There was a tidy row of bleached, white towels, hand towels, and wash clothes draped on a bar over the toilet. Tony removed the largest towel, bit down on the edge with all the strength in her jaw, and tore the towel down the center. It made two decent-sized strips.
“Get your clothes off,” said Tony. “Stinkin’ liar!”
The teacher had found the bump on her head, and was trying to rub it. “What?”
“Now.”
The teacher shook her head.
“You haven’t taken a shower in days,” said Tony. “Don’t fuck with me. Get ‘em off.”
The woman began to breathe funny, heavy, loud, like she was having a heart attack or asthma attack or a blood clot in the brain. But she worked her fingers into the backs of her shoes and worked them off, and then the socks. She grappled for the side of the tub to stand up but couldn’t seem to do it. She remained seated to pull off the sweatshirt and then the jeans. She sat, knees up against her chest, in her bra and panties. The breathing noises, raspy and loud, ran a blade up Tony’s spine.
“Underwear, too.”
The teacher fumbled with the back of her bra and worked the hooks apart. It fell to the slick tub floor. The woman’s breasts were large, with dark nipples and stretch marks. A mother’s breasts, thought Tony. Deformed from milk and nursing, Tony thought. The teacher slid her panties down, and shook them free of her ankles. Her chest heaved. The eyes had closed.
“Get up.”
The teacher fumbled with the edge of the tub and got her feet under her. She stood, then leaned on the rear wall, eyelashes fluttering.
“Mobile South Motor Inn oughta have lots of nice warm shower water,” said Tony. “Hands up to the curtain rod.”
The teacher shook her head, her eyes still closed.
Tony grabbed one arm and yanked it upward. The teacher’s other arm followed as if with a mind of its own. With one of the towel strips, Tony secured the woman’s wrists together and knotted them to the rod.
“Ever see the movie Scarface?” asked Tony as she stood back to admire her work. “Mam’s boyfriend rented it one time. There was this guy. He was a friend of Al Pacino. He went to a drug deal in some motel room, but the drug deal went bad. This drug dealer with a gun tied Pacino’s friend up in the bathtub with his hands on the curtain rod. You see that?”
The teacher shook her head. Her breath wheezed and whistled.
“You lying again? Everybody seen Scarface.”
“I didn’t see it.” A noisy gasp. “I don’t…care for Al Pacino.”
“Everybody likes Al Pacino! He’s the man. What’s wrong with you? Well, anyway, this guy gets tied up in the bathtub and know what they do? They cut off his arms with a chain saw! Cool, huh? Pacino doesn’t know what’s happening, he’s down on the street waiting. But the motel room gets turned into this fucking butcher shop!”
The teacher’s eyes opened and stayed open. She looked at her bound wrists and began to struggle, began to kick and twist. The rod creaked but didn’t pull loose. It was threaded into the wall and screwed in place. Mobile South Motor Inn had done a nice job choosing and installing the bathroom fixtures. Must have gotten them at Otto’s Hardware. “I don’t have a chain saw,” said Tony. “God, you’re stupid.”
The teacher didn’t stop twisting. She sounded like the goddamned Elephant Man the way she wheezed. I am not an animal, I am a teacher!
Tony turned on the shower and adjusted the nozzle so it struck the teacher in the head. The water was cold. She turned the knob until it was warm. “That’s not bad,” she said, nodding to herself. “That oughta rinse you off. Get rid of some of that stink. I’m going out for something. When I get back, I’ll let you down. Then we’re gonna talk about Baby Doll. About the real reason you had her hiding in the car, why she rubs herself all the time. I bet you know. I know you know. And you ain’t gonna lie no more.” Snatching up the second strip, Tony worked it roughly into the woman’s mouth, forcing it through teeth and over tongue, and tied it at the back. The woman gagged, and the whistling breath came now through her nose, fast, irregular. “What, I’m supposed to believe you’d stand there all quiet?”
Tony took the gun into the bedroom. The kid was on her side now, her arm beneath her head, watching as a cartoon kitchen sponge explained to a starfish why they should have a Fall Fish Festival. Her legs were locked around each other like a braid of red licorice. One shoe had fallen to the carpeted floor.
