Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) (29 page)

“If you're really sorry, you'll quit arguing with me.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Livvie said. She allowed Charlotte to help her stand. They moved gingerly toward the stairs.

On the way up the stairs, with Charlotte's right hand atop Livvie's as it rode the banister rail, and Charlotte's left hand in the small of Livvie's back as she climbed one step at a time, Charlotte said, “So did you spend the entire night out in the barn?”

“After round two,” Livvie said. “I didn't have much interest in doing round three.”

“I bet it was cold, wasn't it?”

“I made a little hole in the hay. That helped to cut the chill.”

Charlotte sat Livvie on the edge of the bed, then swung her legs up and pulled the heavy comforter up to her neck. “Why didn't you just get in your car and drive away and leave the bastard to fend for himself?”

“That's why we had the fight and I couldn't go to work. He made me give him my car keys. His fuel pump or something went out in the truck.”

Her voice remained matter-of-fact, and in her eyes and the turn of her mouth, Charlotte saw embarrassment and apology. “Do you
ever
complain?” Charlotte asked.

“I would if I thought it would do any good,” Livvie told her with a smile.

Charlotte said, “You should be warm soon. This comforter is filled with goose down.”

“Is this your bed?”

“The best one in the house.”

“It smells like you.”

“I'm sorry, I can get you a different pillow . . .”

“No, it's a good smell. That expensive perfume you wear.”

Charlotte said, “I haven't worn any perfume for days.”

“I smelled it that night at the elementary school. I wished you'd stood there longer. The smell of those torches was making me sick.”

Charlotte only smiled and fussed with the comforter, made sure it was tucked in all around her. It wasn't long before Livvie's eyelids closed.

“What's it called?” she said.

Charlotte was unsure she had heard the question correctly. She thought about it for a moment, then answered, “Pink Diamond.”

“Mmm,” Livvie said, almost asleep now. “Like the dew on the grass at sunrise.”

N
OW that Livvie was asleep, Charlotte allowed the anger to boil up and fuel her movements. She kept in her mind the look on Livvie's face in the blueberry patch, the small, bloody face all but covered in a gray hood, mouth swollen and crooked, the glaze of terror still in her eyes. Charlotte knew that she would need all the anger and strength she could muster to do what she felt she had to do, what every moment of the morning so far was leading her toward. She hurried down the stairs as quietly as she could and as her hand slid down the rail, she felt that she was sliding deliberately down a tunnel that would finally lead her to a clearing full of light and back to a semblance of the peacefulness that, three hours earlier, she believed she would never feel again.

The only article of clothing she had removed when she and Livvie returned from the blueberry patch was her jacket, but Charlotte felt no need for the jacket now. A deep flush of heat radiated through her muscles and bones. She grabbed the Jeep keys off the hook on the mudroom coatrack, stepped onto the back porch, very quietly eased shut the door, then turned and sprinted to the garage.

She did not pause to knock at the trailer, but shoved open the cheap wooden door so violently that it banged back against the wall. The sound awoke Denny Rankin, who had been sitting slouched back in a corner of the vinyl sofa, his legs splayed out wide. He jerked forward when the door banged open, and for a moment, only sat there squinting at Charlotte. On an empty sofa cushion was an empty box of tissues. Beside it were the tissues, now wadded up and bloody.

Charlotte stood just inside the door, waiting, letting the rage accumulate.

“What the fuck do you want?” Rankin said.

“Get up and get your clothes and get out of here,” she told him. “And don't you ever come near her again.”

He cocked his head a little and studied her. Then he slowly climbed to his feet. Took his time walking four steps to the door. He stood as close to her as he could without touching. Charlotte liked that her boots made him, in his dirty white socks, shorter than her.

She smelled his breath even before he spoke. “Get the fuck out of my house,” he said.

His breath was not sour or beery as she had thought it would be but smelled of rot instead, and the stench reminded her of the dead opossum she had put in her car in early April, and it was this scent that caused her to flinch and momentarily weaken. But then she told herself,
You can't change any of that, you can only help Livvie.
So she drew in a deep breath full of rot and remembrance, and she looked at him and said, “I'm not moving. You are.”

He did not take his eyes off hers, but she saw his eyes harden and she tensed at the same moment his hand seized her arm just above the wrist. An instant later she turned to the side, jerking her arm away so that he, holding tightly, was pulled into the open doorway. He released her almost immediately but it was too late, especially because she was able to get a free hand on his back now and to shove him forward. He flew face forward onto the hard ground.

