In his sleep Dave muttered about hospitals and legs and gas and fire and tools and when he woke a half hour later, he felt stronger and started running his outstretched hands across the slick and warm packed earth of the tool shed floor, hunting for a tool—a crowbar or a lug wrench. Within minutes he stopped and slumped forward, let out a long sigh, and feathered his fingers to the side of his face. It was sore and swollen, the skin tighter now, but he had broken bones before, and he wasn't convinced that his cheek was broken. It wasn't numb. It was in flames.
Once he was able, he got slowly to his feet and dumped his head against his chest. When he did, the pain in his cheek exploded into a brighter pain for a couple of seconds and then eased off again. He could smell the gasoline and the shit just beneath that, a deep scent of manure.
More or less blind in the dark, the sounds from the house, the hurried sounds of people dealing with an emergency and fighting while doing it, had subsided. Dave pushed his arm out into the blackness and found the adjacent wall and worked his way to where he remembered the door was located. About midway down the door, running his fingers along the splintery surface, he found a bored out hole not big enough to squeeze his fist through. Dropping to his knees, he pushed his eye as close to the hole as his burning cheekbone would allow and made out a small light floating in the circle of black. As it grew larger and closer, the dead sound of footsteps became clear and he backed up on his hands, expecting the door to swing open. But instead, a voice, low and quiet, poured through the hole in the door.
"Dave.” A whisper, low and scared, trembling butterfly wings against the outside of the door.
Dave moved quickly across the floor and slammed against the door. The clapboard tool shack creaked and rocked slightly to the left when he did. A lantern tilted back and forth through the opening. "Let me out, please, let me out, please."
"Shhh, now be quiet, little Shannon. I can't let you outta there, boy. Don't you understand that? My boy's a laying in there with his legs needing chopped off and I can't take him to no hospital. Joe won't allow it. Just wanted you to know about Larry.” She stopped talking and the blackness returned as the lantern moved out of sight. He wanted nothing more than to just cry right there on the dirt floor. "Joe's mean, but you deserve this, you know that. You deserve whatever evil he pushes on you, little Shannon.”
The door to the shed slammed forward violently. For a few seconds there was silence, but this was followed by open weeping and footsteps returning to the porch and into the house.The last of those sounds had just started to grow faint when another set of
footsteps hit the back porch. Boots, hard against wood. Intent.
"Heya there, boy!” This was yelled well before anyone reached the tool shed, and then Joe Fenner was at the door. "I got this board over the door here and you ain't gettin' out. You hear me? I'm keeping you, boy. I gonna take your legs because you took my boy's legs. He told me what happened. Said you boys put him up to dropping off that fucking tipple out at Harper’s. You gonna pay for that. You gonna pay hard. The hardest.” His voice had became a hiss, a snake crawling toward the door.
It occurred to Dave with perfect clarity that Joe Fenner was lying. Larry would never have said that, even though it was closer to what could be the truth than anything else. Larry would have just said nothing like he always did after Joe gave him a good beating for nothing. Beat for nothing; says nothing. That was Larry. He was not a rat. Not even when it might help him in some way.
Dave didn't ask why they were going to keep Larry in his house instead of taking him to a hospital. He wanted to, but instead he just pictured Larry there inside the house, maybe strapped to the bed, crying and tears rolling down his face, probably with a cup of hard liquor on the table beside him. Take a drink of this, boy. It'll take the pain away. But it wouldn't ever take away the pain. They would have to take him to the hospital soon and Dave knew it.
At an incredibly deep level, Dave understood, after having been in the shed just a few hours, that this would be his opportunity to get away, whenever they left for the hospital. They would have to. They couldn't take care of him here with that kind of injury. And then, perfectly on cue, Joe Fenner hissed again through the hole in the door.
"You think we're taking him someplace, leaving you here on your own in that hot old shed without water and food, you got another thing comin', Shannon. We ain't goin' nowhere. We're going to stay right here. She's gonna take care of him—" He hooked his thumb toward the house, "—and I'm gonna take care of you."
Food and water. Dave hadn't even thought about food and water, and right now it wasn't food that was on his mind, but water, something wet. The heat inside the shed became more and more of an issue with each passing minute. The pain in his cheek subsided and the dryness in his throat grew worse. How long could a person go without drinking water? His grandmother, who lived to be one-hundred and three before dying in a nursing home, told him a person couldn't go more than a day. They'd die, she said, as sure as a flower will wilt into the ground and away from the sun. She had told him just like that, with the wilting and the sun and the dying.
Time lost value to Dave. He sat on the ground in the dark. His throat hurt and his cheek was no longer throbbing, but the pain was still there. From time to time, he put his fingers carefully to the side of his face, pushed and tested the pain. It was something to do.
