Willow clutched the arms he’d wrapped around her.
“You okay?” he asked. She managed to nod, and he continued. “Who was I to love? Robbie? My dad? Who to hate? Robbie? My dad? Dad was my biggest fan. Always on the track sidelines, or in the bleachers. He even carried my gym bag. I’d come out of the locker room after a meet or a basketball game, and he’d be there waiting for me and reaching out for it, ‘I’ll take that son.’ Every time, I’d grow an inch or two taller. There weren’t any other fathers waiting in the hall. If they’d come to the game at all, they were already in their cars, engines running, looking at their watches, pissed at having to wait. But me? The team’s filing out, and Dad’s got my bag.
“But Robbie was never there. Robbie would have loved watching me play.” He sighed, “God, I wish I’d known then.” He paused for several seconds, “You suppose Prairie will let me carry her gym bag?
“Even if it’s pink?”
“Absolutely.” He took a moment getting back into his story. “Every race I won, every ball that swished through the net was a way of making Robbie matter less. I’m still ashamed; I was such a dumb-ass kid, wanting to be the best on the team, never thinking it through.”
“And your mom?”
“She had Robbie. Somewhere along the way, she quit leaving the house. I’m sure Dad never meant for that to happen, but every year she shut down more. Dad started doing the grocery shopping, and Mom ordered anything else she needed from catalogues. Those big fat Sears and Penney’s catalogues. Those and Robbie’s picture books were the only books I ever saw her read.
“Crazy as things were, we managed to hold it together, until I graduated from high school and planned to leave for college. I wanted to be the one to tell Robbie I wouldn’t be home every night, and that he wouldn’t see me for maybe a month at a time, and he’d have to sleep in our room alone. One day, he and I were in the backyard tossing a football.”
Willow’s heart clenched.
“I told him,” Clay continued, “and Robbie started crying. It really broke him up, or maybe, it scared him. The ball started rolling down this slope, a wobbly roll, and Robbie pushed me out of the way and started for it, tears running down his flat face. He ran as though getting the ball meant everything. I can only guess why beating me mattered so much. Did he think he’d be getting even with me for leaving, or he’d be showing me he didn’t need me, or that reaching the ball proved he could go with me? He was short, never got exercise, and I was the runner, three heads taller, practically running in place, knowing this win meant something big to him.
“I didn’t know Dad had come home. Robbie reached the ball, and Dad swooped down. We had a tool shed in the back, and he shoved me in there where Robbie couldn’t see. Or Mom, I suppose. He pinned me to the wall with one arm, grabbed the end of the garden hose with the other, and started swinging. That rage again. He swung until I sunk down, my hands over my head, blood on my face, my head, my arms. I just kept taking it, not fighting back.”
He took a breath before continuing. “See where this is going? I was as guilty as he was. At eighteen, I could have given him one hell of a fight, or I could have just ran, my specialty. Two strides and I would have been out of his reach. He could never have caught me. I could have given him time to cool off, and he would have. But the event was too incredible to miss. I was getting off on my martyrdom, hoping the bastard hurt me so bad he spent the rest of his life in guilt. And behind bars.
“I knew too,” he continued, “at least I think I knew, that the more I let him hit me, the more pain he’d have later. So he was hitting me, but strike for strike, I was hitting him harder.
“As he’s swinging, he’s yelling, demanding to know if I thought I was a better person than he was. Did I think I cared more about Robbie than he did? Every time that hose whacked me, I felt something being explained just a bit more.
“When he was winded, nineteen years of whatever spent, he staggered back, his knees buckling. He slumped against the lawnmower, did a slow motion to the floor, panting like a horse after a race, ending up on one knee. That knee of his suit pants in an oily circle. Crying. Big sobs, slumped over. It went on and on, and still I didn’t have the decency to leave him alone. I stayed there with my bloody welts, blood running down my arms—waiting for him to see what he’d done to me. He wasn’t thinking about me, though, and I realized slowly that he cried for Robbie. Finally, I got it. Finally, I knew what it did to him to see his son that way and there not being a damn thing he could do to fix it. Robbie wasn’t being kept from the public eye because of Dad’s pride; Dad didn’t give a damn what people thought. It was Dad’s helplessness, and how that tore him up, that made him need away from Robbie. My leaving, it was making Dad face things he hadn’t yet had the courage to face.
