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She jerked the cord, causing it to bite into his skin, but he didn’t complain. “That was the sin of Sodom,” his mama said in a mutter that reeked of smoke and coffee, “men lusting after the angels of God. The angel, she wants to purify you. Set your soul right before the end.”

  No matter what his mama thought, Merle knew this wasn’t any kind of punishment. It was a test of his loyalty. The final test before Ruby would take him as her own, change him forever. Change him to be like her. He would be her right hand in the new world she was building.

  Minutes passed as his mama used her fingers to crochet his restraints, tying tight knot after knot into the coarse and biting fibers. “Gonna be plenty of folk around here real sorry, real soon,” she said. “I warned ’em. At least I tried to. But I ain’t seen a single door outside our own that has the blood.”

  Ruby said she found it real funny when his mama flung herself at her feet, begging her to spare the righteous souls of Conroy. Ruby said that once she changed Merle for good, she’d send him out to see if any houses had blood on their door. These would be the first he should punish.

  He craned his neck in time to see his mama pull her knife from its leather sheath. He heard a snipping sound as the blade cut through the cord. She returned the knife to its case, and slid it back into the pocket of his daddy’s old overalls that she’d taken to wearing after his death a few years back.

  His mama squatted before him, giving him a shove so he fell backward against the fence. As he bent into the wood, the rough head of the post scraped his back—a splinter in the center rail poked him behind the knee. She unwound more of the cord, binding his calves to the lower rail. He closed his eyes, doing his best to forget his mother’s presence, as she continued to make sure he was secured.

  He felt a throbbing in his hands as the clothesline pinched into his wrists, slowing his blood, causing his hands to cool. Cool. Just as Ruby felt cool to the touch when she came to him last night and shared herself with him.

  Before, he thought his loyalty to her couldn’t have been greater, but from the first cool and coppery taste, Ruby owned him, bound him to her, even more sure than he was bound now to the fence. Even though he knew he was alone with his mother, he sensed Ruby everywhere. He could feel her inside him, watching through his eyes, hearing through his ears, as if at any moment she might even speak through his lips. Her scent, a sweet and spicy perfume that reminded him of Christmas ribbon candy, had now become his own, so that he found himself closing his eyes and breathing deep so that he could pretend she was near.

  The thought of Ruby’s touch caused him to begin to stiffen, a hot wall of shame collapsing on him as he heard his mama snort in disgust. His mama thought she, too, loved Ruby, but she couldn’t understand. Not really. She’d never tasted Ruby. And Ruby had promised that she never would.

  Ruby warned him that her blood would change him. Even this first taste would make him averse to the bright light of the sun. More than a few moments would irritate his uncovered skin. More than a few minutes would burn. An hour at dawn would feel like being scalded by hot bacon grease.

  A second taste would worsen his reaction. After they’d shared the third and final communion, the sun wouldn’t just redden his skin, it would light him right up, like a flare. Ruby said she wanted him to know what it felt like, to make up his mind if he wanted to become like her. He knew what she really wanted was for him to prove that he was worthy.

  “Here,” his mama said, her voice prompting him to open his eyes. She now stood before him. She reached into the pocket of her overalls, and fished out a short but thick leather strap. “The angel said to give you this.” She held it out before him. “Open up,” she said, “and bite down.” He obeyed, as he always did where Ruby was concerned, accepting the bit into his mouth. “Keep you from losing your tongue.”

  He watched the sky shift from black to indigo to the purple of a deep and painful bruise. He felt a shiver rush through his body, feeling the approach of the dawn long before his eyes could take it in. The world fell still, then the sun dug its fingers deep into the horizon and clawed it a brilliant crimson. Moments later, the first rays landed on his pale and freckled skin, just warming it at first, but quickly gaining heat, like when the bigger guys at school used to grab his forearm and twist their hands back and forth to give him an Indian sunburn. He stood still, determined to take it, but then the light began to sear his skin like the time his mama caught him stealing from her coin purse and held the hot iron to his palm. He huffed agonized breaths through his nose, gritting his teeth so hard he thought he might bite clean through the strap of leather protecting his tongue.

