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Scars Chapter 10 It was after dark when I walked from my car up to the porch of the big white house. The moon was up, and full, close. No clouds. Plenty of light to see by. There weren’t any lights on inside. No cars parked out front except mine. No cars in the drive. It wasn’t a vacant house, though. The lawn was well taken care of, the paint was good, the windows were clean. Had to hope the people who lived here were on vacation……. The door wasn’t locked. The house was dark, I flipped the switch just inside the door and the hall light came on. A phone in the hall on a little table; I picked it up—it was dead. About what I figured. Poked my head in the first two doors on either side of the hallway. Looked, listened……nothing. Stayed right there in the hall for a few minutes, waiting……. It was strange. Only a few times in my life that I’ve felt like I felt there and then. Perfectly calm. Alert, yeah, but not worried at all. My heart beating slow, just like always, not breathing hard. There was nothing she could do to me. Not gonna do what she wanted; ready to die first……..or kill. Not afraid a’ either one. A little noise…...I walked along the hallway to the stairs……the noise was coming from upstairs…...sort of a grunt……put my foot on the first step, waiting for the creak, if there was gonna be one…….but there wasn’t. The stairs were good, not a single creak when I went up. Felt weird going upstairs like that without a gun. I was in my shirtsleeves, too. Left my jacket in the car in case she was inside watching as I approached, so she could see I didn’t have a gun. At the top of the stairs, to the right……..all the doors were shut; more noises coming from behind one of those closed doors………darker upstairs than down, not as many windows for the moonlight to come through. Opened the door……a shadow laying on the bed…….nothing else. I looked behind the door. Nothing. Not a big room, no other corners to hide. The noise was coming from the bed. I knew who it was before I turned on the light. He was bleeding, but not too bad; Arliss’s artwork was in a line from his neck down his torso, and not the same sort of designs as mine, so she was doing something different with him. And he was naked, and looked scared shitless………but still alive. I put a finger to my lips. Richard nodded. He was tied up good, and the noises were his yells muffled behind the gag stuffed in his mouth. It didn’t take too long to cut him loose with my pocket knife. He stood and rubbed his wrists for a minute. “Where is she?” I whispered. “Do you know?” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen her for a while.” “Take off, then. Get outta here.” “Where’s my pants?” “Forget your fucking pants! Get going.” He looked up, past me, and his eyes got big. “Bud?” I turned around. There she was, standing in the doorway, one arm up in the air and propped against the frame. “What are you boys up to?” she said. She looked different. Her hair was dark red and long; some of it was pinned up on her head, and some strands were loose, falling around her shoulders. She was barefoot, in her underwear. What there was of it. But after that first glance, I didn’t notice how she looked. My calm went away. I had to make myself breathe…… It felt a little like I was in one a’ my nightmares. There she was, and here I was……and I wasn’t afraid…….but sick. You know? Hard to breathe, hard to swallow……and the hate came rising up outta the pit a’ my stomach like bile, and I felt like if I opened my mouth, it’d flow up outta my throat, cover the floor. And I couldn’t make myself move for a minute…….. Everything after that seemed to happen so slow. I suppose the whole thing took only half a minute or maybe less, but it seemed like it was lots longer than that. And clear. Crisp. I’ve heard people say things like “everything went so fast he didn’t catch it,” or “afterwards he couldn’t remember exactly what happened.” I remember exactly what happened. It was slow and clear and there was no question about any of it. “Wendell. I’m happy to see you, sweetheart,” she said. “But you know you shouldn’t have let him loose yet. We could have used him a little while longer.” She smiled. “Can you feel the energy in the air? He was very cooperative. Not stubborn like you. He would have made a good gift—“ “Shut up. I don’t wanna hear about it.” She walked over to me. “It’s time for us, Wendell. Are you ready?” It seemed strange that she couldn’t tell what I was feeling. Other women don’t seem to have a problem with that. And if she had…...if she’d sensed the rage and the hatred, heavy and thick in the air……you’d think she woulda been a little more careful. But she didn’t act like anything was wrong. She raised her arms. I knew she meant to put them around my neck. Couldn’t let her do that. Couldn’t let her touch me. I didn’t have a plan. I hadn’t decided ahead a’ time what I was gonna do. I figured maybe I would know when the time came. And I did, I guess. I didn’t think about it, didn’t have to. All I wanted to do, right