A Choir of Ill Children

by Tom Piccirilli

  And there, behind the palms, I see my dad’s boots jutting out, same as the night I was hit by lightning.

  It’s the dog kicker.

  I part the leaves and Maggie stands there in my father’s shoes, filled with her own frenzy. I, who am her husband before the eyes of heaven, didn’t ever really want her. But my father did.

  No wonder she kicks dogs. She not only protects me but also guards my dad. She has become his legs now, driving off the hounds that lap at his neck, but her anger can’t be contained by the bayou. Every dog in Potts County is an evil reminder of what he’s become.

  “Where are my brothers?” I ask her.

  She smiles and begins to laugh as she moves, in spasms, directly into my arms. Before I can hold her to me, and let loose with all that I want and all that I hate, she prances backward out of my father’s boots and vanishes into the scrub.

  My father raises his eyes. Drabs said he’d talk to me for the price of a pint of moonshine. I toss six bits at the stumps of his legs.

  “So, what do you have to say?”

  His failures, defeats and nearsightedness have driven him to this, as mine have also brought me here. He had no other choice, which means that his love, and mine too, added to the killing of him.

  In some ways he’s better off than I am. His tongue slithers between his broken black teeth and swollen blue lips. He opens his mouth and begins laughing weakly, and hearing that hideous sound is like listening to a choir of ill children.

  I leave the geek there in the mud, dead and giggling.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LEAVES SLAP AGAINST THE WINDOWS AND THE whippoorwills are calling. The hot night pours across my chest and the sweat streams down my burns.

  She’s back again, doing wild and furious things to me. That fiery red hair blazes in the darkness but shows nothing of her face except more shadow. Moonlight stamps in as I whimper at least one of the words she needs to hear. “Defeat.” It raises a chuckle from someplace inside of her, buried and so far below that it sounds as if it’s coming from under the bed.

  I turn my face and look over at my brothers’ sheets, expecting them to have returned to the house. I can’t see through the blackness, but there seems to be motion over there. The room is packed with ghosts. Her languid cries bring them out of the walls, struggling and waving. She jerks to the side as if listening to my brothers moaning in their sleep. The darkness that comprises her concealed chin angles toward their bed as if listening to what is no longer there.

  There’s murder in the air but I don’t know who’s going to fall or why. It’s there though, the taste under my tongue. Maybe it’s her skin or breath, her very being and essence. If she is death then there ought to be more to it, I think.

  She licks my wounds and makes soothing noises and tries to hug me to her breast, but I lie back. She moves against my legs and feet, working between my toes, using her nails to write out her meanings, her significance. These are the sentences of obscurity and void as she drips her gravy over me. I’m still trying to make out the wildly cursive script with all those well-defined stretches. They are like bodies placed upon me. There is weight to the words. My name keeps coming up in her footnotes. The index swirls around my thighs (Ibid., Ch. 3, vi) (Ibid., Ch. 5, iii) (Ibid., Ch. 9, On Being Efficient, Pt I). She slows down and begins printing with an even hand. Girls: they accuse Rasputin of kissing with heavy tongue 32:67.

  It sounds like something I’d want to read. Now, she begins to write in verse. It tickles and I keep breaking into giggles. She shushes me and her hands flutter over my lips. She smoothes my burns, runs her fingers through my short hair. I can tell she likes it.

  Her stiff, cold tresses unravel across the bed like eviscerations that never seem to stop. I try to talk to her but nothing much comes out but more laughter. The invocations are potent but not nearly powerful enough. They never have been. Her promises are lies, her entreaties worthless. She’s known this from the beginning but she never did give up. I try to pat her shoulder but hit nothing but air. Her face is coiled in utter darkness but that doesn’t matter anymore. The names she calls on will find little of value here.

  I whisper, “There’re going to be some changes. I’m tired of this game. Leave and don’t come back.” I reach over and turn on the light and there’s nobody there. The wall shouts at me.

