Beneath the Bonfire (18 page)

“Don't, okay? I don't want to press charges. He didn't steal from the store. All he got was your gun, but I have to tell you something. Please stop. Okay? Just listen to me. All he got was your gun.” Then, “You know me. Right? You
know
me. You have to
help
me.”

The store was quiet. Even the birds were now mute in their cages.

Aida shook her head and looked harder at the young woman. She seemed familiar. But the wounds, already like scars, the horrible wounds. She would have called for backup but the young woman held her arm so tightly that Aida listened. Twenty years ago she would not have lingered, would have pursued the man all the way to Canada had he run that far north. But now she did stop. She felt so, so weary.

And then Bethany told Aida the story.

She had moved into Bret Kruk's farmhouse. Her meager furniture, her clothing. There was plenty of room for her things among the stale-smelling dressers and cobwebbed closets stinking of mothballs. She cleaned for a week straight. Mopped the sagging old wood floors and washed the drapes and linens. She threw his food away, restocked the monolithic refrigerator with greens, fruits, vegetables. She made bread in the oven. She loved that kitchen, the views of the fields open all around her. She bought a houseplant and named it Ione, the name she had seen written inside one of the dressers and again on one of the photographs in the hallway.

It was a week after she'd moved in that the headlights first came teeming up her driveway, after ten in the evening. At first she thought it was a mob and ran across the farmyard toward the illuminated barn, where a fire was burning outside the structure in a steel drum. He spent a good deal of time out there in the barn with his dogs. She had never been invited inside. Determined to warn him about the impending cars, she pushed the doors open.

He was inside a cage of plywood and barbed wire, screaming at two pit bulls, working them up, their powerful bodies lathered with sweat. He held them apart, his knuckles white on two separate leashes, both of his thin arms cut in sharply defined muscle. All at once he let the leashes go and the dogs leapt at one another. One was dead in moments, the other dog at its throat, blood spraying onto the dirt floor of the barn. She held her hands over her mouth. The loudest sound was Kruk's breathing as he panted over the two dogs, and then restrained the one alive, releashing it. Pulling it away. Whereupon the night erupted in the noise of angry dogs all around them. She saw then that he was not a breeder, and yet even now she could not bring herself to understand what was happening.

“Bret,” she said unsteadily, “there are people coming up the driveway.”

“Go back inside, baby,” he said, his voice too calm for her. “Go back inside, I'm just expecting some visitors.”

“They're here,” she whispered. Then, “Bret, what is … what's
happening
?”

“Go on now,” he said. “Go to sleep. Just some bet-making, that's all.” He turned his back to her, led the “winning” dog away, toward where she did not know. Help, she hoped. Bandages and medicine, painkillers and water, though all that seemed very unlikely.

The dead dog before him she recognized as Bick. He slept in their bedroom, ran in his dreams. Bret had described his coloring as “red red nosed.” Bethany shouldered into the cage, picked up the dog in her arms, its body impossibly hot and heavy, and left the barn, just as a column of men came toward her in the night, their own hands full of leashes, dogs snarling, dogs whimpering, dogs who remained chillingly silent, even happy amidst it all. The night suddenly raw with violence.

She carried the dog into the house, went into the bathroom, locked the door, started the shower, and then stepped into the cold water with the dog in her arms. She held it until it cooled down. She slept on the floor of the bathroom that night, beside the cool of the toilet. Kruk never came for her. She found him in bed the next day at noon, asleep and snoring.

She scooped the dead dog from the bathtub, wrapped it in towels, and carried it down to Crawfish Creek, where she let the body drop through the water to the bottom, the towels gently moving in the current. She spent the next three hours tossing large stones onto the sunken body until it was covered entirely. An underwater cairn and headstone. When she finally turned to walk back to the house, there he was, right behind her. He struck her across the head with the back of his hand. She went down, holding her mouth as it filled with blood.

