Winter's Bone (8 page)

Harold and Sonny stood in the doorway watching as she pulled herself to her feet. Harold had his mouth open and Sonny had his eyes narrowed. He stepped forward and said, “You don’t get to hit my sister.”

“Druther I hit you, Sonny? ’Cause I will if you want.”

“Boys! Go back in, boys. Cook those taters ’til they brown. Cook ’em brown, Harold, then be sure to turn the fire off. Go on.”

Sonny came down two steps, said, “Nobody gets to hit my sister who ain’t her brother.”

Blond Milton fairly beamed looking at his seed Sonny standing there defiant with fists balled and jaw set. He smiled a twisty proud smile, then stepped over and swatted Sonny flush in the face with an open hand. The swat knocked Sonny to his rump. Blond Milton said, “Balls is good, Sonny, but don’t let ’em make you into a idiot.”

Bubbles of blood puffed from Sonny’s nostrils and burst to speck his lips.

Ree said, “Dad’d kill you for that.”

“
Shit
, I whipped your daddy about twice a year since
he
was a kid.”

“You
never
whipped him as
a man
inyour
life!
Not when he wasn’t too fucked up to punch.”

Blond Milton grabbed her by the coat sleeve, pulled her toward his truck.

“Get your dumb ass in there. I got someplace to show you.”

He drove fast on the rut road, turned west on the blacktop. His bay rum smell filled the cab and Ree cracked a window. The truck was a big white Chevy with a red camper shell. There was a mattress in the shell. Blond Milton drove a truck with a mattress in the camper shell but he never went camping and his wife hated the very idea of the truck but never said so to him. He ran a crew of pot farmers and crank cooks that often included Jessup, always had cash, and folks said he was the Dolly who’d years before stepped forward and shot the two Gypsy Jokers who’d come south from Kansas City figuring their loud scary biker reputations would let them muscle in on the yokels and take control.

“Where’re we goin’?”

“Down the road.”

“Down the road to where?”

“To somewhere you need to see.”

They drove past deep woodlands and ranges of snow. The sun was behind the hills, the last western light made a sky of four blues, and the gaunt trees on the high ridges were stark in relief. Crows sat on limbs and looked like black buttons on twilight.

Just beyond the one-lane bridge across Egypt Creek, Blond Milton gunned the truck up a washboard rise and along a crooked lane. He drove until he reached the drive to a house in the near distance, then parked. The house had burned. Three walls and part of the roof still stood, but the walls were blackened and the roof was blown open in the center with sections slanted away in every direction.

Ree said, “What’re you parkin’ here for? Man, I ain’t gettin’ back there in that camper!”

“You think I’m wantin’ to fuck
you?
”

“If you are, you’ll be fuckin’ me dead! That’s the only way.”

“Jesus, but you’re sure ’nough twelve to the dozen, know it? Just quit kickin’ a minute and listen.” Blond Milton turned to face her. “Why I parked here is to show you that house.” Dark was near full but the snowscape had caught and held light, so the house remained visible. “That right there’s the last place me or anybody seen Jessup. The other fellas went off doin’ things’n when they got back that’s what they got back to, only it still had fire goin’.”

Ree looked at the ruined house, the splintered roof, charred wood, walls licked black by flame.

“He never blew no lab before.”

“I know it. But somethin’ musta jumped wrong this time.”

“He’s known for
never
fuckin’ up labs nor cookin’ bad batches. He’s known for knowin’ what he’s doin’.”

“You cook long enough, this’s bound to happen.”

Ree opened the door, lowered one foot, said, “You sayin’ Dad’s in there burnt to a crisp?”

“I’m sayin’ that’s the last place me or anybody else seen him. That’s what I’m tellin’ you.”

She stepped out, eyes on the house, boots in snow.

“I’m goin’ up for a look.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! No, you ain’t! Get back in here. That shit’s all
poison
, girl.
Toxic
. It’ll eat the skin clean off your bones and wilt the bones, too. It’ll turn your lungs to paper sacks and
tear holes
in ’em. Don’t you get nowheres near that fuckin’ house.”

