Every Part of the Animal

by Duncan Ralston

  Voices perked up her ears when she stepped out of the trees behind the outhouse. A deep, resonant male voice. A nasally, shrill female. Caleb speaking excitedly. The man said something unintelligible, and added, "little man."

  Darius. Darius and Rainey.

  As if to confirm Bo's suspicion, the little dog yapped.

  How did they find us? What does that little bitch want?

  For a moment she considered hiding in the woods, waiting them out. Caleb had likely told them she was out here. Maybe even told them why. She grinned, thinking about how hearing it must have curdled the girl's blood.

  It was the boy who made up her mind. She didn't want him consorting with that tramp. She didn't want Rainey's foul mouth and flagrant sexuality giving him ideas.

  For a moment she entertained the image of popping off a round into Rainey's head and watching her squirm in the dirt like the possum had. Aside from the obvious fact Darius wouldn't let her get away with it, and she'd be locked up the rest of her life for cold-blooded murder, it seemed like a lark.

  Bo stepped out of the woods, hands bloody, holding the dead animal by the tail. The three of them stood between the truck and Rainey's shiny black Escalade. Caleb saw her first as he petted the anxious dog, his smile alerting Darius to her presence. It took a moment for Rainey to clue in, and when she did her smile froze.

  "Fuck me…" she gasped.

  "I'm gonna give ya'll five seconds to tell me what you're doing on my land," Bo said, holding the rifle loose in her free hand. "After that, I'm gonna let my rifle here do the talking. Caleb, get in the house."

  Caleb looked down at his tatty boots, and kicked up dirt deliberately on his way to the house. The screen door clapped against the jam, startling the dog into yapping.

  In the meantime, Darius slid his hand over his belly toward his inner jacket, where Bo suspected the man carried his sidearm.

  "Don't you move that hand any further," she instructed. The man ran the roaming hand over his bald head with an innocent look, as if that had been his intention all along. "Now talk, girl, before I get angry."

  "Well, shit, lady," Rainey said, throwing out her arms dramatically. "I ain't here to cause shit. My rep saw my tweets, all right? Said I let it get out of hand and I should make things right."

  "I don't know about reps or tweets, or whatever the heck you're blathering on about—"

  Rolling her eyes, the girl said, "I came up here to apologize for what happened in town. You ain't makin it easy."

  "You want to apologize, I won't stop you."

  "I'm doing it."

  "Are you?"

  Rainey sighed heavily. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I still think it's fuckin disgusting what you do, what you did," she added, pointing to the dead possum hung from Bo's bloody fist. "But that doesn't make it right to beat on your truck and scare your kid."

  Darius said, "And?" Not looking at her, just raising an eyebrow in her direction.

  "And puttin you on blast to my thirty million tweeps."

  The big man cleared his throat.

  Rainey growled exasperatedly. "And throwing shade on my Instagram."

  "Am I supposed to know what these words mean?"

  Rainey stomped a boot in the dirt. "I'm apologizing, goddammit! Can't you just say 'apology accepted' or some shit, so I can go back to the hotel and get some real food?"

  Bo just wanted to get in the house and wash the itchy, sticky blood off her hands. "Apology accepted then." She raised an eyebrow of her own. "That all?"

  "Yeah, that's all," the girl said. "Thank you."

  "Don't mess up the grass on your way out the drive," Bo said, turning to head for the house.

  "Hey, what'd that animal ever do to you?" Rainey said.

  Bo turned at the door. "Excuse me?"

  "That beautiful animal," the girl said, stroking her jittery dog's smooth head. "Why'd you murder it?"

  Bo nodded toward the coop. "Killed one of my chickens."

  "An eye for an eye, is that how it is?"

  Smirking. Like she knew anything.

  "I don't kill it, it's just gonna come back," Bo said, losing patience. "Kill another hen, or the rooster. Take the eggs next time, too. I let it go, it's gonna think my coop's a grocery store, and me and Caleb'll go hungry."

  The girl seemed to consider it.

  Maybe she's not so pigheaded after all, Bo thought.

  "Let's go, baby girl," Darius said, ushering Rainey toward the Escalade.

