“You haven’t shed a tear.”
He lifted his arm high, withdrew it. “You best be downstairs in five minutes cooking else you and I’ll have the wickedest come-to-Jesus a man and woman ever had.”
“I’d love for you and I to have a come to Jesus. I think He’s been trying to get your attention over and over, and you’re too stubborn to see it. So full of self pity and anger. You walk around moaning the victim all the time and you’re a terror to the people around you. So let’s you and I come to Jesus right now, you got any courage at all.”
Angus slammed the door. His footfalls pounded away.
Four out of four. Women are cunts. All there is to it. Do your best and still end up wishing you’d spent your life fuckin livestock instead. Soon as you even let yourself give a damn, they wave that gizzy up in the air ‘til someone tosses a cock in it. That’s what Emeline done—waved it up in the air ‘til Deet come along.
Son like that’s better in the ground.
Woman like that ain’t worth keeping around, either. That’s all right. Angus Hardgrave don’t have to wait ‘til buck season. Half the town expected her to run off by now, anyway.
I sit at the kitchen table, watch the wall clock and sip walnut whiskey. The second hand herky-jerks around the dial. Five minutes and not a second more. If she doesn’t drag her broke-legged ass down here and cook something, shit’s gonna come to a head.
Only so much abuse a man can take.
The minute hand clicks once, twice, a third time. With each circuit I get hotter and hotter ‘til steam blows from my ears and eyeball and I slam my fist on the table. Climb the steps two at a time. Throw open the door.
Emeline stands a foot away, on her crutch. Her eyes are red and her face is flushed and splotchy.
“It took a while to get on my feet—I hurt my leg again.”
“Get your ass downstairs.”
“I’m doing my best to please you.”
I back into the hallway. “You oughta started that a month ago.”
“I’m just a girl sometimes; I’m trying to do better.”
“You getting fresh?”
She stops working the crutch and leans on it. I study her eyes. They’re big from having her eyelids all the way back—and a woman only looks like that when she knows you’re going to knock her straight or when she thinks she’s game to do the same to you. I wave her ahead and she swings the crutch, drags her foot. She lingers at the end of the hall, looking over the stairs. One boot in her ass would guarantee she won’t wave that puss in the air.
But I watch her negotiate the steps. Has everything between her and Deet been in my head? I don’t feel sharp like I used to. Just a week ago, my life as a country gentleman unfolded in its natural course. The whiskey stillin’ idea percolated while the dog business came together. I’d run a wood shop out the barn, with Deet doing the work; and in no time, Jacob’d raise the beef and hogs. Not five minutes since I had a snoogle of whiskey and I can’t hardly think optimistic.
Maybe with another shot I’ll get a fix on my pretty little wife.
Did she share the gizzy with Deet, or not?
Emeline pulled a slab of sliced bacon from the refrigerator. She’d stowed the iron cookware in the bottom cabinet on the left. Stooped, she recalled her first day in this kitchen. Angus and the boys had cooked fish and left the oil and crusted skin on plates without even soaking them in water. They lived like hogs. She gripped the iron handle with both hands and hoisted the pan to the stove. Forked a dozen strips of meat.
Angus slipped behind her and squeezed her breast.
Her alertness flared and she clamped her mouth.
He pushed her sideways and she clomped her cast and dragged her foot until she stood at the sink. Through the window she could see most of the driveway, the barn, and the top edge of the dog kennels.
“Keep your eye on the window,” Angus said. He pushed her forward; bent her at the waist. She crossed her arms at the sink basin. He flipped her dress to her back and dragged down her underwear. He kicked her foot aside with his.
“Where’s Jacob?” she said.
Angus’s zipper sounded. She felt him against her, searching, probing. She stared at the sink drain hole.
Angus thrust; she grabbed the spigot base. Looked at the knife block, a foot from the sink. Thought of the carbine in the living room. Bacon grease spattered. Facing down, away from Angus, she closed her eyes.
“Yeah, there,” she said. She felt him grow.
“All of it, Angus; hard as you can. I’ve… been bad and… you got to… teach me a… lesson.”
