by David Nickle
Mom lifted her hand up, as if to cuff Shelly, but she didn’t get far: whether it took strength or will to pull away from her bed, Mom didn’t seem to have enough of either.
“Your Daddy,” she said, “is a very bad man.”
Shelly opened her mouth to argue some more — to point out that Dad wasn’t the one who wouldn’t get out of bed to help his son; that Dad had paid for his crimes, if he’d even done them in the first place; that Mom wasn’t always the nicest lady in town either. But she remembered why she was here: Blaine, she feared, had gotten himself into some pretty immediate trouble; and Mom was in some kind of trouble too. She didn’t like to move around much as a rule since her knee had gotten hurt, but tonight, it seemed like she was drained. It was like when that tar baby had latched onto her breast, it had sucked something vital out of her.
“Don’t know why I married him,” said Mom, shutting her eyes.
“Maybe,” said Shelly, “Dad would be better if you didn’t keep being so mean.”
Mom’s brow crinkled.
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Shelly,” she said.
“I know what I see.” Shelly stepped away from the bed. “Dad trying to fix things, and you lying in that bed.”
Mom’s eyes opened now, and Shelly could see they were wet with tears. Now she did lift her hand, and brushed the air near Shelly’s arm. Shelly flinched away — she didn’t want those sticky-black fingers anywhere near her.
“You don’t know him,” said Mom, her voice nearly a whisper.
“He’s my Dad,” said Shelly. “Never mind about Blaine. I’ll just help him myself.”
Shelly stepped back into the hallway. A taste of salt came into her mouth as she closed the door on her Mom, but she swallowed it and made her way downstairs.
Dad had left the light on in the kitchen, and he’d left his empty beer out and Shelly’s empty Coke-can out too. The smell was better down here, because he’d also left the kitchen door open, and a breeze washed through the screen door and through all the rooms on the first floor.
And of course the door to the basement was shut tight.
Shelly knocked on the door. “Blaine?” she called. “You all right?”
“Shelly!” Blaine sounded like he was muffled by something, talking through the hood of his snowsuit. “Shelly! I’m sorry I called you names!”
Shelly stepped back from the door. Now it was her turn to be speechless; in all her life, Blaine had never once apologized for anything.
“Shelly? You still there, Shelly?”
“I’m here,” she said, cautiously.
“I’m sorry, Shelly!”
Shelly took a breath. “You’re forgiven.”
“Great,” said Blaine, and his voice returned nearer to normal.
“Give me a hand down here, will you? Bring down a towel, and — ”
“ — some turpentine?” Shelly finished for him.
Blaine laughed nervously.
“Yeah,” he said.
Shelly laughed as well. It was like a weight had been lifted from her. All the way down the stairs, she was sure whatever happened with Mom had also happened with Blaine; the tar baby would suck the life out of him like it did from Mom. But he sounded okay, even improved by the experience.
Shelly went over to the counter, where Dad had put the can of turpentine, and lifted it down. She grabbed a tea-towel from the handle to the stove. “I’m — ”
She was about to say coming, but she stopped, as a set of headlights appeared at the end of the driveway, and the sound of a truck engine broke the quiet. Bright headlights washed across the kitchen, shuffling shadows from one end of the room to another.
The truck rolled to a stop beside the kitchen — it was a big pickup truck, painted bright red, and Dad sat in the driver’s seat. In the passenger seat, Shelly saw, was a long-haired, bearded man she hadn’t seen in a couple of years: since when she was really small, and Dad hadn’t been to prison for his second time.
It was Mark Hollins.
The man Dad had robbed the grocery store with — the one who’d gotten off with hardly any time in jail at all. He was laughing at something Dad was saying, and then he stopped and looked in through the window — straight at Shelly. He was still smiling, at least with his mouth — but his eyes had a different kind of look to them. If Shelly had been thinking of enlisting Dad’s help in cleaning up her brother, pulling him out of whatever he’d tangled himself up in downstairs, the look in Mark Hollins’ eyes dissuaded her.