When he came flying back into the trailer, his face was muddy and his eyes black with rage. It took him a moment to find her in the kitchen, to see her standing with her back to the sink, one hand lightly holding the other just below her waist. He stumbled in his fury to get to her, but still she did not move. She thought she knew what was coming and only hoped that she could survive it without losing consciousness. With luck he would hit her only once. Then she could retreat to her Jeep and call the sheriff and have Rankin arrested. The rest would fall into place when he was gone.

He came at her again, but again he stopped short. She was squeezing her fingers hard now, the left hand clenched around the right. He was so angry that he could not stop trembling. She could hear the air in his nostrils, quick, shallow inhalations, the exhalations blowing out hard. When she realized that he was not going to strike her, she held her hands even tighter, but smiled.

“You think I'm funny?” he said.

“I think you're hilarious. In a very pathetic, cowardly kind of way.”

His breaths came quicker now, accelerating. She could feel how badly he wanted to hit her, how strenuously he was holding back. She thought of her father then and one of his favorite words, his name for their short bug-eyed neighbor who complained each time Charlotte's father's grass clippings flew into the neighbor's yard.

She looked at Denny Rankin and smiled. “Piss-ant,” she said.

He grabbed her by the front of her shirt with both hands, seized her so viciously that she felt buttons popping and his fingernails scraping beneath her bra. He grabbed her and spun away and threw her out of the kitchen so that she went sprawling onto her hands and knees in the tiny living room. He strode up behind her and screamed, “Get the fuck out of my house!”

She stood very slowly, took a slow, deep breath before she turned to look at him. His fists were clenched but she did not care, he was finished now, she had made sure of that. She turned and went out the door and walked quickly to her Jeep. She could feel him following behind her, could hear in the dark distance his angry voice, but it was nothing more than wordless mutters to her now, sounds of no consequence. She climbed into the Jeep and locked the door and took out her cell phone.

Rankin was at her door now and had his face close to the glass. His mouth kept moving and she could see the spittle from his words, but it was all she could do to concentrate on getting the phone open, on hitting the call button and finding Gatesman's number on the list of recent calls, then scrolling to that number and pressing the call button again.

As the number rang, she looked up at the window. She watched Rankin's mouth moving and heard the sounds and this time the two came together and she understood.

“What did you do with my boy?” he shouted.

She heard Gatesman's voice in her ear but she could not respond. She could only stare at Denny Rankin glaring back at her.

Then Rankin slammed his fist against the glass. She jerked away expecting a shower of glass. But the window did not break. Rankin screamed something else at her, and then finally he strode away and back inside the trailer. She heard the beep of a broken call, a disconnection in her ear.

G
ATESMAN arrived approximately twenty minutes after her next call to him. With her second call, she had successfully reported the assault.

“Where are you right now?” he had asked.

“Sitting in my Jeep in the driveway.”

“Whose driveway? Yours?”

“Livvie's driveway,” she had said.

“Is Denny still in the trailer?”

“Unless he left out a back door, I guess he is.”

“Then I want you to get out of there. Go back to your place and lock your doors.”

But she was not finished yet. She had deliberately parked behind Livvie's battered Datsun so that Rankin would be unable to drive away. “I don't know if I can,” she told the sheriff. “I can't even find my keys. I think I might have dropped them inside.”

“Inside the trailer?” he asked.

“I think so, yes.” She took the keys out of the ignition and slid them beneath a thigh.

“Jesus,” Gatesman said. “Hold on a minute and let me see if there's a car nearby.”

Thirty seconds later he told her, “I'm already on my way, so it looks like I can be there sooner than anybody else. Do you have your car doors locked?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you have anything to defend yourself with if he comes after you? Pepper spray, a screwdriver, anything at all?”

“Please hurry, Marcus,” she said.

She heard the siren well before Gatesman's car made a squealing turn into the Rankins' driveway. The siren died abruptly; he killed the engine and climbed out. Charlotte popped open her car door and turned in the seat.

“You all right?” he asked.

“I am now.”

“He's still in there?”

“He left about three minutes ago.”

Gatesman turned back toward his car. “Is he still driving that red pickup truck?”

“He took Livvie's car. The Datsun. I had him blocked in, so he tore off through the yard to get around me.”

Gatesman looked at the yard now and saw the tread marks and the torn-up grass. “Which direction?” he said.

“Back the same way you came.”

“I never saw him. Of course, I wasn't watching for a Datsun. But I still don't think I passed him. He must've heard the siren and pulled off somewhere.”

He pulled open his car door and reached inside for the radio. Before he called the dispatcher, he said to Charlotte, “You want to go inside now and see if you can find your keys?”

“That's a good idea,” she said, and slipped the keys into her side pocket before she climbed out.