by Jack Ketchum
That, I guess, was how it started.
But between seven and thirteen Ruth happened, and Meg and Susan happened. Without them that conversation with my mother might even have been good for me. It might only have saved me from shock and confusion once the time came. Because kids are resilient. They bounce back to confidence and sharing.
I wasn’t able to. And that’s due to what happened after, to what I did and didn’t do.
My first wife, Evelyn, calls me sometimes, wakes me up at night.
“Are the children all right?” she asks me. Her voice is terrified.
We had no kids together, Evelyn and I.
She’d been in and out of institutions a number of times, suffering bouts of acute depression and anxiety but still it’s uncanny, this fixation of hers.
Because I never told her. Not any of this, never.
So how could she know?
Do I talk in my sleep? Did I confess to her one night? Or is she simply sensing something hidden in me—about the only real reason we never did have children. About why I never allowed us to.
Her calls are like nightbirds flying screeching around my head. I keep waiting for them to return. When they do I’m taken by surprise.
It’s frightening.
Are the children all right?
I’ve long since learned not to ruffle her. Yes, Evelyn, I tell her. Sure. They’re fine. Go back to sleep now, I say.
But the children are not fine.
They will never be.
Chapter Seventeen
I knocked on the back screen door.
Nobody answered.
I opened it and walked inside.
I heard them laughing right away. It was coming from one of the bedrooms. Meg’s was a kind of high-pitched squealing sound, Woofer’s a hysterical giggle. Willie Jr’s. and Donny’s were lower, more masculine-sounding.
I wasn’t supposed to be there—I was being punished. I’d been working on a model of a B-52, a Christmas present from my father, and I couldn’t get one of the wheels on right. So I tried about three or four times and then hauled off and kicked it to pieces against the bedroom door. My mother came in and it was a whole big scene and I was grounded.
My mother was out shopping now. For a moment at least, I was free.
I headed for the bedrooms.
They had Meg up against the bedroom wall in a comer by the window.
Donny turned around.
“Hey, David! She’s ticklisb! Meg’s ticklish!”
And then it was like there was this prearranged signal because they all went at her at once, going for her ribs while she twisted and tried to push them away and then doubled over, elbows down to cover her ribs, laughing, her long red ponytail swinging.
“Get her!”
“I got her!”
“Get her, Willie!”
I looked over and there was Susan sitting on the bed, and she was laughing too.
“Owww!”
I heard a slap. I looked up.
Meg’s hand was covering her breast and Woofer had his own hand up to his face where the redness was spreading and you could see he was going to cry. Willie and Donny stood away.
“What the hell!”
Donny was mad. It was fine if he belted Woofer but he didn’t like it if anybody else did.
“You bitch!” said Willie.
He took an awkward open-handed swing at the top of her head. She moved easily out of its way. He didn’t try again.
“What’d you have to do that for?”
“You saw what he did!”
“He didn’t do nothin’.”
“He pinched me.”
“So what.”
Woofer was crying now. “I’m telling!” he howled.
“Go ahead,” said Meg.
“You won’t like it if I do,” said Woofer.
“I don’t care what you do. I don’t care what any of you do.” She pushed Willie aside and walked between them past me down the hall into the living room. I heard the front door slam.
“Little bitch,” said Willie. He turned to Susan. “Your sister’s a goddamn bitch.”
Susan said nothing. He moved toward her though and I saw her flinch.
“You see that?”
“I wasn’t looking,” I said.
Woofer was sniveling. There was snot running all down his chin.
“She hit me!” he yelled. Then he ran past me too.
“I’m telling Ma,” said Willie.
“Yeah. Me too,” said Donny. “She can’t get away with that.”
“We were just foolin’ around, for chrissakes.”
Donny nodded.
“She really whacked him.”
“Well, Woofer touched her tit.”
“So what. He didn’t mean to.”
“You could get a shiner like that.”
“He could still get one.”
“Bitch.”
There was all this nervous energy in the room. Willie and Donny were pacing like pent-up bulls. Susan slid off the bed. Her braces made a sharp metallic clatter.
“Where you going?” said Donny.
“I want to see Meg,” she said quietly.
“Screw Meg. You stay here. You saw what she did, didn’t you?”
Susan nodded.
“All right then. You know she’s gonna get punished, right?”
He sounded very reasonable, like an older brother explaining something very patiently to a not-too-bright sister. She nodded again.
“So you want to side with her and get punished too? You want your privileges taken away?”
“No.”
“Then you stay right here, okay?”
“All right.”
“Right in this room.”
“All right.”
“Let’s find Ma,” he said to Willie.
I followed them out of the bedroom through the dining room and out the back door.
Ruth was around back of the garage, weeding her patch of tomatoes. The dress she wore was old and faded and much too big for her, cinched tight at the middle. The scoop neck hung open wide.
She never wore a bra. I stood over her and I could see her breasts almost to the nipple. They were small and pale and they trembled as she worked. I kept glancing away, afraid she’d notice, but my eyes were like a compass needle and her breasts were due north.
