Disgraced (22 page)

THIRTY-FOUR

Fear ascended the muscles
in her calves, her thighs, her back. Bub's hackles stood up like saw blades.

For each step Lola took back, Skiff took one forward, a halting dance of retreat and pursuit. He closed the door behind him. “Where is she?”

Lola listened. The preserves simmered thickly, bubbles plopping and bursting. The glass jars shivered against one another in their boiling bath. But no water running, not any more. Nor voices.

“Out,” Lola said. “Probably on one of her runs. You should go look for her.”

“Nice try.” Why was he still smiling? “I just drove up that road. I didn't see her anywhere.”

Lola's chest heaved with the effort of breathing. Margaret, she thought. Margaret. She tried to remember what Skiff had just said. “Sometimes she runs the ridge. You should go up there.”

“I'm not going anywhere. Guess what?”

Lola wet her lips and took a half-step sideways. If she could get past him. Get outside. Maybe they were out there. Maybe Pal had seen Skiff drive up. Maybe she'd helped Margaret crawl out the window. They could get in Lola's truck. Lola had out-driven Skiff once. Pal could, too.

“What?” she said. “Why do you want to see her, anyway?” Maybe, Lola thought, she was overreacting. Maybe this was a friendly visit.

“I've got a friend in town goes out with a girl on the rez.” Skiff looked as though he'd smelled something bad. “What can I say? No accounting for taste.”

Something flickered behind him. Motion in the hallway. So Pal and Margaret—oh, God, Margaret—were still in the house. Lola raised her voice to a half-decibel below shouting.

“Skiff, why should I give a shit about your friend? Why, Skiff?” Putting a little English on his name. Afraid to chance another glance at the hallway, but hoping they'd heard.

“Because,
Lola
.” A mocking imitation. “My friend's girlfriend works in the tribal offices. Says she faxed something for a couple a whitegirls. Says it was pretty interesting.”

Another motion, this time at her feet. Jemalina streaked past, beady eyes intent upon Skiff's feet, only to find her beak bouncing off his cowboy boot. She let out a surprised cluck and regrouped. “What the hell was that?” Skiff said. “What's that thing doing in the house?”

“I ask myself that every day,” Lola said. Maybe she could stall him with humor. Even get him to leave. “I throw her outside. She sneaks back in.” She forced a smile, all teeth and no eyes. Skiff laughed. She felt Bub relax a millimeter against her leg. Jemalina hunched, flapped her wings, and launched another attack. Skiff stepped to one side, reached down, grabbed Jemalina and snapped her neck with a single twist. He flung Jemalina's body across the room.

“No!” Lola shouted. She'd hated the chicken and its last act had been to defend her. She took a step toward Skiff, intending to—what, exactly? She didn't have to decide. Bub was across the room in two long bounds, the second launching him airborne, the whomp of his body against Skiff's sending them both to the floor, attached by dint of Bub's teeth sunk to bone in Skiff's thigh. Bub snarled and Skiff hollered, and then Skiff's hands were around Bub's neck. Lola leapt into the fray, dropping to the floor beside Skiff and pummeling his face with her fists. He let go of Bub, which was good. But he turned to Lola, which was very, very bad, she decided as he locked his hand around her wrist and hauled her upward. He was exactly as strong as he appeared, jerking her around in front of him with no more effort than if she'd been an empty flour sack. Bub picked himself up off the floor, arching his back and hacking. He lifted his head and bared his teeth again, hindquarters bunching in preparation to spring. Skiff dropped Lola's wrist and drew back his leg. His booted kick landed squarely on Bub's chest. Bub yelped once and fell limp.

Lola whirled and leapt for the door, grabbing the paring knife from the counter as she went. Skiff moved fast to cut her off. He stepped squarely in the wet slickness of spilled berries and careened toward her, arms cartwheeling, grabbing at her for balance, catching at the front of her T-shirt, tearing it to the waist. She flung up her arms to push him away, forgetting that she still held the knife. The thin blade caught him under the chin, sliding through the soft part of his throat. He bellowed with anger and drew an arm back and landed a fist so hard against the side of her face that she crumpled, dropping the knife and catching at the counter for balance. She bent over it, things blurring black.

