Hard Twisted Page 5

  A windstorm arrived with the night. It swept off the lake, flattening the grasses and flagging the trees and sending camp trash cartwheeling through the clearing. It grounded the birds and silenced the crickets, and it buckshot the grill of Palmer’s truck. Inside the cabin it whistled in the chinking and moaned in the stovepipe, and when Lottie ventured outside for the coffeepot, she heard the mad flapping of their tents beyond the guttered firelight.

  The men had been drinking for several hours by the time Palmer rose from the table and bent to the curtained space below the sideboard. Where the hell is it? he muttered, striking his head as he straightened. Shit!

  What’s all the commotion? her father demanded, rousing from his stupor.

  I been waylaid by my own larder. Palmer rubbed his head as he set a tin on the table. Here you go, Bonnie. I been savin these for just such a occasion.

  Bonnie? Who’s Bonnie?

  Palmer grinned recklessly. Why, Dil, she’s a first-class, natural-born cock handler is all she is.

  Who is?

  Look, Daddy, shortbreads! They’re your favorites!

  She opened the lid and spread the crinkling paper for her father’s inspection.

  I’ll be damned.

  Have one, Daddy.

  Tell you what, her father said. These here would go right nice with just a whisker more of that store-bought.

  By midnight he was unconscious, and man and girl shared a glance across the table.

  You’d best give me a hand with him, Palmer said as he stood.

  They scraped back his chair, and as Lottie held her father upright, Palmer squatted and barred his arms across the sleeping man’s chest.

  Grab his feet, honey.

  They carried him, shuffling, to the doorway, then down the stoop and into the maelstrom, the stars at distant anchor their only witness. They sat him down and loosened his tentfly, and they eased him like some prostrate catechumen into a canvas baptismal.

  Outside her own tent, with its grommets whistling and its canvas snapping, Palmer lifted Lottie like a new bride.

  You can’t sleep out here in this! he shouted as he turned her crossways to the wind and, staggering, bore her back to the cabin, and onto the stoop, and thence over the threshold.

  Chapter Three

  DAMN FOOLS AND SOLDIERS

  BY MR. PHARR: When you said there’d been a patch of trouble, what did you mean exactly?

  A: Daddy and Clint had a fight. Not a fight, really. They had words, I guess you could say.

  Q: What about?

  A: I reckon Daddy thought Clint had got fresh with me.

  Q: Had he?

  A: No, sir.

  Q: And as a result of this misunderstanding, did your father threaten the accused?

  A: Probably.

  BY MR. HARTWELL: Speculation.

  BY MR. PHARR: I’ll rephrase. Did you hear any threats made by either man as a result of this misunderstanding between your father and the accused?

  A: No, sir. I wasn’t there when it happened.

  Q: When what happened?

  BY MR. HARTWELL: If she wasn’t there when it happened, then whatever it was that allegedly happened, counsel knows full well he’s eliciting hearsay or speculation from the witness.

  THE COURT: Henry?

  BY MR. PHARR: Not necessarily, Your Honor. For example, the accused might have told her that he’d had words with her father.

  THE COURT: Ask her that.

  BY MR. PHARR: Did Mr. Palmer ever tell you that he’d had words with your father, or that either man had threatened the other?

  A: Yes, sir. Clint said that Daddy had gone to the sheriff, and that he’d had to trace Daddy down and get him drunk so’s to calm him down a little.

  She woke with a start.

  She lay in her clothes on the hard wooden floor with Palmer in the bed above her, his breathing slow and measured. The cabin was dim as yet, a gray light from the windscreen shining through the empty bottle whose shadow fell like an accusing finger across their jumbled boots.

  Floorplanks creaked as she rose and tiptoed barefoot to the window. There she pressed one cheek to the cold glass and then the other, a hoarfrost butterfly clouding her vision of the outside world in waiting.

  Hinges squealed as she stepped onto the stoop and thence to the corner, from where she saw her father’s brogans as they had left them, paired and empty before his still-fastened tent-flap.