“Hey,” Tony said to the little girl. “I’m going out. I gotta tie you up.”
The girl didn’t sit up. She just held her hands out in Tony’s direction without taking her eyes from the screen. Disgusted, Tony dumped a pillow from the case and secured the kid’s hands together in front. A second pillow case bound her ankles. “Those pillow cases aren’t too bad, kinda soft, I guess.” Tony watched as the girl lay back down on her side and relaxed into her story.
“I’ll be back. Who said that? What movie?”
The girl looked at Tony and then back at the T.V.
“It was Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
The girl seemed to smile, but Tony knew it was at the sponge cartoon.
36
Water roared in her bad ear. Pounding relentlessly like someone driving a nail into her skull. Her arms, above her head, burned with immobility. Her legs ached. She opened her eyes to light and mist, and closed them again. Her tongue fought the intrusive terry and could not push it out.
Over the sound of the water, a slam. A vibration in the floor of the tub. A door closing, somewhere beyond the water.
Her mind moving as if in cold lake water, grabbing at thoughts but coming up with only slippery, rotting impressions.
Cotton on the ground. Blood on her thighs. The copper-taste of bile. The second grader in the back seat, sneezing beneath a quilt. Hands between her legs, uninvited, probing, taunting. Her fingerprints on a foyer table. The old brick mansion, void of her son, her husband, herself. Chalk dust on her hands. An accident report on her desk.
She bent her head forward, backward, to the side, but the spray of water was wide, and still it struck her ear.
Images, tumbling one atop the other in the darkness behind her eyelids.
A puppy trembling in the back of Bill’s car on the way to Kate’s dorm room.
Donnie at five, sitting with Kate in the living room of their Richmond townhouse, helping her put together a Christmas box for children in Ethiopia. Pencils, toothbrushes, combs, stickers, crayons. Donnie saying, “I bet those kids’ll be really happy when they get this.”
Kate nodding, smiling. “It’s good to help other people.” Donnie asked what the children’s names were. Kate didn’t know.
Donnie firing his rifle at the dead apple tree and the bark opening like a dark, brown flower.
The mouth of a gun screaming silently at her from the other side of the car.
A girl with the red war-stripes, laughing in the passenger’s seat. The girl. The murderer.
Where was the girl? Maybe she’d gone off to steal a car.
Maybe she had gone to steal a chain saw.
Kate spasmed in the warmth of the water. She opened her eyes again and blinked. Steam rose to her nostrils; mist collected on her eyelashes in tiny beads.
The water drops were real. They were now.
The television droned loudly in the bedroom. Scratchy violin music and high-pitched dialogue from actors hired to voice-over cartoons. Did Mistie go out with the girl? No. No. The girl hated Kate. She hated Mistie. Mistie was in there on one of the beds, watching the cartoon.
Go back to sleep, Kate. It’s easier when you’re sleeping. The water will go away if you sleep.
Mistie sneezed. Kate’s head whipped up and back and she looked at the open door leading to the bedroom. She could see just the very corner of the room, the edge of the dresser on which the television sat. Mistie was on the bed in there, watching T.V. as Kate hung like a beef carcass in the tub.
Kate’s drew in the damp, warm
air through her nose. Grit and dried sweat ran down her skin to swirl and vanish into the drain. As her breaths eased, her mind cleared. Vague, nebulous thoughts drew together, took shape.
Bitch.
Kate had taken her chance to save Mistie Henderson from her abusive home, and the goddamn little murdering bitch, on a whim, had snatched it away.
Goddamned little bitch!
On a whim the girl had turned Kate’s dream around, smashed it, and threw it back in her face. She had nearly killed them both in the lake, and then pulled them back from the brink so she could have something with which to play. Something to entertain her on this trip to Texas.
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.
Little shit.
Kate’s fists clenched. She bore down with her whole body, lifting her legs to her chest and pulling. The rod bent a little but did not give.
Fucking little shit. Who the hell does she think she is? How dare she do this to me!
She yanked on the rod; she put her feet on the tiled rear wall and drew herself up, but the rod did not fall.
I’m a teacher! I’m Kate McDolen! I will not let the little bitch control me!
