5

“Go in and see Tilly,” Delilah told Bradley. As he skittered inside, Cass leaned her rifle against the garage and Delilah climbed into her car and retrieved two large Tupperware containers from the passenger seat. “One’s brownies. The other’s hotdish,” she explained, offering them to Cass.

When Cass didn’t take them, Delilah continued, “Stover left me a message this morning. He said the boys came to The Spot late last night. They wouldn’t let him close up. They were bragging about what happened and Danny needed to stay drunk enough to pull that blade out with a needle-nose. Jesse had his foot in a garbage bucket full of ice, Stover said. He’ll give you the night off, as many as you need. Won’t be safe for you there. I can cover for you at work tonight if you need.”

Cass didn’t reply. Her eyes were on her hands, yet blood-stained.

“Come here, Cassie.”

Cass stepped forward and Delilah grabbed her by the elbows and drew her close. Sorrowfully, she took Cass’s head in her hands and examined the ruby cut on the corner of her mouth, the mahogany bruises on her cheek. Then she turned her head toward the sunlight and examined Cass’s bald, burnt scalp.

“You should go to the hospital,” Delilah said.

“Don’t need to. Can’t afford it, anyway.”

“What about your tooth?”

“It’s only one from the back,” Cass mumbled, shrugging. “They told me Jack got some money.”

“That’s what I heard, too. But there’s more to it, you know. Always is.”

Before Cass could ask what she meant, Delilah turned and led them toward the house. On the way she glanced down at the trap Cass had yet to take from the stoop. Morsels of leather clung to the tips of the jaws. When they entered, Bradley stood alone in the kitchen, but the instant Delilah plopped her oversized purse on the kitchen table and the bottle of pills inside rattled, Tilly came out of her room. Cass helped her into the kitchen. Tilly sneered at Delilah, then at Bradley, then at the maroon stains on Cass’s sleeves.

“What did you do?” she asked Cass.

“Told you I was getting that doe.”

“It wasn’t ready.”

“It got ready.”

Indignant, Tilly mumbled to herself, then turned to Delilah and said, “What have you got for me?”

Delilah dug in her purse for a vitamin bottle, from which she dumped two pills into her hand.

Tilly scrambled over, snatched them up like dice, and gulped them down dry. “By the way, if that little demon bites me, I’m gonna smack him,” she said.

“Do your worst, but I’ll tell you, he don’t do well with troublemakers like you.”

“Troublemaker? You mean like a woman who abandons her man at the first sign of trouble? Is that it? No, wait, I’m thinking of something else. A floosy, maybe?”

“Grandma!” Cass barked.

Tilly scoffed, throwing her hands at Cass. She put the hotdish in the fridge and fingered up three brownie squares and dropped the container on the table. “Look at you, Bradley,” she said. He hopped across the kitchen like a frog, and Tilly gave him a brownie, pulled off his hat, and ran her hand through his hair. “You’ll be handsome just like your dad, won’t you? I suppose Will’s working?” she asked Delilah.

“I watch Bradley till five.”

“At least one man in town has the decency to be employed. Christ. It’s a good thing you didn’t bring him along, though. Last time, Cassandra blushed for two weeks.”

Cass glared at Tilly, and Delilah laughed, a mousy squeak.

“I’m going back to my room,” Tilly said. “Don’t let that boy steal nothing, girls.”

Bradley sat at the table and blissfully ate his treat. After Tilly closed her bedroom door, Delilah said, “I brought you these,” and handed over the bottle of pills.

“What are they?”

“I forgot.”

“How many should I take?”

“Not a whole bunch.”

Cass poured one into her hand, paused before tapping the bottle for one more. She washed them down with a glass of water and tried to hand the bottle back, but Delilah shook her head.

“Keep it. I’ve got more at home. Plus, I’m trying to give them up.” She kissed Cass on the cheek and whispered in her ear, “Let’s go where Tilly can’t snoop on us so easy. Gotta tell you something important.”

“Could go to the basement.”

“Yuck,” Delilah cried. “Let’s go somewhere sunny and warm. Come on, I just made coffee at Will’s house. He’s stopping by for lunch, too.”

“Hell no, then. I look like shit.”

