Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

by Clayton Lindemuth

  “Why would she marry Angus if she had all that money?”

  “She wasn’t much to look at, for one. And who knows what demons pull what levers in Angus’s mind? Everything near your Lake Oniasont is strange, starting clear back with the feud between the McClellans and the Hardgraves over that little strip of land. Spooky, if you ask me. Devil’s Elbow. There were even killings.”

  “Killings?”

  “You know Mitch McClellan—just took the bus home? His father Jonah disappeared right after a bar fight here in town, at the Gas Pump Saloon. Of course it wasn’t called that back then. Mitch wasn’t but a few years old. They called Jonah ‘Whale,’ to give you an idea. He was tall as a tree and bad to his core, the story goes. They searched high and low and never found him.”

  “I never heard such a story.”

  “Your family didn’t live here in those times. I was barely a girl. The rest of us would just as soon forget. There was a lot of badness in the air, and it went away with Jonah McClellan.”

  Emeline glanced to the sidewalk. Deet approached.

  “Hannah, you should meet Deet, my step-son.”

  Hannah seized Emeline, kissed her cheek, whispered in her ear, “You think hard on that. Hard.—Dietrich, it’s a pleasure. I’ll be along now.”

  Rain pattered corn leaves. Whiskey sloshed in Jacob’s belly. Batting the green blades from his eyes, he trotted along a row for a third of a mile and emerged at the margin of forest bordering the Widow McClellan’s. Thunderheads blotted the noon sun and it felt like twilight. Entering the woods was like stepping into a closet. He stole over wet leaves, which gave way to brown needles as pines quickly replaced the hardwoods at the field’s edge. Amid the trees, he circled the McClellan house and hunkered in the grass at the edge of the dead widow’s lawn. He observed the house as if an enemy might have been there in the interim.

  A shadow hurled itself against the lamp-lit glass of a second-story window. Wind and rain consumed the sound. Jacob knelt. Instinctive fear waned and drunken curiosity possessed him. It was the Widow’s room, and the bogeyman this moment stole her soul.

  The beast would pass by the glass again, sure.

  A tiny burp pressed from his stomach and he swallowed back the taste. He squeezed his mother’s ring in his pocket, rubbed a burr of dried meat with his thumbnail. He released the ring and slipped his finger into the shotgun shell his father had left. Inside the house, clues waited that could make Angus pay. Shooting a bird out his hand.

  Shit for brains.

  If he was quiet, the bogeyman wouldn’t know he trespassed.

  Jacob glanced at the road, then back to the upper window. He blinked and the specter crashed against the window like a tornado with a sound like stones on glass. Grass tickled Jacob’s inner arm. A mosquito hovered next to his ear. He dashed across the yard and crossed the porch. The door was unlocked.

  The upper kitchen cabinets were too high, even on tippy-toes. He opened the first on the bottom row. Candles. Vases. A silver platter. The next door revealed baking pans and cookie cooling racks. The third, opening under the sink, smelled musty. Water dripped from pipe solders in back, and pooled where the rotted cabinet floor bowed under a cast iron skillet.

  Heavy curtains sealed the dining room. In the sitting room beyond, a window cast a rectangular bolt of light to the floor. The bogeyman upstairs ignored him.

  Jacob shivered.

  He parted the curtains above the sink. The forest seemed closer and the dark clouds were like a lid sliding closed over the whole world. He kneeled at the cabinet door by the corner.

  Whiskey!

  Rust froze the cap; the sharp edge sliced his finger. He sucked the blood and his gaze rambled across the counter. Standing on a chair, he withdrew a cleaver from a knife block beside a Santa Clause cookie jar. The blade spine was as thick as a ball peen hammer.

  He ran to the fireplace. Upset a box of kitchen matches. The widow McClellan burned wood year round. He carried a cherry log to the jug, supported the prone neck, hoisted the cleaver and smashed the spine to the glass.

