by Larry Brown
She looked out across the road to the muddy field beyond the fence. The leaves on the trees were trembling in a slight breeze.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I kind of hate to go over there. I wouldn’t have even called if I hadn’t been so scared. I don’t know Miss Mary that well. I’ve talked to her a little at church. But I don’t know what she thinks about all this.”
“Maybe you need to set down and have a talk with her,” he said. “You gonna have to get to know her sooner or later, sounds like.”
“I guess so. She might know where Bobby’s at anyway. I’m just nervous about going over there. I hate to take David over there just yet.”
“Leave him here with me,” Virgil said. “I been wantin to see him anyway.”
“I hate to ask you to babysit him.”
“I don’t care. I’ll go around back and watch him,” he said, and he got up from the chair. “Go on over there and stay awhile if you want to. We’ll watch some TV or something. I’ll let him feed my chickens again.”
She guessed it wouldn’t hurt anything. And it had been a while since they’d gotten to see each other. She knew David would stay over here with him all the time if she’d let him.
She took a last drink of her beer and set the bottle on the porch, then got up from the rocker.
“Well. If you don’t care I think I’ll let him stay a little while, then. I didn’t know if Glen would be over here or not. You think he’ll come by?”
“I don’t know why he would. But it won’t matter if he does.”
“He was mad when he left the cafe. He said I was gonna be sorry. He scared me bad.”
“Don’t worry about him. He stays mad. And he ain’t gonna come over here anyway.”
There was something in his voice that she hadn’t heard before. He was standing there holding the beer bottle down beside his leg and looking vacantly out across the yard.
“I had a lot of hopes, too,” he said. “And I ain’t turned my back on him. I know he thinks I have. A lot of it’s my fault. I stayed drunk for a long time there. Me and Emma fought all the time. It ain’t good for kids to grow up in stuff like that.”
“Why does he hate Bobby so bad?”
He turned his face and looked at her, sadness marked deep in his eyes.
“His mama,” he said. “She was always jealous of Mary. It was crazy. She couldn’t stand the idea of knowing I had another child with somebody else. Something happened to her after Theron died. She started telling Glen things about me and Mary. Wasn’t none of it true. But I reckon he believed it.”
“What kind of things?”
“You don’t want to hear all that. I guess I should have took her somewhere and got her some help. She never was right after that. It got worse when Glen got sent off. I made some bad mistakes.”
“We all make mistakes,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, and lifted the bottle to take a drink. “Some of us just make worse ones than others. I’m gonna go around here and see about David. I’ll see you when you get back.”
He went down the steps and she watched him, standing there for just a moment on the porch by herself, and she almost said his name again, but there was nothing left to tell him and nothing left to ask him, and she went on down into the yard and opened the door of her car and got in and drove away.
She heard him taking his clothes off and when she felt him come near, she knew that it would soon be over. She knew, too, that Bobby was probably sleeping in his room. He’d looked tired this morning, and then he’d worked all day. Now he was probably in his room, sleeping. She could almost see him in there. Even if she screamed for help now he wouldn’t hear her, so there was not going to be any help. She wished it didn’t have to be like this, but she understood it now. It was because of what she had done with Virgil so long ago, and that made it about Bobby, too, so there was nothing to be done. Her life was going to change now, become something different. Everything else in her whole life had been leading up to this.
She felt something touch her leg and knew what it was. It was soft but firm, a warm piece of living flesh being pressed against her leg.
She thought about trying to talk to him again, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. He had made up his mind to do this and there was nobody to stop him. And if he had made up his mind to do this, he had probably made up his mind to take her life some way. She hoped it wouldn’t be the knife. And then she remembered that she had her own knife. She had slipped it into her pocket after she finished cutting the okra. It was down in the pocket of her dress. And it was very sharp.
“Untie me,” she said suddenly, and she felt him stop what he was doing. She could hear him breathing close to her and she could imagine him kneeling naked in the hay. She was aware of her own breath coming very fast and shallow from her chest. There was a faint rumble of thunder far off to the north. Other than that it was very quiet. She wished she could see his face. She wanted to see what he looked like now.
For a moment nothing was said. One of his hands was on her leg. And then one word came out of him, soft, inquisitive, full of wonder: “What?”
“Untie me,” she said. “And take the blindfold off. I’m not going to fight you. But I don’t want it like this. Not tied. Not blind so I can’t see.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. She lay on her back in the hay and smelled the dust of years and wondered what he would do. She thought if she could only look into his eyes it might change something, because in that face she would see that other face she loved so much, that face she had given up so much for, the years of waiting, the nights of loneliness with only her pillow to go to sleep against. She thought that if he would only look at her before he did this, he would see that she wasn’t scared, and that it would be okay to cut her loose.
“What are you doing?” he said. “What are you trying to do to me?”
Mary could hear something in his voice that wasn’t quite right, a small quavering that shook in his words, a rising little pitch of something unsteady that sounded almost like fear. She tried to calm her own voice, and she spoke very slowly.