He grunted. The crackling bacon smelled sweet and smoky. A cloud cast a shadow that passed between house and barn like a sliver of night.
“Don’t spare me nothing… Angus. You got to teach… a lesson.”
“Unh… unh… unh...”
“All you got!”
He hit her cervix.
He leaned on her back and bit her shoulder while his arm crossed her belly and squeezed one breast then the other, back and forth, grunting so hard the vibrations rippled through her skin and his saliva wetted her dress.
Lord I know I’m evil but please use that chunk of meat and…
He jabbed and shuddered and squeezed mightily and choking for breath, backed from her, and gave one final slam.
Kill that bastard inside me...
I tell Chambers to drive the truck—the Fairlane won’t make it where we’re going. Unfamiliar with the clutch and less gutsy motor, he stalls before heading out the drive and turning toward Walnut. We follow 322 toward Franklin. He slouches, one hand on the wheel and the other on the shifter. I drink from a gallon jug braced between my feet and offer him a drink.
“I understand we’re headed to a dog fight?” he says.
“That’s right.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Chambers sips, smacks his lips. “Whooey.” Passes it back.
I take another pull and cap the jug. Do I imagine—or did some kind of funny business pass between Emeline and Chambers back at the house? She skirted away and never met his face, and he always turned his head and kept her in the corner of his eye. Never addressed her directly—and no man ought to address another man’s wife directly—but he wanted to. Slopping down runny eggs and bacon, he wished he was eating Emeline. Is there a man in the county she ain’t spread her gizzy for?
“Given any thought to stillin’ whiskey of your own?” Chambers says.
“Hunh?”
“Lotta dough.”
“Not like in the day.”
“Still, better’n feeding corn to cows,” Chambers says. “Cleaning stalls for two years, and selling beef. Not that I got anything against a good beefsteak. Just that them darkies in town—they like that cheap liquor. Give their last dime to lick an empty bottle cap. More and more em, every day. I don’t know who the hell invites em.”
“More n’ more? They ain’t but a dozen in the county. You just notice when you see em. Naw; I’ll sell to white, black, jew, wop, anyone wants a drink. I’d sell to a fuckin nazi. This walnut whiskey opens the mind; ain’t a person alive can drink a quart and not feel sharper, and the truth is, after a quart, a man’ll have a taste he’ll never shake.”
“Powerful drink, that.”
“I don’t know what does it.”
Chambers grins. “I’ve had whiskey all over the damn place and never had any that made me so, well, I don’t know. Seems like a pull of that whiskey, and I know exactly what I want—and I’m ready to pay the price to get it.”
“I got a recipe and a walnut tree. I’m just thinking about how to get the equipment. A fella goes to the hardware and buys fifty feet of copper—if he ain’t building a house, it don’t take hell of a lot of imagination to see what he’s up to.”
“Proper still’d only take thirty feet. I made some drawings, best I could remember. Pappy ran a small operation—but I figure that’s a good thing. We take a little profit and put the rest into corn next year,
build a second operation, a few miles from the first. But here’s the thing. We got to find customers can keep their traps shut. Better to drive all over six counties for the right buyers. One snitch’ll cook your goose.”
“A few miles from the first?” I say. “You can’t be hauling that kind of grain around without somebody noticing where you pull into the woods. Don’t take but a dog shitting on the side of the road to get tongues wagging.”
“I did some looking around,” Chambers says. “That back cornfield at your house close to town runs clear for a mile and a half and joins Barnett’s place. After that, a field circles ‘round the hill and comes out two miles later—and I don’t know who lives there, but the path is open. Don’t have to drive on roads.”
“You mean to set a still on my other property?”
“Two baskets hold twice the eggs. Just an idea, down the road.”
“That’s a long way down the road,” I say. “First off, we need a dozen fifty-five-gallon drums. We got to find two hundred pound of sugar, and fifty of yeast. That’s a chunk of dough to come up with.”
“We’ll find some cash,” Chambers says. “But it’s equal interest, straight through.”
