Shelter (1994) (24 page)

"What room?" He was scrambling his hand around, feeling Buddy's pockets for more.

"Mrs. Thompson—" Buddy started to say.

"She got more? Answer me. She got more?"

"Just a couple more, in a box."

Dad's hand was pinching shut on Buddy's throat and the spot where the air came through got ragged and tiny. Everything got darker. There was a sort of tunnel Buddy could still see into and Dad's face was in the tunnel. A hand came from behind Dad. The hand had Dad by the hair and jerked him up so the tunnel split apart and Buddy fell backwards into the dust of the road.

The trees that arched over the house were just an outline of themselves, silvery, then green, and the stranger was holding Dad by the hair, lifting Dad half off his haunches like a dog with his front paws floppy. Dad had the ring in one hand still and his eyes were rolled up, trying to see what had him. The stranger had a low voice, a growl Buddy could hear inside, like the stranger talked and Buddy thought the words. "Don't hurt the boy," the stranger said. "You hurt the boy again, no matter what is supposed to happen, I'll kill you."

Dad held the ring up, held it higher.

But the stranger just gave him a shake, pulled him up a few more inches. "I'll break your fuckin neck. I could do it now." The voice was quiet and low, a whispered monotone.

Dad went still.

"I know what you do," the voice said. "I see it all."

And he dropped Dad.

For an instant Dad stayed crouched, motionless. He was looking at Buddy but he didn't see Buddy. It was like he was looking into the picture he'd made Buddy see, when he choked Buddy and all the colors bled away. He listened, frozen, then he scrambled for the handle of the car door and got the door open a space and slid into the car. He sat hunched down, looking out the open window, like he'd hid himself.

The stranger nodded at Buddy to get up, get up off the ground, and Buddy did. He stood still and watched. He'd never seen Dad scared of anything real, anything he wasn't just seeing in his head.

Dad looked hard out the window, peering down the road. He kept darting his eyes at the stranger, like it wouldn't do to look directly at him. "I know you ain't really here, you devil." He still held the ring in one hand, and now he put it in his shirt pocket. "I seen you before here, in the dark." He was feeling frantically along the dash, over the seat, for the key. He was trying to drive away, that was what.

Buddy stepped hopefully toward the car. He saw the key in the ignition, with a thin little chain swinging from it. The little chain swung because Dad was gripping the steering wheel in both long hands, jerking on it like he could get the car to go by banging himself against it. "Dad," Buddy said, "the key. Right there."

"You ain't here," Dad said, "you ain't talking." He was looking at the stranger and he felt for the key. He turned the key and floored the gas, and the car rocked and lurched. The brake was on but Dad kept pumping the gas, his face in a clinched smile. "You can't find me, devil. You ain't even alive."

"Let off the brake," Buddy said. Then he wondered if Dad was right, if the stranger was real. But other people had seen him, Mrs. T., and the other men by the river, they worked beside him. And the girls had seen him earlier, and Frank had talked to him, and he had the snake, and eggs had come out of the snake onto the grass. He had the snake now, still coiled up in his one arm. Tight circled up, like it slept. Buddy wanted to go back and look, find more eggs. Touch the cool leaves. But now he felt a real arm, hard and warm, circle his chest and pull him sharply back. The car shot forward, squealing, veered to the opposite side of the road, and disappeared over the bank, down the slope of the shallow ravine. Immediately, there was a thud and a squawk of scraped metal.

The car had left a burning smell. But there was no smoke and the road was quiet, like nothing had happened. Buddy saw streaks in the air, long subtle falls of light, like the air was rearranging itself where Dad had been. The stranger stepped back away from Buddy and went to the edge of the road and looked down. He motioned for Buddy to stay. The snake he let go, the snake he held by its small head, and the length of it uncoiled and hung down, heavy, like a black rope. The stranger walked down the bank holding it until Buddy couldn't see him anymore. Buddy heard him walking a few steps in the long tangle of bushes and briars, then he heard nothing.