“Meg hit Woofer,” said Willie.
“She did?” She didn’t seem concerned. She just kept weeding.
“Slapped him,” said Donny.
“Why?”
“We were just fooling around.”
“Everybody was tickling her,” said Willie. “So she hauls off and clobbers him in the face. Just like that.”
She tugged out a patch of weeds. The breasts shook. They had gooseflesh on them. I was fascinated. She looked at me and my eyes got to hers just in time.
“You too, Davy?”
“Huh?”
“You tickling Meg too?”
“No. I just came in.”
She smiled. “I’m not accusing you.”
She got to her knees and then stood up and pulled off the dirty work gloves.
“Where’s she now?”
“Don’t know,” said Donny “She ran out the door.”
“How about Susan?”
“She’s in the bedroom.”
“She saw all this?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
She marched across the lawn toward the house and we followed. At the porch she wiped her thin bony hands over her hips. She pulled off the scarf that bound her short brown hair and shook it free.
I figured I had maybe twenty minutes before my mother came home from shopping so I went inside.
We followed her into the bedroom. Susan sat right where we left her on the bed looking at a magazine, open to a picture of Liz and Eddie Fisher on one page facing across to Debbie Reynolds on the other. Eddie and Liz looked happy, smiling. Debbie looked sour.
�
��Susan? Where’s Meg?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. She left.”
Ruth sat down next to her on the bed. She patted her hand.
“Now I’m told you saw what happened here. That right?”
“Yes, ma’am. Woofer touched Meg and Meg hit him.”
“Touched her?”
Susan nodded and placed her hand over her skinny little chest like she was pledging allegiance to the flag. “Here,” she said.
Ruth just stared for a moment.
Then she said, “And did you try to stop her?”
“Stop Meg you mean?”
“Yes. From hitting Ralphie.”
Susan looked bewildered. “I couldn’t. It was too fast, Mrs. Chandler. Woofer touched her and then right away Meg hit him.”
“You should have tried, honey.” She patted her hand again. “Meg’s your sister.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You hit somebody in the face and it can do all kinds of things. You could miss and break an eardrum, poke out an eye. That’s dangerous behavior.”
“Yes, Mrs. Chandler.”
“Ruth. I told you. Ruth.”
“Yes, Ruth.”
“And you know what it means to be in connivance with somebody who does that kind of thing?”
She shook her head.
“It means you’re guilty too, even though maybe you didn’t do anything in particular. You’re sort of a fellow traveler. You understand me?”
“I don’t know.”
Ruth sighed. “Let me explain to you. You love your sister, right?”
Susan nodded.
“And because you love her, you’d forgive her something like this, wouldn’t you? Like hitting Ralphie?”
“She didn’t mean to hurt him. She just got mad!”
“Of course she did. So you’d forgive her, am I right?”
“Uh-huh.”
Ruth smiled. “Well now you see that’s just plain wrong, honey! That’s just what puts you in connivance with her. What she did wasn’t right, it’s bad behavior, and you forgiving her just because you love her, that’s not right either. You got to stop this sympathizin’, Suzie. It doesn’t matter that Meg’s your sister. Right’s right. You got to remember that if you want to get along in life. Now you just slip over the side of the bed here, pull up your dress and slide down your drawers.”
Susan stared at her. Wide-eyed, frozen.
Ruth got off the bed. She unbuckled her belt.
“C‘mon, hon’,” she said. “It’s for your own good. I got to teach you about connivance. You see, Meg’s not here for her share. So you got to get it for both of you. Your share’s for not saying, hey, cut that out, Meg—sister or no sister. Right’s right. Her share’s for doing it in the first place. So you come on over here now. Don’t make me drag you.”
Susan just stared. It was as though she couldn’t move.
“Okay,” said Ruth. “Disobedience is another thing.”
She reached over and firmly—though not what you’d call roughly—took Susan by the arm and slid her off the bed. Susan began to cry. The leg braces clattered. Ruth turned her around so she faced the bed and leaned her over. Then she pulled up the back of her frilled red dress and tucked it into her waistband.
Willie snorted, laughing. Ruth shot him a look.
She pulled down the little white cotton panties, down over the braces around her ankles.
“We’ll give you five for conniving, ten for Meg. And five for disobeying. Twenty.”
Susan was really crying now. I could hear her. I watched the stream of tears roll down across her cheek. I felt suddenly shamed and started to move back through the doorway. Some impulse from Donny told me that maybe he wanted to do the same. But Ruth must have seen us.
“You stay put, boys. Girls just cry. There’s nothing you can do about it. But this is for her own good and you being here’s a part of it and I want you to stay.”
The belt was thin fabric, not leather. So maybe it wouldn’t hurt too bad, I thought.
She doubled it over and raised it above her head. It whistled down.
Smack.
Susan gasped and began crying in earnest, loudly.
Her behind was as pale as Ruth’s breasts had been, covered with a fine thin platinum down. And now it trembled too. I could see a red spot rise high on her left cheek near the dimple.
