Red - Jack Ketchum [39]
When he’s finished the room smells of alcohol. He lights a smoke and stands back to admire his work. Looks good — clean and fresh and good.
“Let’s see that dress.”
Belle holds up her project.
“It buttons up along the sides,” she says. “So you don’t have to untie her or anything.”
“That’s good. Try her on.”
Belle’s hesitant as ever around the woman but she walks over and lifts the dress. The woman shifts to one side as though trying to escape it. Like it’s some living thing. Belle flinches.
“Go on. She’s not going to do anything. All this is new to her, that’s all.”
He’s not sure Belle believes him but she lifts the dress and pulls it down over the woman’s head and drapes it across her body. He can see her hands are shaking as she fumbles with the buttons along one side and then the other. The woman’s calm though. Just watching her.
“There,” she says and steps away.
It’s a very conservative baby blue dress, very Old World he thinks. Very rigid cuts. It looks incongruous as hell on her and that makes him smile.
“She looks like one of those polygamist-types, doesn’t she?”
“Mennonite. The polygamists are Mormons.”
“Right.”
“You wanted it sturdy. That was the point.”
“You did good, Belle. Very nice.”
“Thank you.”
He notices a funny thing. The woman was fine with being stark naked. Didn’t seem to think a single thing about it. Now she looks sort of…well, he guesses the word is shamefaced. As though this little bit of domestication has left her absolutely humiliated. Again he has to smile.
“She cleans up pretty nice, doesn’t she?”
“Should we feed her?”
“Yeah. We probably should. What’ve we got in the way of leftovers?”
“Stew. There’s leftover stew.”
“Fine.”
When Belle’s gone to heat the stew he goes to the sink and fills an old tin cup with water. The water’s rusty but that’s what you get down here. Better than nothing. He brings it over.
The woman looks down into the cup and immediately her mouth starts moving. She’s thirsty as hell. He puts it to her lips and she sucks it down.
“You want more?”
This much she seems to understand. She nods vigorously.
He fills the cup again and she drinks. On an impulse he lifts his other hand into her long hair and is surprised as hell when she actually leans into it. Like she’s savoring the contact.
Damn! This woman keeps surprising him.
~ * ~
Belle watches her husband feed the woman with the soup spoon. She’s obviously starving, swallowing the stew without chewing, spilling some of it down over her chin. Her husband scoops it off her and feeds it back to her. Like she’s a baby.
Belle has never had this kind of treatment from Christopher Cleek. Not even when she was running a temperature of one hundred four degrees down with the flu last spring. It rankles.
It rankles even more when he reaches up to stroke her hair.
She finishes the bowl. He wipes her chin with a sterile pad.
She’s hiccupping.
No, wait. She’s crying.
The bitch is actually crying. Tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Go raibh maith agat,” she says.
“Thank you,” Chris prompts her.
She doesn’t understand. Belle thinks the whole thing’s ridiculous. First dressing her up. Now trying to teach her to speak. Trying to teach her anything.
The woman’s nothing but a savage.
“Thank you,” he prompts again.
She still doesn’t understand. Correction. An ignorant savage.
“Thaaank you,” Chris drawls. “Thaaaank you.”
”T-aank ooo,” she says. As if to belie me.
It doesn’t mean anything. A parrot could do as much. A mynah bird. She remembers seeing one on The Tonight Show who could imitate a duck or a monkey or even a cat.
Chris turns to her and smiles.
“See? She’s learning,” he says.
So is Belle. Learning more about her husband every minute of every day.
She’s had time now to go into his study and have a look at his books. The picture isn’t good. They owe money on nearly everything. The second mortgage, the Escalade, the office. The interest on their credit cards is ridiculous. And now he’s buying the Bluejacket properties. With what? Peg will be going off to college soon. Then Brian.