Skiff's harsh breathing filled the kitchen. Lola moved her head slowly from side to side to clear it, and pushed herself upright and turned to face him, her back against the stove. She felt the heat of the pots, bubbling away behind her. Skiff pressed a hand beneath his chin. He lowered it. Blood ran from the cut.

“Look what you did,” he said. “Look what you did.”

“Like you did to Mike,” she heard herself say.

“No,” he said. “Not like that at all.”

“You're right,” she said. It hurt to talk. “This was an accident.”

He put his hand to his chin again. Blood oozed through his fingers and dripped onto his shirt.

She looked away. Her gaze fell upon the knife. He saw her looking at it, and kicked it. It spun across the floor toward the door. She lunged away from him, but he was faster, catching her by her arm and jerking her around so hard that she lost her footing. He let go of her and she slammed against the floor.

“Stop,” he said. “Don't you know when you're done?”

She pushed herself up on all fours. He put his boot to the small of her back and shoved her back down. She lay there, face in the spilled berries, arms reaching for the door.

“Stop,” he said again.

She pulled her arms back and locked her hands behind her head, her elbows covering her ears so she couldn't hear him. He was saying things and she shook her head. No. Whatever it was, no.

His booted toe nudged her. “Turn over.”

She shook her head, and he drew his foot back as if to kick her.

“No,” she whimpered.

He laughed. “Then turn over.”

She pushed herself up on her hands, and rolled into a semblance of a sitting position, hugging her knees to her chest. Her nose ran. She tasted blood in the back of her mouth.

He stood above her, straddling her. “You hurt me,” he said.

Her head throbbed.

“Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in?”

She leaned over and spit blood. Then she raised her face to him. “I don't care,” she said.

“Well, you should,” he said. He held out his hand. “Here. Get up.”

She let him pull her up, then dropped his hand and backed away from him, leaning against the stove for support. The pots burned her back.

He looked her up and down. She wished she'd worn a bra.
“You stay right there,” he said. “I'm going to check the house. Then I'm coming back for you. Don't even think about moving. You know what I'm capable of.” He turned away, toward the hall. There was no mistaking his walk for anything but a swagger, Lola thought, cocksure in his certainty that she was too cowed to disobey.

Lola felt blindly behind her, reaching for something, anything. The pots. She turned. Her fingers closed around the scalding handles of the kettle holding the jars. Muscles tore in her back as she hoisted the heavy pot in a single motion. Holding it high, she swung toward Skiff, who turned at the sound of her escaping scream. She opened her hands wide and the combined weight of the pot and the force of her spin sent it flying from her hands and into his face. The iron rim caught his brow. It tilted, splashing boiling water across his face and down his chest and over his hands as he raised them to protect himself. Lola screamed again as Skiff Loughry crumpled to the floor in a mess of hissing water and breaking glass and the faint fizz of dissolving flesh.

“Hey. Lola. Hey.”

Lola summoned a superhuman effort and turned her head toward the door. It opened a crack. Pal stood outside. Lola raised her hands, heavy as weights, in a warning.

“Don't let Margaret in here.” Lola would not have thought herself capable of a full sentence, words as much of an effort as action, but there it was.

“Then come out here. Can you?”

Lola took a step. “I guess so.” She felt something beneath her foot. She raised it and saw the knife. She picked it up and slid it into her back pocket. She reached the door.

“Fix your shirt,” Pal whispered.

Lola pulled the edges of her shirt together and slipped out onto the porch. Margaret shrieked.

“It's your face,” Pal said. “It looks like blood.”

“It is,” Lola whispered.

Pal ran a finger across the mess on Lola's face and held it before her. Blood mingled with a brighter, stickier mess. “Look, Margaret. It's just strawberries.” She licked it. “Guess we're blood sisters now,” she whispered to Lola. She held her finger out to Margaret. “Taste.”

Margaret shook her head, but swallowed her cries. She let Pal place her shaking body in Lola's outstretched arms. Maybe, Lola thought, as she held her daughter against her, feeling every place where Margaret's body touched hers, kissing her again and again, there had been another moment in her life that matched this reunion with her daughter, both of them alive and safe. She couldn't think of one.

