Absolute Rage (10 page)

The answer (if she knew it) did not come then, for the screen door crashed open and Giancarlo burst in. He grabbed two doughnuts from a box on the table and announced, “Zak shot a crow. We're going to nail it to the barn.”

“No, you are not,” said the mother.

“Yes, Dan Heeney says that's what they do in West Virginia.”

“Fine, if you're ever in West Virginia, you can nail all the crows you want, but not here.”

Giancarlo snatched up a table knife and stabbed it into Karp's bowl several times, while laughing maniacally.

“What are you doing?” cried Karp. “Stop that!”

“Guess what I am, Dad.”

“An idiot?”

“No, a cereal killer. Mom, can we
tape
the crow up?”

“Get out of my sight! Shoo!” Marlene yelled. The boy departed, hooting.

“He took the last two chocolate doughnuts,” Karp said. “Two, not one.”

“They always take two, for the other one. I think it's sweet.”

“But if each one does it, then they have four, and there isn't any left for me. It's not fair.”

“Could you pout more pathetically when you say that?”

Karp obligingly twisted his face.

“Charming,” cooed his wife. “And incidentally, that answers your problem with the criminal justice system. Life is inherently not fair.” Marlene emptied ice from a bag into the two-gallon thermos. “And another example is, I have to go to work in the hot sun while you gorge on doughnuts.”

The sun was indeed hot. Marlene lugged her jug of lemonade into the shade cast by the barn and set it on a rough plywood table, on which there already stood a miscellany of tin and plastic cups. Then she strolled through her small kingdom to declare a break. Billy Ireland was behind the barn working a big shepherd named Lars on the spring lead with Alex Russell. The dog was in a harness attached to a long lead fastened to a thick baby-carriage spring bolted into the wall. Russell was agitating. He came from hiding around the corner of the barn and snapped the dog in the face with a burlap sack. The dog leaped at the sack and grabbed it, at which Russell dropped it and retreated around the corner with every indication of extreme cowardice. The dog killed the sack, snarling and jerking it around. Marlene waited until the exercise was over before she approached. Ireland took the dog off the chain, snapped on a light lead, and sit-stayed him.

“How's he doing?” she asked.

“Coming along. A good dog. Nice and varminty with the sack.” Ireland took in Marlene's tube top and cutoffs, adding, you are a fine-looking woman and I would boff you in a second were it not for the fact that there are lots of fine-looking women and not that many good training jobs for ex-felons and so I will wait until such time as you actually grab me by the dick before going further. But with his eyes, not aloud, which just suited Marlene, who got the message clear enough and thought (as she liked to do), I am
so
bad.

“There's lemonade,” said Marlene, and walked away, feeling the eyes of both men on her. Past the greenhouse and the garden, through a wooden gate to what was once the pasture of the former dairy farm, a dozen flat acres of close-mowed grass. In a near corner of this field, her daughter was running their young mastiff Gringo on a fifteen-foot lead. She was giving the dog the most basic lesson, which was paying attention to the handler on the other end of the lead. As long as the dog trotted along at Lucy's left side, all was well. But when he turned to investigate some interesting object or scent, or stopped or lagged, Lucy did a sharp about-face and walked rapidly in the opposite direction, allowing the slack in the long lead to yank taut and digging the little spikes of the pinch collar into the dog's neck. Marlene watched this a few times, until Lucy spotted her and walked over, with Gringo showing his class by, for once, not having to be dragged along.

“Good dog!” said Marlene. “Good daughter! He's coming along, I see.”

“Pretty well. He's a willing worker. I hope you made drinks, I'm dying of thirst out here.” Lucy gestured to the far side of the field. “I'll go get Dan.”

“Dan's here?”

“Yeah. You hired him and he showed up.”

“I didn't expect him after last night. Besides, I hired him to train the goddamn computer, not the dogs. Wasn't he hungover?”

“He was. But he's noble. And responsible. He stumbled in at seven this morning while I was getting Gringo out, so I gave him Malo and showed him, so to speak, the ropes.”