Joe Fenner brought a pan of water from a long dormant dog house at some point, just as it was getting dark, and placed it about a foot from the door of the shed. Dave crouched close to the dirt floor and made out the dull silver pan, a baking pan that looked like the one his mother made biscuits in most mornings. He could just make it out. What could have been an hour earlier or ten minutes earlier, a skinny and beaten brown and yellow cat slinked past and stopped for a drink. He remembered the sound its tongue made while darting in and out of the water. The sound kept going through his head. He swallowed hard, felt and heard a quick click move across his Adam's apple and tried not to think about his parents looking for him. Surely one of the boys had told what happened. But maybe they hadn't. Maybe they were too scared and thought maybe he was hiding out and scared too. The last seemed the more likely possibility and the truth of this forced a sinking inside his chest.
Again, in his defeated way, he fell backward into the slatted walls of the shed. There was a snap and crack somewhere in the dark that startled him until he realized the sound came from the wall itself. Joe Fenner built the shed roughly but solid; a carpenter as well as a farmer, Joe made a small living at both. But the shed was old and the wood was dried and beaten from weather and age. Dave leaned back again, hard and fast and heard the crack again. It reverberated across the Fenner's back yard, interrupted the very early morning sounds from creatures waking up in the hills just beyond. Though risky, he kept shoving against the wall and made some progress. A couple more hits and he might knock a board loose and that would give him enough room to hook his fingers, get a good hold, and pull the rest of the rest out of the way. He'd get out one board at a time.
When the first board gave against his back, part of his side pushed through. He felt a stout piece of splintered wood pop through the skin along his side. He fell sideways onto the floor and clutched at himself with both hands. He pulled his shirt up and ran his hand across his side. He felt blood spreading under his palm, but no splinter, no piece of wood jutting out. Immediately, he started tugging at the boards on both sides of the new opening. He was gaining strength with each half inch of progress he made. The purple light of twilight was returning again, this time with the sunrise.
From a distance, he couldn't exactly tell how far, a rooster crowed a shrieking blast across the silence. Dave stopped then and sat down, breathing hard clicks into the muggy air. The screen door from the back porch creaked and smacked back into place. He closed his eyes and opened them when he heard the board across the door of the shed popped loose from its place. The first thing he saw was Joe Fenner's eyes through the
new opening. The eyes rested on Dave, deadpan and motionless, and then darted around wildly to examine the progress he’d made on the wall of the shed.
"Tell you what,” Joe said. “I'm gonna step over here and throw this old shed latch and I want you to try to jump out of there. I'm gonna leave the door open so you can do that very thing, cause then I'm gonna kill you quick. That's what she says I should do.” He hooked his thumb again toward the house the way he had the evening before. "So you just take a run for it when I go over there if you want. I'll kill you quick and then she'll be satisfied. You don't' take a run for it when I leave this door open, then I'm gonna make it slow and she won't like it, and if Momma's not happy ain't nobody happy."
He rubbed the gray stubble along his cheek, smiled, and then laughed a little. It was morning and he was feeling better it seemed. Larry must have been asleep and resting and, impossibly, it seemed things might somehow be okay. "Naw, I guess I'll lock it. I'd like it to be good and slow. I'll just tell her you were too scared to make a run for it. How's that sound? Fine. Yes, fine I think. Just fine."
He popped the door closed and stomped across the yard and picked up a fresh two-by-four. He stomped his way back to the shed and flung the shed door wide. Joe spun the board sideways in both hands and brought it down on Dave's kneecap. Like flashes of lightning, three more hits came across his legs and then a fourth across his left shoulder.
The pain shocked him in such a way that he could only spread his mouth wide and wheeze. He had once closed his finger in a car door while pumping gas for his dad. The door closed perfectly without a hitch. He stood a couple seconds looking at his hand caught in the door and thought how strange it was that the door had been able to close over his finger and then tapped calmly on the window and asked his mother to open the door. It hurt more later than when it happened. He figured this would be the same.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Joe's voice was whisper-crazed and mad and then the old man's hands were grasping the sides of Dave’s head. "See on that wall, scratched right above where you been peckin' and pullin' like some old woodpecker? You see that, them scratches there? That'll help you keep up with the day. Just count 'em down.” He pushed Dave back onto the floor and turned to leave, kicking the pan of water over as he did. He turned back around and ran his fingers through his hair, waking up more now, ready to face the day. "That's the way Larry got through it, I reckon. He's the one put most of 'em there. At least half."
Just before Joe Fenner closed the door, Dave had a second to look up again at the marks scratched into the boards. Jagged scratches made with a nail maybe or something sharp. Three rows of about ten or so it looked like.
In the dimness, Dave got to his feet and touched the wall. He ran his fingers over the dug out lines and thought of his face and how it was probably swelled. Then he thought of Larry standing where he was now, raking and scratching to make his marks.
Probably crying. Probably hurting. Probably scared.
He finished counting the marks.
Twenty-seven deeply grooved slashes.
On the porch Joe Fenner shook caked mud from his boots and slipped them from his feet. He bent slowly, plucked them up with three fingers, and placed them beside the door. Inside he removed his coat. Underneath was a set of long pajamas the color of freshly unearthed bone. He scratched at these as he went through the kitchen and into the bedroom.
Clara was still asleep, or if she wasn't she pretended to be. He would be hungry soon and if she continued to pretend then, he'd let her know it. For now he walked loudly to the side of the bed, sat down roughly, and dusted the dirt picked up from the hardwood floors from the bottom of his feet. He crashed back onto the pillow and steadied his breathing.
