Scowler (11 page)

“Mom.”

“We’ve done nothing to them. Nothing. And they treat us like this? Year after year? Like we’re criminals?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You weren’t on that phone!”

“I was sitting right here, Mom.”

“I’m done with it. We’re gone. We’re leaving. Pack what you need because tomorrow we’re out of here.”

Jo Beth Burke was not an impulsive woman and pronouncements of this weight did not come from nowhere. She was already turned on her heel and heading for the dining room. Ry knew he was faster. His chair screeched outward, and swooping around her he jammed an arm in the doorframe—a frame he had fixed two years ago, dammit, and repainted last month. The imposition was startling enough that Jo Beth’s nose bumped into his bicep, and in that moment of contact they both felt the vulgarity of this feckless display of strength. She took a half step back and stared up at him. It was a moment straight out of the repertoire of Marvin Burke.

The dimpled scars along her ear and between each finger no longer seemed so faint. Ry let his arm slide down the doorframe. He felt the veins of paint, the clots of coagulation. It was not a good paint job, not really.

“Phinny will be here tomorrow?” Jo Beth controlled her voice and Ry felt his face burn.

“He’ll be here, but—”

“Then we’ll pack the car, install the part, and then we’ll leave.”

Ry gaped at her. She meant it. Moving out was supposed to be a lackadaisical process; he had imagined a month or
more of packing that, in Ry’s fantasies, would bond mother, daughter, and son as they lifted forgotten artifacts from the backs of drawers and held them up, laughing.

“You have a place for us to go?” he asked.

“A couple options, yes.” There was no fear in her gaze, none.

“So this is something you’ve been planning all along or what?”

“Keep your voice down,” she said. “I made Sarah look out the front window for her meteors. There’s no point in scaring her all over again.”

He listened and heard the flutter of his sister’s notebook. Jo Beth rolled her neck.

“Maybe you don’t feel it,” she said. “I’m not blaming you for that. Maybe it comes with being older. But we’re clinging. Ry? We are clinging to this place. We have been for nine years. And I’m through. Just now. Just like that. It’s no wonder we can’t sell it. We’re afraid to. It doesn’t even make logical sense to the brain, selling your house out from under your own feet. But there is a place. More than one place, actually. They’re in Monroeville. Don’t bother me for details; this isn’t something open for discussion. I know you’re upset. But this isn’t really about you. I cannot live here. It has nothing to do with your father and if he’s at Bluefeather or if he isn’t—I couldn’t care less. I cannot live with these
people
. These so-called neighbors who throw me a few dollars and pretend to be my friends. Have you seen their crops? They’re nearly as bad off as we are and that’s not our fault; it’s the land. I can make real money in Monroeville, Ry, and it can start tomorrow. It can all start tomorrow. You see? All we have to do is do it.”

Ry opened his mouth and felt a lake of tears lapping at the back of his throat. He took a moment to swallow the salty water.

“And then what?” he asked.

Jo Beth reached out and tugged the hair at the side of his head as if checking its fixedness, something she hadn’t done in years. It was comforting, her knuckles so tight against his scalp. He let his head be yanked this way, then that.

“And then it’s done,” she said.

C
hristmas in August was unintentional; it just turned out that way. By the time Ry had entered the living room, his mother was already speaking to Sarah in tones of such skillful persuasion that she could have been suggesting a suicide pact and Sarah would be nodding along just the same. A surprise trip to Monroeville was how Jo Beth put it, except that they were going to stay awhile and see how that went and wasn’t that exciting? Ry knew that his mother was underestimating Sarah. Insight twinkled in the girl’s eyes, but she knew when it was advantageous to fake gullibility, whether it was in the tooth fairy or a supposedly innocuous visit to what was in fact a new home.

It was more exciting than one hundred little lights from space. Sarah wanted to pack right away, but Jo Beth assured her that there would be plenty of time for that in the morning and, besides, anything they wanted to come back for later would still be here. Jo Beth headed upstairs; they heard the telltale rattle of the attic door being pulled from the ceiling and then the thud of the ladder unfolding. Five minutes later
their mother was back, not with White Special Dress but with a cargo so exciting Sarah dropped her precious notebook: two full shopping bags, one old and sprouting the telltale chutes of wrapping paper, and one brand-new and bulging with promise.

“Can’t haul these all the way to Monroeville without you seeing them,” Jo Beth sighed. “Who’s up for presents?”