  Whiskey splashed his knee and green shards ricocheted from the cherry. He righted the jug, found a drinking glass by the sink. Upstairs, the tinkle of pebbles on glass grew louder. The bogeyman had heard the glass shatter.

  Jacob gulped whiskey, lifted the blade, and walked to the stairs.

  Thirty Three

  Deet stared ahead. The Farmall’s rear wheels were a blur in his lower peripheral vision. Ahead the sky was black and above him clouds tumbled like boulders downhill.

  Where would he find shelter, his first night away?

  Maybe he’d steal a tarp from the barn and erect a lean-to a few miles away, shoot a deer and spend a couple days jerking the meat. Or something.

  A hundred yards out of town, Deet turned to Emeline and called, “Look ahead, Em!” A sheet of rain fell sideways, not a half mile ahead. “Can you cover everything?”

  “Pull in here!” she rose on one knee and pointed toward the house she’d inherited from her father. A gust of wind brought rain and drops spattered on her arm. The wind carried leaves and tossed Emeline’s hair.

  Deet spun the steering wheel and followed the driveway. He turned again and Emeline hunched over the grocery bags, trying to cover them with blankets. Fat raindrops fell, leaving wide wet splotches on her back and making her skin shine.

  “Pull into the barn!”

  Deet halted the tractor, leaped down, slid the door open, climbed back aboard, and parked in the bay where Margulies’ wood shop had been. He killed the engine and wiped his forearms, roughed his hair. He sat on the tractor a moment with his back to Emeline, aware that he inhabited a dangerous place with her. He was at a loss. She would die if he found the nerve to abandon her.

  And yet he must.

  After a long moment, Deet turned in the tractor seat. Emeline looked up at him and the partly twisted angle of her torso permitted a glimpse of one breast lopsided heavily toward the center of her top. It, too, was wet with rain.

  Deet climbed down. “I’m soaked. How’d the groceries fare?”

  She shifted a blanket aside. “Dry.”

  Deet faced away from her at the door. Gusting wind flapped his shirt. “Where’s what’s his name?” he said.

  “Chambers? I don’t know his schedule. Angus made the arrangements.”

  “Angus. Your husband, you mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s that mean?” He climbed on the trailer, sat on a bale. Outside, the uncut lawn had grown shaggy and rippled like a green lake.

  Emeline spoke softly. “I mean he’s my husband of course. Before God. But I just wonder sometimes if I owe my loyalty to him, or three dead Mrs. Hardgraves.”

  Deet was silent.

  “I’m not running off, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said.

  “Might be best if you did. Go to the courthouse and get the whole thing thrown out.”

  “Can’t. I followed the Lord in my decision and if I change that decision, I’m not changing my mind, I’m changing His. That’s not so easy as one might think.”

  “Well, you ought to run off. If Angus starts something, and I’m gone—”

  “Don’t say that.”

  Deet plucked a leaf from Emeline’s hair and tossed it over-board. “Look at this tangle.” He rested his hand on her shoulder, palm by her neck.

  Outside, wind drove rain in slanted bands, separated by rolling shrouds of grey mist. Water splashed from the ground and the barn door beat against the wall. It kept half time against the pounding in his chest. He wanted to plunge his nose into her hair and breathe her in.

  He wanted to run. Now.

  Emeline twisted away.

  “Deet?”

  “Wha—” he cleared the huskiness from his throat. “What?”

  “Do you ever think about the Lord?”

  “I surely wasn’t right now.” He leaned back, tried to roll with the direction change. “You mea
n God?”

  She nodded.

  “Kind of hard, don’t you think?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well… look at you. Leg busted. The house you live in. The man you live with. I bet God ain’t visited this entire county one time since he made it, whenever the hell that was.”

  “I think God’s not only visited. I think He’s right in the middle of everything.”

  “If you wasn’t pretty there’d be no redeeming you. Can’t see what’s in front of you.” Deet swung his legs to the outside of the bale and readied to jump to the floor.

