Softspoken

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Softspoken Page 11

by Lucius Shepard


  “So did Janine help you out?” Frank Dean asks.

  “Much to my surprise,” says Sanie. “No.”

  Frank Dean makes a perplexed face and says to Janine, “Didn’t you tell her about the horses?”

  “Oh my god!” Janine puts a hand to her breast and stares as though horrified at Sanie. “Was that what you meant by ‘curious’? That kind of thing?”

  Sanie replies that she doesn’t yet know to what kind of thing Janine is referring.

  “See,” says Janine, “that stuff’s never seemed extraordinary to me. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve had the gift.” She bats her eyelashes at Frank Dean. “Not strong, now. Just a touch. But I’ve always seen things other people couldn’t.”

  “Like ghosts?” Sanie believes that Janine is playing with her, that she knew what Sanie wanted to hear all along and for some reason, probably for the reason in a navy windbreaker sitting next to her, has chosen to make a production out of it.

  “If you’re asking whether I saw ghosts out at Rayfield’s place,” says Janine. “Yes, I did. At least I thought that’s what they were. But Rayfield told me only some of them were actual ghosts. The manifestations associated with his family. He wasn’t even sure about all of them. He used to mark it down whenever he spotted one of his ancestors.”

  “In a book?” Sanie asks. “I found a composition book with names and dates…”

  “You found that old book? Why, that’s amazing! I thought all that junk went out the back door when Rayfield died.”

  “Will saved it.” Frank Dean’s stare disconcerts Sanie and she has to gather her thoughts. “If Rayfield saw ghosts, he must have had the gift, too?”

  “He told me he had a feeling something funny was going on with the house,” says Janine. “He didn’t see anything, though, until he started taking acid.”

  Sanie asks, “He didn’t use peyote?”

  “He experimented with a lot of stuff, ’cause the acid was hard on him physically. I believe he said something about trying peyote, but that was around the time my business took off, and I wasn’t really paying attention.” Janine pats Frank Dean’s hand. “You’re being so quiet, Hon!”

  Frank Dean shrugs and says something Sanie can’t catch. “What about the rest?” she asks just as the jukebox is turned up; the Dixie Chicks’ shrill harmonies beat down all other sounds. She has to repeat her question, leaning close to Janine, who’s making dance moves on her stool and says, “The rest of what?”

  “Say what?”

  “The horses! What about the horses?”

  “I was out…” The jukebox is turned down again, a happy medium struck, and Janine starts over in a less strident voice. “I was out back, eating lunch at the edge of the woods, and I saw a herd of horses. Thirty or forty of them. They come running through the cornfield straight at me. I swear, I thought they were going to trample me. They were so close I could smell them. I threw myself down in the grass, hoping they’d miss me. And then they were gone. I could still hear their hooves for a while, but they were gone. It happened so fast…” Janine shakes her head as if marveling at her brush with mortality. “Anyway, Rayfield said the horses and a lot of the rest of it, they were related to the vortex. He claimed a vortex was developing around the house.”

  Sanie says, “A vortex,” and Frank Dean says, “A whirlpool?”

  “Kinda…but it’s energy instead of water.” Janine gestures impatiently. “Rayfield said it was getting bigger. I don’t know what all it is, really. But I do know it had to be something besides ghosts. Ghosts don’t explain some of the things I saw.” She catches Frank Dean’s hand. “Are you going to dance with me or what?”

  “Not right now,” he says.

  “Well…” Janine slides down off the stool. “I’m going to dance.”

  “What else did you see?” Sanie asks.

  “Just more stuff like the horses. I’ll fill you in later, Hon.” She winks broadly at Sanie. “If you’re not occupied, that is.”

  She dances away along the bar, eyeing the men, prospecting for a suitable partner, and Frank Dean slides over onto her stool.

  “How was the game?” he asks, and Sanie, remembering she’s angry, says, “Great.”

  She stares at a poker machine mounted on the bar, fishes out her coin purse, slots in a quarter, and grimly punches up a hand. Not even a pair. She draws four cards and loses.

  “So how you been?” asks Frank Dean.