“We’re gonna fix you up before he comes home. If nothing else, somebody’s gotta look at your head, and if you won’t let a doctor do it, at least let me. Anyway, it’ll be good for you to get outta the house.”

Cass rubbed her arm and stared at the linoleum.

“Will’s been asking about you,” Delilah added.

Cass’s head shot up. “No, he hasn’t! Don’t lie!”

“Just last week, I swear to God!”

Abashed, Cass shook her head and looked down at the floor.

While Delilah and Bradley played cards, Cass washed up, changed into a new shirt and hoodie, stocked the woodstove, stowed her rifle in the basement, carried the trap from the stoop into the house, and hid the pills in her room. Then they three got into Delilah’s car.

At the end of the driveway, Delilah turned toward 84, which she drove for two miles before taking a slight right onto a dirt frontage road that snaked its way back to Will’s house. It was a four-bedroom log home that his and Delilah’s father completed not long before dying of a heart attack some years ago. Will carried on the family carpentry business and last summer built and varnished the wrap-around pine porch that their mother, who died not long after her husband, always wanted. He lived there with Bradley. It’d been two years since anyone had seen Bradley’s mom. She’d bolted for the Twin Cities when he was an infant.

They walked down a short hallway and turned left into the kitchen. Stainless steel pots and pans hung over an island countertop, on which the coffeemaker murmured. Delilah poured two mugs and led Cass through the living room into an adjacent dining area with birch flooring and huge windows on all sides. The day had brightened, sunlight suffused the room. There was a crate of toys in one corner, a couch, TV, and entertainment center in another. Bradley rushed to his toys, and Delilah pulled a chair away from the walnut dining table, covered with bills and invoices. She then left the room and returned with a pot of soapy water, some washcloths, a pair of scissors, and Will’s electric shaver. Cass sat, tucking her hands beneath her legs. Delilah placed everything on the table, then took up the scissors.

As she carefully snipped her way down to Cass’s tender scalp, Delilah said, “I’d planned on coming over last night, before all this. There were things I’d heard from Stover yesterday that spooked me out. He was real worried about me and you. He told me Jack had robbed somebody. Now, this guy’s looking for him. I wanted to warn you, but I was too late. Have you seen him?”

Cass shook her head. “Not that that mattered to Danny last night.”

“Danny’s trying to collect for this guy. There’s a bounty out on Jack, if you can believe that. It’s some drug-dealer type with connections in the Cities. Stover said the guy goes by Frost. Probably not his real name.”

“A bounty? Who could afford to pay a bounty to strangers but can’t pay some ass-hats to do the job for him? Doesn’t make any damn sense.”

“Supposedly, it’s about recruitment. Finding someone he can trust to break into the market up here. Might’ve even been grooming Jack before Jack robbed him. It’s heroin, Stover says. You know how he is. Somehow he knows everything all the time.”

“I’m not sure what to believe,” Cass replied.

As Delilah swapped the scissors for an electric shaver, Cass yawned and opened her eyes wide and slapped her cheeks to rouse herself. Delilah tilted Cass’s head to the side and turned on the shaver.

“Vick came by yesterday,” Cass said. “He was acting like he cared about me, but he really just wanted that money. But he was real weird … calm. He said he’s changed and all that shit, too, of course.”

“Maybe he has.”

“You know he sent Danny and Jesse over to get the money? He’s the one who did this to me. Got Tilly damn near killed as well.”

“Who told you Vick sent them?” Delilah asked, agitated by the thought.

“I heard them talking about it.”

“Maybe they lied so you wouldn’t go to Vick for help.”

“Like I’d do that, anyway,” Cass replied. “What are you sticking up for him for?”

“I try to see the good in people, Cassie. Makes me happier.”

After a minute or so Delilah turned the shaver off. Pursing her lips, she blew away the loose hair from Cass’s head before dipping a washcloth in the water and dabbing the wound. It burned fiercely; Cass cringed.

Delilah began picking hairs from the shaver blade. She frowned at the strands as she rolled them between her fingertips. Then she parted her fingers and watched the hair glide to the floor.