then, was hurt her. Hit her, hurt her, kill her……. Whatever it was that held me still for the first few moments disappeared. “You bitch.” She had to see it coming. She didn’t even try to avoid it. Didn’t duck, didn’t step back outta the way. The first punch knocked her down. I grabbed her hair, pulled her back up, and let her have it a few more times…….and what stopped me was her laugh. On her knees on the floor, she looked up at me and laughed. She crawled over to the nightstand next to the bed. Blood was running down her chin; I’d split her lip. And there was a cut over her eye that was trickling down her temple, but she was laughing….. “I knew you’d be good, sweetheart,” she said. A trickle of blood ran down her neck. “I didn’t know how good. But slow down a little. We need to make it last till the moon is right overhead. After midnight.” Jesus Christ. “Shut the fuck up.” “If you’d showed me this side of you before, I would have let you loose no matter what Tony said.” She opened the drawer and put her hand in. “I’m glad I waited. It’s better now. Mmm, sweetheart……” She licked the blood off her lip. “Can you feel it? The hum in the air? Not too long now.” The only hum I felt was inside my head; and in my body, the adrenaline was flowing, the rage building…….I reached for her. Closed my hands around her throat. Nobody here to stop me this time. Squeezed. Her hand came outta the drawer with a good-sized hunting knife in it. She aimed for my face. I blocked it with my arm; let go of her and backed off a step. She waved the knife in the air, and said, “It’s so hard to find a man that knows what to do…..” Then she let the hand with the knife fall down by her side. Curled the forefinger on her other hand at me a coupla times. “Come on, baby. Come and get me.” She was smiling when I grabbed the fist that held the knife. She was smiling when I put my other hand around her throat. She didn’t fight me, she sorta…….went limp, a little. I couldn’t get a good enough grip with just one hand to kill her……I didn’t think I oughta let go of the knife…….. Her free arm curled around my neck. She licked her lips. “Maybe you don’t know what’s at stake here. If we do this right, you’ll be surprised at the outcome. We’ll shake the world. We’ll get our fondest desires.” She closed her eyes, and her sudden struggle was a surprise. She managed to slice me just above the belt on the left side; not deep, but I could feel the blood seeping into my pants. I couldn’t manage to get the knife outta her hand; she was stronger than you expect a woman to be. Lots stronger. She pushed her body at me, through my shirt I felt her nipples hard against my chest. She curled a leg around my waist, and I felt like you’d feel if a big fucking spider was wrapping its legs around you…… The shift in her weight made me lose my balance. I staggered and we ended up leaning against the wall. I wasn’t even thinking about killing her anymore, I was just trying to get her off me, trying to pull her arm from around my neck, trying to push her away without letting go of the knife. I figured if I let go of the knife, I was dead. “Your blood, my blood,” she said. “We can do it together. Come on, baby, don’t you want it? Let me feel it….” Then her mouth was on mine, smearing blood from her split lip on me, trying to get in…….. She wasn’t some big honking truckdriver. She wasn’t real big at all. And she was female. I shoulda been able to throw her around pretty easy, but I couldn’t. Couldn’t get the knife away from her, couldn’t get her arm down, couldn’t push her away……felt like I was suffocating. I kinda hate to admit it…….but I started to think maybe I was gonna die with her legs around me and her tongue in my mouth………. Fucking stupid not to bring my gun. I shoulda just hid the damn thing in my pants, and shot the bitch first chance I got. Shit. Wanting to get back at her, wanting to hurt her like she hurt me, was gonna get me killed. Stopped trying to pull her arm away. Braced my arm in between us and pushed…she wrapped herself around me tighter and I tripped, slid sideways along the wall and ended up on the floor. I pulled the knife in, toward her body, my body……and she let me do it, I see that now. It was then, while we were struggling, the knife between us, that I heard the voices downstairs. She heard ‘em, too. The steps coming up. Lots of feet, not worrying about being quiet. “You shouldn’t have let him go,” she said. “Now we have to hurry.” I swear I thought she meant to stab me. I was trying to turn the knife away from my chest; I expected some resistance. And when she pulled it toward herself, and the point of the knife cut her……I thought she’d stop. I didn’t have any idea what she meant to do. Herbert and Jones and Richard came through the bedroom door; she looked at me with half-closed eyes, and said, “Now, sweetheart.” I didn’t know what she meant. “Take me now.” The handle of the knife was sorta wedged against my breastbone, the point just beneath her skin. She let go of the knife, grabbed the back of my neck with both hands, closed her eyes……..and