I drew how the red ketchup looked on the black pavement—how the rain diluted it into thin, wavery red water. It turned the blacktop burgundy in the night.
When I glanced at my watch I gasped. I’d been gone for hours. I ran back down Cota Street as fast as I could. I was breathless when I rounded the curb. I looked down the alley. But it was the darkest part of night, and I couldn’t see. I sensed movement and eyes on me—a fluttering of something outside our bedroom window. But when I came closer there was only the dumpster and a mangy alley cat who cowered. The carpeted stairs of the building were lumpy and cigarette-burned. The walls were a blur as I jumped the steps two at a time with adrenaline pumping through me. I burst into the apartment and saw Jimmy James sleeping safely. I hunched with my back to the door and began quietly sobbing. I felt sure I was going crazy. Jimmy James, who had never seen my tears, jumped up in terror. He instinctively pulled his boots on. The sound of broken glass filled the room. On the floor was a plain, black rock among the broken shards of glass. A cold wind gushed through the hole. Raindrops splattered the windowsill.
Timothy screamed.
I pulled the toddler to my chest in the dark of the bedroom and whispered to him. I shut the door.
“Fuck this neighborhood!” Jimmy James shouted from the windowsill. “Fuck all of you!” He threw the window open in frustration and crawled out onto the fire escape in his boxer shorts. The glass cut his hands, and he bled. He looked down into the alley and slid down the ladder. He cursed all the way to the street but found no one. Whoever threw the rock was fast and wily—slinky and evasive.
He was shaking from head to foot when he finally came back up the front steps of the building. Too angry to calm down. Timothy had gone back to sleep easily. Jimmy James wanted to drive to Brady’s right that second.
That’s when I pulled him to me and begged him not to go. I reminded him that nobody was there but Annie. Just this once, I wanted him to stay with me in our twin bed. That’s when he remembered I’d been crying. The rock stayed on the carpet while he kissed my hair and asked me questions. But I couldn’t answer. It took a long time. His blood dried on my neck. I fell into an exhausted sleep.
But the Man from Angel Road remained unnerved. He knelt to pick up the rock while I tangled in the sheets. He examined it more closely. His fingertips were immediately smudged with dark red—wet with human blood less fresh than his own. He shrugged and threw it back out the window. He taped a blanket over the hole to stop the breeze.
25
GAS STATION BODY
Kat hid in the bushes and watched Jimmy James get in his truck and leave the little red car. She went in the back door of the trailer. She called Duane at the tattoo shop downtown where she knew he’d be. He jogged down Preacher’s Slough Road in his ragged combat boots. His mind picked up a radio station all its own. The voices buzzed and competed with each other. It had been three weeks since he’d slept. He went through Brady’s open back door. He didn’t show his front teeth to Kat because they were brown rotten spikes. Kat and Duane smoked meth in the living room. Joey was still in Alaska. Fitz was at work at the gas station. Joey had sent Brady his rent money along with a letter to us all that said he’d made good money but the girl selection left much to be desired. The envelope with the letter and money was sitting on the kitchen table. Kat took the bills and stuffed them into her pocket. Duane and Kat lit candles. Annie didn’t move from Brady’s bedroom. She was a lump under the covers and an occasional low moan.
Duane was hoping for something later. He was hoping to revisit Kat’s gas station body—and maybe explore Annie’s, too. He thought of Kat’s flesh that was always open—that took credit cards. He hadn’t seen her in a long time. The meth made him stiff. His mind raced with thoughts of Kat’s glazed eyeliner eyes. Her cigarettes. Her red-brown pubic hair. The fact that Annie Kiss was so woozy and unprotected.
Kat told Duane everything he’d been waiting to hear. She told him who she’d seen Jimmy James with in Bremerton, where they lived, and how they had to be stopped. They smoked more meth. Duane was very much alone aside from Kat. And being alone scared him. Even if Stiv hadn’t gone to prison, he wouldn’t have hung around much longer. Duane thought about the Man from Angel Road. How he had the nerve to walk upright. The fourteen-eye oxblood boots. Duane had a bag of marijuana and he pushed it across the table toward Kat. She found a pipe in her purse. They got high quickly—as if they had no future. They drank all Brady’s beer and Fitz’s Jack Daniel’s. The alcohol affected them little.