  Bo toed open the screen door, and stepped into the cool house. As her eyes adjusted to the dim, she stood the rifle up in front of the broom closet, and brought the possum to the sink. A moment later she heard Darius start the car, gravel crackling under its tires as it headed out toward town.

  The sound of Caleb's toy clacking together carried all the way from the back bedrooms.

  "Do your homework, Caleb," she called over her shoulder.

  The boy grumbled and stomped across the living room. He slammed his math book shut and stomped back to his bedroom with it under his arm.

  Bo raised and lowered the hand pump's rod with her elbow, and rinsed her hands under the cold stream of water. Lathered them with a bar of soap and repeated the process until they were clean.

  With a boning knife from the cutlery drawer, she cut through the fur along the base of the animal's legs, and around the tail. Cut around the paws and base of the tail first, then jerked it upward, stripping the hide off its belly and chest, using the blade where the skin caught on the meat, on the ears and over the eyes.

  It was an easy task she'd done a hundred times or more, the kind of mindless chore that allowed her mind to wander. The crunch of gravel disturbed her daydream. Through the window she saw a white truck had pulled up out front, the Fort Garrison Sheriff's Dept. logo emblazoned in blue and gold on the side.

  She rinsed her hands as Deputy Hewson, a slender man in a khaki shirt and blue vest, stepped down off the truck. He straightened his navy blue DEPUTY ball cap, smoothed his goatee, and strode toward the house. Bo didn't like his goatee. Felt it made him look sinister, particularly with such a gaunt face as he had.

  Little bitch must've tattled on me after all, she thought, drying her hands on a towel, and went to meet him at the door. "Problem, Deputy Hewson?"

  "No problem." He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers, trying for casual. "Just canvassing the area, making sure residents are aware of the forest fire."

  Bo nodded toward the black tower of smoke in the distance. "Tough not to notice it, wouldn't you say?"

  He followed her nod. "Ha ha yeah," he said. "Just making sure. So you're aware, if it sweeps over your way I'll be back here again. Fire department's telling us we may have to evacuate the area if it gets too bad."

  "I'm not leaving my home, Billy."

  The deputy squinted off toward the woods. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that. We all saw what happened in Willow last summer. Saved all the sled dogs but most of the homes burned to the ground."

  He squinted at her, hoping to impress upon her with his eyes the severity of the situation should the same happen twenty miles south of Fort Garrison. Bo shrugged, pretending to capitulate.

  "If I see the law out this way, we'll get right in the truck."

  "That'd be appreciated, Mrs. Lowery." He nodded. Bo nodded back, supposing their business was done. "Heard you had a run-in with that pop singer this morning down at Dan Goose's," he said.

  "That what she was?"

  "Oh yeah. Pretty famous, they say."

  "I don't listen to that stuff."

  "Oh, neither do I. I dig hip-hop."

  "Hip…?"

  "Hop." He nodded. "Old school stuff. East Coast, mostly."

  "Okay," she said, not sure how to respond.

  "Anyway, I should get going. Got a few more houses to hit before the end of my shift. You have a good one."

  She returned the sentiment and headed back inside. The officer started the truck with the door open. The mellow soun
d of reggae—Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff," of all the damn songs he could be playing—thumped from the speakers. He backed up, and drove off down the long drive.

  Bo returned to the sink, and began rinsing the inside of the hide, thinking about what she would do if the fire really did spread as far as the Lowery homestead. Right now it was several miles south, with the wind moving it ever more easterly. But the wind could change at any moment, and the fields out beyond the maple forest were dry as bone.

  She ran the carcass under the pump and separated the legs from the rest. Then she deboned, and cubed the meat. By the time she'd cut up the vegetables, poured premade stock into the large pot, and got the wood stove going, Caleb came out of his room scratching his head.

  "Momma, I'm stuck."

  "Stuck on what?"

  "Fractions," he said sullenly, hefting the large textbook onto the counter. Bo had bribed the school in town into supplying her with hand-me-down books as Caleb moved up in grades. The textbook he'd placed in front of her was for fifth grade mathematics. Technically he was supposed to be learning fourth grade math, but he'd seemed to have an aptitude and sped through the lessons.