  Emeline said, “I asked about your beliefs because I was trying to think of a reason why the Lord might have wanted me in the middle of everything you described, and the only thing I can think of is that He put me here to testify my faith and win your soul—you, and Angus of course—and Jacob. Win your souls to Christ.”

  Deet slid down from the bale to the barn floor. “You know Em, here’s what I think of, when I got time for puzzles. I don’t see how you can believe what’s in that black book you keep your nose in, and not believe in what’s around you every waking minute.”

  Emeline watched Deet standing in the barn entrance. His profile was rigid, head angled downward, brow tight, as if to firm the thoughts behind it. At least he hadn’t been rude. Hadn’t the Lord warned that she would be hated, as was He?

  Deet would come around. She could see into his heart, a little. Maybe. He was still tethered to the good, and anyone grieved by the difference between right and wrong was only a prayer away from being saved. Deet just needed to learn more and stop rebelling against his Maker.

  Dear Lord, I thank you for the blessings you have given me, and the challenges that keep me leaning on You for Your strength. Please Lord soften Deet’s heart so that he can hear, and learn. I believe he is capable of being a beautiful disciple Lord, and he’s able to see right and wrong, and he wants to make a stand, I can see it. Lord, I just pray that you would give me the words to lead him to You. Amen.

  Emeline opened her eyes. Deet was watching her. He turned away.

  “I want to check on thing inside the house,” she said.

  Deet helped her down from the trailer and stood beside her. She leaned to him as they crossed the gravel driveway and climbed the porch stairs, then leaned the crutch to the wall.

  “What you looking for in the house?”

  “I didn’t get to take anything but a suitcase and a bicycle. It’ll do me good to see everything sitting where it ought to be.” Holding his arm, she bent to a flowerpot and found a key. She gave it to Deet. He opened the door, peeked inside, and they entered. He nodded to a red streak on the wall by the stair landing.

  “That’s my blood,” she said.

  “Good of him to clean it,” Deet said. “Everything else look right?”

  Emeline paused a moment, trying to understand how Brad Chambers could walk past her blood day in and out, and not scrub it off the wall. She imagined him lingering at the stairs, dragging his fingers along red streak.

  “Do you want to go upstairs?”

  “Now that I’m here, I’m afraid to look. If he’s been in my room…”

  Deet shifted toward the kitchen. “What’s on the table?”

  “Drawings?” Emeline took them in; measurements, numbers, quantities. It looked like an engineering project drawn for a price estimate.

  “It’s a still,” Deet said.

  “Moonshine?”

  “That’s a boiler. You build a fire under it. The pipe leads to the doubler—a chamber where steam condenses, and the alcohol passes, then you got the coils over here, probably running through a vat of cold water, and then it spits out whiskey here.”

  “Not in my house.”

  “An operation like this doesn’t fit in a kitchen.”

  Emeline remembered her father standing behind his chair at the opposite head of the table, saying grace. Instead of ragged notebook paper, the table was set with china and silver, and the center overflowed with oven-warm bread, gravy, turkey, potatoes, carrots, stuffing. Merry voices bounced from the walls and windows. Women and girls bustled, men and boys marveled at their work, praised and blessed them. She heard chairs sliding and silver clanging, coughing and giggling as family took seats. She was eleven and her father’s brothers had converged with their families—one from New York, and the other from Kentucky—for a proper Thanksgiving. It was the first year after her great grandfather and great grandmother died, one three months after the other. The family wanted to be close.

  Deet shuffled his feet.

  The sunshine and gay voices vanished. Emeline stood at the table and looked to the window, where a film of water rippled the gray reality behind it.

  “You want to get moving home before we get another dowse of rain?”

  Lord, why did you send me into such a miserable pit of snakes?

  Deet touched her shoulder.

  “No. I want you to take me up into the field. Take the tractor. It’s my field; I don’t care what you drive over. No one’s using the land anyhow.”

  “Up in the field?”

  “Please just do as I ask.”

  Deet nodded slowly. “Uh, okay.” He spun, leaving her there alone.

  Emeline stood.

