by Nat Burns
Alvin Borrow had pulled from Sophie’s grasp and now stood dancing in the middle of the living room. His wife Doris had switched off Frank Sinatra some time ago, so Al danced to a tune only he could hear. Doris stood by the stereo cabinet, arms folded across her chest. She looked forbidding.
“Alvin, I’m not kidding. Now, come on over here and let’s get this done,” Sophie demanded.
“I don’t much care if it bleeds everywhere,” he answered. “I paid two hundred eighty-nine dollars for this here rug.” He indicated the beautiful red and gold Oriental carpet on which he swayed.
“Yeah, but I picked it out, you damn fool,” Doris said. “An’ I’m not partial to having it ruined.”
“Well, if you hadn’t stabbed me, I wouldn’t be bleeding!” he said, his tone oddly dismissive. “If I want to mess up the rug, I will, and I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
He closed his eyes and moved his feet in a perfect waltz step. Fresh blood darkened his white undershirt.
Sophie heard Doris make small clucking sighs of disapproval.
Sophie was a tall woman and healthy, but she wasn’t sure she could take Al down. He worked at the bottling plant lifting pallets of soda off the line and onto trucks. He was a big, burly man. Yet with his eyes closed and swaying gently to the silent music, he appeared as innocent as a small child. If Sophie wasn’t aware of his history of domestic abuse, she might have felt sorry for him.
Maybe it was time to try threats.
“Alvin, I swear on the Almighty, I’m going to take your ass straight to MedCentral in Goshen if you don’t come here and let me see to that stab wound. You’re losing a lot of blood.”
Alvin paused and looked down at his shirt, now saturated with a darkening pool. Perhaps the alcohol was wearing off and he was coming to his senses. He glared at Doris. “See what the bitch done done to me, Miss Sophie. You know that ain’t right.”
“I hear you, Al, but you can’t be going after her the way you do time and again. That builds up in a person, you know? Then one day that person snaps.” She shrugged. “Today was her day.”
Blood from Alvin’s wound had inundated the lower front of his T-shirt and the saturated parts were turning an intriguing shade of purple. He moved toward the kitchen table. Sophie pushed him into a chair.
“Was it a clean knife? Or had you used it?” she asked Doris.
Doris took a seat at Alvin’s side and crossed her arms over her ample chest. She seemed disinclined to answer even though half an hour ago she had made a frantic phone call summoning Sophie to her husband’s side.
“Doris? I need to know this.”
Sophie gently pulled the T-shirt over Alvin’s head. Although he sat upright at the kitchen table, the alcohol he’d consumed had turned his body loose and pliant and his form wobbled under her hands.
“Doris? Which knife was it?”
“Bitch done stabbed me. Stabbed me!” He lowered his head and looked at the blood on his fingers. He stood unsteadily and moved from the table.
“It was a butter knife is all,” Doris said finally. “It was clean. Out of the rack there.”
Alvin seemed truly perplexed. “What in the hell did I do to her?” he asked, right hand pressed to the wound, blocking Sophie’s view of it. No doubt he was starting to feel some pain.
“Don’t give me that crap,” Doris said. “No matter what I do, how hard I work, nothing’s ever good enough for you. I listen to your complaining from morning ’til night.”
Sophie sighed, certain the argument she’d interrupted upon her arrival was gaining fresh steam. She moved around the table and grabbed Alvin by the arm. He resisted, and she snapped a hand up to grab and twist his earlobe. Pain doubled him and she was able to pull him back down into the kitchen chair.
“I didn’t do nothing to the bitch,” he exclaimed, panting. “She knows I like my hamburgers rare, but does she even care? No, ever’ damn thing has to be her way.”
“Hush now, and let me look at this.”
Grabbing surgical scissors from the counter behind her, Sophie knelt and expertly started trimming belly hair from the wound.
“Doris, look what you done,” he whined, looking down at the ragged wound.
“Shut up, Al,” she snapped in reply. She moved close to see what Sophie was doing. “I’m real sorry he’s such a pain, Miss Sophie. We sure hate getting you out here this time of night and all,” she continued.
“That’s okay, Doris. I know it was something that couldn’t be helped.” She glanced up and her gaze met the other woman’s, a tacit understanding passing between them.
