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Chapter 20
  A View from Beneath

When he woke, for a moment Marty did not realize where he was. He lay face-down on the floor, and there was a bed and boxes and a wooden handle and a knife beneath the bed. Something shifted behind the knife and slithered into the boxes.

He pushed himself up to his hands and knees, and then sat and cried. It hurt his throat to breath so deep, and he wheezed, and after a few minutes, he stuffed down the sobs and sat cross-legged until his heart steadied and his hands stopped shaking. The throbbing alongside his head and throat was as clear as clean water. His scratches and cuts became a cool, crisp stream of flowing pain. He drank from that pain and gained a strength that can only be found through the gauntlet of suffering.

He rose and dug out a knitted blanket from one of the boxes blocking the window. He rubbed the blood away from the back of his neck and wiped the sweat from his face and wadded the blanket and threw it on top of the upended mattress against the window.

He left the attic open hoping it would add some ventilation in the room, and sat on his bed. He lay down and tried to sleep, but his neck felt sunburned or rope-burned or covered with a ring of ants just above his collar. He sat up, checked his barricades, and stared up at his guardian owl atop the dresser with its broken beak.

After a while, after the pain numbed into the background noise of his mind, he took his knife and the wooden handle and climbed into the attic, walked to the west side window and looked out into the yard. Sadie wasn’t in her window. A patch of grass in the yard had been pressed sideways from where he and his mom had scuffled. It looked like the places Uncle Cooper said deer or feral hogs slept, with a large swath of grass laid flat and a couple of trails snaking in and out of it.

When Marty checked the east window, he saw a police car in the driveway. It was one of the new police cars, and on the side was a large seal surrounded by the words,
Cypress County Sheriff Department. Protect & Serve.
Nobody was in the car, but he heard the engine idling, and every once in a while the radio crackled.

He didn’t see anyone in the yard, and so Marty climbed out the window, crouched on the roof, and looked into the back yard. Nobody was there, either. Since he didn’t want to risk crossing the carport and get caught, he put his fingers around the edge of the eave and swung his legs off the side. He dangled above the ground until he stopped swinging, and then let go and landed beside the air-conditioning unit just outside Gerald’s window.

Marty skirted around the edge of the house until he was beside the corner, and from there he heard voices. One was his mother. One was a man, probably Sheriff Dansley, or maybe one of his deputies.

“And how did you get that gash on your side, Mrs. Jameson?” the man asked.

“Shovel got me coming into the carport there,” Marty’s mother said. “See the one on the hanger there? That one got me when I come around the corner and it tore open my ribs.”

“You need a doctor, ma’am?”

“I can’t afford no doctor. I got enough doctor bills already I can’t pay none.”

“I have a kit in the car, Betsy,” another man said. He sounded older than the first. His voice crackled with age, the way old men’s voices tended to do as they aged. It was like they grew rocks in their throat.

“I’m okay, Bill,” his mother said. “I’ll wrap it no fuss style.”

“Well, we can’t have no more fuss out here, Betsy,” the old man said. “This is the fifth call I’ve had on you and Ike. Last time your boy spent two weeks in foster care. Do you want to lose that young ’un of yours?”

Marty’s mother didn’t answer, or if she did she must have nodded or shrugged or made some movement Marty couldn’t see.

“Alright then,” the old man said. “Look, Betsy, this is the last time we come out without hauling you in. I done hauled in Ike a couple of times, and I think that last one got him straight. You get yourself straight, now, you hear? Lay off whatever you’re on and be a good girl. Next time it’s cuffs and a full booking, and I’ll take that son of yours into protection. Are we clear?”

“Oh, you bet, Bill, clear as mud, Officer Bill Sheriff, sir.”

There was a long pause where Marty didn’t hear anything, and then the old man spoke again, slow. “What the hell are you on, Betsy? You want some sober-time in the tank, or are you going to be straight?”

Marty heard scuffling then, and his mother threw curses out that didn’t make sense to him and were ignored by the officers. When the scuffling moved closer to him, Marty scooted beneath the house and watched as two pairs of boots stomped by him hauling his mother with her bare feet kicking a few inches off the ground.