“We have to clean!” Kat told Duane suddenly. She threw Brady’s leather gloves at Duane. She put rubber gloves on her own hands. He didn’t understand but obeyed her by sliding on the leather gloves. They cut up pieces of the carpet to tape onto the edges of the table. They rearranged the furniture so that all the chairs faced east. They straightened every picture with a level. They talked and talked and didn’t listen.
Finally, Kat stopped amid her preparations. Everything kept glaring at her—nagging.
She couldn’t forget her original plan. She tried to concentrate. She lay down desperately with her face on the mutilated carpet. “Get the money!” she yelled helplessly at Duane. She beat her fists against the wall. They were running out of time. Her words dribbled out like the drool after vomit. “We’ll need all the money!” Duane didn’t understand. She was thinking of Mexico.
Kat’s eyes were dry and red. She was losing it. She went into Brady’s bedroom and pawed through his nightstand drawer. Duane followed and thought angrily about Jimmy James. How Kat was the one thing he had that Jimmy James didn’t. Duane pulled Kat to him and squeezed her body. He smelled her cheap perfume. Her cigarettes. He leered at Annie in the bed and squeezed Kat harder. When he dug his pelvis into her she clawed at his face with her nails. “What are you? Stupid?!” She spit on him and kneed him in the stomach. It knocked the wind out of him, and he crumbled. After a few seconds he rolled over and stared at the ceiling. Kat found all the money from Brady’s bedroom drawer and shoved it into her pocket.
Duane wanted to be somewhere else. He wanted to feel good and in control. He reached weakly for Kat’s leg. He finally remembered the cabin by the lake, the happy little wife, the stream where he caught fish. “Will you marry me?” he asked Kat with his whole soul ready.
“No!” Kat screamed at him in exasperation and kicked his skull. He curled up again. This time in real anguish.
It was the first time she had ever told a man no, and it felt strange. The word cut out everything else in Duane’s mind. It made him want her even more. He sat up dizzily. “I’ll build you a cabin,” he started out, and the words drifted off. He really wanted Kat to see what he was seeing.
Kat lifted the mattress and inhaled excitedly. “It’s here!” she shouted with her bright yellow gloves on.
Annie sensed the movement and tried to sit up. “What the fuck is going on?” she whispered hoarsely.
Kat showed Duane the .45—the 1911 with the pearl pistol grip. Duane got angry. He was no fool. His mind swirled around the smell of peat mulch and marijuana seedlings. He didn’t want to remember.
He thought instead of Kat’s swastika tattoo, her glazed eyeliner eyes, her cigarettes, and her red-brown pubic hair. Her dirty gas station body. She was like an animal. He had to hold her captive underneath him—hold her so that she couldn’t move—so she would never go away again. He had to teach her a lesson about stealing. He looked at the gun angrily.
That’s when Annie gave a terrible fight. A fight that knocked down my paintings and tore holes in their flesh. Bite marks and screaming. Two black eyes on Kat’s face. A sore scrotum for Duane. She got as far as the dirt lawn before the front porch. Where she and I had arranged those black rocks.
Kat finally held her down, and Annie’s teeth were broken. A two-by-four lay discarded. Blood gurgled into the rocks through a broken jaw. Annie was no longer conscious. Kat talked quickly while she had the chance. It had to be Duane who pulled the trig
ger because she wanted to watch. They didn’t have much time. It would make her want him—to see him do that. Kat lit up her crack pipe again. Duane’s thoughts pulsed with sounds and colors and whispers. Annie lay close to death.
“They’ll never know the truth,” Kat told him assuredly. It was getting late.
Annie didn’t move. She was still and cold then hot and shaking on the hard-packed earth. She moaned softly—a mountain of strength. Duane looked down at the gun in his hands. It was a pretty revolver. He thought the explosion would redeem him—make him worthy. He thought the blast would release him, clean away all the debris and confusing feelings—the voices. He pictured himself as the king of Cota Street—everyone finally giving him the respect he wanted. With Kat as his queen.
