Bitter Sun

by Beth Lewis

  But as I passed the alley by the liquor store, a block away from Westin’s, someone grabbed me by the collar, threw me into the alley wall.

  I stumbled back. ‘Hey …’ I said, then looked up.

  A sneering grin. Pink cheeks. Pink lips. Light ginger hair.

  Darney Wills.

  A sharp stink of alcohol came off him, out of his skin, in his breath. The red of his letterman jacket was dark, stained, the threads fraying at the seams, the white sleeves now a dull grey. He’d graduated but still wore the letter. Look at me, it said, this rotten jacket means I Am Somebody.

  ‘Little Johnny Royal,’ he said, voice sharp, not slurring drunk like I’d expected. ‘What’s a freak like you doing here?’

  ‘Leave me alone, Darney,’ I said, stepped to the side to pass him, get out of the alley, into the relative safety of the street. He blocked me. A giant barrier of fat and muscle. I looked down, don’t make eye contact, don’t provoke it.

  ‘You want a drink?’ he said, held up a flat bottle of bourbon. He wasn’t old enough to buy it, but when you’re the mayor’s son and the mayor’s knee-deep in the filth of the town, not much is out of reach.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said, sidestepped again. He did the same.

  ‘How’s your sister, freak?’

  I looked up, met those glassy eyes, thought about clawing them out. I tried to push past him, but it was like pushing against a rotten tree. It gave a bit, a slight lean, then crack, snap, break, and I’m in splinters on the ground. Darney tripped me, caught the back of my neck and slammed me down onto the ground. Grit in my eyes, in my mouth, grinding against my cheek. I saw someone walk past the end of the alley, pause a second, then hurry along. I wanted to scream.

  Darney pushed my head into the stone. His sweating fingers slithered in my hair.

  ‘I’ll go find out how your sister is. Pretty little bitch, really blossomed,’ he said. I could hear the drool in his voice.

  ‘Shut up,’ was about all I could manage.

  ‘She’s a sweet piece though, ain’t she?’ He let out that thick hurr hurr laugh. ‘She as easy as your ma? Ain’t a dog in Larson not had his day on that.’

  I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you. Rage, all over me, all through me, like hellfire swallowing up a Bible.

  ‘Reason I asked you here for this meeting,’ he said, his voice turned mock serious like when his father gave town speeches. ‘I have a message for you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have a friend, see, well more a … client, and you do not want to fuck with him, do you get me? You’ve been screwing around with his daughter and he ain’t pleased. Little bitch wouldn’t tell him at first who she’d been seeing and who’d been creeping around his house but he got it out of her, eventually. You know who I mean, freak?’

  Mr Wakefield. Mr Wakefield knows about me and Gloria. That night, all I’d heard, all it meant, came screaming into the front of my mind. My body went rigid, cold. I tried to nod.

  Darney’s face lowered, a few inches from my ear. ‘He knows you were there that night. Knows what you heard.’

  Fear surged, made my bones, my muscles, my eyes ache.

  ‘He told me to threaten you, say he’d break every bone in your pussy body, but I told him that wouldn’t be enough for a freak like you. You’d piss your pants and cry it all out to Samuels or that whore mother. So we came up with a different motivator.’

  His knee pressed down on my back, blasted all the air out of me. I sucked in dust and grit, felt my tears pooling against my nose, hot blood on my cheek.

  ‘You tell anyone what you heard, you tell anyone about our visit today, and he’ll rip you apart, freak. He’ll wreck the one thing you love most in this whole crappy world. Your pretty piece-of-ass sister will be all his, and you saw what happened to the last girl he took a shine to. You say nothing and he won’t touch a hair on her head. You get me, faggot? You understand what I’m saying to you?’

  I was blind. White blind with hate and rage and fear and I couldn’t move but to nod. Yes. I understand you. I understand Mr Wakefield. But my brain wouldn’t process it, what it all meant. Gloria. Jenny. Mary Ridley. Inside me, the maelstrom howled and I couldn’t breathe.

  ‘He won’t touch her if you keep your mouth shut, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on Jenny from now on, you get me, freak?’ Darney leaned closer to my ear so I could feel the heat in his breath, his stink on my cheek.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll break her in, gentle like. I’ll even leave you some after I’m done. I know how close you two are.’

