Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Or was he confused?

  Shit.

  Angus cracked the seal of the miscolored whiskey. Wiped the jug mouth with his sleeve. Braced the heft of the jug on his thigh.

  “Hold my cup, son.”

  Jacob grasped the cup.

  “Hold steady, she won’t bite.” Angus poured.

  Jacob shrank from the smell. “Pap?”

  Angus squinted at him.

  “Pap, that don’t smell like what you gimme me yesterday.”

  Angus leaned forward and put the jug on the ground, took the cup from his son’s hands. Sniffed. Sipped. Spat to the porch.

  “What?”

  Jacob quivered.

  “That goat-fuckin widow!”

  “She tricked you, Pap.”

  Deet stretched Emeline’s dress flat before lifting her and seemed to hold his head away as he carried her from Dr. Fleming’s office. At the trailer Emeline said, “I want to walk—set me down and give me the crutch. Please.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Deet tipped her on the sidewalk; she reached to a tree while he retrieved the crutch from the tractor.

  “Where you going?”

  “Prescott’s. Can you park by the storefront and let me stretch? I want to buy a few things.”

  “That’s an eighth mile.”

  “I have a crutch.”

  He started the tractor and paced her.

  “You don’t need to putt beside me. Go on, and I’ll be there when I get there.”

  He drove ahead, and stopped. She caught up to him in a dozen yards.

  “Maybe I’ll walk with you,” he said. “So you don’t bust your head on the cement.” He tramped beside her, thumbs hooked through his belt loops.

  “If you like.”

  “You’re not angry?” Deet said.

  She stumbled on a mismatched sidewalk panel and he jumped to her; she caught her step and he released her arm. “I wonder how it would be if we’d met in the beginning,” she said.

  “How you mean?”

  “You’re decent. That’s all.”

  He tilted his head to maple leaves fluttering upside down. “I’m a game to you.”

  “That’s not true. We share an attraction that we mustn’t follow.”

  “We did.”

  “We can’t just do whatever we want. There are rules.”

  “Whose rules? Angus’s?”

  “God’s.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t know.”

  She limped faster to match his stride.

  He continued, “All I know is you’ve got me bollixed, good.”

  “Slower, Deet. I can’t keep up.”

  He moderated his pace. “You feel it. I see it working you.”

  “You don’t know what you see. I’m going to have a baby. I’m married.”

  “Well, none of it matters anyway. I’ve set my mind. There’s something I’m going to tell you. Maybe.” Deet hesitated as he walked, adding a wobbling swagger to his gait. “What do you think happened to my mother?”

  “Oh, Deet… I don’t know. Just heard things. You know.”

  “I know what?”

  “She ran away with a man while Angus was at the war.”

  “She didn’t run—with a man, or without. Did Angus say that? Well, no matter.”

  Emeline sat on a bench. He stood to the side, looking at the sky.

  “Do you remember her?”

  “Some. She died in December of ‘46. Angus shot a buck, so I know it was buck season. He didn’t poach much back then. I remember the blood stains in the barn and on the snow outside where he drug the deer up from the lake.”

  “He killed the deer at the lake?”

  “Devil’s Elbow.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Six, I guess.”

  “Did your mother say anything before…?”

  “No. Don’t think she knew what was coming.” He kicked a small stone, waited, head angled upward. “A front’s coming in. The leaves turn upside down.”

  “How long was it before Angus married again?” She leveraged to her feet with the crutch.

  “We didn’t go hungry and Pap don’t cook.” Deet fell in beside her. “The second Mrs. Hardgrave lasted a couple years, and then he picked up Lucy Mae. Jacob is eight, so Lucy lasted seven years. Reigning champ.”

  “If you think Angus did something to them, why didn’t you tell anybody?”

  “How? Ride the tractor to Sheriff Heilbrun and spill my guts? I can’t even convince you.”

  “Do you remember what happened with Lucy Mae?”

