by William Gay
Then you ain’t seen him?
Not today, Little Sister. But I was supposed to. Ain’t you goin to ask me in to supper?
No. I don’t know what you’re doin here in the first place. Kenneth’ll run you off when he gets in.
Kenneth couldn’t run water through a garden hose. And nobody’s runnin me anywhere. Not today. I come here on business, and I ain’t leavin till it’s finished.
He had risen and stepped onto the edge of the porch. In the failing light his face was all angular shadows and with the skin drawn tight seemed composed solely of the skull beneath it and out the wells of dark the yellowflecked eyes as compassionless as a cat’s.
Let’s go in, he said. He would grasp her arm but she jerked away and whirled as if she’d slap him then thought better of it. She went through the door fast and tried to slam it on him, but he kicked it hard with her shoulder against it and she fetched up on the front room floor with her head against a toppled end table and a ringing in her ears. She wiped her forehead with a hand and the hand came away bloody.
It would save time, Sutter said, if we just cut through the front part and go right to the end. The front part is where I ask for the pictures and you tell me you don’t know what I’m talkin about. None of that is in question. I know you got em. You tried to blackmail Fenton Breece with em, and he sent me to get em back. Now come up with em before you do somethin to put me in a bad mood.
She was on her hands and knees. The pattern on the linoleum floor went in and out of focus. Geometric white tilesA single drop of blood dropped off her nose and splattered into a crimson star.
You can kiss my ass, she said.
Temptin as that offer is, I’m goin to have to let it slide. Maybe later. I hardly ever mix business with pleasure.
She looked up at him. His face was stony and remote.
Let’s have em, he said. Where are they?
Where you’ll never find them.
Well, we’ll see. But then I got a ace in the hole. I got you to show me.
He leant over her and grasped her hair and pulled her to her feet. He twisted his fist in her hair and pulled her head back. His face was very close to her own. He was detached, and there was nothing at all of life in the emptylooking eyes. They might have been shards of agate flecked with iron ore.
He slapped her. She had begun to cry. He’ll kill you, she said.
It’s been tried before, he said. By better men than he is. I figured you for a harder case than this. Folks into blackmailin and extortion need a harder shell than what you’ve showed.
You ought to know.
He released her hair. She settled back to the floor. Her head drooped. She sat with her legs folded beneath her.
Get over on that couch and set, Sutter said. I’m goin to look around a bit. Don’t get up. Don’t even think about slippin out that door. If you do, I’ll hear you and I’ll drop you in the front yard like I was killin hogs. Do you believe me?
She didn’t reply, but she believed him anyway.
He began in the front room. He emptied out drawers, checked their bottomsides, pored over their contents. He took the backs off picture frames and looked behind them. Fromtime to time he glanced sharply at her. She wondered where Tyler was, she’d wish he’d come and then she’d hope he didn’t. She sat trying to think. She didn’t know what to do. She’d been holding something of an intricate design, and it had collapsed in her hands, and she didn’t know where the pieces went. It was dark outside. The windows had gone opaque and all they showed her was the reflection of the room.
Be putting this shit up, he told her. I don’t want this place lookin like it was turned wrong side out. He wandered into the kitchen.
She got up listlessly and began to store away papers in the drawers. She could hear him in the kitchen opening and closing doors. When she had the room tidied up, she looked toward the kitchen door and he was standing there watching her speculatively.
What’s them pictures show, anyway? he asked.
Just dead folks.
Dead folks? Why’s he wantin pictures of dead people so bad?
She shook her head mutely. There was no way to explain even if she had wanted to.
Is he screwin dead women or what?
She didn’t reply. She wondered idly if it had been the money Breece was paying him or just a perverse desire to see the pictures that had set him in motion.
He crossed the room toward her. Maybe you got em on you.
I ain’t, though. I’m not that stupid.
It might be fun to look.
How much is he paying you, anyway? Sutter considered a moment. A thousand dollars, he said.
