No Story to Tell (44 page)

“Whoo-hee! I frenched your bride, I frenched your bride,” Bobby sang as Mark circled rabidly.

The two men snarled their arms around each other tight as bulls’ twisted horns and, finding they could no longer punch, resorted to trying to topple one another onto the floor instead. Staggering crookedly around in circles, jeering and taunting into each other’s bloodied face, they worked a haphazard path toward the head table. The gaudy spectacle of the wedding cake seemed to draw them in like a beacon. And sure enough, that’s where it happened. They jostled first Bobby’s way, then Mark’s and then back over Bobby’s until he suddenly lost his footing, sending them both crashing over the table and onto the floor with five stories of wedding cake schlumping down on top.

Electricity surged through Victoria. Her mind jolted, unable to comprehend what her eyes had just seen. Not the fighting or the destruction of the wedding cake, neither of which were unknown at a Hinckly wedding. What she had seen was far more shattering. Far more perverse. The image filled her mind as graphically as the scene now laying before her. No more than a flash on her retina, but she had seen it accurately and undeniably. The two of them, only a breath apart, glowering into each other’s face, the one contorted, raging mask a perfect mirror image of the other. The reality of it struck like searing bright light, instantly vaporizing the layers of self-deception that had protected her for so long.

The plank floor begins to tilt beneath her. Swaying, she sits down on a bale of hay, dazed. She tries to breathe, but breath will not come to her. She is too far gone—high above the stratosphere looking down, whirling soundlessly above the Pandora’s box below. She now holds within her a knowledge she cannot know. No longer can she deny the debilitating exhaustion, the ferocious nausea. They announce themselves clearly and unequivocally. And they announce themselves as the embodiment of young Mark himself.

“Ya, you ain’t so bloody smart, hot shot,” Bobby growls. “I frenched your bride and now you’s sleeping alone.”

“That so old man? Well, I more than frenched your bride. I boned her.”

“Bullshit!” Bobby spits blood into Mark’s face.

“Wouldn’t you like to think so? What you think she was doing that night, slinking around in that green dress?”

This information catches Bobby up short, and he doubles over like he’s taken a shot to the guts. Mark laughs at this apparent bull’s-eye, the grin quickly falling off his face as Bobby wrestles the Enfield free from his boot and staggers back upward. A voice shouts with panic and for a moment she feels it must be her own. She watches, curiously detached, as people begin to scurry frantically about, grabbing coats and hats and sleeping children, tripping over cords and chairs and each other as they breathlessly make their way out of the barn.

“Vic! Where are you, goddam it?”

She tries to press herself into the shadows, but it is too late.

“That true? That true you been dicking this little cockroach?”

“Bobby, no. I—”

“All that shit Rose been telling me the truth, Vic? Is it? You been having a little something on the side? Huh?” He is wild-eyed now, the revolver waving dangerously as he rages on.

“Bobby, don’t. We can talk—”

“Ya? What can we talk about, Vic? You having an affair? Well, got you a little news here. I been having a little affair of my own. Betcha didn’t know about that, did ya?”

Victoria stares through him as she realizes the fetus in her womb places her in a full checkmate. The barn is almost empty now, nobody else daring to move.

“Ya, me and old Enfield here, we got us a little thing going. Two of us, we got us an arrangement, see? First I blow little Enfield and then little Enfield here blows me,” he taunts, slowly taking the revolver’s shaft in his mouth and tonguing it wetly. “That what you want to see, Vic? Huh? That what you came here to see?”

Victoria stares at him in seething silence.

“Huh?” he hollers, jamming the gun up under the folds of his neck. “That what you want to see, Vic? You want to see old Enfield here blow me? Huh? It’s all up to you, sweetheart. What’s it going to be?”

“No, Bobby. It’s not all up to me. It’s up to you. You want to blow your goddam head off, go ahead.”

Bobby’s mouth flies open, contorted with stunned rage.

“I will! I’ll do it. That what you want? I’ll do it!” he yells, shoving the gun even tighter up under his chin.

Eyes furious, Victoria holds his glare.

