This Bitter Earth (22 page)

Chapter 26

THE time they’d spent in one another’s company had slipped by with the patient ease of honey and had been just as sweet.

It seemed more like a month than a week. The days had rolled past in hours that no one had taken the time to keep track of. They ate when they were hungry and slept when they were sleepy. In between there had been some unrest, but more jubilance than anything else.

For seven days they had lived by an aberrant schedule that was, for the misfit occupants of #9 Grove Street, fitting.

The May evening came calling even before the sun had started its slow move east and the crickets’ aria ran a tight competition with the loud laughter that rang out in waves around the kitchen table.

“He was a scrawny thing, could barely keep his pants up around his waist.” Pearl was laughing so hard that she had trouble taking in enough air to breathe. She was at the end of a story about JJ and Seth, and Sugar found herself reliving each scene as if she’d witnessed it.

Seth blushed and rolled his eyes at his mother and then looked at Sugar and shook his head. “I wasn’t that skinny,” he said with mock defensiveness.

“Yes you were, Son,” Joe responded with a chuckle that Sugar found forced.

When the men had returned from Hodges Lake, their faces looked solemn and preoccupied. Sugar had walked out onto the porch to greet them as they climbed down from the truck, had asked if they wanted some lemonade or something a bit stronger, but they’d all shook their heads no and looked everywhere Sugar wasn’t until she realized that they wanted to be alone.

They gathered together on the porch, speaking in low tones, Seth and JJ nodding or grunting when Joe mumbled something and pointed down at the flowerbed.

By the time JJ pulled out for home and Joe and Seth took their places at the table, the air around them had changed, the heaviness of whatever situation they had discussed had lifted enough so that Pearl would not notice that there was something wrong.

But Sugar knew different and she watched them, father and son, as they spoke to each other with their eyes.

Mercy seemed to be participating this evening. Her eyes swung from mouth to mouth as if she were reading lips instead of listening. She even smiled in places where the rest of them laughed.

But her smile seemed too broad and absurd. It reminded Sugar of the smiles painted across the faces of circus clowns and held just as steady, even after the laughter was over and Mercy’s eyes dropped closed, her body beginning a slow tilt toward the floor.

“She worse than a newborn, she just drop asleep without notice,” Pearl said as she nudged Mercy on her shoulder.

Seth smirked. He had a newborn and he knew what sleep looked like. What Mercy was doing was a world away from sleep; it was closer to the slow bob and jerk of the addicts that littered the corner opposite his diner. He raised his eyebrows and gave Sugar a questioning look.

Sugar felt red hot anger begin to well up in her chest. It spread down her arms and through her hands, causing the tips of her fingers to burn. She bit down hard on her bottom lip and clenched her hands into tight fists, which she placed in her lap in an effort to keep them from reaching across the table and strangling Mercy

After all she had done for that child! All of those hours that piled high into days, stretching into long restless nights.

All of that time she’d spent sitting by Mercy’s bedside, mop-ping the sweat from her brow and holding her hand when the heroin fought to keep hold of her body.

Dammit! What a selfish bitch she was!

Sugar clenched her fists tighter.

She should have walked away, should have left Mercy right where she’d found her. Mercy wasn’t interested in changing her life.

Neither were you.

Sugar’s head snapped around and her eyes fell on Pearl.

“What did you say?” she asked.

Pearl drew her head back. “I didn’t say anything.”

Sugar’s conscience was reminding her of what she had been before she’d come to Bigelow ten years ago and who she’d become by the time she left.

Pearl had saved her from herself and now Sugar had to do the same for Mercy.

Sugar’s shoulders dropped in surrender and the anger in her hands cooled. She would stick with Mercy and help her kick the heroin once and for all. But first she would have to find out how she was getting it and from whom.

“Just like a baby.” Pearl laughed again as Mercy rolled her drowsy eyes over the faces that watched her.

Angel hadn’t looked at him since he’d walked in. That didn’t disturb him, but the fact that she wasn’t cussing at the meat or swearing at the potatoes she sliced, did.

Angel was never quiet and her silence plucked at his nerves worse than any loud noise could have.

And Harry wasn’t working. The chairs were still turned upside down on their seats on top of the tables and the toilet paper rolls in the bathroom were one sheet away from the cardboard scroll.

Harry was standing beside his mother, staring up at her, waiting for the moment she would say something.

Normally his presence would have irritated her and she would have chased him away with one swift wave of the knife she had in her hand. But tonight, something in the way her body leaned toward Harry told JJ she needed him there.

JJ had started to ask her what was wrong, had opened his mouth twice to scold Harry into working, but decided that he would remove the chairs and replace the toilet paper himself while he decided on the best way to approach them.

He was dusting off the liquor bottles when Angel finally came out of the kitchen and into the bar area. Harry was at her side, his index finger hooked into the waist of her apron.

