Absolute rage kac-14

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  The dogs were barking and she had to call out. Marlene appeared out of the gloom, wiping her hands on a towel. She shouted at the dogs to shut up, which they did. Rose went into her cringe. Marlene ignored it and said, "Want a beer? I'm having one."

  They went into the kitchen. Rose declined the beer, accepted an iced tea. Marlene said, "Well, that wasn't the worst party I ever went to. No one got shot and we didn't even have to call the cops. Or an ambulance. I expect you've been in situations where there were both."

  Rose felt herself blush. She nodded. "Yes. He's famous in McCullensburg for it. I'm sorry. I thought, well, away from home… a civilized little gathering." She looked up at Marlene and found a colder face than she had expected.

  "You're not angry at me, are you?"

  "I don't know yet. Let me ask you straight: Do you know me?"

  "Know you…?"

  "Yeah. Do you know who I am? What I used to do? I mean, is this hanging around me you've been doing, cultivating me and so on, connected with what went on last night? You're not looking for a little help, are you? In your domestic situation, I mean."

  As soon as Marlene said this, she saw from the confused and shocked expression on Rose Heeney's face that she had been off base and felt a flash of shame.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Rose exclaimed. "You think I need a… whatever you are, a private detective?"

  "Not as such… calm down, Rose. Sit down and finish your tea. Okay, I was out of line and I apologize. It's just that I used to have a business-actually according to my husband, it was more of a crusade-in which I… um… discouraged guys from beating up on their wives."

  "Discouraged? You mean like counseling?"

  "In a manner of speaking. It was an extremely firm kind of counseling. Tough love on steroids." A blank look. "Not to put too fine a point on it, along with several accomplices, I beat them up. On several occasions I had to shoot them, or trained the women in question to shoot them, and they did."

  "You mean… dead?"

  "On several occasions. The point of which is that I have a rep that's still alive in the City, and of course I forgot you don't come from the City. But anyhow, from time to time, a woman drifts into my life and inveigles me into an acquaintance in the hopes that I will fix her domestic situation."

  "And you thought… I mean, that I wanted you to fix Red?"

  "Yeah. So sue me, I'm a little paranoid."

  Rose was staring at her, wide-eyed. Then she made a couple of preparatory snorting noises and burst into laughter. After a startled moment, Marlene joined in.

  "They don't," Rose got out amid the guffaws, "they don't have that kind of service in McCullensburg, but if you ever wanted to open a branch office… oh, my!"

  "Yes, well, easy for you to laugh," said Marlene after they had descended to chuckles. "It's no fun turning off the desperate. But you can see where…"

  "Oh, sure, I understand. But the fact is, even though he acts like a big redneck bully, he loves me and the kids and there's never been anything remotely violent between us, with the exception of subduing him when he gets out of hand, like you saw. Do I wish he didn't do it? Yes, of course, but we have a good marriage and there are worse things, which I probably don't have to tell you. As a matter of fact, by McCullensburg standards, he's a sensitive New Age man."

  "What's so funny?" said Dan Heeney, coming in from the next room. Marlene had started him on the farm accounts, which were in a fearful mess, and he had fallen into the concentration stupor of the computer jockey, tweaking files and exploring the old Macintosh, until the noise of the two women brought him back to earth.

  "Oh, Dan, you're here," said his mother, arranging her face from hysterical back into the familiar lineaments of Mom. "Can you spare a minute? We need to discuss something."

  "The answer is no," he replied, his face sullen.

  Rose said sharply, "Dan!" and then got up and said to Marlene, "Oh, God, I'm sorry, you've had enough of the Heeney family business. We'll talk outside." She went through the screen door, and after a moment's hesitation, Dan said something nasty under his breath and followed her out.

  Marlene sat there, quite happy not to be involved. A little guilty, but she could live with it. She stood, intending a little discreet eavesdropping, but sat again and took a swallow of beer. She rubbed the cold can against her forehead and listened to the refrigerator clunk.