“If Dad’s in there dead, I’m collectin’ him and carryin’ him home to bury.”

“Stay the hell away from that house!”

The snow on the drive to the house was unmarked by boot or hoof or claw. Ree hustled up the slight rise, glancing backwards at Blond Milton. He did not give chase and she slowed. She kept at a distance from the walls, began circling in the pure snow. One wall had flown into the yard. Windows had exploded and the frames dangled, blackened with glass fingers clinging. The charred wood smelled. There were other acrid smells. She circled through snowdrifts to the back. There was a trash pile topped with a cap of snow. Big brown glass jugs, cracked funnels, white plastic bottles, garden hose. She edged slowly between the trash pile and the house. She could see well enough. The kitchen sink had snagged on floorboards falling through to dirt and the curved faucet poked up amidst the blackened wood. Horseweed turned white stood chin-high in the floorboard holes. There were humps of ash where furniture had been. A round wall clock had cooked black and fallen in the heat to become puddled across the stovetop. The stove was wedged partway down a hole in the floor and . . . horseweed. Horseweed turned white stood chin-high in the floorboard holes.

Ree eased back from the house, whirled on her heels, and walked briskly to Blond Milton.

“We can get.”

“You did right to not go in there.”

“You showed me the place’n we can get now.”

“It’s always a bad deal when these things blow. Jessup’n me maybe had our tussles, but he was my first cousin still. I’ll see whatever I can do for you.”

She did not speak all the way home. She gouged herself to keep from speaking. She counted barns to keep from speaking, counted fence posts, counted vehicles that were not pickup trucks. She bit her lips and clamped with her teeth, counting for distraction while faintly tasting blood.

Blond Milton took the rut road that led to his side of the creek. He parked near the three houses. They got out and stood beside the truck. He said, “I know losin’ Jessup leaves you-all hurtin’ over there. I know it’s a lot to handle. Too much, probably.”

“We’ll make do.”

“Me’n Sonya talked about it’n we feel we could take Sonny off your hands. Not Harold, I don’t reckon, but we’d take Sonny. We could help you that much.”

“You
what?
”

“We could take Sonny for you and raise him up the rest of the way.”

“My ass, you will.”

“Watch your mouth with me, girl. We’d raise the boy way better’n you’n that momma of yours can, that’s for certain sure. Maybe on down the line we’d take Harold, too.”

Ree started walking fiercely toward the narrow footbridge. He snatched at her arm from behind but she spun away. On the flat bridge she paused and called, “You son of a bitch. You go straight to hell’n fry in your own lard. Sonny’n Harold’ll die livin’ in a fuckin’ cave
with me’n Mom
before they’ll ever spend a single fuckin’ night with
you
. Goddam you, Blond Milton, you must think I’m a stupid idiot or somethin’—there’s horseweed standin’
chin-high
inside that place!”

R
EE SLAMMED
the door behind herself and stomped past the boys, clomping loudly to the closet in her own room. She reached behind the rank of skirts and dresses hanging, into the far hidden corner, and retrieved two long guns. She dropped boxes of shells into a pocket of Mamaw’s coat. She cradled the guns in her arms, jerked her head at the watching boys, and led them to the side porch. She turned on the porch light and rested the weapons upright against the rail, then began to load them.

“I wasn’t sure just when you boys’d need to know about shootin’, but I think maybe now it’s time you do. Now’s when you boys start learnin’ how to shoot guns at what
needs
shootin’. Throw some cans’n stuff out on that slope there. Set ’em up standin’ so they’ll keel over when you hit ’em.”

Sonny and Harold bounced to it with glee. They rooted eagerly in the trash heap and started arranging targets on the slope of snow. The bright porch light laid long menacing shadows behind the targets.

She said, “No bottles. The glass’ll wash down to the yard in spring’n I’ll be doctorin’ your feet all goddam summer. Just cans or plastic, stuff like that.”

