by Larry Brown
She didn’t know where they had been before this, only that it was a place with long fields of white where the workers carried sacks into the rows and dragged them along the ground after them, but then it had turned cold and they had come to this place down black and broken roads that went through low places of dark water for a long time, all of them piled in the cab that could get in there and her old daddy at the wheel with his whiskers and his stub of a cigar and his bottle nestled right next to his overalls. He’d smack them if they didn’t be quiet.
She remembered walking around on a gravel lot near a stone barn and a fine farmhouse with roses in the yard as her daddy talked to a man, Gary and Dorothy and her mother sitting in the truck. Then a slow drive down a dirt road between fields, then the little camp of tents hidden near a river, out there where most of the fields lay, stretched out to the bordering timber that seemed miles away.
She was too small to work in some places and in some places they let her work. Her daddy told her that they’d eat better if she worked, so she did, but she never ate better. But working here was mixed in with watching the boys on top of Barbara Lewis. Her dress would be over her chest and her white legs would be spread and a boy with his pants slipped down over his ass going up and down on top of her, grunting and shaking, and then something would happen and he would scream out. And Barbara Lewis would turn her head while she was still on her back and see Fay watching her.
They worked the fields there for weeks and weeks, and she helped some, setting sweet potato slips, mounding up the good black dirt, the thin green plants so limp in rows behind them as they went along on their knees.
The workers struck the tents one day and the whole camp moved very slowly to new fields up near a blacktop road, half the camp on one side and half on the other, and that was where Barbara Lewis began to tease her with her food. She would limp out on her crutch and her crooked legs and hold up her cans of Vienna sausage and her tins of sardines and she would show Fay candy bars.
“Come on over,” she’d say, from across the road, and another truck would roar by, shaking the ground almost as it came, an air horn blaring at the workers’ children all scattered up and down the edge of the road. It was after her brother Tom was run over. The watermelon truck had gone over his head and they’d stood around him sprawled there dead in the dusty sunlight, and she’d looked at his eyes. For a long time after that they had money and good things to eat and lots of candy. But now they were here in this place called Florida and there was not enough food to go around in the pot her mother brought home from the cook tent each night. Her daddy ate most of it. Her mother would fight him over it but one time she spilled it and he beat her until blood came from her mouth. Gary fought him even then, what little good it did.
They stayed there and stayed there. She played with some of the other kids and waded in a creek. In late evening she would wander back up to the cook tent where good smells floated out, not too close because they’d smack kids hanging around trying to get food, and she would see the older boys giving food and candy to Barbara Lewis and then helping her back behind the tent and she would watch them put her down in the trampled grass and give her a red box and then take her panties off and push her dress almost up over her head. And they would climb on while their friends waited and watched for their turns, while she lay on her back and scooped her hand into the box and stuffed the candy into her mouth and chewed it as they did what they did with her. She remembered wondering what was that they did and knowing that they were putting something of themselves inside of her. What her daddy peed with by the side of the road sometimes.
And every day Barbara Lewis propped herself on her crutch and chanted her little song:
Come on over and get it, Little Miss Chickenshit.
And she would set it down on the ground and let Fay look at it, bright peppermint candy still in its clear wrapping and the cans of meat, the fat round fingers of beef that were so good with crackers. Fay would watch her wait until a truck was in sight and make her way out to the road and set something down—a sucker, some pieces of gum, always a can of Vienna sausage. And Fay would turn her head as Barbara Lewis struggled back to her side, and try to judge how long it would take for the truck to get there, and she would go out tentatively, looking, afraid to jump, most times too hungry not to, and the horns on the truck would be blaring already, and sometimes she would go back. But sometimes she would not. Sometimes she would run out and grab whatever it was and snatch it almost from under the wheels of the truck, and it was a fine thing to open the sausages or unwrap the candy on her side of the road and look across at Barbara Lewis, leaning on her crutch and yelling, already looking up the road for another truck.
But it became a harder trick to pull off. Barbara Lewis would wait longer, would let the truck get closer before she went and put something down.
Sometimes the fear was too great. Some days she was hungrier than others. Once she felt the side of her dress brushed by a towering truck that skidded and bucked and tried to stop and finally did, and then a man climbed down and screamed curses at them and sent them scattering back to their tents.
She wondered if Barbara Lewis hated her because she watched what the boys did to her. She wondered what it felt like when the older boys did that to her and if it hurt. It didn’t seem to hurt her but it didn’t seem like she got any fun out of it either.
One evening, late, Barbara Lewis’s daddy came in early after a rainstorm and caught one of the boys on top of her. He slapped the boy and kept slapping him and then he pulled Barbara Lewis by her hair into their tent and the screaming started.
