Follow Me (27 page)

The cream-cheese prince of the Amity environs.

How ridiculous — Sally didn’t even know the word
environs.
But even after five years, she would have been able to pick Benny Patterson out of a lineup.

“Can I help you?”

Can,
she said. Not
may.
So what. Her ability to utter the offer aloud at that moment would continue to amaze her for the rest of her life, for it
implied that she was engaging in complex calculations in her mind, judging his manner, estimating his potential for recognizing
her as easily as she recognized him, looking for any sign that he knew what he’d found, either on purpose or by accident,
it didn’t matter which. The key was whether after five years he recognized her.

She’d cut her hair, and now that she no longer dyed it blond, the reddish streaks in it were visible again through the brunette
cast. Her skin tone had changed, darkening slightly through the course of her pregnancy. She was at least ten pounds heavier
than she’d been when she’d met Benny Patterson at the Barge in Helena. She wore overalls and heavy boots, and she was suddenly
conscious that her fingernails were rimmed with grease from a repair she’d done that morning for an elderly woman who’d brought
in a broken Hoosier hinge.

All this was somehow conceived and processed in an instant, stirring in her the judgment, if hesitant, that those milky blue
eyes belonging to Benny Patterson weren’t manifesting any visible sign of recognition, making it possible for her at least
to try to follow the most natural routine, to offer help in a congenial tone, clerk to customer.

There was a short delay in his response, a barely measurable pause, perhaps insignificant or, more worrisome, Sally considered,
maybe an indication of his suspicion. She blinked and looked at the floorboards beside the edge of the counter, noticing for
what felt like the first time that the grain was outlined with embedded grime. But the smell of the dirty wood, damp from
shoes trekking in the light rain that had been falling for the last hour, was pleasant in its familiarity. It was a fragrance
peculiar to a hardware store with a wooden floor, and it would comfort her later, when she entered other hardware stores in
other towns.

“Sure you can help me,” he said with an easy jocularity. She wanted to feel relieved. He seemed oblivious, too absorbed by
his self-importance to remember that he’d ever known her.

But was his tone appropriate for the circumstances, or was there something unnatural about it, a hint of the kind of tension
that usually accompanies subterfuge? Had he come here seeking her out? Did he know her? Did he guess that she knew him?

While in her mind she pleaded with him to go away and leave her alone, with her manner she presented a bland docility combined
with a hint of impatience, which she indicated by tilting her head slightly while she waited for him to tell her what he was
looking for. She cast an obvious glance at the clock on the wall — five minutes to six, and while she was pleased to be of
service, she hoped her customer understood that, though she wouldn’t have been so impolite to put it this bluntly,
closing time was closing time.

“You can help me,” Benny Patterson said, stringing out each word in a drawl, “sharpen a butcher’s knife I got here.”

She guessed that he was drunk, that he’d started drinking at lunchtime and had gone through a six-pack since then. But this
didn’t match the scrubbed, polished quality to his skin. He wasn’t unkempt enough to be drunk, and he smelled of mouthwash
and aftershave rather than of stale beer.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.” She emphasized the apology by shaking her head for a moment, then stopped, thinking that he’d judge
the gesture histrionic. “We only offer that service on weekends. If you want to come back…”

“I can’t come back.”

His words were too deliberate for their simple meaning. What else was he trying to say? He stood there expecting her to respond,
but she was at a loss, unable to formulate a sentence that would seem nothing less than perfectly appropriate. He’d said he
couldn’t come back. Should she ask why not? Should she commiserate?
That’s a shame…?
No, she mustn’t say the word
shame,
not to Benny Patterson and not in Tuskee. Beautiful Tuskee. She felt oddly nostalgic all of a sudden, as though her fondness
for the city were born of loss, though not because she was remembering a place where she’d been happy, where her daughter
had been born and she’d made good friends; it was more like the tingly longing that followed a pleasant dream.

“I’m on my way to Chicago.”

“Chicago?” She repeated the word as though it were unfamiliar to her and immediately regretted this demonstration of confusion.
What was there to be confused about? The customer could not return on the weekend because he was on his way to Chicago.