They’re worth a lot more than that. Me and Kenneth’ll give you five thousand and all you got to do is leave us alone.
He just looked at her.
Half, then.
It’s a hard fact that half of nothin is nothin, too. That’s what you’ve got and what you’re goin to wind up with.
He grasped her shirt, a hand to each side of her collar. When he yanked buttons spun off and she stood with the shirt hanging open. When she made to hold it together, he slapped her. He unpocketed the knife and pressed a button on its mother-of-pearl side, and the blade snicked out. He slid the blade between her breasts, dull side in. Let’s see what’s under here, he said. When he pulled the knife outward, the narrow edge of cold steel sliced the strap between the brassiere cups. He uncovered her breasts, studied them clinically. No pictures here, he said. Nothin here but titties.
She was crying. You’re going to pay for this, you son of a bitch.
She could hear the truck laboring up the hill. He heard it too, stood in an attitude of listening, the knife still clenched in his fist. A moment later and the walls moved with the shadows of treebranches, the fence, sliding along the wall like illusory images propelled by some enormous wind.
He got a gun in that truck?
I don’t know what he’s got.
You holler and I swear I’ll kill you. I’ll cut your throat, then hide behind the door and cut his.
Crazy, she said, so softly she might have been talking about herself.
Footsteps crossed the porch, and the door opened. Tylerstood for a moment framed darkly against the paler dark outside. He held a thermos bottle in one hand; a toolbelt dangled from the other. His eyes grew wide and seemed to take in the whole room at once. His mouth opened but he didn’t say anything.
Everything looked harsh and surreal: What he saw was Sutter standing slightly behind her holding her left arm twisted between her shoulder blades. The blade of the knife lay across her throat. She was attempting to hold the shirt closed but her right breast was exposed. She had her eyes clenched shut, and her face was twisted in pain.
I don’t believe you thought I was serious, Sutter said.
He released the girl and stepped away from her. He closed and pocketed the knife. Fix them clothes, he told the girl. He grinned at Tyler. She can’t keep her clothes on. Somethin about me affects women that way. She’d’a had mine off, you hadn’t of showed up when you did.
Sooner or later I am fixing to kill you, Tyler said. If you don’t kill me first. You had no business going after my sister any such chickenshit way as this. You already told me. I thought you’d be man enough to come after me.
Sutter shrugged. Whatever works, he said.
He watched intent form in Tyler’s eyes, and when Tyler threw the thermos he sidestepped and heard it smash against the wall somewhere behind him. When Tyler came for him he just feinted left and slammed Tyler in the side of the head with his fist. Tyler staggered and swung the toolbelt hard but Sutter caught it onehanded and jerked and when Tyler came stumbling into range Sutter drove a fist into Tyler’s abdomen and the boy’s breath exploded outward in a harsh whoosh and he sat down hard and rolled over. By the time he got upSutter was sitting on the couch with the rifle across his lap. Now get out the memory box and let’s look at them old family pictures, he said.
; I don’t have them, Tyler said. Someone’s keeping them for me.
Sure they are. You just handed them over for somebody to keep a few days. You think I just fell off the haywagon? Shit, Tyler, you can do better than that.
I went to the law with them. Sheriff Odel’s got them. I told them the whole thing, and they’re going to be looking for you. You better not touch my sister again.
Fact is, I know you went to the law. But you went with some cock-and-bull story about me and your sister. Odel done talked to me about it. We had a laugh and a little drink, and he left thinking you was either a troublemaker or kind of light in the head. A blackmailer runnin to the law is one of the stupider things I ever heard of.
There is just no way you can get away with this.
Watch me. We’re in the process of me getting away with it right now.
Tyler was silent a time. He glanced at his sister. Don’t tell him, she said, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
They’re in the truck, Tyler said at length.
Sutter rose from the couch. We’ll see if they are, he said. You go first. Little Sister stays with me. I’ve got a knife on her, and you try anything even approachin what you done awhile ago, she gets another slit cut in a place where she’s got no use for one.