  I don’t know what you’re doing, Lord. I don’t understand.

  Hobbling, she crossed the kitchen to the entrance, retrieved her crutch, and locked the door behind her. The rumble of the tractor engine came from the barn. The rain had stopped but the clouds were in turmoil.

  Jacob, Angus, and Deet had rejected her attempts to converse about the Lord. They ridiculed her. Is that what He wanted—or was it something else? She would go to where He always seemed to be waiting.

  Deet swung the tractor in a wide semicircle and stopped with the trailer positioned in front of the steps. Emeline worked down them sideways, crutch, leg, leg. In a moment Deet lifting her and deposited her in the trailer.

  Deet nodded to the field. “You want to go someplace in particular?”

  “See that big tree on the horizon? There’s a rock I’m looking for in the field, a little before we get to that tree.”

  “A rock?”

  “It’s white.” She held her hands in an oval.

  “All righty.”

  Deet climbed aboard the tractor as if mounting a horse, throwing his leg high, swinging wide. In a moment the tractor surged forward. She watched him from behind as he stood from his seat to get a better view of the terrain. Seated again he cut the wheel and entered the field beside the tree line.

  Lightning flashed. Emeline closed her eyes and counted. Thousand one, thousand two, thousand three, thousand four. A long rumbling boom arrived.

  Deet turned in his seat and hollered back, “You know Angus been struck three times?”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, he can’t carry a pocket watch.”

  Emeline wanted to pray but didn’t. How could the Lord smite him with lightning three times and fail to kill him? Amazing forbearance, giving Angus time upon time upon time to repent of his evil and turn to Him? Or did the Lord have His mind on other matters?

  Three times.

  Cresting the hill, again Deet stood, now to get a better angle on the ground below. He lowered the engine’s tempo and they slowed. “It’ll be on the right side,” Emeline said. She maneuvered across a bale of hay, looked to the tree for her bearings, then to the ground.

  “There it is,” Deet said. “Just ahead.” He turned the wheel a little to the left.

  In a moment she saw the white rock. The tractor stopped and it was immediately below her.

  “You want to hold it or something? Or just look at it?”

  She looked at him.

  “”Cause I’ll get it for you, is what I mean.” Deet jumped to the ground and tromped to the rock.

  “Wait!”

  Lord, I want so desperately to be obedient but I don’t understand anything you’re doing. You’re
infinitely good and I trust you wholly, but I don’t trust myself. I don’t understand anything and if I don’t understand, I can have no peace. I believe—but help me in my unbelief, and forgive me in this act of distrust.”

  She opened her eyes and nodded to Deet.

  Deet bent at his knees. “That’s funny. There’s paper underneath.”

  “Paper?”

  “Sure. Looks like newspaper, just a little bit.”

  She hadn’t looked closely enough when she’d been here last to notice. How would newspaper be under a rock in the middle of a field? It hadn’t been tilled in at least a dozen years. Her father had rented out some of the other land to other farmers, but never this stretch immediately behind the house. There was a tornado two years ago that touched down and bounced to the side hill, and all it did was muss up the grass, rip through a couple of trees, and steal her Bible from the picnic table. It was a puzzle.

  “Give me the rock.”

  Deet palmed the rock and presented it to her.

  She inhaled. Exhaled. “Turn it over so I can see the bottom.”

  She took the stone from his hand and became aware that her mouth hung agape and her eyes strained. A shred of paper, not an inch long and half that wide, clung to the stone as if enameled to it. Her eyes found Deet’s.

  She mouthed, “The Destroyer.”

  “What’s on there?” He looked to the ground. “Well look, there’s more paper.” He lifted a sliver and read, “’and on the two side posts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not suffer.’ That’s what it says.”

  Faint, Emeline laid her head to the bale and blinked. Her eyes filled with tears and her mind with confusion. Joyful confusion and fear. What did it mean? It was like she’d discovered the empty tomb and been confronted by two angels. She felt like she would pee herself and faint. The Lord was real and holy and utterly terrible.