Bitter Sun

by Beth Lewis

  I squeezed Jenny’s hand. Momma wasn’t acting like Momma and it scared me more than any monster.

  ‘Aw hell, Patty, these two can call me Eddie.’ Bung-Eye winked that glass eye at me and Jenny. ‘Or Dad, of course.’

  Momma gestured for Bung-Eye to sit at the table. As he walked, heavy on our floorboards, his black boots made chink-chink sounds like he was fitted with spurs. He wore blue jeans, faded and worn in over decades, and a dark orange shirt with a tight chequered pattern. I’d never been this close to Bung-Eye Buchanan. Never seen him in full light, when I wasn’t hiding or running or fearing for my life. His face was thin, dark hair flecked with grey, older than I expected, or at least, he looked it. Sunken, stubbled cheeks below one fierce blue eye. Small scar on his top lip. Another above his dead eye. Another curving around his left ear. He even wore an earring, a dull silver ball, nothing special but on him it was like a stud edging a leather trunk, practical, necessary.

  The red-blue Dodge Challenger crashed into my memory. Gloria’s father’s car. A payment to keep Mary Ridley’s family quiet. I know what you’ve done, Bung-Eye. I know what you are.

  Jenny nudged me. Her hand. I was crushing it in mine. I relaxed but didn’t let her go. Momma asked for best behaviour. Momma was smiling and happy and dancing and asked for best behaviour. Don’t let your momma down, John Royal.

  ‘Hello …’ My throat closed up, filled with cement at the thought of calling him Eddie or, I flinched, Dad. ‘… Mr Buchanan.’

  He nodded to me, cast his good eye over Jenny, lingered a moment too long, and took the chair at the head of the table, where Momma usually sat.

  A flurry of black feathers in my chest.

  Bung-Eye slowly pulled out the spare chair and put his feet up. Jenny and I watched, open-mouthed, terrified like standing on the tracks, watching the train come. Mud flaked off his boots onto the seat, onto the floor. And he stared. Right at me. His gaze was pressing against mine. He was waiting for me to speak, call him on it. Come on, man of the house, show me what you got. I didn’t, couldn’t. Best behaviour. He took a toothpick from the bowl on the table and started chewing on it, smiling, twisting the wood around his tongue, showing his tobacco-stained teeth, making himself right at home.

  ‘We eating sometime today, doll?’ he said, then leaned backward to Momma at the counter, spooning corn into a dish, and slapped her backside.

  She laughed. A fake laugh, like the girls in those old movies when the man in the tuxedo says they’re a real fox. I wanted to shout, who is this woman? What have you done with my Momma?

  Then I remembered. A dangerous, beautiful man, she called him. They were high school sweethearts. The bad boy and the beauty queen, together again, together at last. I clenched my jaw, bit my tongue, forced the bile back down my throat.

  She set down a bowl of mashed potato and the corn beside the chicken and danced back to the fridge for beer.

  ‘Dig in, honey,’ Momma said, twisted the cap off the bottle and handed it to him. He kept his eyes on me as he drank half in one breath.

  Momma came to the table, to the spare chair, to Bung-Eye’s footrest. She hovered a moment, waited, her smile cracking at the edges.

  Move. Move your damn feet. I looked from him to her to him to her. Move, you son of a bitch.

  ‘Eddie?’ Momma said, her hand on the back of the chair, trying to keep the bright, light tone.

  Bung-Eye looked up at her. A beat. A moment.

  He looked down at his feet.

  ‘Hmm, Patty-cake?’ he said. He squinted up at her, sharp smile on his lips, his finger tap-tap-tapping on the bottle.

  Momma’s hand tightened around the chair.

  My hand tightened around Jenny’s. I felt her heartbeat in her wrist.

  Another second. Two. Painful silence. Crackling air.

  ‘Come on now, you waiting for a signed invitation?’ Bung-Eye lifted his feet, dusted off the seat and pulled it out further so Momma could sit down. He even tucked it in behind her, like a real gentleman.

  Then he leaned close to her, across the table, and planted a kiss on her cheek, hard, so her neck bent awkwardly under the force. Her smile returned, fuller, stronger, than before.

  ‘It smells delicious, doll,’ he said, sat back in the chair. Momma’s chair. He flicked the toothpick on the floor like he was in a dive bar, then took the largest piece of chicken from the bowl. He ripped through the flesh with black teeth.