One gun was a double-barreled 20 gauge, a strikingly handsome heirloom shotgun with a creamy blond stock. The other was an old and abused .22 rifle with a busted stock put back together by brass screws, a semi-automatic that held sixteen shorts. Ree’d learned to shoot on these very weapons, trained in the fields by Dad, and had a deep fondness for them because of that. The shotgun was the prettiest thing she owned and she’d used it to take rabbits, dove, and quail. The .22 was for harvesting squirrels from trees or frogs from ponds and plunking armadillos rooting holes in the yard.

She held the shotgun, said, “This trigger shoots this barrel, this one shoots this one. There’s hardly goin’ to be any time ever when you need both barrels at once, but if what you got to shoot is somethin’
big’n mean,
pull ’em both and splatter the fuckin’ thing. For these cans’n stuff, though, just shoot one barrel at a time.”

She started them both on the shotgun. She steadied their arms and guided their fingers on the trigger. Snow jumped where they shot and each blast rocked the shooter backwards.

“You think you can’t miss with a shotgun, but you can. You still gotta aim good.”

Harold said, “Holy cow, that’s loud!”

“Uh-huh, it is kind of, ain’t it?”

The boys shot hell out of the snowy slope. They exploded cans, milk cartons, boxes, and each explosion tossed snow and dirt briefly aloft and scattered. They shot
boom-boom, plink-plink-plink,
and the scent of shooting spread on the wind. Ree made suggestions, patted heads, loaded weapons. She counted shells and kept the boys shooting until but a handful for each gun remained.

“That’s it,” she said. She spread her arms in the night and nodded while inhaling the smell of shooting. “We’ve raised enough ruckus for now.”

Sonny walked to the slope and began to boot the blasted targets. He stomped shot cans flat and kicked shot boxes into the dark, doing a short hop from one victim to the next, humming as his pounding feet finished the wounded.

“Man, that shootin’ is major fun!” Harold said.

“It can be.”

“When do we get to do it more?”

“I’ll try’n get shells at Bawbee pretty soon.”

Sonny paused in the middle of a stomp, looked toward the side of the house and suddenly moved that way.

“Hey, who’s that comin’?”

Ree stepped from the porch with the shotgun at her side and Harold followed, toting the rifle. The crunch of oncoming footsteps carried. A bent-over shape was slowly edging around the house into the side yard, hoisting something bulky.

The shape saw Ree and the boys and the weapons, halted, tried to raise its arms but could not raise the bulky thing overhead, and said, “Goddam, Sweet Pea! It’s just me’n my baby! What in blue blazes is everybody doin’ with a gun out over here?”

On hearing that voice Ree broke her tense stride and ran joyously to Gail’s side. She held the shotgun swaying low and leaned to kiss the crown of Gail’s head. She snorted, laughed, gave a joshing shove, and said, “I
knew
you wouldn’t eat shit
long
. I know you good enough to know
that
. I knew you’d get back to yourself’n show up for me. I just
knew
.”

Gail touched her free hand to the shotgun and raised the barrel until it pointed at the sky. She said, “What on earth gives?”

A
PICNIC OF
words fell from Gail’s mouth to be gathered around and savored slowly. Ree’s feelings could stray from now and drift to so many special spots of time in her senses when listening to that voice, the perfect slight lisp, the wet tone, that soothing hillfolk drawl. She nodded and nodded, drifting while absently forking fried potatoes straight from the black skillet. She paused with the fork stalled midway between her mouth and the frying pan.

Gail went on, “He told me he wanted to go check his deer stand—you believe that baloney? In all this snow’n icy mess he decides along toward dark he’s just gotta drive out to Lilly Ridge right now’n look at his stinkin’ ol’ deer stand.
Again
.” Gail sat on a kitchen chair and Ned lay on the table, restful inside a plastic baby carrier that had a thin swinging handle. A big soft blue bag with a shoulder strap sat on the floor, full of baby stuff. “I know when he says
deer stand
it means he’s gone over to fuck Heather. Where else could he be goin’? Ain’t nobody needs to check on their deer stand
twice
a week. At
night
. Sayin’
deer stand
just means . . . It’s her who was his girlfriend forever. It’s her who he really loves. It’s her who he wants. I’m just what he’s got.”