  Sanie pops another quarter into the machine. “Fine.” She wins two free plays.

  “Why’re you mad at me?”

  “I don’t like being set up.” She punches up another losing hand.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about I arrange a meeting with Janine…” She draws a straight, stands pat. “And you just happen to turn up.” The machine beats her with a full house.

  “I’ve been worried about you.”

  “You don’t know me. How can you worry about me?”

  She cuts her eyes toward him so as to see what damage she’s inflicted. His face tightens, but remains impassive. She feeds the machine again. Four hearts and a spade. She makes her flush and wins five free plays.

  “The other day, when you came by the shop,” he says, “you were in rocky shape. I know you’re not happy. I can…”

  “You sensed my unhappiness, did you? And you thought, what that girl needs is a shot of Frank Dean? A little push-push where it’ll do the most good? Does that about sum it up?”

  Bonnie Tyler is having a Total Eclipse of the Heart and, ordinarily, Sanie would swing around and scornfully observe the white folks trying to dance to the slow section, bending and swaying like time-lapse photography of plants dying; but she, too, is having an eclipse, albeit one unaccompanied by soaring strings and a boys choir: the sun of sexual attraction obscured behind the moon of her anger at the World of Men.

  “Can’t we talk about this calmly?” asks Frank Dean.

  Sanie laughs, and the laugh feels as if it’s going to keep unfurling, like one of those endless scarves favored by clowns and magicians. She bites it off and says, “Why’s it the only time men resort to reason is when they’re being rejected? Women are much more realistic. They go straight to crazy.” She spins around, her knees bumping his. “There is no ‘this’ to talk about. Hell, we don’t even have a ‘that.’”

  He looks at her steadily, gravely, as if framing a weighty response, and says, “We did so have a ‘that.’”

  She can’t help herself, she laughs, and puts a fist to her forehead and closes her eyes. “God! Yes, we had a ‘that.’ I admit it.”

  “I’m not looking to get over on you,” he says. “All I want…”

  Janine comes huffing up and sags against him, again urging him to dance, and he says, “In a minute. We’re still talking.”

  She defines the verb “flounce” as she goes petulantly off, and Frank Dean says, “If you need a place to stay, I want you to call my sister. She’s got a huge house and nobody else lives there. Alice Settlemyre. She’s in the book.”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t need a place to stay.”

  “You might. Marriages can get ugly. People try and hurt each other however they can.”

  “Jackson wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “I got a feeling he hurts you plenty. Maybe you’ve hurt him, too. I don’t know. But nobody deserves some of the shit can rain down in a marriage. Especially the physical shit.”

  Sanie half-swings back to the poker machine. Does everyone see what she cannot? They certainly seem able to see what she believed was hidden behind a cheerful facade.

  “He wouldn’t hit me,” she says. “I’m certain of that.”

  “Maybe you haven’t given him a reason to hit you. That could change.”

  “No. It’s not in him. And even if he were like that, I’m tougher than him. Smarter, too.”

  “I bet you’re more trusting than him. That might cancel out those other qualitie
s.” Frank Dean lays a hand on her shoulder. “Alice Settlemyre. I’m just saying…Okay? If you need it.”

  “Were you married?”

  He grimaces. “Yeah. It was bad.”

  “Did you…hurt your wife?”

  “I hurt her. Yeah. Not physically, though. That was all on her.” He pulls down the neck of his T-shirt, exposing a puckered round scar below his collarbone.

  “She shot you?”

  “Twice. Got me in the hip as I was falling. Then the gun jammed.”

  “Was she…” Sanie falters, unsure what question would be safe to ask.

  “Crystal meth,” says Frank Dean. “She was crazy as a shithouse rat. She claims I drove her to using. I suppose she’s right…at least part.”

  Having made this confession, he seems less imposing, a working man worn down by his day.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “Is that why you left LA?”

  “I blamed LA. That was a mistake. It wasn’t LA. It was this special poison we brewed for each other. We would have done it anywhere.”

  “So now you wish you were back in LA?”

  “There was a time I did, but now…I’m okay with it. Only thing LA had going was I could make more money there. Sometimes that seems important, but…you know. My head’s better off here.” He exhales forcefully and stretches his back. “I should get on home before Janine comes back at me. I don’t have the energy to deal with her tonight.”