  He nearly surrendered, almost giving in to the urge to struggle out of the ties that held him and flee toward any source of shade, but he held his ground. He held his ground, because Ruby had asked him to. He would have gladly let himself light up like a torch and burn to ashes if the sight of his end would bring a smile to Ruby’s lips.

  THIRTY-ONE

  A cock crow greeted the dawn. Elijah awoke to the smell of cigarette smoke and the familiar sound of his dad’s rasping cough. He opened his eyes to find his father standing over his cot. “Your ma would’ve let you sleep in the house since the woman ain’t here,” Clay said before giving in to another coughing jag. He spat a glob of phlegm at the foot of Elijah’s cot. The smell of whiskey working its way out through his sweat overrode the scent of smoke. His father had spent the night with the bottle again. Elijah wondered what his excuse was this time. There was always a reason, and it always had to do with Elijah or his mother.

  “Yes, sir.” Elijah stretched and pulled himself into a sitting position. His father was a mean drunk. The tight set of the older man’s jaw, the way his heavy brow and his cheeks pinched together, turning his eyes into nothing more than dark, angry slits, told Elijah that this day, just begun, wouldn’t end without violence. Usually Elijah bore the brunt of Clay’s rage. “Just cooler out here, and since I had the cot set up anyway . . .” He let his words fade away. Even though the light was dim, he could still see that his father wasn’t listening to him.

  “The sheriff’s visit has got me thinking.” Clay wrapped his words around the cigarette, and took a few more drags—short shallow ones, in quick succession. He dropped the butt end to the ground, grinding it into the dirt with the heel of his heavy boot, then exhaled and spat. He took a couple of weaving steps forward. “Sometimes a man believes a wrong has been done to him, and sometimes that man feels the need to take steps to set things right, to make things even, before he can find it in himself to move on. I just want you to know I understand that.”

  Elijah remained silent, running his fingers through his hair, then over his lengthening beard. He could see his dad had gotten himself worked up over something, but he wasn’t quite sure what. It was always best to stay silent when his father got this way, try not to provoke him, let him say his piece. He looked at his father, waiting for him to continue. They stared at each other silently for thirty seconds or so, the deep wrinkles on the older man’s face pinching in even tighter than usual. Finally Clay spoke, the words coming out slurred and heated. “I’m just telling you that I understand what you’ve done, but it needs to stop here. You’ve settled the score, now you need to let it lay.”

  At first Elijah held his tongue, not sure what “score” his dad meant. Experience had taught him it would be best to try to diffuse the anger he sensed pulsing through Clay with a quick and humble response of “Yessir,” and worry about what he’d agreed to later. But he felt his head shaking, and the words falling out before he could stop them. “Pa, I got no idea . . .”

  “Don’t play stupid with me, boy.” The harsh growl caused Elijah to quake, even though he was now full-grown, able to take on his father if need be. “I’m talking about Dowd and Bobby. You’ve made your point. They had your woman. They shared that fact with you. Now they’re dead, and you have another woman. It’s time for you to put the past in the past.”

  “But I d
idn’t have anything to do with Dowd or Bobby getting themselves killed. I swear I didn’t.”

  The older man paced back and forth for a few moments, then stopped dead in front of his son. He reached back and swung with his left hand, backhanding Elijah so hard that stars filled the younger man’s vision. Jumping to his feet, Elijah knocked the cot over. He respected the biblical injunction to honor his father, even if he didn’t respect the man himself. He wouldn’t raise a hand against him, but he wasn’t simply going to take a beating. Those days were done. Elijah kicked backward, knocking the cot out of his way, giving him space to move should he need to fall back or feign an attack.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Clay said. The fact that his voice had dropped to a whisper meant he was angrier than if he’d been yelling. “I ain’t no fool. You got revenge, all right. Okay, I can understand that. What I don’t understand is that you didn’t even take your own revenge like a real man would. You got the Sleiger boys to take it for you.”

  “No, sir. I don’t even know where they are. If I did, I would have told the sheriff. I know their ma is worried sick . . .”