pulled herself up and toward me. The blade sank into her chest……. ……and the exhale from her dying body as I shoved it off me onto the floor was an awful lot like a sigh of pleasure…….. . . . . Herbert called the Doc and he stitched me up right there before I went home, mainly ‘cause I told him I wasn’t going to the hospital. He didn’t say much. After he tied off the last stitch, he kinda stopped and looked in my face, and said, “You OK, Bud?” “Sure.” “Hm. Well, all right. I don’t want you taking the stitches out yourself. You come and see me, so I can check them. OK?” “Sure.” While the Doc was stitching me up, Richard started talking to anybody that would listen, and he didn’t shut up till they took him home. I forgot all about him after Arliss came in the room, but he came back in with Herbert and Jones, so I figure he musta went out the window. He’ll probably get a lotta apple pie outta this story. Maybe Nancy’ll even feel sorry for him and take him back. The older couple that lived in the house were down in the basement. Alive. They were scared, but not as much as you might expect. I guess strength doesn’t go away just because you get old. The woman, Mrs. Pollack, sniffed when they brought Arliss’s body down the stairs, and said, “Good riddance.” Her husband offered to loan me one of his shirts so I didn’t have to wear my blood-soaked one home. “I’m sorry about the mess in your bedroom,” I said. “Don’t apologize,” he said, and held his hand out for me to shake. “Thank you.” I told ‘em I could drive home, but the Doc put the kibosh on that. Jones drove me home, and Herbert followed us to pick him up. “That was one fuckin’ weird crazy lady,” Jones said. “Yeah.” And that was it for the conversation until he pulled into my driveway and turned off the car. “Sometimes……” Jones fidgeted in the seat and looked out the window. “Sometimes stuff happens and it doesn’t really hit you bad till later…..” “I know.” He took a deep breath. “I do, too. So…….you know…….if……..well, I know how it is. So……” “Yeah. I’ll be OK.” “Yeah. Well…..I’m just down the street a ways.” “Sure. Thanks. But I’m fine.” “OK.”I started pulling my clothes off, and dropping ‘em, as soon as I was inside the front door. I could smell Arliss on me, her scent and her perfume. I felt like I had her blood all over me, and the smell was sharp in my nose; the smell of death…… I stood in the shower and scrubbed until the water got cold; and for a little while after that. I was shivering when I got out. Felt a little cleaner. Not a lot. Tired. Put on a clean pair of underwear, and sat down in the chair next to the bed. No sleeping for a while. It’s funny what you remember the best. I kept feeling her breath in my face……and hearing her say, “Now, sweetheart.” And I was still sitting there when Lynn got home the next afternoon. I know everybody thought I was in shock or something because of horror, or fear, or I don’t know, something. That wasn’t it. I wasn’t gone. I wasn’t nuts. I just needed to sit still for a while. Needed time to think about it and then let it go. I heard Lynn when she came in the bedroom the next afternoon and spoke to me; like I said, I wasn’t gone. I heard her; I looked at her; I just didn’t feel like talking about it, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I didn’t mean to worry anybody. And it wasn’t all that long, anyway. I went down and had supper later. It’s just that Lynn was already upset. Herbert had to give her a blow-by-blow account of what he saw when he came through the Pollack’s bedroom door, and so she was all worked up by the time she got home. Idiot. I told him so, too, when I went back to work. Lynn was upset, and I was sitting there in the chair in my underwear, and when I didn’t answer her right away, she got kinda hysterical, a little bit, and started to cry and wanted to call the Doc. It was Arbutus who calmed her down, told her to let me be for a while. She made supper; she had the kids to think about, and they were hungry. Arbutus sat with me while she did that. I held out my hand, and she took it; and that was just what I needed right then. And after the kids ate, I put my pants on, and went down, and ate, too. So it wasn’t a big deal, no matter what anybody else says. After supper, I sat in my chair in the living room and watched Charles playing with the train set. Becky climbed up on my lap for a few minutes every so often, and later in the evening, toward bedtime, Charles asked if he could sit on my lap, too. I lifted him up, and he was asleep almost right away. It felt kinda strange. A few days of near-panic, and suddenly everything is back to normal. All over with. All done. Forget about it. Sure.Lynn came down again after she put the kids to bed. “Come to bed,” she said. I shook my head, and started to say I’d be up in a while, but she put her fingers over my mouth. “Come to bed.” “Is that an order?” She nodded. So I went up. I shoulda been tired. I was tired. I just didn’t wanna go to sleep. Lynn waited until I got in bed to turn out the light. I lay in bed, on my back, staring up at