Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

by Clayton Lindemuth

  “She won’t be back,” Angus said.

  “It’s cold—she has to!”

  “She ain’t coming back. Now git!”

  Angus pushed him aside and went to the house for another armload. Jacob stole Lucy Mae’s coat and slipped around the house. He slept with it, buried his nose in the fuzzy collar and smelled her.

  Jacob opened his eyes and studied his sleeping father.

  Twenty Three

  Deet rose long before dawn, tended the animals, fixed Emeline and Jacob an oatmeal breakfast, assigned the dishes to Jacob, helped Emeline to the toilet.

  “Deet—” Emeline said through the door, “did Angus come home last night?”

  “Just after dark. Took the door I fixed over to McClellan’s. Came back with a dog and a bottle.”

  “He never woke me.”

  “Considerate.”

  When she finished, he carried her downstairs and left her on the sofa with her Bible and a cup of tea. “Just holler if you need me,” he said.

  Deet found Jacob petting Rebel in the barn.

  “You cost me grief last night—didn’t shuck your corn. I’m shouldering extra with this woodshop, so today you’re gonna do enough corn to fill the tub, and then you’re gonna clean the hog stalls.”

  Jacob patted Rebel’s head. “Reb’s getting skinny. You been feeding him since Emmy busted her leg?”

  “Ain’t you?” Deet crossed to the dog’s corner.

  “No.”

  “Pap ain’t. Son of a bitch. Well, go in the house and find something—and bring some water.” Deet scratched his head. “Was there another dog here when you came in?”

  “No.”

  In his mind’s eye, Deet followed the bitch’s probable escape route, downstairs and out the back. They never closed the barn’s lower exit to the pasture. She maybe spent the night on McClellan’s porch. If the widow hadn’t been outside yet, the dog might still be there. But then, what sort of deal had Angus struck? Maybe Pap had borrowed the dog overnight. It was Angus’s own fool ass that hadn’t secured her.

  “Get some food and water from the house.”

  Deet screwed floorboards to the kennel frames until ten, then checked to ensure Jacob still ground cobs into kernels in the tub. The boy looked sullenly at him.

  “This right here is why you want to do good in school. You’ll wind up like your Pap and me. Don’t know nothing but how to grow callus.” Deet grabbed an ear of corn and tore the dried husk. “How come you been having such a time with your chores? Where you been?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “I bet you been walking two miles around the lake every day to see Tony Antonuccio. You soft on his sister, what’s her name?”

  “No. Her name’s Regina.”

  “Rej-eye-na. Don’t worry if you don’t get her. All girls got a regina. So far as I know.”

  Jacob frowned.

  Deet slapped his back. “Your secret’s safe. Just do your chores so I don’t get my ass peeled.” Deet tossed the shucked cob into the bin and went outside to the Farmall.

  Emeline brooded on the hayride to Doctor Fleming’s. There was a grave a hundred yards from where she slept every night and three Mrs. Hardgraves’ dusty suitcases in the basement.

  No, four.

  A baby in her belly, and a husband staying out all night long.

  The tractor chugged down the road and wind tangled her hair. She watched a long stem of hay trembling in the wind. No marriage proved as sweet as the engagement. Papa had always said wanting something was better than having it. If she listed the blessings in her life, she’d run out of ink. But still—what new husband stayed out all night?

  Deet parked. As he lifted her from the trailer, she said, “Would you buy me a journal at the drugstore? I’ve run out of space.”

  “A diary?”

  She nodded and curled her arm around Deet’s neck. She rested her temple on his shoulder. He lifted her from the blankets, held her firm to his chest and she breathed the sweetness of a young man whose body was primed for work and seemed hungry for it. Not like her husband, whose sour smell called to mind hardship, and whose scarred hands were almost preternaturally cold. She and Deet worked well together; he positioned her at the door, she twisted the knob and nudged it; he pushed through with his back. Doctor Fleming emerged into the waiting room a moment later, and waved them through to the visiting room.

  Deet left her on the padded table. “I got a few errands, but I won’t keep you waiting.”