  ‘Fine, fine chicken,’ he said, mouth full of churning white meat. ‘From a fine, fine woman. You always were made for the kitchen,’ he licked chicken grease off his top lip, leaned closer to her. ‘And the bedroom, ey? Ey?’

  He winked his good eye at Momma and she flushed pink, took a piece of chicken for herself and told us to do the same.

  ‘Ain’t this just picture perfect? The four of us, just like an aw-thentic, God-fearing, all-American family, ey, Patty-cake?’ Bung-Eye grinned and finished off his beer.

  He got up, went to the fridge and took out another. He popped the cap and tossed it onto the sideboard. It skipped and fell onto the floor. He sniffed at it. The good eye went to me, to Jenny, to Momma. The milk-white busted eye didn’t move, but it was always looking. It was like a frosted window; blurred but it let me see the gears turning inside his head, setting all his pistons in motion. He looked at all of us again, whatever idea he had taking shape. I swallowed a mouthful of dry meat and waited, trembling, my pulse thumping like a countdown.

  Finally, he sat back down and took a piece of cornbread.

  ‘Patty, you getting that?’ he said, tore a bite, crumbs scattered the table, the plate, his shirt.

  Momma, halfway into a drumstick, said, ‘Don’t worry, hon, I’ll get it later.’

  Something changed in that moment. A shift in the air. Everything became electric, every movement, breath, chew and swallow, charged and ready to spark, set fire to the world.

  Bung-Eye dropped the cornbread. It hit his plate and the noise jolted Momma away from her chicken.

  I wanted to warn Momma and Jenny that Bung-Eye was coiled, ready to snap. That look on his face, that smug expression, it was the smile before the bite. I’d seen it before, right before he broke Rudy’s arm. His own son. If he could do that to his blood, what could he do to my momma?

  ‘It ain’t nice to eat when there’s garbage all over the linoleum, now is it?’

  The cap, the toothpick – his garbage, his mess. Pick it up yourself, get on your hands and knees and clean our floor. All my muscles seized, my brain froze, stuck between actions. Shout at him. Don’t shout at him.

  Best goddamn behaviour.

  ‘How about you, sport?’ Bung-Eye turned to me. ‘You gonna pick up that cap?’

  I met my momma’s eyes. A tiny, blinking nod. Not worth the fight, John Royal, that nod said. Go pick up the bottle cap. So I did, and the toothpick, and put them in the trash.

  Bung-Eye grinned, shook his head. ‘What a good lad you are, John, a good, good lad. You always do what you’re told?’

  Again, by reflex, I looked to Momma. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Bung-Eye scratched at the stubble on his cheek. ‘Well ain’t that something. Ain’t that just something.’

  I heard Rudy’s screams in my head. I heard the sound of his bones snapping under those boots. Get me out of here. Get me and Jenny away from him, oh please, God, let us go.

  ‘Jenny,’ I said, straightened my back, gave myself the extra half-inch in height. ‘You finished? We’ve got homework.’

  Jenny didn’t need to look to Momma for her answer. She pushed away from the table and took her plate to the sink. I was about to do the same but something in Momma’s expression made me stop. A crinkle in her forehead, slightly raised eyebrows, something in her eyes I didn’t remember seeing before.

  Sadness.

  Disappointment.

  The air rushed out of me.

  ‘Of course, baby,’ she said, soft, flat. ‘You go on then. Was … was the chicken good, Johnny?
You and your sister enjoy it?’

  A special treat. Her own recipe. Secret’s in the spices. It wasn’t a treat for him, not really, it was for us. She’d made a special meal for her babies. She wanted us to like him, not the other way around. My chest cracked open as if by a hammer blow. My heart fractured with it.

  Stay. Finish the meal. I looked at Jenny, waiting at the foot of the stairs, so timid and angry, her head wrapped in a scarf. Then to Momma, that sadness, that don’t leave me with him, John, look in her eye.

  Where do I go? Who do I choose?

  I’m sorry, Momma.

  I couldn’t sit with Bung-Eye and play house, pretend he hadn’t beaten my best friend on Christmas, broken his arm with his boot, looked at my sister like that. Couldn’t pretend he wasn’t involved in a girl’s murder.

  I went around the table to Momma and kissed her on the cheek, gently. ‘It was wonderful, Momma. You’re wonderful.’

