Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [109]
At the hole, near the lip, a fire smokes, burned down mostly to coals. Stubs of Franklins, half-burned at the edges of white ash. Like they had no more value than yesterday’s sports section crumpled to light a fire. Bud stands between the fire and the hole, looking off into the woods, a long bright-edged blade drooping from his hand. Burnt edges of bills sticking out his jacket pocket.
Luce can’t see the children until she follows Bud’s line of sight. Dolores and Frank stand together on the far side of the hole, right at the edge. Sally shifts about, off in the trees behind them.
Bud turns around and looks at Luce. He says, Jesus Christ.
Luce tries to breathe. She says, What have you done?
—Not a damn thing yet. They keep running around this quarry.
He starts moving toward Luce, and she angles away. For a few moments they mirror each other, like a slow dance separated by twenty feet. Bud moving in and Luce moving away, skewing out of reach. Until they stop with the circle of fire between them, Bud standing near the hole, Luce with her back to the hemlock woods. Bud kicks at the burnt ends of bills, shoving them toward the live coals.
—Look at it, he says. I could have lived high forever. But now, nothing.
Luce glances quickly at the bits of paper igniting in the coals, confused. Then back to Bud. Waiting for him to move again.
—Y’all haven’t left me a lot of choice here. I’m going to do what I have to, and then get gone.
—You don’t have to do anything, Luce says. Just go now. Never see you again, that’s all I want.
—How dumb do you think I am?
—What?
—You can say any kind of lie right now. But I’m not leaving a string of witnesses.
—I haven’t witnessed anything, Luce says.
Bud looks across the hole to the kids. He says, Stuff piles up. Probably, they’ll try to blame Lit on me too.
—I know you did it. But I can live with that. Leave us alone and go.
—No. From right here, there’s one way it’s got to be.
Out of frustration—the endless circling of the hole trying to catch the kids, figuring they would eventually act like prey animals and get nervous and flare off into the woods in fear and then he would run them down, but them never panicking, keeping always one-eighty degrees away, circle after circle—Bud makes some bullshit calculation in regard to the smaller circle of fire. He tries to leap it to get to Luce.
Midway in the crescent of his jump, as he realizes one foot is going to land in the fire, the machete slips his grip. It spins behind him to the edge of the hole, jangles on rock, and falls over the lip. End over end, down into the black water, which receives it without comment, neither splash nor ripple.
Bud steadies his footing, one boot muddy and the other ashy. Says, I’ll kill you with my hands.
He comes at Luce, but not rushing. Moving wary and uncertain without his blade.
Luce pulls her birthday razor from the pocket of her coat and flips the hook at the end of the handle. Holds the razor angled, like a barber ready to shave a face. The steel of the rectangular blade ripples in the light. Along the edge, it’s almost transparent.
The Adam’s apple makes a good round target, a knot of gristle under the skin to mark exactly where the windpipe runs. Luce moves at him and swings hard, wanting to go deep.
Instinct. Bud steps back and throws up his hands. The blade passes across both palms with hardly more resistance than through air itself. For a second Luce thinks she hasn’t gotten him at all. But Lit said the blade seeks bone. The faint ripples she felt through the handle means it cut to every one. She stares at Bud’s hands, the marks thin as paper cuts.
Luce squares up in case she needs to make another go, but then the blood comes. Two dark sheets running from the heels of Bud’s hands and down the wrists where all the suicide veins tangle. The fingers extend spectacularly white above the blood. Blood falls to the leaves and dirt.