  “Once Pap finds something that works, he don’t have much imagination. It was last December. They’d been arguing long as I could remember, but things changed. Used to be he’d yell and hit her and she’d pipe down, but then it got so he didn’t even raise his voice. Lucy Mae started out with a lot of pluck. I used to hide behind her and she’d back Pap into a corner when he was laying into me. By the end, she did what he said. No back sass.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t think you do. I know Pap killed Lucy Mae. I’ve seen him burn through women like a fella smokes cigarettes, putting the flame to one while he stubs out the last. He’s done it my whole life, and my mother was the first he ground in the mud. You’ll be his fourth, lest you wise up.”

  Her upper lip was tucked under her lower lip. “How did he kill her—”

  “He stuck an ought-six in her mouth.”

  Thirty Two

  “You see what I’m doing, boy?” Angus gulped from his mug of walnut whiskey and lifted the .22. He’d long ago stripped the walnut stock and polished a hundred coats of linseed oil to a satin glow. The barrel was silver, the bluing stripped by years of use.

  Jacob watched. The rifle barrel rested on the porch rail; Angus leaned with the stock tucked in his shoulder, elbow on knee, finger on trigger.

  “I see.”

  “‘Cept you’d have your hand there on the guard by the barrel. When you get old, like me, and wise, you won’t need your other arm. So we’ll probly get rid of it. But for now you’re allowed to use it.” Angus blinked. “You see that blue jay on the maple?”

  Jacob nodded.

  “Keep your eyes on that bird. See, I let out my breath. Squeeze nice and easy. I don’t know when it’s gonna—”

  The .22 cracked and the bird exploded into feathers. It fell.

  “Wow! Lucky shot!”

  Angus’s jaw tightened. “I don’t miss with a rifle.” He drank from the mug.

  “Bet you can’t shoot it again.”

  “That ain’t fifty feet. Ain’t even a challenge. Run and move him out a ways.”

  Jacob looked at the rifle.

  “Go on, now! Get that bird and move him out.”

  At the bird Jacob looked over his shoulder. Angus sat in his chair; the rifle rested on the porch rail. Jacob stooped to the blue jay. Its eye was unblinking, its beak open. Tiny talons outstretched. A great part of it was missing. He lifted it by the tail feathers.

  “Run him out another thirty paces—down that sassafras tree.”

  Jacob stopped at the tree and turned. Angus had disappeared behind the porch rail, only the crown of his head visible, and a shiny silver dot that was the muzzle.

  “Hold him out in the air.”

  Arm trembling, Jacob dangled the bird. Squirming, he bent his hips from the bird. The rifle barrel was a perfect dot.

  Jacob felt a tiny amount of urine escape.

  “Steady, now.”

  Tears pressed from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. His stomach drew tight. The blue jay jolted out of his hand and almost instantaneously he heard a crack! but he’d already jumped a foot to the side.

  “Pick him up again!”

  “There ain’t nothing to pick up!”

  “Guess that means I got lucky again. Hunh?”

  “You’re the best shot in the whole world, Pap.”

  “Don’t you forget it. Now get back here and I’ll teach
you.”

  “I still got to shuck the corn for the hogs.”

  “It ain’t even noon. Get your ass up here.”

  Jacob ran with his hands cupped at his privates.

  “You see any birds around? Chipmunks? Why you holding your mess?” Angus pointed the barrel and pushed Jacob’s hands aside. “Get excited, huh. Well the rules are the same now as when you was two. You piss yourself, you sit in it all day. Now go find me another animal.”

  “They’re all scared off.”

  “Well, they’re dumb animals. They’ll be back, no time. Grab a chair.”

  Jacob dragged a second Adirondack, painted green, and sat on the edge.

  “That’s too low. Run in the house and get a Book of the Year.”

  Jacob returned a moment later with the 1953 Britannica.

  “Slap it on the chair. I guess I don’t mind you sitting on the Britannica with pissy shorts. Take this and lay the barrel on the ledge. See how the stock fits in your shoulder? You want it nice and snug.” Angus talked him through framing a sight picture. “All right. You got it? Let your breath out and when your belly’s empty, pull the trigger real slow.”

  “I’m not pointing at anything.”

  “Just pull the trigger.”

  Jacob released his breath. Pressed the trigger, felt it move beneath his finger, until a spring popped.

  “Nothing happened.”

  “‘Course not. Wasn’t loaded. But you got the hang of it.”

