I know it’s hopeless, but my fingers seek a pulse at a limp wrist. Nothing. She’s broken beyond repair.
I groan and close my eyes. Kneeling at the bedside, I rub my fingers over my forehead and eyes, as if I can erase the sight of this poor girl. But I know the obscene image on the bed will stay with me always; it’s forever etched into my mind. I pull my hands down and clasp them together between my knees. I force my eyes open. My breath comes in short gasps now, and the room grows dark as neon sparks obscure my vision.
I’ve got to get it together! Got so much to handle, so much to do. What am I going to tell Charlotte? And where the hell is Lester?
I force myself to stand and shake my head to clear it. I try her pulse again. She has none. She’s still clutching the knife, and I pry it from her hand. I pull a couple of Lester’s shirts off his clothing rod and cover Shelly’s nakedness. Gently smoothing the hair back off her forehead, I brush my fingers over her eyes, closing the lids. The rage I’d seen in her face has disappeared now. Except for the gouge and the swelling, she’s lovely once again. She looks like she’s accidentally hit her head and is at rest, sleeping off the ill effects.
“Oh, Shelly.” I drop to my knees again and press the heels of my hands against the sides of my head.
This sweet, lovely girl. How can I tell Charlotte?
I walk to the basin and put my head under the spigot. The water is wonderful. I let it drip down my face. There’s a plastic glass on the basin, and I start to fill it but notice a bottle of Johnny Walker Red on the floor. I reach for it and see that it’s unopened. Lester’s probably saving it for a special occasion. This qualifies, I think. I sit down on the bed, utterly exhausted. I see the trail of Lester’s blood going out the door into the barn.
I’ll find you, Buddy, and then I’ll pour us both a drink. But there’s so much to do, to take care of!
But I can’t seem to move.
Shelly is dead, and I have to tell Charlotte and everyone else. I have to notify the authorities about Shelly’s death. All that takes time, and what about the fucking tree? The Tree Shelly thought of somehow as Mother.
How scary is that? What are you doing right now, Mama? What bloody mayhem are you engineering at this very moment?
I know The Mama Tree is not idle. No way is she considering retreat. Or defeat.
How many women have you corrupted? And how many male bodies are lying around waiting to be discovered?
I hear footsteps approaching. Lester? Charlotte?
Charlotte stops in the doorway. She sees Shelly. “Cass! Oh my God! Shelly!” She goes to her sister and puts a hand on her arm. “Shelly? What’s—”
I rise and reach out for her. I try to pull her into my arms, but she takes hold of the iron footboard and pulls herself onto Shelly. She begins to weep. Harsh sounds come from her as if her throat is torn.
“I’m so sorry, Charlotte. The figs. She was crazy with the figs.” The knife is still on the bed, and I gesture toward it. “She had this knife; she came at me with it—kind of leaped for me and landed on the iron. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“The knife?” Charlotte says through her tears. “She was going to cut you?”
I nod. She allows me to touch her arm then, and I pull her gently away from Shelly. I hold her close, against my chest.
“Where’s Lester?” she asks, looking up at me.
“He got cut, but I think he’s okay. He crawled out into the barn. I’ve got to go find him.”
She pushes herself away from me. “You said you’d handle this, Cass! Wasn’t there some way you could have saved my sister?”
Lester-Lee’s mommy kneels on the straw and kisses his forehead. She has the cool, healing lips of an angel. She doesn’t say I’m sorry, sweetie, but he knows that’s what she means to say.
“I know,” he says, as if she’s spoken, and she smiles down at him as she starts to drift away. He sees that she’s wearing that same gown with the fluffy bunnies on her feet. The bunnies are dusty.
“I forgive you, Mommy,” he calls after her. “It’s okay.” And it is. What mommy would cut her wrists that way in front of her little boy? On purpose? No mommy would do that, and certainly not his.
Lester feels better. Not just better; he feels almost good. Except for his arm. His right arm feels like it’s put on about twenty pounds of hot, throbbing flesh. He lies on straw on his back in a vacant stall.
He shudders, remembering. Shelly. She cut him, sliced him up real good. The enormity of her act sweeps through him and leaves him weak with wonder.