“Shelly!” Blaine’s voice was plaintive. “Come on!”
Shelly looked away from Hollins, and opened the basement door.
“I’m coming,” she said. By the time Dad and Mark Hollins were out of the new truck, Shelly had closed the door behind her and was making her way down to where Blaine had gotten himself stuck.
The air had been okay on the first floor, but it was bad again in the basement. Shelly wasn’t caught by surprise by it this time, though; even before she turned on the light, she expected the tar baby’s stink would be the worst where it lived.
When she turned on the light, Shelly thought she might never breathe right again.
The basement was filled with tar.
It looked like two pages of a book, with a wad of black chewing gum squished between and stretched out as the book came open. Jump-rope-thick strands of tar stretched from wall to wall, ceiling to floor, casting shadows as black as itself. The strands twitched now and then, and before long, Shelly’s eye was drawn to the likely cause of that twitching — two shapes suspended in the middle.
Her brother Blaine and the tar baby were locked together there, hanging about five feet off the cement floor, directly over the floor drain, and the now-empty washbasin the tar baby had come in.
The tar baby had come in the washbasin, but Shelly figured it would never leave in it. The tar baby had stretched and fattened to the point where it was almost as big as Blaine; bigger, she realized with a chill, than she was. Its legs were wrapped around Blaine’s waist, and its arms, long and spindly, hugged Blaine around the chest. Its head — once the size of a softball, now about as big as the Nerf football Blaine kept on his desk upstairs — pressed against Blaine’s cheek.
Blaine struggled to look up the stairs at her. His face was blackened with tar, and as he moved, one of the tar baby’s hands slithered up his neck, to the back of his scalp. His eyes screwed shut and he sobbed, as the hand fell away again, pulling a small clump of tarry hair out with it.
“Oh, Blaine.”
Shelly whispered it — she was pretty sure Blaine couldn’t hear her she was talking so quiet, but it seemed as though the tar baby could. Its head fell back from Blaine, like it had from Mom earlier in the night, and it cricked back on its skinny neck, so it was looking straight at Shelly. Last time she’d seen it, the tar baby seemed to open its mouth. Now, there was no doubt about it: the cut in the tar of its chin was fully formed, into a jagged grin like a jack-o-lantern.
“I’m sorry, Shelly. I’m sorry, Shelly. I’m sorry, Shelly.” Blaine’s eyes were still closed, and his voice was strangled with tears now as he repeated the apology again and again. It was like he was apologizing for every shitty Shelly he’d said upstairs. As Shelly thought about it, she started to feel the heat of anger come up in her again.
“Do you mean it?” she said, her voice low.
“I’m sorry, Shelly.”
One of the tar baby’s arms unfastened itself from Blaine, and the creature started to dangle. There was a sucking sound, as a strand of tar snapped away from Blaine’s ankle, and he kicked his foot free of the other two still there.
“Do you really mean it? Or are you just saying nice to get in my good books? So I’ll help you down?”
“Dad was right,” said Blaine. The tears had stopped, and he was able to look at Shelly with a directness that made her want to cringe. There was a twang, and a couple of strands came loose of his shoulder, even as the tar baby’s legs star
ted to unwrap from around his waist. “We got to be better to each other.”
Dad was right. Shelly felt her own anger melt away at that. Mom may not have understood, but at least Blaine did.
“Dad was right,” she said. “That’s right — teamwork.”
“What?”
“Something Dad said,” said Shelly.
Gingerly, avoiding the strings of tar along the way, Shelly made her way down the rest of the stairs to where Blaine still dangled. She held the tea-towel under her arm, and unscrewed the top of the turpentine, and soaked a corner of the towel with it. The tar baby’s free arm dangled gnarly fingers near her cheek, but Shelly pulled away and the tar baby didn’t follow. She handed the towel up to Blaine, making herself think kind thoughts.
“I hope you learned your lesson,” she said, as Blaine touched the turpentine to the tar baby’s other hand. Shelly stepped back as that arm came free. The tar baby was completely disentangled from Blaine, but it didn’t fall to the ground — as it came free it swung up among the tar strands nearer the ceiling — like a big, sticky spider, in a web spun of its own substance.