“Once a month those men come out, lay their bets, pay me money to fight their dogs,” he said over her, savagely. “Once a goddamn month. You never have to
see
it or even know it, okay? You can just go ahead and forget what you saw. They're just animals.” He breathed quickly, put his hands on his hips, and scanned the fields as if for witnesses. Then he leaned down to her, touched her shoulder. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I shouldn't have done that. But damn it, girl. I told you to stay away from the barn.”

He turned away from her, striding over the desiccated cornstalks. Thereafter she could not be unafraid of him, and the dogs sensed it. She suspected him of training them against her. She kept steak in her pockets, fed them whiskey when he was away. Sang them lullabies as they lounged on the kitchen floor, drunk and full. She did love them, their big eyes and long tongues, felt safer in the house with them beside her, her protectors, their bodies warming the drafty old house through the long, quiet winter. They curled around her on the couch as she read, the heat of their bellies resting atop her cold feet.

She was afraid to run, had no friends, and nowhere to go. Most of that fall, winter, and spring they lived quietly, taking walks, cooking. A week in Corpus Christi eating fresh shrimp and crab, him having his way with her in a seaside motel to the steady soundtrack of warm, crashing surf. She'd kept her eyes shut or focused on the shifting shadows of other guests walking past their window blinds.

She was trapped, his viciousness and kindness meshed together to form their own cage. She tried steadily to separate the dog killer from the man who was her lover and companion, but the two figures constantly came together into one and it unnerved her. She did not understand killing at all. No one in her family had ever even hunted. On the nights of the fights she tried to be away, to make the whole thing disappear. Those evenings she spent driving the prairies, breaking at truck stops to pee and buy snacks, soda. She took solace in the country music played in such places at low, comforting volumes. In the mornings she found handwritten notes that he'd left on the kitchen table:

Who was I before you? Love, Bret

She called the police one day from the pet store, anonymously. Reported that there was an illegal dog-fighting syndicate operating in a barn off the Crawfish Creek. It was late spring then, and she wanted it all to come to an end. She hoped that the police would scare Bret and he would shut down the operation on his own accord. The officer on the other end of the line listened to her and kept asking her name. She repeated the information and hung up. A day later a police car rolled up their gravel road and two officers knocked on the door.

“We've got a report of some dog fighting on these premises,” a woman cop had said, her long red hair flowing out from behind a brown patrol hat. She was tall and lean, her skin very pale and freckled in places.

Bethany shook her head, shrugged her shoulders. “No idea,” she said. “We've got some dogs, sure. But I don't know about any fighting.” She leaned on the door, her body weak.

Officer Aida Battle looked at her, removed her hat, smoothed back that fiery hair. They had not yet met. “Ma'am, are you sure?”

Bethany nodded.

“Can we get a look at that barn?” the other officer asked, motioning with his thumb.

Bethany nodded again, unable to meet their eyes. The male officer went off toward the barn. Bethany watched him open the swinging doors and go inside. She felt the redheaded woman's eyes on her.

“I should get your name,” the female cop asked. “No matter what, I ought to get your name.”

“Bethany,” she said. “Bethany Evers.”

The male officer was already coming back. He shrugged his shoulders at the female officer, said, “I got nothing. Five or six dogs. Not uncommon on a farm like this. No other signs of anything unusual.”

The redhead studied Bethany's face and then glanced toward the barn. She said, “Bethany, if you ever need to reach me for anything, here's my information. Sorry to disturb you.” She handed Bethany a business card. She donned her hat again, smiled brusquely, and turned. Bethany exhaled. The female officer turned back.

“Bethany,” she asked, “what do you all farm out here?”

Bethany paused, thought quickly. “There's no money in farming anymore. It's just cheap, is all. And quiet.” She smiled, though her eyes pleaded with the officer.
Your partner is in on it
, she thought.
A barn full of pit bulls. He never mentioned they were pit bulls
. “The dogs like it,” she said, lying. “My boyfriend inherited the land from his grandmother.” She did not want them to go.