  "Let me see," Bo said, drying off her hands on a towel. She turned the book around. "Where are you stuck?"

  "This one."

  "Okay. Eighty-seven point three-five minus fifty-five point six." She favored him with a disapproving look. "You know how to do this, Caleb."

  "Nu-uh. No, ma'am."

  "Sure you do. It's the same as regular subtraction."

  Caleb looked up at her, confused.

  "How much is eight-thousand seven-hundred and thirty five minus five-thousand and six?"

  He thought about it, his eyes drifting toward the rafters. "Two-thousand eight-hundred and… twenty-nine?"

  "Okay, write that in there," she said, not sure herself. He did as he was told. "Now just add in the decimal point."

  "That's it?"

  She nodded. "That's it."

  Caleb penciled in a decimal between the numbers. He put the pencil down and looked up at her with condemnation. "Fractions are stupid," he said.

  Bo grinned. "You don't hafta tell me." She threw the damp towel at him. He caught it, flinching. "Go on and wash up for dinner."

  AFTER DINNER BO washed dishes in a large aluminum wash tub she'd heated on the wood stove while they ate, and Caleb dried using a fraying, permanently stained dish towel.

  After dinner, and Caleb's nightly snarky comment about their lack of television, she convinced him to play penny ante poker. Caleb liked to play because he usually won, and Bo enjoyed the banter. Midway through the game, Caleb's stomach made a long, rumbling growl. Once he'd won all the pennies (they reused them each time they played, doling out the same fifty cents each), he stood up abruptly. Bo only then realized he'd been holding his belly under the table for a while.

  "My tummy hurts, Momma."

  "Caleb, you're ten. Don't use baby talk."

  He winced as a high-pitched gurgle ran through his innards.

  "Well, go on to the bathroom then," she said. "Have a cupful of Milk of Magnesia and I'll brew up some tea."

  Caleb loped toward the back of the house. She heard the door slam, and then the almost immediate sound of his bowels loosing into the bowl—she hoped—in explosive bursts.

  Bo busied herself putting the pennies back into the jar, not wanting to hear his bathroom sounds—Had enough of that when he was a baby—and putting the deck of cards back into the pack. Then she went to the kitchen, put a log in the fire, blew on the red hot coals, and set the kettle on the stove for chamomile tea.

  She stood at the window, looking out at the pitch black night, waiting for the kettle to boil. Unsettled again. The girl had really ruffled her feathers this morning. She couldn't remember being so angry since Roy had run off. She'd certainly never thought about—

  High beams swished through the trees. A vehicle turning off Tackle Box Road and into the long drive up to the house. Couldn't remember the last time someone had come calling so late.

  Must be lost. Probably turn back at the oak.

  Her gut felt as bad as Caleb's did as the car continued up the drive. Why had she been standing at the window, anyway? Almost as if she'd expected something to happen.

  Staying by the window, letting the kettle rattle and shriek, she willed the driver to turn around and head back to the road.

  The large vehicle kept on past the big bur oak, where the path widened enough for a vehicle to turn around, and turned onto the last leg of drive before the house. Bounding over a washout in the ruts, the headlights illuminating the kitchen window for a moment, making Bo's vision gray.

  The headlights jerked suddenly toward the left. Bo heard the crash before her eyes registered that the vehicle had stopped moving, crumpled up around a thick pine.

  She heard the engine idling through the cracked-open window. Exhaust visible in the red tail lights. The outline of the car unmistakably the SUV the girl had driven up in that afternoon.

  Aw, hell…

  The kettle whistled behind Bo. She startled. Forgot she'd put it on.

  Outside, the headlights winked out.

  Bo realized she'd been gripping the counter, and flexed the ache out of her fingers.

  As the driver door opened, the interior light came on. Ding ding ding.

  Only the driver's side airbag had deployed. It was just her—Rainey. The tramp. No bodyguard this time. A streak of bright red marred the center of her pale face.

  Bo watched her blink several times into the rearview, shake her head, then bend to get something from below the dash. Her cell phone. She blinked at it, then stumbled out, dressed in a pink bikini top and tight, frayed blue jeans. Probably paid good money to buy them shredded up like that. High heels weaving in the dirt like she was drunk.