Behind her, Pal's words tumbled disjointed. “I'm so sorry. So sorry. I left you in there alone. But Margaret—”

Lola stopped her. “You did right.”

“I wanted to get the truck and go for help. But I was afraid if he heard me leaving, he'd—” Pal left unsaid whatever Skiff might have done. “Margaret. She was so good.” Pal's voice broke. In the last twenty-four hours, she'd told Lola the worst thing that had happened to her, all in a droning monotone. Lola turned to face her. Pal's teeth were sunk in her lip, blood welling but the tears successfully held back.

“I be'd quiet,” Margaret said. “Bad man gone?”

“He's not gone,” Lola said. “But he's not going to hurt us.”

Margaret twitched experimentally. “Get down?”

If she put it in the form of a question rather than her usual demand, she wasn't ready, Lola thought. Besides, she herself wasn't ready to let go. “Not yet.”

Pal moved to where Margaret couldn't see her face and mouthed a question. “Is he—?”

Lola shook her head. Pal looked toward the door, but stayed put. They were going to have to go back in there, Lola thought. Or, at least one of them was. They couldn't leave Margaret alone on the porch. A halloo interrupted her thoughts. Margaret, looking over Lola's shoulder toward the road, saw the source first. “Delbert!” she squealed. Her wriggling turned assertive. Lola opened her arms. Margaret flew down the porch steps and toward the man hitching up the road on his bad leg, a shotgun in his hand. He held the gun far to one side as Margaret reached him.

“Saw that big outfit of his go by,” Delbert gasped as he approached, his face pale with pain. He pointed with his chin toward Skiff's silver truck, hard by the side of the house. “Couldn't call. Tire's flat. Got up here as fast as I could on foot. Shot three times, hoping you'd get the message.”

“I heard,” Lola said. But she'd ignored her own instincts when she'd heard the three shots sometimes used as a distress call. “I'm sorry,” she said, apologizing to herself as much as Delbert. Apologizing to all of them.

Delbert looked at Lola holding the remains of her clothing together, and unbuttoned his blue work shirt. “Here.” Lola turned her back and fastened it around her. Margaret took Delbert's hand, leading him toward the porch. “Mommy? Where's Bub? Where's Jemalina?”

Lola pointed toward the kitchen with an exaggerated turn so that Margaret wouldn't see her face. “In there. In fact, if you can stay here with Delbert, I'll go in and check on them right now.”

Pal moved to her side. “I'll go with you.”

Lola thought Pal had already had one confrontation with Skiff too many. “You don't have to,” she said.

Pal set her jaw and Lola saw the steel in her. “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

THIRTY-FIVE

“Brace yourself,” Lola whispered
as they slipped through the door. No warning would have sufficed. She pressed her fist against lips to stifle her own reaction to what was left of the man on the floor.

Skiff lay on his back, atop the shards of jars. Blood pooled beneath him. Lola looked away and looked back, at the bits of glass embedded in his skin where the broken jars had found purchase, at the nubs of eyelids, at the raw meat that had been his face, at the splinters of bone protruding from the gash on his brow. Strawberries and burnt sugar, cut by the coppery tang of blood, scented the kitchen. Pal tiptoed around Skiff and turned the burners off, never taking her eyes away from the man on the floor. His gaze rolled from her to Lola and back again. Blisters bubbled yellow across his lips.

Lola crept to his side and forced herself to take one of his hands, thinking to pull him away from the broken glass. The slippery, softened skin slid from his hand like a glove. Skiff's mouth stretched in a guttural scream. Lola jumped back. She wiped her hand on her jeans. Bits of skin clung to the denim. The moaning took on a dual quality.

“There.” Pal pointed. A few feet away, Bub lifted his head. It fell back again.

“Bub!” Lola knelt beside the dog. “Oh, Bub.” She slid her hands beneath him and rose with infinite slowness. Despite her care, he trembled in her arms, whimpering. She moved to stand beside Pal, giving Skiff a wide berth. “I guess we've got to call 9-1-1.” But she didn't move. She tried to imagine the call: “A man attacked me and I nearly killed him.”