  “Can I shuck the corn now?”

  Deet watched Emeline recoil. He took her arm. She leaned on the crutch.

  “A deer rifle? How? Where?”

  “Gonna rain,” Deet said. He looked both ways on the sidewalk, tilted his head back and sniffed the air, then glanced ahead. She read the set of his jaw and the way his eyes roamed their path, almost as if he stared into the future and navigated a course through chaos. He seemed cognizant in a way that was beyond Angus’s chemistry.

  “You saw… Angus kill Lucy Mae?”

  “Storm’s coming from the east. See them thunderheads?”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Just like I figure he did my Ma, in the barn.” His voice was gritty. “Why reinvent the wheel?”

  “You work for him every day.”

  “What am I gonna do? Tell him I saw it? ‘I can’t work in the barn, Pap, ‘cause you shot your wife and some of her brains is on the rafters.”

  “That’s so terrible. Don’t say any more.”

  “He had ahold of her hair, in the back, and the rifle at his hip. She cried and squealed and begged him not to do it, ‘til he shoved the barrel in her mouth.”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “She wasn’t but four foot tall. Angus was on his knees. By the time I had the guts to help—”

  “I can’t hear this!”

  “I stuck around for you, Emeline! I should have been somewhere else by now. I had it all layed out. But once you showed up, I couldn’t stand to leave.”

  She took his hand.

  “I was hunting below McClellan’s place. Didn’t see hide nor hair all morning. Angus and me hunt separate because he likes to ambush a deer, where I like to stalk one. Give the buck a chance, you know? We’d got a dusting of snow the night before and I was cold. There’s a hollow with some thickets where they like to lay about a mile closer to town, as the crow flies. Well I heard a shot at about ten, down by Devil’s Elbow.”

  “I thought that’s where Angus shot the deer when your mother disappeared.”

  “You noticed that? So I decided I’d see his kill and get lunch before heading to the hollow. I got to the house about eleven and I heard him yelling in the barn—thought he’d lost his mind, until him and Lucy Mae come into view, and he let out a punch that dropped her to the ground with a sound I heard seventy yards away. I stood at the spruce. The wind’d already blown the snow off the knoll, so I didn’t leave any tracks. I’m twenty feet into a sprint when he grabs his rifle from the wall and gets on his knees so he can shove it in her mouth. He didn’t hesitate. It was over. I turned around and hid by the porch with my 30-30 sighted on Pap for ten minutes while he slumped beside her like he was sorry. I wanted to shoot him so bad I couldn’t think. I figured I could drag him to the woods and make it look like an accident, except for the mess he’d made in the barn. Ten minutes I laid on the ground, my belly cold and my fingers so numb I couldn’t feel the trigger. If I had a do-over, I’d have shot him in the yard, dumped him in the lake tied with a few cinder blocks, and poured water on the boards ‘till the blood washed out—but I couldn’t think. I kept imagining he’d just killed my Ma—though she’s been dead all these years. I saw splotches of blood on the barn floor, and I just watched.”

  “God have mercy.”

  “Eventually he carries her down the trail to the walnut tree. Walks right past me, but he’s blabbering God would get him someday.”

  “What about the blood in the barn?”

  “He pulled the floor planks and swapped em with wall boards. They’re thicker than wall boards, and he had to pair them up to get the width right. They’re easy to spot. That’s why there’s fresh boards on the sides of the barn, and a double-width board beside each.”

  “He buried her by the tree,” she said. “I found the grave.”

  “It’s easy to find. He’s been too drunk all year to know. Every time he comes back from that walnut tree, he’s got one less card in his deck and some new scheme.”

  “It’s hard to understand.”

  “You can’t understand evil with your mind. You just see it and know it. And kill it if you get a chance. That’s what I should’ve done.”

  They walked in silence until arriving at the grocery. Deet pulled his hand from hers. “I’ll get the tractor and wait here.

  Jacob lowered the Ball jar from his mouth. He’d shucked a bin full of cobs and ground the kernels loose. Thinking of the voice he’d heard when he found the ring, and the specter behind it, Jacob slipped his hand to his pocket. The grime between the bands and in the diamond setting—was it dirt, or his mother’s flesh? His mind spun. He pulled the ring from his pocket, touched it to his tongue.