Slowly an embarrassed smirk begins to curl his lip as he lowers the revolver toward the floor. “Ya, who’s the crazy one now, huh? You see that, Sammy? This crazy woman wants me to shoot myself.”

“Vic ain’t crazy, Bobby. She had me dump the powder out of those bullets after that time out at the sale.”

An overwhelming exhaustion crushes the breath from her as she turns and walks from the hay shed. She is vaguely aware of a commotion behind her, and she instinctively knows it is Sam, preventing Bobby from following her. Mud oozing up over her shoes, she runs toward Bobby’s truck and gets in. Fumbling under the papers on the seat, she finds the keys, starts the truck and bounces heavily through the ditch as she turns the truck around and guns it.

Time ceases to function. As if someone has edited and cut out all the space in between. One moment she is at the trailer, the next she is barreling down a back road on her way out of town. The further from the trailer she drives, the clearer the whole joke of her life becomes. She can almost see it imprinted as a stark laughing relief against the rain-drizzled sky. She feels immensely tired, weighed down heavily by the manacles with which fate has bound her. She is tired of living this paint-by-number life. She knows now she should have left long ago. When she was younger. When she still had some fight left in her to get her through each day. Now, she simply doesn’t care. She has nothing. She is nothing. What a fool she’d been to think fate could ever have been a conquerable enemy. Fate, which had written her future and foretold her past. It was not a game one could win. But, although fate may have chosen the stage on which she would live her life, she herself would have the choice of where she would end it. Flooring the truck, she flies through the night as if she’s already disconnected from everything physical. She drives recklessly on the seldom-used road, a shortcut up out of the valley where it joins with the highway that follows along beside the river.

The grainy yellow gaze of the headlight catches something on the road ahead. A heaving and falling motion that calls back visions of the neighbor’s horse last spring, laying on its side in the ditch, thrashing dangerously to regain its feet even though its leg was so cruelly broken that white bone splintered out through the skin.

For a moment she considers driving by. But something deep inside compels her not to. She slows the truck to a stop in front of an old blanket partially submerged in a muddy puddle of water. Getting out, she approaches apprehensively. Maybe she has just imagined the movement. Given the night and her nerves, it is possible that she has. She calls out softly. There is no answer, and she almost allows herself to believe that she has stopped for nothing more than a filthy quilt discarded along the edge of a lonely road. But she knows better. She kneels down beside the puddle and whispers.

“Mrs. Spiller? Mrs. Spiller, are you okay?”

The blanket quivers slightly and she shrinks back from it.

“Who’s there?”

“Vic . . . uh, um, it’s Georgie, Mrs. Spiller. Georgie Stone. Can I help you?”

“Oh, thank the dear Lord,” the old voice croaks. “I need my boys, Georgie. Can you get my boys? I’ve fallen. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. And the tide’s coming in and it’s going to wash away the Lord’s Good Book. Take it for me, Georgie. Please. Take care of it for me. It’s the most precious book in the whole world.”

She tries to help as Mrs. Spiller struggles inside the blanket to free the bible. The effort is considerable, too much considering how totally the old woman’s strength has been absorbed by the rain and the cold night. “Please. Put it in the house for me will you, Georgie?”

Taking the grimy book, Victoria walks back to the truck. Its cover is completely defaced with mud, the binding wrenched crooked from the force of Mrs. Spiller’s fall. She resists an urge to heave it into the bushes. Rage seethes up inside her until she can taste its bitter fruit. How could a fair and just keeper allow such atrocity? And how could this cicada’s shell of humanity still glean to such faith when even she must know that if ever a sparrow had fallen unseen, surely it was she?

Throwing the bible onto the seat of the truck, Victoria walks slowly back to the inert hovel of gray blanket. Her mind spins. She can’t leave the old woman this way. But she has no intentions of turning back toward the valley either. She hears laughter in the pattering rain as she kneels down beside the puddle and eases the blanket back from the skeletal outline of Mrs. Spiller’s face. The eyes are tight lines, squeezed shut against the pain. A lone tear slips free as thin lips, dry as chaff, part in a hoarse whisper. Victoria leans in closer.