Alvin, whether from the pints of beer he’d consumed or the pint of blood wetting his shirt, was finally getting sleepy and had calmed somewhat.
The gash was pretty deep, through the heavy layer of fat and almost into the underlying muscle. Doris must have slashed deep, or perhaps Alvin had fallen onto her in the fight, but Sophie had handled worse. Luckily, Doris had gone to the side and low instead of deep into Alvin’s barrel chest. She poured saline solution into the gash, catching the overrun with his balled-up T-shirt.
Fetching Novocain gel from her backpack, she donned rubber gloves and smeared the gel heavily around the wound and a little way inside the gaping edges.
“What’s that?” Doris asked, bending over Alvin and studying it.
“It numbs it, so I can sew it up.”
His chest was broad and convex, with a heavy covering of dark blond hair, curly like the thick patch covering his head. Closing the wound was going to be tough, and she debated whether she should try shaving the hair around the gash, instead of just trimming it. Using two fingers she pressed the edges of the wound together. The gel hindered her by trapping the hair into a congealed mass. She continued trimming close until the area was a gory mix of blood, gel and clipped hair.
“Hand me some paper towels, will you, Doris?”
Doris, looking just a little queasy, pulled the roll off the holder and handed it to the healer.
Alvin, rallying, twisted under her hands. “Hey, hey there, what’s this you’re doing?” he asked, his voice slurring. “That hurts.”
He saw the scissors and tried to push her hands away. “Don’t be cuttin’ on me. Look like a damned poodle, you get through with me.”
“Alvin, you are plucking my last nerve,” Sophie said, her voice hard as nails. “Better a poodle cut than dead, you ass. Sit back there and shut up. I mean it.”
Seeing the steel in her gaze, Alvin backed down and let his hands fall to his sides.
Continuing to hold the wound closed with one hand, Sophie mopped at the area using a good number of the paper towels. She saw a few clumps of hair she’d missed and clipped them away, then used the towels to wipe the hair clippings off his skin. The wound gaped open again as soon as she removed her pinching grip. Fresh blood welled and trickled into the thin coating of gel still covering his skin.
Alvin must have felt the release for he looked down at the wound. “Goddamn,” he said. “Look at that.”
“Yeah,” Sophie agreed, “look at that. This is a pretty big cut. Not deep but wide.” She turned to squint up at Doris. “You sure you don’t want to go to Goshen on this one? Y’all have good insurance.”
Doris blushed. “No, Miss Sophie. You tend it, if you don’t mind. It’s…well, it’s embarrassing and I just don’t want everyone knowing our business.”
Sophie took a deep breath and turned back to Alvin.
“What’re you going to do?” he whispered with a drunken, conspiratorial air.
Sophie twisted her hand to one side and came up with a sterile package. Breaking it open, she used surgical forceps to remove the curved needle attached to a precut length of suturing thread. “I’m gonna sew it up real nice.”
Alvin suddenly transformed into a small boy. “Will it hurt?”
Sophie studied him a long time. “I’ve numbed the area. You’ll feel some stinging and some pressure, but it shouldn’t be bad. Yo
u let me know if it hurts too bad, okay?”
“Maybe I should have another beer?”
Sophie pondered the idea, deciding to hold off on pain medication until tomorrow. “Sure. Doris, get him one more, but that’s all for tonight.”
After cleaning the gash with saline and a peroxide solution, she determined that the knife hadn’t been sharp enough to pierce the muscle more than a minor surface scratch. It was taking a chance, but she figured she wouldn’t need to suture the muscle at all, just a few runs through the white fascia covering it. Pus pockets could develop in the overlying fat, but the knife had been clean, she had thoroughly cleaned the wound and Alvin was healthy and a clean fellow. She’d take a chance on it.
Expertly plying the curved needle through his flesh, she went one layer deep and sewed the ragged edges of lightly slashed fascia together with absorbable sutures before opening a new suture packet and tackling the skin. An hour later she sat back on her haunches and studied the seamed line across his abdomen. It was a good job.
“That looks real pretty, Miss Sophie,” Doris whispered at her ear.