  I add all this to the tally of my defeats but I will not sway from the course. The burning breeze scratches over my chest and I light a cigarette. I stand at the window looking down at the black lawn. The tupelo and cottonwood sway in the hot breeze but there’s nobody murdered in the yard. I’m filled with a kind of sorrow and longing that I can’t explain. Ants are crawling up my back. Perhaps the storm is coming again. Or my brothers are heading home. I feel both foolish and larger than myself, glancing up at the tree line and seeing the dark houses of Kingdom Come in the distance, silhouetted in the moon. I turn from the window and somebody shuts off the lamp.

  They move, in spasms, inside shadows whirling upon one another as if dancing. That massive bald head reflects a smidgen of moonlight and my vision bucks with splashes of red as if I’ve been shot.

  “You all knew Mama was up there all these years and you never said anything,” I growl. “Why?”

  With three mouths, in one voice, Cole, who speaks with love, tells me, “You weren’t ready to listen, Thomas.”

  “That’s not true, damn it.”

  “It is.”

  I take a deep breath and try to stay focused. It’s difficult and I feel as if I’m washing out at the edges. “And now?”

  “Now you’ve no choice. None of us do.”

  My voice is flat and singular, more whiny than determined. “You had no right to hide this from me.”

  They wave about like Mama’s velvet curtains, palms brushing up against my arms, my face.

  “Come home,” I plead. “I’m sorry for what’s happened between us. I’ll make it up to you, if I can.”

  “You can’t,” Jonah says. There is still great anger and sadness in the lilt of the voice he presses up from their three throats. “You won’t, and you shouldn’t have to. But don’t be sorry. It’s not entirely your fault.”

  “That’s very forgiving of you,” I say, and I mean it, too.

  “The burden has never been yours alone. It’s ours as well, as it should be. Have faith in us.”

  “I do,” I say, and I’m startled to realize I’m not lying.

  “We’ll be back.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “That doesn’t matter. You’re safer now without us near, and we’re better protected without you around.”

  Jonah recites his poetry of regret, while Cole talks of devotion and Sebastian places his hands around my shoulders with a gentle pressure, as if testing what it might be like either to hug or asphyxiate me. He does neither. Molten silver bears down on us, but I can only see a hint of them as they lean and lunge. They’re in pain, I can tell. It isn’t easy reaching me this way.

  “Do you know about Dad? That he’s still alive?”

  Sebastian laughs, a rumble of three sets of lungs, and the noise grows wilder and more wicked until three throats are nearly howling and I have to cover my ears. But I can’t block out the sound and my mind is about to come apart.

  I’m still like that, standing naked before the window with my fists pressed to my temples, the sun streaming in, when I awaken.

  THE PHONE IS RINGING. I EXPECT THE INCESSANT buzzing of my brothers’ dismay but instead I hear Lily’s frantic voice, imploring, strange and barely discernible. “Oh Jethus, I need you. Heth’s crazy! Heth’s going to kiw me!”

  Private eye Nick Stiel takes the phone from her and speaks very softly into the receiver. All he says is, “That’s right.” Whatever sorrow he’d been holding back has busted through the dam. As Lily shrieks in the background he lets out a mild sob and hangs up.

  The sky darkens. I bolt
out to the truck and race across town. I get to her place in under five minutes. By the time I climb out of the driver’s seat she’s already dead. Blood runs down her bay window and there are clumps of blond hair sticking to the glass. I rush in the front door and nearly trip over her body.

  Stiel is sitting on the couch, licking Eve’s all-day sucker. I find it unsettling but in a heinous way it’s also something of a relief. His fists are bloody and he’s got a snub-nose .38 in his lap, but there’s no stink of gunpowder in the air. He eyes me calmly and says nothing.

  Lily is lying facedown on the carpet and the rug has soaked up most of her blood. I turn her over and wind up hissing through my teeth when I see what he’s done. Stiel worked on her for a while, really taking his time. He knows pressure points, weak spots, nerve clusters. I could barely understand her on the phone because he’d knocked out some of her teeth and her lips had already been pulped. He must’ve loved her a lot to be able to do this with such vehemence. Her nose has been crushed, eyes nothing more than red smears smudged down her shattered cheeks.