“A couple of hours later, after Mom helped clean me up, and feeling too sore to run, I took the car and pulled out of the driveway. I saw Robbie panting out of the house after me. Did he think this was the time I’d told him about, that I wasn’t coming back? Had he been listening outside the tool shed, blaming himself? I couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t go back to where he and Dad were. I hit the gas, and in the rearview mirror saw Robbie run into the street. It was the first day of kindergarten all over again, and I didn’t stop this time, either. I watched him, his sorry running, twenty steps, and he was gasping for breath. Then boom. Out of nowhere, a car.”
“Oh, god.”
“Robbie slid up the hood and flew off. It was over before the ambulance got there.”
“Oh god, I’m so sorry.”
“All my life I’d been promising him something. ‘You and me, Robbie.’ Not in words, but in my always being there for him, how close we were. I’d been promising.” He swallowed, exhaled. “I did go off to school a few weeks later. Mom was dead within months of Robbie’s death. Dad stayed in the house, lived another five years, and then he up and died. No one even knew he was sick. I visited him every Christmas. Five Christmases. An asshole. Not him, me. You know why I couldn’t see him more? Guilt over Robbie, yeah, but that felt more between Robbie and me. It still does. With Dad, I was ashamed for not having run from him that day in the garage. He was my father—maybe crazy—but trying his hardest to have this family. I should have cared more, should have taken that hose from him, the way he took my gym bag from me. I should have said, ‘Let me get that, Dad.’”
Willow turned to faced Clay and ran a hand across his chest, felt the rise over one pectoral muscle, the dip and rise again, and she let her hand rest on his heart.
“So there you have it,” he said, wiping tears from the corner of her eyes. “You think you’ve got some huge issue happening on your shoulder. We’ve all got some kind of mark. Ninety-nine percent of us would trade with you. If anyone says differently, he’s a bold-faced liar. Robbie would still be alive if I’d gone back for him instead of hitting the gas—if I’d thought about him instead of myself. He was crying for Christ’s sake. I’ve got to live with that. We could have driven around, gone for ice cream. Mom, Dad, they might still be here, too. Can you stand living with me, knowing that?”
“Of course.” He was turning her again as though they were on a dance floor, she responding to his lead, the touch of his knees into the backs of hers, waltzing her body into the same lazy S-shape as his, spooning her. Where his body touched hers, his chest solid and warm on her back, his groin and thighs a seat she settled into, her skin became harp strings and hummed. He kissed the top of her bare shoulder and continued kissing, his lips moving down to her shoulder bone. When he spoke, he whispered, not breaking the trance but deepening it. “It’s such an easy thing, Willow. A lily bulb, maybe a chrysalis.”
She shut her eyes to try and stop time, to feel the whole measure of the gift he was giving her. A lily bulb. A chrysalis. Mémé had spoken of a chrysalis in describing her own back and said something about the chrysalis being a way of traveling. Willow knew now where his mind went when he looked at her. He wasn’t just will
ing to over-look her shoulder, to weigh it against attributes, her back made him conjure images she loved.
He lifted his head and looked closer at her arm. “What’s this? All these little scars?”
The first hard darkness on the turret windows had softened. She turned and faced him again, her gaze locking with his. “Make love to me.”
A slow smile crept onto his face. “Why, Miss Willow.” Then, after a moment, “You’re sure?”
“You’ve never pushed. I’m beginning to think—”
“Because Derrick did.”
“I told you that?”
“Everything you do and say tells me that.” He held her tight, his expression both serious and flirting. “You’re sure?”
“I want to forget everything tonight but us.”
He slid his hand under the strap of her gown and slowly moved the thin strip of cotton down her arm and then the second strap, his touch electric. As he pushed the fabric over her breasts, his palm caressing, he stopped, rolling her over on top of him, her breasts hanging in round, tear-shaped lobes. “It’s incredible that we’re together,” he said. “For the first time since Robbie’s death, I know I’ve found something good. I don’t want to hurt us, what we’re building. It’s been a tough summer for you, and no matter how much I want you right now, tell me to stop, tell me you need a bit more time, and I’ll stop. I’ll wait as long as you need.”