  Water splashed behind her, and she wheeled to the sound. From the porch of the next cabin, the hag-woman shook her pail, her droop eye glowing dull and malignant in the low light of sunrise. She leaned and spat, and wiped her mouth, and turned back to her doorway.

  Lottie returned from the lake with her old clothes in a bundle. By now four men were at the rusted Overland, arranged like surgeons on tiptoes, leaning over the patient and reaching with blackened arms to point and poke and stanch some oily hemorrhage. Her father drew a clean rag from his pocket.

  She set the clothes with the others to be washed and with her fingers ran the wet knots from her hair. Of all the cabins, Palmer’s alone remained dark and still despite the hour. She gathered her hair and tied it back, then she set the soap and the scrub brush in her pail.

  I’m doin the washin! she called to her father’s back, and he raised his rag in reply as, from the fender opposite, a face lifted into sunlight and grinned, and she saw in the grinning a fleeting flash of gold.

  The day was bright and still, and the only sounds where she stood on the bank were the echoing calls of the ducks and the plash and splatter of her own enterprise. She dunked and scrubbed and dunked again each of the garments, wringing them out to hang on the sagging lakeside branches until she herself was tented and moved within them like a bedouin.

  Her jeans lay neatly folded with her boots nearby and her legs were bare and blotched by the serial ablutions of warming sun and frigid water. The hymn she hummed was the only tune she really knew, the fragmented score to a fading memory of a whitewashed church and hard oak pews and the talcum hand of a mother whose golden cross hung now slapping lightly at the hollow of her own throat. When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died, my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.

  And so she never heard the footsteps.

  The hand that grabbed her was calloused and hard, and it yanked her backward and spun her roughly to the ground.

  Daddy, don’t! Daddy!

  But the eyes she saw through the pulsing of her blood were not her father’s eyes, or the voice her father’s voice.

  You dirty little mink, the man breathed softly, his face streaked and flushed. He fumbled at the knot that was his belt buckle, and as his pants fell away, his long, pink cock bobbed free.

  I’ll scream, she whispered, backing in the dirt. I swear I will.

  The gold tooth glinted. Go ahead. I’ll bet your daddy’d like to hear all about you and that half-pint convict ruttin like spring goats behind his back. You go ahead and call him over here so’s I can tell him all about it.

  He dropped to his knees grabbing at her ankles. She kicked and tried to rise, but he bulldogged her and dragged her twisting onto her stomach, tearing the thin, white panties loose from her clawing fingers.

  Don’t. Please.

  Don’t, please, he sneered, spreading her legs.

  She tried to scream but gagged instead on a bitter loam of earth and snot as he gripped her neck and pressed her face into the dirt.

  The report of the pistol cracked like a whip, echoing across the lake. The rough hands fell away, and Lottie scrambled and twisted, and only then saw Palmer holding a level bead on the man’s back.

  You want a new asshole, or you want I should plug the one you already got?

  The man lifted both hands slowly. Hold on, neighbor. I didn’t mean no harm. We was just havin a little fun is all. Ain’t that right, miss?

  The crash of footfalls in the woods halted the arc of the pistol Palmer had raised over
the kneeling man’s head. He glanced over his shoulder, then to Lottie, where she lay wet and dirty and cowering.

  You’d best put them drawers back on, he said calmly.

  The men, when they arrived, were three in number, her father at the lead. They drew up short in comic unison. Then her father made a wounded sound that was part shout and part whimper, and he threw himself flailing onto the kneeling man’s back, his fists windmilling into flesh and bone and earth.

  Oww! Shit! Help! The man curled himself tightly, warding off blows with his arms.

  The other men watched as her father pounded the man head and ribs and head again until both his fists were bloody and both his arms were too tired to lift. When he slumped to all fours, spent by his efforts, the groaning man rose to a like position, and any discernible difference between victor and vanquished was lost in the shared gasping of breath and the pooling of blood and tears.

  Fucking. Bastard.

  I didn’t. It was him. The man gestured with his bloodied face. Ask the wife. She saw them. Ask her.