“Shit,” was all JJ could think of to say when he looked into her face.

Her right eye was purplish black and swollen completely shut, her bottom lip was split straight down the middle and there were scratches as deep as rivers on her neck.

“Oh,” she said, waving her hand at his shocked expression. “It was my fault, I guess. You know me ... ha-ha ... a sucker for a good-looking man.”

JJ just stared.

“He said I looked like someone he hated. Some white woman.”

JJ thought that Angel didn’t look like any white woman he’d ever seen.

“Not my face ... down between my legs,” Angel said in a whisper, her eyes moving nervously between Harry and JJ.

“Sick bastard,” JJ finally said, but didn’t move toward her.

“Uh, yeah, I guess.” Angel’s voice trembled with shame.

Angel looked small to JJ and made him think about Jude.

“Who was it?”

“Don’t matter.”

Harry unhooked his finger from his mother’s apron and took a step toward JJ.

JJ ignored him and asked Angel again, “Who was it?”

Harry touched the gold-colored band around the neck of the bottle JJ held in his hand and then stretched his mouth into a hideous grin and dragged his finger across his teeth.

Joe waited for Pearl’s head to start bobbing before he gently touched her knee and said, “Baby, you should head on up now.”

Pearl looked at him through sleepy eyes and nodded her head and pulled herself up from the couch.

“Good night,” she mumbled before starting up the stairs.

“Night,” Joe said and settled himself back down on the couch.

The mood that Sugar had felt earlier when the men arrived was back, black and heavier than it had been earlier that day.

Seth yawned and Joe shot him a look that Sugar caught and read perfectly: Don’t you dare go to sleep.

Seth caught it too and roughly rubbed his eyes before straightening his back and trying to look interested in what was on the television.

Sugar wanted to ask what was going on, but knew for sure that they would not include her and that they were waiting for her to retire as well.

The only light that filled the room was the gray-and-white light that spilled from the television. Sugar, Seth and Joe had sat through two movies and now waited through the national anthem that announced the end of programming.

Seth looked at Sugar expectantly and Joe let off a loud yawn before patting his belly and rising to move to the kitchen.

“Well, I guess I’ll go to bed.” Sugar’s voice was hard and her words carried an edge that made Seth twist in his chair.

She was up the stairs and in her bedroom before either man could wish her good night.

Joe pulled the butcher knife from its place in the drawer and ran his thumb along the sharp edge.

Joe had never thought of himself as a killer. Even in the war, he didn’t think of himself as such. Over the years, he had separated himself from the man in uniform who’d spent days on end in ditches letting off round after round against the enemy. He had become a man that would come home, fall in love, marry and then cradle babies and cry over the dead body of his daughter.

He had made that separation a long time ago.

But now what he knew to be true brought those halves of him together.

He didn’t tell the boys everything he knew. No, everything would have driven them to set off on their own after Lappy.

So Joe kept the secret he’d found written on the piece of paper that blustery cold night in 1955 when Pearl had begged him to go after Sugar and he had, but all he found was dozens of pieces of paper dancing across the ground and he swore he heard the words scream out to him before he’d even read one.

The hairs stood up on his arms at the thought of it and the hatred he’d harbored for Lappy Clayton increased.

No, he did not tell the boys all of it.

He let on about Mercy and what that animal had done to Sugar. But he would not tell them about Jude. He would keep that part to himself until he had Lappy begging and pleading for his life and then he would remind him of the life he’d taken from him, all of them, and he would snatch Lappy’s life away from him just as brutally as he had done to Jude.

Joe indicated for Seth to turn off the television. Seth did and then joined his father in the kitchen, flicking off the light as he came. They moved in the darkness to the table and silently took their waiting places.

Chapter 27

LAPPY would never understand what drove him to do the things he’d done.

The woman from the bar, that was just him. She had upset him by wrapping her hands around his neck and forgetting about the length and sharpness of her fingernails. She’d scratched him deep enough to draw blood and that had made him mad.

He’d slapped her once across the face and she’d laughed at him. Told him he hit like a sissy. “A fucking faggot!” she’d screamed.

He was shocked at her reaction, but it had also excited him. Angel saw the movement in his pants and heard his breathing become heavier.

She stood up on the bed and began pulling off the clothes Lappy hadn’t had the chance to get to.

Bra, panties and the red scarf she’d sprayed with perfume and tied around her neck.

Her body was golden and thick and her belly jiggled as she did a slow lopsided spin for him.

“You want some of this, daddy?” She cooed at him as she rubbed her hands across her breasts and then down between her legs.

Lappy couldn’t help but smile.

“Lay down,” he said as he fumbled with his belt.

Angel settled herself down on the bed and opened her legs so wide that her feet dangled off either side of the bed. “See what I’m gonna give you, baby.” Her voice had dropped to a low groan and Lappy could feel the heat pushing up behind his neck.