Annie’s last moments were subdued, sick, and sleepy. She was already drifting away with the smell of burnt methamphetamines.
Kat slipped her hand in Duane’s pants. Her fingers struggled blindly. She felt him there and smiled coyly. She went back into the trailer with an axe and hacked at the lockbox bolted underneath Brady and Annie’s bed. She came back to stand beside Duane still holding the loaded gun.
“I have to, don’t I, Kat?” he squeaked, and she nodded.
The blast did nothing that Duane had imagined. Instead of wiping clean all the curses, memories, and bright images, it pushed them closer to him until they all screamed at once. He gasped in terror at the sight of Annie’s terribly mutilated body. He started shaking. The blood drained out of him. He wanted to distance himself from the dead girl and the live one. He looked up at the white trailer, and wished it was his. That he had good friends like Brady Robbins. Duane’s knees were weak. His flesh dried up and disappeared beneath him. He sat down. In a puddle of his own regrets. They fell out of his head—scurried around his feet. Faster and faster. They chased one another. Until he could see nothing else—just a whirlwind of hopeless thoughts. And then everything stopped. And the silence jarred him. All he could think about was how he hadn’t really meant any of it. But it was too late.
Kat shivered in the cold wind that blew. She watched the snot and tears drip off Duane’s red and swollen face. He suddenly looked very young. The warm saltwater wet the rocks—made them obsidian. Duane dropped the gun and started jogging.
Kat bent down and scooped up a Sol Duc River rock and the .45. She ran after Duane—picked her way carefully through the dark clear-cut. They went back to the tattoo shop. Kat ran recklessly down Cota Street. She came back without the bloody rock. Duane woke someone and paid them to borrow their vehicle. They drove all the way up into the hills in a minivan. He threw the gloves out the window somewhere along the way.
Duane parked at his mama’s trailer. There was no electricity again. He avoided his family and went straight to the fields his father once farmed. Kat followed him guardedly past the shootin’ car. They were in the woods now. Deep in a place Duane knew well. They crossed a stream that trickled over shiny rocks. A barred owl hooted. Kat had never seen Duane so serene. He had sex with her absentmindedly and walked away. She scurried to put her clothes on and run after him. He had taken the gun.
Duane crawled over a stump pile covered in blackberry vines. Kat had trouble following him. She called for him to wait but he didn’t listen. Her foot was stuck between two roots. She twisted her ankle and scratched herself on the vines. She felt herself being left behind by the only human being who had ever cared whether she lived or died. “Duane!” she was getting scared now. The meth was wearing off some.
She thought about his marriage proposal and her stupid reply. She was sorry. She began crying for the first time since she was eleven. Big, built-up sobs. Earth-shattering, body-breaking tears. She had trouble gulping air. She hid her face in her elbow. She finally thought of her mother. Her whole body convulsed. She choked on her emotions and yanked at her leg. She cursed her tattoos. She didn’t know what they meant. Or why she had done anything that she had done.
Kat looked to where Duane had gone and saw a square of cleared land. He was standing in the middle on the freshly harvested earth. It was brighter there where the moon found him. With all her strength she parted the roots and slid her foot out. Her leg was gouged and bleeding.
Duane looked up at her. Even though she didn’t want to, she met his inharmonious gaze. He looked right at her. Locked straight into her pupils. With the gun raised to his head. She saw him close his eyes first. Heard the gunshot second.
Duane’s mama sensed the echo but closed her mind to it. She sighed in relief when she heard the minivan start up and leave. She rose to make her biscuits shakily in the early morning darkness.
At the first gray of dawn, she covered her hair with a navy blue scarf. She walked down to the marijuana field and found her son. She’d been expecting this. Or something close to it. She thought carefully of the television crews. And the reporters with notepads. And the months of work she’d put into those fields.
She picked a spot south—underneath a massive cedar that fell and was rotting. She buried him there. With a love nobody else knew. She prayed over his body. She buried him deep.
26
MEAT FOR NADINE
The morning was cool and steamy before they found Annie. After Brady came home.