“Cassie,” she said, “I want you to tell Jack something if you see him. My aunt in New Mexico can help him get resettled out there. He knows her address and number. She’s waiting for him to call if he decides to go. Shit, he can just show up on her doorstep if he wants to. Tell him everything’s been arranged for him, will you? If you see him.”

“You know he ain’t doing that.”

“But still. I just …” She trailed off, squeezing her eyes shut and pinching the cloth to the bridge of her nose. There was grief in her voice. “As many times as I told him I wish he’d never been in my life, the thought of something happening to him kills me.”

Cass pulled her feet up onto her chair and hugged her legs, resting her chin atop her knees. She waited for Delilah to gather herself.

Delilah spoke softly. “Three years ago I would’ve married Jack. Maybe we’d have been fine, too, but he never asked me and I didn’t think to ask him. Then he kept on with his needles and run-ins. His DWIs and all that. I can’t live that way. I love him, but he makes me crazy. A month or two ago, he told me he wanted to straighten out, wanted one more chance, but then he disappeared and it seems now he went to rip someone off. I can’t do it no more.”

Cass placed her feet on the hardwood again and straightened her back.

“And I get tired of listening to people at The Spot talk about how they always wanted to do this or that, how they always felt like leaving but didn’t. I don’t want that. Even Will says he don’t wanna do construction work forever. Almost anything is better than here, especially in the winter. Damn the cold! I’m tired of it. I’m still young. I should be seeing plays and going to museums and getting more schooling, and I should be somewhere warm and sunny and pretty all year round. San Diego, Miami, Seattle.”

She dried Cass’s head with another towel and grabbed the tube of ointment from the table. She squeezed a dollop onto her finger, applied it to the wound. “This stuff is from when I got my tattoos. You really only need a little. It’ll help the skin heal. Borrow the tube. But you don’t wanna put too much on. And don’t forget to leave the burn open to the air.”

Cass took the tube and nodded, slumping in her chair, staring dejectedly at the label. The pills were giving her a warm buzz. She read skepticism on her nurse’s face, the way Delilah lodged her tongue in the corner of her mouth.

“That’s the only burn, ain’t it?” Delilah asked. “Well, it’s the only one those boys told Stover about last night.”

Cass looked back down at the tube, pushed it into the front pocket of her jeans, drank some coffee, and finally replied, “That’s it, thank God.”

Delilah held a makeup mirror in front of her and, combing Cass’s hair with her fingers, demonstrated how sweeping her locks over the shaved part would conceal the burn. Then she kissed her on the forehead and sat down next to her at the table. She asked Cass about the picture of Suzanne on Tilly’s fridge.

“Your mom was lovely,” Delilah said.

“I wouldn’t know. I feel like I never really met her.”

“That’s what Jack always said, that she was lovely. She certainly was beautiful. Strange of Tilly to dig that picture out, though.”

“She didn’t. I did.”

“How come?”

“Because I need to remind myself sometimes that I don’t wanna end up like her,” Cass said, eyeing the cirrus steam stirring above her coffee.

Delilah’s eyes widened for an instant. She turned her gaze toward Bradley and whispered, “What do you mean, Cassie? Unhappy?”

Cass lifted her coffee to take a sip. “I mean, waiting around for a man to kill me,” she replied over the lip of the mug.

Delilah went quiet, absently tapping her fingernails on the table. Just when Cass was sure Delilah would excuse herself from the room, Delilah instead nodded and said, “I need to tell you something, Cassie. And if you see Jack, I need you to tell him this, too. I’m leaving Backus.”

“With who?”

“What do you mean? I’m allowed to go somewhere alone, aren’t I?” Delilah replied jovially.

“You always got men following you around, so I figured a few here would just follow you out.”

Delilah shook her head sheepishly. Too sheepishly, Cass thought.

“Where are you going?” Cass asked.

“Not quite sure yet,” Delilah replied.

She swiftly stood to collect the shaver and scissors from the table and left the room with her hands full, drying her cheeks on her shoulders. When she returned she sat again and put her hand on Cass’s knee.

Sullenly, she said, “Will and I are here to help. If I were you, I’d stay in, watch a movie, try to relax. Let your cousins come to their senses. Will and I will talk to Bloom, too. I know you expect him to protect his sons, but you should file a report, just for the paper trail. We can drive you to Brainerd if you want. You could meet with someone other than your uncle, you know.”

