by Colin Kersey
Until now, I had worried about Stu returning with the shotgun and how I was going to avoid him. Now finding Valerie was added to the list. At the very least, I had likely contributed to her disappearance when I had disclosed my plans to leave.
“She’s gone for walks before,” Virgil continued. “And it’s obvious she’s mighty unhappy about the farm maybe being sold, but that don’t add up to her disappearing, especially with what she done.”
He sighed. “The rabbits are dead. She butchered them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I know what I did was evil, but in a way, it was a kindness to them. No one has ever paid them any notice or taken care of them but me. And I am not planning to be staying around here much longer. Good luck handling things when I am gone.
Oh, sure. Vonda fed them lettuce once or twice when I was sick, but all she did for days afterward was complain. Like feeding rabbits was beneath her.
It was late. I had a pillowcase to put them in and I heard them screaming. If you have never heard rabbits scream, you cannot imagine the sound. I had to hold the bag tight as they kicked and fought to be free.
Thelma is the big one. She must weigh twenty pounds. “That’s you and me,” Vonda said as we were “watching” the Thelma and Louise movie on television way back when. She was fourteen. I was only eight or nine. “We’re gonna be like that someday. Riding in a big car, just you and me.” Then a few months later, she discovered boys and that was the end of “just you and me.”
I like listening to movies and television shows now and then, especially cooking shows. But it is not always easy to figure out what is happening when you cannot see. I understand they have subtitles for people who cannot hear, but there is almost nothing for blind people. Just a handful of shows produced with audio descriptions. I prefer listening to classical music and reading books in Braille. The Braille Reading Pals Program that Momma subscribed to for me was my salvation when I was a kid.
By the way, it is not that easy killing something that does not want to be killed as I discovered. The birds were easy. I just snapped their necks, the bones so tiny they barely made a crunching noise. But the rabbits were not ready to give up so easy. They kicked and scratched and screamed until the knife did its work. And then they were dead and hot tears were streaming down my face. So, fuck me. Fuck everybody. Sorry, Momma, but using bad words is the least of my sins.
I needed to think carefully about where to bury them. I could not take Patsy with me. She would be upset. I had to find the place by myself. It was not easy, believe me. Even with my cane, I had to step nice and slow to avoid tripping over a tree root or stumbling off in the wrong direction and getting lost. That would not do. No, that would not do at all. I have not asked for help from anyone since Momma died—not that it would have done me any good—and I for damn sure am not going to ask now.
I hate Stu the most. I have laid awake many nights dreaming of dragging my knife across his throat while he sleeps. From what Vonda’s told me, he is tall and strong, but I would make sure he never knew what was happening until it was too late.
Vonda drinks a lot and then passes out. I can hear her snoring all the way from my bedroom. I do not think she would even know what was happening. Do not get me wrong. I love my sister. But I hate her, too. For betraying me. For making fun of me. And for stealing Gray. Everything I got, she had to have, too. Even Gray.
I have thought a lot about how it would be. I’d say, “Vonda, wake up. It’s your little sister, Valerie.” And then I would bury the knife into her chest. Let’s hear what kind of grunts and squeals she makes with the blade of my knife stuck in her fucking heart.
Daddy is a good man, I think. Never cheated on Momma, as far as I know. Just did not have a clue about how to care for his daughters when she died. He brought this all on himself. He could have saved us a lot of trouble if he had not listened to Stu and Vonda about selling the farm to Bob Halonen. Maybe then Gray and Vonda would not have done what they did.
Then there is Gray. He is the one who hurt me most of all. I have not figured out how to do it yet. I would like him to say he is sorry before I cut him, but it does not really matter. In the end, the only thing that matters is that we both die and then we can finally all be together. The two of us. Forever. That is how it should be. Like you said, Momma.
No, I have not forgotten Patsy. My traitor dog. I just do not think I could kill that dog if I wanted to. She is the only good thing I have ever known, except for you, Momma. And maybe Gray. Maybe.
