Lexi
Walter put his fork on his plate. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘It means nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing happened here. Nothing. Amon left with you eighteen years ago and now you’re back. That’s what it looks like.’ He tried to smile. ‘You’re back and we’re glad to have you. Welcome back, son.’
‘Amon’s bones aren’t in the yard?’ Oren asked.
Walter said, ‘Even if a body was there it would’ve rotted after eighteen years.’
‘You know that? Or you hope it?’ Oren said. ‘What would Daniel Turner think?’
‘I don’t give a damn what he thinks,’ Walter said. ‘Unless a court tells him he can dig here he won’t. And a court won’t tell him he can. Not after all this time. Not unless you’ve got more than these lies to tell.’
Oren said, ‘How about you, Mom? Do you mind if I call you that? I mean, that door is long shut. Vines have grown over it and the hinges have locked up with rust. The umbilical cord stopped pumping many years ago. But Mom – what can my arrival mean?’
‘I’ve loved you,’ she said. ‘I did what I needed to survive.’
‘It’s a little late for that don’t you think?’ he said.
‘Too late for love?’ she said. ‘No.’
‘How about you?’ he said to me. ‘What can it mean?’
‘It means trouble,’ I said.
He grinned.
‘You can stay if you want,’ Walter said. ‘You can tell your stories to anyone who will listen. If anyone will. But we’ve been here for a long time. You’re wrong if you think we’re going to cower. You’re wrong if you think we’re going to run away. And if you think we’re going to say we’re sorry for what we’ve done you’re wrong again. We’re better off without your father.’
‘I don’t want you to run away,’ Oren said. ‘And I don’t care if you’re sorry.’
‘That’s good,’ Walter said. ‘Because you aren’t getting either.’
Mom asked, ‘What do you want?’
‘I want you to disappear,’ Oren said.
Walter shook his head. ‘That isn’t happening.’
In the back of the house metal scraped against wood. The men were climbing on to the roof again.
The noise unsettled Walter. ‘What are they doing now?’ he said.
‘Same as they’ve been doing all night,’ Oren said. ‘Cleaning up.’
Oren’s girlfriend went to the fireplace. Looked up through the flue.
‘What’s she doing?’ Walter said.
She pulled the grate out and leaned it against the wall. Then she sat down on the hearth with her legs crossed under her. She stared into the empty space. As if she knew what was coming.
‘What’s she doing?’ Walter asked again. He shoved his chair back and pushed himself to his feet.
Something fell into the chimney from the roof. Scraping the bricks. Bouncing off the damper. And landed hard on the blackened floor of the fireplace. It looked like it once was a work boot. But little had lasted of the leather and laces. Then another boot scratched and bounced and landed.
‘Goddamn it, no,’ Walter said. He hobbled over to the hearth.
The rotten end of what could have been a leg bone tumbled through the chimney and cracked on the floor. Two more bones fell. Clanked on the damper. Bounced out of the fireplace on to the hearth. Then a clump of fabric. A rotten ball of denim and dirt. It smacked on the floor. Walter watched. His eyes blazed. And a piece of red-and-black checkered flannel fell from the chimney into the room. The same as the shirt that my dad wore in the photo of him that Mom kept on the bookshelf. Darkened with age and water. And more bones fell. And something else rolled on to the hearth. Muscle or root or meat.
Walter trembled.
But Mom’s face hardened. She stood and helped Walter back to the table. She guided him into his chair. Maybe the fluttering and plummeting reminded her of why she had killed my dad. Maybe the toughness that had driven her out of her father’s house and up-island to visit my dad when she was only fifteen years old pumped through her veins again. Maybe she felt the force that had driven her to paint thousands of portraits of herself.
She went to Oren. He was so much taller. But she seemed to stand over him. He was an animal that needed to be pushed down before it would submit to her. ‘Leave,’ she said. ‘Take her.’ She pointed at his girlfriend. ‘Get your other friends and go. This is no place for you.’
Without moving his feet Oren seemed to step back. He started to speak. But no words came.
‘Just go,’ Mom said.
Then a tapping came at the door to the porch. And the sound seemed to wake Oren.
‘Listen,’ he said.
‘Go.’ Mom stepped toward him.
‘It was a soft knock,’ Oren said. ‘Not like all those years ago when Walter came to kill Amon.’
Another tapping on the door.
‘Should we let our visitor in?’ he asked. ‘If it were my friends I think they would come in on their own. Don’t you? They’ve made themselves sufficiently at home. So who can it be arriving in the middle of the night?’ He turned to the door and shouted, ‘Who is it?’
‘Go,’ Mom shouted. But she had lost her strength.
Another tapping. As soft as before.
‘I think we had best find out,’ Oren said. He went to the door and opened it.
Tilson was standing on the porch. His hands and face were grimed with soot and sweat and oil. He held a tar-caked wood chisel. He gave it to Oren.
‘Come in. Come in,’ Oren said. ‘You’re as dirty as a newborn baby. But this house has seen worse. Much worse. Take a seat at the table. Have dinner. A meal before you go. Or stay the rest of the night if you like. We have plenty of beds upstairs and we’ve just changed the sheets.’
Tilson went to Mom’s chair and sat. Without a word. And filled her plate with food.
‘And what’s this?’ Oren said. He held up the dirty wood chisel. ‘A house-warming gift for an old house and an old family? No house should be without one. You never know when you might need it. Let’s say you wake up at three in the morning and find yourself in need of kindling. Let’s say you have a husband who needs killing. It’s just the tool for the job.’ He started to circle the table again. ‘Where did you find it?’ he asked Tilson.
‘In the tar box,’ Tilson said. Chewing a bite of turkey.
‘The tar box,’ Oren said. ‘What a place to keep a chisel. I can imagine a toolbox. Or a workbench. Even a kitchen drawer if you kept tools there.’
‘Nope,’ Tilson said. ‘Was the tar box.’
‘What a place,’ Oren said. He ruffled Cristofer’s hair as he walked behind his chair. ‘Was it hard to get it out? It must have been covered with a lot of old tar.’
‘About eighteen years’ worth, no more,’ Tilson said.
‘Well you’ve done a good job,’ Oren said. He put a hand on my shoulder as he passed. My thighs itched. I put my hands between them.
Tilson said. ‘Hate to waste a good tool.’
Oren stopped behind Walter’s chair.
‘I got a suggestion,’ Tilson said. ‘Now on you keep that chisel in a place you can find it. A place you can get it easy.’
‘An excellent suggestion,’ Oren said. ‘Do you have any ideas?’
‘All out of ideas,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
Oren looked at me. He looked at Cristofer. He even looked at Mom. ‘How about here?’ he said. He raised the chisel above his head. And drove it down through Walter’s neck.
Walter hardly moved as he died.
He slid low in his chair.
His eyes lost their fear.
Tears of blood ran down on to his shoulders.
Mom screamed.
For him.
For herself.
If she had run for the door she might have gotten to the front porch. Or the yard. But she started toward Walter. As if she could do anything for him. And Oren wrenched the chisel free from the bone. Then Mom did turn toward the door. Oren was waiting for her. She came anyway. As if she was running into his arms. And he drove the chisel through the flesh of her belly. And up under the ribcage toward her heart. She fell on to him as she slid to the floor. Holding him. Her face and mouth pressing against his neck. As if she would kiss or suck it.