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Scars Chapter 3 “You belong to me now,” she’d said. “Forever. You’re mine.” The hot look in her eyes, the swing of her pretty black hair, the long and slender fingers curling around the scissors…….I could see it so clear, it mighta been yesterday…… I shoulda gone after her right away, I shouldn’ta let Lynn talk me out of following them to Montana. I shoulda found her and killed her, and the rest of her victims would still be alive. I looked at the guy on the slab in Las Cruces before I left; the designs she carved in him weren’t exactly like mine, but close enough. I expected that. What I didn’t expect was the identity of the victim. It was Tony. “Tony who?” the sheriff asked. I shrugged. “Don’t know his last name. They were lovers.” “How do you know that?” I sighed. “She wasn’t shy.” I had to take off my shirt so he could see my scars. He didn’t look at ‘em too close; said he didn’t need to. That was OK with me. I think he had a lotta questions he wanted to ask me, he was curious; but I didn’t have time for that. Charles was in school. I told Arbutus on the phone not to leave her house, to stay and watch over Lynn and Becky. I’d get somebody to pick up Charles. She asked me then if she should load her shotgun. I told her yes. I spent some more time on the phone in the sheriff’s office before I left. He complained once, I told him to bill me. I called the Rev’s house. When he answered, I said, “Is he sober?” “I don’t think there’s any point in going over this again at the moment—“ “Is he sober?” Silence. “Rev?” “No.” I hung up. Had to think a minute. Who else? Not Herbert, he was too mild-mannered. The other two officers on Bisbee’s little police force were his nephews, and pretty much cut from the same cloth. I hadn’t met Patty’s new boyfriend yet, so no way could I trust him with my son. I coulda used a couple more Arbutuses. I dialed the operator once more and had her connect me with Sam’s Hardware. It was hard to sit still. Everything was taking too much time, wasting time I coulda been driving. Seemed like it took forever to get connected, for Sam’s wife to answer the phone, for her to ask me how I was, to yell at Jones, for him to come to the phone……. “Hi, there, Bud, what can I do for you today?” “I need a favor. A big one.” “Sure, Bud, anything I can help you with---“ “Better wait till you hear what it is before you say yes.” It was kind of a hard thing to explain. Sounded sorta crazy. So I kept it simple. “Could be there’s a stranger in town that’d like to get to my family. I’m in Las Cruces, and I’m coming home as fast as I can, but I need somebody to get Charles from school and run him out to Arbutus McAfee’s.” There was a pause. “I can do that.” “If I were you, I’d load my rifle. Just in case.” Another pause. “I understand.” I‘d been hoping the military man wasn’t too far beneath the surface. His usual lazy drawl was fading as we spoke; I was reassured. “Anything I should look out for?” “A beautiful woman.” I didn’t know what else to tell him. “I’m trusting you to keep my boy safe, Thaddeus.” “I know that. Anybody wants him, they’ll have to come through me.” “I appreciate it. I’ll owe you one.” “I reckon you will.” And he laughed. One more call. Miss Robideaux. I told her who I was. “I’m sending someone to pick Charles up, and I need you to let him go early.” “I’m sorry,” she said, “She was already here, and I didn’t let him go with her. If you don’t let me know these things in advance, then I have no---“ “Hold on----who was there?” “Your sister was here. I can’t release the children before school is out, you know, unless I have a written---“ She went on scolding me, but I didn’t listen. I was trying to calm my heart down, trying to breathe slower, trying to calm down. “It wasn’t my sister.” I could almost hear her thinking, through the wires, but I didn’t expect what she said next. “Good. I couldn’t help thinking less of you when I thought the two of you were----“ “I don’t have time to chat. Do you know Thaddeus Jones?” “I believe I could recognize him.” “Charles is to go with him, and nobody else. Understand? Keep Charles inside until he gets there.” “She’s the witch, isn’t she?” I didn’t know how to answer that. “Miss Robideaux---“ “She’s the one who marked you.” Miss R. was big on making unfounded assumptions. I guess you’re gonna be right once in a while doing that. She had questions, too, but I