  “She’s a trip, all right,” Sanie says.

  “She’s a good woman. Little man-crazy’s all.”

  He drops a dollar on the bar, pockets the rest of his change, and Sanie reaches out to restrain him, not wanting to be left alone, not yet inclined to return home, having a flashback to how she felt that rainy day in the coffee shop. And then she notices Jackson. He’s standing on the dance floor, right at the edge, about ten feet away, impeding the moves of a middle-aged couple doing their best to rock out to Springsteen. Will’s at his shoulder, playing Hyde to his Jekyll—that’s how Sanie sees them, as halves of the same person, the Bullard male. For an instant she wants there to be trouble. A seam of viciousness is exposed, and she wants Frank Dean, who’s become aware of Jackson, to wipe the floor with him; but as Jackson steps toward them, she says, “Go, go!” and pushes Frank Dean away.

  Frank Dean says, “You be all right?” and she says, “Yes, just go!” He hesitates, and she shoves him harder. “Please go!”

  Jackson says something as Frank Dean brushes past him and, when Frank Dean fails to react, Jackson throws a punch at his back that glances off the shoulder. Frank Dean stops, his face cinched with anger, but his eyes contact Sanie’s and he starts to walk away. Jackson wraps his arms around him from behind, trying to wrestle him down, and, as the Boss launches into the chorus of “Glory Days,” as the dancers mass together and give the combatants room, displaying the same fixity and exultation with which many of them watched the game, Frank Dean breaks free and nails Jackson with two body punches that double him over, grabs him by the hair, lifts his head, and cracks him in the face with such force that Sanie hears the blow land. Jackson sags, but Frank Dean hauls him upright and cracks him again. Jackson slides to the floor and rolls onto his back. The violence…It’s so mechanical, such an efficient destruction, it doesn’t seem representative of the passions involved. Frank Dean stares at Sanie for a long moment, his expression revealing regret, bitterness, anger, hopelessness, and then he bulls through the crowd toward the door.

  The crowd’s no longer interested in Jackson, who comes to his hands and knees, hanging his head; their attention is all on Sanie, waiting for her to show her colors, to assist Jackson or run after Frank. She’s not sure what she’s going to do, but she comes to her feet and, through force of habit if nothing else, kneels by her husband. Blood drips from his face onto the floor. Numbly, she puts a hand on his back, asks if he’s okay. Will tugs at Jackson’s arm, and the bartender is there, too, helping him stand. Together, they walk Jackson toward the door, but after a few steps he shakes them off and goes on his own, with Sanie following. The chorus of “Glory Days” begins its fade, and she can hear people murmuring, some doubtless asking what happened and others, eager to spread the story, saying how it was all on account of that Sanie girl, the one who used to stroll around town wearing next to nothing, that Frank Dean spilled the blood of Rayfield Bullard’s prodigal son.

  Though his left eye is swelling shut and his nose won’t quit bleeding, Jackson insists on driving the SUV back to the house. Sanie straps in tight beside him, worrying that he’s concussed and will have an accident. She tries to talk him into going to the emergency room of Edenburg’s tiny clinic, but he refuses to respond; in fact, he refuses to speak at all for the first minutes of the ride. The black miles roll by, their headlights rearranging the emptiness. Finally he says, “I’m not going to ask if you’re sleeping with him. I know you are.”

  Sanie presses her cheek to the cold window and says, “I’m not sleeping with anybody.”

  “Nobody you’re married to,” he says. “That much is certain.”

  Guilt nuzzles at her, but she’s too spent to indulge the feeling, and she’s not interested in continuing the argument.

  “I understand I haven’t always given you the attention you deserve,” he says. “And perhaps I deserve this. But your choice of men really disturbs me. First there was that little art fag back in Chapel Hill, and…”

  “Art fag? What are you talking about?”

  “Howard. Howard the art fag.”

  “He’s my friend! He helps me with my writing.”

  “I’m sure he does. I’m sure he tells you what a sensitive creature you are. I’ve read his emails. They’re infantile foreplay.”