  When Garrett stood again, Palmer backed a step, reaiming his pistol. I ain’t the one with my pants round my ankles.

  Garrett, still heaving, looked first to the gun and then to the other men. He unbuckled his belt and drew it from its loops and doubled it in his bloody fist. He brushed past the others and raised the belt high and brought it down with a crack across the cowering girl’s legs.

  No, Daddy! No!

  Again, again, again. Lottie kicked and cried, gouging tracks in the dirt as she backed, balling herself under a tree. Her father stepped forward and raised the belt again.

  All the men jumped at the second crack of the pistol.

  That’s enough, Palmer said evenly. Put it down.

  Garrett lowered his arm.

  Lucile, you grab your pants and get. Go to the cabin and lock the door.

  Lottie scrambled to her feet and ran careening past the leering men and the raking branches and the patchwork curtain of clothes. She gathered up her pants and boots and she kept on running, her heart pounding and her ears ringing, past the chicken coop, past the tents and the truck, past the old car, all the time listening for the sound of the third gunshot that never came.

  Inside the cabin, sprawled on the bed, she finally wept.

  Her tears came at first in great gulps of pain and anger, but soon softened to a torrent of bitter shame, until, at last, clutching at the blankets, she convulsed soundlessly at the injustice of a world in which she herself was but a thing adrift, like some speck of flotsam on the windblown lake that rose or sank at the whim of forces beyond human sense or reckoning.

  The first sounds she heard were angry voices rising from the woods. Next came the slam of a car door and the sound of an engine sputtering and catching and of gears rasping as the old Overland flivver limped from camp like a man on tender feet. Then, at last, a hard rap at the door.

  She looked to the windscreen, where Palmer’s face was cupped to the glass.

  Figures he’d get that thing runnin now, he said without preamble, brushing past her in the doorway. He crossed to the sideboard and wrapped the gun in a dish towel and carried it to the chifforobe, where he knelt and with his pocketknife levered up a floorboard.

  Where’s he goin? she asked, smearing her face with a sleeve.

  To find him a shotgun, would be my guess.

  Palmer stood and looked about. He swept some coins from the table. He crossed to the door and lifted his hat from the peg.

  Where are you goin?

  I got a notion he’s headed for the sheriff, Palmer said, setting his hat. Has he got any gas in that thing?

  I think so.

  Shit.

  He paused, his fingers drumming the doorframe.

  Okay, here’s what’s what. You lock this door and don’t let nobody inside, understand? I’ll try and find him and talk some sense to him. And if the law comes by, you ain’t never seen no gun, you got that?

  She nodded. He studied her face before turning, then stopped again on the threshold.

  Just remember one thing, he told her. Only damn fools and soldiers stick their necks out for nothin.

  She had paced at first, and then, when she’d tired of pacing, she’d lain in bed and cried again, and when she’d finally slept, it was a fitful sleep of terrors vaguely imagined.

  When she woke, it was to blades of moted sunlight slicing through the crumbled chinking of the cabin. She’d sat up blinking, taking in the half-light. Then she stood and paced again, until, tired of pacing, she busied herself by making the bed and sweeping the floor, taking care to avoid the windscreen or any shadow she might make upon it.

  Now she sat at last in full darkness and ate the stale shortbreads with the last of the tepid house water, listening to the sounds of the men as they gathered at the cockpit.

  When she’d tilted the tin and shaken the last crumbs into her mouth, she fumbled for the washbucket below the sideboard and set it on the floor. She lowered her pants and squatted and, in the ringing darkness, felt her leg welts tighten, tracing their swollen outlines with her fingertips.

  You didn’t have no cause, she whispered to the darkness.

  She leaned at the window and watched the backlit men at the cockpit shifting and swaying like pagan supplicants at some red and heretic mass. As though in the blood of the contest, some greater truth might be divined. As though truth itself were the thing exalted, and blood but its base and corporeal attendant.