“Oh.”

“My sister is getting married.”

Why did he tell her this? Why was he telling her more than she needed or wanted to know? He was testing her, wasn’t he? Playing
with her, nudging, needling, trying to unnerve her.

“That’s nice.”

“Not really. The guy’s a dope.”

“A dope?”

“Her fiancé. But you girls, you don’t know heads from tails.” Now that was funny, so funny he erupted with a series of grunts,
forced laughter, a put-on, Sally suspected, though she couldn’t be sure because she couldn’t recall the sound of Benny’s true
laughter; she couldn’t recall ever hearing him laugh.

When she heard the bell over the door jingle, she was relieved. She could attend to another customer and turn her back on
Benny Patterson. But when the bulky stranger elbowed Benny in the back, Sally’s relief evaporated.

“What the hell,” Benny said, his tone more wry than surprised.

“Let’s go.”

“Slow down.”

“Store’s closed, it says on the sign. Aren’t you supposed to be closed?” the man asked Sally. His seersucker suit was so wrong
for the season that Sally wondered if even this outfit was planned as part of an intricate deception contrived to trap her.

“We’re about to close.”

“Let’s go. You gotta excuse him, ma’am. He goes gaga in the presence of a pretty girl. Come on, Benny.”

“I was just saying that girls, they don’t know heads from tails.”

“Shut up, Benny. My friend here,” he said to Sally, “they named the Dumpster after him. A bin full of garbage, that’s Benny.
Benny Dumpster.” The smirk on the stranger’s face signaled complicity with Sally, didn’t it? He was trying to convey to her
that he shared her revulsion of this fool. Or else he was secretly amused by Sally’s foolishness. Did he think she didn’t
recognize Benny Patterson?

“I was hoping to get my knife sharpened.” Benny moved his hand to slice the air with his knife. But he didn’t have a knife;
he’d only been pretending — a ruse to draw Sally into conversation.

“We’ll get your knife sharpened, oh yeah, sure, you can count on it. We’ll get your knife sharpened, Benny. Now say good-bye
to the pretty lady.”

“Good-bye, pretty lady.”

For an instant, Benny’s face was a mirror. He was squinting with the hatred that she felt for him, reflecting back to her
the evidence of her revulsion. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, she hated him, but she did, and he knew it right then. And he
hated her because she hated him.

The two men shoved each other as they turned to leave, their laughter swallowing the jingle of the bell as the door eased
shut behind them, one of them — she couldn’t tell who — interrupting his laughter to call out distinctly, if inexplicably,
“Fly in the ointment!” and then joining the other in laughter again.

Sally recognized the car, Benny’s own fancy green stub-finned Cadillac, a dingy old car after all these years. She stood to
the side of the window and watched the men get into the car, the stranger into the driver’s seat, and Benny into the passenger
side. He was probably too drunk to drive, Sally thought — if he was drunk at all. She couldn’t be sure if anything she’d just
witnessed had been authentic, or if Benny and his friend had planned and rehearsed the whole scene just to humiliate her.
Well, if that was their intention, they’d failed mightily. Those two idiots had no idea how impervious she was, how strong
and confident she’d grown in her years in Tuskee.

Fuckers,
she mouthed, watching the Cadillac pull out into the street. She wished she could have been brave enough to say it aloud,
but she couldn’t, even in the privacy of the empty store.

She hated Benny Patterson with the certainty that he deserved to be hated, though she couldn’t really point to anything particular
he’d done to her. But she was sure she had a right to hate him, if only because of his obvious potential for wrongdoing.

“Dear God.” She let herself say this aloud as she watched the car roll along through the drizzle. Once they’d turned at the
intersection and were out of sight, she realized how scared she was, her fingers numb as though from cold, her knees aching.
“Turn around,” she sang almost as an instruction to herself as she went back behind the counter to retrieve the key. “Turn
around, Lou, turn around.” She double-locked the bolt on the front door. Leaving the last column on the inventory list incomplete,
she grabbed her hat and raincoat and headed back through the rear door, an exit she rarely used but chose now because she
wanted to avoid the more public State Street, in case the men in the Cadillac circled back around the block.