  “That’s right, she is worried sick, ’cause she thinks her boys have let you get them messed up in something that will end with them getting their necks stretched.” Clay took a step back, his shoulders relaxing. He fumbled in his shirt pocket and retrieved a nearly empty pack of Camels, then shook it until one of them poked farther from the package than the others. He took the tip between his lips and returned the pack to his pocket. That done, he pulled a box of matches from his pants and struck one. The scent of sulfur filled the air as the match’s brief glare lit his face, illuminating his expression of disgust. In a second the light was snuffed, leaving the tip of his cigarette to shine like a lonely star.

  “You done lost yourself two of the best friends a man could ever have,” Elijah’s father said, his voice a sneer. “You think it was easy for them to tell you Ruby had come whorin’ after them? They weren’t bragging, boy.” He reached up and pulled the cigarette from between his lips. “They were warning you. Trying to get you free and clear of that bitch before you ended up marrying her. I thought you’d be grown up enough to let it slide after seeing war, but now I reckon as not. Maybe if the Judge hadn’t managed to find her? If he hadn’t brought her back to die?” He tapped the ash from the cigarette and licked his lips. “After you took off for Korea, I asked around. It weren’t only Bobby and Dowd. There were other men who’d had her. Plenty of them.” He took a deep drag. “Ruby would have let just about any man sow his seed in her. Any man. If you’d wedded her, you might have found yourself raising some high yellow bastard as your own. And raising somebody else’s bastard ain’t no life for any man.”

  His father’s body grew taut, and he leaned in toward Elijah. “You hear me, boy? That whore of yours done spread her legs wide all around these parts before hiking her skirt up and running off to California with the fancy fellow of hers.” His right eye twitched, and the right corner of his mouth pulled up into a sadistic smile. He chuckled. “She was gonna be a star, up on the screen for everyone to see. She didn’t love you. You were just the best thing going for her until she could find something better.”

  “No, Pa. I don’t believe it.”

  “You saying I’m a liar?”

  “No, sir, I’m saying Bob and Dowd were. And any other man who said he had her.”

  Clay gritted the cigarette between his teeth and slapped Elijah open palmed on the ear. Then again, harder.

  Elijah held up his hands to protect himself. “She told me she loved me,” he said. Even in the relative darkness of the barn he could see his father’s face grow a deeper shade of red. “And she promised me she had never been unfaithful to me. She didn’t know why Bobby and Dowd lied about having her, but she swore they had lied about it.” Elijah brushed away a tear before the sight of it could anger his father. “Thing is, Pa, I believed her. I would have taken her as my wife, Pa . . .”

  “You,” his father began, and boxed Elijah’s right ear. “Stupid.” A strike to the left. “Son.” A second to the right. “Of a bitch.”

  Clay tried another swipe, but Elijah knocked his hand away before he could. The old man had always taken pleasure in beating him. Humiliating him. Well, he’d allowed his father enough of that kind of satisfaction.

  His father seemed to see something in his face. Something he didn’t like. He took a few steps back. “Even if she had it in her to speak the truth, her mind was gone by the time the Judge brought her home. She came back here with some kind of pox. That’s what killed her. The kindest thing she ever did for you was dying before she could infect you. And the kindest thing anyone ever done for you is what those friends of yours did. You owe them, boy, whether you think so or not. You want to rest easy, you want their souls to rest easy? You give them what you done denied them. When that new woman of yours births you sons, you give them your friends’ names, so that they won’t die forgotten. You hear me?”

  “No, Pa, that ain’t gonna happen. Them two sonsabitches lied,” Elijah said. “As far as I’m concerned they’re responsible for everything that happened to Ruby. Their lies took her away from me.” He felt his fists balling up, his shoulders tensing. “I didn’t kill them, but I’m sure as hell glad someone did, ’cause they needed killing.”

  His father advanced on him and swung. No, not anymore. Elijah’s body reacted before the thought had even fully registered. He grabbed his father’s fist and spun him around, twisting his arm behind his back. His father struggled for several moments until he finally stopped and went limp. “So what if they did lie to you, you worthless piece of shit? They only did it to save you.”

