I found a long row of Shepherds and almost laughed at the name of one. Warlock Shepherd. What a name. Warlock Wright—maybe that’s what they should have named me. I’d been called a witch before. I studied the stones, and I realized there were five generations of Shepherd grandfathers buried there as well, their wives buried at their sides. I found the first Georgia Shepherd and remembered the day I teased Georgia about her name. Georgie Porgie.
And then there it was, another generation, though it had skipped the one in between. A stone about two feet high and two feet wide, simple and well-tended, stood at the very end of the row, an empty patch of grass on either side, as if saving space for those who would come after.
Eli Martin Shepherd. Born July 27, 2007, Died October 25, 2011 was all it said.
A horse was etched in the stone, a horse that looked like his hind quarters were dappled in color. The Paint. A fat bouquet of wildflowers in a bright yellow vase sat beside the headstone and the song the woman had sung in Eli’s memory, “You are my sunshine . . .” caught in my thoughts, and I found myself saying the words. Georgia’s name wasn’t printed on the stone, but I knew with a clarity both sick and shocking that she was Eli’s mother. She had to be.
I counted backwards just to be sure. Nine months before July of 2007 would have been October of 2006.
Georgia was Eli’s mother. And I was Eli’s father. I had to be.
Georgia
I GAVE BIRTH TO ELI on July 27, 2007, a month before I turned eighteen. No one knew I was pregnant until I was three months along. I would have waited longer, but the snug Wranglers I wore every day wouldn’t button and my flat stomach and trim hips were no longer flat enough or trim enough to wedge into tight, unforgiving denim. The horror of my predicament wasn’t just the pregnancy. It was that Moses was the father, and Moses’s name had become a hiss and a curse word everywhere I turned.
My parents and I talked about adoption, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do that to Moses. It made what had been between us meaningless. And for me, it never had been and it never would be. Moses might never know about his child, and he might be forever alone in the world, but his child would not be. And even though I hated him sometimes, even though I’d made him the faceless man, even though I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing now, I couldn’t give his child away. I couldn’t do it.
But the day Eli was born, it was no longer about me, or Moses, or about being strong or being weak. Suddenly it was all about Eli, a boy conceived in turmoil, a boy who looked so much like his father that when I gazed down into his tiny face, I loved him with a fervor that made the regret of his conception quake and crack and then crumble into dust—powerless to hurt us, paper against the flame of devotion that welled in my heart and set my child’s precious face in stone, no longer faceless, no longer feared.
“What are you going to name him, Georgia?” my mom had whispered, tears streaming down her face as she watched her child become a mother. She’d aged in the months since I had unburdened myself on her. But with the sweetness of new life making the hospital room a sacred place, she looked serene. I wondered if the same serenity marked my own expression. We were going to be okay. It was going to be okay.
“Eli.”
My mom smiled and shook her head. “Georgia Marie.” She laughed. “As in Eli Jackson, the bull rider?”
“As in Eli Jackson. I want him to take life by the horns and ride it for all it’s worth. And when he becomes the best bull rider that ever lived, better even than his namesake, everyone will chant Eli Shepherd instead.” I’d planned out my response, and it sounded pretty damn good because I was sincere. But it wasn’t for the bull rider that I named him Eli. That was just a lucky coincidence. I named him Eli for Moses. No one wanted to think about Moses. No one wanted to talk about him. Even me. But my child was his child. And I couldn’t pretend otherwise. I couldn’t completely blot him out.
I had thought long and hard about what I would name my baby. We got an ultrasound at twenty-one weeks and I knew it was a boy. I’d grown up reading Louis L’Amour and was convinced that I’d been born in the wrong time. If my child had been a girl I would have called her Annie. As in, Annie Oakley. As in, Annie get your damn gun. But it was a boy. And I couldn’t name him Moses.
I dug through the bible until I found the verse in Exodus where Moses talked about his sons and their names. The oldest was named Gershom. I winced at that. It might have been a popular name in Moses’s day—like Tyler or Ryan or Michael now—but I couldn’t do that to my child. The second son’s name was even worse. Eliezer. Moses said in the scripture that he was named Eliezer because, “The God of my father was my help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.”
The baby book of names I bought and perused said Eliezer means “God of Help” or “God is my help.” I liked that. Moses had been saved from the sword of Jennifer Wright, I supposed. Maybe he’d been saved so my son could come into the world. I was young, how would I know? But the name seemed fitting, because I had no doubt I was going to need all the help—from God and everyone else—I could get. So I named him Eli.
Eli Martin Shepherd. Eli because he was the son of Moses, Martin for my dad, Shepherd because he was mine.
I had finished my senior year heavy with pregnancy and graduated with my class. I never answered questions, never talked about Moses. I let people talk and let my middle finger answer for me when a response was demanded. Eventually, people just got over it. But they all knew. You only had to look at Eli to know.