Raven's Peak: Cold Hard Bitch

by Cole Savage

  “Nicki, if I thought for a moment that you would have stayed, I would have told you—I swear. Nicki, I never saw Emmylou after that day…I didn’t want to, I only wanted to be with you. Do you know that I didn’t date another girl for a year? A year, Nicki. Even after a year, when I did, it was like dating a robot. I took the University President’s daughter out, at his insistence, to get me out of the funk I was in and I ended up leaving her at a nightclub because she wasn’t you. I blew that shit off after the first date and spent the next three months kicking myself in the ass for my weakness; scheming ways to woo you back… The next day, after the weekend at the river, I went to work knowing that when I came home you wouldn’t be there…You didn’t even say goodbye, and sadly, that was a cruel and painful goodbye, because it was unsaid.”

  “You’re right, Kyle, I knew about Emmy. I’d known for six weeks. And you’re right, if you would have told me that weekend and sworn her off, I would have stayed because as hard as it was for you to come home to an empty house, it was ten-fold for me to leave the house of the man I loved because there’s nothing I wouldn’t have done to make you happy.”

  Kyle hit the steering wheel with his palm two times, and pulled the truck over to the shoulder of the two-lane. He came to a sliding stop on the gravel. He put his head on the steering wheel, along with his hands, and said nothing for two minutes, Nicki watching him, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. Kyle finally picked his head up and looked at her.

  “For six weeks after you left, before I moved to Morgantown, I didn’t go to the mine. I looked out our bedroom window and watched the birds fly by. I looked at the empty place in our bed, then I looked out and followed the clouds. At night I studied the moon as it grew larger. When the moon crossed the window, I stared at the ceiling, then I looked, and imagined you there, next to me on our bed. Every day I looked outside that window trying to forget the things that were no longer happening in our bed—in our room—in that house—in my life…Every night I laid awake with your memories flooding through my head, with the hope that when I finally found sleep, I would find you in my dreams.”

  Kyle’s statement straightened Nicki on the bench seat like an electric shock. All her excitement had seeped away, leaving her terribly sad, filled with a violent emptiness. She shut her eyes and pushed hard on her temples. Kyle looked over and glanced at the rise and fall of her breast, which had become a meter to gauge his improvement.

  “And yet, you never called, Kyle… You just sat there replaying the agony of hundreds of failed days in your head, instead of trying to fix it. Why would anyone rake over past events and dwell on painful events so horrible, that to most, would be too repellant to recall except in a nightmare? Of all our days together, why do you choose to relive that one, you son-of-a-bitch? Why didn’t you fucking call me?” she said, close enough to Kyle that he could feel her hot breath in his ear.

  “Because that’s the day I lost you, and If I could redo it I wouldn’t have to spend the next ten years living in Hell. I would rather pour drain cleaner down my throat than watch you leave again,” he said taking her left hand. “I don’t know why I didn’t call you, Nicki, but I wish I had.”

  Nicki closed her eyes, pulled her hand from Kyle’s grip, put her hands over her ears, and said loudly, “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah”. She didn’t want to listen to him anymore, didn’t want to acknowledge his pain—nor except the fact that he had suffered through more pain than her.

  Kyle leaned over and pulled her hand away from her ear. “Hey, stop that crap and let me speak my peace. I listened to you,” he said, his right hand on her shoulder. “I came down here to get our boys, the least you can do is give me your ear for five fucking minutes.”

  Nicki crossed her arms and looked straight ahead again.

  “Nicki, I don’t know what else to say to you. I’m not the same guy you knew ten years ago. The loss of you has humbled this prideful stubborn ass, and I’m tired of waiting, so you better figure it out because I’m not going back to Morgantown without you,” he said looking Nicki straight in the eyes. “Don’t force me to take drastic action, Nicole.”

  “NICOLE? The only time you call me Nicole is when you’re on the tail end of an ass-whoopin’. Are you giving me an ultimatum, Kyle?”