  “And Eve?” I ask.

  He gestures toward the bedroom. I step in and see that the three of them have been into some pretty funky shit lately. There are sex devices, bondage paraphernalia, leather paddles, chains, weird-looking chairs and swings set up all over the place. Latex, collars, and whips that even Abbot Earl and the penitents wouldn’t go near. Lily and I used to fool around with toys on occasion but goddamn.

  Eve is dead on the bed in the midst of it all, dressed up in a lace nightie with matching gloves very much like the pair Lottie Mae wore that night in Leadbetter’s when she got drunk. Eve’s mouth is stuffed with a ball gag and her hands and legs are bound with intricately knotted ropes.

  I draw her camisole off her shoulders. She has very ripe and firm breasts, but she’s no little kid. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. It’s obvious now that I see her with makeup on, naked, with a thick muff. There’s a huge black bruise on her left side. It looks like he struck her only once, hard enough to break her ribs and drive them into her heart.

  I back out into the living room and sit at the far end of the couch. He’s no longer licking the sucker. It’s on the carpet at his feet and he’s tapping his toe against it like he’s resistant to lose all contact.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  He picks up the .38 and points it at me. “There are two corpses in this house. One of them is a woman you used to screw. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “You’re unbelievable.”

  It seems that the people who question me the most are the ones who’ve committed the most outlandish or atrocious acts. I have no idea what that means. “What did you find out about the girl?”

  His weariness bleeds from him like a cut throat. “What makes you think I found out anything?”

  “You said you’d be on the case until the end. This is it.”

  Stiel scowls as if he’s about to chastise me some more, but even he finds that ludicrous. “She was a prostitute from Los Angeles. I’d tell you her name but there’s no point now.”

  “How’d she wind up in Potts County?”

  “She came to join the Holy Order as a nun, if you can believe that, but she made so much money along the way that she decided to keep tricking. She specialized in the kiddie trade.”

  “Why the act?”

  “She’d worked a lot of the county already. Ask any of the men at your mill. She was a smart pro.”

  That makes sense, and I try not to let the stench in this house of death drive me from it before I discover what I’ve come here to learn. “Yeah, smart enough to stay out of jail. So she was never picked up. Lily told me that Burke printed her but there was no match.”

  “She didn’t hook on the street in L.A. and none of her dates ever would’ve opened their mouths about her. Her clientele was very loyal.”

  “I can imagine.”

  The stain around Lily’s destroyed face grows larger and the flies are getting in. “She was making her way up to you. Figured there’d be big money in it one way or another.” His face crawls in on itself as if trying to skitter off his skull. “She heard you went in for little girls.”

  “Hm. Why was she out at the flat rock?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she was just lost. Maybe it was a way to pique your interest. Everyone knows you have a thing with that place.”

  “Why didn’t she talk?”

  It’s getting harder for him to talk. The realization of what he’s done grows stronger by the minute and the weight of his crime is crushing him to dust right before my eyes. He’s starting to pant. “She couldn’t. She’s a mute. It made her a success out in L.A. A guy could do anything he wanted to her and she would never talk back to him. Never complain or argue or make any sound at all.”

  “You said she muttered in her sleep.”

  “She was traumatized as a kid. Something to do with her father. She never spoke again after that—except in her dreams.”

  The crawling scads of flies become louder, so much like the angry buzzing of my brothers. “What did she say then, Stiel?”

  “Oh my Christ, you don’t want to know.”

  “And you knew all of this the night you tore up Leadbetter’s.”

  “Some of it.”

  “So why didn’t you tell me? Why not just send her packing?”

  “I liked it too much by then.” His admission crushes the rest of the air from his lungs and he has trouble catching his breath. He gasps and wheezes and a wail of anguish threads everything he says. “Don’t you understand? I went to bed with her before I knew anything. Do you realize what that makes me?”