The engine was still running; Carmody had managed to roll down a sharp descent of scrub and hit the only two pines big enough to stop the car. Just here was a sort of clearing, bigger trees shading the ground so dense, nothing of much size had grown up. If Carmody weren't such a drunk fool he might have kept going a ways, steered around trees and driven himself through the woods a half mile, right into Mud River. Carmody should have done that, with the Devil bright inside him, gleaming off his hands and burning. But he sat slumped over the steering wheel, passed out. Parson reached in and turned off the ignition. The throbbing car fell silent. But there were sounds in the woods, the crackle and slide of evil slunk from its host. How evil moved like sun through trees, in patches, dappled and patterned. Parson heard an airy giggling behind him, here and gone, like patchy reception of a child's laughter. Like Carmody's kid might laugh, wasn't laughing, standing back at the road and listening. The kid should stay there; Parson glanced up but he thought the boy wouldn't come down. Too scared. The giggling continued, tinkling like bells; Parson tilted his head and heard the sound move off to the left. He felt the snake shift in his grasp and he stepped closer to the car. There. The bullet head probed along the metal rim of the open window; the snake began to glide forward. Parson slapped Carmody, once, twice, but he didn't stir. He must have knocked himself good against the wheel, but there were no marks on him, no cuts, and the windshield of the car was intact, not even a crack in the glass. Wake up, you evil fool. Then the laughter came again. A kid's laugh still, but high-pitched, strung out. It was a joke, Carmody asleep like a baby, like any drunk who had run his car down a hollow.

"Hey, mister," came a voice. "Mister?"

The words floated down, unanswered.

Parson shoved Carmody's inert body out of its slouch. Now Carmody lay back in the seat, one arm against the door. Parson watched as the snake slid along the edge of the open car window and began to climb Carmody's shoulder. It swung itself in a drooped coil onto Carmody's slack leg. The head moved in its slow'S, testing, along the back of the seat.

"Mister," the voice said again, "you down there?"

"I'm here," Parson yelled up.

"Can I come down there now?"

Pairson looked up along the bank, nearly blinded by a slant of light. "What's your name, boy?"

A pause. "My name's Buddy."

"Buddy, you stay where you are. And be still, real still."

Parson had to listen. There, the laughter, and a sound like a rush of wings. He felt in his pocket for his knife. Blade of a knife, no handle. Just a razored edge, blunted round with a strip of corrugated cardboard he'd fastened tight with a rubber band. The blade was sharp, sharp enough to gut fish: he'd thinned it both sides with a lump of whetstone. The blade had been part of a rusted army knife he'd found at the dump, the one piece untouched by rust, and he'd freed it from its smashed red carapace, hard, with a rock. He could do Carmody now, here, and the kid would be all right. It would all be all right, and Parson could leave.

But Carmody only slept, his mouth hanging open. The snake had looped itself around his neck twice; now it probed the air with its darting tongue. Parson unwrapped the blade and drew it delicately across the flesh of his thumb. Blood sprang up. Quickly, he marked a cross on Carmody's forehead, and another on the inside of the windshield.

It wasn't enough. Carmody was empty. Nothing to kill in him now, just a sleeper, drunk and stupid. But he would wake up. The Devil would feel his feeble scrambling and rush back inside him, fast and silent as a blast from a ray gun. That hot light would curl up in Carmody's guts, peer out through the holes in his head. No, there had to be more, a sign Carmody would recognize and fear. A sign to prove Parson had seen him and touched him, pulled him off the boy. Parson held the blade up, angled toward the sun. He could direct a slice of reflective light across the leaves, across Carmody's sallow face.

Slice of light. He would have to slice the snake. Parson leaned forward. The laughter came again, so quiet, like a whisper inside his own head. Do it, then. Carmody would wake up and feel a weight on his chest, have to pull it off. Know Parson was here, waiting for a time the Devil was home, swollen up big and bright in Carmody's lanky frame, in Carmody's pale eyes. Carmody would come to and fling the snake off himself, shaking and cursing. The snake heavy and bloody on his shirt, no drunken dream. Parson reached out with the blade. He wanted the snake to move, slide away fast. But the snake was still.

A cascade of pebbles. The kid was coming down the bank.

Do it quickly then. And when he pulled his hand away the woods were quiet, and he heard the boy close behind him.

"You killed that snake," Buddy said. "Why'd you have to do that?"

Parson made his voice quiet and smooth. "'Whoso breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.' Ever heard that, boy? You know your Bible?"

"I know some." His big eyes looked open too wide, like he'd seen a lot and still thought he could climb over it. He looked up at the trail the car had made rolling down from the road. There weren't any hedges, just crushed blackberry and chokeweed. "Is Dad snakebit?" he asked.

