by Ninie Hammon
She ended with a sniffle right before her voice broke. She didn’t cry though, and Billy Joe was glad. He hated it when she cried.
“Now, Honey … ”
“Billy Joe Reynolds, we don’t need that man’s money! We don’t need nobody’s money. We’re doin’ just fine. Oh, we don’t have some things maybe we wish we did, but someday—”
“Becky, listen to yourself. We don’t need his money? We’re fine? If you didn’t can vegetables from the garden every summer, we wouldn’t have enough to eat! We can’t pay for Kelsey’s school lunch so she has to be in that federal program, the one for poor people. My truck’s dying, Becky. Every time I turn the key, I pray it’ll start just one more time. We can’t afford to fix it. What are we gonna do when it’s gone—walk?”
He hadn’t meant to raise his voice, but he was close to shouting. Becky stood in front of him trembling, a little mouse in the cold. She wasn’t crying, but her face was slick with tears. He shouldn’t have upset her, not with her pregnant and all.
“We’ll be Ok—you’ll see,” she said, her voice thick and tear-clotted. “We’ve made it this far. We’ll be all right.”
There was about Becky a little-girl quality that was at once endearing and maddening. Sometimes, she just flat refused to see life the way it really was. She’d been raised in a big, gregarious Catholic family, the tenth of 12 children, grew up eating beans and grits and wearing triple hand-me-down clothes. She had never had much and was content—no, happy—with very little. Her world was simple and uncomplicated, and Billy Joe had done his dead level best all these years to protect her innocence, to shield her. But how much longer could he shore up their crumbling lives before reality crashed down on both of them?
“You get all tangled up in this marijuana business, you’re gonna get caught. What’ll Kelsey and I do then—huh? And the baby—what about the baby?”
He watched the realization that she could be left to raise two children on her own send Becky over the edge and she burst into tears. She threw her arms around his neck, pulled as close to him as the melon in her belly would allow and cried, shoving her face into his chest to muffle the sound so Kelsey wouldn’t hear from her bedroom.
“Please don’t, Billy Joe,” she begged between hitching sobs. “Please, Baby, tell me you won’t do this. Please!”
Billy Joe caved in. He was no match for her tears.
“Ok, I won’t. I’ll tell him no. Now stop crying. I’ll say no—you listening to me? Hush now. Shhhhhh.” He patted her back until she stopped sniffling. “You get yourself all worked up and that baby’s gonna come early.”
He pulled out of her arms, took the dish towel back and wiped the tears off her round cheeks with it. “Can’t have that bun coming out of the oven ’fore it’s brown on both sides, now can we?”
That got a smile out of her, though her bottom lip was still trembling slightly when she patted her round belly. “This bun’ll stay right here ’til it’s done all the way through. A little crying’s not gonna to change that.”
Becky leaned up on tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
“I love you,” she breathed in his ear, and somehow managed to sound sexy even with her face all wet and a belly full of baby. “Now, you go put Kelsey to bed while I finish these dishes.” She shoved him toward the little girl’s bedroom. “And say her prayers with her.”
Billy Joe went into the tiny bedroom where his 9-year-old daughter’s pixie face was buried in a book. The little girl’s thick braids hung down her back all the way to her waist, so flaxen blond they were almost white. Her eyes were a clear, startling, ice blue, a stark, arresting color that gave the child’s slightest glance a penetrating quality, “like she’s looking right through you and out the other side,” Becky often said.
“Time for bed, Kells. Go brush your tooth so it don’t fall out and come say your prayers.”
Kelsey heaved a long-suffering sigh. “You know I got more than one tooth, Daddy.” She rolled her pretty blue eyes, then closed the book reluctantly and laid it on the bedside table. When she returned from the bathroom, she knelt, folded her hands together on the bed, squeezed her eyes shut tight and began a sing-song litany of God-blesses.
“God bless Mommy and God bless Daddy and God bless the baby and please make it a girl and God bless … ”
But Billy Joe wasn’t listening to Kelsey’s prayer anymore. When he knelt beside her, his knee had landed on her shoes. Now, he held them in front of him, turning them over in his hands. There was a quarter-sized hole in the sole of the left shoe and one bigger than a fifty-cent piece in the sole of the right. Becky had placed cut-out pieces of heavy cardboard inside the shoes that fit as perfectly as store-bought insoles.