“Can’t be true,” Lester whispers to himself. “I imagined it.” But what about the enormous, pain-wracked arm that lies alongside him and seems to be connected to him? And what about that crazy sex—did he imagine that too?
“No,” he says quietly. He knows it happened. All of it.
So where’s Shelly now? His eyes go to the door to his room. It’s ajar. He shivers.
Where are you, Shelly?
Then he remembers. Cass saved his life. But—and Lester’s heart lurches in his chest—at what cost? Did she cut him too? Is Cass alive? He has to go and see.
But no, he can’t. She might be waiting in his room for him to do just that, to come back to check on Cass. Lester groans, pulls his damaged arm close to his body, and hugs himself.
I gotta think what to do.
He thinks and thinks and squeezes his eyes shut with the effort. With his good hand, he pushes himself up to a sitting position. His head reels but soon clears. Lester staggers to his feet and begins a slow walk back to the doorway of his room. He’s thinking of Cass and Charlotte, Frank, and Dott, and hoping against hope that they’re all right.
They’re my family now.
I come out the door and see Lester. “Oh, Christ, Lester!” I say. He looks like an apparition from Hell. “Jesus. You look like you’ve been dug up from your own grave.”
Lester grunts and pulls his arm up close to his chest. “Are you all right, Cass?”
“Yeah, Lester. But you—” The man’s upper arm is a bloody obscenity. I can see blood still seeping from the cut.
Charlotte comes out of Lester’s room. “Oh God, Lester!” she cries.
“We have to get him to the ranch house, Charlotte; we have to check out this wound.”
“But what about Shelly?”
I try to find a calming way to say the obvious. “She’s beyond help, Charlotte; we’ll take proper care of her as soon as—”
“But—”
“Please, Charlotte. Please help me with Lester.” Frowning, she looks at Lester.
“Yes … okay,” she says, and I’m grateful.
“Can you walk, Lester?” I ask, and he nods.
“Come help me, Charlotte.” She complies, puts her arm around Lester, and the three of us begin a slow, awkward walk back to the ranch house.
“I’ll handle this,” you said to me,” Charlotte says as we stumble along. “That’s a direct quote. You handled it alright! My God!” She has a fist clenched like she wants to whack me.
“I know,” I say. “But the figs—they were in her head—”
“She may not even be dead, Cass, you don’t know! You say she hit her head. Well, that doesn’t make her dead, for heaven’s sake. I’m going to call a doctor!” She drops her arm from Lester’s waist and starts trotting toward the house.
“Charlotte, she’s dead. Her neck is broken. She’s been dead for over an hour.”
“Who the hell are you to pronounce her dead?” She whirls back to face Lester and me. “Are you a medic all of a sudden?”
“Charlotte, her body is cold.”
We arrive and climb the stairs to the porch. We open the door to a happy, welcoming Louie. He gives us all a what’s-going-on-here-anyway sniff. Charlotte kneels and puts her head next to his. She slides an arm around him. Tears course down her cheeks, and Louie sets about happily wiping them up with his tongue.
“It’s a dream, isn’t it, Louie?” she whispers
against his muzzle. “A nightmare. Cass didn’t really kill Shelly, did he?”
“Jesus, Charlotte, I didn’t kill—”
“So who did then?” Charlotte asks, raising her head from Louie’s.
“No one,” I say. “She was crazy with the figs and … had an accident.”
“Oh. The figs just slammed her headfirst into that iron footboard—that’s what you’re telling me?”
“You know what I’m talking about, Charlotte. You’re the one who spotted the change in Shelly, remember? You noticed her eyes. My God, Charlotte, she tried to kill us—Lester and me!”
She stands then, and Louie comes over to me. He starts licking my hand. “I wanted to come with you,” Charlotte says. “I could have stopped her. But no, ‘I’ll handle this,’ you said. ‘I’ll take care—’”
A loud click then, and the room is bathed in a cheery, too bright light. Frank stands at the Parson’s table, his hand on the switch of the brass lamp.
