Love You to a Pulp Page 5

  The day after Neil’s daddy didn’t come home, he went out looking. He had Jessup follow along, not wanting to go into the wood alone, especially down near Rogue’s Harbor. He said the word “Daddy” to the dog as they entered the trail head and Jessup took over, running ahead at a bouncing trot then doubling back to get Neil to chase him, wanting to make a game of it. Neil kept his steady pace and let the dog go on with his back and forth thing, each time back forgetting that it hadn’t worked before, each time forward forgetting he was leaving the boy behind.

  Neil looked side to side, looked at the thin elms that he used to climb, remembered the first time he shimmied up and felt that beautiful tickle in his pecker as he rubbed his way up the small trunk. He was too young, too inexperienced to know anything other than that it felt better than anything he could remember. Now as he walked, nearly seventeen years old and more or less an expert at the do it yourself job, he smiled thinking on that innocent boy who more than likely became the best climber in the state that summer. He laughed until he remembered that his daddy hadn’t come home, just like Mama hadn’t come home, and he wished he didn’t have to go down to the clearing alone, wished he’d followed this trail fresh. Jessup ran back and hopped up, licking his hand again before running off. Neil watched the dog, envious of its nature, and dreamt of such easy dismissal of the past. To be a beast was to be free of memory.

  Jessup slowed a bit as Neil followed him down the rock wash into the flood plain, rocks clacking under foot like the popping joints of the old man. Boy and dog walked among the deep, wet, primordial ferns and rested blind foot after blind foot on thick moss. Jessup took up with his game of chase again, back and forth, irresistibly drawn by the scent of the competing, yet complementary scents of his masters. Neil felt a force pulling him from behind, the call of the road they’d stepped off of miles back. Or perhaps it was a force pushing him away from his destination. He fought through it, walked on. Neil picked up the deer trail that ran alongside the Green River, made a note to check Jessup for ticks when they got home. Leaves were falling all around, adding a new layer of decay to shuffle upon, and through the bare trees Neil could see those clapboards, up on stilts, falling apart and looking like skeletons. Jessup hit the clearing and bee-lined for the edge of the riverbank where the woods came up again like a black wall, the edge of the universe. Jessup sniffed the ground, sure of what he smelled, but unsure as to why it wasn’t there. Neil skirted the clearing and hung close to the wood, watched the clapboards like those stilt legs might just pull up out of the ground and chase after him. He figured them too bulky to follow him into the woods and that’s where he was heading if they gave the slightest windblown creak. But all was silent aside from his feet shuffling through the dry undergrowth. He relaxed as he circled behind the houses, no windows to stare out on him like empty black eyes. He saw height marks of children whittled into the backsides of the stilts and he stepped closer, read the names of children who must have been long dead, peeled away the splintering wood with his fingernails, erasing their history before being scolded by a sharp splinter that peeled nail from the bed, just enough to make him stop, be respectful. The wind blew his face and he eyed the small graveyard, fenced in briar and rusted rat wire. The headstones inside were black and green stained limestone, raw chunks pulled from the hillside and placed over the dead, looked like a mouth of jagged, crooked, teeth or maybe more like broken bones erupting through the skin. Neil looked closer but could read nothing on the stones, he touched one and could feel the trace remains of some etched epitaph, dates, and a name perhaps, rain worn and invisible to all but blind finger tips.

  Jessup’s barking brought him back around the far side of the clearing. He felt the raised-hair pull at his back but kept his steps slow and controlled as the darkening green showed itself beyond overgrown grass and late season hoppers that jumped from blade to blade as the giant Neil crashed through their world. He stopped at the river’s edge. The .22 lay on the ground, but there was nothing else, no other sign that the man had been there. Neil picked up the gun and turned it in his hands. A single spot of dried blood shone red-brown on the shining barrel. Neil raised the gun to his shoulder and fired a shot into the river. He turned and fired on the clapboards, squeezing off round after round. He turned to Jessup. The dog was sitting at his side, back to the houses, staring at the river. Neil put the barrel to the dog’s brainstem and fired, the gunshot briefly mixing with a yelp cut off prematurely and completely. He rolled the dog into the river with a gentle yet firm push of his sole, watched Jessup float, turning and rolling and bleeding, submitting to the whims of the river.