The little girl finished with an amen flourish and hopped into bed. Billy Joe kissed her goodnight and turned out the lamp. But even in the dark, he could see the shoes with their pieces of cardboard.
He could see the shoes still. As he stood on the roadside with his face turned toward the empty spot on the riverbank where the trailer house once stood, he could see the shoes in his mind as clearly as if he were holding them in his hand.
A wave of emotion swept over Billy Joe so powerful he was stunned by its intensity. Hot tears filled his eyes and streamed down his face. He couldn’t identify the feeling; had no idea what it was. So he just stood there looking up into Glen Cove, crying silently.
Chapter 3
With the bathroom stall door locked firmly behind her, Elizabeth Bingham collapsed on the closed toilet lid and cried, great heaving sobs that left her breathless and aching. Though her sorrow was too sharp, too jagged for anything as simple and cleansing as tears, after awhile she felt better, exhausted and hollow, but better.
She didn’t feel good enough to go out there and face all those people again, though. Not yet. When she opened the bathroom door, she spotted another door marked “Family Lounge” at the end of the hallway. She could hear voices coming from the room, but when she stepped inside, she was surprised to find only one person there. He had his back to her, talking on the telephone, making enough noise for several people.
“Let’s just say he ain’t the quickest bunny in the forest,” the tall, willowy young man was saying into the receiver, laughter in his voice. “He’s ’bout as sharp as a marble.”
Then he turned and saw her. Recognition registered in his eyes and his face was lit by the sunny smile she remembered, the dimpled smile that’d break your heart.
“Sarabeth!” he cried.
He blurted “Gottagobye!” into the telephone receiver and dropped it on the cradle, then bounded across the room and enveloped her in a long-armed bear hug—not a plastic, greeting hug, but a real hug, tight. He rocked her back and forth and patted her on the back, crooning, “Sarabeth, Sarabeth.”
Yeah, it was Billy Joe alright.
He finally released her, stepped back, took both her hands in his and smiled down on her.
“When did you get in?” he asked.
“Seems like a hundred years ago, but it was just this morning, I think. I’m still on Singapore time and I’m not really certain what day it is.”
“I’m sure sorry ’bout your daddy.” His voice caught in his throat and tears welled in his eyes. “Uncle Jim was as fine a man as I ever hope to meet.” He reached out and put his arm around her shoulders. “But it’s so good to see you, Bessie.”
Bessie. Nobody on the planet except Billy Joe had ever called her that. When they were kids, Billy Joe was forever giving people silly pet names, and her initials, Sarah Elizabeth Bingham, spelled backwards, were BES. And she had called him Bije, rhymed with siege. Billy Joe. B.J. Bije.
Though they’d become Christmas-card relatives as grownups, Bessie and Bije had been inseparable as children, hanging out together on their grandparents’ farm near Crawford. They’d climbed trees, built snow forts, chased chickens, went fishing—even sneaked up into the steeple at St. Simon’s one Sunday morning and rang the bell during services.<
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Billy Joe was the youngest of Aunt Clara and Uncle Frank’s five children. The others were girls, much older than Elizabeth. Even if they’d been her age, Billy Joe would still have been her best friend. His sisters didn’t have his special magic. Energy, enthusiasm and good humor crackled in the air around Billy Joe like sparks off a blown transformer. And there was something about his eyes. Elizabeth had struggled for years to put a name to it, but the best she was able to do sounded like some goofy song lyric. It was true, though—Billy Joe’s eyes twinkled.
“You’re way more beautiful than I remember, Sarabeth,” he told her, and his dimpled smile was so sincere it put a lump in her throat. But Billy Joe was looking at her with his heart or he’d have seen a much-too-thin woman with eyes sunk in circles as dark as cigarette burns in her pale, gaunt face.
