Emily’s throat was on fire. Her eyes burned like the time she rubbed poison oak into them on a camping trip. The room was sideways. Spinning. Everything seemed like it might come apart and float off like in the cartoons. She stuck one foot out of bed, and before she knew it, she fell on the floor, dragging her bedcovers with her. She lay on the floor, trying to blink her vision back to normal, but the room still looked like a fun house. Her head spun as she thrashed her way out of the covers and crawled across the carpet to the door. From downstairs, she could hear a loud roaring and the sound of her mother’s voice. She tried to get to her feet but couldn’t, so she crawled down the hall on her hands and knees. At the top of the stairs, she again tried to rise and again was unable to get her legs to cooperate. “Papa,” she croaked. The roaring from the kitchen seemed to get louder. Louder even than the roaring in her ears as she tried to back down the stairs on her hands and knees, only to lose her grip and go sliding to the bottom on her belly, where she landed in a tangle of arms and legs. Her lungs felt as if they were frozen. Tears rolled down her face. She couldn’t stop coughing as she crawled toward the back door.
The limp was gone. Mama May came down the stairs at a lope. “They’re not upstairs,” she said, her face a mask of concern. “Must have snuck back home while I was napping.” She shouldered her way out onto the porch and stood beside Dougherty. She pointed out over the fields at a brightly lit house in the distance.
“That’s my son’s place over there.”
Dougherty didn’t wait. She turned and began running for the car, with the older woman hard on her heels. They jumped into the rental car together. Mama May was still trying to close the passenger door when Dougherty threw the car into Drive and went peeling out toward the highway. Wasn’t until they bounced out onto Route 10 that Mama May realized she was still clutching the poster in her gnarled hand.
Sarah tiptoed out from behind the door, holding the pipe in front of her like an offering. The sound of rushing gas filled the room, masking her footsteps as she crept across the linoleum. The smell of the propane was overwhelming now. It burned in her chest like cold fire as she moved across the room. Her mother was coughing and wheezing as she worked. Her hands shook as she peeled the tape from the bottom of the Meijer’s bag and pulled the plastic sack from Papa’s head.
Must have been a change in the light. Or maybe some vestigial survival instinct kicked in right at the last moment. Either way, Teresa Fulbrook looked up for the last time and made eye contact with her oldest daughter just as the pipe began its swift descent. The first blow seemed merely to stun her. She rocked back and then reached for the top of her head as if to assess the damage. She was still in that position when the second blow hit her full in the face, shattering her nose and both cheekbones, sending her sprawling to the floor with a look of disbelief etched on her bloody face. Sarah brought the pipe down again and again, beating her mother’s head to jelly, until she was no longer able to breathe. At that point she used one hand to clutch the pipe to her chest and the other to cover her nose and mouth as she grabbed the car keys from the hook next to the refrigerator and staggered off toward her bike in the backyard.
Tommie de Groot dusted his hands together. He pulled open the driver’s door on the Pontiac and got into the car. The seat was set for Teresa, so he had to find the handle and move it back to accommodate his long legs. Wasn’t until he reached to start the engine that he realized he didn’t have the keys. “Dumb shit,” he muttered to himself as he got back out, slamming the door hard in frustration. He stopped alongside the car and pulled a plastic baggie of tobacco out of his back pocket. He pulled a rolling paper from the baggie and shook it full of tobacco. He set the baggie on the trunk lid and used his free hand to tamp the tobacco into place before running his tongue along the edge and using the side of his finger to roll the package into a perfect cigarette. He stuffed the baggie back into his pocket and started for the house. “Be smokin’ wherever the hell I want now, won’t I, Gordie baby,” he said to himself with a chuckle as he walked up the flagstone walk toward the kitchen door. “Don’t gotta listen to none of your no-smokin’ bullshit no more, now do we?” He bounced the hand-rolled cigarette in his palm as he walked. “Son of a bitch got what was comin’ to him,” he said with a smile.