  From the doorway of the barn, Lucy could see Dan and his mother on the other side of their car, just the tops of their bodies over the hood of the Jimmy. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could read the body language. Rose was arguing with him, her body stiff and bent a little toward him; he was turned slightly away with his face averted. Suddenly he broke away with a shake of his head and started back toward the house. His mother went after him and clutched at his sleeve, but he pulled away. Then Emmett leaped from the cab, caught up with Dan, grabbed him, and spun him around. Lucy heard their voices raised. Both their faces had gone red. Emmett shoved Dan toward the truck, Dan shoved him back, and when his brother snatched at the front of his shirt, Dan popped him one in the mouth, a short left. Emmett stepped back and felt his mouth. He looked at the blood on his hand and went at Dan.

  Lucy knew a thing or two about boxing, and she could see that neither of them was a skilled boxer, just fairly decent bar fighters. Half a dozen blows traded, and a little wrestling, and then they were down on the ground, each trying to choke and pummel the other into submission. Emmett, bigger and heavier, soon got astride his brother and rained blows on his face. Their mother was screaming, now, "Stop it, oh, stop it," Lucy could hear that much. Rose bent over and tried to separate them, pulling at their clothes, their hair. A random elbow or knee clipped her in the jaw and she sat down hard. She put her face in her hands and wailed, a high, hopeless sound, like a small child. The twins and Lizzie, who had been playing with the puppies in the barn, came running out to stand next to Lucy. The boys watched in fascination. Lizzie bit her lip and was very still.

  Lucy started toward the fight, not really thinking about what she would do when she arrived, but here she was forestalled by the arrival of her father and the agitator Russell. Russell yanked Emmett off Dan. Lucy could see blood all over Dan's face, and before she quite knew it, she was running toward him. She saw Emmett throw a clumsy punch at Russell, who ducked it and countered with a short, solid blow to the solar plexus. To Lucy's vast surprise, she saw her father slip behind Emmett and put him in a competent-looking half nelson. The young man bucked and yelled, but Karp was able to jam his face up against the truck and held him there, talking calmly, until, by a nod of his head, Emmett indicated he was through fighting.

  Daniel had vanished. As soon as his brother was off him, he had taken off running. Lucy called out to him, but he ignored her and ducked between the house and the greenhouse, heading toward the big field, the dunes, and the beach. Lucy looked in the direction he had gone for a moment and then went to see if she could help Mrs. Heeney. Marlene was already on the job, however.

  "What the hell, Rose! What was going on here?" Marlene helped Rose to her feet and examined her face. "Christ, you're going to have a fat mouse there. What happened?"

  "Marlene, I don't want to talk about it," said Rose, pulling away and brushing the dirt from her blouse. "I'm fine. Just let me go home."

  Emmett said, "I'm sorry, Mom." He actually hung his head. Lucy noted that he had turned from a somewhat frightening man to a sheepish, overgrown boy.

  "Oh, just get in the truck, Emmett!" Rose snapped. "Lizzie! Come on, we're going."

  They departed without another word. Karp and Marlene exchanged a look and a shrug. "Well! Who wants to go to the beach?" he said cheerily, got a yell of assent from his sons, and took them into the house.

  "What happened?" Lucy asked her mother.

  "Damned if I know. She wanted Dan to do something he didn't want to do but his Dad wanted him to, and Emmett apparently tried to muscle him."

&nb
sp; "He wants to stay here and not go home to West Virginia. I'm going to go after him."

  Lucy ran into the house and emerged a minute later with a bulging plastic freezer bag. She whistled up Gog, who emerged from the barn drinking and drooling but, as ever, game for a walk.

  She followed the dog past the field and across the road and into the dunes and found Dan sitting near the place they had gone the first day.

  "Are they gone?" he asked.

  "Yes." She knelt in front of him and took a damp washcloth out of the bag.

  "How did you find me?"

  "I have an expensive tracking dog. Hold still, I'll get the blood and dirt off you."

  She did so, gently and carefully. He closed his eyes and let her do it. He thought of his mother doing the same service, innumerable times, and considered in his analytic way just why this was different. He closed his eyes and let her work; he could smell the soap on her skin as she leaned close.