  She’s older than Dodi, and probably older than Lottie Mae too. He’s tearing himself up for being what I am. “Stiel, listen to me—things are different down here. This is the deep South. There are laws that don’t apply.”

  “You’re an ugly, disgusting people.”

  “No worse than most I’d guess.”

  I mean it as an honest assessment but he takes it as an insult. He squeezes his eyes shut but it’s even uglier in there and he’s got to open them again to get away from his mind. “I save children, that’s what I do. That’s what I’m supposed to do. In my mind and soul, do you know what I’ve become? What they made me into? I can’t be let out on the street. Not now. Not anymore.”

  “Stiel, don’t—”

  He raises the revolver to his mouth and pulls the trigger, blowing all the screaming ghosts and demons out from his scattered three-pound brain.

  THE TEMPEST RETURNS, AS IT MUST. LIGHTNING shears through the malevolent clouds as the assault begins. The river is in another frenzy. Rain claws for me through my windshield, flowing like arterial spray. The wind is one long lament. My skin is on fire, as if the very atoms of my body are calling the lightning down for another strike. Flames run across the woods, flickering against the splashing run off. The flooded roads wrangle me toward one corner of town and I go without question.

  I drive to Velma Coots’s place and can hear her screaming voice over the thunder and thrashing rain as I draw up. Dodi is in there too, yelling, “No, Mama, no!”

  “Do it, chile!”

  “I won’t!”

  “Do as I say!”

  My roofing job has finally started to cave in. Rain boils into the shack through the ruptured beams and shingles. The brass cauldron in the fireplace spits black venom against the heated brick.

  Velma Coots lies straddled over the chopping block. All her fingers are gone and the stumps of her hands have been cauterized and poorly tied off with strips of yellowed sheets. The burned flesh of those nubs still smells like sizzling steak. Dodi stands there with dark circles under her eyes. She holds a long-handled ax poised over her mother’s neck.

  The swarming water washes over them. Velma Coots cries again, “Mine me! Do it, girl!”

  “No!”

  Dodi hurls the ax at my feet, rushes out to my tr
uck, guns the engine, and wheels away, leaving me alone with this crazy granny witch on a night when the dead are climbing out of our heads.

  “You go on and finish it,” Velma Coots tells me.

  “Cut your head off?” I ask. “What purpose would that serve?”

  “Only purpose there is! Somebody got to make the sacrifice. You ain’t gonna pay your debts.”

  “Oh shut the hell up about that, lady. I’ve been evening the score on them pretty well the past few days.”

  “Not enough,” she sneers.

  I help her to her feet and move her off to a corner chair where the roof still gives some shelter. “I suppose it’s too late for that vinegar stuff.”

  “A’yup.”

  “Where are my brothers?”

  “Doin’ their part.”

  “Which is?” I try to imagine their stunted, gnarled bodies out on the highway hitchhiking, waving down strangers. Six thumbs hanging in the vicious wind pointing in every direction.

  “Too late to worry about it.”

  I snort and try another route. “Did you give Lucretia Murteen an abortion?”

  “That woman wanted a child more’n anybody I ever known.”

  “Who did it?”

  “You ain’t ever gonna find out.”

  “Jesus, I wish you hags would quit saying that.”

  “Life’s got more questions than answers, boy.”

  It hits me low and I burst out laughing. “You granny witches. You’re so laid-back about killers but you’ll put your own neck on the chopping block. The fuck’s wrong with you people?”

  “It coulda been anybody. Maybe that Abbot Earl done it. He could be lying about what he heard and saw, you ever think of that? Maybe one’a them other monks. They got men floatin’ around that place from all over the country, with their minds that ain’t right. Drugs and liquor, torturin’ one another in the name’a God hisself. They beat themselves bloody for redemption, then spit in the Lord’s eye. It just don’t matter. You ain’t ever gonna know.”