She quieted him with a kiss, her hand sliding down his flat stomach, feeling a pulse there and going deeper.
He sighed, “Thank god.”
I left them their passion, and the house seemed to do the same, quieting into the night. Only in Tory’s room did the lights remain on. Tory sat at her desk turning dried plants, counting and cataloging her apothecary stock, her tight heels still on her long feet, her pencil skirt still pulled down over her locked knees. Looking around at her horde, her lips twitched with pleasure. At last, she picked up a circle of muslin, wheedled her needle in and out, red embroidery floss, a slightly tipped, sneering mouth on the doll’s face. “Sip, sip,” she hummed to herself, sewing and drinking her sherry.
41
The following morning, the sun crested red and bled across the undersides of clouds. Wind set the oaks up and down the drive stirring. In the garden, the blowing was low and hot. Petals dropped from flowers, the fronds on Willow’s tree went right and left, as though tossing in troubled sleep, and the bees stayed close to their hives. Farthest House seemed to shudder on its foundation and every corner to hold its ghost.
Clay had left in the wee hours, Willow telling him to hurry, afraid of Tory realizing he stayed the night. Though she got up and dressed Prairie, by noon Willow was sick again and sitting on the bathroom floor over the toilet, her stomach heaving.
I pitied her, but with so much happening elsewhere, I was glad to see her there, safe, albeit suffering.
Tory’s glee was a thicker psychic rope, and it pulled me to her. In her room, she strode back and forth, a celebratory pacing. Her ceiling hung with more plants than had covered the ceilings of the barn and the kitchen at The Beast’s villa. Many of these hanging herbs and weeds were so old they were only brittle stems, the pods and petals and leaves long since having dropped onto the floor and onto her bed. Behind her, a fortress of cardboard file boxes reached nearly to the ceiling. I thought of Julian and how alike the siblings were. In times of stress, they both hoarded, as if to keep a hold on some physical thing.
Tory’s face remained stoic, despite the pleasure her success gave her. Thus far, all was going according to plan. She felt alive, exhilarated. Each hunt was a rebirth. She trailed a thin finger through the grainy dust covering Luessy’s mystery, Mad Apple, and turned to her window at the sound of a bee dropping.
It’s been said nothing destroys a mother’s love, and though Tory wasn’t of my womb, she was of my heart, an organ just as physically and emotionally deep. When she was little, I’d taken such pride in everything she did, even in her dreams: She’d go to the university in Lincoln, and she’d become a veterinarian, a decision made at ten years of age when she found a rabbit clutch in the wood, and one by one the tiny creatures died in her arms.
Then it all changed. And it changed again, as irrevocable as the letter arriving, telling me Sabine was dead. There were long months and years following, when I lived in fear of being found out, and for us to survive, I needed to convince her that murder had a place, that no one had the right to hurt her. Did I let myself belief I was slaying The Beast? That with The Beast dead I could bring back Sabine?
For all the emotional clamor in Tory’s room, energy roiled even harder and faster across the yard where an old, black man was removing his clothes. Jonah’s heart raced as he stuck his hand into a rusted coffee can and drew out a glob of grease and bee’s wax mixed with a concoction of his own. His senses were keen, and the world around him lucid: his kettle, the old chairs, his damp walls, even his hands as he smeared his mixture over himself. He knew what he had to do. If it meant he died, he was willing. If he did return, things would be different. He’d tear the tarps from his windows, and he’d ask Mable to marry him.
He smeared his poultice thickest over his face and around his eyes. Willow wasn’t listening to him, but she’d listen to college man. If college man went, Willow and her baby would go, too. They’d be safe. He’d known since the afternoon she sat in his kitchen with the sting on her neck that something needed to be done. Leaning in close, he’d smelled death on her. Unmistakable. The same smell her mother carried—an odor asleep in him for twenty years.