***
Vonda did not bother to knock. A black eye dominated one side of her face.
“Jesus. Ain’t you a pretty sight?” she said. “Daddy said it looked like Stu tried to kill you.”
“Are you sure you want to be here? Your high school all-star is apt to show up any minute.” I squinted up at her from the bed where I had not moved since Virgil’s visit. It hurt to take a deep breath and the swelling in my jaw made it painful to speak. If that was not enough, I now had a lisp.
“Besides, why are you not looking for your sister?” From what Virgil had said, she had been missing for at least a few hours.
“I’ll be leaving in a few minutes after Daddy makes some calls. He asked me to look for her while he drives. But I figured you might need this.” She handed me an ice pack.
“Got any aspirin?”
“Before I go looking for Valerie, I wanted to say something.” She touched my bruised cheek. “This might be the last time I get to see you. While I was locked up in the bedroom the past day and a half, I did some thinking. You and me seem to have a chemistry. Call it sexual attraction, or whatever.”
Where was she going with this? Surely, she was not thinking about sex at this moment.
As if hearing my thoughts, she smiled. “Don’t worry, Gray. I may be crazy, but I ain’t that crazy. Figured this might be my last opportunity to convince you to ride off into the sunset together. Just leave this place and all the problems behind.”
“What about Stu and Valerie?”
“Let them sort out their own problems. They can stay, leave, whatever. I don’t care. I hate this place. I hate my husband. I hate being stuck here in the National Geo-fucking wilderness with someone whose life was over at age nineteen.”
Her voice broke and I thought she might cry. Or laugh. With Vonda, I was never quite sure what to expect.
“I need a new start. I need something new. Someone new. I think you are the someone I need, Gray.”
The pounding in my forehead grew. “You’ve got part of the equation solved. Dump Stu.” I wiped blood from the corner of my mouth.
“I know I ain’t perfect,” she continued as if I was on board her misguided train of thought. “I tend to drink too much and could probably stand to exercise some before my ass starts to droop. But I ain’t stupid—no matter how I talk.” She tried to laugh but failed. “Shit. I think I might love you, Gray.”
She touched my forehead and ran her fingers softly through my hair.
I grabbed her wrist. “Look at me, Vonda! I’ve got nothing. No money. No job. No future. Maybe no teeth.” I spat blood on the floor.
“Yesterday, I admit I needed you. In addition to an ill-considered lust bomb fueled by fear and loneliness, I may have felt affection, however misplaced. Today, however, I need forgiveness. And aspirin. And right now, we need to look for your sister,” I croaked. “Before something worse happens.”
“Why?” She pulled away from my grip and rubbed her wrist. “I fail to see why you are so concerned about her. All she has done is cause trouble. If she had not said something the other day at breakfast, this might not have happened.”
“First, she is handicapped. Not just physically but emotionally—something you or I will probably never understand. Second, she spoke up for me when I needed a job and a place to stay.” I rubbed my jaw where the bat had connected at least once. “Third, she brought me a blanket and a sandwich on a cold rainy night when I was trying to catch a few
hours’ sleep in my truck. Your little sister made me some of the most bizarre sandwiches I ever tasted but, for someone who was hungry and had nothing, it was manna.”
Vonda frowned as she circled the tiny room. She was not hearing me and likely never would.
“I probably sound like a crazy fool. It started out being just sexual attraction, but somewhere—maybe when I was laid up with a black eye from my asshole of a husband—it changed.
“You don’t even have to love me back. At least not right away.” She hastened to wipe a tear away. “We could travel, live off my share of the sale of the farm, find an apartment someplace.”
I groaned. In some weird, messed up way, her offer made sense. But that was before. Before Heide died. Before I was shot and being hunted by people who wanted to kill me. And before Stu took out his frustrations on me with his Louisville Slugger. Now I realized how stupid and naïve I had been about love, faithfulness and, most of all, trust—a currency you could earn but never spend without losing all its value.
