And Ruth?
They’s only one thing left, regarding Ruth.
I kick off my boots. Crinkle my toes and kind of work em back and forth with my fingers. The little one pops. Back in school, ’fore I quit, Mister Ping told us them bones ossified like the skull bones and the tailbones. I set ’bout making sure my piggy toe bones never ossified. I’ve cracked em every single night of my life since.
I pop my toes and when I got my mind where I want it, grab a pen and sheet of paper.
Dear Ruth—
On account of you never writing back, I’m done.
I scrunch the paper into a ball and chuck it at the fire. Go to the crick with a brick of soap and get the toe funk off my hands.
Dear Ruth—
I hoped one day you’d send a letter and tell me why our lives didn’t turn out the way we thought they would, back at the start.
You know by now I’ve stayed stuck on you. But I don’t even know what I’d do if you showed up. It’s too late. Things is going to happen that change the rest of my life, and I don’t know which way it’ll change.
But I like to think if you showed up, we’d just take a car and drive all day and all night, and not stop until we got somewhere nice. I’ll say bye with that.
—Baer
I read it over and the words don’t say half of what I want her to know, but if I ain’t said it in all these years, too bad. Part of the responsibility’s on her; she ought to carry some of the water if she wants a drink.
She don’t want a drink, though, and that’s why I’m through writing. After this’s over, I may be dead and gone, I may be living in a cave, but either way I won’t write letters to Ruth.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Mae’s heart jumped. Cory stood in the open doorway, gun dangling in his hand. He was stoned.
Don’t take the fight to him. Don’t challenge him now—he doesn’t have the sense to think. But don’t take his shit. Don’t be one of those women who wind up on Oprah, explaining how it was rational to submit while her babies watched her get beaten into the ground.
“You got things to explain,” Cory said.
Cory was here to fight.
“Just a minute.” Mae twisted to her computer and hit “save.” She should have planted a knife in the desk drawer. She closed the document. Spun on her chair.
Should have asked Baer for a gun.
“Getting a little uppity, all this college.” Cory stumbled on the rug. He waved the pistol and recaptured his swagger three steps into the room. “But you’re a real smart girl. Real smart. Got all the men you want, and none the wiser.”
“Girls, go upstairs. Go to your room and play for a little while.”
“No! Stay here. You two want to see this. So you know the difference between right and wrong.”
“Girls, upstairs. Now.”
Morgan took Bree’s hand. They backed away. Their eyes moved from Cory to Mae and back to Cory, until they turned at the stairs.
Cory lunged, trapped Bree under his arm like a satchel of books. Bree screamed.
Mae jumped across half the living room, and trembled two feet shy of Cory. “Put her down! Cory, don’t do this. Morgan! Upstairs now! Cory, listen to me. Put her down. Let’s talk.”
Cory strode past Mae. He swung Bree upright as he dropped into the couch, and plopped her beside him. Bree’s face was terror. Morgan stayed on the steps, three high, shrunk against the wall.
“I want my baby girl to understand what happens to whores.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know what you been doing behind my back.”
“Cory—you’re not… ” Don’t tell a man he isn’t sober. “Cory, not now. Let Bree go. We can talk all you want.”
“Talk. You’re good at talking. Never shut the fuck up. So why don’t you start running that trap of yours and explain all that food in the kitchen. You got to ’splain four hundred dollars waiting at the grocery.” He smiled. Rubbed his cheek with the pistol barrel. “You got to ‘splain making out with your uncle.” Cory pulled Bree closer. She wriggled. “Honey, I’m going to take you away tonight. In a minute we’ll go upstairs and get your things. You won’t have to grow up watching your momma be a whore.”
“What are you doing? She doesn’t even know those words! Let her go.”
“You see, Bree—and I see you over there, Morgan. It’s good for you to listen when your daddy’s talking. You see, girls, your momma’s been a bad, bad girl.”
“Why are you here, Cory? I don’t have any money.”