Before they arrested Jimmy James.
I huddled against a tree in the Skokomish unit—bare arms to my ragged chest—the boredom biting into me. I’d been leaning against the tree for quite some time. Hours. Since sunrise. Not as patient as Jimmy James. Something was wrong. The waiting piled up. I bit my lip. I wanted to sit, but when I was sitting I wanted to stand. I was making too much noise. Although I had slept, I had not rested. That morning I had washed myself in scent-blocking soap, my clothes in odorless detergent. I was trying not to stare at Jimmy James’s back, in order to give him privacy. He knew when I was looking even if he couldn’t see me. I saw chanterelles growing under some Doug fir. I would remind Jimmy James to stop there on the way back.
The herd came all at once. They appeared from behind trees and evaporated into bushes.
They floated down from the sky—their stinky, animal odor filled up my nostrils all at once. Their cries surrounded us.
I watched the arrow leave the camouflaged hunting bow—arcing high—a strong, loud absence of sound as it hit the animal’s flesh. Behind the foreleg. A solid shot.
The large animal took a short time to die. We waited where we stood. We did not chase her. We watched the bushes where she disappeared in her death-run. We tracked her forty yards—followed traces of bright, bubbly lung blood and broken salal. Jimmy James’s boots churned up no leaves or dirt out of a strong, hard-learned habit. The elk lay on the ground—a fat doe. Doe meat is more tender, he’d said that morning. Her once-heaving sides were still.
I watched him mouth a personal, silent prayer to some nameless and cruel god. He gutted the animal with respectful hands—dove deep into the cavity of the body. He threw the truck keys to me and told me to go get his brothers. I left him while he finished. He would need all of us to help drag the animal to our truck. I stopped before I entered the thick tree line and turned around. I watched him on the grass alone with the elk carcass. I worried for him. I thought of cougars—their large, slinky bodies and silent paws. He worked methodically and easily. His arms were crimson. The blood turned dark as the air hit it. His bald head bowed for a moment. The steam rose up around him. He stayed there—motionless. I wondered if he was thinking of the meals we could have now. He looked so old sitting there. I had a sudden thought that I should turn around and go back to him—that I didn’t have as much time as I once did. But I started moving again. I hurried away with my hands in my pockets. I drove to Angel Road.
I pulled up in the driveway and saw her. Nadine Blood: a Scorpio. As complicated as the prairie wind. Drastic and changing. Lofty and intimate—filled with hail and a hot, dry heat.
Nadine Blood: who asked little. Nadine Blood: who gave much. The first love of the Man from Angel R
oad. She lived in a brown single-wide with an ornate jungle garden climbing energetically around it. Her sons and Lupita lived with her. They helped her keep it up. There was much work to do—always. There was a small, shady pond and a whitewashed shed. Wet laundry hung by the woodstove to dry. Timothy was throwing rocks into the pond and squealing when the water splashed. “Gam!” he kept yelling excitedly at Nadine—wanting her to look. “Gam!” Pointing his chubby fingers.
I walked up behind him. Said his name softly so as not to scare him—didn’t want him falling into the water. He turned and saw me. “Yee ah!” he yelled my name in a high-pitched voice. He spread his arms wide. I hugged him to my heart. I had bundled him in warm blankets early that morning. I had warmed up the truck before strapping him into his car seat. I held on to him for a moment just to smell him—feel him breathing—his black hair pressed against my nose.
I told him, “We can eat now.” Nadine scowled. Her son shouldn’t be out there alone. He should have taken his brothers instead of me.
Jimmy James took me because I’d wanted to learn. Nadine sensed the strange energy. She shook her head. She knew the problems of her firstborn ran deeper than hunting accidents. Nothing sat right. She stood with her pitchfork stuck in the soil—her elbow leaning on it—staring right through me.
Sagging grapevines hung heavily on a trellis. A split rail fence zigzagged around the apple, cherry, pear, and plum trees. Her porch held a spinning wheel and a kiln. There were bags of wool and clay. I saw her pottery wheel, pots she’d made and fired that were ready to sell.
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