Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [88]
Upstairs, walking the halls lined with identical doors to the many guest rooms is no different from gambling. Bud sends out feelers of hope and waits for mysterious powers to cough up rewards. He enters rooms that call to him. Tarnished brass numbers relating to his birth date or to some year less shitty than most of the others. Inside 218, he opens bureau drawers, lifts corners of the mattress, blue stripes over cream, a big mysterious brown stain featuring waterlines like the lakeshore out the window. Bud lies down. His theory is, get calm and let the power of money speak and tell its whereabouts.
He falls asleep, which is fine at first, because he dreams immediately of the money. A vague sense of it fleeing from him, first down these very hallways, and then down walkways between rows of barred cells stretching into the distance. Down a bright tunnel of headlight beams through black night. Nothing but trees, the trunks rowed and leading onward into the dark. The dream goes on forever, but no message is delivered.
Bud wakes to the sound of the kitchen door banging closed, people moving around downstairs. The door bangs again, and then an armload of stovewood from the pile on the back porch thumps onto the floor. In time, the sounds settle. Bud walks down the hall and waits at the top of the stairs, listening. All the rattling comes from the kitchen. He creeps down the stairs and across the room toward the front door. Almost there, he sees the children sitting together on one of the faded rugs, playing with kindling, forming shapes like they’re getting ready to burn the place down. Their heads lowered in quiet concentration. Frank placing his sticks to build a strict combustible cone. Dolores free-forming an imaginary geometry, many pieces and angles and spaces, perfect airflow. Bud takes two more steps toward the door, his hand reaching for the knob, and a floorboard creaks against a nail. The kids look straight at him.
—Hey, Bud whispers. I’ll let myself out.
Dolores stands, pulling Frank with her. They begin backing slowly into dimmer light. Looking at Bud dead-eyed. No screaming or crying. They get to the door frame to the dining room, and Dolores, real flat, repeats her mother’s words. I’ll fucking kill you if it’s the last fucking thing I do. Frank echoing a second behind her.
They run up the steps, and they keep running, thumping feet growing distant.
Bud runs, too. Out the front door, down the lawn to the lakeshore, and around to where his truck is parked. Panic rises in him like a bad dinner. He can’t draw breath. He twists the key in the ignition and pats his foot so fast on the accelerator that he floods the carb and has to wait for it to clear. And then he has to vomit and doesn’t even have time to get the door all the way open before his insides spray out bitter onto dead poplar leaves.
He wipes his mouth and gasps for air, seized up all through his center. Heart attack is Bud’s first thought. So bring it on, then. Check out right now. Fuck everybody and fuck tomorrow too.
Bud waits and waits, and fails to die.
Turns the key, and the engine fires. He floors it, and before long, he’s flying crazy down the gravel road. Three curves along, partway into a tight left, the empty back end of the pickup gets loose and begins coming around, skittering across the gravel in slow motion. He stomps on the brake, and that makes things worse. The truck swaps ends and comes to a stop in a cloud of dirt.
He sits in the road and tries to breathe. Grabs his necklace and cuts his thumb deep on the serrations and then tastes the blood. Memory is so damn harsh when it grabs you tight. The little bastards remember, and they are talking.
BY THE TIME LUCE comes from the kitchen, Bud is gone down the lawn and into the trees, just another flicker of dark shape silhouetted against the bright metallic light of the water. Luce goes looking for the kids, calling their names, knowing they won’t answer unless they