Apricot brandy (14 page)

She walked back to the stump of her first victim and realized, from a crushed crate under its branches, that she had begun with the tree Susan had fallen from. Susan up on her ladder, sweating, eyes bright… Susan alive, just three days ago.

She began to cut her way up toward the start of her row near the highway. She carefully aligned her notch-cuts to the picking lane, to drop the trees square across it and, if their branches tangled with the trees across the lane, went in and cut them apart so the victims lay flat, their red butts aimed at the house. She made her back-cuts perfectly horizontal and tried to leave the neat, half-beveled stumps all of a height. The soothing sweat, the all-obliterating dance of hard, careful work… it was almost like peace.

She had to refill her gas can twice from the drum in the big shed before she reached the head of the row. She brought a box wrench and a new chain out with the second can and knelt in the weeds to slip the dulled one off the bar. The old man left half a dozen chains on a nail in the shed wall. Every one of them was sharp, though the whole place was years overgrown.

An idling motor came up behind her. Wolf was back with the empty pickup. “Maaaan! You’re runnin’ some sweat! You’re pumpin’ out some juice! You havin’ a good time here, or what?” His handsome face was beaming with moronic glee. She saw that he had only that one smile, really, a tool to work closer to people, leverage more liberties, his flinty eyes checking you meanwhile for cracks in your façade, places where he could move in closer to you.

“Well, you tell me,” she said. “You’re doing the same thing.”

“Well, yeah, but… ” And he waved a hand at all the acres of trees rolling down slope from the house:
I’m
cutting firewood.
You’re
insane!

She smiled at him and, overriding a deep fearful instinct, let him see her dislike in her smile. “Got a ways to go, don’t I? So I guess I better not stand around jawing.” She turned and knelt back to installing the new chain, heard the truck slip oh-so-slowly into gear and roll on inchingly, taking forever to be gone, the man telling her through the engine’s growl how his eyes were lingering on her back.

She went back to the other end of her cut and began to finish off the row. She had worked her way almost to where she could see around the house to where the men were working, when she found that they had done working. The truck swung out onto the drive carrying its last load and towing the splitter behind it. Kyle gave a farewell double toot on the horn. Wolf didn’t look at her, was turned talking to Kyle. Was on his way right out of the state, thank God.

When they were gone, Karen saw how low the sun was getting and, feeling a sharp chill in the air, went in the house and got her canvas work coat, came out and sank back into the chainsaw-trance. Something in one of the coat’s pockets bumped her thigh as she worked. She realized she still had the .357 in there and then forgot it.

Half an hour before sunset the whole row was down, a huge segmented serpent of glittery foliage speared in the flank by shaft after shaft of sawn trunk. It was something. It didn’t help against the silence of the night to come, though in a few hours Kyle would fill some of that emptiness It didn’t help against all the nights to come, but still this serpent was a good thing to have made, was bold and beautiful, a shout of defiance against him, dear dead Dad.

Night fell outside the bright-lit kitchen as she chopped mushrooms into spaghetti sauce and set it simmering. Then, though at night the bathroom was hard to enter, she went into it long enough to pee and wet a towel with warm water. With this she went out into the living room to undress by the fire she’d built and wipe her body clean. But nakedness was frightening anywhere within these walls and she was quick getting into clean jeans, clean Pendleton. With her running shoes back on, feeling herself once more fight-or-flight ready, she was easier again. And thought: You
cut down his trees bold enough— now go back upstairs to that sewing room
.

She went back in the kitchen, chopped up a salad and put it in the fridge to stay crisp. Then turned on her heel and went to the foot of the staircase— faking out her terror and trying to give it the slip. But found it right back in front of her as she stood at the foot of those stairs. Was that dress still up there? Was that letter? Were they both hallucinations? Even if they were hallucinations, they were still Dad talking to her, Dad still right in there, owning her brain and her bowels. Did she have the spine— Did
she
have the spine to go up there anyway and see what he would tell her?

