Ninety Days to Save My Sister

1 It was ten years after my sister died that I finally learned the truth. She hadn’t run off to work in some textile mill across the state line when she was seventeen. My Uncle Ray had taken ten thousand dollars in cash and delivered her—still clutching her acceptance letter to the state teachers college—to a man living in the deep timber up in the hollow. The morning she tried to run, she had hidden in the collapsed tractor shed behind the old gravel lot. Seven-year-old me found her first. I had clutched the cellophane-wrapped tangerine hard candy she pressed into my palm, turned around, and hollered toward the house: “Uncle Ray! June’s hiding out here!” Three months later, my sister died on the dirt floor of that man’s cellar. Everyone in our hollow said she was just fragile, that she took her own life. It wasn’t until ten years down the road, packing away a box of her water-damaged high school textbooks, that I found a folded letter wedged inside the spine of an old literature reader. The pencil lead was smeared into gray ghosts by dried tears. On the very last line, she had written: I don’t blame Annie. She was only little. She didn’t know. Then my vision went white, and when I opened my eyes, I was standing in the wet weeds outside the tractor shed all over again. “June. It’s me.” I pushed back the rotting pine board, keeping my voice down to a harsh whisper. The interior reeked of damp hay, motor oil, and mildew. In the darkest corner, curled into a ball, sat a figure. June had her knees pulled tight against her chest. Her arms were covered in bramble gashes, and her eyes were swollen nearly shut from weeping. When she saw me, her knuckles shook. She reached into the pocket of her faded denim jacket, pulled out a small, cellophane-wrapped tangerine candy, and offered it with a trembling hand. “Annie, baby,” she whispered. Her voice was cracked and raw, sounding nothing like a seventeen-year-old girl. “Take the candy. Go back inside and tell Uncle Ray you didn’t see me anywhere.” The wrapper was faded orange, slick with sweat. Exactly like the first life. In that life, I had taken the candy and sold her out before the sugar even melted on my tongue. “I don’t want the candy.” I knelt down in the dirt, reaching out to wrap both of my small hands around her freezing fingers. June froze, staring at me. “June, listen to me,” I urged, the words tumbling out fast and urgent. “Run east. Cut behind the dry creek bed, go through Mrs. Gable’s cornfield, and hit Route 9. There’s a shoulder on the highway. You can flag someone down.” Her lips parted, but no sound came out. She just stared at me. It was the exact gaze from that letter—the crushing, impossible mixture of protective tenderness, raw terror, and quiet despair. “How do you know that way, Annie?” “I just know. June, please, you have to believe me.” She didn’t move. Instead, she pushed the candy into my fingers again, trying to curl my small fist around it. “You’re only seven,” she murmured, tears spilling over the dried scratches on her cheeks. “This isn’t for you to carry. Uncle Ray… you don’t know what he’ll do if he gets angry.” Across the gravel yard, the heavy thud of work boots crunched against the stones. Uncle Ray’s voice carried through the thin mountain air: “Annie! Where’d you run off to, girl?” June’s hand clamped over my mouth, shoving me flat into the moldy hay. Her whole body was vibrating with terror, her collarbone pressing hard against my shoulder blade. “Don’t breathe,” she breathed into my hair, so soft it wasn’t even sound. The crunching grew louder. Through the warped gap between two weather-beaten boards, I saw Uncle Ray’s steel-toed boots stop just outside the threshold. Three feet away. He flicked a lighter, the yellow flare briefly illuminating the weathered, leathery crease of his cheek. He wasn’t looking for me. He was hunting her. “June-bug,” Uncle Ray said, blowing a stream of gray smoke into the damp air. His tone was level, conversational, the way he sounded when calling us down for Sunday supper. “You’ve been out in these woods a full night and day. Copperheads are waking up, and the frost gets mean after dark. Harlan Cross’s place might be a bit rough around the edges, but he’s got food on the table and heat in the stove. You give him a baby in a year or two, and life settles down just fine.” June’s fingernails bit into the meat of my arm through my flannel sleeve. I bit my bottom lip until I tasted iron, not daring to twitch. “Your mama and daddy are dead and buried,” he went on, crouching down so his face was level with the rotting wood. “I raised you and Annie on my own dime. Ten years of feeding you, buying books, buying shoes. Annie’s got school coming