He finished coating his skin, set the rusty can in the sink, and for a long minute stared at it. He didn’t know exactly what Willow and Prairie would be safe from, maybe the house and all the land around it was cursed. The dead were buried everywhere. He also didn’t know if what he was about to do made sense, maybe it didn’t make a single lick of sense, and still he needed to do it. He’d spent his whole life in the body of a whale. No more.
Everything had been clear when he woke that morning, his mind full of images: spook college man by taking him where he ain’t ever been. College man had no business writing his stories about Luessy; college man needed to take Willow and the baby and keep them away.
Jonah opened his door and stepped into the yard. Men like Clay, college men, they were the ones who stirred up others, got themselves elected, made the laws, slammed down the gavels, drank the hardest liquor, and took what they wanted.
He shook his head, trying to clear his thinking. Some mornings the world seemed to ruffle backwards like pages blowing in a book, and it was 1919 again, and the mob was alive, breaking into the courthouse, lynching Willie Brown, dragging him through the streets, burning his body. And Willie’s crime? The same as every Negro’s in the city: his color. Or it was 1932 in Jonah’s mind, and the mob was screaming, “Lynch the bug!”
“College man,” he mumbled the moniker. No other way to make Willow listen. Only thing to do was scare college man, scare him hard, something he couldn’t pencil out.
With his crowbar and smoker, Jonah puffed a bit of smoke into the bottom of the first hive, momentarily quieting the guard bees at the entrance. He pried off the lid and lifted only a few of the frames, turning them over before spotting the queen, twice as fat and long as the bees around her. She was old now, old like himself. After three years, her fertility was waning, but he had one more favor to ask of her.
Bees began to rear up, spewing in a cloud around him. “It’s Bug,” he told them. And to the queen, “Yup, it’s me.” He took her up between thick fingers and closed her squirming in the palm of his hand. More bees flared in alarm. He wasn’t aware of the number of stings he was receiving, if any. He needed one more queen, and through the thick furry cloth of angry buzzing bodies, he pried up the lid on the next hive.
He was speaking to everyone who’d put him down over the years: the teacher who locked him in the steaming outhouse; the mob who tortured Willie Brown while Jonah hid in a c
ellar, watching through broken slats; those who wanted him dead, not because he’d killed, but because killing him would be as satisfying as using the toe of a boot and grinding out a cockroach.
As Clay’s car climbed the steep gravel and he could see Farthest House in the distance, he felt a growing uneasiness. He had believed Willow’s fears about Mary were mostly grief over her father’s death, and he’d understood. A decade had passed and Robbie’s death still impaled him. But given Mary’s campus visit—he should have told willow the story—he needed to re-think Willow’s position. Still, to suppose Mary started Julian’s house on fire, knowing he slept inside? Clay shook his head, it was a huge leap from driving onto an open campus with a Polaroid.
He made the turn from the gravel road onto the bottom of the drive before he saw the wall of darkness. His breath caught, and he slammed on the brake. The car slid to a stop. Not a dozen feet ahead, thousands of bees, a mass that looked to be an entire hive, maybe two or three, made a twisting, seething blockade in the shape of a squat tree. Angry branches frothed and hummed, wasp-like.
There are sixty to seventy thousand bees per hive, Willow had told him. He stared at the swarm. This had to be more than one hive, and they were not bees just drifting in a swarm to start a new colony. This was a wholly unnatural phenomenon. The bees held an angry core and intentionally blocked his way. He thought of Willow. Even calm bees stung her. If she stepped out now, not knowing the bees were loose and dangerously upset, and if she had little Prairie in her arms, both would be seriously harmed. Adrenaline pushed through his veins. He had to warn Willow.
It takes over a thousand stings to kill a healthy man, she’d also said. How many to kill her or Prairie? he wondered. He scanned the space leading up to the house. There wasn’t room between the oaks to swerve off and up the grass in his car, and suppose the bees followed him? The same catastrophe was likely to happen if he tried to make a run for it on foot. The closer he got to the house, the closer he got to warning Willow, the more danger he’d be putting her in, bringing the bees up to her front door.
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