She started up the stairs and found herself climbing ever more slowly, felt each riser lifting her into a whole other atmosphere of fear, where she had to pause and learn if she could breathe it… . The light from the living room sank behind her foot by foot, while the upstairs darkness inched down, bringing her the smell of its old, worn carpet, of the ancient varnish on its dark, closed doors.

Far outside, she heard the sigh of an engine on the highway. Was it decelerating? She could not tell… and then couldn’t hear it any more.

She stood waiting. Waited a long time and no sound followed. Her heart was hammering. She looked up into the darkness.

Not tonight. Tomorrow, in the daylight. She could give herself that much— her heart was still bleeding from Susan’s terrible wounds. She could not bear more terror, not this night. She would give herself the solace of Kyle’s company, try to take some hope and courage from him, a man who had lived at least as hard as she had. Tomorrow, by daylight, she would climb all the way up these stairs and go into the sewing room.

Karen turned and went back down the stairs. Kyle would be another hour. She slipped her canvas coat back on and stepped out the back door into the autumn chill. A waxing gibbous moon was up, its moonlight filling a strange new void, a field of stumps where Dad’s special trees had stood all through her childhood, all through her life.

The devastation she’d ordered shocked her, then the shock grew on her, became hope, even a first stir of joy. This wonderful emptiness she’d created caused her to shiver. All Dad’s crooked old poison-mothers, vanished at her will, only beautiful moonlight here in their stead. Breathing it in, it felt like pure freedom.

All the trimmed branches, still studded with fruit, lay in a big pile to one side. Karen wanted some gesture to proclaim her victory, a rite of defiance. Stepping off the porch, she came to the trim-pile, a shaggy mound as high as she was tall. A bittersweet smell came off it of sheared wood, sap, and bruised fruit. Unbidden, a memory flooded her of how she’d loved these trees as a little girl. Of how she’d stood small beneath them, looking up into their sun-drenched splendor.

It took her several heartbeats to find her rage again, her vengefulness. “Hmmm,” she murmured. “How ‘bout an apricot?”

She reached into the heap for a handsome pair as a trophy and slid her grip around a plump pair of spheres. But what greeted her palm was the cold, slack elephant skin of a hairy scrotum, which holstered balls like eggs of ice. The alien flesh stirred and its slow, reptilian wrinkling tickled her fingers.

Recoiling so powerfully her heels snagged, she toppled onto her back. The wind knocked out of her, she lay gasping and just then heard, beyond the house behind her, the crunch of gravel far out on the drive. Footsteps.

Kyle would be driving his truck… .

The steps came on, a purposeful stride… someone big.

Dad
was her first thought, her palm still tingling with the nightmare it had gripped. But another thought followed, one more urgent than nightmares, one that put the hard earth back under her and set her struggling to her feet. Instinctively she shunned the house— now was not the moment to be boxed inside it.

Her legs steadied as she ran to the house corner, crouched and peeked around it. The footsteps were still beyond the curve in the drive from which she would be visible. Darting across to the big shed and working her way around it, she crouched down and peeked from that corner.

It
was
Wolf.
Crunch, crunch, crunch
— here he came, high, wide, and handsome, and just detectably unsteady from the booze he’d been drinking. The big asshole climbed the porch, opened the front door, and walked right in.

She had to get a grip, had to get cold and clear, fast. Her truck was out, the keys were in the living room. What about Kyle? Kyle wouldn’t have told him he was coming back, or Wolf wouldn’t be here. He thought Wolf was gone from the state and Wolf thought Kyle was gone from this place. All Karen had to do was stay hidden till Kyle showed up.

Wolf would know from the set table that Karen was here— that she’d spotted him, bolted, was hiding and, after a while, he’d know she wasn’t hiding in the house. How long could she elude him? She knew these acres and he didn’t.

If she should get into the orchard a dozen rows deep and hide in the weeds, she could watch both doors of the house. Turning, Karen saw that the trees she had felled formed a wall of tangled boughs she couldn’t crawl through without considerable noise. She would have to go up or down the open truck-lane, in the moonlight, to get around the felled row and into the standing trees. And then she wouldn’t be able to watch the house.