  I found my voice. Some of it. This I could fight, this threat of his, this disgusting image. This I could process and understand. Everything else disappeared.

  ‘Leave her alone.’ I strained against him, useless, weak, I couldn’t move. ‘Don’t touch her! Don’t you dare!’

  He ground my face harder. ‘Or what?’

  A gob of his spit hit my temple. But it was acid, burning into my skin, through my bones into my brain. I thrashed and bucked, the birds filled my body and tried to lift me. Everything I had in every muscle unleashed and he, that fucker Darney Wills, just laughed. Laughed. Then I was free and he was standing and I was lying in the alley, yelling like a kid lost in a tantrum.

  He kicked me in the side. All my screaming stopped. My vision filled with red and black and red again. My guts felt like they would erupt through my mouth if I only opened it.

  ‘See you soon, freak,’ he said, moving away, a sound like he was unscrewing the bottle of bourbon. ‘Tell Jenny I said hello.’

  I lay there for I don’t know how long waiting for the pain, the nausea, to pass. Nobody helped. A kid just got beaten two foot off Main Street and nobody was helping. What had happened to my town?

  Then arms around mine. Pulling. A soft voice I knew.

  ‘You okay, John?’ Frank said. ‘What happened?’

  I fell onto him, arms over his shoulders, hung there for a moment.

  ‘All right, you’re all right,’ he said, warmth in his voice. Warmth I desperately needed. I pulled away from him, clutching my side, wiping my face of the spit. Frank pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to me.

  Tell him, John. He can help.

  No. Not him, not anyone. I was too afraid that I might say the wrong thing, put Jenny at risk. So I told him Darney jumped me, beat me up for calling him a draft-dodger.

  ‘That little shit,’ he said. ‘Darney has always been a mongrel, just like his father.’

  I almost asked the questions squatting inside me. What have you, Mr Wakefield and Mayor Wills got going on with Bung-Eye Buchanan? Mr Wakefield killed Mary Ridley, didn’t he? Did you know? Did it happen in your basement? What do they have over you?

  But I didn’t ask. I could’ve. Should’ve. But the way he helped me, pulled me up, held me for just a moment like a real father would, I couldn’t say a word. I didn’t want to know the truth about him. It was all too much right now, after Darney, after the threat, after what he said about Wakefield. Oh God. Gloria. If she found out, it would kill her.

  I handed back the handkerchief.

  ‘You keep it,’ he said, smiled, checked the red graze on my cheek. ‘Don’t worry about boys like that. They don’t grow up, they just get older. You’re meant for better things than this place, John, you mark my words. You’ll get out of this town one day.’

  I matched his smile, felt a bubble of something grow up inside my chest. Pride, maybe, that Frank thought so much of me. He was a balm. A tonic. I felt my heart slow under his gaze. Felt myself return to some degree of control.

  ‘All I want is to make a good go of our farm,’ I said, my voice weak and strained. ‘One day it’ll be the biggest in three counties.’

  He nodded along. ‘And how is Jenny? I hear she’s doing all right in school.’

  I flinched at her name, Darney’s words ringing in my ears.

  She’s safe unless you talk, John, so keep it quiet.

  Bu
t Wakefield killed Mary Ridley. He did it. He did it. What do I do with that information? What can I do?

  Justice for Mary Ridley or safety for Jenny? That’s an easy choice, when you boil it down, isn’t it, Johnny boy?

  ‘John?’ Frank’s calm voice cut through my panic. ‘John, I asked after Jenny, she doing okay?’

  ‘She’s just fine,’ I said. I think I said. I didn’t hear my voice but he responded.

  ‘Good,’ he nodded, smile wide. ‘Good, that’s good.’

  A few seconds of silence. Awkward and too long. I was screaming inside.

  ‘Thank you, for helping me,’ I said, then I laughed through the ache in my ribs. Laughing cures all ills, John Royal, my momma used to say, and turns prying eyes away from you when you need it.

  I smiled, forced it through numb cheeks. ‘Why is it you’re always around just at the right time?’

  ‘I suppose the good Lord sees to it you and I come together at times of need, which is fine by me. You’ll always have this,’ he patted his shoulder, ‘should you need it.’