Even when life was normal, before all that had happened to her in the past six months, Elizabeth had not been beautiful. She had never been beautiful. Her features were too large and expressive for traditional beauty. Striking-looking was a better description. A high forehead, almond-shaped hazel eyes, and a wide mouth with full, Sophia Loren lips that made her face sensual and arresting. At 5’10”, she was big-boned like her father. But now, she was as hollow-cheeked and emaciated as a refugee. She had purposefully selected a shapeless black dress that camouflaged, as much as possible, her skinny frame.
Her great saving grace, however, was her hair. It always had been. Long, thick, natural curls the color of rust cradled her thin face and tumbled down around her shoulders.
“Well, you haven’t changed a bit,” she told Billy Joe and she meant it. He’d gotten bigger, tall and slender with sandy brown hair falling into his eyes, but he still looked like a boy even at 32. She smiled in spite of all her pain, just because Bije always made her feel like smiling.
All of a sudden, the door burst open and in fluttered Billy Joe’s mother. Elizabeth had always believed her Aunt Clara was proof positive that the incidence of gypsies switching babies was a whole lot more prevalent than most folks believed. That this tiny, twittering, bird of a woman could be related to her father, who’d been so sturdy, strong and unflappable, was one of the great mysteries of Elizabeth’s life.
“Why, there you are, Billy Joe!” She was talking as she opened the door, her voice high and squeaky, her salt-and-pepper hair falling into her eyes just like her son’s. “I was wondering where you were. Can you go get a casserole out of Gladys Jackson’s car and put it in mine?” She gestured toward the door that opened on the parking lot. “It’s in the floorboard of the big blue Chrysler parked under the oak tree. And use the hot pads ’cause she just got it out of the oven.”
When she noticed that someone was standing next to her son, curiosity played across her face before the wires connected.
“Why, Sarabeth honey,” she squealed, and rushed over to grasp her niece in a remarkably tight hug. “I thought I saw you out front, Sweetie, but with all those people, I couldn’t … Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. It’s been so hard!” Tears filled her eyes and her lip began to tremble.
Oh, please don’t cry! Don’t get me started again.
Elizabeth felt sorry for her dithered aunt. Her brother’s murder must have been a terrible blow. Clara’s husband, Frank, had died soon after Elizabeth’s mother swept her off to California. For awhile, the brother and sister had needed each other. But for years now, the need had been one-sided.
Aunt Clara didn’t cry, though. She pulled herself together, cleared her throat and shifted gears.
“Where’s Becky and the girls?” she asked Billy Joe.
Billy Joe took a beat too long to answer. Even in her current state of mush brain, Elizabeth picked up on it.
“Becky’s not … feeling well, Mama, so she … Kelsey’s home with her. She and Bethany, they’re looking after their mother.”
Aunt Clara blew past the answer as if she’d never even asked the question. But a pained, defeated look skittered across her face before she continued.
“Those hot pads, get ’em on good and tight ’fore you pick up that dish or you’ll burn your hands. I’m parked on the street down from—”
Ben appeared at the door.
“You Ok?” he asked Elizabeth.
She gave him a weak smile and nodded.
Billy Joe looked from Ben to Elizabeth and back to Ben.
“Well, you sure enough got your mama’s hair, boy—that’s a lead-pipe cinch!” He gave Ben a big welcoming smile, then stepped over, grabbed the boy’s hand and pumped it up and down like he was trying to draw water. He turned to Elizabeth. “I didn’t know you had a son, Bessie. Uncle Jim told me about what happened, ’bout how you … ”
He stopped, confused at the look of fresh, raw pain on Elizabeth’s face.
Actually, Billy Joe was right. Ben did have hair just like his mother. Just like their mother.
“I’m Elizabeth’s brother, Ben,” the boy said when it was obvious Elizabeth was in no condition to respond. The self-introduction begged a bigger explanation, of course, but it was much too complicated to get into now.
The teenager had whispered into Elizabeth’s ear earlier, during the interminable visitation. “I should have made myself a nametag: ‘Hi, I’m Ben Malone and you’ve never met me so stop giving yourself a brain freeze trying to remember who I am.’”
She’d smiled for an instant and whispered back, “That’s not a nametag; that’s a bumper sticker.”