*   *   *

Aida nodded, kicked the dry ground, began walking away. In the distance she saw a circle of old, disturbed coals. The memory of a large fire. She walked back to the police car. Her partner was already in the car. It was unusual that she would ride with another officer and had spent most of her career patrolling alone, but her lieutenant had suggested that Lombard ride along. The address in question was in the middle of nowhere, and Officer Battle was close to retirement.

“I don't need that on my shoulders,” he joked. “You go out and don't come back. So close to retirement and fruity drinks on some Floridian beach. No. Take Lombard along, guy couldn't find his ass with both hands. Show him those back roads.”

They drove back down the gravel driveway and through the hulking shadow of the red barn. At the road, they met Kruk's truck. He waved happily to them, rolled down his window, and stuck an elbow out. In the bed of the truck were three pit bulls, their tongues lolling. “Hello, Officers,” he said. “Can I help you?” He blocked the sun from his eyes, squinted.

Aida peered at the dogs in the bed of the truck, their nails loud on the metal. They barked incessantly. “What kind of dogs are those?” she asked.

“Terriers,” he said, nodding. “Magnificent dogs.”

“Pit bulls,” she said, nodding back at him. “Right? Pit bulls?”

He spat at the ground, grinning. “I don't call them that, Officer. They're my pets and I love them.”

“That why you've got them riding in back?” she replied. “If you loved them, you might let them ride in the cab with you. Maybe even buckle them in. Fact is, I could give you a ticket right now.” She wanted to see more of his face, but it was obscured in the shadow of his visored hand.

“Aida…” Lombard said quietly out the side of his mouth as he pretended to peer out the passenger-side window.

“We just came from the creek,” Kruk said. “They were playing. Havin' a ball. I didn't want to smell like wet dog. My girlfriend hates that.” He smiled again, his teeth showing.

“Yeah, we just met her,” said Aida, putting the cruiser into park. “Nice lady. Showed Officer Lombard here the barn.” She tried to remember the young woman's name but couldn't.
I just met her
, Aida thought. She waited for a reaction from the man.

Kruk did not flinch, though he did rub the stubble of his face with a hand. Looking more closely at the passenger side of the police cruiser, he smiled and gave a wave. “Officer Lombard, didn't see you at first.”

Lombard waved meekly back. Kruk smiled at Aida, shrugged. “It's a nice spot for dogs,” he said finally. “So much freedom, you know? Room to roam.”

Aida put the car back into drive, her foot on the brake. “They're dry already,” she said.

“What?” asked Kruk.

“Your dogs,” she said, “they're dry.”

He blinked.

“You said you were up at the creek. Those dogs look dry.”

Kruk looked over his shoulder at the three panting dogs. “They dry off quick in the back of the truck like that. My little secret.” And then passing them on his own driveway, he gave them a wave somewhere between friendly and dismissive.

“Seems like a nice guy,” Lombard said.

“Yeah, how about that? You knew him this whole time and you never let that slip. Why didn't you say something?”

Lombard spit out the window, scratched at the back of his head. “I didn't realize he lived out here, is all.” He shrugged. “So I see him at the bar sometimes. What's the big deal?”

“I don't like something,” Aida said. “Something ain't right.”

*   *   *

When Bethany finished her story, Aida paused. “I remember that day, Bethany,” she said. “I remember not believing him. But that's all the more reason why I still have to go after him. He's got my gun, for one thing. I can't let that go. The lieutenant will have my ass. Jesus.” She could not believe she hadn't recognized the girl, hadn't recognized Kruk.
Her face, I didn't recognize her face with the scars
, she thought.
My goddamn mind is going
.
Unraveling
.

“You can't,” Bethany said. “Not right now. Just take me to the hospital. I'll need more stitches.”

Aida shook her head. “You don't get it. By all rights, I ought to have him already. Pulled over and in cuffs.” She shrugged off Bethany's grip. Decades of untarnished service to lose her pistol this close to retirement; Aida was livid, scared. “I'll get backup. More cops.”

“They won't care,” Bethany said stiffly.

“What do you mean?” Aida said, exasperated. “What do you mean,
they won't care
?”