“Untie me,” she said. “Cut my hands loose and I’ll take my clothes off. You won’t have to rape me.”
He was quiet again for a bit. She moved a little, trying to ease the dull pain that had started growing between her shoulder blades.
“Please,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be like this. You don’t have to hurt me. I don’t deserve this.”
“Yes you do,” he said, and there was no fear in his voice now. It was flat and final, and it sounded to Mary like a judgment. She wanted desperately to be able to see him, and it was maddening to have to lie in the blackness that covered her eyes, choking in the dusty hay. She struggled and pulled but the ropes didn’t give and she heard his laughter at her feet and knew that he had to be kneeling there, watching her, and then she felt his hands on her legs. They were hard hands and she could feel the calluses on his palms sliding up over her shins, touching her knees. She tried to pull back but she had already gone as far as she could go.
“Don’t do this,” she almost whispered, and she turned her head from side to side, feeling the stems scratching her cheeks and her temples. It became harder to get her breath because she was raising more dust with her struggling, but she couldn’t lie still either, not with those hands creeping farther up her legs, past her knees, up the insides of her thighs like a snake sliding, exploring each new inch of skin, touching and resting and then moving again bit by bit. She didn’t want to let him see her cry but it was hard not to cry. She was ashamed and she felt the heat in her cheeks and she knew that her face was turning red under the rag he had put over her face.
“Please, Glen,” she said. “Think about what you’re doing. You could go back to prison for this.”
The hands were going higher and higher and they were squeezing the skin of her thighs and she was trying to think of something to say that would make him stop because they were alm
ost up to the place she didn’t want them to be and her head was reeling and the hands were still climbing and she said the next thing she thought of.
“You just stop this,” she said. “You just stop this right now. Your mother wouldn’t want you to do this.”
He stopped. His weight was leaning on her thighs. She could almost see him, bent forward, his face almost over hers.
“What did you say?” he whispered. “Did you say somethin about my mother?”
She heard the threat in his voice, the anger that was climbing into it, and she was suddenly scared to speak again. But his voice demanded an answer, so she answered him. “I said stop this.”
She felt him bending low over her and it seemed that his lips were almost against hers when he spoke again.
“You goddamn bitch,” he whispered. “You don’t know nothin about my mother. You ain’t even fit to say her name.”
She didn’t know what to say to him then. He was right on top of her and she could smell the whiskey on his breath even stronger now. And then his fingernails were at the side of her head, working at the knot in the cloth. She could smell him thick and strong in her nostrils, and she could hear him panting as he clawed at the knot. Then the cloth slipped away from her eyes and she was looking at him kneeling over her with the cloth in his hand and she had never seen a face like that. She looked deep into his eyes and swallowed hard at the hate and the lust showing there. His eyes were cold, glinting bits of light, so dark brown and shining and absolutely devoid of anything resembling human compassion that she could not look into them for long. She turned her face downward as she knew she must and saw with a shock that made her heart wilt the thick and blue-veined length of rigid flesh that trembled slightly between his legs. He wasn’t going to just let her go when this was over. He couldn’t. She’d seen his face now.
“Untie me,” she whispered.
Nothing mattered now but what would happen next. Nothing she would do for the rest of her life was as important as what was happening now. She waited for him to move, and like somebody who cannot wake from the blackest dream she watched him drop the cloth and fumble in the pocket of the crumpled pants beside him and draw out the small folded Case knife. He never took his eyes from her and she watched that little blade come into the light when he opened it. It fascinated her how he never looked at it, just turned it in his hand and moved up closer to her, holding the blade pointed down toward her chest and in that one small moment when she knew that he was not going to cut the ropes that held her, when she realized that she had made a bad mistake, she just pulled her breath in and closed her eyes and waited for it, wondering how it was going to feel when it went into her heart. She thought about Virgil, almost wept for all that could have been and never would be now, and she was thankful that she had gone to see him that one last time.
There was a slight pressure on her left wrist and she opened her eyes to see him sawing through the little sea grass rope. The tiny strands parted one by one and suddenly her left hand was free. He wasn’t looking at her. He was cutting the rope on her right wrist now and when it was free he dropped the knife in the hay behind him and leaned back with his buttocks against his heels and his hands flat on his thighs.
“Do what you said,” he told her. His eyes on her were hot and she had to obey.
She reached down for the hem of her dress and pulled it up and started opening the buttons over her breasts. But he couldn’t wait. He reached for her roughly and stripped her panties down and over her feet and tossed them away. He looked at her for just a moment and then he was on her, his hands going everywhere, smothering her mouth with hard kisses, trying to push his way inside her, pulling at her hair, her shoulders, burying his face in her throat. His unshaven jaw scraped her skin. She felt him slide inside her and he was huge and it hurt. She put one arm around the back of his neck and he began panting faster and she felt the rope trailing from her wrist as she reached into the pocket of her dress for the little paring knife and her hand closed over it. He was heavy on her and he was pushing her deeper into the hay and she opened her eyes to see his teeth gritted and his lips bared in what looked to be almost a snarl. She hoped that Virgil would be able to forgive her one day for this.
