Scowler (7 page)

She could not; he felt bad for even thinking it. More brown thread snaked through the webbing between the thumb and index finger of each of her hands, drawing them tight to the mattress. Ry took a step back and was mesmerized by the brown shimmers of thread he suddenly saw in dozens of bodily locations. Marvin had lashed his wife into a posture so natural that, had it not been for the discarded pink cloth, Ry might have taken it for sleep and tiptoed out without thinking twice.

More than pain, it was numbness that Ry sensed from his mother. Sensation had left his body, too. He didn’t feel the bolt shift when he unlocked the bedroom door from the inside. When he withdrew the twelve-inch sewing shears from the bureau inside the walk-in closet, the metal was without temperature. Before returning to his mother’s side he lowered the window to stem the icy breeze, and it jammed a half inch from closing. He put all of his weight on it but no farther would it budge; nine years later, only nailing it shut would finish the grudge. Blood worked its way back into Ry’s fingers, though, and that was important considering what he had to do next.

With exquisite care he removed the sheet from the rest of her body. Though her skin was blue, he felt the heat of her shame. Her body’s meat hung heavy and shone with perspiration. Her thighs were tacky with urine. Ry felt the prim fealty
of a nurse as he took up the pink fabric, shook out its crusty folds, and quartered it. Blood had ruined it, though Ry was of the opinion that it was being repurposed for nobler service. He found a clean edge and swept beads of sweat from his mother’s lip and brow. Then he refolded it again and wiped the urine from her thighs and blotted what he could from the mattress. He discarded the fabric in the trash can and took up the shears.

It was the most intimate thing he had ever shared with anyone. He began with the left ear, raising the pink flesh and extending the point of the shears to make three minute snips. Freed, she immediately wrenched her neck to stretch the cramped muscles. Ry continued his scrutiny; not an inch was left to chance. A single thread made four passes through her left armpit, and the act of pinching that skin away from the bed was not unlike the morning milking. A tidy knot cinched her left nipple to the mattress, and Ry took care to rest the blade against the areola before committing to the cut. The thread passing through the upper curve of her navel had previously broken free but she had no idea; Ry faked a slice with the shears and watched her stomach pound in relief. Most serious were the four trips the thread made through her hip fat. After he freed it, the flesh spasmed as if just that part of her were sobbing. Everything else was easy to liberate: the thread that passed through both folds of her private parts, the loose knots that strung the underside of her knees to the mattress, the eight meticulous circuits Marvin had sewn through the skin between each and every toe. When Ry finally rose with an aching back and shears shining with blood, he knew that he had freed more than skin.

Jo Beth sat up, grabbed the glass of water that had sat out of reach for who knew how many hours, and chugged it. She shook stubborn drops from the bottom of the glass, took several deep breaths, and then stood. It was the last thing Ry expected. Two dozen threads dangled like extracted veins. She reached to her ear, pinched her fingers, and began to withdraw each string. It was an unchaining: Each wisp swam away on invisible currents, and she grew stronger with every body part that was emancipated. For the first time Ry felt shy. He lowered his eyes, then felt the encircling of two arms and the nestling of breasts. His feet nearly left the ground with the force of her back-and-forth rocking. Behind her, he glimpsed the white mattress and saw the dotted red outline of her perforated body. It was the residue of a person left behind; this new woman holding him was whole.

“Gather your sister,” she said.

Difficult to do, with a baseball bat in one hand and shears in the other, but gather her he did as his mother dressed and hurried downstairs. Barest essentials—bottles, medicine, diapers—were stuffed into a bag. Ry’s main job was to carry the weapons, but the bat was eerily smooth and kept slithering from his grip like an eel. It would require both hands. He slid the shears into his back pocket.

His mother’s coat was unzipped when she ran outside. Ry heard the sputter of the car engine cranking, heard it die. Bile surged up his esophagus—it wouldn’t start; they would never make it. When he heard it catch he almost sobbed. Jo Beth knew the vehicle’s quirks as well as anyone; in weather like this it needed five minutes minimum to warm up or it would die before making it past the driveway. Ry set Sarah
on the floor and began lacing his boots. They were leaving. It was happening. The knot got sloppy and Ry had to start over.

