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“Come on, Ben, don’t puss out on us now,” Trey called, heaving gulps of air after a third, a fourth, a fifth axe chop.
The bull was on its side, moaning now, a mournful, otherworldy mewing, the way a dinosaur in a tar pit might have sounded—dreadful, dying, stunned.
“Come on, Ben, get your kill. You can’t come and just stand,” Diondra yelled, making standing sound like the most worthless thing in the world. The bull looked up at her from the ground, and she started stabbing it in the jowls, a quick, efficient jab, her teeth gritted, screaming, “Fucker!” as she stabbed it again and again, one hand on the knife, the other covering her belly.
“Hold off, D,” Trey said, and leaned against his axe. “Do it, Ben. Do it or I’ll fucking hurt you, man.” His eyes still had the druggy glow, and Ben wished he’d taken more of the Devil rush, wished he wasn’t jammed in this between state, where he had some logic but no fear.
“This is your chance, dude. Be a man. You got the mother of your child here watching, she’s been doing her share. Don’t be a scared, dickless boy all your life, letting people push you around, letting people bring up the fear in you. I used to be like you, man, and I don’t ever want to go back there again. Shit on. Look how your own dad treated you. Like a limp dick. But you get what you deserve, you know? I think you know that.”
Ben breathed frozen air into his lungs, the words seeping under his skin, getting him angrier and angrier. He wasn’t a coward.
“Come on, Ben, do it, just go,” Diondra needled at him.
The bull was only panting now, blood pouring out of dozens of wounds, a red pond in the snow.
“You need to let the rage out, man, it’s the key to power, you’re so scared, man, aren’t you tired of being scared?”
The bull on the ground was so pathetic now, so quickly undone, that Ben found it disgusting. His hands clenched tighter and tighter around the axe, the thing needing to be killed, put out of its misery, and then he raised the blade over his head, high and heavy, and brought it down on the bull’s skull, a shocking crack, a final cry from the animal, and shards of brain and bone shattered outward and then his muscles felt so good stretching and working in his shoulders— man’s work—that he brought the axe down again, the skull breaking in half, the bull finally dead now, a last jitter of its two front legs, and then he moved his attention to the midsection, where he could really do damage, up and down, Ben sending bone flying, and bubbly bits of entrails. “Fuck you fuck you fuck you,” he was screaming, his shoulders impossibly tight, like they were rubberbanded back, his jaw buzzing, his fists shaking, his cock hard and straining, like his whole body might pop in an orgasm. Swing, batter!
He was about to go for the shotgun when his arms gave out, he was done, the anger leaking from his body, and he didn’t feel power at all. He felt embarrassed, the way he felt after he jacked off to a dirty magazine, limp and wrong and foolish.
Diondra busted out laughing. “He’s pretty tough when the thing’s practically dead,” she said.
“I killed it, didn’t I?”
They were all panting, spent, their faces covered in blood except where they’d each wiped at their eyes, leaving them peering out, raccoon-style. “You sure this is the guy that got you pregnant, Diondra?” Trey said. “You sure he can get it up? No wonder he’s better with little girls.”
Ben dropped the axe, started walking toward the car, thinking it was time to go home now, thinking this was his mom’s fault, her being such a bitch this morning. If she hadn’t freaked out about his hair, he’d be at home tonight, clean and warm under his blanket, the sound of his sisters just outside his door, the TV humming down the hall, his mom dumping out some stew for dinner. Instead he was here, being mocked as usual, having done his best to prove himself and coming up short, as always, the truth finally out. This night would always be here to point at, the night Ben couldn’t get his kill.
But now he knew how the violence felt, and he wanted more. In a few days, he’d be thinking about it, the bell rung, can’t unring it, and so he’d be thinking about it, obsessing about it, the killing, but he doubted Trey and Diondra would take him out again, and he would be too pitiful, too scared, as always, to do it alone.
He stood with his back to them, then raised the shotgun to his shoulder, swung back around, cocking the hammer, his finger on the trigger. Bam! He imagined the air ringing, the shotgun butting against his shoulder like a friend with a punch, saying good job! And him cracking the gun, popping another shell in, walking deeper into the field, swing that gun back up, and bam!
He pictured his ears ringing and the air smelling smoky, and Trey and Diondra for once saying nothing as he stood in a field of corpses.
