The Marrowbone Marble Company (31 page)

W
IMPY'S STOMACH WASN'T RIGHT.
It was making sounds of the squeaking variety and he feared he'd shit himself if he let one rip. The fire trots, as he called them, were back again. They often accompanied trouble, frayed nerves.

He sat inside the outhouse, reading a beat-up copy of
Letters from the Earth
. Morning sun shone through the cut half-moon on the door and illuminated the open book. Something moved there, cast a shadow on his page across the word
microbe
. Wimpy looked up.

A cicada traversed the moon's edge. “Hello there,” Wimpy said. “Where did you come from?”

A cloud covered up the sun. Next to the cicada, a splinter of wood twitched in the wind. The little bug turned to face him, its red eyes like drops of blood. Wimpy had an uneasy feeling. “Party's over,” he said. “You're a year late.”

He finished up and followed the cicada to where it flew. He lost sight of it out front of the house.

Dimple was there, working a posthole digger at the parking lot's edge. The floods had eroded another chunk of land. He wiped sweat from his nose with a hanky. “Gettin too damned old,” he said to his brother, but Wimpy looked past him to the gate. “What is it?” Dimple said. “What the hell you lookin at like that?”

Wimpy didn't answer. His face had lost its color, and he walked past his brother, on out to the gate. He stood and stared at what he saw there.

Dimple followed. A cicada flew around the gatepost, then off to the trees behind the burying ground. Dimple leaned in close next to his brother. Together, they examined the tiny clawed feet perched on the crossrail. “What in the devil?” Dimple said.

Wimpy reached out as if to touch the things, their points stuck in the wood, their lengths sticking up where a body should have been. He stopped short.

Dimple pointed. “Is that foot missin a toe?”

It was the left. “This was the redbird I told you about,” Wimpy said. He couldn't understand what he saw. “Do you think somebody shot him?”

“No,” Dimple said. He leaned in closer. Sniffed. “There ain't no smell of birdshot. Looks to me like something ate him, left the feet behind.”

Wimpy was certain the cicada had led him there. And now, in the trees beyond the burying ground, he could hear more of them, grinding their call—crying, it seemed to Wimpy. Orb's book had confirmed that cicadas only came once in seventeen years, but here they were again. The book said they did not eat trees or plants like some supposed, but only struck egg slits in saplings and small bushes. In fact, the book said cicadas did not consume a thing, but here was the redbird, eaten alive.

It was beyond peculiar, the little feet on the gatepost. Both brothers studied them for some time. Wimpy regarded them as a sign, but he didn't know what of.

Neither spoke a word.

A car kicked mud and came fast down the road. Dimple walked back to his repair site. He'd left his shotgun and binoculars there.

He put the binoculars to his eyes and had a look. “Erm's Cadillac,” he said.

When it got within fifty yards, the Cadillac finally slowed. It stopped at the gate. The front bumper hung loose on one side. There was an imprint on the hood in the shape of a man.

The car whined in neutral, and the door swung open. Fury stepped out, dirty and bearded. His hair grew to his shoulders. He'd lost twenty pounds.

“Morning, fellas,” Fury said. In his waistband was a little Colt .25.

“Anybody up for playin cards around here?” He laughed. Then he went straight-faced, his hollow eyes flinching. He turned and looked at the trees as if they might uproot and come after him. “Is Ledford around?” he asked.

Inside the factory, Fury sat down on the workbench, his skinny ankles dangling pale from his pantlegs. He blinked incessantly while he spoke, and everybody could smell his foul breath. Mack and Ledford exchanged a look. They recognized a man in love with morphine.

“So I ran as fast as I could from Uncle Sam after that,” Fury said. He'd been chronicling his tour in Vietnam. His injury after walking into a trip wire, his decision that the war was wrong. “And wouldn't you know it,” he said, itching at his filthy beard, “I came back to Chicago and found nothing but more war.” Uncle Fiore had been shot and killed in his toolshed. Erm was running scared. “The only thing that's kept Dad alive in the last ten years is Uncle Fiore,” Fury said. “Now that he's gone, it's open season on Dad.”

Ledford threw a hunk of wet newspaper in the wastebasket. He wiped his hands on his overalls. “And you took his car?”

“Probably not the best idea,” Fury said. He smiled. His teeth were yellow.

“Where is your daddy now?” Mack asked. He didn't trust the Bacigalupos. He didn't want them around.

