have done. He would have let the devil go on growing inside of him, until it took over hisbodyand hissouland eaten him alive! Any other father would have let him go on having nightmares for the rest of his- Jesus! Do you know whatnightmareshe was having?"

  He staggered, almost losing his balance, and suddenly focused his eyes on Daniel as if he didn't know who the boy was.

  "That's-that'sDaniel! Jesus, that's my boy. What have you done to him? What the fuck have you done to him?"

  "He's had an accident, Mr. Joseph. I've called the paramedics and they're on their way to help him."

  "Anaccident?"Elliot Joseph pushed aside one of the armchairs and dropped onto his knees on the floor. Holly could smell the whiskey on him, and it made her eyes water. He lifted Daniel's torso and shook him. "Daniel!Daniel!Listen to me, boy, this is your dad! Daniel, you listen up, now!"

  "Mr. Joseph, he's very badly hurt. I know that you don't want to make his injuries any worse."

  But Elliot Joseph shook Daniel even harder. "Daniel, goddamnit! What's the matter with you? Are you trying to make me look like some kind of asshole?"

  "He's hurt, Mr. Joseph. He has broken bones."

  "Hurt?He'snot hurt! Now, that devil, oh, yes! That devil got hurt okay! I beat the devil out of him! I beat it out! I saw it with my own eyes! It was black! It was like a black shadow! I saw it! I beat it out of him! I saved him! Daniel! Daniel, if you don't fucking open your eyes and look at me I'm going to beat the living shit out of you, boy, the same way I beat the living shit out of your devil! Open your fucking eyes!"

  "He can't hear you, Mr. Joseph. Please leave him alone."

  Elliot Joseph abruptly let Daniel drop back onto the floor. He gripped the edge of the armchair, missed it, gripped it again, and clambered onto his feet.

  "He can't hear me? He can'thearme? Is that what you've fucking done to him? You've infected him! You've made him deaf, just like you, you bitch!"

  He took one unsteady step closer, and then another. This was one time when Holly really wished she could hear, because she wanted to hear sirens. Elliot Joseph wasn't tall but he had a huge bony head, with angular cheekbones and widely spaced eyes and a flat widespread nose. His upper body was massive, like a buffalo's, even though his legs were so short. Mickey Slim had once described him as a "walking definition of threatening behavior."

  "If anything happens to my boy I'm warning you. I'll tear your fucking head off, you bitch, and I'll piss down your neck."

  "Mr. Joseph, something has already happened to him. Something very serious. I can't even tell if he's still alive."

  Elliot Joseph licked his lips. His eyes were wandering, as if he were trying to remember something important. Then he swayed forward even closer and whispered, "Do you know who I am?"

  There was a clocksprung quality in the way he said it that made Holly feel seriously unnerved. She had come across it so many times before: the quiet, illogical, unanswerable questions, followed by a gradual escalation into total rage. It was the way that violent men justified what they wanted to do.I'm trying to be reasonable here, you bitch, I'm trying to be calm, and all you can do is thwart me and provoke me. What else can I do but hit you?

  Even more softly now. "I said, do you know who the fuck I am?"

  Holly nodded but didn't reply. Whatever she said, it was going to be wrong.

  "I am Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt. That's my real name. That's my tribal name. Do you know what that means, Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt?"

  Holly shook her head.

  "You should. It's one of the greatest fucking names in Nimipu history. It means Thunder Rolling Down From The Mountains, that's what it means. And I was given that name. I wasgiventhat name because I am a direct descendant of Chief Joseph, of the Wallowas, who was the greatest fucking-"

  He stopped and frowned at her. "You don't give a shit about any of this, do you? You don't give a rat's ass."

  "I'm worried about Daniel, Mr. Joseph, as I'm sure you are."

  "You come here trying to break up my family you come here bad-mouthing me. You come here making my boy deaf. You deaf bitch."

  "Mr. Joseph, just take it easy. The paramedics won't be long now."

  "You deaf bitch, look what you did to my boy! Look what you did to my house! That's all you ever wanted- wasn't it?-to break up my family and break up my house. Wasn't it?Wasn't it?"

  Without any warning, he swung his arm and slapped her across the side of the head. Holly saw scarlet and her head sang, and she stumbled back against one of the upturned armchairs. Elliot Joseph came for her again, seizing the lapels of her raincoat and wrenching her from side to side.

  "You deaf bitch! You deaf bitch! If you've killed my boy-"

  He hurled her backwar
d. She fell against the half-collapsed curtain pole and hit her hip against the windowsill. Elliot Joseph pitched the armchair out of the way and came for her, and she could tell from the way that his mouth was stretched open that he was screaming a high-pitched scream like a woman, as if he wanted to scream for her.

  He tried to pull her up to her feet, but she deliberately allowed her knees to buckle, and he was so drunk that he toppled over her into the window bay. He managed to clamber up again and strike her on top of the head with his fist, but then he abruptly spun around and jumped away from her with all the agility of a cat.

  He hadn't jumped, of course. He was far too drunk to jump. He had been bodily heaved away by Mickey Slim and another officer in uniform. Two more officers were already coming in through the door, followed by three paramedics.