“What’s the problem here?” he says. His eyes are huge behind his spectacles, and his hair is standing up in white spikes. He’s wearing nothing but bright red boxer shorts.
“Tell your uncle what you’ve done, Cass,” she says, and strides past the old man down the hall.
“What’s she talkin’ about?” Frank asks.
“We’ve got big trouble, Uncle Frank,” Cassidy says. The boy looks worn out, like he’s just come out the sorry loser in a very tough fight. And Lester … shit sakes! The man’s arm is hurt bad, looks like.
“What’s happened here?”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” Cassidy says, and guides Lester into the kitchen. “Come on in here and help us, Frank.”
Cassidy wets a dishtowel and begins to clean Lester’s upper arm and the wound that’s oozing blood. Frank gets the bottle of Dickel and pours some onto a clean dishcloth. He pours a generous amount into a glass. “Drink this, Lester,” he says and hands Lester the glass. He then puts the cloth soaked with whiskey onto the wound itself. Lester jumps, grimacing with pain.
“Hurts like hell I know, but it keeps the germs away.” Lester drinks the whiskey down.
Cassidy binds up Lester’s arm in a sling he makes from a couple of torn up dishtowels. He pours himself a shot of the Dickel and tells his uncle the unlikely, truly incredible story of Shelly’s death.
“Lordy-God,” Frank says. “That’s just crazy!”
“Maybe we should run,” Lester says. “Nobody’s going to believe that story.” He pours himself another shot of whiskey. “Too many people dead, and that tree’s going crazy. We need to get out of here. We can call the state police from the border.”
“No,” Frank says. “We don’t run.”
He has trouble believing Cassidy about the monster fig tree, but his mind keeps showing him pictures. Pictures of himself battling a bright green rope that wanted his foot for some reason—and maybe his life. In his head he sees a close up of his strangled boot that still lies out near that Godforsaken tree.
“Life deals us some mighty peculiar cards, don’t she?” Frank says. “Any chance Shelly is still alive?”
Cassidy looks at him with bloodshot eyes. “None,” he says.
“We’re gonna have to make a call. Report this, you know.” Frank shakes his head. He’s so sad, he actually hurts. He wonders how Charlotte is taking this. “Why is Charlotte so mad at you?”
Cassidy stares off for a moment. “She wanted to go with me to the barn. Where Shelly was with Lester. I told her to stay here. I said I’d handle everything.”
“Ah,” Frank says, nodding. “And you think if you had taken her with you—”
“Yeah. Maybe she would have been able to talk to Shelly and keep her from—”
“That’s a very big ‘maybe,’ Cassidy. You can’t figure it like that.”
Problem is, Frank can’t figure it any which way—whole thing is just too crazy. He thinks to walk over and give Cassidy a pat on the shoulder but stands right where he is. “I’m going to make some coffee,” he says and sets about doing that. “I’ll see if Charlotte will have a cup with me. Then we should all go to the barn and see to Shelly.”
“We don’t have time for all that, Frank,” Cassidy says, his voice rising.
“Charlotte needs to say goodbye to her sister, and we need to … do the same.”
“I covered her body, Frank,” Cassidy says. “And I closed her eyes. I did all I could.”
Frank nods. “And, we have to call the authorities. Like make a 911 call. We’re goin’ to get some mighty tough questions once the law gets a look at Shelly.”
A wave of fatigue goes right through me. I think of what Lester said—maybe we should run—what a wonderful idea. There’s a killer tree after us all, but the thing that’s driving me out the door is that Charlotte hates my guts. She thinks I could have saved Shelly. Fuck! Maybe I could have. Maybe there was a way. But … running?
No! I have to stay. I want Charlotte back. Back with me. I have to find a way … And we have to kill that Goddamned tree before she kills us.
Frank seems to think we have all the time in the world, and calling any authorities is just about as attractive to me right now as jumping into a bog of quicksand.
“We have to burn down that fucking tree, Frank, like yesterday! And once acting asshole Al Schmidt gets his nose into Shelly’s death, well … He’s just waiting for a shot at me—you know that. We can take care of ‘the authorities’ after we take care of The Tree.” I wave a hand toward the coffee pot perking away on the counter. “That coffee’s a good idea, Frank. And maybe some fast toast. Can’t work on an empty stomach.”
