"Why are they all flocking around you?"
"Guess that's kind of obvious. I got bad seed, but it sure is a prolific seed. These aren't even half the army I got living in my woods. The others… they don't look as presentable as this lot. They only allowed out of the woods, at this point at least, early in the morning when I feed them, and late at night, after the sun goes down, when I train them."
Back at their shack later that night, Roy questioned his wife. "Why'd Uncle Hollis say, Ask your wife? And why was he talking about his seed?"
Audrey kept her back to her husband, burning feathers off the birds he shot earlier. "That's just how he talks, Roy. Doesn't mean anything."
"He was pretty specific."
Back still turned to him, paying extra close attention to the birds, the backs of her shoulders gave an unhappy shrug. "Don't mean anything."
"You ever lay down with my uncle?"
"That's…so ridiculous!"
But a husband is rarely reassured during these moments.
Something terrible grew up between these two young people who had beforehand been so happy. A silence. Like a wall of glass, palms pressing on either side. And something cancerous began growing inside Roy. Resentment. Towards his wife.
For the first time ever, Scowtt began disappearing for long stretches of time during the day.
"Are you going over to Uncle Hollis' place, to play with the other four-leggers?"
"Maybe."
"I don't want you over there. I want you here, at our home. We're your parents."
But each time they had this argument, Scowtt would just look up at Roy with the same black-eyed intensity of a child's stubbornness to do what it wants to do.
One evening, Audrey was serving dinner, silent like she had been the past few days, as if there had been a death, because she knew anything she said, no matter how innocent, would just enrage Roy further. Scowtt was missing for the meal, probably off you know where.
They were eating fried fish, which the Kellobash boy had sold them, going shack to shack up their road, fresh catch hanging from hooks slung over his shoulder.
"Fish is burnt."
Audrey kept her head down, fork to mouth.
"Said, fish is burnt."
"You want mine?"
"Maybe if you were cooking for Uncle Hollis, the fish wouldn't be burnt. Maybe it'd be fine, tender white flesh, lots of moisture, because you'd take more care."
Audrey, head bowed, fork held in her fingers, crying.
Roy flinging his plate of fish off the table. With the side of his left hand. "You fuck that bastard? You fuck him?"
Audrey kept her head down. Praying to Jesus. So secretive, her lips didn't move.
"No man fucks my wife."
"He's too big in the hollow, Roy. Got too many friends."
Roy snorted. "I don't give a good Goddamn how big he is. I'm going up against him. And I'm not walking away until he's on the floor, twitching. Beaten down by my fists."
The next night, while he was trying to relax in his chair after dinner, whittling, but rather furiously, curls of wood flying, there was a knock on the door.
Roy picked up the shotgun propped against the wall beside the door, but it was just Audrey's father.
"Mind if I come in, Roy? Set a spell?"
"Of course."
Audrey's father, Scott, was a small man, with a humped back. Teeth were snaggled. But everybody liked him. And of course Roy had to show respect towards him, since he was Audrey's dad.
Roy offered him a jar of shine.
Scott took a sip. The old seem to taste alcohol different from the young. Raised his age-spotted face. "I always love coming over your place, Roy, because whenever I visit my other children and their spouses, there's always conflict. But in your house, I've always felt peace."
Roy had his own jar. Audrey kept to herself by the sink. "Thanks."
"But this time, I feel a tension. Something's wrong. You want to talk about it, man to man?"
Roy rarely talked about his feelings with anyone, and certainly not another man, you learn to be dead that way pretty early in boyhood, but because Scott was so much older, and Audrey's dad, he looked down at the jar of shine he was holding in both his hands. "You know, or maybe you don't, my Uncle Hollis has been saying some truly disrespectful things about my wife. Your daughter."
"I am aware." Scott's cataracted eyes looked into Roy's. A weak shrug of Scott's right shoulder. "There's always going to be people like Hollis in this world."
"Yeah, but. How he treats me influences how other men treat me."
"Well, that's true. But are you going to move out of the hollow? Because otherwise, Hollis is part of your lot in life. Plus, he's related."