“I wonder. I bet your daddy’ll be real interested in you fucking his brother.”
Mae forced her mouth closed. With her eyes she urged Morgan to climb the stairs but her daughter stood transfixed. Bree’s horror had become shock. Things were quickly unwinding.
Mae wiped her eyes. “Cory, don’t do this… please?”
“You never once said it wasn’t true, Mae.”
“It isn’t true. He’s my… uncle!”
“What was you going to say? You can’t lie your way out of whoring. Guess it’s in your blood. Yeah, I know about that too.”
The gun barrel reflected light from the bulb overhead—it was like a star. Mae looked away. “I kissed him. Baer backed away and left five minutes later. You saw that too, right?”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, you saw it. So what are you up to, Cory? Or did you take off so fast you didn’t see what you thought? Put the gun down.”
“Listen to you. Put the gun down. How about I use it instead? Use it on you.” His voice cracked. “But you got to answer one thing.”
Bree wriggled. “Mommy?”
“Hush!” He clamped her closer. His eyes pointed across the room, to the floor, to the kitchen.
“What is it, Cory?”
He nudged Bree. “Look at your mother.” He leveled the pistol at Mae.
Oh God!
“You still love me, Mae?”
“You don’t want your babies to see this, Cory. Send them upstairs!”
“I want them to see you lie to me. Do you love me, Mae?”
“Bree—I love you! Morgan—I love you!”
Mae stared into the end of the gun. The pistol wavered. Cory lifted it until he met her eyes over the sights.
“I don’t love you, Cory.”
“You’re one dumb cunt, you know that?” He closed his eyes. Inhaled deep. Opened his eyes and said, “Wasn’t too bright, sending Baer out to jump me at the house.” Cory released his grip and swiveled the pistol barrel toward the ceiling. “You haven’t loved me for a long time. That’s the truth. Now we’re going upstairs, all of us. Pack some things.”
“This is kidnapping, Cory.”
“I’m not taking you.”
“That’s what I mean. You take them with a gun, there isn’t a court in the state that’ll let you keep them. Listen to me. Listen. You think you’ll do better bringing them up, do it the right way. Not with a gun.”
“Upstairs.” He gestured with the pistol and stood between the door and Mae. “Upstairs, everybody.”
Mae was still. Cory stepped to her.
His hand flashed. She saw it coming and heard the butt crash against her brow. She felt blood in her eye, carpet on her cheek. Morgan punched Cory’s legs with fists light as clover bundles.
“Come on, girls. Upstairs.”
*
Last I went to the Gleason post office I carried two flasks. Now I ain’t had a drink in four day. I wait in line and avoid looking at anyone. My turn comes and I slap the letter on the counter.
“You can’t carry a rifle inside a post office,” Harry says.
“What? I’m gonna steal a letter? Here.”
“Letter to Mars Hill,” Harry says.
“Last one.”
“That so?” He looks at me like I said a dragon shit in my scrambled eggs.
I turn.
“So don’t you want to know how long it’ll take to get there?”
“So long, Harry.”
I swing by the grocery. Merle’s parked on the stool behind the register. I slap a gold coin on the counter.
“What’s that?”
“What’s it look like? Real money. By weight, that’s eight hundred fifty dollars.”
He lifts it. “A maple leaf.”
“It’s from Canada. They’s fond of maple.”
“What you want me to do with it?”
“Write eight hundred dollars in that book of yours for Mae.”
“She hasn’t used twenty dollars of the other you left.”
“She will. She’s got them kids.”
“Why don’t you take that down to Millany and turn it into money, ’fore you bring it here?”
“You don’t know what the hell money is. And I’m lazy, like you. Put down eight hundred on a slip for Mae, and I’ll take a ten-dollar jug of bourbon here, and maybe five dollars of that cheddar-type cheese. So you get a commission for working with me, this one time. Right, Merle? Good with you?”
He nods and I go to the cooler. I stop by the register and he hands me a pint of Wild Turkey. He shoos me away.