up, too. Where do you think that cash comes from?” He tapped his cigarette ash against the doorframe. “Your uncle ain’t doing you wrong, June. You’re just being ungrateful.” June’s hand slowly slipped from my mouth. I felt the sudden absence of her warmth as she stood up. “June—” I gasped. “Stay down, Annie,” she whispered. She kicked aside the rotten straw, shoved the pine board open, and stepped out into the dying dusk. Her shadow fell long and frail across the weeds. Uncle Ray looked up, tapped the tip of his cigarette against his heel, and let out a satisfied grunt. “Good girl. Knew you’d come around.” He reached out a thick, calloused paw to grab her forearm. I lunged out of the shed, throwing my whole weight around June’s waist, screaming at the top of my lungs: “She’s not going! You can’t make her go to that man’s house!” The easy smile vanished from Uncle Ray’s face. He looked down at me, his small eyes narrowing into dark slits. “Annie. What did you just say?” “She’s not going!” I screamed, clinging to June’s sweater. “She got into college! She got the letter in the mail! You’re selling her!” The backhand struck me across the cheek with the force of a swinging plank. The yard spun. I hit the gravel hard, gravel digging into my palms, the hot, metallic taste of blood flooding my gums. June threw herself over me instantly, shielding my head with her arms. “Don’t you touch her!” she shrieked, her voice tearing at the seams. “She’s seven years old!” Uncle Ray stubbed out his smoke beneath the tread of his boot. He reached down and hauled June up by the collar of her jacket like she was a sack of seed corn. His voice didn’t rise; it remained terrifyingly smooth. “Look at what you’ve done, June,” he said quietly. “Look at the filth you’ve put in this child’s head.” He dragged her toward the house, her boots scraping useless lines in the dirt. June twisted her neck, screaming back toward me one last time: “Annie! Go in the house! Mind your uncle, Annie!” I sat alone in the mud, staring at the little tangerine candy shattered beneath the dirt. The only difference this time was that I hadn’t betrayed her. Yet the outcome was exactly the same. 2 “Bolt the door from the outside,” Aunt Brenda snapped through the hallway. “Don’t let that little one wander out tonight.” The heavy iron hasp clicked shut, followed by the dull snap of the padlock. The spare bedroom was pitch black. Wooden slats were nailed across the window frame, allowing only thin ribbons of cold moonlight to slice across the floorboards. In the living room, the landline was ringing. In our hollow, Uncle Ray had the only working telephone on the ridge. I pressed my ear against the bottom seam of the door. “Yeah, got her back,” Uncle Ray’s voice carried through the drywall, low and measured. “Didn’t make it past the tree line… Right. Bring your flatbed up first thing in the morning.” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice dropped an octave, dripping with quiet malice. “Don’t you worry none. This time, I’ll take a blade to her heel cords before I let her bolt on you again.” My fingernails dug into the grain of the door until the wood splintered beneath my skin. In my first life, I had never heard this phone call. In my first life, I had fallen asleep with that sweet tangerine flavor dissolving on my tongue, completely oblivious to the world burning around me. June was locked in the canning lean-to on the west side of the porch. I crawled to the window and tried to wedge my head between the wooden slats, but my collarbones caught hard against the rough pine. I pulled until my skin scraped raw, but I couldn't slip through. A seven-year-old’s body was too weak. Too small to even breach a window. Around dawn, the smell of burnt cornmeal drifted from the kitchen. The padlock clicked open. Aunt Brenda shoved the door back, carrying a chipped ceramic bowl of cold grits. She set it on the nightstand with a thud. “Eat,” she said. “Aunt Brenda,” I whispered, looking up at her apron. “Let me see June.” She wiped her hands on a grease-stained dish towel, not bothering to look down. “Your sister’s fine. She’s leaving out out at sunrise.” “She doesn't want to go.” “What she wants don't pay the light bill,” Brenda retorted, slinging the towel over her bony shoulder. “Your uncle put food down your throats for ten years, and all we got out of her was an ungrateful brat. Harlan’s paying ten thousand dollars in clean cash. Wayne needs a down payment on that town home in the county seat, and you need shoes for school. You think money falls from the pine trees?” “That’s selling her,” I said clearly. Aunt Brenda stopped. She turned, her face tightening not with fury, but with the cold, venomous irritation an adult reserves for a