Marlene shrugged. “Well, tell him he can have a drink, too.” She turned back to the barn. Lucy took a zigzag dog-training route across the field and watched Dan work his dog for a while. Malo was a stiff-necked bruiser, heavier than his brother, and Dan was doing a good deal of dragging. He was sweat-soaked; his face was an unhealthy yellowish gray.

“He's a toughie,” observed Lucy.

Dan jerked his lead hard enough to pull the head off an Airedale. Malo gave him a hurt look and then ambled along in the new direction as if he had just decided that it was more interesting.

“That's it,” she said. “The first principle of Kohler training: where the dog's head goes, the rest of him must follow.”

“I'm used to it,” Dan said. “He reminds me of my father.”

They began walking side by side across the field. After an interval she asked, “Does that happen often? Last night, I mean.”

Dan snorted. “Invariably. Emmett and I started jumping him when he was sixteen and I was fourteen. Before that, he'd break things or knock Mom over.” Dan paused and color came into his face. “I don't . . . it's not like he was mean or anything—just out of control. He never hit her or anything. Mom's always making excuses for him—he's under stress, he works hard, we have to be understanding.”

“And are you? Understanding.”

“Yeah, to an extent. It's traditional. A man gets drunk and starts fights. That's what men do. And all is forgiven afterwards. The cutoff line is does he beat the wife and kids and does he drink on the job, and I have to say Red Heeney's on the good side of that. And really, he's a great man. Words my mother taught me.”

“So why does he act that way if he's so great?”

“Because he's angry at all the misery and injustice in the world that he can't get his hands on to beat up. So he beats up on anyone handy when he's got his load on. Maybe it's even true. My mom believes it, that's for sure.”

“But?”

He smiled at her. “I guess there was a but in there. Smart of you to pick it up.”

“Language is my game,” she said coolly.

“Right, I'll have to watch myself. Anyway, the but is, I'm tired of it. I'm tired of all that like last night. And what causes it. Because it's . . . I don't know . . . finished, all that old working-class stuff. He wants it to be like that again and it can't, not like the twenties and thirties, with the union songs and the struggle. All his guys, this pathetic little union he's got there, all they want is a satellite dish and a Camaro and enough booze or weed to get shit-faced. When you come right down to it, it's a company union. Always has been up there in Robbens County. They killed all the real union guys back in '23, and since then the company's had this cozy relationship, first with the underground miners and now with the pit mine equipment operators. The UMW couldn't get in there and neither can the clean unions like the Operating Engineers. He wants class-consciousness, but the only thing they care about is if you're from here or from away, which is the whole planet that isn't Robbens County. And your family, they care about that. Are you a Jonson or a Cade boy? Or a Weames. I got to hand it to him, it's amazing he's gone as far as he has. He actually has a shot at making Weames have to steal the election.”

“Isn't that, like, illegal?”

“Oh, right, legal! This is Robbens County we're talking about, not the United States. And, yeah, I should support him and all, because he's right, and sacrifice myself like he did, and like he made my mom do, and Emmett. But—okay, here's the big but—I want to just have . . . I don't know, like a normal life. A family you can bring somebody home to without them getting a quiz on their place in the class structure and a lecture about what went on in the mines in 1919 and how unjust and cruel.” He laughed. “Right, poor me . . . it's so boring it makes me puke.”

“I know what you mean,” she said.

“Not really,” he said, a little bitterness creeping into his voice for the first time. “I mean, you have this nice normal family. . . . What's so funny?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said when she had brought herself under control. “My normal family life.” To his confused look she said, “Oh, forget it. Come on, I could drink a quart,” and she trotted away with her dog.