The truck sat facing the house. Tyler was wishing he’d left it pointed outward bound. A cool wind was looping up through the pines. They sighed softly. A three-quarter moon the colorof bone hung suspended over them, and the truck gleamed dully.
Where in the truck?
They’re taped under the dash. If you want them, you’ll have to get them out.
Not in a million fuckin years.
Tyler opened the truck door and lay back across the seat. Hands behind his head and fumbling under the dashboard. A myriad of wires here. He felt the tobacco can ducttaped behind the radio.
Hell, it’s gone, he said.
Involuntarily Sutter leant forward as if he’d look too. Tyler kicked him in the chest as hard as he could with both booted feet and before Sutter struck the ground he was immediately scrambling to get under the steering wheel. He was already cranking the truck when Sutter dropped the rifle and went stumbling backward and fell. Get the hell in here, Tyler was yelling. Move it.
She jumped in and sat holding the door handle. When the engine caught Tyler popped the clutch and spun it backward in the gravel not knowing or caring where Sutter was or even if he was under the wheels. He slammed the shift lever into low and went sidewise out of the driveway with the rear wheels fishtailing onto the road. Shut the door, he said, but she just sat there. She seemed not to know where she was. She was very pale. He glanced back once, but he didn’t see Sutter, which was just as well, for there was an explosion behind them, and both windshields erupted in flying pellets of safety glass. What the hell do we do now? he asked aloud, but he was already doing all there was to do. Get down, he told her. Shut that door and lay down in the seat. She slidobediently down in the seat but left the door flopping and when Tyler reached an arm across her to close it they were already going too fast for the curve.
He was trying to correct the skid the truck was in but the rear tires were already schoolhopping along on the packed chert when there was a dull boom and a tire went and the truck spun with the windshield opening an elongated frieze of fleeing trees and inexplicably the house itself sliding toward the edge of the world. The truck was riding eerily sideways on the embankment with brush whipping the rocker panels and headlights lost in the halfgrown pines they were riding over. He was afraid to break the truck’s momentum by slowing and he had some halfcrazed idea he might get back on the road where the curve ended if he could just keep the truck from flipping. The right side of the truck was topmost and it kept defying gravity and bouncing playfully upward then returning to the ground again. Her weight had slid against him and the door kept banging. If he’d continued downward he might have made it but where his course intersected the road he cut right and when he did the right side of the truck lifted and would not settle back. It stood eerily balanced for a moment like a carnival trickrider then rolled upward and over in a cacophony of rending metal and breaking glass and the grating shriek of steel sliding across stone. She’d slid away from him when the truck rolled and when it slid again she was gone.
The truck righted pointed downhill with headlights cocked into the onrushing trees that were just a whirlpool of light he was driving into. He was in the floorboard when the truck slammed into a tree and ceased in a final outrage of breaking glass and he was out immediately to find her. His next thought was for the cover of the trees, he wanted it desperately.
He could not feel anything broken but something had peeled the skin from his shin and he was bleeding into his boot. All the while he was feeling for broken bones he was looking wildly about for her and he could hear brush popping somewhere and he knew that Sutter was already coming at a run.
A white body strewn on the homemade road they’d constructed. He leapt deadfalls of broken pine skinned bonewhite in the moonlight to where she was sprawled and caught her up under the armpits and dragged her toward the truck. She seemed slack and unwilled as a sack of grain and he kept talking to her but she didn’t answer.
At the truck he dragged the rifle from behind the seat. He untaped the Prince Albert can from beneath the dash. His hands were shaking and it seemed to take him forever. Something kept dripping out of the truck and onto the leaves, drip, drip, some vital fluid, his truck was bleeding to death. He shoved the can in his hip pocket and caught her up again and started for the woods. All the breath he had was just a ragged sob in his throat. He won’t shoot, he was thinking; he don’t know for sure where the pictures are. To show what he’d learned of Sutter the moon rode from behind a skiff of ragged clouds and a bullet thocked solidly to earth, sending chunks of dirt skittering away across the girl, and another sang off somewhere in the treebranches.
