by Ron Rash
“What on earth happened to your face?” our mother exclaimed.
“I was fishing,” Bill answered. “A laurel branch whipped back and nailed me good.”
I’d had branches do the same to me, and I knew he’d met Ligeia at Panther Creek. Surely that morning I’d have noticed if there were also scratch marks, the raking kind that fingernails make. Yet even so, why would I have thought Ligeia responsible? Or that she’d caused the bruise or swollen lip. After all, she’d boarded the bus to Charlotte and everything was fine. My brother had said so.
It is all so suddenly improbable—Ligeia falling in the water, hitting her head and drowning. A stream, a rock, a laurel branch. Improbable, but not impossible. To think otherwise, I have to believe my brother is a murderer.
PART TWO
CHAPTER EIGHT
Damn,” Bill said that Sunday when he came back upstream. “You drank another beer?”
“Hell yeah, and look at this,” I said, the words I spoke slippery as creek rocks. I lifted the stringer and showed Bill a fourteen-inch rainbow, the biggest we’d caught that summer.
“I guess it’s your lucky day, and about to get better,” Bill said, and nodded toward the woods downstream. “Ligeia’s waiting for you.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why do you think?”
Years later I would read Faulkner’s answer when someone asked why he drank. To feel braver and stronger, he’d answered, and I had been feeling exactly that way, but the sensation quickly drained away.
“Maybe it’s not such a good idea. I’ve been thinking that if Grandfather found out . . .”
Bill shrugged, gave a slight smile.
“If you don’t want to go, little brother, that’s fine. I’m just the messenger.”
“You don’t think I will, do you?” I replied, meeting his eyes.
“I don’t care either way,” Bill said, no longer smiling. “But she’s got to leave soon, so if you’re going go now, though you might want to wash the worm and fish slime off your hands first.”
I kneeled by the creek and rubbed my hands with sand and water. As I got up, the world seesawed a moment, then rebalanced.
“I’m going,” I said.
Bill patted my jeans pocket.
“Don’t forget to put that on,” he said. “You understand?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled.
Beer sloshed uneasily in my stomach, and the disconnect between my head and feet caused me to stumble twice. After that I kept my eyes on the ground as I made my way into the woods. Ligeia had her bikini on. She sat on the quilt, knees tucked. I stood above her, swaying slightly, unsure what to do or say.
“You can lay down beside me, Eugene,” she said, giving me a drowsy smile. “I’m a wild child but I won’t bite.”
“If Bill asked you to . . .”
“He didn’t ask me to do anything.”
“I just don’t want to be disrespectful,” I said, slurring the last word.
Despite the Valium and wine, Ligeia’s eyes hardened. I’d see that look again when I taught at the community college, always in the eyes of women who’d grown up hard, a distrust of anything spoken softly.
“Respect,” Ligeia answered. “Is that what gets a girl’s panties off up here?”
“I didn’t mean, don’t mean,” I stammered. “It’s just that Bill, he’s better looking, and athletic.”
Ligeia patted the quilt.
“Come sit with me, Eugene,” she said, her voice softening.
I sat down on the quilt, flexed my knees and clasped my hands, mirroring her. My stomach calmed.
“You North Carolina boys,” she sighed. “I had to make the first move with your brother. That’s not like the boys in Daytona. You give them a smile and they start unzipping their jeans. Then of course if you let them, they call you a slut or whore.”
“I’d never do that,” I said.
“Good,” Ligeia said. “That was a really cool thing about the commune. Girl or guy, if you dig someone and that person digs you, then you get it on. And afterward everyone’s cool and nobody puts you down because making it is about sharing.”
“I get that,” I said. “Free love.”
“I think you do, especially the sharing part,” Ligeia said, “maybe in a way your brother doesn’t.”
I smiled.
“I hope so.”
The alcohol became an expanding glow, first encircling the two of us, then widening to include the sheltering woods. Ligeia leaned her back against the quilt and beckoned me with her index finger.
“Come lay down with your mermaid.”
I did as she asked. Ligeia freed her bikini strap and peeled the cloth away, revealing the pale breasts. I’d always imagined sex as a dim, slow exposure of bodies. Even here in the midafternoon, I’d expected a more subtle unveiling, a turning away, breasts covered with arms and elbows.
“You can look at them,” Ligeia said. “I’m not uptight about my body.”
She twisted her hips and worked the suit bottom down her legs until she could kick one foot free of the cloth, then the other.
“Now you,” Ligeia told me.
My jeans off, I reached in the pocket for the condom.
“Do you know how to put it on?” she asked.
“I think so,” I said, but I was so flustered I couldn’t open the wrapper. “It’s just that I’ve . . .”
“Hey, everyone has a first time,” she said, and took the condom from me. “Lay on your back.”
My eyes were open but with my head on the quilt I couldn’t see Ligeia, only a gap in the canopy where a single white cloud hung motionless under a blue sky. Her fingers worked the condom down until I was covered.
“Okay,” she said, and brought me closer. “Think about something else, like the words to a song. Do that and you’ll last longer.”
“FOR YOUR FIRST TIME, you were out of sight,” Ligeia said as she slipped her bikini bottom back on.