  She didn’t realize she had dozed again until she was startled awake by a crashing sound at the door. Palmer cursed and stumbled heavily into the room, the bucket clanging against the chairleg where she sat.

  Holy shit!

  Are you all right?

  Light the goddamn lamp.

  He hung unsteadily by the doorway as she felt for the match-box and lifted the blackened chimney, and the walls when they appeared out of darkness were to her in her lingering somnolence as the ribs of the whale, and she inside was as Jonah cast out and saved and waiting to learn her fate.

  Where is he?

  Palmer removed his hat and tossed it toward the pegs, from which it caromed and wobbled, circling back to where he stood. He stepped over the hat and lifted a chair and straddled it backward, his chin resting on his arms and his arms resting on the hard ladderback.

  It went just like I thought, he told her. He run straight to the sheriff, and he made ’em call down to the sheriff at Sulphur Springs. What all did you tell him, anyways?

  Nothin, I swear.

  Palmer leaned and spat on the floorboards. That stiff-necked son of a bitch done shat in every nest I got.

  What happened?

  Nothin happened. I told Cross he was a crazy drunk is all. Then I tracked him into town and by God got him drunk. I told him he was all wrong about you and me, and that ol’ dead-eye was a born troublemaker who could spin a yarn longer’n a whore’s life story, which is the God’s own truth.

  Did he believe you?

  He smiled wetly. Did he believe me? Come here, darlin.

  He tilted in his seat and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

  What matters now is that we be careful till I get this sorted.

  Sorted how?

  He stood and turned the chair and carried his hat to the pegs.

  You’d better scat. Your pa’s in his tent, and you’d best be in yours when he wakes up.

  But—

  But nothin. Go on.

  He held the door and waited. Outside, a pale fluorescence bathed the empty clearing.

  Lottie rose, righting the pail as she passed and pausing beside him where he stood in the open doorway. The outside air was cool and fresh, and a lock on Palmer’s forehead twitched in the gentle night breeze.

  Thank you, she told him. If you hadn’t of come along—

  Forget it. He brushed her cheek with his fingers. Oh, but there is one thing. You get a chance tomorrow, could you take a mop to this place? I think a cat done pissed
itself in here while we was out.

  Lottie’s tent sagged under the twin burdens of morning dew and a cold, gnawing dread. The risen sun burnished the thin scrim of canvas that shielded her, like the cloak of Elijah, from the judging eyes of the camp. Inside, her body rigid, she lay breathing the mildewed canvas and listening to the morning calls of roosters and the murmur of distant voices. Then a shadow passed across the tent wall, and she heard the clack of stacking kindling.

  When she crawled forth into daylight, she found her father hunched before the cookfire. Beyond his crouching form, the camp was awake and in motion. He lifted his head.

  Coffee? He lifted a cup for her approval.

  She smoothed her hair and joined him on the log, feeling the prying eyes on her back.

  Yes, sir. Thank you.

  They sat looking into the half-distance, at the Overland jalopy and at the slumbering lake beyond it, barred yet in the muted blues and grays of morning light and shadow.

  I was thinkin we’d take us a little walk this mornin, her father said. Just you and me. He passed her the cup by the rim. Careful, she’s hot.

  She glanced toward Palmer’s cabin. It alone remained dark.

  I hear they’s a trail runs clear around the lake. I never been to the other side, have you?

  No, sir.

  Well, there you go then. I’d call that a plan.

  They followed the narrow path through alternations of dark forest and bright clearings, catching and losing sight of the lake. Her father carried his Bible with him, first in his hand and then, farther along, snugged in the belt of his trousers.

  There were bees in the meadows, and butterflies, and the fragrant scents of mallow and sweet gum adrift on the morning air. At a glade on the northern shoreline her father stopped and stooped to gather stones, which he flung sidearm onto the water, watching their skip and splash with a stern demeanor alien to the endeavor.

  Lottie sat, watching as he paused and weighted the stones in his hand.

  I’m gonna ask you just the one time.

  Sir?

  He turned to face her.

  Did you lay with that man?

  She looked away.

  I ast you a question.