"He's passed out," Parson said. "He'll come to in a while."

"You mean he ain't dead?"

"He's full of poison."

"Blacksnakes ain't poison. Anyone knows that."

Parson smiled. "Wasn't this snake that bit him. He's been poisoned a long, long time."

The boy seemed to consider this.

"I think you know it," Parson said.

The boy only glanced across Parson's face, looked away. "I was going to fix up that snake some shade in the rain barrel," he said, "with branches in there, and a lot of grass and leaves—"

"You ever played a harmonica?" Parson asked.

"Yeah, I got one. Mam gave me one."

"Ever play it?"

"I play it some."

"You know how you hold it and blow the music through it. How you blow, that's how the music sounds. Harmonica is something to use, that's what it's for." Parson wiped the blade off carefully on his pants, held it down in front of the boy, and saw his own face reflected on the surface.

The boy moved closer to look. Not so scared as he seemed. Parson watched him lean in so his head nearly touched Carmody's laden chest.

"The Lord uses what he needs to make a mark," Parson said, "leave a sign."

The snake's head was level with the boy's face and he peered at the lens of its cold, still eye. In its black depths lurked a diamond of glitter. The diamond seemed to move, as though a shine of eyelid flicked across sideways, fast as an instant. The boy stepped back, but reached to touch the flat plane between the ridges of the eyes. Parson knew the feel of the snake's head was hard and smooth, like the dome of a pearl.

"Get away now, boy," he said. "You get on back to the camp. Stay with your mother."

The kid fixed Parson with his blue gaze. "Can you get me that ring Dad took off me?" His voice was a fast whisper. "I got to have that ring back. It's in his shirt pocket."

Parson touched the back of the boy's head. Smooth, the hair shaved so short it felt like peach fuzz. "You don't want any ring. You don't need any ring." He nodded up the bank, then bent down and said, quietly, "Get on back up the way you came, and get to the camp."

The kid looked at the ground, then turned and scrambled up through the brush. He was lost in leaves even before the sound of him stopped.

Parson began walking toward the river. He didn't look back. The car sat like a bent toy in the quiet, but everything else would move forward now. They would all line up, like a sum to be figured, or a design on a flag. Like the girls raised the flag in the morning and took it down at night, and walked around the quad on white gravel paths that cut straight across like bright slashes. Flagpole in the center. How the heavy flag hung down in the heat, limp and useless. Parson had seen it there, a bright rag for children to salute. Jails have flags, and prisons, courthouses, orphanages. Yes, even that far back, there was a flag.

Parson walked, wrapping the blade again in its cardboard sheath, crossing the rubber band around it three times. At the dump there was no flag, no tall pole with a banner. There was a place nobody claimed, a squat of spoiled land in a clearing that looked to have been seared off. It was an open space in the trees that pulled at Parson and spooked him. The clearing was octagonal and dark. Tree stumps stood up in burnt configuration, silent amongst the shapes of discarded furniture, torn motorcycles, piles of tires. The stumps were jagged and splintered, weathered a few years yet blackened where ash had washed away. Tumbled with them was a spread of damaged goods, and Parson took from that damaged bounty this thing and that thing. He drew sustenance, like a creature at a water hole. Like that exposed creature, he took and he listened, alert, ready to bolt. The sky looked big above the clearing, and the road emptied into it like there was nowhere else to go. He'd found the blade by the coils of a broken box spring: piece of a knife the size of his palm, just right for his hand. He'd bent to retrieve the metal shard and there was a silence as he knelt down, a kind of sanctuary.

Now he put the knife back into the pocket of his baggy pants. The pants were loose; he didn't need to eat much, only the coffee they gave him at the site and the evening meal he took at the roadhouse the men had shown him, where traffic hummed on the two-lane road, not far from the dirt road to the camp. The place smelled of hamburger fried with onions and the food was the same as food he'd eaten everywhere: eggs flattened to a yellow sheen, grits with pooled butter. He'd always thought to see Carmody walk in there; Carmody never had. Other people came and went past the booths, and the electric fans made a humming that was nearly sleepy. Parson wanted to go to the roadhouse, sit thoughtless and still in the familiar sounds and smells, but he would go back to Turtle Hole and wait.