21

Rapunzelina did her best to not be too much of a distraction to Pace. She went to the library in Bay St. Clement and did the proper research regarding gaining admission to nursing schools and very soon began sending out applications. When she wasn’t at the library or running errands, such as buying groceries, Punzy spent most of her daytime hours in Dalceda’s house, which is where she and Pace regularly had dinner. At night they slept together in the cottage. Pace’s writing was going well and he was pleasantly surprised by Punzy’s understanding of his need for privacy. Pace enjoyed their time together and, despite the sadness caused by the death of her sister, Punzy seemed genuinely happy.

Then one evening six months after her return, she did not show up back at the house and did not call. Pace fixed his own supper and afterwards went back to the cottage and read until he fell asleep. It was after two in the morning when Pace was awakened by loud noises coming from Dalceda’s house. He looked out his bedroom window and saw the Subaru and a red Dodge Ram pick-up parked in the driveway. Lights were on in the big house and terrible techno music was blasting from it. Pace got up, put on his pants and shoes and went over to find out what was going on.

He found Punzy and two bearded, middle-aged men snorting lines of cocaine off a counter in the kitchen. One of the men had a patch over his left eye and was naked from the waist down. The other man was completely naked and was swigging from a fifth of Jack Daniel’s in between inhaling coke through a rolled up twenty dollar bill. Punzy was fully dressed. Her eyes were only half open and she staggered over to a chair and passed out with her head on the table.

“Who’re you?” shouted the man with an eyepatch when he noticed Pace. Before Pace could say anything, the other man began urinating on the floor. Pace took off and ran back to the cottage, grabbed his Remington .332 over-and-under shotgun and two shells from the bedroom closet, loaded the gun and walked quickly back to the house.

The two men were still in the kitchen. The one with the eyepatch was shaking Punzy by her right shoulder, trying to get her to wake up. His cock was at half-mast and he was yelling.

“Come on, honey gal, suck Porter’s hairy old dick again!”

Pace leveled the shotgun at him and said, “Get out.”

The other man threw his whisky bottle at Pace. It missed and Pace turned the .332 a few degrees and shot him in the groin. The man screamed and fell down.

“Take him and get out!” Pace shouted at Eyepatch, pointing the gun again at him.

Eyepatch lifted up his partner, who was howling and writhing in pain while bleeding copiously onto the floor, and dragged the wounded man out the back door. Pace stood in the doorway and watched as Eyepatch dumped him in the bed of the truck, then got behind the steering wheel and drove away.

The men’s clothes were scattered around the kitchen. Pace walked into the dining room and fired the other shell into Punzy’s Bose, blowing it apart and off the table they had become used to having dinner on, then went back into the kitchen. Punzy had slid off her chair onto the floor, where her head rested in a pool of the wounded man’s blood.

Pace sat down in the chair in which Rapunzelina had been sitting and placed the shotgun on the table. It was quiet now in the kitchen except for the gurgling sound of Punzy’s troubled breathing. Words from the Fourth Circle of Dante’s Inferno came to his mind and he spoke them:

“Not without cause our journey is to the pit.”

Pace did not move for a very long time. He looked down again at Punzy and wondered what would become of her. Her breathing feathered out and she slept now like a child. Pace looked up and imagined Sailor was sitting across the table from him, smiling.

“Well, Daddy,” Pace said. “I’ve got my answer now. You had Mama’s everlasting arm to lean on and I don’t. That was your secret, wasn’t it? Havin’ Lula there for you made it possible to go on.”

Pace knew what he wanted to write now. He got up and walked back to the cottage.