  "There." She affixed a Band-Aid to a cut on his eyebrow. "You still look like you lost a fight, but you won't scare the children."

  "Thank you. Are we playing doctor now?"

  She ignored this. "What was he trying to do, your brother? Take you back by force?"

  "Something like that. Emmett isn't really stupid, he just acts like it sometimes. Dad is God Almighty and I'm his play-pretty, and-"

  "His what?"

  She saw a blush creep up his battered cheek, which she thought charming. "Toy, I mean. When we were growing up, he was the enforcer. 'Emmett, go get your brother and make him fix his room.' He's still doing it. I used to daydream about sending away for one of those karate courses and studying in secret, and one day when he tried to beat on me… boom! But, needless to say…"

  "You got him a few good ones," said Lucy encouragingly. "He's pretty tough."

  "Yeah, he is. The only good part about being Emmett Heeney's brother was that he was the only one allowed to beat on me. I never had a hard look from another kid all through school." Dan paused, took a breath. "I'm not going back there. I hate it there."

  "I figured that's what the fight was about. Why didn't your dad come over and yell at you himself?"

  "Because he knew I'd say no, and he'd lose a point. He can't make me do anything. I'm eighteen, I have a full scholarship, and I can make enough money doing programming to pay my own way. Dad's a negotiator, and the first rule of negotiations is never put yourself in a position where you're going to lose. So he sent Mom and Emmett. That way he can throw up his hands and blame them. But the fight… it wasn't really about that. Mainly it was he made a really nasty remark about you. He made out… you know. That you were why I didn't wanted to go home and pass leaflets to the working class." Dan was starting to blush again.

  "And you slugged him to defend my honor? " Before she could help it, a giggle burst from her mouth and she felt herself joining him in shameful red.

  "I guess, in a way." The unfamiliar idea made Dan uncomfortable at first, but after a short while it seemed right. It was not impossible to think of this girl in those terms. Whether in fact Emmett had been correct in his surmise did not get discussed at this point.

  "Well, thank you," she said. "No one has ever done that for me before. Of course, it's so rarely threatened in any way. My honor, I mean. I'm sorry you got so banged up."

  "I've been beat worse." He picked a grass stem and started to chew it, then flung it away with the thought, oh, great, the perfect hick look, a big shiner and a grass stem in the mouth.

  "So," said Lucy, "what now? You'll stay here? At your house?"

  "No, they're all leaving after this weekend. People are coming to fix the place up and get it ready for sale. Maybe I'll get a tent and just live on the beach."

  "Don't be silly! We can put you up, if you can stand us. I'm sure my mom won't mind. She likes a medieval menage-dogs, servants, retainers, children, all banging against one another and having to be straightened out. It's her fun."

  They walked back toward the house by a shortcut, a sandy path that wound around the kind of slight rise that passed for a hill in eastern Long Island, and through a shady copse of pines. At the base of this hill there was a seep under some boulders where Lucy had once found dog violets, and she wanted to see whether there were any now. Suddenly the sound of machine-gun fire burst out, as imitated by a ten-year-old boy. Lucy flung up her hands, screamed, and collapsed on the path. There was more machine-gunning.

  "Die dramatically," Lucy advised from the ground. Dan did an ahrrrg, staggered, and fell in a heap.

  "I got you!" crowed Zak from among the boulders. They rose and inspected the machine-gun nest, a sandy notch dug out and camouflaged with branches. The machine gun was a length of three-inch plastic drainpipe.

  "I thought you guys were at the beach," said Lucy.

  "We were but it was boring. I was being imaginary until you guys came along. You didn't see me until I got you."

  "Yes, but we weren't looking for an ambush. Next time you want to be lower down, so you're not silhouetted against the sky. They call it the military crest. Where are the rest of your men?"