pest. “Watch your mouth,” she hissed, leaning down until her stale coffee breath brushed my face. “It’s marriage. Decent country marriage. You best quit mimicking her nonsense, Annie, because I’m telling you right now—” She gripped my chin, forcing my face up. “You keep raising hell, your uncle said he’ll find a truck for you, too. Plenty of men up the ridges don't mind raising a girl up from young. You hear me?” A cold chill ran down my spine, sinking into my marrow. She wasn’t bluffing. Her eyes were dull, flat, the way she looked when she talked about gutting chickens for Sunday dinner. “You hear me?” she repeated. “…Yes ma'am.” “Then eat your breakfast.” She walked out, leaving the bedroom door unlatched. She didn't need to lock it anymore; she knew I had nowhere to run. In my first life, Brenda had never spoken to me like that. In my first life, I had kept my mouth shut, swallowed my candy, and grew up quiet. The grits were gelatinous and cold. I picked up the tin spoon and forced them down, swallow by swallow, choking down the lumps. I had to stay alive. I needed strength. I had to find a way. June was still breathing. Before Harlan Cross came with his truck, I had to find an adult—an adult that Uncle Ray couldn’t intimidate. I put down the empty bowl and stepped into the gravel yard. Uncle Ray was at the chopping block, splitting hickory logs. When he saw me emerge, his axe paused mid-air, resting on the stump. “Annie,” he said, the easy, grandfatherly smile slipping back onto his mouth as if last night had never happened. “Uncle Ray ain’t mad at you. You’re small. You don't know no better.” He wedged the axe head deep into the wood, stepped over, and crouched in front of me. His rough thumb brushed the swollen purple bruise on my cheek. “Family business stays inside the fence line,” he whispered, his tone gentle, almost tender. “You take our business out to strangers, you break your old uncle’s heart.” His skin felt like sandpaper against my bruised jaw. I didn't cry. “Uncle Ray, can I walk down to Mr. Lewis’s bait shop?” “Go on,” he said softly. “Don’t dilly-dally.” Old man Lewis ran the tackle and sundries shed down by the crossroads. I didn't go there. Instead, I broke into a dead sprint along the ditch, heading toward the county road to find Dwight Hollis, the district magistrate. He was the only man on our ridge who had a county-issued pickup truck and authority recognized by town folks. When I reached his porch, Dwight was sitting on a rusted glider, shelling boiled peanuts while a small transistor radio buzzed with a baseball game. “Mr. Dwight,” I gasped, clutching the porch railing. “My uncle sold my sister June. She don’t want to go with that man. Can you please help her?” Dwight paused, cracking a soggy peanut shell between his thick thumbs. “Annie girl,” he said slowly, chewing. “Your uncle already came by yesterday. Told me June made up her mind to settle down. Harlan Cross might be rough, but he owns fifty acres of timber. Good provider.” “She didn't make up her mind! She was running away! He dragged her out of the shed!” Dwight waved a dismissive, peanut-stained hand. “Little girls don’t understand grown folks' arrangements. Your uncle like to broke his back keeping shoes on you two orphans. Getting her hitched to a landowner is a blessing.” He popped another peanut into his mouth. “Go on home now, Annie. Don’t be out here making up wild stories. Ray’s gonna wonder where you got to.” I stood at the bottom of the porch steps, the high noon sun beating down until my scalp felt scalded. This road was dead. It had been dead in my first life, and it was dead now. Dwight Hollis had shared moonshine and deer blinds with my uncle for thirty years. Out here, they called human trafficking an honest mountain wedding. As I turned to leave, I heard Dwight mutter behind the screen door: “Spitfire. Just like her sister.” 3 “June, grab your bag. Ride’s here.” The next morning, Uncle Ray stood outside the canning shed, calling out into the damp fog. I was huddled by the porch steps, pretending to pack red clay into small mud pies. A battered blue flatbed pickup rumbled into the gravel turnaround, its rusted muffler sputtering and backfiring like rifle shots. The driver left the engine idling. A man climbed down from the rusted cab. He was in his late forties, his skin leathered into a dark, greasy mahogany from working mountain timber. His hands were thick as tree roots, and a ragged white scar slashed straight through his left eyebrow, twisting his face into an uneven sneer when he grinned. He handed Uncle Ray a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes. “Morning, Ray. She ain’t gonna take off on me again, is she?” “Not a chance,” Uncle Ray took a cigarette, gesturing