  Bo didn't care what brought her here, or what state she was in—she just wanted her gone.

  She took the kettle off the stove, silencing its whistle. On her way to the door she glanced at the crack of light under the bathroom door.

  Stay in there, Caleb.

  Bo stepped out into the chill night air.

  Behind Rainey, the Escalade's dome light went out.

  Up close she saw the girl's nose was definitely broken. Twisted at a bad angle and leaking blood in the dirt.

  "There she is," Rainey said, seemingly oblivious to her injury. "Now I got a bone to pick with you—" Something struck her as funny, and she doubled over in squeaky laughter. "Bone. You get it? I didn't even say that on purpose."

  "Little girl, your nose is spread halfway across your face."

  "I love the way you talk," she said, and licked blood from her top lip. "It's so Honey Boo-Boo."

  Bo stared until the girl snorted laughter.

  "Relax, girl!" Rainey said. She could barely keep on her feet. "Chill. I'm just messin with you, all right?"

  "You just crashed into my tree."

  "You're tree? You can't own nature."

  "You're drunk as a danged skunk."

  Rainey sputtered. "Me? Hell no. I had like one wine cooler and a bit of weed, that's like not even anywhere near my limit."

  She burped. Swallowed hard and grimaced.

  "You're drunk," Bo said, "and you been driving on windy country roads with your brights on. You know that's a recipe for disaster, don't you? I mean, you proved that right there crashing into my goldarn tree."

  Rainey scowled at the implication. Blood streamed from her nose and down her stomach. "Whatever." She pointed a wavering finger in Bo's direction. "You're the one who's drunk, not me."

  Bo spat in the dirt. She knew she'd regret the decision, but despite everything the girl had done to annoy her up to the present moment, she couldn't think of a single thing deserving of the possibility of dying upside in a ditch. "All right," she said, "come on inside. I'll clean you up, make you some coffee so you can sober up."

  "Mmm, coffee," Rainey said, her heavy eyes widening at the thought.
Staggering toward the house, a heel turned inward and she lurched forward. Bo caught her, catching a waft of sweet liquor and the sharp tang of marijuana in the bargain.

  "All right. Get back on your feet, girl. I ain't carryin ya."

  Rainey drunkenly pushed herself to her feet. "You're a nice lady," she slurred.

  "I ain't nice," Bo said. "I'm a fool."

  She opened the door for Rainey. The girl stumbled in.

  Caleb stood holding the table, his fax waxy and pale. His eyes widened when he caught a look at Rainey bleeding like a stuck pig in her bikini top. "Holy crow!" he said. Bo wasn't sure whether the exclamation was about the blood or her partial nudity.

  "Caleb, fetch the big sweater from your closet."

  He hurried off.

  Rainey giggled. "Ain't he a cutey?"

  Bo helped her into a chair. Rainey placed her cell phone on the table—apparently still possessing the mental acuity to keep track of her personal items, but not to perform basic tasks like sitting herself in a chair.

  "Stay there while I get a towel for your nose."

  "Why? Is it running?" She answered herself, "Well if it is, you better go catch it!"

  Bo opened a drawer while the girl laughed uproariously. Rummaged and came up with a stained tea towel she handed to Rainey. The dazed girl looked at it without understanding, so Bo pressed it against the girl's nose.

  Rainey yelped. "Ow! Hey, that hurts."

  Bo helped her sit at the table. "Hold it there and keep quiet a minute."

  Rainey looked at the towel. "Dang—who's blood is that?"

  "It's yours, you ninny. You been in a car accident."

  While she put the kettle back on the cook stove, Rainey looked around. "This is a nice place," she said, before burping and pulling a sour face.

  "Thanks."

  Caleb came out of his room with the sweater, dragging a cloud of bathroom spray with him. He went straight to Rainey, holding it out. Bo intercepted him and snatched it from his hands, then draped it over Rainey's shoulders. "Go on and zip that up, would you?"

  "It's too hot," Rainey said, tugging it off her shoulders and tossing it grumpily onto the floor.