He had to look, she had invited him to do so, and when he did he saw Jane Anne Clementine’s pussy and thought about the five long years he’d spent on the chain gang, the beatings he’d suffered and the night he woke up and found Elijah down between his legs sucking happily on his dick.

He had killed him for that. He could remember, even now, how easily Elijah’s neck had snapped and how it sounded so much like the
pop-crack
sound of fresh green beans being readied to cook.

Lappy killing Elijah had been all of him too.

There had been one other, besides the girl Jude, Sugar and Elijah. There had been Grace Ann. That was a mystery to him too. He could remember the sick feeling coming over him whenever she was with him.

Lappy had liked Grace Ann, thought about her in a way he’d never thought about a woman. He supposed he had come to care for her in some way. That feeling, that affection, so foreign to him, had moved Lappy to push her away, so that she could be saved.

But she didn’t understand that and had cussed him in the street in front of all of Rose and then had come to him late in the night begging for him to take her back. They’d ended up at the banks of Miracle where he’d fucked her for the last time and then killed her.

He’d been beating on Angel for a good five minutes before her boy Harry came through the window with a stick to beat him off of her.

Yeah, that was all Lappy Clayton and had nothing to do with what Shonuff had done so many years earlier.

He cut the light off in his room and walked out into the living room. The guys, the men from the band, were milling about, smoking dope and talking shit, gearing themselves up for their performance that night.

He had hooked up with the band when they were playing in Sun Flower County, supplying them with any type of drug they requested, and so they didn’t mind when he asked if he could come along with them to Bigelow.

Lappy didn’t know why he wanted to go back to Bigelow. He had left nothing there. But the mention of the town had excited him.

“Sure you can come along, just as long as you bring along your little friends,” Luther had said.

They’d stopped in five other towns in Arkansas before finally coming to Bigelow and the small rented house on the outskirts of town.

“You be down the club tonight?” Luther asked as he rolled his second joint for the night.

“Yeah, later on,” Lappy said before stepping from the house.

Seeing Sugar at the club the other night had been a surprise. He’d thought that he was seeing wrong, but there was no mistaking that velvet black skin and silky soft voice.

As soon as he saw her he understood why he had come back to Bigelow. The young woman she had with her had stirred something in him too, but he couldn’t quite place exactly what it was about her that further fueled him. And then there was JJ. Lappy remembered him well, especially the look he’d given him just before he’d run off after Grace Ann.

Angel snatched at his arm but was only able to catch a piece of the green material of his shirt, and even that slipped from her reach. “Joe, please,” she said, and then after Harry had wrapped his arms around her waist, she added, “Don’t.”

JJ didn’t know what it was about what Harry had done that suddenly jarred his memory of who Lappy was. Maybe it was a combination of the slow movement of Harry’s finger across his teeth and the despicable act of attempted murder that Joe had unfolded to them down by Hodges Lake. Maybe it was all of those things.

Whatever it was had sent all of the memories flooding back to him and reopened the place in him where he’d stored his pain away.

Grace Ann. She was the first and only person to smile at him when he walked into Rose with his filthy clothing and gruff beard. Seeing her smile was like watching the sun rise.

She was the reason he’d stayed in Rose for as long as he did. He’d stumbled on work slopping pigs and stringing bales of hay for shipping. At the end of two weeks, he’d earned enough to get a new set of clothes, a shave and a bed over the barn on the land owned by the man he worked for.

They never exchanged words, Grace Ann and JJ, but she always smiled at him when their paths happened to cross in town, even if she was walking hand in hand with Lappy Clayton.

He’d heard her name mentioned in conversation, heard her aunt complaining about Grace Ann to a neighbor as they stood examining tomatoes at the market and had utilized that name like a prayer, saying it in the morning when he rose, over all of his meals and at night before he closed his eyes and slept.

Yes, Grace Ann was the reason why he stayed in Rose for as long as he did and she was also the reason why he left.

JJ was there when the men pulled her body from Miracle’s muddy bottom. Her beautiful lips were gray and drawn after three days and her skin was blue and hung loose from her bones.

JJ walked away from Rose with wet eyes and a heavy heart.

The sun had set for him that day, and hadn’t risen since.

Now he was going to make it right for Grace Ann as well as Sugar.

JJ snatched up his gun and ripped open the door to his truck. He gunned the engine twice as he tried to decide whether or not to take the dogs, before throwing the gears into reverse and doing sixty out the driveway, spinning the truck south and gunning it toward Grove.

Sugar was wide awake. It must have been close to midnight, but she wasn’t sure and wouldn’t dare break her even breathing or the once-every-third-breath snore she’d been doing for Mercy’s sake, to go and check the time.