She fought the shower curtain rod, twisting, jerking, slipping on the wet tub and regaining her balance. The rod held tightly. She stopped and waited, gathered her wits and her strength. She pulled again, gritting her teeth into the terry gag as if that would fortify the whole of her body and soul.
The rod bent a bit more, but did not break free of the walls.
Okay. Stop a minute.
Her breathing was wild and irregular, but her resolve was not.
Stop and wait.
Outside in the bedroom, it sounded as if Mistie was laughing.
I’ll wait, thought Kate. I’ll be here. I’ll play her game. But I’ll use my sharper wit and my better breeding. I’ll kill her if I have to, but she will not win.
Okay.
Oh, yes.
The warm water began to grow cooler on Kate’s neck and shoulder. She shivered, but grit her teeth. Her lip went up in a sneer around the soaked and heavy gag. Oh, when the girl got back they’d have a talk. Oh, yes they would.
Okay.
37
The waterfront was not far from the Mobile South Motor Lodge, down a dark and narrow paved road and past a brightly-lit seafood restaurant and its parking lot crammed with patrons’ automobiles. From inside the restaurant came waves of sound – hoots and hollering and country music from a juke box. Outside in the lot a young couple leaned against each other and their car, giggling, snuggling.
The sign on top of the restaurant’s roof read, “Catfish Delite, Tasty Gulf Treats Since 1962.” It blinked as if there was a short in it somewhere.
Tony could smell the fried fish as she passed on the road, and her tongue watered. She slowed her walking to savor the smell. She’d had catfish once in her life, but that had been many years ago, when she was eight.
She remembered.
Burton had taken her fishing on the Nottoway River in Southampton County. He didn’t take Darlene because Darlene had whined that she didn’t like hooks and didn’t like worms and especially didn’t like sitting in the mud and getting her clothes all messed up. But Burton and Tony went that one time, dressed in jeans and boots and packing rods and two lunches in a brown paper grocery bag. What they did was illegal, Burton had told Tony in the truck on the way, because the best fishing spot was on the edge of the McDolen property where the river slowed and deep pools gathered.
“Screw the McDolens,” Burton had said as he’d lit his cigar and blew the smoke out the open truck window. It was June, and the day was overcast and hot. “They can kiss my lily white ass they find us here. They think they own a river? Hell no, they don’t.”
Burton had driven off the road to a grassy, hidden spot on McDolen property where clusters of weeping willow trees were punctuated with “No Trespassing” signs. Tony sat beside her father on the riverbank and dug with her fingers into the soil until she came up with a few grubs, some pill bugs, and one long, red-brown earthworm that crapped black dirt in her hand. Burton showed her how to drive the hook through the body of the grubs. The grubs twisted on the sharp probe, and when Tony asked Burton if it hurt them, he said, “Hell, yeah, it hurts ‘em. It’s supposed to hurt ‘em. But that’s why God made ‘em.”
He’d laughed. She’d laughed. She put the hook through the earthworm, then through it again, so it was impaled in a loop. They’d caught several catfish that afternoon, and took them home where Burton scraped them clean in an aluminum tub in the backyard while Lorilynn complained from the deck that she’d heard somebody up river was dumping shit in the Nottoway Rive and so she wasn’t going to eat any of that smelly, diseased catch.
Burton had rolled his eyes as the fish scales flew, and said to Tony, “Got a joke for you. What smells worse that a dead, slimy fish? A live, slimy pussy!” He laughed. Tony laughed, though she thought she knew what the joke meant and it didn’t seem funny at the time.
She remembered.
Tony ambled up the graveled lot behind the restaurant where she paused at the Dumpsters. Light from the rear windows of the restaurant pooled across the lot in a yellow wave and splashed up to the barrels, making it easy to see in the little square side doors. There were some fairly good scrapings there – whole pieces of breaded trout, shrimps glistening with smears of tartar sauce, frog legs deep fried in cornmeal, rolls barely nibbled on. Back at the motel there were some canned foods in the duffel bag, but none of them had the allure that these odorous bits did. Tony reached in, then pulled her hand back out. She’d reward herself after she found the Gulf. She’d pocket as much as she could on her return trip. She’d eat it all in front of the teacher.