Elizabeth was proud of Ben. He looked so clean-cut, so—what was the word? preppy—standing there in his Oxford cloth shirt and cuffed khakis. More than that, he seemed so grown up, had just stepped right in and taken over. She wanted to tell him that, but now she couldn’t seem to find the air to speak. She was tired, so very tired.
It was probably Ben; the boy was as quick as a cat. But it could have been Billy Joe; he was closer. Elizabeth wasn’t sure which one of them caught her before she smashed into the floor.
• • • • •
The squirrel hunter never saw Daisy coming. The big, black Rottweiler leapt on his back and used her 75 pounds of pure muscle to topple him face-first into the dirt. Then she went for his forearm, bit down hard and began to tear at it.
The initial shock of the dog’s attack knocked the breath out of the 57-year-old pharmacist from Cincinnati. When she bit into his arm, he screamed, rolled over on his back and tried to throw her off. She let go of his arm and he scrambled to crawl away. Then she went for his leg. He tried to scoot backward in the dirt while the monster dog, its face smeared with his blood, mauled his leg. Without making a sound!
Bubba could hear Daisy at work from where he sat, could hear the sounds of the struggle, the man flopping around, probably hitting at her, kicking, trying to shove her away, and all the time howling in terror and pain.
He smiled. Good girl, Daisy. Good girl!
Bubba would have liked to have watched the attack. He’d have enjoyed seeing her rip the man’s arm off. But he stayed where he was, hidden from view, and listened to the man scream as Daisy bit into his face, tearing out his right cheek and exposing his teeth.
The man began to cry then; the sound of sobbing mingled with his shrieks. Reluctantly, Bubba pulled the silent dog whistle out of his pocket and put it to his lips. Daisy froze, a piece of the pharmacist’s flesh in her mouth, her muzzle gory with his blood. Then she leapt off him, bounded up the hill and vanished.
The injured man staggered to his feet and began to stumble away in the opposite direction. He made it down the hillside, across the meadow, over the fence and all the way to the car he’d left sitting on the side of the road. He fumbled the keys out of his pocket, sobbing, managed to unlock the car, leapt in, slammed the door shut behind him and then just sat there crying hysterically. It took him awhile to pull himself together. Then he started the engine and roared away, leaving a cloud of dust behind, to settle out of the air around Bubba’s feet.
He’d followed along down the hill, far e
nough behind that the man couldn’t see him, not that the idiot could have seen him 10 feet away if Bubba didn’t want to be seen.
Bubba had to make sure the fool made it to his car. What good would it do for him to let Daisy rip the man apart if the guy didn’t live to tell about it? About the black dog that came at him silently through the woods and almost killed him.
The big man looked around, picked up a fallen tree branch and used it as a broom, methodically swiping it back and forth across the ground until every trace that a car had ever been parked there was gone. He piled a mound of brush on the spot where the man had staggered out of the woods. There was a thick stand of Queen Anne’s lace right beside the road and Bubba pulled all the plants up by the roots and threw the remains into the woods. He kept the city boy’s precious new .22 rifle that he’d left behind in the dirt, though; Bubba loved guns.
Standing back, Bubba surveyed his work. It didn’t look much different from before, but different enough. Tucker’s Ridge was criss-crossed by dirt roads. This one wound through the knobs for 15 miles, twisting and turning like a drunk snake. There were probably 50 different places along it to pull a car off on the side of the road and park.
Why, it was out there on Tucker’s Ridge, that urban idiot would tell the doctors and nurses, and eventually, the game warden and the sheriff.
Reckon they’re gonna cite him for huntin’ out of season?
Bubba grinned.
They’d bring him out here to show them where it had happened, but the man would never be able to lead them to the spot. Even if he managed to find the right dirt road, he’d been too traumatized to remember much about it, and this place looked just different enough now that it wouldn’t match whatever picture he had of it in his head.
Meanwhile, his story would spread, getting bigger with every telling. Inside 24 hours, there wouldn’t be a man, woman or child in the whole county who hadn’t heard about the pack of rabid monster dogs prowling the hollows on Tucker’s Ridge looking for prey.