“I am touched by your offer, Vonda. But I have never felt so ashamed of myself. I deserved your husband’s punishment.” I struggled to pronounce the final word clearly. Best to stick to one syllable words. “Besides, you don’t really love me. You are just looking for someone to take you away from this. You are afraid there is no one out there. That you might have to spend the rest of your life alone. Or worse, with Stu.”
I sounded like I was talking about myself, which maybe I was.
“Oh sure.” Vonda’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Let’s feel sorry for ourselves. That will solve everything.”
“If Stu shows up and sees us together, it won’t really matter.” I managed to wobble to my feet with a grunt. “I’m going to look for your sister,” I announced with a lisp.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Virgil and Vonda assumed Valerie was running away from home to protest the sale of the farm and would be hitchhiking or had called for a cab. Consequently, they were searching the roads and Mt. Vernon bus station for her in Virgil’s Cadillac.
I was no psychologist, but I suspected that the disappearance of her birds followed by the slaughter of her pet rabbits was symptomatic of something more profound than a young woman’s anger over the sale of the farm. My hunch was that the affair between Vonda and I had pushed her over the edge of whatever level of sanity she had been clinging to and that she might be hiding somewhere near, planning her next move.
Patsy accompanied me to the Lucky Lady. As we drew close to the derelict, I could hear noises inside.
”Valerie, is that you? What are you doing?”
“Don’t come near me!” she ordered.
“Why are you hiding?” I stroked Patsy’s ears. It was a warm day. The sun peeked through the leafy canopy overhead. The smell of evergreen trees, moss and earth competed with the sour, musty smell of the cabin cruiser resting on its rusted trailer beneath the ruined tarp. Nearby, I could hear birds warbling and crickets chirping like there was nothing out of the ordinary and no need to worry. As I had learned, however, it was all a trick to make you think things would be okay. Another clever ruse from the master con artist in the sky.
“I got a right to do what I want,” she said. “I’m tired of people thinking they know what is best for me.”
I took a few steps closer. “I heard about the rabbits from your dad. He found them. Their bodies anyway.”
“Oh, crap.”
During the silence while I waited for her to speak again, a bumble bee found a dandelion and Patsy snapped at it.
“Must be difficult to hide something when you can’t see,” I offered.
She snorted. “You sound funny. Why are you talking like that?”
“Stu needed some batting practice.”
“That asshole.” She continued to move about inside. “I heard you coming from a mile away. Is my traitor dog with you?”
“Yeah. She’s here. I’m coming in.”
The dog would have to stay outside. In my condition, it would be difficult enough just climbing over the transom.
“Stay,” I commanded and hoped she would.
I used a fender on the trailer to climb up and peer into the cabin cruiser. The first thing I noticed was the knife waving in front of my face like a cobra.
“I told you to stay away!” She slashed at me.
I yanked my head backward, but the blade tip caught my upper arm, drawing blood. I grabbed her wrist and twisted the knife away. It fell to the floor.
Valerie scuttled toward the galley in the dim interior like a caged feral animal.
The second thing I noticed were the blood stains on her clothing. It ribboned her arms and thighs where it looked like she had tried but failed to cover it up. A blood-soaked towel lay in the corner near an empty package of bandages.
“What the hell, Valerie. What is with all the blood?” I climbed into the boat with a grunt from the pain stabbing my ribs.
“They’re just scratches,” she said. She wiped away a tear from a reddened cheek.
“Let me look.” I edged closer, not wanting to frighten her, but backing her into the galley’s seating area where I was able to corner her. I clutched an arm before she could escape and pulled up one sleeve. A dozen old scars were revealed among the more recent cuts. After recovering from my initial shock, I tried to put an arm around her shoulder, but she jerked away.
“You’re cutting yourself?”