  “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  “What are you going to do if I don’t? Are you gonna stuff me in the back of your rental car, take me to Morgantown and chain me to a pipe in your cellar— force me to have sex with you and use my body violently?”

  “That isn’t my first choice, but the way you make it sound doesn’t sound so bad. I could think of worse options,” Kyle said, followed by an itchy relief of laughter from both of them. It was one of those frozen, placid instants you just know has a whole happy life attached, one that Kyle was no longer part of.

  “Do I have any other choices, Kyle,” Nicki said trying to remain stone-faced, but clearly grinning.

  “I have a fall back option that might be considered cruel and unusual punishment, that involves me flying to South Beach to buy one of those Homo bathing suits, then showing up at Karen’s house wearing Speedos, chaps, mining boots, a cowboy hat, and nothing else, hoping my sex appeal will drive you over the edge.”

  “I think I like the first option better. I don’t know how Karen would feel about you showing up at her front door wearing chaps, your ass-cheeks hanging out of your thong”

  “Seriously, Nicki, guys shouldn’t be held accountable for things they did before the age of twenty-five. Our brains are still developing.”

  “So you think I should have given you a pass for your behavior with Emmylou, Melanie Pritchard, and that bitch, Susan Stiles?”

  “You knew about Susan Stiles?”

  “Not until right now, you son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Goddammit, I walked right into that one. Talking to you is like walking in a mine field.”

  “If you told the truth you wouldn’t have to worry about the traps.”

  The resumed their drive. The drive was like hundreds of roads they’d driven in the past— no different. Different time maybe, but still the same. Roads that crowned in the center. A stretch of tar and asphalt; bleak, scaly, lined with light poles and pines, rutted and tilted this way or that, but for Kyle today was different. Even in her down trodden country vestments, Nicki looked stunning. Her simplicity and wholesomeness was something to behold, and yet, her inner beauty mirrored her façade— a veneer that drew in hot-blooded men like the lunar tide, making her the envy of every woman— and scorn. Her subtle southern drawl was the kind of voice that made you feel instantly at home, which must have been tough for Kyle because he could close his eyes at any moment, avoid her gaze to break her spell, but the music coming from her lips was inescapable, and infinitely as impassioned and heightened in intensity when she was tipsy on the Whiskey. It wasn’t just her accent that made her irresistible. It was her brevity. Brief is stylish, longwinded, not. To Kyle, she seemed so beautiful today. So seductive, so different from other girls he knew or had known. In fact, so different he could not understand why no one was as agitated as he was by the sound of her boots on the gravel today. Why no one else's heart was crazy with the winds stirred by the sighs of her shroud, why everyone didn’t go mad with the movements of that crazy pony-tail attached to so much substance. It was the flight of her hands, the richness of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures today, not one indication of a character flaw, but had yet to approach her for fear of breaking the spell from which he was held under. But indeed, people— men, had noticed her, how could they not? she was an ounce of gold in a mining pan, air-conditioning in the stifling heat of the Sahara, oxygen in the expanse of space. Yes, Kyle, they noticed, you just weren’t looking. You were looking at her— the one that got away. Her presence beckons, Kyle. Oh she beckons, and I want her back, and I will try—There is nothing I won’t do, from this day forward, to get her back.

  CHAPTER 20

/>   No one could explain Karen’s bitterness or declaration of war on the world, but Trent had left Karen with a grasp, in the form of a debt, of the complexities of pari-mutual betting, a couple of garish trick shots at Eight ball, a malice for racetrack wagers, gambling halls, poolrooms, and the cave dwellers inherent in those institutions. Battling Karen was fun when Trent was young, but somewhere between the time that Nicki was born and left the house, Trent had lost his capacity for celebrating an enemy’s defeat. Trent had pegged her as a fetching scatter-brained spitfire that tried incessantly to relinquish her dark and painful history at the hands of anyone who would give her an ear, and when no one wanted to listen she tied them down and sizzled them with caveats that would bring down the Roman Catholic Church. Trent’s death amounted to nothing more than Karen feeling that she was living only to care for her late husband’s gambling foibles. Karen was a creature bound to pursue Trent no matter where he went, whispering the foulest terms in his ears, related to her crimes and blackness of her soul. Karen was the classic mid-century democratic idealist who had lived long enough to see hope die time and time again. The neighbors suspected Karen of sending their pets into an unseen graveyard because of her sadist propensities, so she had alienated even her closest friends. If not for Nicki’s gregarious and cosmopolitan personality, not to mention pure hotness, Karen would be living inside a bubble by herself.