He’d stopped stockstill, mindless of the bullets, just staring at her. She lay with her head pillowed facedown on her breast. Arms outflung defenselessly. As if the world was coming at her at a blinding rate of speed and she’d thrown up her hands to thwart it. All he could see was the dishwaterblonde of the back of her head and when he gently righted it it moved without resistance like something moving underwater. Her eyes were open with the exposed whites rolled upward and he could see the dark freckles against her colorless face and her pale breasts bared without shame and her hair all caught with leaves and sticks like some luckless soul drowned and beached here by a receding tide.
He’d begun to cry. Keening some inarticulate grief over her broken body. All the cruel things said and done, the kind ones saved for later. Could I but do it over.
He lowered her head gently and closed her eyes and took up the gun. He’d thought when he made the woods he might lie up in the brush and kill Sutter but the light was chancy at best and what he wanted most right now was to hear her voice, for things to be the way they had been scant minutes before with her weight against his shoulder but the clockhands would not roll backward. What he needed was distance. There was a hellhound on the trail and when the dark sanctuary of trees swallowed him he just kept on going.
Yet sometime past midnight he came cautiously back through the timber again, and the field was alive with activity. He watched with an almost dispassionate bemusement varicolored lights flickering like spirit lamps, dark folk moving about the field. Disembodied voices almost surreal in this clockless hour drifted to him without clarity or coherence. The staccato static of a scanner like a dispassionate chorus commenting on the depths his life had fallen to. An ambulance backed out onto the roadway and tires slewed on gravel and it sped offtoward town. He waited for a siren but there was none forthcoming. It vanished in silence and he sat watching its lights wind up into the hills. A bitter grief lay in him like a stone.
Another vehicle backed around and its headlights swept the field and ceased and he could see black figures moving about in the light. A wreck
er with its revolving strobe. A figure at the wrecker was paying out cable across the field toward Tyler’s truck.
He sat getting his courage up. His story straight. At length he rose and started to enter the field and then he stopped. There was a dread familiarity about one of the figures. The angular unmistakable shape of Sutter. Shouting something back from where Tyler’s truck sat canted against the tree. Instructions, directions, who knew? Overseeing all this perhaps. The world had turned strange and seemed to proceed without logic, or any logic he could follow. Even as he watched the cable tautened and the wrecker backed further into the field to provide more slack, and Sutter hooked the cable and shouted. Once more the cable grew tight and the creaking winch slowly drew Tyler’s wrecked truck back into the field.
He hunkered at the edge of the wood and watched this shabby tableau. A wind stirred, clashed in the drying leaves. Leaves drifted about him but he did not notice. The wrecker was leaving with the pickup, climbing the steep embankment to the roadbed, its lights canted upward briefly limning moving trees then the clouds absorbed them and there was only a faint glow like some celestial light flaring behind them and the wrecker cut into the road with the headlights clearing out its path. Other engines cranked; all this seemed to be drawing to a close. One by one the other cars followed the wrecker likemourners in a funeral procession. Then the field lay dark and revenantial and silent and there came the cry of an owl.
Still he sat. He seemed to have nowhere else to be, no one in all the world to talk to. The image of the ambulance lights wending upward over the horizon of dark hills would not fade, it seemed to have seared itself onto his retinas. A lifetime ago she strolled up the roadbed toward the school bus, books clutched defensively against her breasts, her face already closed against the anticipated catcalls and whistles. A lifetime ago she led him to the first-grade door and released his hand and consigned him to life. Little sister Death, commended to Fenton Breece.
The house sat in the haunted glade. Fairytale cottage, gingerbread house, but where is the playful troll? The warlock seems not about. Somewhere about his rounds perhaps. A pale ribbon of nighcolorless smoke rose plumb from the flue and dissipated in the windless air.