“He’ll still make my life hell.”

“Think about it, please. Cassie, will you pray with me?”

They held hands and Cass observed her as she closed her eyes, cleared her throat, smiled through her tears, and prayed.

“Dear God, please watch over us. Watch over anyone else in town who’s come into a bad way from all these drugs and money and evil that’s come to us. Cassie has always been so kind to me. Please look out for her. Lord, I know she’s tough, but help her find her way through this difficulty. Help protect her from these evil men. And help Jack get out of town safely. In Jesus’ name we pray.”

When they said amen, Bradley scampered across the room and jumped onto Cass’s lap. She cradled him and he snuggled against her chest.

Cass frowned. She’d been eagerly waiting for Delilah to slip up.

“How do you know Jack’s here?” she asked, keeping her eyes on Bradley.

“What do you mean?”

“You said that you hope he makes it out, like he ain’t gone already.”

“I don’t know. Just assumed from what’s going on …” Again, Delilah trailed off. She rose with their mugs and started toward the kitchen.

“I see,” Cass continued, talking to the bowl of sudsy pink water on the table. “It’s just, you happened to have a plate of brownies and a dozen helpings of hotdish whipped up and sitting around?”

Delilah frowned, stopped, turned around. “‘Whipped up’?”

“You sure didn’t make all that this morning between finding out what happened and rushing over.”

Delilah smiled at Cass. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“My guess is you feel bad about selling him out.”

“Who? Jack? Cassie, I’ll admit that I heard about all this early in the morning and that I didn’t come over immediately. I just figured you were asleep. The pills are getting to you. You should eat something.”

Cass’s voice was tranquil; she was careful not to upset Bradley. “Jack had been gone for weeks, and in all that time no one came by the house asking where he was. Suddenly, yesterday, everyone came over, which means someone ratted him out. Who could’ve done such a thing, I wonder …”

Delilah huffed. She said, “Okay, I saw him, yes, but only for a minute and I swear I didn’t tell a soul. What, you suppose I’m helping you out just to be awful?”

“No. I think you got yourself a slice of the pie yesterday and you didn’t think Danny and them would take it to this level with me. Now you ain’t up to what you done and you’re trying to make it right in your conscience with some brownies and a haircut.”

“Got a slice …?”

“And that means you’re doing this with his blessing.”

“Whose?”

“Vick’s. Nothing big happens in town without him orchestrating it. I’d be careful with him, by the way. He’d probably take you out camping, shoot and bury you, then convince everyone you killed yourself.”

“Cassie, that’s horrible.”

“Horrible?” she whispered to Bradley as though reciting a lullaby. “What nasty folks do to good ones is horrible. Calling it what it is ain’t the bad part. But, what do I know? Maybe he asked you to help me because he’s been born-again and he pities me like you do …?” Cass scoffed at her own suggestion.

“I really think you need to rest, Cassie. Whatever you do, lay low. Don’t go out and put an even bigger target on yourself. Everything’s getting outta control and moving too fast. People aren’t acting right. I didn’t think …” Delilah shook her head, walked to Cass, and combed her hair again. “Who would’ve guessed those boys would do what they did to you? If I’d known—”

“You knew enough to stop it.”

Delilah stared down at Bradley. “I … I didn’t tell your cousins nothing.”

“No, you told Vick.” Cass, pushing her sleeve up to her elbow, said, “Wasn’t gonna show you this but … Take him, would you?”

Delilah picked Bradley up, her misty eyes fixed on the burn on Cass’s forearm. Cass wrung the washcloth out, and water trickled down into the bowl, splattering and burbling. She washed her arm.

“Thoughtful of them not to burn my face, don’t you think? Too gutless, I guess. Anyway, thanks for the haircut and the food and all that.”

“At least promise me you’ll stay in. Jesse and Danny will be out at The Spot again. I’ll talk to Bloom. We’ll get this straightened out. Ah, I have an idea! I’ll tell them I was wrong about where Jack had gone, that he went somewhere else.”

“It’s too late for all that.”

“Can I cover your shift at least?”