  “Save me from what, old man?”

  Clay’s chest began to heave, and he bent over with laughter. “To save you from bedding your own goddamned sister. Dowd and Bobby. They knew. I had to tell them.”

  Elijah released his father and fell back.

  His dad spun back to face him, a wicked glee in his eyes. “Your mama. She was pregnant when I married her. The Judge never knew it, or at least he acted like he didn’t, but you’re his boy.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Annie Krueger’s wide and oddly angled face had been ravaged by chicken pox. If she had ever found a single thing to smile about, embarrassment over a severe overbite would have prevented her from doing so. Her eyes sat too far back in her head and too closely together. A lazy right eye remained permanently turned inward to spy on its companion. Both rested on dark purple circles that never faded. With those eyes, Annie scanned the tables at the Blankenship Diner, or “Blank’s,” as its faithful patrons referred to it, making a special point to catalog each crease, each mole, each scar on the faces of those customers who lacked the imagination to go down the street even once in a while to eat at the drugstore’s luncheon counter.

  She circled the room, coffee carafe in hand, celebrating the knowledge that one day, one day soon, she was gonna kill every last single one of these bastards. Put rat poison in the coffee, in the grits, in the beans, in every spoon of slop she sat before these swine. That was the only thought that kept her going, the sole thought that kept her sane as she rose each day to meet the sun and donned one of two identical uniforms, each a pale buttercup yellow that she knew made her sallow complexion seem even more jaundiced. Black collar, four black buttons, and black stripes over the pockets made her resemble an anemic bumblebee. Pinned-back lusterless brown hair imprisoned by a black hairnet, and graying tennis shoes. This was the outfit she wore six out of each seven days of her life. There was no point in trying to look pretty. Since childhood, harsh words and avoided glances had let her know she was too far away from that goal to make her efforts anything more than worthless.

  She worked here, toting plates from counter to table, from table to kitchen, from Monday through Saturday, from breakfast until the moment when Barbara Jean arrived to work the dinner shift. A nod to Barbara Jean, perhaps a mumbled word or two, then she’d retu
rn to her parents’ home, where she would hand wash the scent of her sweat and the smell of bacon and onions from the buttercream dress, hanging it over the tub to drip-dry for the two days hence when she would wear it once again. Each and every evening, she’d put on her mother’s old robe, and make herself a cup of tea and sit in her father’s armchair, where she’d dream of the day when she would finally kill every single last one of the bastards who frequented the diner.

  It had seemed an act of Providence, a prayer answered, a wish fulfilled, when a couple of years back, she’d spotted a glint from a brown glass bottle sitting in the trash behind the diner. Annie figured the rats found their way into the diner again, and the boss was trying to get rid of them quietly and on his own. Most of the label was still on the bottle, and the word “Poison” printed in red and surrounded by a red diamond, jumped out at her like a hallelujah. She’d carried it with her. Slept with it even, ever since. The only thing that surprised her was that she’d held off from using it this long.

  Annie glanced over her shoulder at the clock on the wall. Seven o’clock. Eleven and a half hours before she’d pass the last customer’s fouled plate back to Merle, the pimple-faced teenaged dishwasher, and walk the eight blocks east and three blocks south to arrive back home. The house would be dark and empty when she got there. Her father had passed four years back, and her mama joined him last fall. Now, with summer ending, and the nights growing long again, Annie wished she’d hadn’t tested the thallium on the cat.

  “Annie.” An impatient voice caught her attention. She turned and fixed her misaligned gaze on Marjorie Thompson, holding up a lipstick-stained mug. If any woman in the world could sympathize with Annie’s pain and loneliness, it should be this fat, peroxided old maid, but Marjorie seemed oblivious to her own basic detestability. Annie crossed to her and filled the cup, the display of movie magazines fanned out around Marjorie’s plate catching her eye: Picturegoer, Screenland, Photoplay, Why, and a few whose titles were hidden by the ones Annie could see.