Red - Jack Ketchum [13]
He heard a shrill scream from outside and the screen door flew open and suddenly Darlin’ was hugging his leg for dear life. And there was Brian behind her holding a small, very dead brown mouse by the tip of its tail. He dangled it into her sightlines, grinning. She squealed and giggled and buried her face in his pants leg.
But then she couldn’t resist. She peeked up at her brother.
He opened his mouth and pretended he was going to eat it.
“Eeeeewwww!” she said.
Chris smiled at his son and shook his head. Kids.
“Burn barrel,” he said.
And remembered he was supposed to baste that damn ham.
~ * ~
Chris was late for dinner. Baked ham, corn on the cob, baked green beans and mashed potatoes. Everybody seated around the table except him. Brian was mowing the food down. He’d want seconds. Peggy was barely picking at it. Darlin’ was swirling it around into a big goopy mess with her fork. It was Belle’s turn to sigh.
What the hell was Chris doing out there?
He was acting very strange.
He’d taken down the 5’X 9’ authentic wide-mesh fishing net off the west wall of the living room and denuded it of all its ornamental starfish and shells, folded it and taken it out to the fruit cellar. Then she’d heard him on the stairs just now and looked out from the kitchen to see him carrying four of Brian’s plastic-coated hand-weights, which the boy never used — the weights were a total waste of money — across the foyer and out the door. She crossed to the dining table and through the window in front of it saw that the weights were going into the fruit cellar as well. By then the food was already on the table.
She opened the window and leaned out.
“Chris!”
“Be just a second, hon!”
She closed the window and sat down to eat with her kids. She buttered and salted her corn. The corn was good this year.
Finally the front screen door slammed and Chris was at the table, smiling at them. He sliced a piece of ham and cut it into pieces. Tasted it. Chewed.
“Good,” he said. “Um…a little cold.” Like he was surprised.
She almost laughed. What did the man expect?
“Want me to zap it for you?”
He handed her the plate.
~ * ~
She didn’t know whether it was the hammering or the dogs that woke her.
She rolled over into his empty space and switched on the standing bedside lamp he would read by with its too-expensive pale silk lampshade and filled the room with sixty watts of light. She got out of bed and found her robe and belted it around her waist. The hammering stopped. Then continued.
She padded barefoot down the hall to the stairs. She had nearly fallen down this staircase once when she was six months pregnant with Brian riding delicate in her womb so that now as ever since her hand went automatically to the railing.
At the bottom she walked to the front door and looked out the window panel. The hammering had stopped again.
The door to the fruit cellar was flung wide and she could see his shadow moving below in the flickering light.
“What’s he doing?”
She jumped at the voice and then had a single strange moment of utter disorientation. Sitting on the couch in the dark in the palest shaft of moonlight, staring out the window, her bathrobe pulled tight around her, arms crossed beneath her breasts, Peg might have been a younger Belle, the Belle of twenty years ago, a slim young woman sitting alone on that very same couch in just that pose and bathed in just that light of the waning moon, wondering. Wondering had she done the right thing.
Marrying him.
“Damn, Peggy. You scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Well, try. School in the morning.”
“What’s dad doing?”
“We’ll find out tomorrow. Go to bed, Peg. It‘s late.”
She watched her daughter place one bare foot on the floor and pivot her weight off the couch in a single smooth motion, tighten her belt and move gliding to the stairs. Again she had the uncanny sense that she was seeing herself giving in to the necessities of life in some other distant time.
Belle had been a soft and pretty woman then just like her daughter.
Now she was