Ry’s heartbeat accelerated with the realization that he was in the presence of genius. With a single audacious move a night of anxiety had been transformed into festivity. The living room door was closed to gloriously exacerbate the rustle of wrapping paper and the squeal of drawn tape. There was a string of colored lights and Sarah knew where it was stashed. Ry headed out to the machinery shed, where weeks ago he had uprooted a small evergreen after its roots had begun to interfere with the septic tank. Back inside, he kicked aside the kitchen stool and propped the tree in front of the phone. Sarah strung the colored lights across dead limbs that refused the weight, and it was with some deal of smugness that Ry made it work.

“That tree’s going to burn us down,” Jo Beth moaned.

“What do we care?” Ry said, laughing. “We’re out of here, right?”

The gifts, purchased on one of Jo Beth’s rare trips to Monroeville, maybe the same one during which she procured their mysterious new housing, were piled in the center of the table. Sarah’s Walt Disney record player journeyed from her room to the kitchen counter; Mickey’s arm was placed to the groove and out came Bing Crosby attesting that it was a silent night. It was anything but. The previous dinner was sent into the trash with a clatter of cutlery, and a dozen cooking tasks were
in progress before Jo Beth bothered to take a vote on what the hell they should eat. This mild dip into profanity, on Fake Christmas no less, had Ry and Sarah howling, waving their arms through their frantic gasps to make sure the word
pancakes
was heard.
Chocolate chip pancakes
, even. “Liver and onions? Okay, if that’s what you really want,” Jo Beth said. Their screams of terror were unparalleled.

By the time Bing was wishing rest upon merry gentlemen, batter was bubbling and bacon was sizzling and Sarah, showing inspiration, removed three Coca-Colas from the fridge. Pancakes and bacon and pop—he was surrounded by masterminds. He danced along to Bing until the crooner began to skip—
I’ll be home for, I’ll be home for, I’ll be home for
—and when Ry redropped the needle Bing was already on about jingle bells. Better, much better.

While Jo Beth and Sarah sang and opened presents and licked maple drippings from their forearms, Ry rotated his head to take mental photographs of the house so that he could remember it in case he never saw it again: the incognito cans of generic or partially damaged food, the spotless heartbreak of the ice cream maker and fondue set stacked hopefully in the corner, the crusted runners on the stove front that were somehow the very fingerprints of his mother. He wanted to remember it, all of it, the life contained until the moment that the night surgeon came and snipped it away.

He felt delirious; he heard laughing and joined in out of hope that his contribution could sustain it. Their faces—yes, it was
faces
he wanted to memorize, openmouthed and crinkled with happiness, and here of all places. Sarah opened the back door and called for Sniggety. Pancakes were the dog’s favorite and it should not have surprised anyone that he hauled
his old bones up the steps to gobble the leftovers. It was his nirvana. It was theirs, too—feeling each other’s warmth, looking over Sarah’s shoulders to watch the food disappear into the soft brown muzzle.

V
elvet dreams scraped away to reveal a soft scuffling coming from the other side of Ry’s door. Probably Sarah, her routine out of whack from spending half the night buzzed on caffeine and staring at an uneventful sky. When Ry had gone to bed, her pen had still been hovering over a fresh page unmarked by a single hatch mark. But he was thankful that the noises had awakened him. Just because it was his last day on the farm didn’t mean there wasn’t work to be done. He had a whole laundry list, starting with Phinny Rochester. The repairman was a notorious early riser, and Ry figured he might as well call him right away to make sure those spark plugs were coming today. Not just today, but this morning. The faster they did this, the less it would hurt. He winced while dressing; the floor was cold. He opened the door.

Sniggety lifted his nose from the tile and let his tongue flop from an idiot grin. Ry just stared. Never in Sniggety’s seventeen years had he set paw inside the house. Even when temperatures had plunged into the negatives, the best offer had been the doghouse, a pile of musty blankets, and a heat lamp. Yet here he was, a begrimed and slobbering alien plopped down within a clean and orderly world, and by all appearances elated at the opportunity.

Music rumbled from the next room, no doubt another
album placed upon the Walt Disney record player. This indicated that it was Jo Beth who was up, not Sarah, though Ry couldn’t imagine why his mother had allowed Sniggety indoors. Not that it mattered—Ry was surprisingly happy to see the old boy. He took a knee, gripped the pennant of fur that sprang from the dog’s cheek, and examined the tumor swaddling the left rear hip. Maybe this was the gift of their newly revised life: Old was new to the eye, the sick could be saved. Today Sniggety would be among the car’s passengers. Ry chastised himself for overlooking the dog before.