with his chin toward the lean-to. “Tied her shins with nylon.” My fingernails sank deep into the red clay. Tied her shins. In my first life, I never saw that. In my first life, I thought June had climbed into that truck of her own free will. I remembered this man’s face now. Not from my memories of the future, but from last Thanksgiving. Uncle Ray had invited him to dinner, giving him the head of the table, pouring him three tumblers of dark whiskey. Aunt Brenda had ladled pot roast onto his plate, calling him Mr. Harlan. The deal had been struck right then, across our kitchen table. June had been standing over the cast-iron stove, carrying the heavy platters back and forth. Every time she stepped into the room, Harlan Cross’s yellowed eyes had tracked her like a hound watching a deer. I had been too young back then to know what that look meant. Now, I knew every sickening inch of it. The lean-to door squeaked open. Aunt Brenda shoved June out onto the porch. She was wearing the same clothes from the shed, her denim torn, dark crusts of dried blood caked over her knees. Around her left ankle, a length of yellow nylon cord was knotted tight, the frayed end dragging three feet behind her in the dust. When she saw Harlan Cross, she took an instinctive step backward, her shoulder slamming into the doorframe. Harlan stepped forward, bent over, and scooped the frayed end of the rope from the dirt, wrapping it twice around his calloused palm. “What you shaking for?” he drawled. “Come on home and keep house. That window you busted last week trying to jump out the kitchen? You’re glazing it yourself when we get back.” June’s lips were bloodless. She didn’t utter a single sound. Uncle Ray puffed on his cigarette, laughing lightly to grease the wheels. “June’s just bashful, Harlan. Takes after her mama. Give her a month or two, she’ll settle right into the harness.” Harlan grunted, tugging the cord. June stumbled hard, her bruised knee cracking against the stone threshold. I launched myself across the dirt and threw my arms around June’s calf. “She’s not going with you!” Harlan looked down at me the way an old farmer looks at a stray chicken in the road. “Whose youngin is this?” “Just my niece,” Uncle Ray sighed, walking over and wrapping his thick fingers around my wrists, prying them off June’s leg. “Annie, let go.” “I won’t!” June dropped to her knees, cradling my face with both of her trembling hands. Her skin was freezing, but her voice fought with everything she had to sound steady. “Annie, baby. Listen to me. June’s just going up to stay a few days. I’ll come back real soon.” She was lying. She had told me the exact same lie in my first life. “You won’t ever come back,” I said, locking my eyes onto hers, pleading. “If you get in that truck, you’re never coming home.” June’s face drained of what little color remained. Uncle Ray yanked me backward by the armpits, swinging me up like a bag of trash and thrusting me into Aunt Brenda’s waiting arms. “Take her inside! Get her out of the damn yard!” Aunt Brenda clamped her forearm over my ribs, dragging me backward as I kicked, one of my sneakers flying off into the weeds. Over her shoulder, I watched Harlan Cross shove June up into the open flatbed of the truck, throwing her down between the rusted iron toolboxes like a sack of feed. The truck backfired, gears grinding, and hauled its way down the drive. A cloud of red mountain dust blew up into my face. I didn't chase after it. Not because I didn't want to, but because a seven-year-old’s legs could never catch an engine. In my first life, I hadn't chased it either—because back then, I hadn't known there was anything to run after. Aunt Brenda threw me onto the bedroom floor. “Shut your mouth!” she spat. “She hitched a man with land. You’ll be lucky if you catch half as much when your time comes.” The heavy door slammed shut. I sat on the cold floorboards, listening to the rattle of that rusted engine fade down the mountain switchbacks until the woods returned to dead silence. Three months. In my first life, June lasted exactly three months. Today was July nineteenth. She had ninety days left to live. Out in the front yard, through the window slats, I saw Uncle Ray leaning against the hood of his sedan, counting money. The bills were limp and stained, bound into two thick bricks with thick rubber bands. He counted them slowly, his lips moving with every crisp flick of his thumb. When he reached the end, he looked up at Brenda on the porch. “Ten thousand. Right on the penny. I’ll wire it to Wayne in the morning so he can put the earnest money down on that town house.” Wayne was my cousin. Uncle Ray’s only son. My sister’s life was worth the down payment on a brick rancher in town.