  He swerves to avoid roadkill on the shoulder, a large bloody shape of indeterminate nature. A werewolf, Sanie thinks. Or a minotaur. Fabulous creatures are springing out from the South Carolina darkness, coming down to drink and die on the banks of the new River Lethe, State Road 226.

  “That one email about his influences.” Jackson continues. “That was my favorite. ‘Baudelaire spoke to my soul, and I believe he would speak to yours as well, Sanie.’ And there was one…I think it went like this.” He adopts a high-pitched adenoidal voice. “‘The dark slants of the Bard’s humor conjure magic from the most banal circumstance.’ I bet that one got you juicy.”

  Sanie’s guilt evaporates. “So what you’re telling me, if I was fucking a better class of guy, you wouldn’t object? I’ll start bringing them home for your approval.”

  “Do you think that would work? I don’t know. You seem drawn to certain types. If you were a car, you’d have a bumper sticker on your front that read, ‘I brake for art fags.’ And on the rear, ‘I heart Neanderthals.’”

  “So which category do you fall into?”

  “Husband,” he says. “I’m the one who earns your…your favors. But I don’t receive them except as grudging installments. Always late, always a few dollars short.”

  She has the urge to offer mock applause and, affecting a cultured British accent, say, “Wonderful metaphor! Well turned! And spontaneous, too! Born of the moment. Not at all practiced-feeling.” Yet she’s shocked by his comment—it’s the closest he’s come to admitting that something is wrong, and she wonders if now might be the time to get their problems out in the open. But the opportunity is lost. He’s on a roll, he starts taking her apart, telling her verities about herself that she’s unable to deny, spinning them to make her seem calculating, treacherous, not maltreated, and making himself out to be long-suffering, patient, a reasonable man—flawed, to be sure—tied to an unreasonable woman who doesn’t respect him, who’s ungrateful for the cushy life he’s provided. His words hold enough truth to confound her, to cause her to doubt once again her view of the marriage. Something, she thinks, must have happened early in life to bind them to this fate. Were their feet tied together with black string when they were babies and a cabalistic spell muttered? Were leaf-painted Dru
id mirrors holding their infant reflections shattered at the same instant, while they drooled happily in cribs miles apart? It can’t be simply a matter of human weakness. Some woeful magic must be involved, the union is that durable, its tensile strength enormous, like the stuff of an otherworldly element, one kept secret from the world in the Vatican vaults or buried in Henry Ford’s grave.

  He starts in on her father, not saying anything outright, but suggesting a link, questioning whether he might have provided the template for Sanie’s erratic character, listing his faults, his alcoholism, gambling, liberal causes, his trivial mind, his casual attitude toward his various responsibilities, going on and on until Sanie wishes for the accident she originally feared, Jackson passing out, the SUV arrowing toward the gas pumps at Snade’s Corners, the luscious finality of the impact, the gasoline erupting into a ball of flame bigger than the store it’s consuming.

  “Stop it,” she says. “Just stop it.”

  He glances over, a look of surprise on his battered face, illuminated briefly by the lights of a passing pick-up, and she sees what a job Frank Dean did on him: the left side of his forehead and cheek swollen along with the eye; a cut around the eyebrow, blood still trickling. She imagines his surprise is due to the deadness in her voice, which has surprised her as well, and she notes that he hasn’t mentioned Frank Dean other than obliquely in all this long rant.

  “We’re going to talk about this later,” he says. “And you’re going to listen.”

  SIXTEEN

  Midafternoon, the day after the bar fight, Jackson’s sequestered in the study, the promised talk has not materialized, and Sanie’s drinking vodka straight from a plastic jug she bought at Snade’s. Not drunk, but getting there. She’s standing naked in front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom, an oval mirror set in an antique frame of cherrywood gone dark with age. She turns in profile, examining the jut of her breasts, thinking that they’re still firm and high enough to pass the pencil test—she looks around for a pencil to place under a breast and see if it falls. Finding none, she has another drink and examines her rear end. Cellulite-free. On the whole, a top-notch butt. Cute, yet sufficiently full and womanly.

 

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