“You really mean that?” I asked.
“Sure, just as good as your brother, maybe even a bit better.”
I pulled my cutoffs up and zipped them.
“How about helping me put my top back on,” she said.
I kneeled behind her. As I tied the green strings I thought, now I know what those songs are talking about, I’ve done what they’re talking about. Ligeia leaned back onto the quilt and closed her eyes. I did the same but kept my eyes open. The beer and sex, the warm afternoon and the stream’s murmur, induced in me a dreamy satedness. I was quite a fine fellow, I told myself, one who wanted nothing more than to be here looking through green leaves at a now-cloudless sky. I was no longer who I’d been, and I’d never be that person, that boy, again.
“So what do you see up there?” Ligeia asked when she opened her eyes.
“I don’t know. It just looks nice.”
“I see the ocean,” she said. “I really must be part mermaid, because if I’m not at the ocean I don’t feel at home. Hell, I don’t even feel real, at least all-the-way real.” She laughed softly. “That’s a pretty weird thing to say, isn’t it? Damn, it’s been so long since I’ve gotten stoned.”
“But you’ll be living up here until your high school starts?”
“Maybe longer. Now my old man’s threatening to make me stay up for my senior year. Either way, as soon as I turn eighteen in October I’m a legal adult and I’ll go where I damn well please.”
“To the commune?”
“No, Miami. You can make a lot of bread as a cocktail waitress. It’s not like Daytona, where the rednecks tip quarters. But you’ve got to be eighteen to serve booze.” Ligeia paused. “For once in my life I want to have a few things of my own, especially my own pad, maybe even some wheels to go places, and have my kid sister stay with me some during vacations and summer. I’ll take her shopping and to movies and to eat out, make her feel special, because no one at home will. That was something that could be a drag at the commune. They said you were plastic if you
were into ‘material’ things, but most of them had parents with money. They never had to give something back at the grocery store when everything was rung up. Your mom ever make you have to do that?”
“No,” I answered.
“Well, it’s a shitty feeling,” Ligeia said. “I never much believed all that jive about peace and flower power either. How I grew up, if you didn’t scratch and kick when someone came at you, real bad things could happen.”
“Then why do you wear a peace sign?”
“A girl at the commune gave it to me. She said just wearing it was good karma. That’s hippie-dippie dope talk. But what the hell, I figure wearing it can’t hurt, right?”
“I guess not.”
“Don’t think I’m putting down the whole commune scene. I want to go back sometime, but to one in San Francisco, where every day is a happening. The guy who rigged up that hip sound system, he says either the Dead or Jefferson Airplane plays a concert every weekend. It’s right on the ocean too. Can life get better than that?”
“It sounds really neat,” I said.
“And drugs, you can get anything out there,” Ligeia said, then smiled. “But hey, what I’m feeling right now ain’t bad. Valium is a good vibe anywhere. At the commune most people smoked pot or dropped acid, but I was into floating on downers. Still am.”
A white cloud filled the leaf gap, and I imagined the cloud settling beneath me. I wondered if Ligeia had ever seen snow, was about to ask her when she pushed up onto her elbows.
“I need to split soon. Man, I did need a couple of hours away from them. Pretty groovy afternoon for you too, wasn’t it?”
“The grooviest,” I answered.
“So we should do this again, right?”
“Damn right,” I said loudly. “Goddamn right.”
Ligeia laughed.
“You’re supposed to be the shy brother.”
“I’m not so shy.”
“No, you’re not,” she said, and placed her hand on my knee, stroked it lightly. “Your brother though, he’s a bit uptight, isn’t he, especially about your grandfather?”
“I guess so,” I said. “Grandfather’s pretty strict.”
“Bill says he won’t get me any more Valium.”
“I know.”
“And you’re okay with that?” Ligeia asked.
“I guess so.”
“Because Bill decides things for both of you?”
“He doesn’t decide anything for me.”
Ligeia smiled.
“I bet your grandfather has samples galore in his office.”
“He has a lot,” I admitted.
“He won’t know and Bill won’t have to know if you get your mermaid something to feel good, right?”
“I guess not,” I said after a few moments.
“You could try them too,” she said, moving closer, her breath in my ear. “So what do you say, Eugene? You’ll be a real sweetheart if you do.”
“Okay,” I said softly.
She kissed me on the mouth.
“You won’t change your mind, will you?”
“No, but don’t tell Bill.”
“I don’t fink on people,” she said, getting up. “This is our secret.”
When we walked upstream, Bill smiled but didn’t say anything.
“Can I take the rest of the wine?” Ligeia asked. “I can stash it behind my uncle’s shed.”
“Sure,” Bill said.
“And next Sunday, how about bringing some cigarettes? Aunt Cazzie and Uncle Hiram would flip out completely if I asked for some.”
“What kind of cigarettes?” I asked.
“Virginia Slims. I’ll pay you back.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I’d better split or they’ll think I drowned,” Ligeia said.
I found the wine-bottle cap and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she said, kissing my cheek before she turned to Bill. “Your brother’s a quick learner.”
As she crossed the stream, Bill pulled the stringer from the water; three trout dangled from it now instead of two.