didn’t have time to answer any of ‘em. I got back on the road and pushed Lynn’s poor old Buick as hard as it would go. I still had lotsa time to think. I started out imagining all the bad stuff that could happen while I was on the road. I wanted to stop every half hour and call Lynn, make sure she was still OK. Like that was gonna keep her safe somehow till I got there. Just drive, I told myself. Just take that much longer to get home if you do stupid stuff like that. Arbutus won’t let anything happen to Lynn and Becky. Jones’ll look after Charles. Just drive. I coulda used a couple more Arbutuses. Huh. I thought about that. Strange to think that I trusted her to keep my family safe more than I trusted just about any man in Bisbee. It was kind of a puzzle to me. OK, yeah, she was a better shot with a rifle than I was. She laughed at Herbert’s locker room jokes. When her old car began to sputter a little she raised the hood and replaced the spark plugs and points herself, and then checked the fuel line. Like a man would. But she never seemed like anything but a woman to me. I felt like protecting her, looking after her, just like I did Lynn. She just didn’t need me to. She could take care of herself. I said something to her, that day she was working on her car, about letting a man take care of this kinda thing, and she laughed at me, and said, “Why?” I don’t remember exactly what I said, probably something about how it was a man’s job. Not a woman’s. She stopped laughing. After a minute, she said, looking at me from under the hood, squinting in the sunlight, a smear of grease on her cheek, “So if I do it myself, am I not a woman?” “That’s not what I meant. I just meant, it’s something a man could do for you.” She straightened up, started cleaning her wrenches off with a rag. She didn’t look at me when she said, “…..So do you think I’m not feminine?” Christ. I can’t tell what’s going on in a woman’s mind by her face, and anyway I couldn’t see Arbutus’s face ‘cause she was looking the other way, but I’ve heard questions in that tone of voice before. The one that you know means you better answer the question right. I stepped up behind her, and put my arms around her waist. “You have to ask me that?” She thought about it a minute. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry.” I lay my cheek against her hair. It took her a minute. Then she relaxed against me, put her arms over mine, let me hold her. “I know better than that.” If I’d been holding Lynn insteada Arbutus, right then is when I’da kissed her. If somebody’d seen us standing there in front a’ her car that way, I imagine Lynn woulda got an earful over the phone from that somebody. Things being what they were, we stood that way for a while. We didn’t get to be alone together much these days. After I got home from the mountains, we spent a lot of time together, sitting outside in the swing. I missed it. Not because there was anything we wanted to do that we couldn’t do with other people around, but……..it was just quieter with nobody else around. Easier to talk. Or not talk. I missed it. Arbutus’s eyes were closed. She started humming to herself real soft. “You’re sleeping with Lucius?” I said. “Mm-hmm,” she said. “Some.” “Is he good to you?” “Good enough.” Opened her eyes. “He’ll do.” “Are you thinking serious about him?” She turned in my arms and looked me in the face. “Why?” I let go of her and put my hands in my pockets. Backed up a step. “I don’t wanna be a problem for you. For the two of you. If you’re thinking of something serious.” She frowned. “What put that idea into your head?” It was Lucius that put that idea into my head, but I didn’t tell her so. Lucius wanting to know what there was between the two of us. Wanting to know what he was up against, I guess. I don’t think he believed me when I said there wasn’t anything. And then he warned me off. Not in so many words. He brought up the rumor about Lynn and Richard---yeah, that rumor. Fucking Richard. And told me he understood, but that it was time to move ahead. And let other people move on, too. And that he wasn’t sure what was gonna happen between the two of them, but he knew I cared about Arbutus, and he was sure I wouldn’t wanna mess anything up for her. You know, the whole routine. So he didn’t come right out and tell me to stay away from her, but I got the picture. It pissed me off. I don’t like people telling me what I’m gonna do, for one