  They pulled Neil’s daddy out of the water nearly three weeks later, bloated and purple, his facial features nibbled away by fish and rot. Jessup never turned up.

  A week later, alone in the house, Neil lay in the pre-dawn watching for the blue morning light through the slits of the cracked blinds that covered the dusty window. He explored his own body with no thought, like an animal licking wounds on a full belly, no cares or pulls at his instincts, no notions of survival.

  He scratched his cheek lightly, felt the flakes of scab catch under his fingernails, pressed the pads of his fingers against the leaking holes until the blood turned thick like drying concrete. He’d won another fight, no one in his corner. Alone he tapped at his tender beak, his swollen eyes, his jaw, feeling the dull ache that seemed to be connected by webs to the various parts of his face. It was a good ache, not the waxing pain associated with fresh wounds, but the ebbing pain of wounds on the cusp of recovery, each tinge a tandem sensation, reminding him with subtlety of both his past and his journey to recovery to full health. Like a character in an arcade, he felt his life bar filling up, soon to be reset at full just in time for the next round of violent play.

  His hands continued to evaluate his state, his mind on the burned girl and his mother and the money he’d won. It no longer hurt to breathe, but he felt the same tender promises as he palpated his rib cage and solar plexus. His hands crept further down, found the waistband of his underwear and went deeper still to the growing physical need that matched his want, a perfect metaphor were they actually two facets of the same desire. But before indulgence came fear, always the way. Neil searched his scrotum and found the cancer, the swollen growth where his taint met the cold-wrinkled jewel bag. He tugged at the cellular mistake, the mass cured of inhibition by the unbridled fight for life. If each man is a collection of cells given the will to live, and if each cell carried with it the instructions of its ancestors, then they couldn’t be faulted if they sensed an advantage in a selfish mode of survival.

  Neil rolled out of bed, his fingers on the growth, panicked. He passed his daddy’s bedroom door, thought to enter but then remembered. In the bathroom he pulled his shorts off completely in the dark, startled himself with his own black reflection before pulling the chain light above the sink. For a moment he was able to retreat into the depths of his own mind, swam away from the reality between his fingers and looked at his face, his torso spotted with yellowed, shrinking knuckle strikes. But then he was back, returned to the surface of the immediate reality. Neil raised his right knee high, planted his foot on the edge of the sink and gave himself permission to examine the progression of death affixed to him, the root deep inside him.

  The tumor was red-brown, cyst-like, a near perfect sphere. He flicked it with a finger and the dread faded as he realized he wasn’t going to die, replaced by a slight nausea and an anger that became as important as the death he’d just faced. He pulled at the growth gently, increasing the strength of the pull without adjusting the pressure between his fingers. The skin tented out as the growth was pulled away from the core of his body and finally came free with a small spray of blood marking his inner thigh. Knee still raised he brought the tick to his face and his face to the tick. Eight legs waved confused and desperate in front of Neil, the swollen ball of death filled with no malice or spite. The tick contained nothing but what it would conside
r its fair share of Neil’s life fluid. Its fair share. Neil looked in the mirror and watched himself maneuver the tick between his fingers again, dared it to latch on before applying the pressure he’d been withholding. The swollen parasite exploded like a dead star, a beautiful nebula spray of dark blood. Neil dropped the tick into the sink and turned on the water. He watched it circle the bowl, mingle with his daddy’s beard trimmings and hocked up yellow tonsil stones. Neil scratched at the swollen itch while licking the blood from his fingers, taking back what was his, hoping it would help him forget that sure as anything he was going to die one day.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Heidi Skaggs was on her front two acres, doing some planting and weeding in the flower beds while her pair of Bosnian gardeners took care of the lawn and tree trimming. She turned her head toward the rumble of the Cutlass as it turned in from the road, under the brick archway guarded by two weathered concrete lions. From the car Neil saw the woman peering under the visor of her sunhat as he put the glue back into the glove box, swerving a bit and nearly clipping the man on the riding mower. The sound of the mower and the Bosnian curses floated and vibrated through him like hummingbirds.