  I lingered, breathed her in. Camel cigarettes, the smell of the kitchen, the food, the beer, but something else, a deep scent, a body scent, underpinned it all. Strawberry bath soap, sweet, ripe corn, and sour, whiskey-tainted sweat. That was Momma. She was still there underneath it all.

  ‘Night, Momma,’ I said then took a deep breath. Best behaviour. ‘Goodnight, Mr Buchanan.’

  ‘Sweet dreams, sport,’ he said, finishing off his second beer.

  I didn’t hide my distaste. His voice, his smell, his presence, were jagged in my home. He didn’t fit. A puzzle piece that doesn’t link up, no matter how hard you force it.

  ‘And sweet dreams to you, princess.’ Bung-Eye raised the bottle to Jenny, who flinched, took a step up the stairs away from him. His lip pulled up in a fishhook sneer and he winked at her. ‘Yes, ma’am, sweet, sweet dreams.’

  Then he laughed and I wished we had a gun because I would get it and load it and shoot him in that beautiful, dangerous face.

  The house shook that night with their fucking. The moans, the banging, the shouts from him, from her, first in the family room, then later in Momma’s bedroom, right below me and Jenny. It was never like that with Eric. Never so loud. So violent. We felt it through the floor, the rhythmic thud-thud-thud, every word, every grunt. I lay beside my sister, turned away from her, in the bed we shared and tried, God, I tried, to block it out. I tried not to feel it, like it was happening to me, by me.

  My hand slipped downward. Gripped. I tried not to imagine it, tried not to let those feelings surge through me, into me, through the floor, the walls, the bed.

  I bit my lip, clenched my fists, dug my nails deep into my palms. It was wrong. So fucking wrong. Larson called me freak, pervert. Maybe they were right.

  ‘When?’ Jenny said and her voice, its brightness, filled me with shame. My stomach, my chest, a rushing void. It sucked all the goodness out of me like an airlock opened in space. Whoosh, out into the blackness.

  ‘When what?’ I whispered. Too loud and she would hear the tremor in my voice, know its cause, call me freak too.

  The noise below carried on, quicker, louder. Thunder inside me, thrumming in my blood.

  The bed bounced, Jenny rolling over to face me. I knew her every movement, even in the dark. I dared not move, the growing shame turned my body to ice and her voice cut through it, melted it, took the dull ache in my groin away.

  ‘When do we leave?’ she said. ‘You always said we would. Remember?’

  She huffed over onto her back, made the bed frame creak. ‘I can’t stand it here. With her. I can’t believe she’d go with Rudy’s dad. He scares me. Did you see the way he looked at us over dinner? Ugh.’

  She shook her whole body as if to throw off his gaze.

  Their noise reached its crescendo, a great crash of voices and then nothing. Panting silence and a few seconds later a smell, smoky sweet, unmistakably marijuana, floated up through the boards. My blood cooled and slowed. The sick feeling eased.

  ‘John?’ Jenny sat up. I looked over my shoulder. Moonlight caught the white of her nightdress.

  ‘We’ll leave,’ I said, still on my side, away from her. She’d see otherwise. She’d see my horror.

  The room was an oven. Thick air, like breathing through steam, and it was only May. This summer would be the worst, I could tell. Maybe it would make history. Remember the ’73 heatwave? How could I forget? Worse than ’71 by a long shot. But we’d live through it. The heat, the new Pigeon Pa; we’d survive it, Jenny and me, but not by sitting still. Not by waiting it out.

  ‘He’s dangerous,’ her voice changed, the defiance replaced with fear. ‘I’ve heard stories. They say he’s been to prison and he killed someone while he was there. I heard he did it with his hands but they let him out because the guards were too scared of him to keep him locked up.’

  ‘Momma won’t let him do anything to us. She’ll protect us.’

  Jenny’s bitter laugh filled the room. ‘She’ll protect you. She’ll ignore me then tell me I was asking for it if he hits me,’ the laughter died. ‘Or worse.’

  I suspected she was right but it hurt to hear. Jenny always brought the devil out of Momma, made a tiny disagreement a hundred times worse with sass and back-talk, but Momma had gone too far when she cut off Jenny’s hair.