  Zak pointed out a few places nearby. "Uh-uh," she said, and knelt to scratch a plan in the dirt. "Okay, let's say an eight-man squad. Your machine gun is here. Automatic rifles here, here, here, and here. You wait until their point man gets here, and you open up with your automatic rifles from both ends. The enemy forms a perimeter right here, where the trail dips a little, and that should be right in the beaten ground of your machine gun. They call it a kill sack. See?"

  "What if they run into the woods?"

  "Well, you already mined the woods, and if you have mortars, they'd be preregistered right there. The point of an ambush is to get everyone down in the first minute. So they can't call for support."

  Zak nodded, taking it in. Dan gaped. Zak said, "You learned that from that guy, right?"

  "His name is Tran."

  "Yeah. Dad really doesn't like him, does he?"

  "No, he doesn't."

  "But Mom likes him. And you like him."

  "I don't like him. I love him."

  Zak looked puzzled. "You can't do that. Love is like like but more."

  "Actually, it's not. Like is from here"-she touched his head-"love is from here." She poked him in the center of his chest so that he squirmed away. "La coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connais pas."

  "That's French," said Zak.

  "That's right. You should go back to the beach before Dad thinks you're drowned and calls the police."

  Zak laughed and trotted off with his drainpipe, spraying the woods with deadly blasts. They walked on.

  "Wow, what was that all about?" Dan said after a minute. "Who's Tran?"

  "Tran is an elderly Vietnamese gentleman. He was sort of my governess when I was growing up. He also worked with my mom."

  "And he taught you military stuff? Was that all on the level?"

  "Oh, yes. And from a distinguished practitioner. We did small-unit problems all afternoon in Central Park. I also know how to tail someone, shake a tail, and clear a building of defenders. And shoot."

  "Why?"

  "Oh, partly it was practical. My mom had a lot of enemies at the time and he wanted to protect me. The other stuff… he was of the opinion that you never could tell what was going to happen in your life. He was planning to teach literature and ended up guerrilla fighting almost his whole life. So he wanted me to be prepared. Weird, but there it is. Yet more useless knowledge in my head."

  "What happened to him?"

  "Oh, he's a small-time gangster now. He's a pretty awful person, I guess, but he's our awful person. He and my mom get along fine."

  Marlene had no problem putting another plate on the table, after having first called Rose Heeney to tell her these plans. They had a polite conversation, like two school mothers arranging an overnight for a fifth-grader, as if Heeney violence had not occurred on Marlene's doorstep. The weekend oozed along peacefully. Sunday, Lucy whipped the twi
ns out of bed with the cry "Pagan babies! Up! Up! Prayer is better than sleep!" and drove them off to mass at St. Perpetua's in Southold. Just after one, the Heeneys came by, with their car packed for the trip. Marlene gave them a civilized lunch at which no alcohol was served, nor were the fights mentioned. Heeney discussed dogs he had known and trained for hunting, to all appearances an affable good old boy. It was perfectly artificial, but not at all unpleasant. Giancarlo gave Lizzie an origami crane, but secretly. Dan and Lucy allowed their eyes to meet for tiny instants, but otherwise kept away from one another. When the clan left, something heavy seemed to go out of the air. Dan Heeney felt a pang of disloyalty, for he felt this, too, but it did not prevent him from enjoying the rest of the day.

  That evening, Marlene put Dan in a tiny room at the end of the upstairs hall, originally the hired girl's room, as Marlene explained, and more recently used for sewing. It held a narrow iron cot, a dresser, an old Singer, and a dressmaker's dummy.

  "You won't mind sharing a room with Ermentrude, will you?" Marlene asked, indicating this object.

  "No, ma'am."

  "Feel free to run up a party dress, if you want."

  He blushed and showed an uncomfortable smile. Oh, now I've impugned his manhood, Marlene thought. Should I watch the badinage henceforth? Maybe not; the boy needs a thicker skin, and this family is the place to get it.

  While Dan was thus engaged, Lucy was on the phone with her best (and nearly only) friend, Mary Ma in New York. After the usual exchange of the latest, Lucy asked, "Listen, Ma, do you know Dan Heeney? He's in your class."