Embarrassed, Sophie busied herself with cleaning up the mess. “I’ve only been doing it since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Grandam started me out on dead chickens when I was about five.”
“You healer witches ain’t quite right, I swear,” Alvin mumbled. He had finished his beer and was mellowly observing the two women.
“Hush, Al,” Doris hissed, pressing her lips together in a disapproving line.
Sophie bandaged the wound and working together, the two women helped Alvin to the bed. Passing the guest bedroom, Sophie noted that a lot of Doris’s things were scattered about the room. Things that were conspicuously absent from the room Al now occupied.
“Sleeping in the guest room, Doris?” she asked as they made their way through the end of the long hallway that bisected the Borrows’ ranch-style home.
“Yeah. He’s mean as a bear. Moving in the guest room only makes it worse, but sometimes I just can’t stand to be in the same room with him.”
“If you need the shelter, you know you can call Clary anytime and she’ll come right out to get you.”
“Thank you, Miss Sophie. I do appreciate it.” She smiled wanly. “I guess I’ll stay on with the old bastard. He’d go to hell in a handbasket if I wasn’t here to ride him about stuff.”
Sophie nodded. “I understand.”
As they stepped into the kitchen, Doris paused. “Listen, I got to thank you for not calling the law and all, Miss Sophie. That’d be a whole lot more trouble than either Al or me are worth.”
“Well, I know you didn’t mean him any harm. Things get out of control sometimes.”
“You’re right about that. It’s the drink that makes him so hard to get on with. He’s a different person when he’s sober.”
“Does he still drink every day?”
“No, only about three times a week. Not as bad as he used to. He’s getting older, I guess.”
“Good.” Sophie wrapped her dirty utensils in paper towels for sterilization at home. “He’ll be hurting in the morning. I left a bottle of pills on the counter. Two every six hours and take his temperature each time. Call me if it’s up. And no drinking. Make sure, okay?”
“I want to give you this.”
Sophie looked at the money lying in Doris’s hand. It was a sizeable wad. “That’s too much, Doris. You know I take barter. It doesn’t have to be cash.”
Even as she said it, she thought about the electric bill, the phone bill and the pharmacy bill, all requiring money.
“We’re doing good, lately. Alvin moved up and got an increase. I wish you’d take this.” She pushed the money toward Sophie. “It’s a couple hundred and I know you need it to help you go on with the good you do. We can spare it.”
Sophie studied Doris’s kind face. She had put on a little weight during the past few years but still was an attractive woman. She looked like pictures of Mrs. Santa Claus. She wore heavy gold jewelry at her ears, neck and fingers.
“All right,” Sophie sighed. “If you’re sure. It’ll help a lot.”
Doris smiled and turned to help Sophie pack her backpack. They talked about Alvin’s follow-up care and Sophie promised to return in two days. They would decide then when he could return to work. Doris promised she’d keep Al down until Sophie saw him again.
“He’ll just have to use up some of his vacation time. It’s what he gets for going on about the damn hamburgers. Doesn’t he realize eating raw hamburger can make him sick?”
Sophie smiled. “Looks like eating well-cooked hamburgers isn’t doing him too much good either.”
Doris laughed as she saw Sophie to the door. “Well, most of the time the burgers don’t come with a stabbing. Tonight was dinner and theater.”
The two women laughed together, and Sophie paused on the front stoop, shivering slightly in the coolish early morning air. “Next time, don’t take matters into your own hands, Doris. If Al had died you’d be shed of one set of problems but troubled by a whole new set.”
Doris pursed her lips and nodded, letting Sophie know it was a point well taken. “I’ll remember. Thank you again, Miss Sophie. Tell Miss Beulah hello for us, okay?”
Sophie nodded and slid into her car, shutting the door carefully so she wouldn’t disturb the neighbors.
Chapter Fourteen
“Hey, lover boy.” The voice on the phone was low and husky and undeniably desirable. Stephen felt ridiculously happy to hear from his partner.
“Right? Is that you?” Stephen hated the chirpy sound of his voice. “Where are you?”
“Just getting up. How’s your day going?” He yawned as if presenting evidence of sleeping in.