Jo Beth burst in, grabbed Sarah’s shoes, coat, snow pants, and hat, then dropped them in a pile in front of the two-year-old and went to work. Ry knew from experience that it took several minutes to dress Sarah. That meant there was time to save something that mattered to him alone. He hurried through the dining room and entered his bedroom. Every object cried out for mercy but he felt a masculine disregard for their pleas. Ry took to his knees and reached under the bed.

But when he picked up the box it wilted, and the “Corn Flakes” stamped on its side accordioned into a nonsense of consonants. Ry dropped it on the bed before the bottom gave way. There was no way this box was going to make it. He felt the snotty choke of a child’s stubborn determination. This was his birthday, Christmas, and the last day of school put together. He would not be denied.

“Let’s go.” His mother clapped from the kitchen. “Now, Ry.”

“Wait!” He took the box and dumped the toys onto the quilt. Hypnotized by chrome and rubber and painted faces and sculpted muscle, Ry found choice an impossibility.

“Meet us outside,” Jo Beth warned. The front door creaked. “We’re leaving.”

Ry sunk his hands into the pile and felt the loving bite of fake weaponry and robot circuitry, the prickly scruff of stuffed animal. He shoved a handful into his coat pocket. Another handful into the opposite pocket. One, two, three more crammed down his left pants pocket and four jammed down the right. The ridges of plastic faces, of posable arms, of hands with notches for accessories—they excited his fingers,
were the very textures of joy. He could not stop now. Several more characters went into his underwear.

He heard what sounded like a car door. No, not yet! A sob tore through his shoulders and he swiped up the baseball bat and turned away. Action figures ground against his groin as he dashed through the dining room. He banked through the kitchen, kicked through the back door, and rushed across the porch, feeling like a toy himself—stiff and operating with the simplest of jointed limbs.

Leaping down the stairs, he expected to find the car idling in the driveway, Sarah waving at him from the backseat. It was not there and Ry wondered if he had been left behind. Then he saw the creep of exhaust from the garage and realized they had yet to make it out. Ry ducked under the clothesline and came upon the car. It chugged dutifully. There was no one in it.

He turned at the sound of voices and saw, thirty feet to his left and near the junk shed, his mother scuttling backward across the snow with Sarah clutched in her arms. A purring truck blocked the narrowest stretch of driveway and Marvin Burke stood in front of it, boots planted, overalls poking from his wool coat, green stocking cap sitting comically low upon his head, gloved fists placed on hips like a schoolmaster. Jo Beth was screaming something. Ry couldn’t make it out and stepped closer.

“Don’t touch her!” That was her refrain. “Don’t touch her! Don’t touch her!”

Whatever conversation Ry had missed had been enough for Marvin. For once he was not in the mood to talk.

“Get out of my way!” A strand of saliva hung from Jo Beth’s lip. “We’ll run you over!”

Ry realized he was still moving. Toys poked at his legs as if nudging him along.

Marvin held out a palm to his wife, as if expecting to be given her hand, or even the baby.

“Burn in hell!” Jo Beth roared.

Ry was fifteen feet away now. He passed his mother and sister. Marvin did not look at his son; instead he made clenching motions with his outstretched hand.

“No!” Jo Beth screamed. “No! No!”

Ten feet, nine, eight—Ry choked up on the bat, his fingers and wrists recalling the lessons of all those swings taken over all those nights. He raised the bat to his shoulder. Seven feet, six, five—he drew it back. Here it was at last, the violence he had always expected and secretly wanted, a violence that if pulled off correctly might just free his sister and mother. His heart lost its tempo, improvised.

Marvin looked at him.

“Son,” he said.

Ry smiled—an apology—and swung.

Until the final instant, Marvin did not believe it. That was the sweetest part, the mustache twitch indicating how the master calculator had miscalculated. The moment, however, was brief. The sickly strike passed a few inches in front of Marvin’s nose. Ry was left drastically twisted. He blinked and coughed and wondered if, apart from everything else, his father was disappointed that he had raised this magnitude of pussy. A shadow fell over Ry; Marvin took the bat. There was nothing else to it. Ry appraised his empty hands. Red welts glistened upon each palm.

He looked up. The gaping black hole of the man’s face was warped by the unfamiliar contours of betrayal. The bat,
however, looked natural in Marvin’s grip, particularly when he lifted it to his shoulder.

“The rubber tubing.” Marvin sounded choked. “You flushed it?”