Blaine fell to the floor as he came loose of that web — and it seemed as though he landed all right. But he winced as he stood, and his legs trembled under him.
“Dad was right,” he said. “I wanted to hit you upstairs, and when I went to, I took a swing — and then I was down here! Hitting the tar baby, getting all stuck up like Mom.”
Shelly nodded. “That’s how it worked for Mr. Baldwin at prison, I bet,” she said. “The tar baby smells the mad, and it doesn’t matter who it’s directed at; it draws the mad to itself.”
“So why didn’t you wind up down here? When you kicked the bed?”
Shelly thought about that. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said. “I just wanted you to quit it — I didn’t think you’d hit your head.”
Blaine looked down. He really was a sad mess, Shelly thought — hair all black and sticky, and his pyjamas just as bad. And he looked weaker, too — the tar baby had taken it out of him, like it had from Mom. The only reason he was standing, Shelly thought, was because maybe Blaine had had more in him to begin with. “I guess it was because I wanted to hurt you then.”
“I guess that’s how it works,” said Shelly.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Stop apologizing.”
“Okay.” Blaine started scrubbing at himself, but it was clear even with the turpentine, it was going to be a harder job than he had the strength for right now.
“Come on,” said Shelly — and she took his arm, sticky as it was. They started up the stairs together.
“What in fuck you get into, kid?”
Mark Hollins was sitting at the kitchen table, a bottle of bourbon open and half empty in front of him, when they came out of the door. The sleeves of his denim jacket were rolled up, and Shelly could see a dark green shape that had been tattooed underneath the thick black hair on his forearm. There was no telling what it represented. Dad sat across the table from Mark Hollins, and there was a paper bag on the table between them.
Dad didn’t even look back.
“Don’t curse in front of the children,” said Dad.
“Ah, fuck you,” said Mark Hollins. “Gonna learn it somewhere.”
Now Dad did turn around, and he looked Blaine up and down. He nodded slowly.
“Learn your lesson, son?” Dad was smiling ever so slightly.
“Yes, sir,” said Blaine.
“Good. Take that turpentine upstairs to the bathroom, and start washing yourself. I’ll be up to help in a minute.”
Mark Hollins finished a long pull from his bottle, and slammed it down again onto the tabletop. He spoke directly to Blaine.
“You take your time, son. Your daddy and me got some business.”
As Mark Hollins spoke, Shelly saw Dad reach up and put his hand on the paper bag. Mark Hollins saw it too, because his eyes darted immediately to Dad’s hands. They had that same discouraging look to them they had when he’d smiled at Shelly, and now even the smile was gone.
“Ah, shit, Scott — don’t try this crap on me. We’re splitting it like always.”
“No,” said Dad, his voice as level and calm as could be, “not like always. Not like when I did time for you. I’m keeping all the cash. And the truck. You owe me.”
Shelly felt Blaine’s hand on her shoulder — he was squeezing too tight, but she could tell he wasn’t trying to hurt her. He was just scared — like she was starting to get. She was piecing things together, or maybe just admitting things to herself: like, where did that truck come from? Dad didn’t even have a valid driver’s license anymore, and the family hadn’t owned a car for years. And cash? She wondered if the cash was in that bag on the table; and if so, just how they’d managed to get it.
“I owe you shit,” said Mark Hollins.
“That’s your opinion.”
She and Blaine backed out of the kitchen and into the living room. Blaine’s hand was trembling, and she could hear him sniffling as he pulled her further into the living room, around behind Mom’s television chair. He crouched down, and Shelly crouched beside him, her arm over his filthy shoulders.
In the kitchen, the conversation escalated — at least on Mark Hollins’ side. He slammed his bottle down on the table, not hard enough to shatter, but enough to send a gout of booze up through the neck and splash on his white-knuckled fist.