That Kentucky shit washes cheddar better’n water. After a few drinks I realize how dried out I been since the house fire cooked all my jugs. Now my brain’s starting to work.
I head for Mae’s, already thinking ahead to what I’ll do if I see Cory Smylie there.
I’ve recounted the facts as I know em. I’ve replayed that night I found Fred, matching the shape of the shadowy man that dumped him in the dirt to Cory Smylie and to flesh-and-blood Larry. I’ve thought of Cory’s truck, that day he was at Mae’s, and how it maybe was or wasn’t the truck I saw that night. How Cory washed his truck and there’ll never be any telling if the tailgate was dirty on one side. I’ve thought on Pete Bleau ’fessing that Stipe pays Cory to steal dogs.
But you can’t know a man done evil ’less you know he’s got evil in his heart.
With Cory it’s about as sure as venom in a rattler. It was five year ago, after him and Mae started popping out kids. I didn’t have nothing to say about the way they wanted to work they affairs. I tried to get on, and be civil.
I was at the still one day and heard a horn. Went to the house and found Cory with his new F-150. The grill was smashed, the hood crinkled. Spider web on the windshield. He had a dope-headed grin and hung to the mirror for balance.
“You got a ball bat?” he says.
“I dunno. What for?”
“Hit a deer.”
“You say you hit a deer?”
“That too. He’s still alive and I want to club him.”
“I’ll get a gun.”
“Look how he dicked my truck. I’m going to club him.”
“I’ll club you. Where is he?”
Cory pointed across the drive to a bend where deer cross from the wood to the field at dusk.
“Go on home, Cory. I’ll handle it.”
He studied me like a punk taking my measure. I watched him do the math. Add a little for experience, subtract a lot for age. The math always puts a punk on top. The longer he looked at me, the sharper the electric got, and his eyes glowed in the dusk.
“Yeah,” he said. “Guess I’ll head home.”
I went in the house and come out with a thirty-thirty. Cory’s truck was gone and time I reached the road, I saw him driving back and forth over the deer. Each time he hit the gas hard, the truck bounced and the body flopped. I swung the rifle to my eye and lined the sights to put a chunk of lead through his cab, but before I pulled the trigger, I figured it would end in me putting a chunk of lead through him.
I set off down the road and he was long gone. It was a doe and she was smashed good, and dead maybe from the second time he hit her. I fired six times into the dirt just to blow steam, and dragged her to the woods.
In my book, Cory Smylie’s a human septic tank. Only thing good that’ll come out him is daisies in the cemetery. A man that’d treat one animal like that’s about as likely to treat another. Maybe since he’s hunted dogs for Stipe, he had the moxie to steal mine. Maybe Stipe put him to it, specific, because he was working some other angle. I dunno. But I know he’s got the evil in his character, and adding everything else, I’m about certain Cory stole Fred.
I reach Mae’s and rap the door, making sure not to knock it in. It’s dusk, but they’s lights on.
She opens the door in a bathrobe. Big old smile, even with half her titty hanging out. She covers it.
“Don’t got but a minute,” I say. “I wanted you to know I’m going away. Maybe a long bit, I dunno. Left another eight hundred down at the grocery.”
She stares at the porch planks. I look closer. Her eyes is wet, and her big old smile changes—or my understanding changes—and all of a sudden she looks like she’s been bawling an hour.
The bruises from before’ve progressed to a sick black yellow—but they’s new swelling and a cut in her brow she’s tried to cover with makeup. Bruises on her arms.
I turn away. Cory Smylie made a liar out of me to them girls—but I’m the fool promised what I couldn’t deliver. “Was the kids here, this time?”
She nods. “He took them.”
I punch the wall. “I did it your way. I shoulda cut off his fucking head.”
“I just want my babies.”
By Tercel it ain’t ten minutes to Smylie’s house. I’ll take the police chief and all, he gets in my way. I got the rifle across the back floor and Smith on my hip. Mae sits on the passenger side. She says, “I’m ready to do what I have to do.”