*  *  *

That afternoon, Karp was standing in the shade of the barn, watching Ireland and Russell work another dog, a Doberman, on the spring lead. They were using a sleeve, a thickly padded device that Russell wore on his right arm. He was annoying the animal with a switch, and when the dog leaped at him, he allowed it to grab the sleeve and tear it off him. Russell then retreated out of sight and allowed the dog to chew up the sleeve for a while. The agitator had, of necessity, a sure sense of exactly how far the dog could lunge against the spring. Karp, watching, felt sorry for the dog, with whom he identified. He had been trained in very much the same way and was currently in a situation not unlike that of the plunging, snarling Doberman. After a number of such sessions, Ireland took the dog back to its cage and Russell walked over to Karp, sat down with his back against the barn, and lit a cigarette.

“So that's how it's done,” Karp said. “Do you ever get bitten?”

“Me? Hell, no. Guys
have
been tore up pretty bad, if they don't know what they're doing. I seen a dog rip a guy's face off, once. Grabbed him on the cheek and
whang!
The whole thing, the whole half of his face, just come off like a fuckin' glove.” He gestured with his cigarette. “You got company.”

The dogs broke out their chorus as a battered, dark blue Jimmy with West Virginia plates rolled into the yard. Its left fender was pink with Bondo and its chrome was dented. A working stiff's car, Karp thought, and wondered if it was that way by design. Emmett Heeney was driving and looked uncomfortable, almost grim. The passengers were Rose Heeney and her daughter. They got out and Rose walked over to Karp.

“I realize you probably never wanted to see me again,” she said, “but I had to come over and apologize.”

Karp shrugged and put on a smile. “No problem. It happens.”

“He doesn't know what he's saying,” she added. “He's under a lot of stress.”

“It's fine, Rose,” Karp said, now becoming a little embarrassed himself. “You want to see Marlene? I think she was in the barn.” Rose turned to go. “And I was just going to take the boys to the beach. If Lizzie wants to come . . . ?”

Rose smiled a grateful assent. She entered the barn, with Lizzie running ahead, and stumbled on something. She paused to let her eyes adjust to the dimness. She was thinking, I am so good at this, and reflected on what a shame it was that pride could not really be taken in what was her one real skill: pretending not to be mortified, the kind of charm she had learned at her mommy's knee early, learning to lie about Mom and Dad not being available and charming the men who came about the bills one has when one is trying to keep up appearances without quite enough liquidity. She had thought that marrying a dragline operator from West Virginia, a man dedicated to the fight for justice, would have excused her permanently from mortification, but it had not proved to be the case. She had nearly stopped feeling sorry for herself—it was by now a routine, the famous Wickham shit-eating grin, a little la-di-da toss of the head, crude to be angry with such a one, right? And by extension with the one who had done the damage, broken the window or the jaw—although she still felt for the children, not Emmett so much, but for Dan; Lizzie was starting to be old enough to understand, too.

The dogs were barking and she had to call out. Marlene appeared out of the gloom, wiping her hands on a towel. She shouted at the dogs to shut up, which they did. Rose went into her cringe. Marlene ignored it and said, “Want a beer? I'm having one.”

They went into the kitchen. Rose declined the beer, accepted an iced tea. Marlene said, “Well, that wasn't the worst party I ever went to. No one got shot and we didn't even have to call the cops. Or an ambulance. I expect you've been in situations where there were both.”

Rose felt herself blush. She nodded. “Yes. He's famous in McCullensburg for it. I'm sorry. I thought, well, away from home . . . a civilized little gathering.” She looked up at Marlene and found a colder face than she had expected.

“You're not angry at me, are you?”

“I don't know yet. Let me ask you straight: Do you
know
me?”

“Know you . . . ?”

“Yeah. Do you know who I am? What I used to do? I mean, is this hanging around me you've been doing, cultivating me and so on, connected with what went on last night? You're not looking for a little help, are you? In your domestic situation, I mean.”

As soon as Marlene said this, she saw from the confused and shocked expression on Rose Heeney's face that she had been off base and felt a flash of shame.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Rose exclaimed. “You think I need a . . . whatever you are, a private detective?”

“Not as such . . . calm down, Rose. Sit down and finish your tea. Okay, I was out of line and I apologize. It's just that I used to have a business—actually according to my husband, it was more of a crusade—in which I . . . um . . . discouraged guys from beating up on their wives.”