The air was warmer and stickier in Alabama than in Virginia. Tony pushed up the sleeves of the WWJD sweatshirt and felt the heavy air stroking her skin. In the darkness on the other side of the street where a street light had burned out something fell over, rolled, then stopped. A dog, Tony guessed, sniffing around for cats. Let it come near her, and she’d take care of it like she did the animals on Rainbow Lane. That would be fun. She hadn’t taken a dog apart in weeks.
There was a phone booth on the corner of the “Catfish Delite” parking lot. Tony pushed through the folding glass door and stepped inside. There was no phone book hanging on the chain, and the light in the ceiling didn’t work. The phone itself, a clunky silver apparatus, was tacky with bits of chewed gum and other crusted substances. Tony gingerly lifted the receiver, tapped zero, and Leroy’s number. After speaking her name on request to the computer-operator, she waited, one foot shaking on the floor, one hand scratching the top of her head. Come one come on.
The line was busy. Tony slammed the receiver down.
That’s okay, I know Buddy’s number. Nobody talks on the phone at Buddy’s house. Nobody likes Buddy or his family and nobody ever calls ‘em.
After three rings, a gruff male voice answered. “Low?” It wasn’t Buddy but some other man, one of the uncles, cousins, or in-laws who crashed at Buddy’s house on an ongoing, rotating schedule.
“Hey!” Tony tried to interject before anything else was spoken. “Say yes!”
But the man couldn’t hear Tony’s words or didn’t care that he did, he grumbled at the request to accept charges and the line went dead.
“Screw it,” Tony swore. She tried to remember Little Joe’s number, but couldn’t. It had a nine and five and two and something else. Whitey’s phone had been disconnected last month because Whitey’s mom was mad about a $300 900-number bill Whitey had racked up on a Tarot-reading line and refused to pay the bill.
Tony leaned against the phone booth wall and watched as a car pulled out of the restaurant lot, and another pulled in. She licked the flavor of salty air off her lips and let out a long breath. She dialed Leroy again. Again, busy. She slammed the receiver down and leaned against the booth wall, arms crossed. Where the hell did Leroy’s family have to go? Maybe Leroy wa
s in jail and they were visiting him. They’d be sitting behind a clear plastic window talking into a single phone and Leroy would be on the other side, beat up from the other inmates who thought he was sweet-pants. Leroy’s mom would cry, of course. Maybe even Leroy would cry. Tony wondered what Leroy crying would sound like.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve…. Tony counted to one hundred and then tried Leroy’s again. Someone answered on the fifth ring. Dee Wee.
Okay, Dee Wee, don’t be a shit, this is Tony calling, you’ll hear me say my name, you just say yes.
“Will you accept charges?” asked the computer-operator.
“Uh, huh, okay,” said Dee Wee. “What’s charges mean?”
“Dee Wee!” Tony fairly shouted, then lowered her voice. “Dee Wee, it’s Tony, hey, what’s up?”
“Nothin’,” said Dee Wee. “Tony, where you at? Leroy said you was gone.”
“I am gone, Dee Wee. Put Leroy on the phone.”
“I think he’s watching T.V.”
“Put him on the phone, Dee Wee. Do it.”
Pause. “Well, okay, but don’t get mad if he gets mad for me bothering him.”
A clatter, clunk, silence except for background shuffling and mumbled voices. Then clattering again, a click, and “Fuck it, Tony, where the hell are you?”
Tony felt her soul soar at the irritation and the intensity of Leroy’s voice. Things back home had to be pretty damn good for him to sound like that.
“I can’t say where I am, Leroy. But I’m not in Virginia, that’s for sure. I’m really far away.”
“Where’d you go after…after, you know? I thought you got caught or shot or something and taken into custody. You ain’t calling from Emporia jail?”
“No. Is that what you hoped would happen? You and Buddy and Whitey and Little Joe all takin’ off in the car and leavin’ me behind? You hoped I’d get caught and take the fall for your asses?”
“No.”
“Why’d you run off without me?”
“’Cause of what happened in the store, idiot. We didn’t have time to wait for you, Tony, you know that! We wait, and somebody would get us all. We knew you’d probably be okay on your own. You’re good at stuff on your own. You’d either shoot or hide, but you wouldn’t let nobody take you.”
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