“Give me the Goddamn money!” Hollins stood up, and put his arms under the table. Dad lifted his beer and the bag, and swung back as the table fell over onto its side, empty beer bottles and Shelly’s old pop can scattering across the linoleum floor. “I risked my fuckin’ neck tonight!”
Dad got up from his chair and stood with his arms crossed — beer in one fist, bag in the other — and he chuckled, shaking his head.
Shelly pinched her nose as the smell of tar grew stronger — it seemed like she could actually see the fumes, coming out of the half-open door to the basement in a thin grey cloud. Blaine didn’t cover his nose — he probably smelled enough tar his nose wouldn’t even tell it — but his hands were up over his ears, and his eyes were shut.
In the kitchen, Hollins reached around to his hip pocket, and he pulled something out that flashed metal in the kitchen light. Dad stopped chuckling as Mark Hollins held it in front of him, and even Shelly could see what it was: an X-Acto knife.
“That’s it, you fucker,” said Mark Hollins. “You’re right we’re not splitting this money. You’re going to give it all to me — isn’t that right?”
Dad looked straight at his old buddy Mark Hollins, and shook his head. “Get out of here,” he said, “if you know what’s good for you.”
And that set him off. Hollins shouted something Shelly couldn’t hear properly, and he lunged with the X-Acto blade —
— straight at Dad, he must have thought —
— but in fact, straight through the door to the basement.
Mark Hollins made a painful-sounding clatter as he tumbled over the first few steps, but the falling-down sounds ended quickly. There was nothing afterwards but a series of shouts — first surprised, then angry and finally just frightened. Dad walked over to the doorway and leaned over, both arms outstretched against the door frame. He laughed like he laughed when Mom got it earlier on. “What were you saying, Mark?” Dad stopped to cough — the tar-fumes were pretty thick — and went on: “You want all the money? Truck too? You want this house, Mark?”
Mark shouted something back, and now Shelly was sure it wasn’t just bad hearing on her part — he was making no sound anyone could understand.
“I’ll leave you to figure your way out of that one,” said Dad. “Then we can talk about how to divide things up, from now on.”
He pushed himself off the door, and swung it shut, then looked to the living room.
“Blaine?” he said.
“Y-yes, sir?” Blaine stuck his head up from behind the chair.
> “Get on upstairs like I told you to. I’ll be along in a minute.”
“Yes, sir,” said Blaine. He got up and went to the stairs. Shelly followed, but Dad told her to wait behind a minute. He had some things, he said, to say to her.
Shelly went to her Dad. He picked up the table and set it right, and pulled the chairs back in place.
“You’re in pretty good shape tonight, little girl,” he said. “Didn’t feel the need to hit the tar baby?”
“No,” she said.
Dad nodded. “That’s good. Not everyone needs to learn from their own mistakes. What did you learn tonight?”
Shelly opened her mouth, and closed it again. There was a noise from behind the basement door — like a big cushion hitting against the stairs. She had been about to say team work, but that sound stopped her.
“Little girl?”
“It’s . . .” She looked down at her relatively clean hands. “. . . it’s gotten bigger,” she said. “There’s tar everywhere now.”
Dad nodded. “That’s what Mr. Baldwin said might happen. His tar baby got pretty big in its time, although it didn’t stay that way forever. Just while it soaked it up . . . all that anger . . . aggression . . .” Dad’s face went sour “. . . misplaced authority.”
“What does misplaced authority mean?” asked Shelly.
Dad patted her back. “Something you’ll never have to find out about,” he said. “Let’s just say, the other prisoners aren’t the only ones a fellow has to fear in jail. There’s also the damn guards . . .”
The thumping from below stopped — but there was another sound now: distant sirens, wafting across the scrub from the direction of the highway. Shelly looked out the window at the red truck Dad had driven home from his walk, and at the brown paper bag Mark Hollins had wanted so badly he’d pulled out a knife and knocked over a table.
“Go upstairs now,” Dad said. “Tell your brother I’ll just be another minute.”
Shelly did as she was told — but she stopped on the stairs, and peered over the banister to the kitchen.