  Then he clapped my arm. ‘Watch out for Darney, okay? He’s an ape but his father has clout. Just you and Jenny stay out of his way.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said and my throat seized at her name. Enough clout to be involved in a murder and have no questions asked. Maybe even to cover one up. What could I do against that kind of power?

  Frank said goodbye and made a joke about wishing him luck with the ladies of the Gardening Society, then he trotted down the street away from me.

  I forgot all about the chocolate pie to cheer up Jenny. My cheek stung and my jaw ached from being pressed into the ground. I told myself I slipped, grazed my cheek and hit my side on a rock. Darney Wills never happened, the truth about Mary Ridley’s killer never happened, the threat never happened. At least I knew Frank hadn’t killed her. He did something but not that. Frank was still a good man. He’d soothed me, salve on a burn, but the damage and the hurt was still there, mixed in now with anger at Darney. The things he said about Jenny, the fear, oh God the fear, is she really safe? Will she ever be in this town? Then a different anger bubbled up at allowing Gloria’s father to get away with murder, at this horrible sword hanging over Gloria’s head, this secret I could never, ever tell.

  But only Jenny mattered, keeping her safe, keeping her away from Darney and Mr Wakefield, and hoping to God nobody ever found out the truth about Mary’s death, else it could all come back to me, back to Jenny.

  I don’t know what time it was when I got home but it couldn’t have been much past noon. I passed the mound of rotten corn, buzzing with blackfly and wasps. My soiled clothes were under there somewhere, buried but still there, right outside my house. Shame coursed through me remembering that night at Gloria’s. I’d burn it, today, I decided. Enough of the disease and infection, enough of the dead ground beneath being pocked and infested with maggots and beetles. I wanted to destroy something. I wanted to unleash all that anger Darney and Eric and Wakefield had put in me and seeing that mountain of rot was like the world holding up a mirror of my mind. I’d burn it out of me, burn out Darney’s words, burn out the images they put in my head, burn out Wakefield’s threat. That mound was the last thing Eric did, the last part of him remaining, and I’d clear it. That’s what Jenny would need, remove all reminders, reset her home to a pre-Eric state, keep her mind free of everything else, free of that dagger hanging over our heads.

  I strode inside to find the long kitchen matches Momma had for when the stove didn’t light, but as soon as I stepped foot into the house, something felt wrong.

  The pain in my side and cheek evaporated.

  Silence. The record Jenny had been playing when I left had stopped. Joni wasn’t wailing any more. Momma wasn’t snoring any more. Then a hum came from the family room.

  ‘Momma?’ I said. She sat on the edge of her armchair, bent double in jeans and a yellow shirt, painting red onto her toenails.

  She didn’t look up. ‘You and your sister will have to fix your own lunch. I’m going out.’

  Her voice was thick and tired, I wasn’t sure if from sadness or the drink, maybe both. Her hands trembled slightly but the nail polish was perfect.

  ‘Where’d you two go?’ she asked, dabbing a touch of scarlet onto her pinkie toe.

  The word struck me. Two.

  ‘I went to the west field to check the corn,’ I lied. ‘Jenny didn’t come with me.’

  Then Momma looked up.

  She didn’t register the graze on my cheek. Her eyes were red where they should have been white, her pupils blacker than I’d ever seen. The skin around her eyelids was dry and pinched, like the salt tears had sucked all the moisture out of her.

  ‘She’s not in your room,’ Momma said, the sluggish tone sped up with worry, or anger.

  A drop of red polish struck the floorboards, looked like blood.

  I ran upstairs, flung open our door.

  Bed unmade. Drawers open. Clothes thrown everywhere. My clothes. Hers were gone. I rushed to the bed, ducked to look beneath it. Her backpack was gone. Her shoes and coat and sunhat, gone. The record player turntable still spun, but it was bare. The Joni record nowhere.

  ‘Momma!’ I screamed.

  That’s what had felt wrong when I got back to the house, a new, horrible emptiness. He’s got her, I thought, Darney beat me home and took her. Wakefield has her. But why would he pack her clothes? I didn’t know. Couldn’t figure it out. But it didn’t matter. My sister was gone.

  ‘Jenny’s not here.’ I ran downstairs. ‘She’s gone, Momma, Jenny’s gone, where’d she go?’