Roy shifted his jaw. "I'm going to do whatever I have to do."
"Of course, just saying, you have a wife. You have a child."
"If it is my child."
"Well, that's an unpleasant thing to say."
"I'm going to do whatever I have to do."
Scott took some time lighting his pipe. Maybe to calm Roy down. The old do know how to use our respect of them. Once he had smoke going, and there was that cherry wood smell in the air, he leaned over sideways in his chair towards Roy. "You ever hear about Dirt Land?"
"Don't believe so."
The quaver of old age in Scott's voice. "You can change in some ways as you get older. You can change your behavior. But you can never change what's in your head. Whatever's in your head, it crawled in your ear when you were a little child, lit a cigar, and set up shop. It's never gonna go away. But like I said, you can change your behavior. So at least there's that."
"So I'm never going to have less inner turmoil than I have now, as a young man?"
"Never, ever. You're gonna be walking around, and smiling, and making love, and checking to see if anybody need their drink refreshed, the considerate host, and watching the television, and flossing your teeth and asking the doctor what side effects these pills have, and grinning when somebody snap a picture of you behind your fiftieth birthday cake, and trying to get along with the nurse assigned to you in the old age home, and that turmoil is just gonna keep seething inside you. But you know, after enough years, maybe you learn how to live with that? Can't change what's inside you. That's as much a part of you as your heart or ten miles of intestines. But you can change your behavior.
"What you keep telling yourself, is you got Dirt Land up ahead of you. Dirt Land is a marvelous place. You reach your hand down in that dirt, and you can pull up anything you want. A crown of jewels to put on your wife's head. Imagine that? A brand-new suit that fits you like you spent one million dollars on it. Like the tailors fussed for one week deciding where each needle should reenter the cloth, to have that wool hang perfect around your body. Maybe you're being modest? You just want a dog? You can dig him up out of the dirt, pulling out his front paws, his smiling jaws, and he'll be the most faithful, loving dog you ever had walking by your side. That's what Dirt Land is. It's where everything is finally right. The way it should be. The way it's supposed to be. What happens here? Around us? Just try to get by with as much dignity as you can. Swallow the affronts. Take in that poison. Because, really? That's what life is. It's being insulted every day."
Probably good advice. But Roy didn't take it.
Later that night though, after Scott left, Roy walked up behind Audrey while she was washing out the drink jars. She froze her hand with its white rag deep down inside the soapy glass, looking with wife eyes at him, to see what he had to say. Her husband's face still so young, but eyes getting old. He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry I pissed on you that time, and made you eat grease."
Uncle Hollis and his cronies hung out at the Fury Bar every Wednesday night. Just a glorified double-wide shack in town, no toilet, you had to go out the side door, be discreet. No tables. Stools around the half-moon of the bar itself. Behind the bar, Lola, maybe fourteen years old, dark-haired, face already so old it almost, but not quite, can
celed out her body. (Takes a lot to cancel out a woman's body, especially a young woman's body.) She poured the drinks while Rufus, the owner, old and lecherous, sat on a stool behind the bar. He had her wear a white t-shirt, came to just above her hips, and nothing else. Bit disconcerting the first time you saw her behind the bar, not when she took your order, but when she turned around and reached up to the shelf at the back of the bar to get the bottle for your drink. Bare ass, and when she turned around, bare pubis, dark hair. The old men sitting on their stools were always asking her to pull down another bottle, so they could see her nakedness.
Roy went in, already fairly juiced. Face numb. First time in the Fury Bar. Close atmosphere. Saw Uncle Hollis was at the end of the bar. Faced Lola, asked for a whiskey, neat.
Maybe she was surprised a man so young as Roy had stepped into this establishment. Maybe it was hormones. Or the mating instinct. Whatever it was, she acted like she was a princess and Roy was some white knight who tied up his horse outside. Gave him a courtly bow, as if she was wearing a ruffled white dress, instead of a white t-shirt with her cunt exposed.