Libby DayNOW
Lyle had left nine messages in the days I’d gone Oklahoma-incommunicado, their tone wildly varying: He’d started with some sort of impression of an anxious dowager, I think, talking through a pinched nose, inquiring about my welfare, some comedy bit, then he’d moved on to annoyed, stern, urgent and panicked, before swinging back to goofy on the last message. “If you don’t call me back, I’m coming … and hell’s coming with me!” he screamed, then added: “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Tombstone.”
I have, but it was a bad Kurt Russell.
I phoned him, gave him my address (an unusual choice for me) told him he could come over if he wanted. In the background I could hear a woman’s voice asking who it was, telling Lyle to ask me something—-just ask her, don’t be silly, justaskher—and Lyle trying to scramble off the phone. Maybe Magda, wanting a report on Runner? I’d give it. I wanted to talk, in fact, or I would get in bed and not get out for another ten years.
While I waited, I prepped my hair. I’d bought a dye kit at the grocery store on the way home from seeing Ben. I had planned on grabbing my usual blonde—Platinum Pizazz—but in the end I left with Scarlet Sass, a redhead smiling saucily at me on the box. Less upkeep, yes, I always preferred less upkeep. And I’d been thinking about changing back since Ben remarked how much I looked like my mother, the idea irresistible to me, me somehow thinking I’d show up outside Diane’s trailer, looking like Patty Day resurrected, and maybe that would be enough to get me inside. Goddam Diane, not phoning me back.
I packed a crimson glob of chemicals on my head, the smell like something gently burning. Fourteen minutes more to go when the doorbell rang. Lyle. Of course he was early. He rushed in, talking about how relieved he was to hear from me, then pulled back.
“What is that, a perm?”
“I’m going back to red.”
“Oh. Good. I mean, it’s nice. The natural.”
In the thirteen minutes I had left, I told Lyle about Runner, and about Diondra.
“OK,” Lyle said, looking to his left, aiming his ear at me, his listening-thinking stance. “So according to Ben, Ben had gone back home, that night, briefly, got in a fight with your mom, and then left again, and he knows nothing after that.”
“According to Ben.” I nodded.
“And according to Runner, what? Either Trey killed your family because Runner owed him, or Ben and Trey killed your family and Diondra in some sort of Devil worship ritual. What’d Runner say about his girlfriend recanting his alibi?”
“He said she could suck his dick. I gotta rinse.”
He trailed me to the bathroom, filling the doorway, hands on each side of the frame, thinking.
“Can I say something specific about that night, Libby?”
I was bent over the tub, water dribbling out of the attachable nozzle—no showers in Over There That Way—but I paused.
“I mean, doesn’t it seem like it could have been two people? Somehow? Michelle’s murder was just—Your mom and Debby were like, uh, hunted down almost. But Michelle dies in her bed, covers pulled up. They have different feels to them. I think.”
I gave a small, stiff shrug, the Darkplace images swirling, and stuck my head under the spray, where I couldn’t hear anymore. The water started running toward the drain, burgundy. While I was still upside down, I could feel Lyle grab the attachment from me and pat at the back of my head. Clumsy, unromantic, just getting the job done.
“You still had some guck,” he yelled over the water, then handed the hose back to me. I rose up, and he reached toward me, grabbed an earlobe and swiped. “Some red stuff on your earlobe too. That probably wouldn’t go with earrings.”
“My ears aren’t pierced,” I said, combing out my hair, trying to figure out if the color was right. Trying very hard not to think about my family’s corpses, to concentrate just on hair.
“Really? I thought every girl had pierced ears.”
“Never had anyone to do them for me.”
He watched me brush, a sad-sack smile on his face.
“How’s the hair?” he asked.
“We’ll find out when it dries.”
We sat back down on the soggy living-room couch, each of us at opposite ends, listening to the rain get going again.
“Trey Teepano had an alibi,” he finally said.
“Well, Runner had an alibi too. Apparently they’re easy to come by.”
“Maybe you should go ahead and officially recant your testimony?”
“I’m not recanting anything until I’m sure,” I said. “I’m just not.”
The rain got harder, made me crave a fireplace.
“You know that the farm went into foreclosure the day of the murders, right?” Lyle said.
I nodded. It was one of forty-thousand new facts I had in my brain, thanks to Lyle and all his files.
“Doesn’t that seem like something?” he said. “Doesn’t this all seem too weird, like we’re missing something obvious? A girl tells a lie, a farm goes under, a gambler’s bets are called in by a, jeez, by a Devil-worshiping bookie. All on the same day.”
“And every single person in this case lies, is lying, did lie.”