I looked at Ruth as she raised the belt again. Her lips were pressed tight together. Otherwise she was expressionless, concentrating.
The belt fell again and Susan howled.
A third time and then a fourth, in rapid succession.
Her ass was splotchy red now.
A fifth.
She seemed to be almost gagging on mucus and tears, her breath coming in gulps.
Ruth was swinging wider. We had to back away.
I counted. Six. Seven. Eight, nine, ten.
Susan’s legs were twitching. Her knuckles white where she gripped the bedspread.
I’d never heard such crying.
Run, I thought. Jesus! I’d damn well run.
But then of course she couldn’t run. She might just as well have been chained there.
And that made me think of The Game.
Here was Ruth, I thought, playing The Game. I’ll be goddamned. And even though I winced every time the belt came down I just couldn’t get over it. The idea was amazing to me. An adult. An adult was playing The Game. It wasn’t the same exactly but it was close enough.
And all of a sudden it didn’t feel so forbidden anymore. The guilt seemed to fall away. But the excitement of it remained. I could feel my fingernails dig deep into the palms of my hands.
I kept count. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.
There were tiny beads of perspiration across Ruth’s upper lip and forehead. Her strokes were mechanical. Fourteen. Fifteen. Her arm went up. Beneath the beltless, shapeless dress I could see her belly heave.
“Wow!”
Woofer slipped into the room between me and Donny.
Sixteen.
He was staring at Susan’s red, twisted face. “Wow,” he said again.
And I knew he was thinking what I was thinking—what we all were thinking.
Punishments were private. At my house they were at least. At everybody’s house, as far as I knew.
This wasn’t punishment. This was The Game.
Seventeen. Eighteen.
Susan fell to the floor.
Ruth bent over her.
She was sobbing, her whole frail body twitching now, head buried between her arms, her knees drawn up as tight to her chest as the casts permitted.
Ruth was breathing heavily. She pulled up Susan’s panties. She lifted her up and slid her back on the bed, lying her on her side and smoothing the dress down over her legs.
“All right,” she said softly. “That’ll do. You just rest now. You owe me two.”
And then we all just stood a moment, listening to the muffled sobbing.
I heard a car pull in next door.
“Shit!” I said. “My mother!”
I raced through the living room, out the door to the side of their house and peered through the hedges. My mother was pulled in all the way to the garage. She had the back of the station wagon open and was bent over lifting out bags marked A&P.
I dashed across the driveway to our front door and ran up the stairs to my room. I opened a magazine.
I heard the back door open.
“David! Come on down here and help me with the groceries!”
It slammed shut.
I went out to the car. My mother was frowning. She handed me one bag after another.
“The place was absolutely mobbed,” she said. “What have you been doing?”
“Nothing. Reading.”
As I turned to go back inside I saw Meg across the street from the Chandlers’ standing by the trees in front of Zorns’ house.
She was staring at the Chandlers’ and chewing on a blade of grass, looking thou
ghtful, as though she were trying to decide about something.
She didn’t seem to see me.
I wondered what she knew.
I took the bags inside.
Then later I went out to the garage to get the garden hose and I saw them in the yard, just Meg and Susan, sitting in the tall splotchy grass beyond the birch tree.
Meg was brushing Susan’s hair. Long smooth strokes of the brush that were firm and even but delicate too, as though the hair could bruise if you didn’t get it right. Her other hand caressed it from below and under, stroking with just the tips of the fingers, lifting it and letting it gently fall.
Susan was smiling. Not a big smile but you could see her pleasure, how Meg was soothing her.
And for a moment I realized how connected the two of them were, how alone and special in that connection. I almost envied them.
I didn’t disturb them.
I found the garden hose. Coming out of the garage the breeze had shifted and I could hear Meg humming. It was very soft, like a lullaby. “Goodnight Irene.” A song my mother used to sing on long nighttime car trips when I was little.
Goodnight, Irene, goodnight, Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams.
I caught myself humming it all day. And every time I did I’d see Meg and Susan sitting in the grass together and feel the sun on my face and the stroke of the brush and the soft smooth hands.
Chapter Eighteen
“David, have you got any money?”
I felt around in my pockets and came up with a crinkled dollar bill and thirty-five cents in change. We were walking over to the playground, Meg and I. There was going to be a game there in a little while. I had my left-handed fielder’s mitt and an old black-taped ball.
I showed her the money.
“Would you loan it to me?”
“All of it?”
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“I want to go over to Cozy Snacks for a sandwich.”
“For a sandwich?”
I laughed. “Why doncha just steal a couple of candy bars? The counter’s easy there.”
I’d done it myself on plenty of occasions. Most of us did. The best was just to walk up to whatever you wanted and take it and then walk right out again. Nothing furtive and no hesitations. The place was always busy. There was nothing to it. And nobody had any use for Mr. Holly, the old guy who ran the place, so there wasn’t any guilt involved.