But no one had seen the attack. Skiff—if he survived, and he probably would, given that his injuries were above his chest, where his heart appeared to be damnably chugging along—would surely tell a very different story.
Story
. A wriggle of hope in her chest. Her story, with its account of the rape and Skiff's subsequent threats, would be online soon, if it weren't already. That would help. But as Lola knew from too many years of covering the legal system, the person with the worst injuries got the most sympathy. Pal's experience—assuming anyone believed her, and rape victims were the least believed victims on the planet—would pale beside Skiff's grievous wounds. As for Lola, all she had to show was a bloody nose, along with some bruises and a torn shirt. The deepest wounds, the ones to her psyche, remained invisible.

Words bubbled up in her brain, breaking the surface like the strawberries slowly quieting in the pot.
Murder
. No. Skiff was still alive, albeit only just. If he survived,
aggravated assault
. Nowhere near as bad as murder, but still a felony, enough to put her in prison until Margaret was a teenager.
Self-defense
. But no suspicious, hard-eyed juror would ever fall for that one, not when there were no witnesses and a guy's eyelids had melted away.

“Fuck oh fucking fuck. What the fuck do we do now?” Later, she could never remember whether the words had been hers or Pal's. The answer, though. That came from Pal. Who reached behind Lola, slid the forgotten paring knife from the back pocket of her jeans, and said, “You take the dog and go on back outside. I'll handle this.”

Lola took her phone from her pocket and looked at it a long time. In the end, Delbert slid it from her limp hand and called 9-1-1, requesting both sheriff and tribal police. The ranch was, after all, within the reservation boundaries, something that would complicate things, given that the FBI also was summoned whenever there was a felony on the rez. “An ambulance, too,” Delbert said. “We got a man bad hurt here.” He paused. Lola could see him considering the implications of his words. “And a couple of women in pretty bad shape. They fought him off. There's a child, too, scared out of her wits.”

Lola slumped on the porch steps and awaited the impending swarm of activity. There'd be cop cars from all the agencies, lights twirling red and blue in the monochrome landscape. The ambulance. Even a fire truck, dispatched with each ambulance call, never mind that smoke was nowhere on the horizon. “A regular circus,” Lola murmured, one hand sunk deep in Bub's fur, kneading his shoulders. Margaret sat beside her, one hand clutching Lola's sleeve, the other stroking Bub's head.

The dog would be fine, Delbert had assured her. “Got the wind knocked out of him. Maybe a broken rib or two. He'll take it easy for a few days. Sleep a lot. That'll let him heal.”

Tears wet Margaret's face. “Jemalina won't heal.”

“No, honey. But she was very brave. She tried to save me, just like Bub.” Lola allowed herself the lie. Jemalina had been doing just what she always did, funneling her natural pure meanness into one last dash to destroy someone's feet. The unthinkable came out of Lola's mouth. “When we get home, we can get another chicken. Maybe some baby chicks. Would you like that?”

Margaret lit up. Delbert snorted.

Pal had been in the house a long time. “I'll handle this,” she'd said. Knife in hand. Lola could think of only a single interpretation. Well. Skiff had it coming. What had he said to Pal at the parade? “Karma's a bitch.”

Damn straight
, Lola said to herself. How bad would it be if, when the various law enforcement agents finally trooped into the kitchen, Skiff had expired? Justice, albeit unofficial, would have been served. Lola's gut tugged at her, a reminder that she knew better. In their twisted way, Skiff and the others had thought they were serving justice on Pal, and on Mike, too, that night in Afghanistan. They'd concocted a palatable story that everyone was happy to believe.
This is different
, she told herself. The mantra of rationalizers. Her gut knotted tighter.

She continued her silent argument with herself. There was her story. She'd have to update it now, with the attack, and likely with Skiff's unfortunate death. Lola had never knowingly written a false word in her life, had never understood the impulses that drove plagiarizers and outright fictionalizers. Now it dangled before her, beckoning. It wouldn't be active fiction to write that Skiff had died of his wounds, said the beguiling whisper within. More like one of those sins of omissions the nuns of her childhood were always harping on. She could write, truthfully, that Skiff was alive when she left the kitchen. And that when authorities arrived, he was dead. So unfortunate. End of story.