  He washed away the rotten pungency with whiskey and stowed the Ball jar under the tub. He exited the lower barn floor between the dog kennels. Rebel and the bitch drummed the coop cages with their tails. He neared and their exuberance waned. Rebel backed into the corner and growled. The bitch joined.

  The sky had clouded and a fine mist dampened his shoulders. He wrapped his fingers through the wire and pressed his nose. Rebel lurked at the back, his cast smeared black, and his eye a purple scab. His teeth gleamed. Lightning flashed nearby and a clap of thunder exploded; Rebel charged. Jacob jumped. He punched the wire and the dog raged, growled and drove his teeth at Jacob’s fist. The bitch snarled in the adjacent cage.

  “Hey there boy!” Angus called from the porch. “There you go, son! Grab that prod and jab em in the ribs. Gits em bitter as skunk piss.”

  A stick leaned in the corner where crate met barn, the green wood whittled to a dull point. Jacob grabbed the shaft and thrust the tip through the fence on the right, Rebel’s blind side.

  “Hyah!” He stabbed Rebel’s ribs.

  Rebel seized the prod in his jaws and jerked. The point crossed into the bitch’s pen, where she fell upon it, tugging and gnawing like Rebel, until the whole stick was inside. Jacob found a smooth stone under the corner eaves and slung it into the crate. The rock caromed from the wire mesh and rattled inside. He hurled more until a lucky shot struck Rebel and the dog pealed with fury.

  “Easy, now, shit for brains!” Angus called.

  Jacob turned from the pen with both dogs snarling at his back. He stared at his father on the porch. Since he’d first tasted the walnut whiskey, a certain edgy awareness seemed with him all the time, a sharpness of the mind, a sensitivity, an inability to ignore frustration. He wanted more whiskey right now.

  “Well, dumb shit?” Ang
us boomed. “Fuck with him s’more.”

  Wind picked up and the raindrops fattened. Angus’s laughter swirled around Jacob like the storm. He walked to the lower barn entrance, paused to drink more walnut whiskey, and exited from the opposite side, invisible from the house.

  It was a five-minute walk to the Widow’s house.

  Emeline stood inside the grocery doorway and watched bruised clouds battle white ones. A good soaking might cool her skin, but would spell disaster for bags of flour and sugar. She could stow the groceries under hay and blankets, but a downpour would soak them just the same. She didn’t want to think about trying to explain to Angus that the cab of the truck would have better protected the goods.

  “Emeline! You’re up and about already!”

  She twisted to her left. Hannah Kirk.

  “I couldn’t stand the stillness. Deet made a crutch in his wood shop.”

  “The Lord’s doing.”

  “No doubt. And Deet had something to do with it too.”

  Hannah stood so close Emeline smelled the heat from her neckline. “You think about getting out? While you can?” Hannah squeezed Emeline’s elbows, her upper arms; her eyes widened and she looked at Emeline’s abdomen. Peered into her eyes. “Oh Heavens, Em, you’re with child.”

  “Whatever—”

  “No use denying it. I’ve had eight. Your secret’s safe.” Hannah stood bolt upright and bounced a look left and right. “Something troubled me since we talked. That question—why did Angus and Lucy Mae marry? I got to gossipin’ with Nancy and we both remembered—one thing brought them together and at the time, it was all the talk. It’s terrible; I simply can’t tell you.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “But I must. Lucy Mae’s father died.”

  Emeline raised her brows and nodded slowly.

  Hannah said, “Well, he sold life insurance. I can’t believe Nancy had to remind me—and I shouldn’t tittle-tattle, but a story doesn’t get told without a kernel of truth. The word went that he wasn’t a very good salesman, and had to buy his own product.”

  “Buy life insurance? On who?”

  “Himself, his wife, little Lucy Mae. Well, his wife met her maker in forty-seven, and Lucy Mae’s father collected all that money—some said five thousand dollars. He died two years later, and Lucy Mae collected on him. People said she was worth ten thousand dollars, plus the house! I don’t know if I ever knew what the house sold for, but Angus got rid of it in a hurry.”