His hand brushed over the dog’s collar. Years of rabies tags tambourined, and then Ry felt something unexpected. He brushed crud out of his eyes and leaned closer. It was twine, knotted around the collar and trailing off across the floor like a leash. A leash? Sniggety had outgrown those fifteen years ago. This thought, disturbing enough on its own, was followed by a realization even colder. That music—he recognized it and it wasn’t an album. It was a voice, and now it was directly in front of him.

“Hmmmm hm hm hmmmm.”

The strap of twine lifted from the floor. Ry craned his neck to follow its arc but got no farther than the toothless maw of their shotgun. A sob broke from Ry’s chest, but he yanked the sob back because it was a release he did not deserve. Instead he gave himself a single moment to enumerate his failures, and rapidly, for he had only seconds. One, not insisting that they follow Jeremiah into the safety of the night. Two, not remembering to search for the gun, not for even five lousy minutes. That was as far as he got; the heavy barrel pressed into his temple. Ry swallowed a lump of hard
air, pulse racing, the delay of oblivion a torture, while the memory of old Bing made nonsensical laps in his head:
I’ll be home for, I’ll be home for, I’ll be home for—

Marvin Burke never changed his tune, either.

“Hmmmm—”

“Fast.” The word escaped Ry’s lips, dry and quick. “Do it fast.”

Ry felt the warm gust of voided anger at the interruption. An apology gagged up Ry’s throat, son to father, weak to strong; how swiftly it all came back.

A deep inhale, another try: “
Hmmmm
hm hm hmmmm.”

“Can’t you just do it?” Possibly Ry referred to his own fate, possibly to the fate of his family. “Do it. Do it!”

“Hmmmm hm hm
hmmmm
. Hmmmm hm hm
hmmmm
.”

Sniggety wagged his tail and made sprightly figure eights, the most energy he’d displayed in a decade. Ry lost himself in the appalling demonstration until a click, soft as a mother’s whisper, signaled the disarming of the shotgun’s safety. Yes, good—
now
. Ry thought of all the farm animals, old or infirm, that the twelve-gauge had executed.

“Hmmmm.” The barrel moved, so unexpectedly Ry gasped, and the cool metal tapped his ear, once, twice. “Hm hm.” Now it nudged his neck. “Hmmmm.” Finally it poked at the starburst of his forehead, making things explicit, urging him up. Ry didn’t know why, but he put his hands to the cold floor and pushed himself to skittish knees. The warm walnut of the shotgun stock touched against his cheek, effortlessly angling him toward the staircase, which fed upward to the confident, lazing bodies of his mother and sister. The muzzle lodged comfortably around a vertebra and prodded.

R
y didn’t get a single look at his father as they climbed the stairs. Nor did he get a peek during the calamity of his mother’s awakening. After a minute, the humming infected her dreams, and then her eyes shot open, and then she was throwing the sheets around like they were someone she was strangling, and doing plenty of screaming, and all Ry could think about was the last time these spouses had shared this room and what had happened. To Ry’s knowledge, the mattress had never been changed, only flipped.

Sarah appeared at some unnoticed moment, drawn by the furor, and stood by the door sleepy-eyed, trying to make sense of the mom who had gone crazy and the brother who was in the wrong bedroom, not to mention the stranger. Ry got no sense that she knew for sure who the man was, though her dawning expression of rapacious curiosity meant she had a pretty good idea. The humming continued as if oblivious to all of this, and the muzzle pushed Ry, and Ry’s body pushed Jo Beth, and Jo Beth clutched Sarah, and in this centipede fashion they moved down the hall and staircase.

They spilled down the back steps into a pretty country morning, and a canny shove from the Winchester sent the three of them sprawling. Jo Beth sprang back up like a wrestler, her chest heaving and hands open. Sarah followed suit, noticed a grass smudge on her mother’s nightgown, and fingered it to gauge whether or not it would stain. Ry found this gesture touching and yearned to bring his sister into his arms. He brought himself to a knee, and Sniggety blasted him with a putrid snort before shouldering about the legs of his
resurrected master, happily distracted at last from the aural agony of the birds. Ry stood.