I pull Copenhagen from my pocket and roll it end over end in my fingers.
“You need me to pop that open?”
“I been carrying this for a week and ain’t even thought to take a dip.” I chuck it out the window, and drink walnut whiskey.
Emeline’s mind drifted. She ran hot water on the bacon skillet, wiped grease residue with a paper towel, then propped the pan on the drying rack. A stark memory of Deet tossing his shirt aside at the barn roof sucked the breath from her lungs.
She thought of the white stone and the verse in Revelation, how the Lord would give her a name. The page must have been from her Bible, blown from the picnic table. It must have ripped and been trapped by the rock.
The Destroyer.
Did the Lord send her to destroy the Hardgraves?
She washed Angus Hardgrave’s dishes. She coughed loose a wad of phlegm, looked at the dishwater, and hobbled on her crutch to the front door. She spat on the porch. Her nose dripped and her mind hovered above, somehow disconnected from the horror inside.
She smelled charred wood and flesh from McClellan’s place.
In a moment she crutched along a footpath. Corn leaves rustled in a slight breeze; the silver tassels smelled like flowers and the clumpy earth recalled a fresh dug grave.
Beyond the path that bordered the field, to her left extended a knoll with scattered sassafras trees and huckleberry bushes. Her eyes followed the shoreline until a giant bough of green eclipsed the water. The black walnut tree. Every halting step carried her closer to the woman buried amid its roots.
A persistent tugging originated from the tree as if it wielded some cerebral gravity. It sought to soften her revulsion. It wanted her to understand. It promised something she couldn’t fathom. She steeled herself, focused on the tramped grass and the whispering corn leaves.
Come to me. Let’s talk about Deet.
The magnetism increased as she followed the tangent that, at its closest, would bring her within fifty yards of the tree. She dared not look. In her grief the darkness pulled like gravity. She faced the corn as if bracing against a centripetal tether by steering away from it. She passed the closest point and hobbled faster.
I’ll show you what to do.
One step after another, she kept forefront in her mind that she knew the Lord, knew good from evil, and recognized the force for what it was: the same animus that inhabited Brad Chambers the night he raped her, that allowed Angus to let his son inhale flames, that turned Jacob into a zombie.
She recognized evil, but the unflagging, gentle offer of understanding confused and overwhelmed. She should go see what it wanted. That couldn’t hurt. She swayed toward the walnut.
I’ll show you everything...
Emeline froze.
She stepped backward without looking, only sensing the leaves and the fragrance of corn silk as the field enclosed upon her. The walnut’s pull diminished with each inch. She crossed row after row, trampling stalks, until the evil lingered more as memory than a presence.
Midway through the field, the parallel rows guided her toward McClellan’s. She reached the forest; beyond was the charred hull of the house. Men’s voices slipped through the trees. She crept forward. One was dressed in a black suit; two wore denim. They and Sheriff Heilbrun picked through rubble. She watched by a hemlock, her thoughts still ethereal, as if all of this action and pain took place in someone else’s life—as if she’d walk back to the house and Deet would call her Ma—
The man in the suit stood at the edge of the debris with his head tilted forward; the two in jeans worked their way into the wreckage, removing charred boards and rearranging others. The sheriff walked along the stone foundation. His hands were in his pockets and his dog-jowled face hadn’t changed since the afternoon before.
“Sheriff, I think I got something over here,” one of the men in denim said. The others angled toward him.
“What?” Heilbrun said.
“Must be the widow.”
The others stood at the nearest edge and leaned forward, and Emeline drifted along the path where Angus came from when he rushed to her. The ground dipped and rose; the trail passed between heavy-trunked evergreens.
“Wait a minute, Joe. Is that bedsprings she’s laying on?”
“That’s right.”
“She smoke cigarettes? A pipe?”
“She did not,” said the man in the suit.
“She bedridden?”
“Got about fine at church last Sundy. Little bit of limp is all,” the suited man said.
“Okay,” Heilbrun said, “my mother’s eighty-one and wouldn’t be caught dead in a bed in the afternoon. Why’d the widow hide from a house fire in her bed?”