She didn’t see Barbara Lewis for a while and then one day she was back, propped up across the road, her face swollen, both eyes still black, a tooth missing where one had not been missing before. They were standing on each edge of the road, looking at each other, and she could see that Barbara Lewis had nothing in her hands. She heard the truck grinding way off and she looked into Barbara Lewis’s eyes and watched her wait until the truck was too close and then limp directly into the path of it. There was a noise and blood flew and the truck went past skidding. Then there was only Barbara Lewis broken and bleeding in the road and her eyes were not like they had been before. They were like Tom’s eyes had been, only cold and staring. A voice inside her said: That’s what dead looks like.
THE FLAME BLEW by her cheek and she felt its hot kiss blossom against her skin and the bullet cut some of her hair. But she had her hands on the gun by then and she pointed it up as Sam had done and it didn’t fire. She didn’t say anything, and Alesandra didn’t, only panted and struggled with her, and now that Fay had her hands on her she could feel the fear in the woman and could hear the breath coming in ragged gasps, and could hear her trying to suck it in like a fish in the bottom of the boat.
Then the gun did fire, once, and Fay didn’t know how many it held, and she turned loose of it with one hand and doubled her fist and drove it hard into Alesandra’s eye. It put her down and Fay had more leverage as she stood over her. She brought her knee up into Alesandra’s nose and heard something give, and pulled the gun free. And she didn’t even think about it, just pointed it down at her and squeezed the trigger and it bucked in her hand, those little barks you wouldn’t think were loud enough, bright flashes of light like strobes that showed holes in Alesan-dra’s falling face, and then the moon hid its face for good. A whippoor-will called from somewhere up the beach. Another one up in the woods somewhere answered him. She turned and threw the gun as far as she could into the lake. It went in without almost any noise at all and the black waves kept moving. Then she looked down at what she had done.
WHEN THE RAIN came she was far out in the lake and her fingers on the wheel of Alesandra’s boat were slick with blood. She’d watched Sam operate his plenty of times. She had the running lights off and it was hard to see, but she was pretty sure the water was open, with no dead trees, for a long way out. She wasn’t going to take her all the way to the levee or
anything anyway. Just somewhere out here in this blackness she was going to stop.
The drops pelted her and she felt them matting her hair. The lake was getting rougher, and the boat rocked some in the chop. This was the only way to hide it. The rain would wash away the blood on the beach. If she was lucky she could make it back to the bank long before Sam got home. If she was unlucky or weak he might get there before her and ask her where she had been. And, soaking wet, what would she say?
It was probably best to go on out. She’d thought of trying to find the old trees, and of tying the boat to one of them and leaving her there. Some fisherman would find her in the morning. Somebody would take care of it. Of her. Somebody had to come to take care of Barbara Lewis. They had put her flattened head and her broken shins onto a stretcher and covered her up with a blanket, head to toe.
There was nothing but blackness around her and the rain stung her arms and legs. She didn’t try to look at the body slumped next to her, its head almost down on the floor and still probably leaking blood. She was too scared to do anything but just keep going. She could still see the light on Sam’s deck and she knew that if she lost sight of that it was all over. She wouldn’t be able to find her way out of this and she’d probably get caught. If she was still in this thing at daylight she knew she’d be caught. So she kept driving, trying to see what was in front of her, trying to remember what things looked like in daytime. There were stands of trees far out to the right, and some more groups of them way out in front. But she couldn’t see anything of them now. It was all black, and moving, and the rain was bouncing on everything and getting in her eyes. Her hair was plastering to her neck.
She looked back at the light again. It was just about gone and she could not lose it. So she reached to the switch and killed the motor. The sudden silence of it barely registered in the noise of the wind and the rain.
She tried to see Alesandra in the seat next to her but she was just a wet thing. She had to get back to the house before he did and get cleaned up and maybe put her wet clothes away somewhere or maybe dry them. She would have to lie her way out of it when they found Alesandra. She was almost vomiting sick now with what she’d done, and shaking with the old knowledge of how it could happen so easily, so quickly. The cops in the movies always found out who killed somebody. They had fingerprints and bloodstains and they knew what kind of bullet came from what kind of gun and they’d keep messing around, smart son of a bitches asking you questions and waiting for you to slip up and then they’d catch you in a lie and it was all over. She’d say that of course she’d been home, that’s what she’d tell them. She checked the straps on her life jacket to see that they were tight and then she slid over the side of the boat carefully, into the black water, and it was scary how fast the boat drifted away into the darkness and then disappeared. She kicked her feet in the water and swallowed a mouthful of it. The light at Sam’s house was a tiny wavering dot that flickered and sometimes hid. It was bad to just leave her like that but there wasn’t anything else she could do with her. Even now the rain was washing out the tracks from where she’d dragged her down the beach and loaded her into the boat. All she had to do was just keep kicking and she’d get there eventually. But the water kept pushing into her mouth and she let some get down in her lungs and had to stop and cough for a while before she could go on, the waves rising up over the back of her head. It pained her to have to crane her neck out of the water to keep it out of her mouth. Why would they even ask her any questions? The only person who might guess what happened would be Sam. She pulled hard against the waves and kicked her feet. The life jacket made it easier to stay up but it made it harder to move her arms.