Placed the squat glass on the bar between his hands. Poured in that straw-colored mind-fucker. "Here you go, sir." Actual lilt to her voice, gotta hand it to her, her dreams hadn't been completely pulped by a steady fist yet, like he might rescue her from the humiliations into which she had strayed, and got stuck.
He avoided her eyes. Put his hands around the glass. Her smile wobbled away, like it often did.
Hollis leaned out from his stool. "Fancy seeing you here, little nephew. Looks like you got a bee in your bonnet."
Roy threw back his whiskey. Burn at the back of his throat. That's the thing about whiskey. It lets you know, warmness descending, when it's taking over.
Still leaning back from his stool, Hollis raised his voice. "You here tonight to fuck Lola? Cause I can certainly recommend her. As can every other man in town, and the adjacent counties. Stick it in her mouth, stick it in her cunt, stick it in her shit hole. I'll tell you this, the girl is game. Ain't that true, Lola? Gotta earn those nickels and dimes somehow. Or maybe you want to plow some new territory, like jamming your dick up one of her nostrils. Just about the only hole she got that's still kinda virgin. Plus you got a choice with her nostrils, Roy. Left or right. Maybe you fuck her left nostril, and your big ol' Uncle Hollis fuck the right nostril, and he grab you by the scruff of your neck and stare his big baby blue eyes into yours while the two of us fucking her nose, both of us feeling our big hard cocks pumping so close to each other, nothing much separating those two engines from rubbing directly against each other, like moose heads rubbing together, swooning, but, what they call that wall of flesh between the nostrils? The septum? That it?"
Roy signaled to Lola he wanted another shot. "No, I ain't here tonight for Lola."
"Really!" Uncle Hollis unsaddled his stool, standing up, all five feet eight inches of him, with his big nose, bald head, wide grin. "So who you here for tonight, little nephew? Wife won't put those luscious wet lips around your cock? That the problem? Tell your Uncle Hollis. I'll coach you on how to get her to suck your cock, much like I schooled her in how to suck my cock." His blue eyes blinked. "When she do suck your cock, does she by any chance reach that delicate right hand of hers up behind your scrotum sack, scratch your balls from behind? Well, if she does, you can thank your ol' Uncle Hollis here, because I's the one taught your wife to suck real hard and nasty on a man's cock, nostrils flaring out like she undersea and her oxygen is running short. That why you here? To thank me for teaching your young wife how to suck my cock? You have a golden award statue or some such you want to present to me?"
Roy tilted back his second whiskey shot. Signaled to Lola to pour him a third.
"I'm here to kill you."
"You're here to kill me! Well, well, well." Eyes darting to his cronies. Walking closer to Roy. "How you gonna do that? You gonna tell a real funny story, and kill me with laughter? You gonna bake me a fudge cupcake with thick buttercream swirled atop and kill me with cholesterol? Or you gonna get down on your shabby little knees, take me in your mouth, work my cock with your lips like your wife do, and kill me with kindness?"
Hollis didn't know Roy had a knife in his pants pocket.
Didn't even see Roy pull it out. Start it on its high arc like a missile headed towards Moscow.
But Hollis caught Roy's wrist long before the knife descended. "This? This was your plan?"
Still holding Roy's hand aloft, Hollis gave Roy's face a series of short, sharp slaps.
Dancing left, right in front of Roy, avoiding the younger man's free hand wheeling around, until that many eye-stinging slaps disoriented the boy, mouth gasping, and Hollis was able to wrest the knife from Roy's weak fingers.
A few more open-handed slaps, and Roy fell backwards, on the bar floor, landing on his ass.
Hollis still standing, looking at the little knife he had taken from his nephew.
Lola, who had whooped when Roy attacked, quickly changed her strategy when Roy failed. Blew Hollis a kiss, swinging her shoulders.
Hollis stood over Roy's sprawled body. "You got a Plan B, boy?"
Roy, despite himself, let his face get red. Started crying.
"Didn't think so. That's what makes a boy a boy. No Plan B. Stand up."
Roy had no choice but to rise.
The close atmosphere inside that small bar got even more unfriendly.