“You don’t got to do nothing. First we see what’s going on. We’ll get the kids back.”
“I called Mom and she didn’t answer. It’s been two days. And I drove to your place and the house was gone. Just burned. What was I supposed to think? Why didn’t you say your house burned? I mean, what the hell? What the hell, Baer?” She faces the window. “Last I talked to Mom she said Larry was giving her problems. She was worried.”
I look at her.
“Watch the road. You’re speeding.”
“Since when you call him Larry?”
“Since now. Since he started giving Mom problems and threatening her.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Coming around, like a stalker. She caught him watching her at night a couple times.”
“He’s married again.”
“When did that ever stop a man?”
“When was all this?”
“Last week. I told her to get a restraining order.”
“That won’t work.”
“She hasn’t called back in two days.”
Seems like words is useless. Between the time for saying and the time for doing is silence. We drive through it.
The Smylie house lights is off, like the whole family’s gone. The upstairs windows glow from a nightlight, or a lamp left on, but the rest is dark.
“Where’d he take them?” Mae says. “This is bullshit! I’m going to kill him!”
“Easy. You don’t got to.” I touch her shoulder then think better, and pull over beyond the Smylie house.
“What do we do?” Mae sniffles. “If there was ever a time I could break all the rules this is it. They’re out with their high-price lawyers,” Mae says. “They’re stealing my babies.”
“Quiet, now. I’m going to poke around. Stay put.”
I leave the car without slamming the door. The minivan’s in the drive. Cory’s truck is gone. I slip alongside the house and the only noise comes from neighbors out back, with a fire pit and a circle of lawn chairs. A bug zapper. Old-fashioned marshmallow roast. The fire and bug light throw a glow on Smylie’s back yard. I stop at a window. With no lights inside, anybody in there could see me—but they’s nobody in that house. I flat-out know it.
Back in front of the house I stop to a sound—if them sons a bitches with the marshmallows would shut up for one minute I could hear it. Footsteps. Patter like raindrops so
small it’s like mist on leaves.
The knob’s locked. I press my elbow to the glass pane—but the neighbors would hear it shatter. Other side of the house, I slit screens with my Leatherman tool and press windows ‘til one budges. I pry the screen out and push up the window, all the way. I jump, ease through on my belly, and land on a nauseating sofa that smells like spice and flowers.
Feet patter upstairs. I stand in shadows and get my bearings. Smylie’s got an organ agin the wall, a coffee table right where a man’d stumble on it. Maybe an alarm system tattle-telling the Gleason police.
“Morgan, Bree?”
Whispers. The stairwell’s behind me.
“Uncle Baaaar?”
“That’s right. I got your momma outside. I come to take you home. Anybody else here?”
“No sir,” Morgan says, voice squeaky scared. “I don’t think so.”
“Where’s Joseph?”
“In bed. Upstairs.”
“Let’s get him. Show me.”
I come up the stairs and this whole setup don’t feel right. Like I shoulda looked up and down the street for Cory Smylie’s truck. Like I’m the man breaking and entering another man’s house. I pass Bree on the stairs. She clings to the rail. “Go downstairs and wait by the door. I’ll be right there.”
She nods. I’m high enough now I can see they got a night-light in a room down the hall. “Morgan—which room?”
My arm tingles real faint.
Morgan scampers ahead and stops. Points.
Any number of ways this could pan out. Cory’s inside with a gun at the door, and Morgan’s old enough to know Joseph’s in trouble. But her eyes don’t glow at all.
Or Cory’s outside waiting on catching a burglar in the act. Or he’s downstairs stowed under a desk, waiting the right moment to drop me.
My curse is weak and I feel damn near sightless.
The door’s open. I swing inside, arms high enough to block a punch, but none comes. I twist around and the room’s clear, save a closet. I grab Joseph—he lets out a cry and this’s ten times worse’n having a bunch of dogfighters rush you in the woods. I’m about blind, all these walls. I pull Smith, then holster it.
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