  Living with Trent, Karen had observed that what got labeled karma in their marriage was really stubbornness married to a knack for observation, a fluid sense of truth, a sharp ear for bullshit, and a deeply suspicious nature because of Trent’s indiscretions. Unlike Karen, Trent was uncomfortable with fairy-tales, but his fixation on self-reliance made him secretive about his exploits. Karen was always threatening rain or snow, so he always kept an umbrella and a snow-shovel on hand to stroke her fears, because most of the things Karen worried about never happened. Nicki was the only child fathered by Karen and Trent, born from unsaid hope, expressed by their mutual disdain for birth control, as they lit a candle one special night after Trent won a parlay at Kentucky Downs— a project they embarked on with equal zeal in their young marriage, with a fixity of purpose that had over time faded in vigor, as it became apparent that one could beat the house on very few occasions. The news that Karen had finally conceived a child was so welcome to Trent, a child so eagerly anticipated, that for an instant the joy of it outweighed everything else, that in essence showed that the pregnancy of Nicki would be the only necessary condition for the loss of on track-betting and other vices in their lives that they discharged as a couple, except for Trent, who reverted back to the track when Nicki was two years old, and more times than not, lost his entire paycheck in a single afternoon.

  Nicki dropped Kyle off at the house, and Kyle walked the ‘Green Mile’ to the front door of Karen’s house, from the street, a hundred feet below the front porch— Karen’s house was a fairy-tale tangle of roses and wisteria, covering a severely peeling coat of whitewash. Nicki later confessed that she didn’t drive up to the house because she didn’t want to risk taking a round of rock salt from Karen’s’ cut-down-twelve, meant for Kyle. Kyle didn’t laugh. Karen was waiting, hiding behind the faded curtains in the parlor, watching him eel his way up the gravel drive.

  He cleared his throat and knocked three times—no answer. He knocked again and thought about leaving a note. Karen opened the door and released a grunt, somewhere between enlightenment and annoyance. She was wearing a long white nightgown and slippers, one hand on the door, one on the doorjamb. Kyle dwarfed her, but seemed skittish by her presence.

  “Hi, Karen.”

  “Well, looky here. God almighty does answer prayers.” Kyle gulped. Karen’s face looked placidly interested.

  “He delivered that sum-bitch right to my front door, all gussied up… Nicki said you might be comin’ by but I figured you for a yellow belly, so I wasn’t aiming’ to hold my breath, you weasel…Has anybody ever told you you’d look good hangin’ on a cross with nails through your head?”

  “Can I come in, Karen? I don’t want to make this a thing?”

  “It’s too late for that, Kyle. This is already a thing. It’s been a thing for ten years.”

  “Let me rephrase that. I have an explanation.”

  “Well then, that’s a whole new story. I can’t wait to hear this potboiler. You know, explain why a man married to the prettiest girl this side of the planet would walk away and let her raise his two youngins’ by herself?”

  “Can we do this inside, Karen?”

  “Come in, Kyle. It’s better in here— there’s no witnesses.” Karen dropped her arm and pointed to the couch. Kyle walked in but kept his head on a swivel. Kyle smelled onions, bacon, and the sweet smell of alcohol. He heard a George Straight tune bubbling from the bedroom. He took a perch on the edge of the couch and put his hands on his knees. Karen looked around outside, then closed the door. With a flyswatter in hand, her cut-down-twelve in the corner of the parlor, she turned to Kyle slapping the swatter on her leg. Kyle looked around, walking up memory lane, the house where he courted Nicki—remembering his past. Karen’s house had been a shaft of bright sunlight in the confused and angry darkness of his ugly adolescence. He looked at the bright kitchen where Kyle stole Nicki’s virginity. The memories in this house collected like sediment at the bottom of a river. Being here, being home, was a bitter-sweet moment for him because Karen was here too. He looked to the kitchen where warm familiar scents drifted from the oven into the parlor, but the silence was awkward, and it was stifling, so he reached up and let his neck breathe by pulling the collar of his shirt away from his neck. Nicki had warned Kyle to be careful, that the slightest trigger could end up in him listening to a monologue of vial protestations.