Meanwhile— it struck her— Wolf was poking around in that house, where every handgun known to man was on display and every form of booze would make him more reckless. It was like Dad at his worst had come back in this goon’s body. Dad was back in the house. She remembered Wolf noisily smacking on one of Dad’s apricots.

Then, like an earthquake her mind’s eye showed her the twelve-gauge pump shotgun, with five rounds of double-ought in it, leaning against the cellar wall beside Dad’s workbench, right where she’d left it when she woke up this afternoon. It was the worst thing for Wolf to find before Kyle got here and the best thing for her and Kyle to have when he did get here.

But what if— an aftershock here— a slower and deeper jolt than remembering the shotgun, was she sure she wanted her
and Kyle
to have it when he got here? Kyle: I’ll make sure she’s home— cooking dinner. You go in and make the grab. I’ll come by and join the party… .

Could
that
be true of him? She’d seen Kyle laugh— you could trust that, couldn’t you? When you didn’t know someone at his core you unconsciously waited for that, to see how he laughed, before you started trusting him… you looked to see if he really liked laughing. But some people knew all the moves and could fake them. Especially sharp-minded, older men like Kyle. Could do anything with their faces, while their guts were cold. And in that case it was twice as urgent that
she
should have the shotgun.

But— did she dare? Even as she asked it, she saw a light come on upstairs— Wolf was poking around in her parents’ bedroom. She dared not think, because from this instant every thought was risk, was lost time. And instantly she was up, running in a crouch, creeping as she neared the side of the house.

Finding the ground-level basement window above Dad’s workbench, she prayed that the sash would move, and planted the heels of her hands under the thick wood mullion, heaving upward. The sash faintly groaned and gave with a chalky whisper— came up perhaps a foot before binding. It would be just enough, but she had to be infinitely careful not to make noise putting her foot down among Dad’s tools. Better to thrust in head-first, explore the dark bench top with her hands, and draw her legs in after her.

She eased head-first into the dark and musty cellar air. It was laced with a cold ghost of the fruit-cellar’s terrifying scent. Light from within limned the cellar-door— had she left the light on down there?

Her hands found scarred wood clear of obstructions. She put her weight on her palms, brought each leg in and gingerly planted its knee on the bench top. All her nerves were prickling for the least noise from the house above her, especially for the least creak of the floor-joists just over her head.

Learning how well she moved under extreme fear— she dropped down softly, square on the balls of her feet. Not a sound, from anywhere. Two stealthy steps to the end of the bench and she thrust her hands into the shadow where she’d left the gun standing. It wasn’t there. Her eyes, adjusted to the greater dark, could see her hands groping emptiness.

The side of her head exploded; a concrete avalanche hit her shoulder and punched her skull again from the opposite side. From above her came a bray. Her stunned brain grasped it was words: “Looking for this?” The cellar door was kicked open and she was hauled by her belt into its spill of yellow light.

She lay with her head tilted back off the lip of the steep wooden steps; her vision steadied enough to show her Wolf, way up there, smiling down his one smile. He set something down— the shotgun? She couldn’t move, couldn’t seize the moment. He took her up by the belt again and threw her down the steps like luggage. The risers slugged her shoulder, chest, arms, head. Karen found she still had reflexes and kept her head tucked to her chest, her arms hugged to her. She came to rest face-down on the cellar floor, skull ringing and her left hand in agony, something surely broken there.

Wolf came down to stand astride her. Between his bracketing legs she felt the grind of his weight against the earth— hopelessly bigger, hopelessly stronger than she had ever been at her strongest. With a groan, she freed her left arm from under her and laid it out across the floor. Something definitely cracked in the hand.

The muzzle of the shotgun bit against the back of her neck. “Now you hold still, bitch, and don’t give me any trouble.” It was almost Dad’s voice that came out of him, gritty and deep.

Reaching under her, with some difficulty, he undid her belt, shucked her jeans to her ankles, and then pinned them together with tight wraps of the belt. Jailhouse love. Straight and to the point. She couldn’t stand up, but her legs could be spread, and he wrenched them apart, kneeling down between them. She felt the crush of his sharp shins across her calves