“This will be enough to keep on the old man’s good side,” he said, freeing the smallest fish and reaching for the Ka-Bar knife he sharpened after every fishing trip before pocketing it. The blade tip settled on the trout’s abdomen and in one quick motion the flesh opened like scissored silk. I turned away, feeling queasy again.
“I’ll load the truck while you clean them,” I said.
I finished before Bill and waited inside the cab. A dull pain settled in the back of my head. Maybe just two next time, I told myself. I heard Bill tramping through the laurel, then a rattling thunk when he threw the stringer into the truck bed.
“You okay?” Bill asked. “You look a bit green around the gills. You guzzled those beers and that’s not smart. You didn’t puke while you were with Ligeia, did you?”
“No.”
“You’re lucky. The first time I drank beer I did three and hugged a commode for an hour.”
Maybe I can hold my alcohol better than you, I thought, smiling to myself as Bill cranked the engine.
The bumpy drive up the logging road unsettled my stomach, but once on the four-lane I rolled my window down and felt better. The cool wind seemed to lessen my headache too. I turned on the radio.
“So how was it?” Bill asked as I searched through the static for a station.
“The beer tasted good.”
“I could tell that by how much you drank,” Bill snorted. “I meant the other thing.”
I twisted the dial and finally found a clear station, but it was playing Merle Haggard.
“Assuming it happened,” Bill added.
“It happened,” I answered, then more sharply, “and it was damn good for me and for her. I was every bit as good as you were, probably better. She told me so.”
“Okay, okay, I believe you,” Bill said. “Damn, you don’t have to get on your high horse about it.”
I’d found another station and turned up the volume. I didn’t recognize the song, but it wasn’t country. Then “Good Lovin’” came on and I sang along. Baby please squeeze me tight. Yeah, I know what that’s about, I thought, and sang louder. I’ve done what they’re singing about. Did it damn well too.
CHAPTER NINE
It was almost noon on the following Wednesday when Ligeia’s uncle Hiram came through the office’s front door.
“Oh, shit,” Bill whispered as Mr. Mosely stepped up to Shirley’s window and asked to see Grandfather.
Like sprinters ready to bolt, we both leaned forward, eyes lowered. Then Mr. Mosely raised a hand wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. Shirley told him to have a seat. He turned and saw me and nodded. I returned the nod and picked up a magazine, relieved when he sat near the door. Soon a patient came out and Shirley told Mr. Mosely he could go on back. A few minutes later Grandfather called Bill to join them.
“It’s not about her,” Bill said, but looked uneasy as he stood.
I followed Bill but stopped in the hallway. The room’s door remained open. Mr. Mosely sat on the steel examination table, his gashed palm tinted orange with Betadine.
“You won’t object if Bill does the stitching, will you?” Grandfather said. “He’ll do a better job than I can.”
“No, sir.”
“Go ahead, Bill,” Grandfather said. “Three should be enough.”
Bill threaded the needle and Mr. Mosely laid his hand palm up on the table, wincing as Bill completed the first stitch.
“I’ve heard your brother’s daughter is here for the summer,” Grandfather said.
Mr. Mosely nodded.
“Because she got into trouble with the law,” Grandfather added as Bill’s needle paused. “Is that right?”
“She has, but Jimmy said it’s mainly her running around with the wrong crowd. That’s why she’s up here.”
“Is she giving you any trouble?” Grandfather asked.
“No, sir, but Cazzie and me don’t let her
go out,” Mr. Mosely said, clenching his teeth as Bill pulled the needle through the second time, “unless one of us is with her.”
“Is it not numb enough?” Bill asked.
“It’s numb enough,” Grandfather said. “Finish it.”
“I’m all right,” Mr. Mosely told Bill.
“A tight leash is what you need with a teenager like that,” Grandfather said as Bill completed the third stitch and knotted the thread. “Hold it up, Mosely.”
He raised his hand and Grandfather inspected it.
“You’ll not find better stitching on a Major League baseball,” Grandfather said. “Wait a week then clip the stitches and pull them out.”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Mosely said.
“I hope you’ve learned your lesson about being careless around saw blades,” Grandfather said. “We don’t stitch limbs back on, do we, Bill?”
“No, sir,” Bill said, setting the needle and thread on a steel tray.
“For a moment there I thought we were in some deep shit,” Bill said when Mr. Mosely had paid and left. “This settles one thing for certain. There’s no way we’re taking as much as an aspirin out of that closet again. I can’t believe that I was stupid enough to do it even once.”
But I had already done so, on the previous afternoon when Bill and I were cleaning up. When he went into Grandfather’s office to mop, I opened the closet and fumbled through the various samples and packets. I found a Valium packet just as I heard the office’s front door open. I’d barely closed the closet door and jammed the Valium in my pocket when Nebo came into the hallway. He stepped past me and leaned over the water fountain, gulping and then coughing each time he raised his glistening bulb of a head. I went to the other closet and got a mop and bucket. I remembered the love beads then, the ones I’d bought Monday night and dared not wear in Grandfather’s presence. I tucked them deeper under my collar but when I came back down the hall Nebo was gone.