  The lack of noise in the house sounded like seconds ticking down to an apocalypse. Karen gave Kyle a careful once over. The opinion she had formed about his physical manifestation appeared to be in need of emendation. She noted his dark sinewy arms, wide chest and shoulders that over the years had blossomed under the weight of work outs at the university and fire station. His hair was longer, finer, and darker than she remembered.

  “I have to admit, Kyle, you don’t exactly look like a mud dog.”

  “Thank you…I think.” Kyle turned to her.

  “How you been, Karen?” no response. “House looks good, looks like Trent did a midlin’ job of keeping her current.” No response. “I read the other day that the boys at the mine are getting a raise.” Nothing. He sat without moving, without blinking or breathing, like a mime holding his breath.

  “Your looking great, Karen, so is Nicki… I ran into Mr. Clinton, he said he retired last year…Have you been outside? It’s a day made by the Gods.” He lowered his head averting his eyes from the gaudiness and blare of the fire dancing in hers.

  Karen cleared her throat and said, “how long will you talk before someone stops you? Did I tell you that my daughter is dyin’ of Brain Cancer?” She came confidently, but hedging a little, head cocked to one side.

  “Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s rainin’, Kyle. I ain’t one of your dumb as rock harlots, and ain’t nobody gonna mess with me and call it Apple-butter”. She hit him with surliness, scorn, and cold-water inertia. Kyle turned away for a second and free-floated above her scorn.

  “I’m sorry, Karen. I’m drowning here. I’m just trying to break the ice but you’re making it difficult, and I’m finding it very warm in here,” he said, suspecting his status as prey, but very aware of the tautness of the communication tether between them.

  “No worries, Kyle, your ass is as welcome here as an out-house breeze.”

  Karen pulled her glasses down and added, “you messed up proper, Kyle. What do you want with Nicki?”

  “Oh…Wow— that’s it? No foreplay, a cup of coffee, a warm up dance. You’re just going to get right in there?”

  “What do you want with Nicki, Kyle?” Karen said taking a seat on her rocker.

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nbsp; “Why do we need food, Karen?”

  “Sustenance. We can’t live without it.”

  “You have my answer, then.”

  “So you waited ten years, you sum-bitch?”

  “It’s complicated, Karen. Me and Nicki had a long talk, Nicki can fill in the gaps for you.”

  “Then why are you here, Kyle?”

  “I have a great deal of respect for you, and your daughter, Karen, and I wanted you to know that I didn’t marginalize your family—nor would I. Kyle held his tongue and heard a startling heehaw of laughter.

  “So, this is how you fix your mistakes? You come back when Nicki is dying and expect to do, what exactly, Kyle. How is Superman gonna fix this?” She sounded frustrated, even angry, and yet, at the same time, there was a theatrical trill to her voice. Kyle felt isolated, his figure fingering the vast expanse of the sky, awaiting Karen’s next attempt on his life.

  “This isn’t about me and Nicki, Karen. This is about me and you.”

  “You think you can walk in my stead, apologize, and bing bang you’re forgiven? I’d rather you put a straw up a frog’s ass and suck it.”

  Kyle covered his mouth and laughed silently. He shook his head, pulled some folded papers out of his back pocket and straightened them.

  “Karen, I don’t want to get into a verbal battle with you. Look, these are statements from my bank in Morgantown showing two cancelled checks to Trent Griggs for twenty-thousand dollars. I helped Trent pay the house off, Karen,” he said handing Karen the papers.