“I don't know,” Fury said.

Stretch came in the back door and took his place at the welder's table. He pulled the mask over his head and torched up.

Fury twitched at the sound of combustion. He bit at his lip. “Listen,” he said. “I have seen things with my eyes closed, things that changed me.” He chuckled. “I talked to God,” he said. He looked from Ledford to Mack and back to Ledford. “Listen.” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “Dad's all torn up about this land deal with Charlie Ball. He wants to come clean, but he doesn't know how.”

“What are you talkin about?” Ledford said.

“The land development deal. It's all fallen through. Dad had wanted to build a racetrack out here, be your neighbor, but it turns out Charlie Ball gambled away the money.”

Ledford glared at the young man. He wondered if he was being set up.

Fury rocked back and forth, knocked over a jar of brads. “Sorry,” he said. “I run off at the mouth a lot.” He gathered up the nails. His fingers shook.

Mack and Ledford looked at one another again.

Ledford said, “Are you tellin me Erm was in cahoots with Charlie Ball behind my back?”

Fury grimaced and clutched at his stomach. “Where's the restroom?” he managed.

Mack pointed to the back. Fury hopped down from the table and ran. When Ledford kicked open the door two minutes later, Fury was sitting on the floor with his belt around his biceps, a needle stuck in the crook of his arm. He smiled with his eyes closed.

 

S
TAPLES WAS BEDRIDDEN
,
didn't have much breath left to draw. But he liked to be kept abreast of developments. Rachel, Mary, and Lizzie tended to him most, alternating blocks of hours, watching him sleep and wheeze and waste away.

On a Monday afternoon, it was Lizzie's shift. She pressed a cold washcloth to his forehead and said, “So, Ledford explained to the young man that dope isn't allowed out here. He and Mack searched the car, the duffel inside it, the clothes. They flushed what they found and stomped on his needle plungers.”

Staples nodded. “Good,” he managed. “Good.”

Lizzie looked out the window. A cold front was coming in. The tree limbs swayed. “I mean, can you imagine? That young man showin up with drugs, after they hauled Herchel outta here?” She shook her head. “They've got him locked up in Willy and Orb's room. Keepin a watch on him, lettin him sweat out the demons.”

Staples' chest rose and fell slow. “What's happening with the case?” he asked.

“Nothin,” Lizzie said. “Your brother has done a fine job. Harold is learning from him every day.” Wind whistled through the doorjamb. She turned to him. “Bob thinks that warrant was bogus. He thinks the raid, Herchel's arrest, all of it will be thrown out just like they threw out Stretch's.” Harold had subpoenaed police department shift logs and proved that Shorty Maynard was not approved for ride-alongs, much less baton swinging. Stretch was cleared of all charges.

“Good,” Staples said. “Law.” He believed in it.

He closed his eyes.

Lizzie felt the washcloth. It was no longer cold. She stood and ran water in the sink. Looked out the window again.

Up the Cut, inside Willy and Orb's room, Fury had awakened. He was naked, a film of dried sweat on his skin. He was alone in the room.

The door was locked. He tried the window. It gave. He'd waited long enough.

Dimple and Wimpy were the first to spot him. Fury leaped from the window to the porch roof, then rolled off and hit the ground hard. He got to his feet and ran past the dog kennel at a speed none knew he possessed. He wore no clothes, his parts exposed and jostling for all to see. Dimple gathered his reins and turned Silver to the west. “That boy's naked as a jaybird,” he said.

He made a clucking sound and took off across the footbridge, Wimpy in tow on Boo.

They got to him at woods' edge. Dimple rode close and kicked Fury to the ground. He got up and they circled him. Wherever he turned, they blocked his route. “Give it up,” Wimpy told him.

After a while, he did.

That night, the worst came. When they'd secured Fury on the bed again, a fever gripped him. The Ledfords watched him through the night, twitch-fits grabbing hold and cold sweats coming every half hour. Rachel melted six ice cubes on his head and neck alone. Mary cinched more in a dishrag and pressed it to his belly. Willy and Orb watched from the open doorway to their bedroom. Fury was red-streaked, diagonal. Like war paint, Orb thought. Zebra stripes the color of scabs.

Down the hall, Ledford slept hard. He'd been up two straight nights with Fury. Had felt it was his duty. “He's my godson after all,” he'd told Rachel.