"Lucky for you, you're my nephew. You weren't my nephew…" Wicked grin. "Which would be fun. But anyway since you are, you know what? I'm a-gonna let you just turn around, and walk out that door. Ain't that a treat? And all you got to do is understand that from now on, I'm not gonna be discreet about fucking your wife. Fact is, I may even ask you to hold her ankles apart while I ease on in." Hollis gave a lazy, big-shouldered shrug. "Who knows? Maybe you pick up a technique or three. You're just gonna have to live with it each time, like your dad, Audrey's father, and every other man here in the hollow. Now you walk out that door, go back to your little shanty shack, and tell Audrey to get a good night's rest tonight, because I'll be by tomorrow, and I want her energetic. Oh, and Roy? Tell her to fix me some scrambled eggs, little nephew, will you? I just love scrambled eggs."
Now, Roy knew whatever he did next was going to determine the rest of his life. And it's rare you come to such an all or nothing crossroads. He could say nothing, which was the same as saying Yes, sir, walk out the door and buy some eggs on the way home; or he could walk back down the length of that bar, and once again attack his Uncle Hollis. And almost certainly lose. Coward? Or hero?
Hollis saw Roy's indecision. "What's it gonna be, boy? You just got to resign yourself to your fate, much like a married man after two or three years have passed resigns himself to masturbation, ear cocked to make sure his wife is still snoring."
The old men on the stools, and Lola behind the bar, waited.
Sometimes you have to be smart, and wait for another day.
Roy walked to the front door of the bar.
Everyone in the bar, except Hollis, looked disappointed.
Roy pushed the front door open.
Cool night air outside. Sound of insects in the trees, sharing their rhythms. Moon up in the sky, just above the dark shoulders of the hilltops. Would it be that bad? He could go off hunting whenever Hollis came over. Have Audrey take a bath in the river afterwards, each time. Was trying to learn to swallow that, get it down, having trouble with it, but maybe he could have, then those two words got stuck in his craw. 'Each time.' In his thoughts, the memory of him and Audrey in their little shack, one evening after Scowtt had been born, sleeping with his hooves drawn up on his belly, he and Audrey sitting on the floor by the blue blanket, and he didn't remember who got the conversation going, but they started talking about when they were kids, before they knew each other, and how each of them, separately, first read a book. Each had to use a finger, following along the bottoms of the sentences, but that was okay. He starte
d off, telling her his first book was The Little Prince. She sat up, eyebrows raised. That was the first book she ever read! Both of them grinning at the coincidence. She went on, and after I got to the last page, and there were tears dropping on the words, I saw that someone had drawn a blue-inked heart under the last paragraph. Roy reared back his head. That was me that drew that heart! You read the same copy of the book I did, but years later? That extra coincidence shut them both up, but in a good way. Maybe they were destined to be together. Maybe there was a pattern to it all. Maybe life was bigger than they thought. Kinder. And he didn't want that Audrey, the Audrey of that evening, excited and shy, blue eyes smiling, pale hair even paler in their candlelight, to have to go through anything bad even one time, let alone 'each time.'
So door to the bar open, Roy turned around. Didn't go back down the length of the bar, because he knew that would be the end. But what he did do was, he raised his right hand, and raised his middle finger. Stuck it up, at Hollis, defiantly.
Thought maybe he could get away with that. A small protest that maybe he could build on. After all, they were related. Maybe Hollis could give him this tiny crumb.
But he was wrong.
Hollis stared at his nephew. The bar was silent.
No sound in the world, but those insects. And loud as they were, they didn't care what happened in this small bar.
"The sure sign of an impotent boy. The finger."
Roy kept it raised.
"Can't let that go, Roy. Just can't. Sign of disrespect."
Roy turned to leave, trembling.
Hollis' hand whirled him around, shoved him against one of the stools. Grabbed Roy's right wrist. Hoisted it up.
Blue eyes staring into his. Left hand holding the wrist, his right hand encircled Roy's middle finger, which tried to hide, by curling, but to no avail.
Still staring into Roy's eyes, Hollis bent Roy's middle finger back. Bent it back more. More. Roy's knees lifting, mouth howling.
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