  Neil stopped the Cutlass in the turnaround in front of the pillared, red-brick mansion. The estate looked like old money and it had a presence of its own in the modern world of readymade luxury homes. It was a beautiful specimen of quality and craftsmanship and it seemed to know this, exuding an ageless, stoic pride.

  Heidi stood and approached Neil with a smile, pulled off a green gardening glove and extended a hand.

  “Mr. Chambers?”

  “Neil. Mrs. Skaggs?”

  “Heidi,” she said.

  “A pleasure. Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice.”

  “No bother. Shall we go back to the garden?”

  “If you like.” Neil followed her lead, passed the bulbs and pots and bags of soil ready for use. “Beautiful landscaping.”

  “Oh, thank you. I’m really not very good, but I just don’t have much to keep me busy all day.” She turned and eyed him, as if sizing him up or undressing him. Either way she looked vaguely disappointed. “Drink?”

  “Gin and tonic.”

  The large patio was a mosaic of small Spanish tiles, baroque in its ornate intricacy, and held more square footage than most homes in the county. Beyond the tile were plants and flowers, each selected to seduce the proper pollinators while dissuading the pest species with a variety of carefully selected pesticides. Farther out was a wild looking grove of trees, chosen for the shade and privacy their canopies offered. A trail of synthetic red river rock ran through the planned wood with benches set at various crossroads where butterfly gardens and bird feeders attracted welcome guests fit for company.

  Neil and Heidi sat in soft chairs in the sun. Heidi pulled off her other glove and laid the pair on the table. She removed her hat and brushed the sweat from her brow with a dirty forearm. In her overalls she didn’t look the part of lady of the house, more the type to only work the property, but her skin was smooth, her nails finely manicured, and as she crossed her legs, Neil saw that her toenails matched as they wiggled inside her German-made leather and cork sandals. Her skin was smooth and her teeth were white, porcelain white, and Neil detected the effects of Botox in her stone still, wrinkle-free forehead.

  “Lotta!” she called out in a pleasant, sing-song yell. The backdoor opened and a young girl, early twenties and most likely eastern European, poked her head out of the house. “Drinks please. I’d like a beer and Mr. Chambers will have…”

  “Gin and tonic please, Lotta.” The girl retreated inside and Neil looked around the property admiringly. “A lifetime away from Brownsville here.”

  “Isn’t it? I can’t say I’m sorry to be gone. No offense, but that is where you are located, right?”

  “None taken, and yes it is. Can’t say I blame you. This set up is nice; nobody could fault you for wanting more than Brownsville has to give.”

  “Ah yes. This,” she said with an eye roll. “I certainly traded up.”

  “So this isn’t paradise?”

  “I sound awful don’t I? Poor little rich girl. Too much free time, too much money.”

  “I ascribe to the old ‘mile in their shoes’ adage. I wouldn’t claim to know how you feel anymore than I would expect you to know my trials.”

  Heidi smiled and then just as quickly put it away. “I assume you want to discuss Hoon.”

  “You assume correctly. You go way back with Mr. Hoon. I remember you two together.”

  “Oh yeah, we were something weren’t we. Prom queen and the quarterback. He could have gone to college you know that? Eastern offered him a scholarship to play ball. But he stayed back to work when we found out about Janie, our girl. I told him it was stupid, that it’d be better for him to go to school and be able to provide better for us, but that was the way he was, thought working was more important, like education was a luxury he didn’t deserve.” She looked up and behind her at the sound of clinking glass. Lotta stepped down the concrete staircase with a bottle of beer and a tall gin and tonic on the tray. She set the drinks in front of Neil and Heidi and waited for additional instruction. Heidi waved her off, watched her until she faded inside the house. “Sorry, I just don’t like her very much right now. I’d get rid of her, but Mr. Skaggs wouldn’t have it, which is the reason I don’t like her very much right now. But I don’t need to point A to B out to you. Detective and all.” She sighed and lifted her beer. “He’ll get bored of her. He gets bored with all of them. And then I’ll be her shoulder to cry on. Can you believe that? I’ll console her after my husband dumps her.”

  “And why will you do that?”

  “Because then it’s my turn.” She gave him a wink and he had to smile. She raised her beer. “To innocence corrupted.” And Neil couldn’t imagine a better thing to toast to.

