Red - Jack Ketchum [21]
“One shy,” he says.
“I heard. Whatcha shootin’ at, Pop?”
“You’ll see.”
He watches the movie for a minute. Eastwood is preparing a prison break. Brian goes to the cabinet, pulls out the box of shells and puts a fresh shell in the clip, then hands it back to him. He inserts the clip, safeties the weapon and stuffs it back into his jeans. He walks into the kitchen. And there on the table is the cornbread. He doesn’t know how Peggy and Darlin’ have resisted it, sitting right there in front of them. Peg is helping her sister with some sort of puzzle. He isn’t even about to try to resist. He lifts up a square and bites.
Warm, delicious.
“You’ll spoil your dinner,” Belle says. She’s stirring the gravy in the pot roast.
“Not a chance,” he says.
“You say that now.”
“I certainly do.”
He sees her glance at his finger again, the gauze and pads brown at the tip. He’s already been through the questions with her and the kids and told them basically nothing. I had a little accident with a new project of mine. No big deal. Luckily nobody has been around to actually see the damn thing while he treated it. They’re women after all. He wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them had fainted dead away.
He’ll see Doc Richardson tomorrow. Get a shot or whatever.
God knows what’s been in that mouth of hers.
He finishes the cornbread and licks his fingers.
“All right. Everybody want to come on down to the cellar with me?”
“Again?” Peggy says.
“Again at dinner time?” says his wife.
“It’s pot roast, Belle. Put it on simmer. You need to see this.”
She looks at him a moment, then sighs and wipes her hands on a dishtowel and gives him a small, tolerant smile.
“Come on, girls. Do as your father says.”
~ * ~
They are downstairs. Assembled. Standing at the foot of the stairs. Peggy and Darlin’ holding hands. Brian with his mouth agape. Brian has been the first one down, all excited. As they crossed the lawn he asked, watcha got in there, dad? A mountain lion? He was kidding of course and Cleek had acknowledged the fact with a grin. A hellova lot more interesting than a mountain lion, son, he said. So now Brian stands there beside him. And his father is right. This is much more interesting than any cat.
Brian sees…
…his first half-naked woman, ever. There is more to his response than that because Brian is a complex young man but that’s the first thing and it’s primal. His eyes can barely leave her breasts to take in the rest of her — the bloody face, the matted hair. The fact that she is chained and helpless is not lost on him. Nor is the sheer size of her. But he has never seen Peg’s breasts and his mother’s he doesn’t remember. He feels the beating of his heart. He feels a tremor.
And Peggy sees…
…a woman chained to a wall. Somebody has hurt her and that somebody is probably her father. She’s been badly beaten. Her mouth is bloody and blood drools out her ear. It occurs to her to wonder how the woman has come to this. She’s big and strong-looking and should have resisted. She is impressed by a kind of stillness about her, a silent watchfulness — but the woman also frightens her. Her smell frightens her. Her filth frightens her. What has her father done? How crazy is this? And how can she, Peg, go on living in this fucking house?
And Belle sees…
…wrongness, evil. In the size of her and the wildness in her which she can read plain like her mother used to read the palms of hands at parties and in her stink and her scars she sees what no woman should ever become, what no human should ever become. Chris Cleek doesn’t believe in God or the Devil, only pretends to believe. But she does and she’s facing a devil of some kind for sure and she feels an almost pleasant thrill of terror that somehow this will get way out of control, chains or no chains, she can feel control slipping away even as she stands here — and then so sad suddenly for Chris and herself and her family and the life they’re living now that she could almost cry. Instead she steels herself. Against whatever is to come.
And Darlin’…Darleen sees…
…a