The narrow alley behind the store led from State Street and ran between high slat fences to the small parking lot where Sally
had left her car. In her befuddlement following Benny’s visit, she’d forgotten that she’d given the car keys to Penny, and
that she’d been planning to take the bus. Right then her thoughts were racing through the sequence of things she needed to
do: make sure all the lights were out in the store and that there was food in the cat’s dish; lock both the knob and the bolt
of the back door, one click signaling that the first lock was secure, the next click signaling that the bolt was in its slot
and she could leave, and would, but couldn’t because he — who?— who else?— was dragging her backward through the air, spinning,
arm in a vise around her neck, flesh at the wrist, her own hair in her face, and words she hadn’t heard in the longest time,
words like
slut
and
bitch
and
wasn’t she a goddamn cunt who thought… she thought… she thought she could just —

It was happening too quickly, in jagged flashes, her awareness was blurred by the speed with which the assault took place,
the sequence of blows delivered faster than light.

Fist in the face, bouncing off the hard ridge of her cheekbone. Head propelled down with a yank of her hair. Her whole body
twisting in a way she hadn’t known was possible.

Realization seemed to take forever, but it must have come quickly, for she’d been struck only once before she understood what
was happening to her and began stiffening in defense, her strength coming to her in little surges. She slapped away his arm
when he tried to hit her again. Whose arm? His arm, of course — his name escaped her right then, or else the fact of it was
so clearly useless that she didn’t bother to waste her time identifying him. She knew him without knowing him, this man who
was hurting her, his violence fueled by accusatory rage, destruction the only possible way he could conceive to end the action
he’d begun.

He had never forgiven her and never would, the slut, the little whore who’d had the nerve to up and leave him sitting there
at the lunch counter in the Fenton Woolworth’s, treating him like shit, taking off without a word when she belonged to him,
she was his girl, she was supposed to do what he told her to do, and he hadn’t told her to go, but she’d gone anyway, she’d
left him sitting there looking like a complete fool. And then she’d tried to hide from him. She really thought she could hide?

With the word came another punch, splitting her lip.
Hide —
what did it mean? It meant pain and the sour, metallic taste of blood and a wrenching force too powerful for her to block.
It meant he hated her and wanted to kill her. It meant she hated him and wanted to kill him. It meant she had to get back
to her daughter and take her away —
to hide
her from him, her daughter’s father who was not her daughter’s father, at least not according to the lineage that Sally would
have wished for her, for he was not Mole, and since Mole should have been her daughter’s father it meant that he
was
her father, Mole was, not this man, not the one attacking her, beating her, who, she’d known from the start, had always been
capable of this, what he was doing to her now, and why she’d tried to…

Hide
: It meant she had to cover her face, so the next time he hit her his knuckles struck the back of her hand, bouncing her head
away from him but not actually hurting her, which only enraged him more, and with a swift movement he yanked her arm away,
and though she wanted to scream she didn’t have time, his fist caught her in the mouth, driving into her gullet, shattering
bone, filling her vision with a blank darkness that matched the sky.

There, he’d done it, she thought as she fell to her knees. He’d killed her. But she couldn’t be dead if she could think that
she was dead — proof, wasn’t it, that she was still alive enough to be thinking, also to notice the shine of a puddle, though
she couldn’t identify the source of the light it was reflecting?

Where was the light?

Who cared?

Not Sally Mole — all she cared about was that she was still alive, and since she was alive then, watch out, she was furious!
She had a right to be furious, didn’t she?

And she had a right to fuel her fury with the indignant certainty that God was on her side. And if He was on her side, then
she could appeal to Him, in silence.… Dear God, she was red-hot mad, so please give her strength! She wanted to surprise the
man doing this to her with her own power, and she would have succeeded if he weren’t so much stronger, she would have returned
the blows and magnified them tenfold if the nature of physical force didn’t rely on such fixed laws.