He stayed in bed for about five minutes, occasionally leaning over to pull the curtains on the bedroom window and look out at the shed. Finally he groped around for his watch on the nightstand, turned it into the weak morning light through the pulled back curtains and got out of bed. He tucked his feet into a pair of dusty brown wingtips without strings and clapped through the short hallway. Raking like an animal grooming he pushed his fingers through his hair and stopped at the doorway of Larry's bedroom.
Larry's labored and beaten snoring and sucking sounds filled the room. Short breaths and long grunts, and then the broken sucks of someone trying to breath without moving their ribs. Larry squinted his eyelids and tried to make out his father in the doorway, hoping to get a read on his mood. His arms were pinned at his sides and his legs bulged from under the covers, box-like from the splints. At last, Joe stopped looking at Larry and went to the bedroom window to peel the curtain back in his casual kind of way.
"Daddy?"
In the bed, Larry's arms were now folded across his chest. The fingers, long and trembling, were moving up and down like a piano player, up and down along the lining of the covers. Joe didn't say anything but took one step toward the bed.
"Daddy," Larry said again.
Joe pulled the covers back from Larry's legs and felt wind catch inside his throat. He pushed it up and out through his nose with a snort, then sniffed and looked away.
The legs looked bad. In some places there was black splotches and they were swelled, had swelled through the night, so bad that the bean rope he had tied the splints together with were drawn tight and cutting into all the bloat. The legs were going to have to be fixed and this just was not going to do.
"Can you cover me back up, Daddy? With the yeller flowers, can you cover me back up?"
Gibberish. Joe moved absently and tossed the cover back over the legs. "They'll have to run some rods through them things, ain’t no doubt."
He left the bedroom with Larry saying “Daddy” over and over again and heard his son start to cry when he passed through the doorway. Back in the living room Joe paused at a vanity mirror and pushed his hair back. With the tonic from the morning before still holding, it only took a few swipes to get things in place and then he went back to his bedroom. Clara had turned over on her back. She never slept on her back. She was pretending for sure.
"I'm gonna have to take him to the hospital," he said, going to a tiny closet at the foot of the bed. "Something ain't right and I know you're gonna want me to take him anyway if you get a look at the legs." He pulled on a pair of dark work pants and buttoned them with two long fingers while reaching back into the closet for a brown work shirt.
Clara swung her legs over the side of the bed and pulled her hair back as an afterthought. She hooked a plastic clamp to it so that it bounced up from the top of her head. Leaning over, she tossed back the curtain and eyeballed the shed.
"I wanted you to take him soon as he got here,” she said, looking down at her feet, rubbing them together and feeling the hard calluses on the insides of both her big toes.
"You'll have to watch close while I'm gone," Joe said. "I know it's what that boy's been waiting on out there. For us to leave so he can bust through that shit shack."
Clara Fenner stood up slowly from the bed and stretched her plump fingers outwards toward the walls of the bedroom. Loose skin swayed from her arms. "You go on and take Larry on to the doctor. Everything'll be okay here."
Joe's face stoned over, serious and demanding. “Don’t let that boy out. You hear me?”
"You think I lost my mind in my sleep last night? I ain't lettin' him go nowhere."
"You ain't lettin' him go nowhere," Joe repeated. "That right? You goddamn right you ain't lettin' him go nowhere. You goddamn right."
Dave stretched out across the dirt. Lifting his shirt, he flattened out so the cool packed ground touched as much of his skin as possible. But it wouldn't stay cool for long. He could already smell the heat working on the sides of the shed, the smell of hot wood heating up in the sun.
Earlier a door had slammed on the house and the sound of an old car cranking to life had filled the valley. The sound of footsteps across the porch followed that. Out the hole where a knob should have been he saw Joe Fenner stomp in
to the house. Soon he reappeared carrying Larry by hooking his forearms up and under the pits, clenching in on Larry's sides, pinching and clutching. Larry's face had been more than Dave could bear to look at, and he had turned away with only the dead-weight sound of Larry's feet being dragged across the porch. A short few minutes later, the car's motor revved two quick times and then burst into a roar that faded slowly away.
Now the heat had hit a high point. The backyard and house were quiet. She was inside, Dave knew that, but also knew there was little reason to expect any help with his plans. He had thought Clara might be helpful at first, but the reality was clear now. He pushed himself up and felt some of his old strength return. Stronger, feeling better, he pushed against the side of the shed and watched it saw and buckle with his weight. Immediately afterwards he dropped to his knees and jammed his eye to the door handle hole. Nothing. No movement from the house. He pushed again, dropped again, and this time saw Clara walk to a window of the house.
She was a big woman, not like Joe. It was plain that Larry inherited his size from his mother and her side of the family. Joe and his parents and grandparents, who had owned and worked this same poor land before him, were small people, short and skinny, but fierce and left alone due to a combination of meanness and meanness on top of that. Clara stood framed in the window. She leaned over and pressed her hands against the window, her features somehow dropped onto her face, sagging, unflinching.
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