They carried her through the gate in the fence and placed her in the back of the police car. The young officer opened the trunk while the older one, Sheriff Dansley, fingered the radio on his shoulder. “Pippy, you copy? We got a 415 at the Jameson place, and a possible 273, female Caucasian, mid-thirties, Elizabeth Jayne Jameson, goes by Betsy Jameson. We’re going to cool her off for a little while. She has a gash in her side but refuses medical attention, non-threatening. Officer Hernandez is going to offer first aid. Write us off for at least an hour. Copy?”

“Copy,” the radio said.

After Officer Hernandez treated his mother’s wound, he shut the back door of the police car. The two officers walked to the end of the driveway and stood smoking and talking quietly between themselves as they watched the traffic pass by on I-10. Every once in a while one of them laughed, and they burned through several cigarettes before they returned to the police car and opened the back door.

Sheriff Dansley took Marty’s mother by the arm and helped her out of the car. He spun her around, and as he unlocked the handcuffs he said, “So are you going to be a good girl, Betsy, or do I need to do something a little more extreme? I got plenty of room up at County, and we got some brand-new paint on the walls. Smells real good in there if you want to try it out. I love me the smell of fresh paint, girl. You interested?”

He turned Marty’s mother to face him, and she looked up at the sheriff and shook her head. “No, sir.” She took a deep breath and rubbed her wrists. She lifted her hands to her face and began to cry, but the sheriff stared at her with an expression as unmoving and rough as worn oak.

“It’s just so hard,” Marty’s mother said.

“I know, Betsy. You hang in there, okay. You call us if Ike gives you anymore trouble, and don’t you go taking nothing out on that boy of yours. When he gets back from them woods or wherever he run off to, you be nice to him and be a good mommy and all. You want to release some angst, you best find some other way to do it. This is the last time I come out nice like, you hear? Next time I’m the big bad bear, you copy?”

The sheriff stuck a finger under her chin and lifted her eyes so she saw him. “You hear me, girl? I’m the big bad bear next time. Do you understand?”

They didn’t wait for a response. In one smooth motion, the sheriff dropped into the driver’s seat, and Hernandez fell into the passenger’s seat, and before the doors shut they were backing out of the driveway and onto the feeder road. The engine revved, and after it faded into the distance mixing with the I-10 traffic, Marty’s mother turned and walked through the gate and stood in the driveway.

“Marty?” his mother said. “Marty? Where are you, Sugar?” She looked left and right and walked out to the shed. She watched her feet, and must have seen a snake because she jumped and cursed and made a wide arc around something on the ground. She held her side as she walked, a little hunched over, and favored her left leg. She opened the shed door and said, “Marty? Are you in there? Sugar? Come see Momma.”

Marty slid out from beneath the house and waited for his mother to see him. When her eyes locked on him, she waved to him and said, “Come here, Sugar, Momma’s sorry.” She walked through the yard with her eyes on the ground taking precise note of where her bare feet landed.

Marty met her in the driveway, and her arms wrapped around him and her fingernails dug into his back as she pressed him into the ribs of her chest. She smelled like cigarette smoke and beer-sweat and blood. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, Sugar. Mommy didn’t mean it. I’m just, it’s so hard, baby. Being a grownup sucks sometimes.”

Marty released himself from her grasp. “I didn’t mean to cut you.”

She laughed and it almost sounded human. “Your daddy’s done did worse than this little scratch. He put me in the hospital when I was pregnant with you, but hell, I deserved it. He said I shouldn’t be doing all the shit I do and he broke my wrist, beat it with a cooking pan. I guess I deserve this here cut you gave me, too. I shouldn’t have been up on you like that, Sugar. You was just defending yourself. Now why don’t you come on inside the house. It’ll be dark soon, and I bet you’re hungry. I can warm up some cheese dogs.”

Marty looked at the sky and realized his mother was right. The sky was turning orange and the sun was dropping into Galveston Bay. He looked up at the attic, and after running through his options, Marty decided he could sleep inside the main part of the house tonight. He could always lock himself in Gerald’s room if his mother got back into one of her episodes.

The smell that had been penned in Gerald’s room now infected the rest of the house. It hit him when he followed his mother through the back door into the breakfast nook and kitchen. His mother didn’t seem to notice, or didn’t care if she did.

On the counter were two grocery bags. “Our week’s supply,” his mother said. “I got it this morning when I walked down to the store. Don’t eat too much, Sugar. We got to stretch that out until your daddy comes back with more money.”