But she could rest with the life jacket. That was the main thing. It might take a long time to get over there in these waves. But they might catch her. She might not be able to lie good enough whenever Sam asked her if she knew anything about it, which he would. He would for sure. And then, if she told the truth, what would happen to her? And how would he feel about it and about her now and what would happen to him since it happened at his house? His boss might drag him under. Somebody hateful and high up might see to it that he was ruined, and not let him be a cop anymore. They might send her to the pen.
The water was getting cold on her face and hands and legs and feet. The light seemed a little clearer, not quite so far away. The rain started moving across the tops of the waves in gusts, and she blinked her eyes and kept swimming, and even thinking that it might be best to just keep on going once she hit the bank. She could talk to him later maybe and try to explain it, try to tell him how it happened, and how scared she’d been. Damn crazy woman. Them having this baby and her trying to mess it up. She didn’t have to come over like that, and sneak up to the house. Maybe she’d been watching through the windows. Maybe she’d been there before. Maybe she’d watched them make love on the couch at night. Why did people have to act the way they did? That one back there would still be alive if she’d left them alone. If she hadn’t had that gun. Wasn’t anything else she could have done, so the thing to do was just stick around and tell the truth about what happened. She stopped in the water and looked around. There was no telling where the boat was. This thing was done. There was no undoing it. She’d left a body in a boat and swum away from it. That was enough for cops. They’d find out she killed her, too. So she couldn’t stick around here. She’d have to pack some clothes, get what little money she had, try to get out on the road and catch a ride quickly, just to get out of sight. She couldn’t take a chance on hooking him up with this. She’d find some other place to stay for a while, and then later she’d come back. She didn’t know how. She just knew she would.
She was weakening an hour later and the rain was still beating down on her, but the light was closer and the sky was as black as it had been before with the deepest part of night over her head. She sang songs to herself from the ones she’d heard on the radio or on the cassette player, tunes she could sway her hips to, and she didn’t want to leave him. His hands were soft and warm and strong and they moved down between her legs and over her nipples and he put his face down there and kissed her until she’d scratch the side of his neck with her nails, didn’t mean to, just got so excited. She kept spitting the water out but she had to swallow some of it and it was making her stomach feel bloated and she wanted to cry but she knew that wouldn’t do any good because it never had before, not even when she couldn’t pick up the watermelons and still he made her try, and she wondered where his sorry ass was tonight and hoped he was dead.
She kicked her feet and looked up at Sam’s light shining out there, all alone by itself in the night.
SAM EASED A cigarette out of his pocket and punched in the lighter on the dash and waited for it to pop out. His hat was on the seat beside him and he was off duty, had already checked out for home. He’d worked two wrecks, had run a roadblock for an hour and a half, and he had issued three tickets for speeding and pulled over one drunk that he took to jail in Coffeeville. He was done. Heading home. He’d eaten at the 444 truck stop on I-55 at Senatobia even though he wasn’t supposed to be that far north.
He’d meant to call home, had intended several times to get to a phone, but they’d kept him running from place to place all night and he didn’t even get to finish all his sandwich at the truck stop for the portable calling him away again.
But she was all right. She’d probably watched some television or read something. She’d get used to it.
He cracked the window to let the smoke out. He turned off Highway 6 and went up the access road toward the dam. There wasn’t much traffic on the road now. Fay was young but he figured she’d be a good mother. He remembered the night Karen was born, how small she was, how red and wrinkled, how black her wet knot of hair. He wished things could have turned out differently for her. He wished he hadn’t been so hard on her. And Amy now, done, finished, gone. And her stone not even up yet and he had to call them again about that. It was a big stone, a good stone
. It had cost almost two thousand dollars. For that much money it looked like they could go ahead and get the damned thing up.
He turned off on his road and made the short drive down to his mailbox and went in past it, slowing down to a steady creep through these woods. The tires went quietly over the pine needles and bumped over the bridge and he pulled up in his yard and parked. He got his ticket book and his hat and locked the car after he got out. Looking up through the windows of the house he half expected to see her come to the door, but he thought maybe she was watching television and hadn’t heard him pull up. It looked like it had rained hard here tonight.
But something seemed wrong when he went through the door. He called her name a couple of times and only the quiet house was there.
“Fay?” he said. The back door was standing open and the light was on over the deck. He set his stuff down. Maybe she’d gone for a walk on the beach. In the rain? Not likely. It was dark as shit out there away from the house. The oven light was on in the stove and he pulled the door down. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans. Everything looked a little dry. He closed the oven door and shut it off. It was one-thirty by the clock on the wall. He’d had to fill out some reports at the station.
If she was hiding it wasn’t funny anymore.
“Hey Fay,” he said.
The television was playing, the volume low. Something on the Discovery Channel, looked like, animals living in the snow.
Nothing in the bathroom.
She wasn’t in the bedroom but some drawers had been pulled out.