Now, while the rest of the family tended, Ledford got locked inside a nightmare. Fury's talk of gook ears and land mines had brought it on. Never had Guadalcanal visited him like this. He could smell it, and he could feel it on his skin. Effluvium, rotten fish, mildew. “Atabrine! Atabrine!” someone shouted incessantly. Then there was McDonough, who was dressed in civilian attire. White shirt, collar buttoned tight, the veins in his neck swollen and pulsing. “I can't breathe,” McDonough said. “Put a hole in me.” Then he laughed and his face turned dark and he said, “Have you kneeled at the feet of the Lord? Have you called on him since they nailed him up there?” He pointed and Ledford turned to look. There was nothing but a hillside of mud, a hundred or more people crouched on its face. “Asses and elbows,” McDonough said. It was all you could see—bent backs, bottoms of feet. The people wobbled and twitched. They were digging holes in the ground.

Ledford asked what they were digging for and got no answer. He turned back to McDonough, who said, “Dig for ticks.” Then, just as it had on the banks of the Matanikau River, McDonough's face exploded.

Ledford screamed and sat up in bed.

Down the hall, Fury sat up in the same instant. His eyes were shut and he mumbled something about rain. Rachel pressed him back to the bed. His skin was hot to the touch, his voice hoarse and dry. “Shhhhhh, shhhhh,” Rachel said.

Tears welled in Mary's eyes. She walked to the hall and sat against the wall. The ceiling fixture hummed above her. There were air bubbles behind the wallpaper.

Willy and Orb went to the kitchen and came back with a pillowcase full of marbles. An hour prior, they'd drenched it in tap water, filled it with old marbles and stuck it in the icebox. Orb had come up with the idea. Now it crackled and unstuck as they rolled it onto Fury's chest, frozen glass spreading like chain mail. Fury wheezed.

Ledford stepped into the room. There was hatred in his eyes. He stepped to the bedside and leaned in close on Fury. He studied the young man's face. Sniffed him. He took a wad of Fury's beard in his fingers and began to sift through. It took only a minute before he found it on the chin, swollen to the size of a grape, its head burrowed deep. “Get me my tweezers from the hall closet,” Ledford said.

When he yanked the tick, blood burst and dotted Ledford's fingers. It dripped from the ends of Fury's beard and gathered at his collarbone.

Ledford set the tick down in an oversized yellow-glass ashtray on the nightstand. Fury grit his teeth and his fever surged again.

Ledford said, “Willy, go to the Bonecutters. Tell them how it's gotten.”

Willy ran hard. His sneakers pounded cold ground and the thump of his heart reminded him of training days. A board on the footbridge cracked under his weight.

Something caught his eye at the edge of Herchel's garden. There was a glint in the moonlight, and Willy stopped dead to eyeball it. Ground-cover rustled, and someone ran for the woods. For a moment, Willy thought about running after them, but Fury was burning alive, and he'd have to let it go.

Dimple said he'd ride the ground's perimeter. Wimpy mounted Boo bareback and Willy swung on behind him.

When they got there, Wimpy dismounted and walked quick to the backyard. At the dogwood tree, he took out a Buck knife and a tin cup. Scraped at the bark until he had enough.

In the kitchen, he boiled water and infused the dogwood scrapings. He followed Willy to the bedroom, the tea balanced gingerly in a soup bowl.

They all watched as Fury choked and gasped on the steaming concoction, Wimpy forcing it on him. It seemed that more spilled down his jaw than got inside, but Wimpy assured them it would do. Mary turned away. She wouldn't watch a man drown in a scald of bitter water.

When he'd finished with the tea, Wimpy stood. He took both of Fury's hands in his own. “My grandmother was a fever doctor,” he said. “I seen her do this more than once.” He looked at each of them. “If you don't like it, leave.” Wimpy closed his eyes and squeezed Fury's hands until the knucklebones knocked together. He seemed to shudder just as his patient did.

Willy stood in the open doorway, Rachel and Mary just inside. Orb moved closer to watch. He held his daddy's hand.

Wimpy tucked his chin to his chest. He made a grunting sound. Then, looking up at the ceiling, he said, “There came a angel from the east bringing fire and frost.
Go in
, frost.
Go out
, fire.” His voice grew louder. “In frost, out fire.” It seemed to reverberate off the windows and walls. “Go
in
, frost. Go
out
, fire.”