“It’s the only thing keeping me from killing myself,” she snarled.
“I didn’t realize how bad things were. Let me drive you to the hospital or somewhere you can get help.”
“Too late.” She scrabbled away. “Why are you here? Surprised you’re not gone yet.”
Why was I here? Why had I not just driven off in the banshee Toyota like Stu had ordered? Was I trying to save Valerie? Or myself? Once again, I was in over my head.
“Don’t worry,” I said in as calm a voice as I could muster. “I am not making you do anything you don’t want to do.”
Valerie’s rarely used cane rested on the table. The knife, meanwhile, lurked in the shadows on the floor.
“Got any painkillers?”
“Sorry, no meds. Wanna drink?” She waved a bottle of brandy, no doubt stolen from her sister. I had never seen her drink before, but there were evidently lots of things I had never seen Valerie do.
I sighed and sat down. “Why the hell not?”
She passed the brandy, then reached a hand tentatively toward my face. “Where did Stu hurt you?”
“There are streaks of blood crisscrossing your arms and legs, and you are worried about me?” The brandy stung my lips, but tasted good, warming as a ray of sunshine in the dim interior. “Jesus, Valerie. How long have you been doing this?”
She started to cry. I waited while she wiped her nose on a blood-stained sleeve. “Since right after Momma died.”
“And no one knows?” I found it incredible that a young woman—not to mention a young blind woman—could conceal such pain and self-harm from her family for so long.
She reached a hand for the bottle. The air in the boat smelled of apricots and mold and blood. “Just you.”
Watching her, I had a sudden realization. “You did it to yourself, didn’t you? The knife in the dishwasher.”
She took a pull on the bottle. “I never said it was you.”
“Why would you do that to yourself?”
“Why did you fuck my sister?”
“Because.” I paused. “Because I wanted to forget.”
“Forget what?”
“That I’m a dead man walking.” I felt loss and maybe self-pity like Vonda accused me of. But I was angry, too. At my lisp, my pain, and now this latest affront to my dignity and my pathetic notion of how the world ought to be. In addition to being virtually penniless and hunted by sociopaths, here I was sitting in a derelict cabin cruiser with a disturbed young blind woman after being beaten half to death by her brother-in-law. All because my
wife thought she could get away with helping a friend steal a hundred million.
I took the bottle back from her and took a big swallow and let it burn the back of my throat. “I lost everything I knew and loved. I don’t even have a place to call home anymore.”
“It’s not that different—me cutting myself,” Valerie said quietly. “It stops the pain of remembering. Of missing my mother. Of feeling sorry for myself. Sometimes it is the only way I feel in control of my life and not drowning in loneliness or hate.”
I looked around the boat. There was a small sink, a refrigerator, and a two-burner stove. The seat seams were split, and the once-upon-a-happier-time white vinyl had turned green with mold. “What happened here? What is a cabin cruiser doing sitting in the middle of nowhere?”
She tried to smile. “The boat was Momma’s idea. We would go fishing, or just motor around Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, or Bellingham Bay. Just Vonda, me, Daddy and Momma. She would bundle me up in a parka and tuck a blanket around my legs and make me a warm mug of hot cocoa. I remember the wind, the spray on my face, the seagulls squawking. It was like heaven.”
Her smile faded a few seconds later. “And then she got sick and we never went out again. Daddy didn’t have the heart to sell the boat, but it made him too sad to see it, so he hid it back here.”
“I’m sorry, Valerie.”
“For what?” She passed me the bottle again.
“I failed you.” I took another pull. At least my pain was starting to diminish.
“You ain’t the only one.”
I reached for her hand. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Remember the apartment over a bakery?” She turned her face toward mine, her eyes closed. “You can still do that.” I must have been already feeling the brandy because I added, “We can do that.”
“Don’t lie. Tell me the truth. Otherwise, you are no good to me.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. “I am not leaving without you.”