  Mrs. Skaggs showed him through the garden. It was deceptively large, opening up beyond the tree line to acres of paths and gardens and custom marble busts of philosophers and bluegrass artists. Occasionally a gardener made himself known with the whine of a gas-powered trimmer or hedge clippers, floating invisibly through the estate-like ghost servants bound to the Skaggs for eternity.

  “Did you see Helen the day Hoon died?”

  “I did. She dropped the babies off and she had an Irish coffee with me.”

  “How’d she seem? Agitated, nervous?”

  “No. She was pretty as could be and smiling, always smiling when I saw her. And the kids love her. They call her aunt Helen. And she loves them too. Some women might be threatened by that, but not me. I want to know that when they’re not with me, my babies are being treated right.”

  “How would you describe your relationship with Hoon?” Neil asked.

  “Friendly. And not just for the kids. We outgrew each other, we both knew it, didn’t fault one another for wanting different things. We were friends till the end.”

  “Was he depressed?”

  “Ha. I love Hoon, but depression requires a certain level of intellect beyond what Hoon possessed. He was happy and simple as long as I knew him.”

  “So I suspect you’re a bit incredulous as to the whole suicide thing.”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible. I shouldn’t make light of him, he was simple yes, but he had the heart of no man I ever knew. Something could have crawled in there and got him. I know he was upset about the baby.”

  “Yours? I mean yours and his together?”

  “No, the Jenkins girl. He got her pregnant, reliving his old glory days I guess, but she was dead set on getting rid of it. He didn’t like it, but he wanted to keep her happy.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because I paid for the abortion.” She sipped her beer, eyeing him over the glass. “I was his occasional benefactor, bail money, rent, and when he needed money to take her in he came to me. Told me everything.”

  “When was this?”

>   “Not more than, oh, two weeks ago I’d say.”

  Neil took in the new information and let it simmer with the rest on the low heat of his fuzzy brain. He watched a hummingbird suckle from a flower, its long beak and the deep plant perfectly adapted to one another, a partnership with an investment in time, a risk of dependence carried out for millennia until in the end, for each party, there was only the other. Neil looked at Heidi, who was watching her red toes wiggle.

  “Hey,” she said. “You like shine?”

  Neil looked at her, skeptical. “Moonshine? Sure.”

  “Come on, I want to show you something.” She stood and Neil followed her down the twisting paths, deeper and deeper into the planned wood, and then off the laid path, behind a purple flowering dogwood where she picked up a wild path not much different than the deer trails he knew. Heidi stopped and pulled back some brush like she was opening a curtain and there sat a still of polished brass, a beautiful collection of coiled pipe and swollen belly fermentation vats. She pulled a mason jar from the apple crate next to the box, unscrewed the top and took a long drink that made her shiver from her head to her pretty toes. She passed it to Neil and he drank. Swallowing and then gasping for air, a pained smile on his lips.

  “Oh that’s good. I must say, would never expect you to be the type.”

  She smiled and licked the glistening shine from her lip. “You can take the girl out of the holler,” she said and she took the jar back, lifted it to her lips and had another long nip.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  With Daddy gone, Neil was coming out to Rogue’s Harbor nearly every day, making the woods around it his home. He had an uncle, who knew how to apply for survivor’s benefits, move into the small house. His uncle made sure he helped Neil by drinking the benefits away every month. There were a few scuffles early so Neil defended himself by being gone most of the time. Rogue’s Harbor was the only place he knew to be so that’s where he went. The place still filled him with the fear of all the ghosts that his daddy had told him about, and now his daddy was one of them, and Jessup too. Neil would sit there around the old fire pit feeling the dark things come up to creep on him from behind. He’d sit bone still until he just couldn’t stand it anymore and then turn around to nothing but their smell on the air. He listened to the things in the woods, malevolent things that he had no way of seeing and told himself they were there to try and steal him away. And he sat there and dared them, dared them until he scared himself to near tears and found himself running back through the deer trails and up the rock wash, feeling the things on his heels, lungs on fire but unable to slow down, his heart trying to pop out his eyeballs, unable to relent to exhaustion until he finally burst through the tree line, born again to the world and laughing at himself for his fear and feeling a fool.