She opened the freezer and dug out a yellow box of miniature corn dogs, and shoved it box and all into the microwave. She started the microwave and said, “There. Dinner will be ready in three. Help yourself, Sugar. What you don’t eat put in the fridge for lunch tomorrow.”

His mother walked into the den, and Marty dug a plate off the counter and fished out his pink glass with the teeth marks. He ran the plate and glass under the water tap. Along the back of the sink were little black pellets of rat droppings.

When the microwave finished, Marty loaded the box onto his plate, found his place at the picnic table, and set about digging the corn dogs out of the box and dropping them onto his plate. Some of them clanked, still frozen, and he pushed those aside for lunch tomorrow.

His mother flipped through the channels non-stop. The screen moved as fast as the traffic on I-10. She swallowed a fistful of pills and leaned back on the couch with a cigarette burning in one hand and the remote bouncing in the other. Several empty beer cans lay alongside the couch. She rose in a sudden burst of energy, lifted the cordless phone off the table beside the couch, and for about two minutes disappeared outside, in the carport, away from where Marty could hear. When she returned, she wedged the phone onto the charger, fell onto the couch, and resumed flicking through the channels.

“Just got off the phone with your daddy,” his mother said. “I told him all about your little slut next door. He said wrap it up. Don’t you get her pregnant or he’d make a dust trail to the nearest abortion clinic. That’s what he said. And he said if they keep calling the cops, he’ll bury them out back with the snakes. Tell her we said that.”

When he didn’t answer, his mother said, “You hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You tell her we said that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now eat your dinner and quit looking at me like that. You cry and I’ll bust you again.”

Marty ate slow after that, letting his thoughts simmer as he held his nose and stomach against the smell leaking out of Gerald’s room. He leaned back and looked down the hall toward the woodshop, and his mother tilted her head at him and said, “Don’t even think about it. You eat and stay out of Gerald’s room.”

He wasn’t looking at Gerald, but was thinking that he needed either the hacksaw or coping saw to cut the length of Bois D’Arc handle for the Bowie knife. Now that he had carved and polished the handle, he needed to split it down the length so he could fit the tang. He could sneak in later, after his mother fell asleep. She wouldn’t be long, not with the excitement today.

By the time Marty picked up his plate and put it in the fridge for lunch tomorrow, darkness had fallen outside the kitchen window. It wasn’t the full-on dark of midnight, but was the dusky dark that if he were in the attic, he would still be able to see purple along the skyline toward Houston.

Through the kitchen window, Marty saw Sadie. When she saw him, her eyes lit up. She turned and yelled mute over her shoulder into the house. Marty didn’t hear it, but he could see she screamed, “Momma!” and soon after, Mrs. Marsh appeared next to Sadie. She leaned down and looked at Marty.

Sadie waved and as she did so, Mrs. Marsh’s hand lifted to the window and the blinds pinched shut.

“What are you looking at, Sugar?”

Marty turned and saw his mother standing in the hallway next to the bathroom. Her hand was on the doorknob and she had that almost-asleep look in her eyes.

“Nothing, Momma.”

“Damn nosey neighbors,” she said. “I’m gonna beat the shit out of her if she calls the cops on me again. You can tell your girlfriend I said that.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Get out of my sight. I’ve had about enough mothering for one night.” She slammed the bathroom door behind her and Marty heard retching.

Marty jogged into the hallway, took a deep breath and held it, and dove into the stench of the woodshop. He climbed on the cutting table and lifted off a hacksaw, a quarter-inch chisel, and a hammer.

He hopped off the table and spared one glance at Gerald. His mother had covered him with the sheet, head and all, and although the breathing machine still chuffed beside him, the sheet no longer moved up-and-down. Something crawled beneath the sheet lengthwise down Gerald’s side. A mouse tumbled out, fell to the floor, and ran along the floorboard so fast it seemed to float into the pile of junk in the hallway.

He followed the mouse out of the bedroom. He wished he could shut the door behind him and never open it again, but his uncle had removed the door to be used as a cutting table. Marty closed Gerald off mentally, even though his brother’s smell clung to his clothes and felt itchy on his skin.

By the time his mother emerged from the bathroom, Marty had cleared most of the boxes and junk from the pile on top of the picnic table. She seemed hardly to notice either him or the newfound workspace. She walked to the couch, leaned over the coffee table, sucked on a burnt-out cigarette, picked up the remote, and lodged herself into her couch-lying position.