thing. Not only that, it was damn stupid. He knew better. Or at least he oughta. “I’m married,” I said to him, “to a beautiful woman.” He looked down at the sidewalk and nodded. “I love my wife.” He sighed. “I know that.” “Then you’re full a’ shit. And you don’t know Arbutus very well. Seems to me if she wanted something from me, she woulda come and got it by now. You know? And it ain’t like you got a claim on her yet. Do you?” He didn’t wanna answer me, but he did. “No.” “OK. I guess we don’t have anything else to say to each other, then, do we?” And I walked away from him. I suppose I mighta got more upset than I shoulda. He was just jealous. I figured that out after I calmed down. Just what he was jealous of was beyond me. Seemed pretty strange…….a man like that, a doctor, who was always saying stuff I had to ask him to explain, was jealous of me. I didn’t think, till later, that maybe Arbutus had said something to him about me. I didn’t think she would, it didn’t seem like something she would do, and we usually understood each other…….but she was a woman, and I couldn’t say I always knew what women would do………. “Bud?” she said. “What’s this all about?” “Nothing. I just wanted to make sure everything was OK. With you.” She didn’t believe me. “If things don’t go right, or he doesn’t treat you right, you let me know, OK?” I said. She really frowned, for a minute. Then her face cleared and she laughed a little. “How about this? I’ll let you fix my car next time.” When I didn’t say anything, she patted my cheek. “Don’t worry so much.” She kissed me on the cheek. “You’re still just as sweet as candy, and I’d be a fool to let you drift away.” She grinned. “And a big strong man, too; why, I bet you coulda turned those wrenches twice as good as I did. Fixed the car in half the time. The next time something needs fixing, I’ll just call on you to help little ol’ me.” I didn’t laugh. “Yeah, go ahead and make jokes. I’ll shut up.” She stopped laughing, too. “Oh, Bud, don’t. Don’t. You know I didn’t mean anything by that. I always thought…….I always thought we got along good ‘cause we didn’t want anything from each other except good company. So being together’s not a chore. Let’s not change that.” She put her arms around me and gave me a hug. Here’s another time where, if it woulda been Lynn insteada Arbutus, I woulda kissed her. So it was confusing. I couldn’t think of her like a man……but I wasn’t supposed to do for her any of the stuff men do for women…….except when she wanted me to. And we were just friends…..sorta……..but Lucius thought he had a reason to be jealous of me. It didn’t do me any good to think about it on the way back from Las Cruces. Didn’t come up with any more answers than I had before. Maybe if I’da had a couple more Arbutuses it wouldn’ta been a problem. I called them when I got about half way. Had to. Had to make sure they were still OK. Nothing I coulda done if they weren’t, but that didn’t make any difference. I almost called Herbert and asked him to keep an eye on my house, but then I thought about it some more and changed my mind. Maybe I shouldn’t bring anybody else into this any farther. You know? Be better for him to go home and put his feet up and stay out of it. Safer. Lynn told me Jones was staying there with them. Just in case. And she said Richard was there for a couple minutes, looking for me. “Was he drunk?” She hesitated. “I don’t know. Thaddeus talked to him.” Uh-huh. Fucking Richard. Something else to think about on the way home. The Rev said I needed to have more patience with Richard. He said my good opinion was important to Richard, and without it, he was less likely to overcome his particular beasts. He said Richard was truly remorseful. He said……..he said a lotta things. I was told Richard fell all to pieces when he thought I was dead. That sounded like bullshit to me. What did he do before I moved here? Was he all in pieces then? The Rev said Richard fell in with the wrong crowd somehow. Started gambling and drinking. I’ll bet Richard was doing some a’ that before, just nobody knew it. And I’m not saying that just because he liked to have a beer every once in a while. I can’t believe all of a sudden, because I was gone, he started doing stuff he’d never done before. I think he just got caught. And Patty said even at that it wasn’t too bad until the thing with Lynn came up. Richard jokes around. Everybody knows it. Sometimes his jokes