When he started shivering and shaking and moaning into her ear she raised the knife and turned it to his throat and pushed it all the way in. Suddenly blood was pouring down onto her face and she felt him pull out of her, heard him groan. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her free hand and his blood was hot on her face. He got off her and she sat up. He was back on his knees and blood was pumping from the hilt of the knife and leaking down his chest and there was semen on her thighs. His hands had gone to his throat and he was trying to pull the knife out. He seemed to be choking there on his knees and he was shaking his head to show that he could not believe she had done this to him.
He pulled the knife out and dropped it in the hay. He turned and put his hands down and he arched his back and coughed out a great gout of blood that ran down his chin and spattered on the hay and soaked quickly away. He looked up at her, a sidelong glance over his shoulder, and then on all fours he began to try and move away from her. He moved very slowly, like a child trying to learn how to crawl, the motions of his body ebbing down. She wished then that she could take it back, undo it somehow, because she knew there was not much time left for him now. When he turned for the last time and looked back at her for just a moment, she heard very clearly what he said. The words were soft and on his face and in his eyes she saw a great regret.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she believed him.
He eased himself down into the hay and moved onto his side and lay there, and it seemed to her that he was trying to find a comfortable place to rest his head. He breathed a few more times and then he was still. It was quiet once again in the barn. She felt his semen cooling on her thighs. She pulled herself up slowly, painfully, sat up, wiped her legs off, and shook the hay from her panties and put them on. After a bit she was able to get to her feet, but she was still dizzy from the place on her head. She held on to a post and stood there until she was able to walk over to him. She stood looking down at him for a long time. His eyes were half open and all the light had gone out of them. They saw nothing.
Her hands were still shaking when she buttoned her dress. She found an old mildewed quilt and covered his nakedness so that no part of his body could be seen. She heard a car pull up in the front yard and wondered who it could be. And then she walked out of the barn and back out into her wet yard, under the cloudy sky, trying to find her son.
Puppy’s day was nearly done. He was working on his daddy’s car when he heard the front door of the trailer open and close. He was bent under the hood, pulling the cover off the timing chain, and he drew back and peered around the side of the car to see who it was. Trudy was coming across the yard toward him and he guessed she was still mad at him, but he hoped she wasn’t. He hated it when they fought. It wasn’t good for the kids. It made it harder to stay home. It made everything harder. He bent back to his socket wrench and broke another bolt loose, then started taking it out. He didn’t want to fight with her anymore, and he felt bad about putting his fist through the door. He knew he needed to spend more time with her, stop staying gone so much. But it wasn’t too late to fix that. She was probably upset about him losing his job and everything. Then Glen came along and that didn’t help anything. She’d probably get over it pretty quick and it wouldn’t be any trouble to take her out to eat sometime, maybe go to the drive-in and watch a movie like they used to. She’d like that.
He was waiting to see what she was going to say when she came around to where he was, smiling a little, and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Hey,” she said.
He glanced up at her. She didn’t look mad at all.
“Hey, baby. How you doing?”
“Fine.”
He got the bolt out and put it with the others on top of the breather, then laid the ratch
et on the fenderwell. He leaned both hands on the radiator and looked down at the motor. It was leaking some oil from the valve covers and he figured he might as well put some new gaskets on while he was working on it. Save his daddy from having to do it later. It wouldn’t take ten minutes. Go ahead and get everything fixed while he had it over here.
“You fixing your daddy’s car?” she said. “I know he’ll be glad of that.”
“Well, I thought I would. Go ahead and get it runnin for him, take it on over to him when I get it ready. It ain’t much wrong with it. He needs his car. I should have done fixed it.”
“I’m glad it quit raining,” she said.
“Yeah, me too. It’s faired off right nice.”
She moved a little closer and put her hand on his back and rubbed it slowly.
“You gonna get all dirty,” he said. “I got grease all over me.”
“I don’t care. What you want for supper?”
He looked up into her eyes and he saw a soft light there that made him feel better.
“I don’t care. Whatever you want to fix’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry about this mornin,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be ugly.”
“That’s all right. I didn’t mean to either.”
She leaned closer and kissed him. Her voice was low and happy when she spoke. “Why don’t you come on in the house and take you a long hot bath and I’ll fry you some pork chops. I put some beer in the freezer for you.”
Puppy smiled.
“That sounds pretty good,” he said. “Let me just let the hood down on this thing in case it rains again.”
He reached up and lowered the hood over the motor and his tools, pulled it down just short of the latch and left it. She stood there waiting for him.
“I cleaned up the house,” she said.
“Good.”
He walked over to her and she put her hand around his arm and turned with him. A little breeze was stirring and it cooled his sweating back. He was tired from working all day but he felt good. He was glad to be back on his own again. He thought things would work out. People would probably start bringing their cars in when they heard that he was open again.