“Don’t make sense, Sheriff, ‘lest she took a nap or maybe felt poorly.”
“I know this is a stretch, Joe, but can you see any marks on her? Any holes in her skull?”
“I can’t tell. Hell. Just bones and charcoal, and barely that. Musta been a hellacious fire.”
“All right. Chief, you see any indications of arson?”
“No way to know. I’d have to pick around the rubble a couple days to rule it out. My money’s on lightning.”
“Wouldn’t that’ve left marks on the ground?”
“Not if it hit the roof.”
The man in the suit touched Heilbrun’s arm. “What’s eatin’ you, Sheriff?”
“I don’t like this a damn bit. We got a crew of Pittsburg hoodlums making road trips north to rob old folks, and they always leave their mark. They burn the place to the ground and their victims are always shot in the head with a .22. They haven’t hit Walnut County yet, but I got to think this is the first.”
“Pittsburg hoodlums?”
“I hadn’t heard of em ‘til I got a call last week from Roy Stoner, Mercer sheriff. He had an old couple shot and the house burned. Anyhow, he got on the horn with every county sheriff in Pennsylvania, and some in Ohio, and plotted all the victims that fit the pattern. Every one lived three four hours from Pittsburgh.”
“I guess if they was coming from Erie, they’d have to be geniuses, something,” the man in the suit said. “To get the circle right.”
Emeline stood midway along the trail to the house, still hidden. Her wandering gaze settled on the cement slab that used to be a porch, where she’d pulled Deet’s ankles. A moment before, at the birdbath, she’d grabbed his arm and he’d reached to her as he sprinted toward his death. Angus had arrived from this direction, as if coming from the farmhouse. He must have finally been up and about, saw smoke, and cut across the path. Came through the yard and saw her cleave to Deet, saw his son’s hand linger.
Emeline backed from the house; turned, and spotted an envelope against a hemlock trunk. Though waxy, the bottom was waterlogged and the paper rolled away fr
om the fold in layers.
An oddity—a pair of boot prints next to the tree, the heels dug in and cemented in the mud, as if someone loitered, shifted weight, but didn’t move. A man had stood here after the rain started.
Maybe one of those Pittsburg thugs… Emeline twisted toward Heilbrun and stopped. The envelope’s flap was open. She withdrew a photo of Angus—Angus, but older. The man might have been his father, or Mitch McClellan’s; his hat brim shadowed his hewed cheeks and chiseled nose. His face projected a recognizable brew of pride and arrogance. He was tall, dwarfed the automobile behind him.
It was Jonah McClellan.
She flipped the envelope and read McClellan’s address. The post office stamp denoted August—water blurred the day—1946.
Emeline withdrew a black book with names and numbers arranged in a primitive kind of ledger. Last, she unfolded a sheet of paper—a recipe—for whiskey mash.
She looked toward Heilbrun. What’s this, he’d say, and she’d say I don’t know, but Angus murdered Lucy Mae, and the only witness died in this fire.
And then what? The Sheriff would one day turn those sad eyes at her over Angus Hardgrave’s casket, and think, this woman believed Angus killed his other wives—did she do unto him? Did she hasten the by death do you part?
Emeline leaned to the hemlock. The recipe. The photo. The book. Walnut Whiskey at the center, and a giant black walnut tree at the center of that. She thought of Lucy Mae’s grave, and maybe two others, anonymous under a mat of leaves.
Why there, like some kind of offering?
She recalled picking a BB from Jacob’s arm. She’d given him walnut whiskey… It ain’t so bad… Then, looking out the spare bedroom’s window, she’d found Jacob’s playground had become the black walnut on Devil’s Elbow. Where Mitch had killed himself. Where Angus lounged.
Where he’d had her on their wedding night.
The tree pulled everyone, but only she had the strength to resist. She and Deet. Emeline paused. The hair on her arms stood and a chill coursed her back. Did the tree orchestrate Deet’s death? He was the only one unaffected by it. Deet, and her.
Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her Page 23