aren’t too funny. That’s just Richard. He used to joke around with his wife about other women all the time. Something about this time was different, though. Nancy threw him out this time; and I couldn’t figure it out, cause I wasn’t here when most of it happened. I was in the mountains, trying to stay alive. All I knew was what I was told. And one day a few weeks ago, I said something to Lynn about it. Sitting at the supper table, trying to understand what was going on. I said, “It’s not like he actually made a pass at you. It was pretty much like all his other jokes, wasn’t it? So how come Nancy’s still so upset at us after all this time?” She was at the stove, spooning the leftovers from supper into bowls. And she didn’t say anything. I waited a couple minutes. “Lynn? It’s not like he made a pass at you. Right?” And she didn’t say anything. I guess she didn’t need to. I pick up on things sooner or later.
She turned around. “I didn’t say anything to you because……there were so many things when you first got home……..problems…..and then Becky…….and Charles…….and it seemed like there was never a good time……..and it really wasn’t very important. He just…..did it, and I said no, and he went home.” She didn’t look like she thought it wasn’t very important. “He went home. So he was here. In the house.” She nodded. “Was he drunk?” “Well…..he had a beer. He was just……here to see if I was all right.” “Yeah.” I stood up. “Probably just wanted to comfort the widow.” Maybe all his jokes about sleeping around weren’t jokes. Maybe he comforted widows all over town. Maybe everybody knew it but me. “Bud.” Lynn curled both her arms around one of mine. “Don’t. Sit down, and we’ll talk about it.” “I think we just did that.” I pulled my arm away from her, and limped outside. Got in my old pickup and drove away. Didn’t go to the Rev’s, though. Didn’t go looking for Richard to beat the crap outta him. I could always do that later. And I might. I drove out into the desert a ways to think about the guy I used to figure was my best friend…….trying to get in my wife’s pants while I was gone. And the question. Why didn’t she tell me about it? It’s been almost two years. In two years, she couldn’t find a way to say something? I worried, while I was stuck in that fucking cabin, that Lynn thought I was dead, that someone would comfort her.…….I imagined coming back to my house, walking in, and finding her with a man. I worried that it might be Ed. Or somebody else I didn’t know. I never even thought of Richard. He was married, he loved his wife, he’d been my best friend……..I never thought of Richard. I wish I was a better man. I wish I could say it never even crossed my mind, that I didn’t wonder for a second whether she was telling me the truth. Or whether she was leaving something out.……. She hadn’t been brought up to say no to men. She hadn’t had a lotta experience with it. I didn’t know if she could do it if I was outta the picture. Richard looked so damn guilty all the time after I got back. I never understood it before. When I got home later, she had that sick look on her face. “Where were you? I was worried about you.” She looked down at my hands. “Oh, baby,” she said, “what did you do to yourself?” I let her clean my hands up, and smear some cream on ‘em, and put a little bandage on ‘em to keep the cream off the sheets. I didn’t need all that----they weren’t that bad---but she wanted to do it. We put the kids to bed, and went to bed ourselves, and I took her in my arms and kissed her. Held her for a while; she sniffled, and tried not to let me know it. “I love you,” she said. “I know you do, baby,” I said. “I love you, too.” I didn’t ask her. No point. If I asked her, and she didn’t do it, I’d be insulting her. I felt like a real heel just for thinking it. If she did do it…..well, then……..I’d just have to understand. Like she did for me. She thought I was dead. So maybe she figured it didn’t matter. Patty told me she was afraid Lynn was gonna die, too, when I didn’t come back. Maybe she needed to be close to somebody. Not like that was something I couldn’t understand. And Richard could be charming when he wanted to be. Women liked him. She probably didn’t do it, anyway. Why would she? She was pregnant. She was real careful about the baby. Either way, it wasn’t such a big deal. It shouldn’t hurt so much to think about it. Fucking Richard.
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