“What should we do now?” he asked.
“Watch some TV,” I said. I flipped on the TV, plomped back down, pulling out a strand of half-dry hair to check the color. It looked pure shocking red, but then, that was the color of my hair.
“You know, Libby, I’m proud of you, with all this,” Lyle said stiffly.
“Ah don’t say that, it sounds so fucking patronizing, it drives me crazy when you do that.”
“I wasn’t being patronizing,” he said, his voice going high.
“Just crazy.”
“I wasn’t. I mean, it’s cool to get to know you.”
“Yeah what a thrill. I’m so worthwhile.”
“You are.”
“Lyle, just don’t, OK?” I folded a knee up under my chin and we both sat pretending to watch a cooking show, the host’s voice too bright.
“Libby?”
I rolled my eyes over at him slowly, as if it pained me.
“Can I tell you something?”
“What.”
“You ever hear about those wildfires near San Bernardino, back in 1999, they destroyed, like eighty homes and about ninety thousand acres?”
I shrugged. Seemed like California was always on fire.
“I was the kid who set that fire. Not on purpose. Or at least, I didn’t mean for it to get out of control.”
“What?”
“I was only a kid, twelve years old, and I wasn’t a firebug or anything, but I’d ended up with a lighter, a cigarette lighter, I can’t even remember why I had it, but I liked flicking it, you know, and I was hiking back in the hills behind my development, bored, and the trail was just, covered, with old grasses and stuff. And I was walking along, flicking the lighter, just seeing if I could get the tops of the weeds to catch, they had these fuzzy tips—
“Foxtail.”
“And I turned around, and … and they’d all caught on fire. There were about twenty mini-fires behind me, like torches. And it was during the Santa Anas, so the tops started blowing away, and they’d land and catch another patch on fire, and then blow another hundred feet. And then it wasn’t just small fires here and there. It was a big fire.”
“That fast?”
“Yeah, in just those seconds, it was a fire. I still remember that feeling, like maybe for one moment I might have been able to undo it, but no. Now it was, like, it was all beyond me. And, and it was going to be bad. I just remember thinking I was in the middle of something that I’d never get over. And I haven’t. It’s hard to be that young and realize something like that.”
I was supposed to say something now.
“You didn’t mean for it to happen, Lyle. You were a kid with some horrible, weird luck.”
“Well, I know, but that’s why I, you know, identify with you. Not so long ago, I started learning about your story and I thought, She might be like me. She might know that feeling, of something getting completely beyond your control. You know, with your testimony, and what happened after—”
“I know.”
“I’ve never told anyone that story. I mean, voluntarily. I just figured you—”
“I know. Thanks.”
If I were a better person, I’d have put my hand on Lyle’s then, given him a warm squeeze, let him know I understood, I empathized. But I wasn’t, the thanks was hard enough. Buck hopped up on the sofa between us, willing me to feed him.
“So, uh, what are you doing this weekend?” Lyle said, picking at the edge of the sofa, the same spot where Krissi had put her face in her hands and wept.
“Nothing.”
“Uh, so my mom wanted me to see if you wanted to come to this birthday party she’s having for me,” he said. “Just, like dinner or something, just friends.”
People had birthday parties, grown-ups did, but the way Lyle said it made me think of clowns and balloons and maybe a pony ride.
“Oh, you probably want to just enjoy that time with your friends,” I said, looking around the room for the remote control.
“Right. That’s why I invited you.”
“Oh. OK then.”
I was trying not to smile, that would be too awful, and I was trying to figure out what to say, ask him how old he’d be—twelve years old in 1999 means, good God, twenty-two?—but a news bulletin blared in. Lisette Stephens was found murdered this morning, her body at the bottom of a ravine. She’d been dead for months.
Patty DayJANUARY 3, 1985
12:01 A.M.
Broke-down Kinnakee. She really wouldn’t miss this town, especially in winter, when the roads got pitted and the mere act of driving rearranged your skeleton. By the time Patty got home, the girls were full-down-out-asleep, Debby and Michelle splayed out on the floor as always, Debby using a stuffed animal as a pillow, Michelle still sucking her pen on the floor, diary under an arm, looking comfortable despite a leg bent beneath her. Libby was in bed, in her tight little ball, fists up at her chin, grinding her teeth. Patty thought about tucking each one in properly, but didn’t want to risk waking them. Instead she blew a kiss and shut the door, the smell of urine hitting her, Patty realizing she’d forgotten to change the sheets after all.
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