Dott and Charlotte come into the kitchen then, and Dott guides Charlotte to the table where she sits down. Once seated, she’s motionless.
“She needs a doctor,” I say softly, and Dott nods. “I don’t want her in the barn again, Uncle Frank. I don’t think she can take another look.”
Charlotte looks up at me, frowning. “I’m right here, you know. You don’t have to use the third person. I can hear you, and I understand you.”
What a nightmare this woman has gone through! We all sit down at the table and have coffee and toast.
“Want a little somethin’ in your coffee?” Frank asks the group. He gestures toward a bottle of brandy he’s placed on the table.
“Not a good idea, Frank,” I say. “We’ve got to be sharp for the job ahead.”
“Cassidy, why are we all in such a bloomin’ hurry?” Franks says. “Nobody’s pickin’ up any more figs, and we’ve got a lot on our plate just now. There’s Shelly a’ course, and Charlotte here isn’t in the best of shape, and neither is Lester. I think that tree can wait at least a little while.”
“Yeah, but The Tree is still growing. She’s going to be plenty tough to put down.” I don’t tell them that I also think The Tree is one smart lady, and I’m pretty damn sure she knows we’re coming. I think she’s ready for us.
“I agree,” Dott says. She turns and places a huge hand at the back of Charlotte’s neck. She works her fingers gently into the flesh there. “Charlotte? You can trust me, sweetheart, you know that don’t you?”
Charlotte smiles at Dott, meek as a child.
“Do you want to come along with us?” Dott asks, smiling. “Do you want to help us with the tree?”
“No,” I say. “She needs to rest. There’s nothing she can do.”
“There’s plenty I can do,” Charlotte says, glaring at me. “If I believe what all you people are telling me, and I guess I do, that fucking tree and her fucking figs are responsible for my little sister … losing her mind. I want to help kill that monster.”
Charlotte’s face is flushed with healthy anger. She’s beautiful, and I ache to hold her.
“Good!” everyone says, almost in unison.
“Sweet fucking Christ!” Acting Sheriff Albert D. Schmidt roars. He can’t believe it. “Where were you, anyway?” He received this ridiculous, unthinkable news at 6:30 this morn
ing. He had thrown his uniform on and driven to his office in a rage.
“I was right there, sir,” the deputy says, his face glowing red. “I mean, like nearby, you know. Like at my desk, sir.”
“Nearby? Nearby?” Al scowls at Deputy Jim Collins, his second in command. Two more deputies are there as well, standing at attention. He turns his glare on one of them. “Stanley, I want a twenty-four hour suicide watch on Lindee Banyon, starting right now. I don’t want that woman takin’ a crap without your company. I’m sure as shit not goin’ to lose her too.” He waves the man away and addresses the other. “And you, Jenkins, get the coroner over here.”
He turns back to the grisly scene in Carla Russo’s cell. Al pushes the red-faced Deputy Collins aside and kneels in front of the cell door, studying the body through the narrow bars. Carla lies on the floor in her navy jump suit, dried blood on her face and head.
“Please tell me you checked for a pulse? You know for certain the woman is dead?”
“Sure! You bet, sir. She’s dead.”
“How did she do this?” Al asks. “Did she run headfirst into the bars?”
“There’s blood on the bars there, sir. See it?”
“Shut up.”
“She might a’ grabbed the bars and rammed her head—”
Al stood up so fast he saw spots. He turned unsteadily to his deputy. “I told you to shut the fuck up. Sweet Christ, all you had to do was keep your eye on a crazy old lady.”
“I know, sir. I really feel terrible about this.”
“Oh well, that’s okay then, Jim-boy. That makes you a hell-uv-a guy, doesn’t it?”
And it makes me a fucking loser. Who’s gonna want a sheriff who can’t keep a demented old-lady killer alive? In a locked cell, for Chrissake?
“That’s what we need around here, a really sensitive lawman.”
The deputy takes a breath and starts to walk into the cell. “I’ll just get her cleaned up—”
The Matriarch Page 18