Stephen glanced about the littered office of Backslant Publishing and wondered how his day was going. Kind of pointless, really. “It’s all right, honey. Going on as usual. Are you getting ready for work?”
“No, not yet. I still have a couple hours. Listen, I was thinking. What would you say to us moving? Going somewhere else to live?”
Stephen sat up straighter in his chair, his eyes fixating on a washed-out print of the Rhine River in Germany. “What do you mean?”
“You and me. Moving. I was thinking I would love to go on down to Key West like we used to talk about. Didn’t you love it there when we visited?”
“Yeah, I did.” Stephen swallowed and surprising tears blurred his gaze. He thought of his job, leaving it and looking for a new one. He thought about changing insurance, taking lower pay and losing seniority.
“Yes, let’s do it,” he answered firmly.
Righteous was silent a long time. “You mean it, Stephen?”
“Home is where you are, Righteous.” Stephen had buried his face in his free hand.
Righteous sighed as if he’d been holding his breath a long time. “I’ll put my notice in today. Do we have enough in the bank to do this? Put money down on a new place and all?”
Stephen laughed gently. It was so like Righteous not to know. “We’ll be okay. Things may be tight for a while, but it’ll be okay. At least we’ll be together.”
“I love you, Stephen, you know I do.”
“I know.” Stephen was going to cry outright. He glanced around the office to see who would see even as tears escaped and moistened his cheeks.
“Okay.” Righteous seemed to sense Stephen’s emotional fragility and seemed at a loss for words himself. “I guess I’ll see you tonight then. I’ll come home as early as I can.”
“Yes, tonight,” Stephen said softly.
“All right. Be safe.”
Stephen replaced the handset into the cradle of the telephone and cupped his face in both hands as a silent sob slipped from him. He was touched because he knew that Righteous was trying. He did want to be with Stephen and was making his choice. Leaving Redstar and Goshen would get him away from the profligate life he’d fallen into. Maybe if he could escape that life he could find his way back to
faithfulness with Stephen and that was all Stephen wanted.
Filled with a new joy and a feeling of new perspective, Stephen mopped his cheek with his shirtsleeve and straightened his desk.
“So, how’s the Whitley piece coming?”
Conrad Ramsey stood in the doorway, his body spread wide, a palm pressed to each doorjamb. The body beneath his oxford shirt and tight khakis appeared to be a work of Michelangelo perfection.
“Done,” Stephen responded, looking away. “It’s in your queue.”
Conrad moved into the room and lifted a letter opener that was resting on Stephen’s desk. He moved it back and forth slowly, from one hand to the next. “Are you okay? You look like you might be upset.”
Stephen knew Conrad wanted him to meet his gaze, but his emotions were too raw. “I’m fine, Conrad. Thanks.”
“We’re moving,” he finally said. “Away. Down south.”
Conrad drew back to study Stephen’s face. “What do you mean?”
“He just called me. As soon as we can get everything set up, we’re out of here.”
“Damn.” Conrad stood and moved to the door. “Well, what do you know.”
He moved through the door into the hallway, then turned back to give Stephen an encouraging smile. “Good. That’s good, Stephen. Good.”
Chapter Fifteen
Morning brought routine into Sophie’s day. She preferred this to the restless nights that had been bothering her lately. Usually her sleep was beneficial, but lately the grinding loneliness she’d been feeling had crept into the netherworld of her slumber.
She rose from her tangled bed and drank coffee at the kitchen door as the sun meandered slowly into Bayou Lisse. Swarms of insects greeted the sun’s warmth by busying themselves with their own daily chores. Papa Gator growled about a half mile away. It was late in the season for him to be looking for a girlfriend so he was probably warning off a trespassing male.
Sophie sighed and stepped outside. Her bare feet recoiled from the roughness of the wooden floorboards of the porch, but she moved on, coffee mug warming her cupped palms. Just off the porch, on the right, stretched the ancient herb garden Grandam had nurtured since Sophie’s mother was a child. One of Sophie’s greatest pleasures was the garden, and she walked toward it through the dry, prickly grass. She loved to stroll through the herbs, her hands caressing the various plants and releasing each unique fragrance. Even after all these years, it never failed to delight her.