Mercy was awake. Sugar could tell by the way she kept rubbing her feet together and moving her hands up and down her arms. She’d made some type of sound with her mouth a few times, before she finally couldn’t take it anymore and eased out of the bed.

Mercy crept across the floor toward the window and peeked out. Whatever or whoever she was looking for wasn’t there, because Mercy cussed and sucked her teeth in disgust before throwing her hands over her mouth and giving Sugar a cautious look.

Sugar, she just kept pretending to be asleep.

Pearl sat straight up in bed. She blinked at the darkness and then moved her hand over the empty space beside her.

“Oh, my God,” she uttered as she stepped from the bed. “Where did I put it.” She spoke low and to herself as she moved to her dresser and then thought again and moved to the closet.

She checked in four pockets before she found what she was looking for.

Pearl had dreamed of Jude, a dancing, happy, so-alive Jude. Jude was dancing in a brightly lit field of flowers, her long braids bouncing off her shoulders as she laughed and swayed to music Pearl could not hear.

Pearl’s heart swelled and she took dream steps toward her daughter, but Jude never seemed to be close enough to touch and then the light faded and Jude’s face was replaced with Sugar’s and then Mercy’s.

Pearl could hear herself call out her daughter’s name over and over again until an answer boomed back from somewhere deep in the darkness, startling Pearl back into the waking world.

She looked down at the bleeding blue letters and suddenly understood.

Joe had heard a car come up the road but not past the house, and so he knew the sound that had clouded his dreams for three nights straight would soon follow.

Seth heard the creak of the stairs before he saw the glowing white of her gown and almost jumped to his feet, but Joe laid a firm hand on his arm, ceasing his movements.

Mercy lingered on the bottom step for a moment as if she sensed that something was wrong. Joe and Seth held their breaths and hoped that the sound of their banging hearts would not give them away.

Joe heard the earth break apart beneath Lappy’s feet and then the light tapping sound against the living room window.

Joe could feel the muscles in Seth’s arm strain against his palm. He gripped the knife in his hand tighter.

Mercy did not move to the living room, but went straight to the front door, turned the lock and swung it slowly open.

Sugar felt the air in the hall change. It reminded her of when she sat in the kitchen and Pearl opened the refrigerator door; the air would go cool around her ankles, not enough for her to notice right away, but later on she would think of it when the day hit two o‘clock and the heat became unbearable.

Sugar was about to tiptoe past Pearl’s bedroom when the door swung open and both women jumped back in surprise.

Neither of them spoke. They just stood staring at each other until Pearl eased a slow hand out toward her.

Sugar looked down at the piece of paper that was pressed between Pearl’s forefinger and thumb. It was limp and barely comprehensible, but it was her secret just the same.

Lappy stepped into the hallway. It was his first time in the house, and being there made his stomach ache. Mercy shifted her weight from foot to foot. The need in her felt like electricity moving through her. Every nerve in her body was on alert, making the late-night breeze feel like a blustery cold wind.

Her body swayed as she extended her open hand toward Lappy.

JJ’s truck ran off the road and collided with a looming white ash. He’d taken a turn too quickly and the hot tears that filled his eyes blurred his vision, assisting in his miscalculation of the bend.

“Shit, shit, shit!” he screamed into the glow that came off the dashboard.

The engine stalled and refused to turn over.

The moon above him smiled and JJ saw the silhouette of a blackbird pass across its grinning face.

Unable to control himself any longer, Lappy stepped forward and grabbed Mercy by her neck. It was a quick and fluid movement that no one anticipated.

Mercy was down on her knees, the air she needed to breathe and the scream she wanted to release locked away in Lappy’s firm grip.

Seth and Joe were taken completely off-guard. Their bodies jerked, but they did not totally react until Mercy’s eyes rolled up into her head and Lappy had started to drag her out the door.

Both Sugar and Pearl heard the dull thud Mercy’s knees made when she crumpled to the floor. In a mad rush to see what caused the noise, the two women got caught at the top of the stairs, their large hips pressed against each other and between the close walls, holding them hostage until Sugar turned sideways and jumped three stairs toward the bottom.

Seth had seen movies that reminded him of this scene, and long into his old age Hollywood would continue to churn out pictures that would make sure he never forgot it.

Lappy, his eyes wide with astonishment, his gold teeth gleaming beneath the moonlight; a glimmer of silver, a ripping sound, a howl of pain and then the blood, so much blood, spraying everywhere.

Joe had plunged the knife right into the center of Lappy’s chest.

When his daughter was old enough, and Joe was long dead, Seth would tell her about that night and the look he saw in his father’s eyes when he laid the blade into Lappy Clayton’s flesh. “The cold deep gaze that chills me still to this day,” he would say.

Joe would have lunged again, but he’d tripped over Mercy’s body and Lappy had stumbled away.