“Please.”

Leaning back on her heels, Victoria studies the puddle as the rain drives lances through the night. Moving forward, she gathers the near-weightless form into her arms and rocks it gently. The scent of pines floats over them. Pulling the blanket back up, she moves with a gentle rhythm, patting the tiny shoulder lightly. Carefully she begins to lean forward, tenderly turning the old woman’s face downward into the puddle beneath them. She easily resists the feeble struggle that pulses once, twice then ceases as one of the gnarled hands falls free then slowly begins to curl in on itself like a dying leaf. She leaves her that way, face down in the puddle: an unfortunate, merciful accident that someone else will find by the light of another day.

Angling the truck around the still form, she smashes her foot into the gas pedal and swerves wildly. Thoughts overtake her, and she is carried along in their steady stream until suddenly, instantly it seems, she is angling off the highway, gripping the wheel tightly as she bounces toward the strip of black river below. Stopping just short of the water, she twists off the ignition, settling the night back into darkness.

The interior light, which works only at random intervals, flickers on as she opens the door to get out. She pounds it back off. Leaning against the side of the truck, she pulls herself free of her shoes and clothes and throws them back inside. Blindly patting across the seat, she finds the slippery coolness of her dance dress and pulls it toward her, sending Mrs. Spiller’s bible sprawling to the floor. Caressing the dress, she slips it on. It is stained now. Worn. Certainly it is not as perfect as it once had been, but somewhere in its embracing silence she can still hear the whisper of what might have been.

The night has eased slightly, clouds parting to make way for the moon. She wades thigh-deep into the rain-dimpled water. Hesitating briefly, she looks up, transfixed by the luminous glow of the moon, listening to the deep murmuring of the ancient river. Her eyes slowly sculpt the softly hanging arc, her hands tracing the bulging roundness of her abdomen. She stands like this for an eternity, quietly questioning the universe above her. More than anything else in the whole world she wishes she could just take her child and place it high above the travesty of life. Nestle it safely in the moon’s gentle arm. And yet it cannot be. Too much has become suddenly, tragically clear. As lucid as the frigid water. As palpable as the sharp gravel biting into her feet. The truth can no longer be denied. Mark is Bobby’s son. And now, safely hidden in her womb is the next link in fate’s interminable chain; Bobby’s grandchild.

Stepping further out into the stream, she falters slightly as the unexpected force of the water catches her off guard. Regaining her balance, she steps into a thin slash of moonlight and pulls her dress off over her head. Holding it tightly with one hand she watches it sink and bob as the current snatches at it greedily. Releasing it, she follows its progress downstream, the river taking it away with surprising swiftness then twirling it off to the side, where it becomes tangled in the water-logged limbs of a fallen tree.

Looking down at herself, she feels a momentary thrill of release. Black water has swallowed the bottom half of her up to her breasts. Almost gone and yet fully alive. This is what it will be like, she muses. When death comes, this is what it will be like. A seamless absence of self. A painless ceasing. Taking a deep full breath, she slips beneath the darkness and begins to swim. The river is wide, the undertow treacherous. She’d grown up hearing of their victims. And if they failed to claim her, there was the rapids and beyond them, the waterfall. She swims as strongly as she can, anxious for the deep water. Time becomes lead. She is impatient for the moment when her thoughts will enter the blackness as well.

Suddenly, her head shoots clear of the water. Gulping for air, her arms flail, struggling to keep her afloat. She is not alone here. She has felt something move. Something not of her. Something distinct and tangible and foreign. A gentle tumbling flutter. Like two butterflies somersaulting inside her womb. She starts to call out, shocked into speech by the utter fascination of it, but fishy water swells over her filling her mouth. Panicked, she reverses direction, starting back toward the shore. A silver ripple indicates the bank, and she is frightened to see how far she’s swum. Floundering uselessly, her arms and legs move sluggishly against the firm resistance of the water. Twirling helplessly downstream, the currents pull her under several times and she struggles back to the surface, snatching desperately at the air.