  I was tired of it and I had bigger fish frying on my grill. If living in Larson had taught me anything, it’s that people talk, even when they’ve got nothing to talk about, they’ll just go on and make it up. Keeping a secret is near impossible so it would only be a matter of time before the gossip mill churned and the truth about Wakefield and Mary Ridley flowed out. Then Jenny would suffer. I had to make sure we were long gone when that happened.

  ‘I’ll protect you. And we’ll leave. Soon. I promise,’ I said. ‘Now go to sleep.’

  23

  The next morning Bung-Eye was gone and Momma looked tired. She moved slowly, like she was made of glass and afraid of breaking.

  ‘Momma?’ I sat beside her at the kitchen table. She sat in the spare chair, Bung-Eye’s footrest.

  ‘Yes, baby?’

  She tapped a Camel from the packet on the table. Bung-Eye smoked Camels, Momma smoked Lucky Strikes. Rudy would steal one or two packs from his dad and we’d smoke them behind Gloria’s house. We used to. That suddenly felt like a different person sucking on those joes. We hadn’t done that for months. The picture in my head was sunshine through leaves, smiling, laughing faces, shared secrets, plumes of blue smoke rising into the sky. A lifetime gone, in just a year or two. Could I even count Rudy and Gloria as my best friends any more? We had barely spoken in months. If I did this, what I was about to do, what I was about to tell Momma, we might never speak again. But I had no choice. This was the only way I could think of to get Jenny away from Wakefield and Darney Wills.

  ‘What is it?’ Momma said.

  ‘I … I’ve been thinking,’ I faltered. Could I do this? Should I? You’ll be back to take over the farm one day soon, Johnny, you don’t need a college degree for that, just a strong back and a good head on your shoulders.

  Momma snapped her fingers in front of my face. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  A flash of monster. The foreign smell of Camels in the house. The doubt receded.

  ‘I want to quit school,’ I said and Momma’s eyebrows shot up her forehead.

  ‘You do?’

  I nodded.

  She struck a kitchen match and lit the joe. ‘Why?’

  ‘To help with the farm and the bills. Al Westin has work for me and when I’m not there, I’ll be here.’ Stand firm, lie well. Your hands and eyes got to match what’s coming out your mouth, Momma always said, and if you do it right, even you won’t be able to tell the difference. I hated it but it wasn’t bad lying, I told myself, it was burning the chaff to let the new seed take. All for the greater good.

  ‘I want to be the man of the house,’ I said. ‘I want to look after you and Jenny so you don’t need someone like Mr Buchanan, you’ll just need me.’

  Momma didn’t
slap me or tell me Bung-Eye was a good man and how dare you. She knew he was rotten. Momma sucked the cigarette down by half before she spoke.

  ‘I always said school was no good for men. Makes their heads and hands soft. And we can’t have that,’ she said. ‘Go on then, my man of the house. I’ll tell the school if they ask.’

  ‘Thank you, Momma,’ I said, a speck of guilt about lying lodged in my chest but it was quickly obscured by relief. I kissed her on the cheek as Jenny came downstairs, ready for school.

  She looked only at me, never at Momma, not any more. Jenny would think I was doing this to get her away from Momma. I’d never tell about Mr Wakefield and his threat against us. She’d go right to Samuels and then we’d be done for.

  I walked with Jenny to school and told her my plan to quit.

  ‘It’s the only way,’ I said. ‘I can save everything I earn and then, when I’ve got enough, we can leave.’

  Jenny just listened. I expected her to cry, no Johnny, you can’t, what about your education, your future, don’t do it, we’ll think of something. But she didn’t. And it stung.

  ‘That’s a big deal.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I think it’s a good idea.’

  An invisible slap across the cheek. ‘Good. Settled then.’

  We were quiet for the rest of the walk. My stomach flipped over with every step. Was this the right thing? It was all happening so quickly, so easily. I’d set a ball rolling and now was running down the hill beside it wondering if I could catch it again. Momma didn’t try to talk me out of it but I hadn’t expected her to. Jenny from a year ago would have thrown up her arms and said, oh no, Johnny, you can’t!

  I didn’t really understand until then how much she had changed. I’d hoped the darkness was just on the surface and her insides were still the same but now I knew better. Now it was even more important to get her out of this dying town.

  The sun, already strong despite how early it was, beat on the back of my neck. I looked sideways at Jenny. The wisps of gold-blonde hair escaped from her scarf, lifting gently in the breeze. The sun freckles on her cheeks. The blue eyes I loved so much.