Come closer
, the scenario whispered, crooking a seductive finger. Because there was Pal. The truth would see her tried for murder. After everything she'd been through. Hadn't she suffered enough? Lola started as the words ran through her mind. The very words used by Dave Sparks, by the high school principal, by Skiff himself.
Let's just let this lie. Everybody's suffered enough
.

The wriggle turned into full-blown nausea. She gagged and pushed herself to her feet. She had to stop Pal, if it wasn't already too late.

“Mommy?”

“Lola?”

Two sets of worried eyes turned upon her. Bub whined and tried to push himself up.

“No, Bub. Delbert, Margaret, it's okay. I just need to talk to Pal. You wait here.”

Before they could catch her, she was through the kitchen door, closing it behind her in a way that warned Delbert not to follow.

Pal stood over Skiff, the knife dangling in her hand. He was very still, eyes staring ceilingward, unmoving.

Lola held her breath. Forced it out, along with the same question Pal had put to her earlier. “Is he—?”

Pal nudged Skiff with her foot. A creaking sound emerged from those spongy lips. “Nah.”

Lola found herself on the floor, butt planted firmly on the linoleum, hands braced on either side of her. “I thought you would—” Unable to finish a sentence despite herself.

“Yeah. I thought so, too.” Pal poked at Skiff again with her toe. The creaking continued. “For sure, I wanted to.” She lifted the knife to her own throat. “Just like he did to Mike.”

“Careful!” Lola came partway up from the floor. Pal dropped her hand and Lola sank back.

“It would have been so easy. All this broken glass. Hell. I don't even need the knife. Nobody would have thought twice.”

“True.” Probably. Although, among all the law enforcement officers due to arrive momentarily, inevitably there would be one like Charlie. Unconvinced. Dogged. Worrying the inconsistences like a dog on a bone. Hating the
unfair
of the results, but unable to stop himself from pursuing the truth.

“You're going to go through hell.” Lola couldn't help but point out the obvious. “I've seen rape trials. They're bad enough when the guy's a stranger. But if the two people know each other? You have no idea. I once saw a lawyer lay a cardboard cutout of a woman down on the floor and climb on top of her, trying to show the jury things couldn't have happened the way she said.”

“Good God.”

“I was so shocked I couldn't tear my eyes away from him to see how the jury took it. He was a little guy, round as he was tall. He had a hard time getting up.”

Pal's almost-smile flickered. “It's not going to go much better for you. You're involved in your own story now. Isn't that against the rules? Seems to me I remember Jan talking about stuff like this.”

Lola felt ridiculous, sitting there on the floor, but couldn't seem to get up. “It's problematic, that's for sure.” She stretched out her leg and gave Skiff a nudge, and tried to feel ashamed of the jolt of satisfaction when he emitted a cry. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn't you?” Lola drew her finger across her throat and looked at Skiff.

Pal shrugged. “It would have been one more lie. After so many. Mike didn't take the coward's way out. How could I?” She chewed at the raw spot on her lower lip. “Not that I trust the justice system to get things right. Especially not the military justice system, not when it comes to this stuff. I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy. Hey, Skiff.” This time, she delivered a real kick. He obliged with a real scream. Lola scrambled to her feet.

“Roll those big bare eyeballs of yours over this way. Got something I want you to see.”

Skiff began to shake all over, the raw exposed flesh of his face quivering.

“Pal, he's going into shock. We should get a blanket.”

Pal's voice was as unyielding as her grip on Lola. “No. You stay here. I want you to see this, too.” She dropped Lola's arm and raised the knife.

“Jesus, Pal.” Lola grabbed at it.

Pal was too fast. The knife flashed, coming down across her own arm, carving across an exuberant bloody X across the final single scar there. “That one's for you, Skiff. I'm done with all of you now.” She threw the knife down beside his body, and left the kitchen, Lola close behind her.

Pal stopped in the doorway and lifted her hand to her forehead, heedless of the blood coursing along her arm. Lola followed her gaze. A line of dust rose above the road. “That'll be the police,” she said.

The vehicle topped the rise, alone, not the cavalcade she'd expected. Lola narrowed her eyes. Margaret figured it out before she did, on her feet in a flash, skimming down the road toward the approaching car, sounding the first note of joy Lola had heard in a very long time.

“Daddy!”