  She smiled at Deet and the doctor turned from her to watch Deet exit. “Everywhere you go, Emeline, the boys are enamored with you. Did your daddy warn you?” Fleming furled her dress to her thigh and studied her flesh at foot and knee.

  “Warn me?”

  “Men. Young men. Mature men.”

  “I’m beyond warning now.”

  “That confirms my suspicion. You are entirely naïve—and because I delivered you and have watched you grow from a little pumpkin to a beautiful young woman, I will tell you what you need to hear.”

  “What?”

  “Science has confirmed an elegant truth—and by that I mean simple—that men exist with only one purpose. Procreation. From the moment a boy becomes self-aware, one passion consumes him. Man’s greatest achievements—architecture, art, athletics, business, war—all have been inducements for some girl to lie down with him.”

  “War? What?”

  “When these constructive, or deconstructive achievements fail to bring a woman of free accord, that is, when a man believes himself insignificant, he turns to force.”

  “Doctor Fleming—”

  “You—how do I say it? I am an old man. I have been joyously free of the prison of which I speak for years. I no longer desire to procreate.”

  She turned away, smiling.

  “I am an old man, Emeline, listen to me.”

  “But, Doctor Fleming, what’s that got to do with me?”

  “You’ve heard of Helen of Troy—a woman so beautiful her face launched a thousand ships? You’ve heard of the mythological sirens, whose voices drove men insane? You are such a woman, Emeline, in a nest of men already mad to possess you. Their minds are devious little engines solely employed toward capturing you. Your husband? Four wives. Your chauffer? A breeder in his prime. Your tenant? A man returned from a horrible war, with scars. Each man wrestling his insignificance. Forgive my candor. A man lays claim with his achievements or his strength, and your suitors have little of the former.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Doctor Fleming cut away the thin cast, beginning at her foot. He was silent until he snipped the final segment, spread it like the chest cavity of a slaughtered beast. “You must exercise caution around your men, Emeline.”

  Yesterday the pain had been so severe she’d turned away. Today she looked. Her shin was a red and pink swirl of serrated flesh.

  Fleming cleaned the wound, applied an ointment. “The infection has subsided.” He covered it with gauze. “I’m going to do something new.” He cleaned the inside of the cast with alcohol, slipped it around her leg, and wrapped an ace bandage around the plaster. “We’ll try this for three days. You mustn’t put your weight on it. Come see me if the pain approaches what you felt yesterday, or if you see red lines above your knee.”

  “You believe these men will hurt me?”

  “Possessing you is more important than loving you. I am sorry. Biology makes us beasts until we are so old we have no use for our… biology.”

  “That can’t be true of all men.”

  “All men? We’re only discussing three, and for those I am certainly correct. Be careful.”

  Deet traced his finger over a coil of half-inch copper tubing. He’d bought a diary at the drugstore, dog feed and heavy gauge chicken wire at Agway, and a roll of tar paper at the builders. Now he visualized a still: copper from boiler to doubler; twenty feet of coil inside a cooling tank, with a shut off valve at the end. A lot of copper.

 
He left the hardware store rubbing his hands, thinking of cutting wood and smelling sawdust. Madison Street, Route 64, was a quarter mile of old-style storefronts, the same as any other Pennsylvania town. Its history extended well over a hundred years. A barber worked each end of town. The Walnut Macaroni plant, housed in a three-story brick building set a block back, employed more townsfolk than any other business. Adjacent stood St. Luke, the largest Catholic church in town, and opposite, the Presbyterian church where Angus married Emeline.

  Doctor Fleming’s office was on Madison, on the way home after the hardware. Deet stopped the tractor. Emeline waited in the visiting room. He carried her to the trailer.

  “Doc give you bad news?”

  “I’m fine. It’s lunch time.”

  “Got an appetite myself.”

  Deet cut the steering wheel, checked traffic. Released the clutch and glanced over his shoulder at the rear tire spinning close to the trailer corner as he chugged through a semicircle turn.

  “Where are we going?” Emeline called.