  I expected worry. I wanted her to spring into action, grab the keys, shout, let’s scour the roads and ask everyone in Larson if they’ve seen Jenny. I expected a mother. But when it came to Jenny, Momma never acted like I wanted.

  Her face changed. A deep, primal sneer came over her, in her eyes, in her lips, her cheeks, every part of her transformed.

  ‘That little bitch,’ she said, shook her head, clenched the bottle of polish so tight in her fist I thought it would shatter. Red spilled out onto the floor, across her foot, over her hands.

  She stood, trod in the pool, walked bloody half-footprints toward me.

  ‘You know what she’s done, don’t you?’ Momma said, right up close.

  Done? What could she have done? All I could think was, where, where, where, are you, Jenny?

  ‘Her and Eric have run off together.’ Momma’s sneer grew, showed her teeth, stained yellow and black from whiskey and cigarettes. ‘That little slut thinks she can steal my man. But I’ll show her, oh my, oh yes, I’ll show her what it means when a man takes notice.’

  I thought of Darney Wills, of Wakefield, a man taking notice, and wanted to hurl. A monster, uncaged, unchained, rushed into the back of Momma’s eyes.

  ‘She might just be—’

  ‘This is your fault,’ she snapped. Her hand, painted red, shot to the back of my neck, pushed my head down. Her mouth was at my ear, the smell of stale bourbon in my nose, specks of spit on my cheek. Shock gripped me harder than her nails, she’d never grabbed me like that, spoken to me like that, I felt tears burn my eyes.

  ‘You were meant to keep her clean,’ she spat. ‘That dirty girl needs to be kept clean and you were meant to do it. You’re useless, John Royal, useless, just like your deadbeat father, just like that pussy Eric. You’re no better than them.’

  She let me go but I still felt her nails digging into my skin. I didn’t know where to look, what to say, what to do. My heart galloped, thundering hooves kicked up panic and fear and left me gasping. Momma was speaking but the sound of my pulse was in my ears, blocking out everything else.

  ‘Momma,’ I said, a weak whimper. Too weak, I knew right after I said it.

  The back of Momma’s hand blasted across my cheek. I stumbled. Fell to my hands and knees. Then the pain and heat came, like a second hit, bam!

  Momma was a hurricane of red polish and tight jeans, all
rampage and chaos, spiked words and gnashing teeth. She spun away and I heard the metallic clink of keys, then the front door, then her bare feet on the hard, dry earth. The truck started up, roared out of the yard, screeching on the gravel road and then away.

  I stayed on my knees. The sudden silence was foreign. It was what my house would be without Momma or Jenny and I hated it. I wanted to run outside, hear the birds, feel the wind, but I didn’t dare move. What if Jenny came back and I wasn’t here? What if she didn’t?

  Momma would find her. Momma had to.

  But with Momma in this rage, I prayed she wouldn’t, at least not until she calmed down.

  Jenny could be on a bus to Washington by now, chasing Eric. Gone forever.

  Impossible. Jenny’s just upset, she’s not thinking straight and, besides, where would she get that kind of cash?

  My eyes went to the tacky, red footprints. Three toes and the ball of Momma’s foot. They led from the chair to me, fading with each step. A mess around the armchair. I thought for a second how bad it would look if someone, anyone, walked in. A boy kneeling on the floor, a welt on his cheek, something like blood splashed and trodden across the boards.

  21

  Momma didn’t come home for hours. I paced the house, never able to settle in one room. A thousand thoughts raced inside my head. Jenny’s dead. Jenny’s run away and gone for good. Jenny just wants attention. Jenny taken by Darney Wills to Gloria’s father. Her father. My fault. All my fault. Dig too deep and you dig up bodies. You dig up danger.

  Damn you, Jenny. Come home. She’s at the Roost, hiding in the Fort, she’s at the Backhoe, she got on a bus and could be anywhere, she’s trapped and screaming. I tried to think of something else. Watch the sun, John Royal, that’s the one thing you can count on, day in, day out, round and round the world it goes.

  The sun rose to its late summer peak and fell over the west field, turning the sky to old gold. I stared at it through the kitchen window. A flock of starlings danced far off beneath the sunset. At this distance, they were one small cloud, not individual birds, just a swarm of darkness floating and pulsing somewhere else.