Red - Jack Ketchum [33]
The woman hesitates, looks him in the eyes as though to verify his intent. And then drops his father gasping for breath to the cellar floor. His father is coughing violently. He can hear it over the gunshot ringing in his ears. He’s aware of movement behind him and then a firm hand pushes him roughly aside.
He corrects his balance just in time to see his mother, lips pressed tight together, tears pooling in her eyes, whack the woman in the side of the head with a length of two-by-four. The woman goes slack.
The woman is out.
He realizes he’s barely breathing. He hauls in a deep one.
His mother. Who’d have thought it?
It’s ridiculous and yet not so ridiculous given the occasion but an old song lyric pops into his mind that his dad likes.
Stand by your man.
His mom tosses away the two-by-four clattering to the floor and goes to him. Helps him up.
“Thanks,” he says. His voice is weak. His eyes all skittery. His hand is at his neck. He turns to Brian.
“Go get me a hammer and the drill, son,” he says. “Need to drive a new one. Deeper. A lot deeper.”
He reaches for the gun and Brian hands it over.
“Dad. I’m sorry. I know I’m not supposed to…but…”
“It’s okay, boy. You did good. Real good. Now get me those tools, okay?”
And it stays with him, what his dad said, as he hits the stairs. You did good. Real good.
He has never quite gotten those words out of his father before.
Not once. Never.
SIXTEEN
He can do this practically with his eyes closed as he can do most other things which require physical skill and dexterity but he’s having trouble concentrating and he thinks that even Belle can see that, Belle standing to one side with the .45 to the woman’s head by way of discouragement while he drives the eye bolt into new hole which he means to get all the way down to the loop but he’s missed the damn thing twice which is not like him at all.
His trouble is that he isn’t quite sure why he’s doing this. Why he doesn’t just let her go to live out her miserable savage life however she sees fit. And this is not like him either, to be unsure. He’s sure in his business and he’s sure with his family and friends and acquaintances which is a better word actually because he has no close friends really, has never wanted them, has never trusted them. He trusts Belle and his kids and that’s it. That’s all he needs.
He’s looked over the subject of why he’s doing this and around and through the subject and he doesn’t have an answer except that he wants to. He knows it’s probably dangerous, forget the fact that physically she’s one fucking dangerous beast, but if he wanted to count them he knows he’s probably breaking a dozen laws or more, he’s putting them all in a kind of jeopardy here but all he can come up with in terms of a why is that he wants to see this little experiment of his through to its fruition. Just as his cheerful sweet drunk of a mother used to call Chris her own little experiment meaning that she’d have one kid, sure, but no more, she’d never willingly birth another.
But he sees this wildness in her and it attracts him powerfully in both his dick and his brain, he knows that much and he does want to tame her, he does want to know if it’s possible. He’s tamed himself god knows. And if he could do that with the kid he was why not her? If he had the will and the strength to break himself like you’d break a crazy wild horse he ought to be able to do the same with her.
Maybe he has some kind of sister-in-spirit here, maybe that’s it.
Maybe he sees something in her that he also sees in himself — only purer of purpose, sleeker in its aggressive design. He loves his own aggression. It’s made him what he is today.
Maybe he’s doing this because he loves himself. His pure self. The self without the makeover.
It’s possible.
He hammers the bolt home.
SEVENTEEN
And there they were again today like any other day, all those dopey sweet hormone-driven bubblegum-popping teenage girls with their tight jeans and tight bottoms filing