  Deet grinned at folks on the sidewalk and stopped at the only red light in town. Ahead on the left was Pitlake’s General Farm Supply Company—the Farmall dealership. He’d seen the place for years but had never been inside. The Hardgraves didn’t buy new farm equipment. Their first tractor, when Deet was three, was a jalopy stripped of everything but its frame, axles, and engine. They made do. They invented.

  The smell of singed beef and onions pulled Deet’s eyes to Tony Ianolio’s Burger Shack, ahead on the right. The traffic light became green. A hundred yards ahead, he circled through the Burger Shack lot and parked next to the road, broadside to the Farmall dealership. He killed the engine and spun on his seat.

  “Ever been here?” he said.

  She shook her head; her hair bounced and her lips pulled back, dimpling her cheeks. “Well, maybe once or twice.”

  “Neither’ve I. Smells good, don’t it?”

  Deet climbed down. “Wait here.” He crossed the lot and stood at the window, looking at the menu board inside. A town kid waited on him. He decided Emeline would like a cheeseburger with fries and Coke.

  “Dollar fifty.”

  Deet gave up the two-dollar bill he’d saved for his escape. Emeline beamed as he neared.

  He climbed onto the trailer from the side and crawled close to Emeline. Reclining against a bale, he propped two paper cups in the blanket folds between them. She accepted a burger with bulging eyes and flared nostrils, unfolded the waxed paper, and bit into it.

  Deet watched her. She chewed, made a sated face. Moaned. “This is so good. Aren’t you going to try yours?”

  “Me? No, I bought two for you.”

  She punched his arm. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He unwrapped the other; nodded across the street. “That dealership used to be your Pappy’s?”

  “That’s right. Um-hmm.” She filled her mouth with burger.

  “And you only come here once or twice?”

  “Papa was frugal. That’s how he stayed in business.” She smiled.

  “You know Pitlake—the fella that bought it? He came up yesterday while you was in the doctor’s office and said he owned this tractor. Said he carried the serial number on his books since the beginning. Why would he say that?”

  “I don’t know him. Pitlake?”

  “He said he was Pitlake. Wait a minute. That’s him there, talking to the bald fella on the right side of the lot. That’s him.”

  “Papa brought the tractor home when I was too young to notice.”

  “Pitlake said he’s carried it on his books for years.”

  “He’s looking this way.”

  “You know why your Pap parked it in the back of the barn, like he was hiding it?”

  “Hiding? We didn’t have guests to our barn.”

  “Angus is gonna have to deal with this fella, and what you remember is all he’ll have to go by.”

  “This tractor’s been ours since before Papa sold the dealership. I can write a thousand dollars in my checkbook ledger, and copy the numbers every day for a year! What do you think the bank is going to say when I go there and demand a bunch of made up money?”

  “Didn’t mean to get you riled.”

  “Well you did. I’m fed up with vultures. Soon as Papa died, they swooped in for his money because they’d rather cheat and steal than work an honest wage.”

  “Easy, Em.” He noticed a glaze of sweat on her brow.

  She pointed. “You take me over there right now!”

  “I haven’t had a bite of my burger.”

  “Finish it this second and take me over there.”

  Both Pitlake and the bald man watched. Pitlake turned and the other followed him inside the dealership.

  “This is Angus’s fight, now.”

  “I’m not asking if you’re man enough. I’ll tell him myself.”

  He glared, unbuttoned his top shirt button. “It ain’t about being man enough. I’ll go whup on him right now if I’ve a mind to.”

  Her gaze fell. “I get angry.” She twisted her side to the Farmall dealership. Opened her mouth. Closed it. “Your sandwich good? You try the potatoes?”

  “I guess they’re pretty good.”

  “You haven’t had one.”

  “No.” He climbed from the trailer and mounted the tractor. Started it. Pitlake watched from the dealership door, behind a row of red tractors. Deet chugged onto the street.

  Emeline sat on the porch. The familiar blue jay yammered a string of avian profanity. The turmoil with the tractor and the pain from her leg weighed on her. She had a belly full of cheeseburger and cola, and they weren’t making friends.