the dark where the ceiling would be. The moonlight, from a moon not quite as full and big as last night, came through the curtains enough to see shapes and shadows. She turned to me, put her arm over my chest. I made room for her under my arm, so she could rest her head on my shoulder. Gave her a hug. “Do your stitches hurt?” she asked. “Not bad.” She leaned forward and kissed me; in the dark, I think she missed the spot she was aiming at, got me sorta on the jawbone. She put her hand on my face and turned it toward her. “Kiss me.” I kissed her. I guess she wasn’t satisfied, she said, “Kiss me,” again. “Lynn…..I don’t feel like---“ She raised up on her elbow, leaned over me, and found my mouth; and didn’t let me go, didn’t let me move, didn’t let me stop until I had my arms around her and I was kissing her back. “I’m sorry I said you always run away,” she said. “You don’t. You never do.” And she kissed me some more. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll be all right.” I wasn’t sure just what I wasn’t supposed to worry about, but hearing her say it made me feel better anyway. I woke up in the night, sweating, swearing, but still inside her arms. She kissed me, kissed me, kissed me until I stopped hearing Arliss’s voice in my ears, until I forgot the dream……until I could lose it all in the taste of her mouth, and the feel of her thighs around me. She soothed me with her body, and held me afterward, and I wished she could feel what I felt for her…..I wished I knew what to say to tell her……I said, “I love you.” That wasn’t enough, but I didn’t know what else to say. “I know you do, baby,” she said. “I love you, too.” Everything went back to normal pretty fast. I took a few days off; Herbert said I could take a week, but after three days, he said his arthritis was bothering him pretty bad, and could I come in just for the afternoon? Nobody asked me about it. Not even the Rev. The Doc looked at me intently when he took the stitches out; asked me how I was. Jones came to the station a coupla times and stood and talked; after that I found him at the hardware store like usual. Spent my days off with Arbutus and the kids. Monday, Charles went back to school. When Becky went down for her nap, Arbutus sat down beside me on the back porch steps and took my hand. “There’s a lot of things you don’t say,” she said. “Who, me?” “Yeah, you.” She looked sideways at me. “But you don’t fool me.” I let go of her hand…...and put my arm around her, pulled her up close. “Ok.” “So don’t even try.” “I won’t.” “All right.” She fell asleep against me, and slept until Becky woke up. When Charles came home from school, I got out the sprinkler, and Charles and Arbutus played sprinkler tag. Becky watched and screamed and laughed. I had to laugh, too; it was pretty funny. Arbutus got tired before Charles did, so she settled back against me on the porch again while the kids went on playing, and wrapped my arms around her to get me as wet as possible; and that’s where we were when Lynn got home. Miss R. stopped by in the evening to remind Charles about the schedule the next day. That’s what she said; I’m pretty sure she coulda called. She probably coulda sent a note home with him from school. Or something. I figured she’d been listening to gossip; probably wanted to see for herself whatever it is that she sees when she looks at me. I walked her out to her car when she left. “You were wrong about Arliss,” I said. “She wasn’t anything special, just a lunatic, like I said. She kept talking about what she was doing, what was gonna happen……and she stuck a knife in herself and nothing happened except she died.” Miss R. looked astonished. “Of course something happened. Didn’t you feel it? I did.” I didn’t wanna know about it. I asked her if she had her purse. Then I opened her car door for her, and shut it after she was inside. You oughta be able to recognize yourself when you look in the mirror…… Yeah, everything that happens changes you. Everything leaves its mark. My old man left a mark on me that‘ll never go away. Arliss left her mark on me, and not just on the outside. But pot roast dinners and baby kisses leave a mark, too. And sprinkler tag. Arliss taught me something. I’m not a different person than I used to be. Maybe I’m not exactly the same, but I am the same person. I could go back to L.A. and do what I did before……if I wanted to. But I woke up this morning with Lynn’s arms around me. I got five sloppy kisses from Becky………before breakfast. Charles is getting his picture taken at school today, and wanted to wear a tie, so we ran to the shop quick before school and got him a clip-on to match his shirt, and I got a hug around the neck before he got outta the car and ran up to the school door. So my job’s a little boring. And sometimes what I’m doing doesn’t seem very important. And maybe I’ve put on a few pounds just because I’m sitting in front of a typewriter too much of the time instead a’ running down bad guys. Tough shit. I might have to stop whining about it.
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