“Fine.”

“Cassie—”

“The nice thing about Jack is, when he lies to me, at least he’s honest about it.”

Delilah was crying again, Cass waiting for her to leave the room.

“I don’t get it.”

“Get what, Delilah?”

“How come you didn’t just tell them where the money is?”

Just then the front door opened. For the first time since confronting Delilah, Cass looked up at her. “Because I don’t know nothing about it,” she sniped.

Delilah didn’t return Cass’s gaze when she took the bowl from the table. She carried it and Bradley out of the room, and Cass sat alone, applying the ointment to her arm.

Minutes later, just as Cass was about to go ask Delilah for a ride home, Will emerged in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. He wore wool socks, knee-pads over his dusty jeans, and a sweatshirt beneath a pea green plaid shirt. He was tall, tan from roofing in the summer sun, with thick blond hair, deep dimples, and delicate crystalline blue eyes that Cass couldn’t long look into without mortification. She greeted him with the earnest glare she’d intended for Delilah; he wryly smiled back, and she soon broke, lowering her gaze to her folded hands. She blew on her forearm, then pushed her sleeve down again.

His voice a scratchy, soothing baritone, he asked, “That a new style?”

“You like it?”

“Soon everyone will have it. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Ain’t you on your lunchbreak?” she replied icily.

“I can eat in the car if I wanna—I’m the boss.”

She didn’t see Delilah or Bradley on her walk out to Will’s truck.

During the ride home, she buried her hands in her pockets so she wouldn’t fidget, play with her hair or bite her nails. He placed his lunchbox in between them, ate his sandwich and drank his pop as he drove. He was shifting uncomfortably in his seat, so she asked if he was okay.

“Just stiff. Got a back like my dad’s.”

“I got pills at Tilly’s.”

“What are you doing with pills?”

“Got them from your sister because of what happened.”

“You don’t shoot up like your brother does, do you? Stay clear of that, Cass.”

“Okay, Dad,” she shot back.

“Somebody’s gotta look out for you.”

“No, somebody don’t.”

“I’ll be talking to Bloom and his kids, too. He listens to me. I’ve given him tips over the years because my guys are always talking at work.”

“Don’t waste your time. Whatever they’re all after, he’s in on it.”

“I don’t know about all that, but I’m real worried about Jack. Worried about you too. Jack once told me you’re even more of a misfit than him.”

“Jack’s full of shit.”

“Cass.”

Blushing, sweat nearly breaking on her brow, she was reluctant to look over at him. When she did, he again smiled at her.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Really, though? You look like you’re hurting.”

“I am.”

“I don’t mean just the burns.”

They’d reached 84, and for a mile she said nothing, listening to the crisp highway pass beneath the tires. As he turned onto Tilly’s driveway, she said, “Everyone gets tired of how things are up here, and some people wanna leave. I never felt that way till now. At the same time, if I run away, that’s letting Danny and Jesse and them win. I ain’t doing that. Plus I got Tilly to worry about.”

He parked out front. Her bangs had fallen over her downcast face. He tucked them behind her ear. She looked out her window into the grove, avoiding his eyes so she couldn’t know whether he was looking at her as he always had, like she was merely Jack’s little sister.

“I told her to bring you by, Cass,” he said. “I wanted to see you.” When he put his arm atop the seat between them and his powerful, calloused hand fell near her shoulder, she looked at the steering wheel, then up at him. “I’ve been worried about you, even before all this. You don’t got no real companion. That’s a shame, someone as strong and bright and pretty as you.” He thumbed the cut in the corner of her mouth and said, “I feel that way, like I’m alone out here. Burnt out, trying to clear up Dad’s debts. Don’t wanna be working on my knees till the end of time, either. Sometimes, it’s just good to have friends around, someone to talk to.”

His words silenced her, his touch heightened the numbing tingle of her pills. Her eyes, wide and still, lingered on his.

“Can I call you tonight to check on you?” he asked.

She nodded before remembering that Jack had destroyed her cell. “Oh, but my phone broke is all.”

“I’ll come here, then,” he said.

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“You got a date tonight?”

“I don’t have those. I just look after Tilly.”

“She’s a lousy one, I bet. Tomorrow, then.”