  Doctor Fleming’s words troubled her.

  Clouds rolled over the lazy lake; the air that followed was thick with humidity. She yawned. Deet backed the trailer to the barn entrance and unloaded rolls of tarpaper and chicken wire, then removed the slats and piled the hay bales lower on the slope. Finally he backed the trailer into the barn bay, leaving the front end visible from where she rested. Minutes passed with Deet out of view, and then a dark object crept across the trailer. It was a kennel.

  “How did you lift that?” She glanced sideways for Jacob but she was alone. Deet worked inside the barn, a shape in the shadows, bucking angrily against the weight of the kennel. He emerged into sunlight and raised his arm to his brow. Emeline touched her sternum. He went back inside and she stared at the lake.

  From the back of her mind a thought thrust forward and she saw the black walnut on Devil’s Elbow. She closed her eyes and sunlight patterns flickered on her eyelids. The walnut called to her with an image of herself lounging in the cool shade. She smelled the lake air, the forest. An image resolved as sun amoebas floated on her closed eyelids. A shadow of the walnut tree became a cloaked man with broad shoulders and a face made of sawdust and hard angles. His eyes were dark caverns and he did nothing but stand and study her—as if he could know her mind.

  If she opened her eyes she would see him.

  The sticky lake breeze brought the sound of rickety springs and tires on stones. The apparition vanished. Emeline opened her eyes. On the driveway, a blue car led a plume of dust. The windshield reflection hid the inhabitant.

  Deet watched at the barn door. Emeline looked back to-ward the car. Pitlake? She shifted her legs and pain shot from her shin to her side, as if a bolt of electricity had burned everything between. The car stopped. Deet turned back to the trailer but watched over his shoulder. A woman exited the passenger side.

  “Oh, Lordy child, it’s good to see you!” the woman called, still unrecognizable, leaning into the blue car’s back seat.

  “Thank you for coming,” Emeline said. “So good to see you.”

  A man waved through the driver’s side window and cigarette smoke rose from his hand. The woman carried a tray. Emeline had met her at church but couldn’t recall her name. Before the woman’s foot struck the porch Emeline said, “I’m so glad you stopped
by!”

  The woman carried a tray with several dishes. Her countenance was like a marble piece the sculptor had decided at the last moment to make smile, after the rest of her face was chiseled to a frown.

  “Inside?”

  “Kitchen’s on the right.”

  The woman thumbed the screen open and carried the tray inside. “You want this to warm in the oven, Sweetie?”

  “Thank you but just leave it on the table. Angus doesn’t come home until after dark.” Emeline smelled beef roast.

  The woman emerged and dragged a chair next to Emeline.

  “So,” she said.

  “Thank you. I can’t tell you—”

  “Nonsense. Least I could do.”

  The woman knit her hands together. “That leg looks painful.” She leaned forward. “Lord, I know what it’s like to fall down the stairs.”

  “You what?”

  The woman glanced to the blue car.

  “I slipped when I saw a strange man in my house in town,” Emeline said. “I didn’t know Angus—my husband’s not a churchgoer, and you may not know him—”

  “Oh, I know him.”

  “—had let out the house.”

  They were quiet. Emeline queried her eyes.

  “Well, I’ll be running. Charles is in the car…”

  Charles…Kirk. Charles and Hannah Kirk.

  “Hannah—stay a little longer, won’t you?”

  Hannah simpered. “Of course, dear. This is such a lovely perch. The lake, the clean smell from the trees. You never can smell enough corn field, either. That’s what I always say.”

  “You said you know Angus?”

  “Went to school with him. Used to tingle to look at him.”

  “Is that so?”

  “All the girls did. He’s different now. But it’s not my place to tell you that.”

  “Different how?”

  “He was a regular Tom Sawyer showoff before the war.”

  “He doesn’t talk about it.”

  “He saw dreadful things, no doubt, but I suspect it was something else. He married right before the war, a blonde named Adolfina, of all things. He should have known.”