Ry acknowledged that it was a perfectly sound question. After the curtain was drawn on this scene, Marvin Burke had a farm to administer. Unfortunately, the morning’s chores were impossible for Ry to recall. Marvin’s defeated sigh was aimed at all parties, including himself.

“This is not how to run a farm,” he insisted.

The bat left a red mark upon the air. Ry was struck between the eyebrows. He was aware of a black flare like that of the camera flash during school photo day; then, at a great distance, his mother’s howl. He saw trees, clouds, the roof, the ajar second-floor window, clouds again, trees again, snow. The puny plumes of his own breath. Sniggety, upside down, skulking from the upsetting scene. He felt for his body and found nothing. After a time, blood began to run into his eyes. It made sense to close them and he did.

Sixty seconds at most passed in darkness, though it felt like sixty years.

Ry resurfaced. Through lashes glued together with blood he made out his mother crouched against the side of the garage. She held Sarah’s face to her chest as if to shield her from the outlandish Wild West vision of Marvin Burke hopping from one foot to the other. He was hollering all the while, though to Ry’s busted head it was but wet and fuzzy nonsense. Ry shook himself, watched his vision go wild, and felt hot blood sluice down his collar. For some reason this made him aware of the shears lodged in his back pocket. He took a handful of dirt and dragged himself closer for a better look.
Now Marvin was making jabs with the bat close to his wife’s face. Jo Beth was not crying, though, and not shrinking. Ry was proud. His mouth opened in a smile and he felt blood coat his bottom lip.

Snow fell. A truck rumbled past on the road and gave a neighborly toot; Marvin waved his bat like an overexcited kid. He did not look around, though, and Ry was glad. He pulled his junked body another foot, then another. Marvin started clobbering the ground at Jo Beth’s feet as he tried to explain a complicated point. Ry felt mud spatter from the backswing—his crawling had drawn him even nearer than he had realized.

He brought himself to a seated position and reached for the shears in his back pocket. The metal burned his hand and tears exploded from his eyes instantly. He could no more drive the shears into his father’s back than he could his mother’s neck or sister’s heart. The sink, the squish, the jut—his muscles refused to be a part of it. He was not a killer; he was a little boy—he was ten and he was useless. The shears, in fact, had already slipped from his fingers and were lost in the snow.

If he ran away at least he would not have to watch what happened next. Ry’s first steps were foul; his knees bobbed as if they were toys floating in water. Marvin noticed him standing and was so surprised that he dropped the bat. Ry felt the pinch of a grin. Running: It was not cowardice; it was inspiration! His father would be forced to chase him! Ry gulped a sob of pride. His foot kicked through the flimsy wire fence bordering an erstwhile flowerbed, and his legs, midsection, and torso worked together in acceptable fashion. He shuffled across the lawn dizzily. The exact location of his mother was unclear—he could no longer see her due to a black spot in his
vision—but he pointed at what he hoped was the garage and whispered a prayer:
Drive away, Mom, drive away
.

Ry heard the
shunk
of a Louisville Slugger being snatched from sidewalk cement and he gasped in delight—his father was taking the bait. Ry picked up his speed and careened between the thirty-five-foot silo and the corn crib, everyday landmarks along a path he could traverse half-blind, which he was. His father gave chase—Ry could hear the footfalls. Far away, he thought he heard the opening of a car door.

“Yes!” Pink froth sputtered from his lips. “Yes!”

Both seventy-foot silos, the old grain shed, and the dueling manure pits blurred by in neon scribbles, and then the architecture of the farm gave way to the endless brown of one hundred and sixty acres, the white corkscrews of snow. Ry elongated his stride and laughed at his speed. What spirit and endurance! With each pump of his leg, toys worked free from his pockets and scattered. Bravery! These kamikaze soldiers! He would earn their sacrifice.

It was a distance that never took more than seven minutes to cross, but that was walking. At a dash, Ry covered the winter ruins in what felt like seconds. Beyond the low-hanging limbs of Marvin’s beloved Osage-orange trees, so thick they made fences unnecessary, awaited the caliginous magnificence of Black Glade. Green ash walnuts stood like old gods, flexing their bone wings against shag bark and bitternut hickories. Ry dove beneath these skeletons and daylight was obfuscated. The pelt of snow became haphazard scatterings.