“Okay,” she said.

She climbed out of the truck, went directly into the garage, and shut the door behind her, afraid he’d follow her to say he didn’t mean to lead her on.

She went to work, her chest fluttering, her giddiness intoxicating. She put the couch back, swept up the glass from the broken bottle in the basement, duct-taped the crack in the woodchute door, tossed split oak down the chute and into the basement, and stacked the logs by the stove. It was after skinning the doe, while slicing hunks of venison from the carcass and wrapping each in parchment paper and packing them into a freezer in the garage, that she made plans for the night ahead.

The doe’s gristle-strung skeleton filled a small garden wheelbarrow. She dumped the head and most of the bones behind an elm tree in the middle of the grove, and with wire she hung the torso to one end of the steel T-shaped clothesline post cemented into the backyard. An altar to some profane god, it beamed red against the snow, a great throb-less heart slatted with stark-white cartilage and gleaming-moist taupe bones, which the birds would peck and nibble for many months to come.

She washed her hands, dressed in clean blue jeans and a faded green sweatshirt, and ponytailed her hair to the side opposite the burn in order to show off the wet pre-scar rose. She retrieved a new beaver pelt from the basement so she could show Tilly, then she sat at the kitchen table, where her sulking grandmother chewed her tobacco and watched dusk settle in over the grove.

“What do you think of her?” Cass asked, pointing at the pelt on the table. Tilly looked the coat over but said nothing. “I saw a red fox sunbathing yesterday,” Cass continued. “She was colored dark cherry. Real pretty.”

“Those are the terrible ones,” Tilly replied absently. “You’re an old soul, Cassandra. Soon, you’ll be the only trapper left.”

“I’m sorry your son’s using you like he is.”

Tilly didn’t reply.

“You hungry, Grandma?”

Tilly spat chew into the can and wiped her chin with her knuckles and licked her lips. Then Cass warmed two bowls of Delilah’s hotdish.

“What’s your Vicky gonna do now?” she asked.

“It’s getting cold. You filled the basement up, though?”

“I did.”

Tilly pulled a bottle of pills from her robe pocket and washed two down with coffee. They ate in silence, as Cass stole glances at the bruises on Tilly’s neck and wrists.

“How are you feeling, Grandma?”

“We should clean the woodstove glass soon.”

“You don’t wanna talk about last night? You were all chatter then.”

Tilly grunted. Raising her voice, she replied, “And I heard you humming today. I saw you talking to Will in the driveway, too. You know he wouldn’t give you a minute of time if you don’t got that money.”

“He’s not like everyone else.”

“I never met a man different than the rest of them.”

Cass didn’t respond.

After emptying her bowl, Tilly said, “Might even head to bed early.”

“Good. I’m sorry we can’t bathe you tonight. I’ve got an errand.”

“Where in God’s name are you off to?” Tilly asked, glaring at her.

“Out.”

“You’re not going to The Spot!”

“I am.”

“You will not! Christ, Cassandra, don’t be an idiot. I’m sure that little skank Delilah will take your shift if that’s your problem. Leave this business to the boys.”

“That’s working out good, huh? I’m getting myself a drink. I’ve earned it.”

“Vicky told me he plans on making an appearance tonight, and who knows what he’ll have in mind for revenge!”

“Revenge on who?”

“Who do you think! I don’t like the way all this is heading. Would you just tell me why you’re doing this, Cassandra?”

“Fuck do you care?”

“I love you.”

“You got a bullshit way of showing it,” Cass muttered.

“Cassandra!”

Cass brought their bowls to the sink, washed them, then retreated to her room. She took two more pills and lay back on her bed, waiting for the second high of the day, the second of her life. She was too busy thinking about The Spot to regret the fact that her resolve depended on this euphoria.

She had no intention of waiting around at Tilly’s for her next beating. She needed to fight back and to do so publicly; even if she lost, there’d be witnesses who could keep Bloom honest. And though both Tilly and Delilah had told her the same story about Frost, she wanted to hear it from the most trustworthy source available: her boss, Stover.

After dusk had dimmed her room and the pills had numbed her senses, she went out to Tilly’s truck, fired it up, and started toward town.